Copy Protection DRM

[KingAl]

O RLY?

[xander]

NO WAI!

Not to be overly pedantic, but it's spelled "way", not "wai". And you call yourself a pedant.

wwarnick

xander

[wwarnick]

I've seen alot of pixels in my day and that looks shopped.

wwarnick

[xander]

xander

[shinygerbil]

Edit: To kind of stay on topic...Isn't hotlinking naughty?

[xander]

xander

[Ace Rimmer]

Déjà vu.

[Cabbage]

I recommend a look on the way that Stardock handled this topic with their games. It's kind of similar to what Chris said.
Their principle is the following:
-Don't bother legitimate buyers with discs, copy protection or DRM. Yes, that's right. Absolutely zero direct copy protection.
-Create a digital distribution network (not unlike Steam).
-Release amazing patches that not only fix, but also add content (to some extent)and make various tweaks and improvements to the game. Let only people who have registered their game on the afore-mentioned network download the patch.
-The result: pirates are stuck with the base build of the game, being barred from any improvements made to the game.
-Sit back and enjoy the fact that you annoyed pirates and made your fans happy. The end.

Ok, I might have described it a bit idealistically, but you get the point.

Here's a post from Stardock's CEO on the subject: Clicky.

[Paperflyer]

You are right, piracy is of course also possible on Linux, but I think you got my point anyway, didn't you?

Cabbage's proposition sounds fascinating, though.

[The GoldFish]

You are right, piracy is of course also possible on Linux, but I think you got my point anyway, didn't you?

Well, yes, I see your point, my problem though is with this whole section here:

I think that the problem of piracy is largely a question of money. A Kid saves money to buy his first PC, but oftenly does not calculate the money needed for Software -- starting with the operating system. So It just downloads it. Being a bad pirated copy, it works poorly and the kid gets problems with drivers and other software. Hence, it thinks that games in general are not reliable in terms of stability and therefore not worth the hard-earned money.
Had its parents bought a proper PC with proper software, those problems probably would not have arisen at this extend because the overall experience would have been a lot smoother and less error-prone.

Therefore, I use Linux, where piracy is utterly impossible and software generally is free. And thanks to Introversion (and Laminar Research), I still can game on!

Basically because, for a start, most of the illegal copies of operating systems I've ever come across have been perfectly stable in every respect. There aren't any problems with drivers or other software in any way other than those present in the retail versions of said OS - if there were, people who actually did know what they were doing wouldn't use them either and the availability of poor quality copies would dwindle, while the better quality copies are more available.

Secondly, anyone who doesn't weight in the price of games/software etc and then obtains a dodgy version of an operating system full of bugs and THEN blames the games for being faulty and doesn't buy them probably COULDN'T use Linux in the first place, or at least far beyond the fundamentals. So really your point seems kinda muddled about to me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not really trying to argue, I partially agree, but I would say really the reason for it is a combination of cost and/or/vs convinience. If something is very expensive then people tend to go more out of their way to obtain it, but for something which costs 5 pounds they might just say, well, it's 5 pounds, it's easier just to buy it. If they think they're being overcharged, that is, if a product's apparent valuation and commercial cost don't add up to the person in question, then they're even more likely not to pay. The purpose of DRM isn't (or shouldn't be) to PREVENT cracking - that's never going to succeed - the purpose is to make it difficult, complicated, and annoying to crack, so that it's decidely inconvinient to download it illegally, making simply paying for it a much more attractive prospect.

For a start, not having access to patches and updates ala Galciv etc is decidedly inconvinient. But so is having to connect to the internet every single time you want to play your single player game, and being forced to apply updates. Oh, and being only able to install the game twice...

Also someone said it earlier, I've certainly downloaded the DW and Uplink patches quite a few times. Only thing is I'm not most people, nor are most people on the forums, so, it certainly seems to me that there'd be a fairly hefty ratio of people who probably only downloaded them only once (or maybe twice)

[Cooper42]

I thought steam had the answer to all.

Now, against my better judgement, I'm back at uni and behind their network firewall/proxy - and I've been bitching about steam for ages. I had to tunnel through a bloody 1.5kb/s ssh shell to install orange box...

I'm a big fan for extended support / content.
Nothing says 'we care, here have a great big hug' than speedy patches, and updates which add content and/or extend experience (graphics, customisability etc.). It's arguably much easier to limit the distribution of extended content.

I would be willing to jump hoops in terms of game keys, registration forms etc. knowing that my legitimate purchase entitled me to something over the leechers.

And, if it can;t be said ennough; hands off my hardware. Bloody SecureRom...

[Shrimpster]

Just something to consider...

When you kicked all those Defcon players that were playing off of the pirated steam key... It became a lot harder to find people to play with. As such, you actually reduced the value of the game for the existing players, as it now takes a lot longer to find people to play with.

Personal suggestion?

Since you've got a guaranteed way of checking for pirated versions, just enforce the demo on them. Let them play games like anyone else, just not able to create their own with special settings. Periodically you could "unlock" these demos for a limited time to let people try out the full game. Having a large player base goes a long way towards making the game enjoyable for everyone.

In fact! Why not preempt the pirating and upload it to bittorrent yourself? You can look at it as free marketing... Heck if you make a big deal about it you can probably even get some free press. Because you are in control, you can always revoke the passes if something goes wrong...

======

I think the future of games is in allowing players to create their own content... The cool thing about that is that if the quality is high enough, it doesn't really matter if the game is pirated or not... As those pirates can now be considered as a legion of "unpaid" pseudo developers that are improving the game.

Anyways, just some thoughts to mull over.

Keep up the good work!

-Chris

[shinygerbil]

Firstly, those who were kicked off were almost definitely not banned for life from playing the game. They could have continued playing the demo, if they liked the game enough to want to.

Secondly, a fake Darwinia torrent was released.

[Pox]

xander

XKCD = win.

[RabidZombie]

Indeed it does.