To be honest, I think you're missing the point. I didn't even know what a darknet was, and I've been a computer geek since age 5. Anyway, of course dedicated, hardcore pirates will find ways to keep their illegal activities afloat. The point is that it needs to be driven back underground so that average Joe with a broadband connection doesn't have a quick, easy, and riskless one-stop-shop for all his free stolen goods.
OremLK on
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
I'm not sure it'll work out quite like that; even if you just decentralize it, it'd put a HUGE dent in the amount of piracy that goes on.
That'll just drive it into the darknets. All you need is one trusted hookup point, and then it's business as usual again.
Trust me on this: it's like squeezing water. You'll never get a hold of it.
Would this not be a better situation overall though? I mentioned earlier, piracy is so prevalent because it's literally a one click affair now. Pushing it into the darknets would lower it to the people who are dead set on pirating, compared to regular Joe's who don't really know where to download Call of Duty 5 online now.
You'll never get rid of piracy, that part is clear. But making it harder to accomplish would certainly cut it down a large amount I would think.
edit: Oh hey, 2 minutes late with the same suggestion. Gotta learn to type faster.
The Wolfman on
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
How can you stop people from FAQ'ing how to "go underground" and get the stuff, though? As long as you can touch it (i.e. connect to it on the Internet) then you can download it. It's a classic cat and mouse.
Well, yeah, there's that. I'm mainly talking about stopping your average person through sheer annoyance. If you end up having to download chat software, get in a channel, search for your game, then get in a queue and wait to download. Hopefully that person would just say "Fuck this" and buy the game because it's just simpler. The person willing to go through those steps? Well, he's a dick and we really can't stop him. The idea is stopping the average dude.
After reading that, I kinda realize I mostly just described the torrent system as it is now. But the main idea is to make it a lot harder and more in depth to have to pirate something. Because as I said, it's so easy to go to torrents R Us dot com and click one link for a game.
I'm really mostly just thinking out loud, so forgive me if it's truly as futile as it sounds. I suck at teh explaining.
The Wolfman on
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Well, yeah, there's that. I'm mainly talking about stopping your average person through sheer annoyance. If you end up having to download chat software, get in a channel, search for your game, then get in a queue and wait to download. Hopefully that person would just say "Fuck this" and buy the game because it's just simpler. The person willing to go through those steps? Well, he's a dick and we really can't stop him. The idea is stopping the average dude.
Exactly. Even if it only halves piracy, Christ--that's half! Half is good! The average person won't go to lengths to pirate something.
OremLK on
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
The average person won't go to lengths to pirate something.
Actually, I'd say the average person would go to extreme lengths to get free shit.
Considering how little effort it takes, yeah, the average person will likely just download stuff for free. The worst part is that of all the computer illiterate people I've spoken to that do pirate stuff, they act like there's nothing wrong with it. Like it's the legal, purposeful use of the internet. They're generally surprised to hear that it's a crime you can get fined and imprisoned for.
They try to make their game un-stealable, people steal it anyway (of course), and it's somehow their fault that the the pirates spread the word that their pirated game won't work? Truly mind-bottling.
Um. Yes. It's their fault.
If you already have a good grasp on the fact that there's an irreducible percentage of your audience that can and WILL pirate and crack open your game -- regardless of how sophisticated your checks against it are -- who do you really have to blame for negative word-of-mouth when it turns out those people can't distinguish between your security and what appears to be a game with incredibly poor quality control?
I'm not here to defend piracy (though how many avid PC gamers can say they've never used it as a means to a glorified demo), but this is a fairly inept backlash. The problem could've been avoided by showing a friendly error when the game was made to crash -- "Invalid cd-key detected, please attempt to reinstall."
Copy protection is a waste of everybody's time. The pirates (note: there are two types, the 'consumer' pirate who merely clicks a torrent link [the vast majority], and the actual 'cracker' who takes glee in breaking your relentlessly thought-out copy protection schema) won't be dissuaded, and your own development resources will have been poured into a black hole of money and time. In the worst case, scenarios like this will occur, and the protection will backfire in such a way as to completely turn people off to your game.
What i don't get is that developers are claming to move to console because theirs less piracy. Pirated console software has been around forever. And its moved beyond having to need a soldering gun (thanks to console advancement) to pirate console games. Consoles are a temporary safer harbour at best. Once enough people are there to make it worth the crackers time,the consoles will be pirated as much if not more.
As people have been mentioning the only way to get a handle on piracy is to discourage the average joe. You will never ever stop hackers/crackers from dissesembling your software untill we got a shadowrunesque mind-frying black ICE. But keeping the average joes from doing it brings the losses into acceptable brackets.
Look at the torrent sites and compare the numbers for console games and PC games. A lot of console games don't even have torrents listed meanwhile PC games have enormous number of downloads with a dozen different torrents. Consoles games are far more difficult to pirate and change with every generation. There is also the risk of getting your system banned for piracy and since the hardware is regulated it can be updated at any time. Piracy that works on older versions might not work on newer versions. It is a lot more difficult than the simple download and install that plagues PC gaming.
Rakai on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]XBL: Rakayn | PS3: Rakayn | Steam ID
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Look at the torrent sites and compare the numbers for console games and PC games. A lot of console games don't even have torrents listed meanwhile PC games have enormous number of downloads with a dozen different torrents. Consoles games are far more difficult to pirate and change with every generation. There is also the risk of getting your system banned for piracy and since the hardware is regulated it can be updated at any time. Piracy that works on older versions might not work on newer versions. It is a lot more difficult than the simple download and install that plagues PC gaming.
Yeah. I think there's more PC piracy for a few reasons:
1) No invasive hardware procedures
2) Easier to get the software
3) The people who are likely to be tech-savvy enough to solder chips onto consoles or find the software are likely to be PC users to begin with.
What I can't understand about all this is ok they made it so you couldn't play the game if it was pirated. But why in the blue hell would not put a pop up window or a warning or something that says "Hey you didn't buy this game did you.. Well if you didn't put any effort into it I'm not going to either. Enjoy your desktop."
What I can't understand about all this is ok they made it so you couldn't play the game if it was pirated. But why in the blue hell would not put a pop up window or a warning or something that says "Hey you didn't buy this game did you.. Well if you didn't put any effort into it I'm not going to either. Enjoy your desktop."
I mean jesus it's common sense.
At a guess, if that happened, it could aid crackers in knowing how to disable it.
I mean, that message would be somewhere in the code.
Not that I have any knowledge of how cracking games happens.
Because they underestimated the amount of complaining people who pirate their games would do. That and perhaps they didn't expect people who pirated the game before it was even released to go around announcing that they pirated the game which is what they did by complaining of the crashes. It goes to show you how little they care about doing something illegal. What they should of done is have the game crash and overwrite the boot sector or something nasty when it failed the security check. I would have bought 10 copies if they had the stones to do that.
Rakai on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]XBL: Rakayn | PS3: Rakayn | Steam ID
(FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a PC Game developer. I have been making online RPGs for over 12 years. I am about to attack my own industry for its own short sighted, bad decisions.)
1) That whole piracy rant was a giant canard. The real problem there was the copy protection. THAT is what caused the bad press and the technical difficulties. If piracy is so incredibly rampant, then why are you wasting money on worthless copy protection schemes that do nothing but cause bugs and frustrate legitimate users? Every PC developer should *THINK* about what they are saying when they talk about piracy. They have no understanding of its causes, motivation, or true effects.
Why is there less piracy for console games? Sure, in small part it is hardware/software related, but honestly it isn't that hard to pirate console games as well. But console gamers don't have to fork out $50 a pop for every game, and suffer disappointment after disappointment when so many games (PC and console) are bad. They can rent console games for a few dollars, or subscribe to sites like Gamefly and pay a flat monthly fee to rent unlimited games.
Also, console games have a REAL price of only about $20-30. Why is that? Because you can sell back console games to the store if you want. There is no such option for PC Games. Or you can buy used games as well, for about half the price. PC Game companies cracked down years ago on EB Games and other retailers who were buying/selling used games. Well, you reap what you sow, folks.
Right now, PC games have a higher final, real cost than console games and there exists no similar ability to "try before you buy" like renting console games or subscribing to Gamefly.
There is your problem, PC Game Developers. That is root of your piracy problem.
2) Also, PC Developers, do you know who is to blame for so many PC Gamers knowing how to pirate? You are. You are your own worst enemy. Every time you released a game with some buggy copy protection that made the game run worse, and every time you REQUIRED the CD/DVD in the customer's computer to play a game they installed on their hard drive, you motivated that gamer to search the internet for a crack.
I buy every single PC game I play, but I still crack every single .exe so I don't have to keep the stupid disc in the drive.
PC Developers: You can only blame yourself for giving people the legitimate motives that resulted in them LEARNING how easy it is to crack an .exe.
3) Here is a quick checklist of things you can do to quickly and effectively reduce piracy:
Stop using copy protection schemes (safedisc, starforce, etc.). They accomplish nothing. They cost you money. They frustrate users which results in them going to various internet sites to learn how to crack their .exe.
Stop requiring the CD/DVD in the drive. This accomplishes nothing. It frustrates customers and results in them going to various internet sites to learn how to crack their .exe.
Develop every single game with the idea in mind that you will have some nifty content add ons that are downloadable from your web site, but only to customers with a legitimate CD Key. This is a type of "phoning home" that customers will be more than happy to do.
Host your own patches. Not only is this the responsible way to handle patching, but once you send people scouring the net for patches, sometimes the site that hosts a patch also hosts cracks. Once they see one, they see the other.
The root of the piracy problem is simple: it's free, it's easy, and it faces no repercussions. Look at the PSP and the DS after the explosion of the popularity of the R4. One requires flashing the firmware and the other requires buying hardware and yet piracy continues to grow on them. The easier piracy becomes the more and more people do it. Piracy on home consoles can get your console banned as well. Also PC games have had demos long before consoles did. Consoles had to pay for their demo (rent).
You say no copy production but then mention CD-keys. And then you talk about offering downloads from the site with "legitimate" CD-keys. What's the point of this? They can easily be pirated and will be thus not offering any incentive to buying a legit copy.
Rakai on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]XBL: Rakayn | PS3: Rakayn | Steam ID
Develop every single game with the idea in mind that you will have some nifty content add ons that are downloadable from your web site, but only to customers with a legitimate CD Key. This is a type of "phoning home" that customers will be more than happy to do.
That crap will easily be pirated.
Rakai on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]XBL: Rakayn | PS3: Rakayn | Steam ID
The root of the piracy problem is simple: it's free, it's easy, and it faces no repercussions. Look at the PSP and the DS after the explosion of the popularity of the R4. One requires flashing the firmware and the other requires buying hardware and yet piracy continues to grow on them. The easier piracy becomes the more and more people do it. Piracy on home consoles can get your console banned as well. Also PC games have had demos long before consoles did. Consoles had to pay for their demo (rent).
You say no copy production but then mention CD-keys. And then you talk about offering downloads from the site with "legitimate" CD-keys. What's the point of this? They can easily be pirated and will be thus not offering any incentive to buying a legit copy.
I don't know of many demos that allow you to pay a fraction of the purchase price but still allow you to play the game in its entirety. I love PC gaming but consoles do have a big advantage by giving their users the option to rent. AFAIK the only thing that comes close on PC is Game Tap.
LittleBoots on
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
Develop every single game with the idea in mind that you will have some nifty content add ons that are downloadable from your web site, but only to customers with a legitimate CD Key. This is a type of "phoning home" that customers will be more than happy to do.
Develop every single game with the idea in mind that you will have some nifty content add ons that are downloadable from your web site, but only to customers with a legitimate CD Key. This is a type of "phoning home" that customers will be more than happy to do.
That crap will easily be pirated.
You mean the add-ons themselves?
Yes.
Rakai on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]XBL: Rakayn | PS3: Rakayn | Steam ID
Develop every single game with the idea in mind that you will have some nifty content add ons that are downloadable from your web site, but only to customers with a legitimate CD Key. This is a type of "phoning home" that customers will be more than happy to do.
That crap will easily be pirated.
Really? Go pirate ten games with online multiplayer. How many can you play online with legitimate users?
The root of the piracy problem is simple: it's free, it's easy, and it faces no repercussions. Look at the PSP and the DS after the explosion of the popularity of the R4. One requires flashing the firmware and the other requires buying hardware and yet piracy continues to grow on them. The easier piracy becomes the more and more people do it. Piracy on home consoles can get your console banned as well. Also PC games have had demos long before consoles did. Consoles had to pay for their demo (rent).
You say no copy production but then mention CD-keys. And then you talk about offering downloads from the site with "legitimate" CD-keys. What's the point of this? They can easily be pirated and will be thus not offering any incentive to buying a legit copy.
I don't know of many demos that allow you to pay a fraction of the purchase price but still allow you to play the game in its entirety. I love PC gaming but consoles do have a big advantage by giving their users the option to rent. AFAIK the only thing that comes close on PC is Game Tap.
I really wish steam had a renting option, where you got however many hours/day after download complete before it stopped working. The free red orchestra days + friend passes are awesome, but it could be even better.
If I could have rented portal, I would have(I didn't buy it). That would have been money in valve's pocket right there too, because its steam.
I often wonder how much better some of the more "meh" PC games out there would have done if people had the option of renting them. I mean think about it. The PC user really only has two legitimate options 1) Take a chance on reviews and/or the hype you've heard about a game and purchase it with no chance of a refund and hope you get your money's worth (EDIT: and hope it runs on your machine and there is no crazy ass software/hardware conflicts). 2) Don't buy it
and there is a 3rd-ish option of borrowing from a friend but who has friends? Where as a console gamer can just rent the game for 5 or 6 bucks or what ever and if it sucks, well, you're out a few bucks but that's better than being out 40-60.
LittleBoots on
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
Develop every single game with the idea in mind that you will have some nifty content add ons that are downloadable from your web site, but only to customers with a legitimate CD Key. This is a type of "phoning home" that customers will be more than happy to do.
That crap will easily be pirated.
Really? Go pirate ten games with online multiplayer. How many can you play online with legitimate users?
(The answer is not many, btw)
But that's online multiplayer with servers with a centralized communication. Singleplayer focused games do not have this ability. Singleplayer content WILL be pirated just as Steam games can be pirated.
I often wonder how much better some of the more "meh" PC games out there would have done if people had the option of renting them. I mean think about it. The PC user really only has two legitimate options 1) Take a chance on reviews and/or the hype you've heard about a game and purchase it with no chance of a refund and hope you get your money's worth. 2) Don't buy it
and there is a 3rd-ish option of borrowing from a friend but who has friends? Where as a console gamer can just rent the game for 5 or 6 bucks or what ever and if it sucks, well, you're out a few bucks but that's better than being out 40-60.
or the 4th option: play the demo.
Considering pirates don't purchase games after they play them, (even if they keep playing them) and you risk losing some sales from people who stop buying to rent, the net result would very little difference.
Rakai on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]XBL: Rakayn | PS3: Rakayn | Steam ID
Really? Go pirate ten games with online multiplayer. How many can you play online with legitimate users?
(The answer is not many, btw)
But that's online multiplayer with servers with a centralized communication. Singleplayer focused games do not have this ability. Singleplayer content WILL be pirated just as Steam games can be pirated.
There is no magic bullet solution to piracy. But I believe PC Developers trot it out as the End All, Be All excuse that justifies all of their failings.
They are ignoring the fact that console gamers can rent, buy used, and sell back games. These three things protect them from buying lemons (making them more willing to gamble on a purchase), and they also enhance the overall value they get for their money.
Piracy cannot be stopped through technical means. The only way piracy can be stopped is if you make it unattractive to pirate, or conversely, attractive NOT to pirate. I believe that most people out there would be happy to pay full price for a game if they felt they would get full value for their money. That is why console games are not suffering as badly - people have many avenues to protect their financial investment.
My suggestion of extra content via CD Key validation is not a magic solution either. But if the developer releases things every few weeks after a game's release, then there is a huge upside to being a legitimate customer. If it is added through a built-in "update" system, rather than via a specific file download, it is *harder* to pirate. And sure people will pirate it, but then they have to wait, go through extra hassles, etc. Having a robust online multiplayer that validates the CD Key is also another smart move (although I think games should still keep LAN multiplayer intact).
There are entire web sites dedicated to helping people get hacked .exes. The reason they are so well known is because there are so many legitimate reasons for people to need/want a hacked .exe. There would be less justification for sites hosting actual content downloads.
And to all the Threshold players responding: Hello there! You should pop back and check us out. We're free to play after all.
This coupled with the no-return policy on software makes for a very difficult market. Players have to know the game is good and runs well on most systems before they can feel safe buying it. You can't chance it, because you can't return it. That's wrong. Obviously you can steal a game just as easily without the original disc these days, so what's the point really?
This is so incredibly true. I can go back through my financials and see exactly when PC Games stopped being returnable. When PC games could be returned, my wife and I used to spend over $3,000 a year on games. That is the games we kept. That sounds like a lot, but it is only 60 games per year, or 5 per month.
Now we spend less than $300 a year on PC Games. We both buy 2 or 3 games per year - tops. It just isn't worth the risk any more. So our buying has been cut by 90%.
[edit] Also I had to crack several of my pc games that I bought legitimately in order to get them to run. I wouldn't even know how to pirate games if it weren't for DRM. Talk about self-defeating.
Indeed. I made this point as well. These terrible copy protection schemes send legitimate customers out onto the internet looking for, and learning how to use, cracked .exes. That just isn't smart.
Posts
That'll just drive it into the darknets. All you need is one trusted hookup point, and then it's business as usual again.
Trust me on this: it's like squeezing water. You'll never get a hold of it.
Would this not be a better situation overall though? I mentioned earlier, piracy is so prevalent because it's literally a one click affair now. Pushing it into the darknets would lower it to the people who are dead set on pirating, compared to regular Joe's who don't really know where to download Call of Duty 5 online now.
You'll never get rid of piracy, that part is clear. But making it harder to accomplish would certainly cut it down a large amount I would think.
edit: Oh hey, 2 minutes late with the same suggestion. Gotta learn to type faster.
You can't. That's my point about the darknets -- just as easy to get, but an order of magnitude harder to stop than shutting down a torrent site.
After reading that, I kinda realize I mostly just described the torrent system as it is now. But the main idea is to make it a lot harder and more in depth to have to pirate something. Because as I said, it's so easy to go to torrents R Us dot com and click one link for a game.
I'm really mostly just thinking out loud, so forgive me if it's truly as futile as it sounds. I suck at teh explaining.
Hah, no. Just ask the nearest 13-year old for the illegal number needed to hook up to your local darknet and warez away.
Exactly. Even if it only halves piracy, Christ--that's half! Half is good! The average person won't go to lengths to pirate something.
Actually, I'd say the average person would go to extreme lengths to get free shit.
Oooh, you rebel! Head on over to Digg, they'll love you there!
only 2 diggs says otherwise
You forgot the "COOLEST [something] EVAR!!!" title.
You're up to three now! Awww somebody loves Lewie.
Considering how little effort it takes, yeah, the average person will likely just download stuff for free. The worst part is that of all the computer illiterate people I've spoken to that do pirate stuff, they act like there's nothing wrong with it. Like it's the legal, purposeful use of the internet. They're generally surprised to hear that it's a crime you can get fined and imprisoned for.
Um. Yes. It's their fault.
If you already have a good grasp on the fact that there's an irreducible percentage of your audience that can and WILL pirate and crack open your game -- regardless of how sophisticated your checks against it are -- who do you really have to blame for negative word-of-mouth when it turns out those people can't distinguish between your security and what appears to be a game with incredibly poor quality control?
I'm not here to defend piracy (though how many avid PC gamers can say they've never used it as a means to a glorified demo), but this is a fairly inept backlash. The problem could've been avoided by showing a friendly error when the game was made to crash -- "Invalid cd-key detected, please attempt to reinstall."
Copy protection is a waste of everybody's time. The pirates (note: there are two types, the 'consumer' pirate who merely clicks a torrent link [the vast majority], and the actual 'cracker' who takes glee in breaking your relentlessly thought-out copy protection schema) won't be dissuaded, and your own development resources will have been poured into a black hole of money and time. In the worst case, scenarios like this will occur, and the protection will backfire in such a way as to completely turn people off to your game.
As people have been mentioning the only way to get a handle on piracy is to discourage the average joe. You will never ever stop hackers/crackers from dissesembling your software untill we got a shadowrunesque mind-frying black ICE. But keeping the average joes from doing it brings the losses into acceptable brackets.
Yeah. I think there's more PC piracy for a few reasons:
1) No invasive hardware procedures
2) Easier to get the software
3) The people who are likely to be tech-savvy enough to solder chips onto consoles or find the software are likely to be PC users to begin with.
I mean jesus it's common sense.
I never asked for this!
At a guess, if that happened, it could aid crackers in knowing how to disable it.
I mean, that message would be somewhere in the code.
Not that I have any knowledge of how cracking games happens.
1) That whole piracy rant was a giant canard. The real problem there was the copy protection. THAT is what caused the bad press and the technical difficulties. If piracy is so incredibly rampant, then why are you wasting money on worthless copy protection schemes that do nothing but cause bugs and frustrate legitimate users? Every PC developer should *THINK* about what they are saying when they talk about piracy. They have no understanding of its causes, motivation, or true effects.
Why is there less piracy for console games? Sure, in small part it is hardware/software related, but honestly it isn't that hard to pirate console games as well. But console gamers don't have to fork out $50 a pop for every game, and suffer disappointment after disappointment when so many games (PC and console) are bad. They can rent console games for a few dollars, or subscribe to sites like Gamefly and pay a flat monthly fee to rent unlimited games.
Also, console games have a REAL price of only about $20-30. Why is that? Because you can sell back console games to the store if you want. There is no such option for PC Games. Or you can buy used games as well, for about half the price. PC Game companies cracked down years ago on EB Games and other retailers who were buying/selling used games. Well, you reap what you sow, folks.
Right now, PC games have a higher final, real cost than console games and there exists no similar ability to "try before you buy" like renting console games or subscribing to Gamefly.
There is your problem, PC Game Developers. That is root of your piracy problem.
2) Also, PC Developers, do you know who is to blame for so many PC Gamers knowing how to pirate? You are. You are your own worst enemy. Every time you released a game with some buggy copy protection that made the game run worse, and every time you REQUIRED the CD/DVD in the customer's computer to play a game they installed on their hard drive, you motivated that gamer to search the internet for a crack.
I buy every single PC game I play, but I still crack every single .exe so I don't have to keep the stupid disc in the drive.
PC Developers: You can only blame yourself for giving people the legitimate motives that resulted in them LEARNING how easy it is to crack an .exe.
3) Here is a quick checklist of things you can do to quickly and effectively reduce piracy:
Threshold RPG - Our World, Your Imagination
Primordiax RPG - A New Generation in online role playing.
And he's right.
My mind is blown.
First I was "wait, what?" and then I recognized the name in Frogdice's sig + the link to Threshold.
Hi, Ari! I played on Threshold years ago!
Holy shit, that was ten years ago.
Wait, you played on Threshold ten years ago?
... so did I.
We must talk.
You say no copy production but then mention CD-keys. And then you talk about offering downloads from the site with "legitimate" CD-keys. What's the point of this? They can easily be pirated and will be thus not offering any incentive to buying a legit copy.
Keygens don't work like that, duder.
That crap will easily be pirated.
I don't know of many demos that allow you to pay a fraction of the purchase price but still allow you to play the game in its entirety. I love PC gaming but consoles do have a big advantage by giving their users the option to rent. AFAIK the only thing that comes close on PC is Game Tap.
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
You mean the add-ons themselves?
Yes.
Really? Go pirate ten games with online multiplayer. How many can you play online with legitimate users?
(The answer is not many, btw)
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
I really wish steam had a renting option, where you got however many hours/day after download complete before it stopped working. The free red orchestra days + friend passes are awesome, but it could be even better.
If I could have rented portal, I would have(I didn't buy it). That would have been money in valve's pocket right there too, because its steam.
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
and there is a 3rd-ish option of borrowing from a friend but who has friends? Where as a console gamer can just rent the game for 5 or 6 bucks or what ever and if it sucks, well, you're out a few bucks but that's better than being out 40-60.
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
But that's online multiplayer with servers with a centralized communication. Singleplayer focused games do not have this ability. Singleplayer content WILL be pirated just as Steam games can be pirated.
or the 4th option: play the demo.
Considering pirates don't purchase games after they play them, (even if they keep playing them) and you risk losing some sales from people who stop buying to rent, the net result would very little difference.
There is no magic bullet solution to piracy. But I believe PC Developers trot it out as the End All, Be All excuse that justifies all of their failings.
They are ignoring the fact that console gamers can rent, buy used, and sell back games. These three things protect them from buying lemons (making them more willing to gamble on a purchase), and they also enhance the overall value they get for their money.
Piracy cannot be stopped through technical means. The only way piracy can be stopped is if you make it unattractive to pirate, or conversely, attractive NOT to pirate. I believe that most people out there would be happy to pay full price for a game if they felt they would get full value for their money. That is why console games are not suffering as badly - people have many avenues to protect their financial investment.
My suggestion of extra content via CD Key validation is not a magic solution either. But if the developer releases things every few weeks after a game's release, then there is a huge upside to being a legitimate customer. If it is added through a built-in "update" system, rather than via a specific file download, it is *harder* to pirate. And sure people will pirate it, but then they have to wait, go through extra hassles, etc. Having a robust online multiplayer that validates the CD Key is also another smart move (although I think games should still keep LAN multiplayer intact).
There are entire web sites dedicated to helping people get hacked .exes. The reason they are so well known is because there are so many legitimate reasons for people to need/want a hacked .exe. There would be less justification for sites hosting actual content downloads.
And to all the Threshold players responding: Hello there! You should pop back and check us out. We're free to play after all.
Threshold RPG - Our World, Your Imagination
Primordiax RPG - A New Generation in online role playing.
This is so incredibly true. I can go back through my financials and see exactly when PC Games stopped being returnable. When PC games could be returned, my wife and I used to spend over $3,000 a year on games. That is the games we kept. That sounds like a lot, but it is only 60 games per year, or 5 per month.
Now we spend less than $300 a year on PC Games. We both buy 2 or 3 games per year - tops. It just isn't worth the risk any more. So our buying has been cut by 90%.
Indeed. I made this point as well. These terrible copy protection schemes send legitimate customers out onto the internet looking for, and learning how to use, cracked .exes. That just isn't smart.
Threshold RPG - Our World, Your Imagination
Primordiax RPG - A New Generation in online role playing.