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| 13. |
Re: Vista Cripples Audio/Video! |
Jan 23, 2007, 23:54 |
DarkCntry |
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I admit, Stardock did take that step, but also look at something as simple as this. Stardock, while producing such great games like the GalCiv series, is still far too small to compare to that of the EAs, Ubis, Valves out there. GalCiv did have quite a throng of people pirating it though, that I know for sure.
The problem I actually see is that people are becoming way too cautious to plop down $50 to play a game that is so uninspiring that they fear doing so again. This is perpetuated with companies that don't attempt to give potential customers the chance to try the game without massive limitations, and sometimes completely different games, prior to purcahse.
In the early days it was almost common place to find someone tossing around the Shareware version of Doom or something, it allowed the product to be evaluated as it really is without all the gloss that we're seeing today with game releases.
How many games in the last year came out with a demo (which was the same game as what was released) prior to it's commercial street date? Of those games, how many weren't retreads on some well-worn idea? Of those games, how many were brand spanking new ideas and directions?
The problem is that the average consumer is willing to plop down the $50 happily for a subpar game, where-as the ones like us who frequent places like Blues are usually a bit more educated and what a better experience prior to committing to the purchase. What do most of us resort to when we cannot get a said experience prior to purchase? Of course, you download it and play it. This is where the pirating world become that odd little hazy grey area, you have that subsect that downloads everything they can because it's free, and you have a subsect that downloads in the spirit of the old try-before-you-buy way. It's a much more appealing thing to be able to play the game prior to purchase to know if it'll be worth the money to buy...but sadly there are way too many that want to just get the games for free that there's little chance that the subsect that most of us belong to doesn't get grouped together.
This is where the annoying copy protections come into play, they have to be more proactive in the way to protect their games, which generally means being about as intrusive as punching you in the face sometimes, just because there are people out there that are generally smart enough to crack most all protection schemes. I mean there are a few, like the one they use for Darkstar One (forget the name) that will progressively degrade the game if you are using a pirated copy, this is the type of protection should be there...at last check it took the crackers around 5 months post-release to get a working crack and I am not even sure it's fully functional, I don't know as I haven't kept up with that community as of late. Unfortunately we get protection schemes like StarForce which does nothing but cause more problems than it is supposed to alleviate. At least Ubi was smart enough to jump that burning, sinking ship.
What needs to be done is to find a middle ground, between both copy protection schemes and the pirating community itself...but sadly that's just never going to happen.
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