We need to remove the free dowloads!

[balfro]

I have seen allot of FREE 3rd party downloads to prison architect. (I bought it legit(I have it on steam)).
Just search youtube: Prison architect free download. And you will get some videos with download links. Can you remove that with copyright?
P.S. I have not searched google. I think that there might be around 50 free download sites there.

[knoest26]

Considering that Prison Architect has sold almost 300,000 times and raised close to 10 million dollars this should easily cover development. I think the developers aren't very concerned about piracy in the alpha stage, the final version will probably feature more of 'required cd lock' or something.

And personnally I think it's good that you can download prison architect for free, $30 is quite a lot for an alpha game if you don't know what it's like. People who pirated it for several Alpha's will eventually want a real copy so they can be more involved.

[Axios]

Cd lock? In a digital distribution?

They release from their site the drm free version....

However they are selling good. Yes, piracy is always a problem but not their first problem.

[VoiD88]

IV has never been too concerned about piracy, one of the reasons why I support the company so much.

The big companies (prime example is EA) are just loading their paying customers with more and more ridiculous problems because of their horrendous and ever increasing copy-protection systems, which always get broken by pirates in a matter of days. So the protection systems only serve to make things worse for the paying customers because pirates can just circumvent them.

[thekillergreece]

Torrenters of PA, are not fully satisfied of course, which is good...The reasons are: No access to official wiki,no access to mods and ready maps, and no support on developers forum

[balfro]

I am not saying that they should put DRM on the game. I mean that they can remove the videos of youtube because they hold the copyright to the game.

[iScripters]

To be honest, I pirated PA too.. After about 3 hours of gameplay I liked it so much that I went on Steam and bought it. Not just PA but most of my 150+ Steam games actually.. I pirate if there's no demo available.

So it can be a good thing!

[thekillergreece]

To be honest, I pirated PA too.. After about 3 hours of gameplay I liked it so much that I went on Steam and bought it. Not just PA but most of my 150+ Steam games actually.. I pirate if there's no demo available.

So it can be a good thing!

Exactly, the main reason why IV should add demo to game(When PA finishes its development which may take years)to prevent high piracy.But hey, even if they torrent it, it wont make them satisfied due to lack official wiki,steam workshop,mods and support

[Meeeps]

they could also do the opposite and make the game opensource at release, I don't think, there aren't many people left who would buy the game anyway, most interested people already bought it or will before official release will appear. Also they could earn another huge amount of money by simple donations.

[Master-Guy]

As one of many, I support the idea of demo's. If these are not available, I usually download the game first from another source as well.
If I like the game I still buy it afterwards to support the developers. If I don't like the game, it gets removed from my computer and that's it.

However, I do also agree to the fact that pirating complete games just so you don't have to pay should be stopped somehow.
In the Netherlands we have a group called BREIN that tries to stop the torrenting.
So far, they have not bothered with newsgroups yet.

Next to that, I somehow think that it should be possible to protect the game from copying. For example, add a unique ID to every download of the game, so you can find out who spread it out.
Also, some form of IP based restriction could help, even though that is simple to bypass with the hosts file.
Requiring that a connection is available once every month or so would be an option. This would block the game if it was ran for more then a month in a single household without a license.

I'm sure there are ways to not bother the users a lot, but still protect the game from unauthorized copies..

[balfro]

Now you say you buy the game anyway but first download it from a 3rd party. Some people do not buy it they just play the pirated version. That is the problem i have.

[VoiD88]

Now you say you buy the game anyway but first download it from a 3rd party. Some people do not buy it they just play the pirated version. That is the problem i have.

But IV doesn't have a prolem with that, so I don't know why you do^^

[balfro]

Because they should have a problem with that. Prison architect is so good that they deserve to multiply the money income be 342.

[Meeeps]

With all the cheap sales on Steam or Humble, people still pirating "old" PC games is silly. It is so not worth the hassle.

[Abhorsen]

Those who pirate during alpha won't get the latest version and won't have access to this forum. I don't think it'll be a problem in the long run: some of those who pirate will choose to pay for it later on, maybe when it begins to get more frequent discounts on Steam. It can be counter-productive for an indy company to be too aggressive about piracy.

Minecraft had a decent solution: they displayed a little message in-game for those who pirated. Something along the lines of 'It looks like you didn't pay for this game '. Friend of mine pirated it at first, but then went and bought it and convinced a group of us to get it too.