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The New Comic Thread for Friday, February 19, 2010
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That makes me the closest thing the forum has to "that" guy
You know, the smug ass with an eyepatch
like the enemies start being invincible or something
that one game had ships like suddenly following weird laws of physics and slamming into each other
ps the internet connection thing is total bullshit that would prevent me from buying a game
my internet is not very stable
basically the way they go about anti-piracy measures are alienating their customer base and preventing sales
they produce that retarded "proud to pirate" thing by making their product shittier if you're playing by the rules
we're maybe the exception that proves tycho's rule
any lolpirate would be instantly eaten alive by Tube, and then thered be much rejoicing
To what extent do you believe that legality is congruent with morality? It seems like a lot of pro-DRM arguments (including some of those we've heard here) are at least partially based on the legality of various acts, and don't necessarily make the moral case independently of the legal particulars.
In other words, would you agree that there could be circumstances in which piracy (whether outright piracy or cracking a piece of software that you legitimately purchased simply for your own convenience) is illegal but morally acceptable?
I'm most interested in hearing what pro-DRM folks have to say, but any comments would be welcome.
Whoops. I'm sorry about that; as usual, I left out a few steps because at six in the morning I am convinced the entire world can read my mind. The line of reasoning I was referring to is the one behind your phrasing here:
The implicit assertion is that DRM "does something" about piracy. Which is a debatable proposition. It delays the initial cracking, and frustrates the fuck out of a portion of the legitimate customers - in this case, anyone whose internet connection is not rock-solid.
How many of those frustrated customers go on to crack, or obtain a crack of, the game they bought? How many foresee their eventual piracy and decide to skip the 'buying it first' part? I don't know, but I'm damn sure the people making these decisions don't know either. And I suspect it doesn't work out to be anywhere close to worth shitting on all the legit users like that.
After catching up on the thread and rereading the newspost, I discover that my point has been made in clearer terms and by a more august personage:
And now let me staple another response onto this beast of a post.
Cracking a piece of software that you bought because the DRM makes it unplayable or inconvenient is absolutely morally justifiable. Once you buy it, you have the right to use it in a way that is not broken. But then, I'm not pro-DRM, so my opinion won't be the most interesting one in the thread.
Micheal Blanchet may steal video games.
The problem with that is that "BUGGY PIECE OF SHIT GAME" gets out a lot faster than "No, you pirated it"
Off the top of my head, I remember reading news stories about The Force Unleashed(PC version), Batman: AA, and Fallout 3 bugging to hell if you had the pirated version. I'm fairly sure the news stories also said something like "And x pirate group, once they knew about it, fixed the crack".
but I doubt that most people have Destructoid or Joystiq on their Google reader, and instead hear second-hand from their friends who pirated "Yeah man, the PC version sucks, Batman's glide is broken as shit, don't buy that POS"
In fact I am playing one right now.
I would like to point out that pirating a game isn't the same as stealing it, though. If you stole the game, the person you stole it from would (presumably) buy a replacement copy, meaning the game company would still be getting two sales of the product. SO while theft has definitely occurred, piracy (and the damage to the gaming industry which accompanies it) has not. So I don't want to see anyone else misnomering.
Make sure you do it right from now on.
I'll be watching.
Great lengths? No. Some lengths, yes.
Perfect? Not asking for perfect.
That's supposed to represent the industry?
I didnt say that no one will line up, but that most people wont. I wont. No one I know would.
That is two dozen people for a very popular title. It doesnt help your point much. That absolutely does not happen for every product, either. If you want to talk about pirating an extremely popular title (that any number of people would line up for) that's a different issue altogether, as then people are extraordinarily impatient. Apart from the triple-A titles, though? No one's lining up for anything.
You're right, I dont have to buy it. I could always pirate it, right?
I'm saying that DRM isnt worth the trade off as it stands, even economically. I dont count myself as extraordinary, I doubt very much my opinions are unique, and as simply and bluntly stated as possible; I would rather not play games than deal with this proposed DRM. I apologize if the foul language is hurting your feelings, I'll try to pretty it up a little. Maybe some glitter, little scratch'nsniff. Let me know what you'd like.
No, I wasn't being clear enough. I'm going to put the context back in my statement:
Meaning, as a person who has worked as a developer before, and who is trying to turn that into a business, hearing people that I consider friends justifying piracy at all upsets me. The wording got muddled at the end because I was tacking on one justification for piracy, but I phrased it poorly.
I've already posted about why I think publishers are adding DRM, and I think its reasonable to assume that they have more data on the topic than we do.
Cos the likes of EA claim it does them no harm, Valve has the magic of steam on their side, and Ubisoft are... going nuts
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Not too many people here are trying to justify piracy in so much as condemn DRM.
That's pretty much all I've got to say about the mess.
Good luck with developing, though.
maybe replace all the textures with DON'T PIRATE OUR SHIT, ASSHOLE
If I can't afford it I do not watch/play it.
This is what I tell all the mouth breathers I meet that still pirate shit.
The only stuff I've pirated is stuff that didn't have a demo. If I liked it, game was bought. The difficult thing for me in all this is that while I absolutely hate this whole "Internet required to play" model that AC2 and to a lesser extent Steam enforces, I'm not going to sit here and say publishers should just stop trying to protect their games because people will crack it anyways.
PSN: TheScrublet
Why do you think the cracker does what he/she does?
For them its not an inconvenience, its a fun challenge.
One that, if successful, wins them praise from the scene.
Its basically a hobby like any other for these guys.
Doom 3 was especially bad about this; it detected my ATI All-In-Wonder videocard with TV tuner as a video capture device, and refused to run unless I removed my videocard.
Yeesh
Well okay in that kind of situation I think you'd have to be a letter-of-the-law-rather-than-spirit kind of guy to protest cracking it
Sort of like jury-rigging your own temporary patch
PSN: TheScrublet
That's interesting.
A quick google search brings back scores of reviews of AIW cards being benchmarked with Doom 3, but I can't find anything about that error. What model card was it?
Now that makes more sense. Sorry I jumped down your throat at first.
I don't. Where would they be getting that data?
If a developer actually did this, I would first buy the game to support that awesome idea and then play a friend's pirated copy to see the effect for myself.
Now what are the moral implications of that?
well, that's a pretty dumb argument from those people isn't it?
people are being dumb on both sides
in the end, normal joes like you and i just want to own a game they have paid money for and not have to jump through ridiculous hoops to be allowed to play the game after putting money on the table.
At one point in the game Guybrush gets captured and he's locked in this old shack. Once inside he discovers a small trap door which leads to his escape. Each time he's captured the guards upgrade the door, eventually to the point of becoming an ultra-max electronic vault cover. Though, none of it matters since Guybrush was escaping through the trap door the whole time.
Game developers are like the guards, always upgrading their DRM to prevent piracy. The thing is, none of it matters since the pirates just keep using the trap door.
yes, absolutely. that is a ridiculous hoop to jump through.
Morality is a lot more subjective than legality.
However, I can think of one example where it might be technically illegal, but I would consider the matter morally grey at worst. That would be the situation where a game has been around for some time, the company that made it / supported it is now defunct, and the only way to play said game is via an "illegal" crack. With no entity to claim the property, I would consider it part of the public domain as it were, and feel free to do with it as I pleased.
A very large portion of the US lives in places (not just boonies, but suburban and urban areas) where their choices are 1-3 equally shitty ISPs. Or maybe a couple shitty ones and a super expensive decent one.
All-In-Wonder X800 LE I believe. When the game started up Starforce would detect a "video capture add-in device" and prompt me to remove the capture device before playing. Apparently someone introduced a driver hack a few weeks after that stopped the detection, and then some months later Starforce was largely patched out of the game.
By this time I had already finished with Doom 3.
Yeah copy protection is stupid, mostly because it doesn't deter pirates and only annoys legit users, nothing really new here...
I do like "it's okay to steal if you're really ANGRY when you do it"
Starforce was crazy with that shit. Older versions of the software used to refuse to run if you had line-level sound recording, any kind of CD-emulation, if you were running virtual machines... all kinds of things that would stop perfectly legal software from being installed while Starforce was going.
I think the idea was that they made a DRM copy protection scheme that could stop people from copying any kind of media, whether it was audio, video, game resources... it wouldn't let games run on your computer until all of that was gone.
that's still like 1/5 of households by the way
"hey let's reduce our customer base by 60 million people"
I am pretty sure they realized there bottom line was being hurt.