If you look at the interview from earlier in the week I think it suggested the licensing fees were in the thousands of dollars range rather than tens or 100s of thousands so like you say - not a big outfit. If every game getting released on PC used them it'd be decent money for a small outfit though.


And to the cocky pirates: I don't so much see that there's anything to be proud about how easily anyone can pirate games though. Currently to run SF protected games you need to mount an image using Daemon, generally, and run various other helper programs before and after playing. Clearly you've no interest in paying for games if you're prepared to go to these lengths and whingeing about "make better games, darnit!" is an excuse. An excuse is not a good reason - it's an EXCUSE for bad behaviour.

From the point of view of the game companies if you aren't going to pay for games ever you don't really matter so to that extent Starforce works perfectly and prevents casual copying and casual downloading. When all you have to do is download an iso, burn it to CD and run the included hack or swap the exe file then anyone can pirate a game. When you start having to know what you're doing the piracy rate will fall off and people, who will take something for nothing if it's going, WILL be more inclined to pay money. If you want to see good games getting made then let the market decide by giving money to good game developers because right now the system favours big companies like EA who can factor piracy into their spreadsheets. Meanwhile good games from small companines sell a few hundred copies and the studios get bought up or go out of business.

The scene? It's not some cool underground conspiracy it's a bunch of freeloading selfish immature babies who've no regard for the time and effort of other people who're just trying to make a living.

And consider this - if piracy was as easy and straightforward as you believe it should be and everyone was stealing their games, and I mean EVERYONE, then what's going to happen to games production?

Pay for your games or have the decency and shame to just keep your mouth shut.