As for digital distribution not helping, I disagree. The easier and less hoops you give your customer to run through, the more likely they will be to make a purchase.

Ok, in terms of making games easier to buy, yes, then this IS the right way.

It might seem like common sense to you but you don't have millions of dollars riding on the decision so you don't exactly have the same scope they do.

It's the scope of involved money, which is responsible for all this "Angst" to theoretically loose revenue. The bigger the company is, the more paranoid the board is. I have experienced this myself, working in a little company which expands in only a few years to multimillion dollar venture. The former bosses, nice, competent guys, now all CEOs and COOs and what_not_else_Os, they stop being nice, compentent guys. They lost all contact to reality, they made one hilarious descision after another and a few years later the company folds. Really, money makes you stupid.

This is a very old marketing tactic. If all companies start "chanting" the same thing over and over, the general populace and other similar companies will believe it to be so.

Just look at the current financial mess, most of it is emotional and makes no sense, but enough financial guru's have chanted the same issue over and over, and we all believe.

So PC gaming is officially dead. End of debate.

Hardware chips would never work. There would always be some vendor willing to make a non-chipped motherboard just to one-up the others. Plus every casual user usually has a tech savvy friend who could remove/defeat it. I see idiots all the time in my shop with hard drives full of games/movies/porn that their friends showed them how to download.

First off (for any publishers and/or devs that are reading this), I do understand that companies want to protect their product from piracy, and rightfully so. I appreciate that you want to make sure you get the money that you deserve for making your game.

But.....could someone please tell me what is wrong with - instead of DRM on the game disks - having to register and tie an e-mail address first with a unique serial number and an account name to the game with a specific PC...a one time 'activation' if you will?

Then the game disks (or downloaded content) could be copied as many times as you wanted - no DRM + free distribution of the game on the web! Also, you have tied your single license with your email address, account and the specific hardware you installed it on. This should generate a unique serial number to put into your game and there you go.

If you wanted to, you should be able to uninstall or re-install on that computer any number of times. You could install the game content from the game disks to a different computer, but since it doesn't have all the information to properly match the licensed copy to the hardware it will not work.

However, if your machine crashes and burns, or you need to do a major upgrade - no sweat. You would log into your account, unregister the license that was bound to the 'old' computer, and re-register to the new or updated computer.

There you go, Piracy averted.

I've seen this work. Ironically, the makers of Alcohol 120% do this. It seems to work well.

Of course, if the company were to go belly up, something else would have to be done like a patch to remove the way the licensing is done, or another company could host the licensing database\site for a fee or something - but at least no DRM measures have to be installed with the game, potentially screwing your computer over.

That and the whining fucking stops with the publishers, which means they can feel more comfortable with developing for the PC again.

So I ask you, doesn't this sound good (or at least better than what is now done) - or is there a gaping hole of Buccaneerish logic I've missed?

This comment was edited on Oct 8, 2008, 11:04.

If a game is popular enough, there will be ways to play multiplayer with copies. And digital distribution has done nothing to prevent "piracy". For example, every Steam exclusive game was available on release date as a non-steamed copy.

There's a big difference between playing on a cracked server(of which there aren't many to begin with) and played it legitimately. Hardcore pirates will find a way around everything but that's not what we were talking about. There are WoW private servers out there too but millions still pay for the legit experience because it can't be duplicated and because thats where their friends are. As for "Steam exclusive games" being cracked on release day, that's a pretty big catchall and I'm sure it isn't true.

As for digital distribution not helping, I disagree. The easier and less hoops you give your customer to run through, the more likely they will be to make a purchase. With Steam I literally just click and get my game. Doesn't really get more convenient than that.

I wish, pusblishers would simply stop caring about those copies and concentrate on making a good game, which will, surprise, surprise, sell well enough, because people WANT TO BUY IT. But fear and paranoia are hard to overcome ...

They are doing that, they're just doing it for consoles instead now. Why put up with the hassle in the first place when you could move to another platform, make more money and not really worry about piracy? They probably make more money with a mediocre console game than with a PC title they spent 4 years making. It's a business unfortunately and they will make business decisions related to their games. Making a better game that had it's previous version stolen a lot is a business risk. It might seem like common sense to you but you don't have millions of dollars riding on the decision so you don't exactly have the same scope they do.

Anyways, I thought this game would be kind of neat - macro your base with voice commands and micro your units in battle at the same time. Hopefully they release it at some point.

JaguarUSF

You are absolutely correct. This is just a B.S. excuse to cover up the fact that people are not interested in buying their products. I've noticed that it's mostly the same few crappy publishers that spew this nonsense over & over again. Yes Piracy is an issue but good games sell well despite piracy. Valve is not crying about TF2 being pirated neither are the WoW developers publishers etc.

Ex 1: CoD4 devs. did not implement certain basic functions to reduce piracy. The game is very good & sales where very good despite the piracy.

Ex 2: GEARS PC, the game was not very good the sales where bad same with Crysis.

Bottom line, people will buy good games & bad games get pirated to hell & back then deleted. Demos might help reduce the piracry but not by much. Like a guy said the other day on the bus, he considers most game, movies & Music albums as disposable entertainment because it's so bad that he downloads it when he's really bored looks or listens for a few hours & deletes.

I would not put my career in jeopardy by acting this way but I've heard this from multiple sources. I can't even remember the last time I went to the movies or bought a music CD... if I'm desperate, I rent a few movies or listen to old tunes on youtube.

Multiplayer and digital distribution are the easiest ways to defeat piracy and probably the least costly

If a game is popular enough, there will be ways to play multiplayer with copies. And digital distribution has done nothing to prevent "piracy". For example, every Steam exclusive game was available on release date as a non-steamed copy. Not to mention those people, who do not care for multiplayer. Sadly, no money from them ...

I wish, pusblishers would simply stop caring about those copies and concentrate on making a good game, which will, surprise, surprise, sell well enough, because people WANT TO BUY IT. But fear and paranoia are hard to overcome ...

This comment was edited on Oct 8, 2008, 10:54.

And nothing of value was lost.

Ubisoft's PC ports don't sell because they're rightly viewed as crap.

The worst part is that they don't have a clue.

They can keep this game on the consoles...WiC beats this game hands down.

Hardware chips would never work. There would always be some vendor willing to make a non-chipped motherboard just to one-up the others. Plus every casual user usually has a tech savvy friend who could remove/defeat it. I see idiots all the time in my shop with hard drives full of games/movies/porn that their friends showed them how to download.

Multiplayer and digital distribution are the easiest ways to defeat piracy and probably the least costly. Ubisoft's plan of "$60 games on Steam" isn't really working for them though. Assassin's Creed was a fun game but overpriced on Steam for way too long. If I'm paying $60.00 for a game it better at least have multiplayer.

This comment was edited on Oct 8, 2008, 10:30.

They will never be able to stop PC piracy completely, but if they implemented some kind of hardware solution (all the game producers pay a large sum to motherboard makers and they standardize some anti-piracy chip) then they could significantly reduce the piracy. This wouldn't stop it completely (just as xbox 360 can still use pirated games, you just need a mod-chip), but it would keep the stupid people from easily pirating a game. So only true hardcore gamers would be able to pirate the game. Or another solution is make the multiplayer of a game so incredibly awesome, people HAVE to buy the game for the cd-key.

UbiSoft: EndWar PC Creative Director impacted by Idiocy

I don't actually doubt that there is some truth to what he says. However, I also think the game itself is to blame and I don't see the Bioshock or Call Of Duty 4 publishers complaining about cannibalised sales from the PC versions. The strange thing is that Far Cry 2, also by Ubisoft, is going for a simultaneous release - a bit of hypocrisy there.

What is needed for PC is an effective way to stop piracy. Current DRM only punishes legitimate users, making it completely counter-productive. I heard things about TPM but virtually no motherboards are including it and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere fast (apart from in the business laptop world).

I was thinking the same thing...

And then they are going to wonder why a crappy ported console game released months later did not sell well. O wait... PIRACY! Nevermind the fact that the people that actually give a shit about the game would have played it to death on consoles and not care about buying it again for PC, some will but most probably won't.
This comment was edited on Oct 8, 2008, 09:55.

Maybe they just keep saying this to justify poor sales.

"To be honest, if PC wasn’t pirated to hell and back, there’d probably be a PC version coming out the same day as the other two," also saying: "You know, the level of piracy that you get with the PC just cannibalizes the others, because people just steal that version."

Whaaah! Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

And honestly, from what I've seen of Endwar in previews so far, it looks like they took an average game and slapped voice commands on it, and that's their big selling point: "You can use a headset!!!!!!!!!!"

So, no loss there...



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http://theslip.nin.com/
Piracy: When it's easier for a publisher to blame it's losses on theft than to make a quality product.

Oh boy, here we go again.