Pretty much every company on Earth has complained about piracy. No longer limited to nameless criminals, many companies now threaten every citizen on the planet with the consequences of file-sharing, (as much as they complain - I think they love being able to attack everyday people). Pirates, however, didn't just steal the riches & properties of merchants. A just-as-common activity of pirates was to "hijack" a person's method of transport, (in the old days - their ships).
Everyone knows about, & hates, spyware. It slows your computer, (method of transport), steals your ram, and a host of other problems. It takes special software to remove it, and even then it doesn't always work. Lately, I've had problems with 2 spyware programs. One keeps advertising different CD's, (all from Jive Records), the other shows me upcoming titles from Electronic Arts. I had to update my software to remove the EA spyware. I still haven't been able to remove the Jive Records one. >:(
it could be argued, & probably is, that these come from independent companies, but I've never heard of a store that sells music from 1 label or 1 store.
Spyware isn't, technically, illegal & neither is filesharing. I say, if large companies want to gain any ground on filesharing, they're going to have to stop acting like the pirates they hate sooooo much.
........Although the truth is they just hate that, for the first time, you can hurt them as much as they can hurt you. 8)
Piracy is software theft and although I might do it and you might do it, making up lame excuses about how it "isn't really. no, wait, it is. No it isn't exacty" doesn't change that. I agree the companies are being very reactionary and most of the measures they're taking (even more convulted copy protection, online validation) will not stop piracy, but does that mean anybody's "winning?"
Some companies, I'm not mentioning any names here (UBISOFT!!!), go too far with the validation process. It was real hell for me to play FarCry on my PC. And sometimes my internet is broked, so I can't install some new games at all, because of the whole online validation thing.
I'm not saying I agree with software theft, or even file-sharing in general. But it, at least in the United States, isn't illegal. Which is why it exists. 50 programmers in a basement appartment don't survive against the combined forces of a 50-billion dollar industry by breaking the law. Consider the people who've been arrested: kids with Camcorders in theatres, and kids who E-mailed songs that hadn't been released yet, (this was touted as filesharing arrests, but it wasn't). Ethically illegal is quite different from literally illegal. Many companies are trying to make it illegal - & this is what the industry considers winning. Piracy is a derivative, & appropriate, name the industry placed on people they consider thieves. If you use the term, you can't "pick-&-choose" what aspects of pirating you'll consider.
But that's not really the point. The point is the industry is never going to gain ground in courts by doing the same quasi-legal activities of their intended targets. It's like saying "They throw rocks at us & we throw rocks at them. We want the courts to stop them from throwing rocks, but we're gonna' keep throwing our rocks & it's gonna' be okay."
I don't care if the industry cracks down - I don't download anything illegal; so why should it be okay for Electronic Arts & Jive Records, and others to download illegal data from me. I've heard plenty of people screaming "File Sharing Losers Should Be Shot"!! Let's start with the people who made the first claims >:(
Software companies need to stop spending (wasting) time and energy on copy protection shit ...
It's a complete waste of time.
For every hour they spend trying to stop the masses from pirating it's another dollar added on the price of the software. And then, five minutes out of the gate, somebody has cracked the protection and it was all for nothing.
Just develope the game, put it out there for a much cheaper price, and you'll sell twice as many of them.
It's the same thing with the CD industry ... they'll just never learn.
I totally agree with you, DCIllusion. If they want US to stop pirating their software, then these companies had better stop spamming us with adware and spyware. You wanna flood my screen with pop-ups for your crap? Fine. I'll pirate it. One side has to stop first, and I'm holding out for as long as I possibly can.
Do you want to know the definition of irony? A pop-up ad...for anti-spyware software. ::)
darth, i disagree. i know one copyprotection which actually works and has not been cracked.
operation flashpoint. pretty good, you didnt even notice that the crack went wrong. i was playing it on a lan, my shooting was very bad, getting worse, enemies obviously cheated, missions are unsolveable.
now that i've bought the game it runs fine :)
and, trackmania had a very difficult protection. took them about 7 months to break it. (for the latest patch, that is)
I agree with you, Darth.
You can do a fun experiment with software. Download a P2P client & make a list of the hottest games with lots of copy-protection & games with little-to-no copy-protection.
- Games with the most, (like Half-Life with its "file-dongles", or The Sims with "embedded anti-copy code"), are available, with cracks, in unbelievable amounts - like 900 sources.
- Games with the least, (like Baldur's Gate), will have 1 or 2 sources.....if at all. It shows that if you don't treat your customers like thieves, they won't act like thieves.
Dasjoe - Copyprotection you don't notice is fine. I think Darth is talking about games where you must register online to play (Half-Life 2); use a code-wheel (Out of this World); map star charts (StarCon 2); or worse........The game doesn't run even after you legally purchased it (7th Guest, XIII).
People say copy-protection is a waste of time because for every 1 that can be named that works, there are, at least, 5 that don't.
I guess the number of sources where you could get these games have nothing to do with the fact that Half-Life 2 was the most anticipated game of they year, whereas Baldur Gate is old and huge and everybody who's cared enough to play it has played it already.
Copy-protection that's invisible is no better than obvious copy-protection.
My problem with copy protection is that it causes the price of software to rise. There's so much R&D into it that in order to cover the cost of the R&D they must tack on to the final cost.
Software is rediculously over-priced (as are CDs) and I'm never going to be convinced that a CD, and a little booklet, in a box is worth $59.99. Even with marketting, distribution, etc. It's way over priced.
The most simple kind of copy protection at least stops the clueless casual gamers, who don't know much about computers, from burning copies of the games for their friends. I don't think they should give up copy protection completely.
Quote from: Ghormak on Thu 17/03/2005 19:42:02The most simple kind of copy protection at least stops the clueless casual gamers, who don't know much about computers, from burning copies of the games for their friends. I don't think they should give up copy protection completely.
Yeah ... the old method of having to look on a page in the manual ... something like that works for me.
I don't have a problem paying for things. I have a problem paying too much for things.
I agree, software and CDs are WAY overpriced these days... I would have bought, Doom3, UT2004, KOTOR, HL2 etc. But I don't have that money on me. So I've pirated a couple of them, and I can say, Doom3 would have been worth maybe 25â,¬, but not 55â,¬. :( And I'm not playing that 50â,¬ just for some multiplayer game which I don't play that much, if at all, online anyway.
All Quake 2 engine games are neat. No need for the CD after installation, unless you want to hear the original music. I bought Heretic II for 7â,¬, and that was worth it, though I could just have pirated it, with no diffrence, I didn't get a printed manual anyway...
I only got to play Splinter Cell 2 with a crack because the original kept complaining about cd emulation software or something - even after I uninstalled all of those programs.
Being a gamer isn't easy these days anymore.
I don't understand when people say 'this game is worth 20 bucks, not 50 as was it's original price'. How do you do these calculations? I either like a game and want to play it, or I don't. I'd pay the standard amount of money one pays for game software for it (which I agree currently is way too much, but that doesn't have to do with the quality of each idividual game), or I wouldn't. Just that this analogy between price and enjoyment derived from a game seems weird to me.
I'm still trying to figure out what the hell this debate is about!
The title talks about all different forms of piracy, but the majority DC's post was all about spyware, and now we're putting price in a ratio to fun.
I thought he just wanted to know how to get rid of his Jive Record ads? ? ?
Helm: So you agree that games are overpriced but you can't understand where desire to keep your money isn't always eclipsed by wanting to play a game? There's very definitely a limit for me. It still shits me that XBox and Gamecube games cost so much, let alone PC games. I pretty much never buy PC games and it's because I just can't justify the price. It's ridiculous, and Mr. PC game company, your game probably isn't worth that much of my money.
I can make my own god damn games for free! ^_^
I agree that games on the whole are overpriced. I do not agree/understand when somebody says "this game was enjoyable to the point where I'd pay 10 bucks for it, but not 40, whereas this game was so enjoyable, I feel the 40 were justified." I am puzzled by how people are able to make this calculations and present them seriously.
Not having enough money to buy a game is a different issue, as is having money but not being willing to spend it on computer games. This as well, is completely understandable. But I don't get people who are obviously playing a lot of games, and rating them by how much money they'd pay for them.
Well, I go with Darth's first post in this one:
I human makes a lock, human can make a key-
So why not invest into decreasing the will/need to make a key instead?
There is no non-crackable things. Even if a game is so solid and though to crack, it will be compensated by something else - like these internet validations? It's 2005 and internet has made crack suppliers life more difficult...
While Steam games (Half-Life 2,CS) are in my favourite list, there's always an element of disgust -- I have to pay my ISP (for Internet) so I could play the game I paid for!!!
Maybe I don't give a heck about internet at all, I just want to play the game. Validation takes only a minute. A minute a day. But I'm paying for whole month, this means that 99,9% of the money is wasted! (As I said, it's 2005 -- "get a dial-up connection" isn't as easy anymore as it may sound.) Just to make sure some people won't steal the game.
A game from the company, not me. So me - and all the ones who bought the game are actually paying money so the team behind the game could get even more money and at the same time wouldn't lose any to thieves. Well, if that's not some cheeky attitude here, what is?
Well, this is all theoretical. Of course, no-one would make such investment for just a computer game.
Valve - and all these other software companies must think very highly of their products, if they allow themselves such freedom.
Am I the only fool who feels this way?
edit: And nowadays, games suck anyway. In golden DOS age, a game was released when it was ready. Now what the fuck do you mean by "update", "patch" etc words anyway? So, we pay for game, ISP - so we can do validation/registration, and also the damned updating every month? So basically we buy uncompleted and buggy crap! And pay further so we can move step-by-step (time-internet-updates) to a thing we actually wanted to buy in the first place. And it is so with most games, ain't it?
Oh, this is so-oo unfair.
Most computer games see 90% of their sales within the first month or two of release. Developers and publishers know that the copy protection will be cracked eventually, but every week or even day they delay that moment by means fewer sales lost to piracy.
As long as the cost of developing the copy protection is less than the profit they make from additional sales, copy protection doesn't raise the price of the game. Pirating a game instead of buying it does.
I don't believe copyright violation equals theft, and I won't pretend I've never pirated software, but I don't think it's unreasonable or unfair for developers to protect themselves. Just as long as they don't restrict the legal things I might want to do with their product. That does piss me off.
Quote from: InCreator on Fri 18/03/2005 00:58:08edit: And nowadays, games suck anyway. In golden DOS age, a game was released when it was ready. Now what the fuck do you mean by "update", "patch" etc words anyway? So, we pay for game, ISP - so we can do validation/registration, and also the damned updating every month? So basically we buy uncompleted and buggy crap! And pay further so we can move step-by-step (time-internet-updates) to a thing we actually wanted to buy in the first place. And it is so with most games, ain't it?
For me, this is a double edged sword.
I think the idea of 'updates' being made is a good idea in principle. The internet is a great tool for allowing that sort of thing. The problem, as I see it, is that now-a-days developers hide behind that as a reason to release a game before it's finished.
Also, related to that, I remember what a pain in the ass it used to be to make games work in DOS mode. We used to have to set up different loading methods to run certain games, editing config.sys and autoexec.bat and messing with files and buffers and dos=high umb.
Back then the game makers made the games to run a certain way and you had to make your computer work that way in order to run the game. Now-a-days all games must be made to work on a million different combinations of setups and I think that's why they're so buggy.
QuoteAs long as the cost of developing the copy protection is less than the profit they make from additional sales, copy protection doesn't raise the price of the game. Pirating a game instead of buying it does.
If I get a pirated copy of their game for free, and I was never going to buy it in the first place, they haven't lost money.
I can't wait for the software company that markets themselves the right way ... they begin developing a game which they are ONLY selling online. Cut out the retail stores, deal with it ALL internally. No booklets, no CD/DVDs, just a download for 10 dollars.
They'd sell MILLIONS of them.
With some clever marketing (say around 300-500 dollars a month for SEO and Pay-per-click advertising) they would get their name out there and they'd be millionaires. (that's assuming, of course, that it was a good game.)
It could easily be accomplished this way and prove that over-priced software is ripping people off big-time.
Sincerely,
Cyberobbin Hood
Oh, my phrase, "Golden DOS age" was distracting.
Actually, this goes to all games at this era, and was pointed to game development (culture?), not the machines or OS's. Like - console games for example? Buying a console game does not cause extra paying, or even if - then it's minimal. This nice thing stands until today - if I'm not mistaken. But only for non-PC games.
* A patch that is decribed as "adds support to new GeForce card" or something similar is okay with me. This is called product support (in some way?) and is very nice thing.
* But a patch called "You won't get stuck in a wall near house X" or "Removes nasty bug from here or there" isn't quite the same thing. This is more like something game development team should be ashamed of and avoid at any cost!
Do they?
"Oh, bugs. Games are so complex nowadays and every devloper makes some and this is what whole programming is about blah-blah --"
-- Well, not for the money the games cost right now!
Personally, I think that when a company sends you spyware or something, that it just pisses people off and causes them to rip more stuff from them.. But thats just me
Quote from: Darth Mandarb on Fri 18/03/2005 02:54:37
If I get a pirated copy of their game for free, and I was never going to buy it in the first place, they haven't lost money.
True, and I agree that probably a majority of the things people pirate they wouldn't have bought. But I also think it's true that there's a significant number of people out there who think "Why should I buy it when I can get it for free?" and that sales suffer because they don't bother paying.
Incidentally, I copied quite a lot of software and media illicitly back in school and at uni (starting with floppies of Sierra and Lucas Arts adventures, and culminating with .torrent files of DVDs and application suites). Now that I've got a job and can actually afford to buy the stuff I want, I'm making a point of acquiring more and more parts of my library legally. I may not be living totally clean still, but when you're putting your money away in stock options and IRAs it's a lot more difficult to tell yourself that you should have the fruits of other people's work for free.
... Besides, there are all these AGS games that people are just
giving away!
Helm: What's so hard about comparing price to enjoyability? I can put the two into proper perspective just fine. For example, I've played Doom III. It was OK, but to me not worth the price ($60). Because it's just not my thing. Now give me a good adventure game that costs $50, and I'll definitely scrounge up the money to buy it. Now, if an adventure game was released that I paid $50 for and didn't quite enjoy, then I'd feel gipped.
It's not that hard a concept, no offense. :) It's just a matter of questioning whether a game was worth paying its price for.
As for the whole issue about pricing CDs in the first place, I know a LITTLE bit about pricing things (Web development projects), so I can take a few educated guesses and guess-timate that even if Doom III, as popular as it is/was, came out with an initial price of $30, it would've given the company GREAT profit, if not better. Think about it, how many times do you pass by a game that costs $60! And you go, "Man, I wish I had the money, the game looks so good!" I've done it plenty of times. I bought Halo 1 when Halo 2 came out. :P Because it took me so long to get the money for it. Now, if it had cost $30 innitially, I would've bought it much sooner.
Software Companies overprice games. We've discussed it in our Principles of Marketing class. It's usually all in the advertising, packaging, and copy protection. The first tiwo I can see, but I agree that copy protection has become an art in itself. Needing a word from a ccertain page in the manual is just fine.
I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that if you don't treat your customers like thiefs, they won't ACT like thiefs. Nicely put. ;)
Well to divert this thread a bit, apart from games there are actually lots of softwares that are not worth the money but you ]should play for them.
One such example is called Windows...
However, for games and other entertainment stuff you're not forced to pay for them, if you don't feel they're worth the price, just don't pay for them them and don't play them. Noticiably when you can try most of them before paying nowadays (more silly about softwares is that most of teh time the trial version is already the full version...) already, so just get the feeling of them and decide whether you should get the full thing (though there're still lots of cases that after paying for a game one gets disappointed). For example, I won't pay for DOOM3, so I won't play it (Well I won't even try to see what it's like, I'm enough with FPS already...).
And don't tell me to use Linux, I won't fall for it, I'd rather use DOS. :=
I shot throught D3 in a week or two. And I probably wouldn't play it online. I bought Halo around when Halo 2 was coming out. It cost 30â,¬. It took me a month to comlete the single player, and I've played it online, but not that much. That was not at all too much for it. The moment free record shop tags D3 or UT2004 with the "2 products for 20â,¬" sticker, I'll be buying them.
For CDs, I've bought every CD I wanted to listen to, if I have got the chance to get hold of it. I don't have any complete albums on the computer that I don't have in my shelf aswell.
I have no problem with playing stuff I haven't paid for. If I really like something, I'l buy it. In fact, I do. I play/listen/watch something for free if I can, and if I think it's genuinely good and something I want, I buy it. Not out of obligation either, but because it's just plain nice to have the stuff you really like.
I totally agree with that "thieves" phrase too ^_^
I agree with Sharky. If I bought it, I want to be able to sell it when I'm no longer interested. Basic economics, no?
Oh and yes, spyware is annoying, but the triad of Firefox, AdAware and ZoneAlarm personal firewall should deal with 99.9% of it. Works for me.
@ TerranRich
That's exactly right about passing by the game that costs $60. If they'd have released it at $30, sure that's 1/2 the price, but they'd probably sell 10 times as many. How does this not make sense to them?
What I really love is when you see the software in the store for $60 but you see that you can get it cheaper online! So you check it out when you get home and it's $54.99. A whole 5 DOLLARS cheaper!! Only now you don't get the pretty box, the shiney CD/DVD, and the fancy booklet that comes with it. Wow! Thanks for letting us know that the materials used for the game only cost 5 dollars. Now we can REALLY see how badly we're being ripped off.
I understand about paying the guys for developing the game and all that but a 55 dollar mark-up is rediculous.
Mark my words, someday somebody will do what I mentioned in my other post, and all the other software companies will suddenly be 'the bad guys' when people realize how badly they've been scammed over the years!
My feelings towards software these days are right in-line with my feelings towards CDs. They're far too expensive and I'm not going to 'feed the greed' that is running rampant.
When CDs are $2 each and software is $10 each I'll start buying them again.
For music Cd's I generally am willing to pay ten to twelve bucks, which means I have to wait till its on sale or old.....but thats what I do. I just can't pay sixteen bucks, silly huh? I don't pirate music because it's normally low quality or recorded on different sound levels etc.....
Now software I am horrible about. I justify windows because they want me to buy a version for every damn computer I have, screw that.....so I pirate it...Games too, but I have no real excuse for that. I rarely buy $50 games and normally only buy ten to twenty on a game....