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Game Developer Asks To Hear From Pirates
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Aug 10, 2008 11:31 AM
from the first-person-royal dept.
from the first-person-royal dept.
cliffski writes "Indie game developer Cliff Harris has long waged war against games piracy, but has issued a call to pirates to tell him why he is wrong. Assuming that developers are missing out on potential sales from disgruntled pirates, Cliff wants to hear specifically from people who have pirated his games. Not to criticize or lecture them, but to answer a simple question. Why? The reasons people give for copyright infringement/piracy are many and varied, but much of the debate has centred around music and movies, with big 'Triple-A' games an occasional consideration. With specific application to the world of small budget 'indie' games like those Cliff makes, he wants to know the thought processes behind people pirating the games. What puts people off buying? Is it quality, cost, DRM, ease of access? Is there anything that can be done to convert those people to buyers? While many pirates often make good general points about the reasons for the widespread pirating of PC games, it's unusual to get a chance to address specific developers with specific reasons. If you knew 100% that the developer would read your email explaining why you pirated their game, what would you say?"
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Games: Game Developer's Response To Pirates 734 comments
cliffski writes "A few days ago, indie PC games developer Positech publicly called for people pirating their games to explain why, in an open and honest attempt to see what the causes of gaming piracy were. Hundreds of blog posts, hundreds more emails and several server-reboots later, the developer's reply is up on their site. The pirates had a lot to say, on subjects such as price, DRM, demos and the overall quality of PC games, and Positech owner Cliffski explains how this developer at least will be changing their approach to selling PC games as a result. Is this the start of a change for the wider industry? Or is this the only developer actively listening to the pirates point of view?"
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Lack of demos. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lack of demos. (Score:5, Informative)
If you *can* try it before you buy it (using a cracked version), you often just don't buy either... I know I never did. It was all about the money... I could get it for free so why pay for it? Even if it was a crappy game, I'd still get a cracked version and play it.
Parent
Re:Lack of demos. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Lack of demos. (Score:5, Insightful)
two problems with linking to an online account:
1) you need Internet service to play (unless there is a timer or something).
2) privacy
#1 is more an issue when you don't have internet service - in a plane, a car, outside a wifi hotspot, power outages (I lost power for 6 days in a windstorm and ran my laptop sans internet on a generator), etc. When cell phone internet (and airplane) become common that will be less of a big deal, but at the moment I don't like it.
#2 is an issue if you don't want companies generating statistical information for targeted advertising towards you and possibly collecting personal information on you which they can then resell to other companies. Battlefield 2142 says they do this right in the license.
Parent
Re:Lack of demos. (Score:5, Interesting)
It is about money, and about a person's perception of their money. If money is just "what you use to get stuff" then there is little reason to buy. However if money is "a tool to effect the world around you" then there is a solid reason to pay for a game that you enjoy, regardless of if that money goes to a big corp, an indy developer, or shareware donation. Now I don't have a good study to point to but I imagine that thinking of money as a tool of influence is more a trait of the wealthy, as the acquisition of material goods reaches saturation but there is still money to be spent. Conversely, when material needs can't be met money isn't likely to be spent on idealogical matters. I wonder if there is a relationship between disposable income and piracy?
Parent
Re:Lack of demos. (Score:5, Interesting)
yes. as a high school student with no disposable income and no (legal) way to purchase things on the net, pirating tv shows is my TiVo (I *could* have seen it for free at some point in time), pirating music is my radio, and [irating games is just because as long as I'm getting it illegally, stealing something has a much lower penalty than fraud (e.g. having an underaged paypal account)
Parent
Re:Lack of demos. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Lack of demos. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why waste your time playing a game that isn't worth your money?
How do you know it isn't worth buying until you try it?
Games with very good demos (remember Starcraft?) I tend to buy (back before children when I still bought games). If the demo is ridiculously limited or non-existent, I often would just "try" it with the pirated version and then never bother buying the game - 'cause, hey, I already have it and I'm lazy and cheap. Online play is another avenue where companies can get my money easily - it's harder to pirate an online game... not worth the effort, honestly.
Even when I buy a game, I'll frequently use the pirate cracks on it because of the stupid copy protection schemes. Who ever thought that the "put the disc in the drive" scheme was a good idea? Sheesh.
Parent
Re:Lack of demos. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people have tons of time and are low on money. And there is also the case of people piracting 'because they can', not because you actually want to use the item, i.e. when you find a tarball with a ton of games in it, you download the whole thing, instead of cherry picking the things that you actually care about. When things are free, people tend to just grab what they can, instead of thinking about what they need first.
Parent
If it is good... (Score:5, Interesting)
that way, I'm supporting the devs and I've got a working game.
Parent
Re:Lack of demos. (Score:5, Interesting)
"All About the Money"
Yeah, that's pretty much it. I don't make too much, and as I'm sure this will play into most peoples moral calculations of me: I don't plan on making too much, at least before I'm responsible for someone other than myself.
My limited entertainment dollar is spent on social activities. I rent movies at a local shop. I see live music. I go to cheap bars. At very small concerts, I donate money to bands. I use my local library. If I were buying commercial records and video games, that money would be coming directly out of my more primary entertainment expenses. The decision to pirate a game or album comes down to "pirate this or read / play / listen to someting I already have / go to the library." It isn't priate vs. buy. I'm not really much of a fan. There's very seldom something coming out that I just HAVE to be a part of, and I don't really understand that kind of behavior. It's pirate vs. do something else that would be free or almost free.
If mainstream commercial pop culture were to become inaccessible except at the kind of fees they seem to believe they deserve, I'd largely stop consuming it. I don't hate the stuff or consider myself above it, but I could do without it. It seems like only a recent development that large numbers of people spend over $100 a month on consuming pop culture. I think people from the 70s would think we're insane.
The argument could certainly be made that if I want to have that many albums on my ipod I should just go get some job I'd hate and make a bunch more money. OK. Sure. Whatever. I'm not.
I know this is about independent games specifically, and I can't say I play any. I'd probably pay for those. I'm a big believer in the little guy.
Parent
Re:Lack of demos. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more complicated than anyone really lets on. Plying a video game is no different than playing a board game with friends except that in the case of the video game, everyone has to own a copy.
The thing that makes and breaks games for everyone is simple: have I had fun playing it?
I have, at my disposal, a near infinite amount of games to play, and you're (the game manufacturer, not the person I'm replying to) installing barriers to entry into your brand new ones, and I'm supposed to be more interested in them for that? ha.
And then you release a demo which is basically a pre-alpha state of your game. There's no guarantee that the final product will run on my machine but I'm supposed to take your word for it.
And even then, you install policing software on my machine that I'm supposed to trust, when you've basically given it the ability to scan my machine and steal my personal information. How in the world am I supposed to trust that you (or one of your low-paid employees) aren't going to up and decide that you can steal all our bank account numbers with your DRM and run off to some cozy island with the billions you get from that?
You've interpreted our buying decisions as a "threat" to you and your money and you call us "pirates" because we still have the right to say we don't want to buy the crap you're shoveling.
If you make good games, we'll tolerate stuff like Steam. If your game is good enough, it will be popular. Take Sins of a Solar Empire, for example. there's practically no drm. you don't even need the cd to play. But the company that's made it has earned a lot of trust and respect which will be rewarded when they produce the sequel.
If you want to make more money, take all that cash you're spending on "security" and put it back into your profit. Your security issues don't come from us, they come from your fears.
Parent
Re:Lack of demos. (Score:5, Informative)
Since all games on his site have a demo lack of demos is not a legitimate argument.
Parent
Re:Lack of demos. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Lack of demos. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree there, demo of the game (real demo not the bullcrap that some pass off as a demo) is a good reason for 2 big ones... 1 - does the game suck, Most games out there suck bad, I am not going to buy the latest suckage. 2 - the the game run decently on my incredibly outdated 6 month old machine? Imagine how pissed someone get's when they buy a game and find it runs like crap on their pc.
As a person that buys the game I still pirate what I buy for 2 very simple reasons.
The pirated version is always better than the legit version because It does not ask for the damned CD/DVD and does not do the other crap that pisses me off as a customer. Ut-III has to go farking ONLINE to play single player, the cracked version eliminates that stupidity and makes the game more enjoyable.
The 12 year olds that pirate games will NEVER BUY YOUR GAMES even if they were priced at $19.95. Because 12 year olds dont have money and dont really care.
Parent
Obvious. (Score:5, Insightful)
If it does, and I like it, I buy it. I have about a dozen games like this that I play. Lots more that I've tried and deleted.
I still use the no-cd crack because that shit drives me crazy. It's lousy copy protection and it just pisses me off.
Re:Obvious. (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy who wrote the article provides game demos. He wants to know why people pirate his games even though demos are freely available. So the "I pirate in order to demo the game" argument is not valid in this case.
Parent
Re:Obvious. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Demo's are great indication of how games will perform when you purchase the full version.
I cant count the number of times I have tried a demo, then later bought the game to find promised features missing, performance on my computer vastly reduced and game play crippled by bugs that were no present in the demo.
So, I will, as I have in the past, continue to pirate the game first, then purchase it if it makes the cut.
Parent
Re:Obvious. (Score:5, Insightful)
It still may be a valid argument. Going to the Pirate Bay and downloading the full game may well be easier than tracking down a copy of the demo on the publisher's web site (we all know how terrible they can be) or, shudder, Fileplanet or similar... having to register to download it... memorising Yet Another Password... then being stuck in a queue before the download can begin... and then the download proceeding at a pathetic 12 KiB/sec. Not to mention that many demos seem to embed Starforce or other invasive DRM software these days, for god knows what reason other than publisher idiocy.
Parent
Re:Obvious. (Score:5, Interesting)
It is if you use wine. Often the demo works fine, but due to some change to the final game or copy protection the real game does not run. I need to know if it works in wine before I waste money on it. If you do not make a linux version, expect me to test your game this way.
Parent
Re:Obvious. (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to pirate games to see if I liked them, but these days, with games getting so large, I have a different solution.
I wait until the games been around a bit, been patched up, thoroughly reviewed, and drops in price.
I tend to feel a lot happier to 'risk' £10 or £20 on a game then £40+, especially when I can trawl the internet for other peoples comments.
Parent
What would a pirate say? (Score:5, Funny)
"because i could" (Score:5, Insightful)
hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
What we should be asking is? "Why should your industry making record profits despite non-scarcity?"
You assume, erroneously, that everyone who relies on copyright to make a living is part of some filthy rich megacorp. The megacorps can take care of themselves, but copyright is far more important to the small indie developer (which the guy posing this question is). How many rich small-time game developers have you met?
I think the argument should be viewed in the reverse, considering non-scarcity of said product once it is produced, why haven't prices of games come down?
Well, I'm not a genius, but if you take a look at the resources required to develop Crysis or Supreme Commander and compare them with the resources required to develop Tetris or Pacman, I think we can safely assume that today's AAA titles need a bigger development budget.
Parent
The solution is patronage (Score:5, Interesting)
You are quite correct to apply supply and demand economics to this problem. The "intellectual property" industries (movies, music, and computer software) rely on the artificial legal construct of copyright in order to extract profit from an activity that produces a "product" that, once produced, has an infinite supply and near-zero cost of distribution.
The natural state of affairs is to eliminate the artificial legal construct of "copyright" and just accept that anything that can be rendered digitally is free to copy.
The usual objection is "well then how do artists/writers/producers make money without copyright backing them up"?
The first response to that question is to point out that it is not the responsibility of the state or society at large to see that any industry remains profitable. Once upon a time there was a thriving buggy whip industry, but there was no legal construct erected to protect buggy whip manufacturers from being obsoleted by the forward march of technological development.
Notwithstanding, the question of "how can an artist make a living without copyright?" is a valid one. Happily, there is a historical answer - patronage.
Not so very long ago, it was practically impossible to distribute artistic product at all. Without any form of recording device, the only way to hear Mozart was to go see Mozart. Want to see Shakespeare? Go to the Globe Theatre. Want to read Ovid? Pay the enormous costs of finding a copy and then having a monk copy it by hand.
The flip side to this is that as an artist, given that the costs of producing your art were so very high, the only way to make a living doing art was to find a rich man who would hire you to produce the art - a patron.
The nice thing about zero-cost duplication and distribution of artistic content in the modern age is that it allows the cost of patronage to be spread across a very much wider audience, meaning that the cost of being a patron is very much smaller.
In effect, erect a means where your customers/fans can get money to you, and then let it be known that if they wish to see future product, then they need to contribute to the pool, or development will cease.
Yes, many people will just download the game/song/whatever and never pay. So it goes. But if the product is good enough, enough people will contribute to allow you to continue developing more product - and that's a win. How many of us get to make a living at their passion?
DG
Parent
Also... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, pirates do it for fun. No, really, they do. Read some nfos from respectable groups like Razor1911, Deviance or Fairlight, and you're bound to find a note on "why" etc. They also tell warez-users to go buy the stuff they pirate. "If you like it, buy the game - we did!", or something in this context.
Re:Also... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's been my experience as well -- the crackers who broke one of my games (in three days -- took me two weeks to do the protection) lived in my apartment complex and chatted with me about it.
They were just looking for a challenge. They had hundreds of games, and as near as I can tell they never really played them.
But of course they gave copies and compilations away to anyone who asked, often with a "cracked by (stupid hackerish name)" splash screen.
Parent
Re:Also... (Score:5, Insightful)
crackers who broke one of my games (in three days -- took me two weeks to do the protection)
Moral: you wasted two weeks of your life writing ineffective copy protection that does nothing to slow down pirates but inconveniences any customers you might have. Why?
Parent
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never played his games, but usually I "pirate" because some devs/pubs feel it is necessary to install "copy protection".
I get rather annoyed when a game won't play because I have a virtual drive on my computer.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
What's even more ironic is that you have good reason to.
Parent
Put your game on Stardock central/Impulse (Score:5, Interesting)
...and I will buy it, just like I have bought Sins of the Solar Empire, Galactic Civilizations II and Space Rangers 2.
Note that SR2 I originally passed as it was originally published - it had Securom copy protection, so I let it pass.
http://www.impulsedriven.com/ [impulsedriven.com] is Stardock's new system, looks very promising (and more friendly than Steam, which is also nice).
Re:Put your game on Stardock central/Impulse (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Paranoia Limits (Score:5, Interesting)
I think a lot of the true Pirates will avoid the contact because they'd be concerned about their anonimity. He'll hear from the part-time leechers and the 'try before buying' crowd, but the folks who do the actual work on cracking a game probably won't make a sound.
What if Slashdot did one of those 'ask-the-developer-a-question' forum, and they took the top reasons, then sent them in (with the understanding that the developer would get back with replies and/or rebuttals)?
Flawed premise (Score:5, Insightful)
He asks what he can do to "convert more people to become buyers". You can't convert people that wouldn't have bought your game in the first place. The only way to stop people copying your game is to provide more value to a so-called pirate such that the "pirate" gets more utility from the game by paying for it than by downloading it. If your game sucks and provides only marginal utility, even if he couldn't play the game for free the game he wouldn't have paid for it.
Re:Flawed premise (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire "study" has one huge glaring problem: A PIRATED GAME DOES NOT MEAN A LOST SALE.
I would change that to read "A pirated game does not always mean a lost sale." I think there are quite a few people who would pay for games if that was the only way to get them. The fact that illicit copies are freely available dramatically reduces the motivation to purchase. At least for some people.
Parent
Re:Flawed premise (Score:5, Interesting)
It also doesnt mean they would not have bought it either.
This was certainly the case in college for me. The only (PC) games that I played were freeware/shareware or pirated copies that other students had. If the pirated copies didn't exist, it's not as if $50 would suddenly materialize in my pocket - and if it did, I'd probably go out on the town rather than buy a game. I didn't even buy new console games - just played what I went to college with.
I'm sure there were other kids with different priorities (and more money), though. But you can't get blood (money) from a stone (college student).
Parent
I stopped pirating games years ago. (Score:5, Interesting)
I earn money now. As a student buying that game was taking food/alcohol money.
I don't have less free time. I have to be more selective. I play less games and the cost to purchase is the least of my worries. In fact it probably saves me cash as if I was out doing something else, I'd undoubtedly be spending more money.
I like on-line a lot. I bought Battlefield 2 for the magic code that let me go online - and I've not chipped my 360 for the same reason.
Cracking stuff makes me feel guilty. I mean yes there's all the arguments about how paying for the game gives you a more restricted copy - but Oh I dunno. If it's a good game somebody has poured their heart and soul into it, and I don't want to make them sad.
Steam - I like steam. I go there, I buy a game (after playing a demo maybe) and there it is to play a few minutes later. I can't be arsed fiddling with CDs, I usally lose/scratch them. If I'd put my thinking cap on and designed my own online distribution system - it'd look like Steam.
I'm not involved in the scene. Getting a pre-Jap release of Metal Gear Solid through the post, complete with japanese stamps on the jiffy bag - that's exciting. Clicking on a torrent link or browsing usenet.. not really a challenge. Strange point this one, but I liked the days when stuff had to be posted, or tracked down to an obscure hidden FTP dir. Too easy now.
How to stop piracy? Well that's a tricky one as I think everybody has their own reasons. If you genuinely can't afford the game - then nothing's going to stop that person pirating it (and if there's been no sale to lose - who cares?). If anything it keeps somebody in the market for future releases and hey they might turn into me and start buying them when they can.
Possibly the other thing is to make the makers of games more important. If you've been reading the blog of somebody who is making something - or eagerly tracking the return of Sam and Max - then you're going to feel more inclined to show support and buy it. When some movie-tie-in appears on 9 formats the day of the films release from 'somewhere' - well I'm not feeling a great emotional attachment to the producers.
Final bit is that I think game makers are starting to be nice to us and understand what we want. We don't have it too bad. Compare what's happening with online distribution of music and movies..
Mutual respect (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, I don't want to pirate stuff. I'll happily pay to go see a movie, and I'll happily pay to buy a good game (without even downloading it first to try it!). But here's what I demand in return: treat me with respect.
I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but the above are my non-negotiable requirements for buying software in general. I'm not out to share copies or take anything away from you, but in return I want acknowledgment that I don't owe you any extra favors just because I bought your stuff. I'm your customer and want to have a good relationship with you, so don't treat my like an asshole just because other people ripped you off.
Why do you care? (Score:5, Insightful)
The percentages of each of these might be interesting to find out. More important, however, is the percentage of people who didn't buy your games who pirated them. Since, I would imagine, most people on this planet didn't buy your game, and only a tiny proportion played it at all, then this number is almost insignificant. The correct question is:
Why did people who didn't buy my game not buy it, and how do I change this?
Whether these people pirated it or not is a side-question - a distraction. I can give you my answer to this:
Beyond that might be the price. I haven't looked at how much you charge for your games - three reasons not to buy them before I even found out what they were about made me stop looking - but a lot of companies charge a lot more for games than I would consider them to be worth (especially in comparison to something like a DVD or a book).
Your games are pretty boring (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey Cliff,
This is going to get modded flame bait but this is probably one of the reasons why your games in particular are getting pirated and not so much bought: people are downloading the pirated version, trying it a couple times, but because the game play is boring and repetitive, they are deleting it.
Your games are all the same with different graphics, they're all the "tycoon" style simulations with minor variations. I know this is probably not what you want to hear, but most people are generally good in that if they play a game a lot they will buy it.
Your games are niche and your intended market isn't going to be going online and downloading them, they won't be that savvy. Your market is looking for them on the shelf at bestbuy and getting roller coaster tycoon instead.
My Reasons... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's my reasons why I do not buy most games - and why I go out of my way to buy some..
1. Copy protection - There should be nothing in a game preventing me from making a copy. There should be nothing in a game that installs 3rd party bullshit on my computer. I would rather not even enter a unique code. Face it, no matter how great of anti-piracy software there is, if I buy the game it inconveniences me - while the pirated version that is easily downloadable on the Internet will not have those inconveniences. If I want to loan the game to a friend, and let him play it a few days, LET ME FUCKING DO IT. I BOUGHT THE DAMN GAME.
- THINK ABOUT THIS: Anti-piracy efforts typically only affect the people that bought and paid for the game. They are always an inconvenience. In all circumstances, the pirated version on the Internet (and it will exist no matter what game, no matter what copy protection), has most of those inconveniences removed - though the game may be missing material, have new bugs due to anti-anti-piracy, and generally have less value to the opinion of the game.
2. Pricing - Every damn PC game comes out at a ridiculous price - $60, $65, even $75.. and every damn PC game is $19.99 bargain bin after 3 months. How about make the price somewhere in the middle and keep it there. I'll buy games on release date if I knew the price wasn't gonna fall by 2/3 in a month. I think $25-30 pricing for games makes it almost more convenient to buy it - provided my other points are considered.
3. Community support - Let the community mod the games - and support them! Nothing is better than a game being released and the community taking over and creating unlimited amounts of new maps/levels.. unless the developer puts some of their own resources back into the community.
4. Pirates buy games - Yes, many pirates also buy games. When I actually had time to play PC games, I pirated many and bought many - and I definitely bought more games that the average person. Consider that. I don't like being called nasty names when I feel perfectly fine with my reasons for pirating - usually too much copy protection.
5. Don't make me have to insert a damn CD when I play the game!!! I bought the game. The pirated version doesn't make me insert a CD, why should the bought-and-paid-for version? My cd player is in my computer on the floor at the corner of my desk - and I'm a lazy gamer that doesn't want to have to open my book of cds, find the right one, and insert it! oh wait.. my cd is scratched. fuck me.
6. Stop being so goddamn confusing with the patches! I have 'pirated' games I bought just because installing the original cds, downloading the patches, installing them in order were so annoying and time-consuming. Here's how you do it. Release a game. It is version 1.0. Patch it. It is called patch 1. Now the version is 1.1. Every new patch should not require the older patch. There should never be a game version like "Awesome Game 1.01.07.0003 p004 with Nvidia enhanced drivers". WTF is that.. That makes me wanna turn my brain off and play Xbox.
7. Offer refunds. Yes, risky.. BUT DO IT. I bought X3 Reunion and was not able to play it for a long-ass time because I only had an external cd burner due to their fucked up copy protection. I posted on their forums. I was told everything was my fault and nothing was their fault. Think I'm ever gonna buy an Egosoft game again? Fuck no. Note: You would most likely have to offer 1/10 as many refunds if the game did not have copy protection. And, 'this game sucks' is not a valid refund request. The reviews are everywhere. If someone buys a game rated at 44%, they deserve to be out the money.
8. Bump up the minimum requirements. Don't say the game will run on a P3 1ghz with 128mb ram if it needs a Core 2 duo at 2.6ghz with a Radeon 4850 just to look decent! Why? Because Joe-dumbass will buy the game and try to run it on his son's shitty laptop with Intel integrated graphics. After doing that once or twice, guarantee he will becom
My Top 4 In Order (Score:5, Insightful)
1. I was cheap.
As a teenager in the early 90s, I had about 1/30th-1/15th the cost of a then typical game coming in as pocket money each week. If I skipped lunch each day, I could maybe boost it to 1/5th of the cost of a game each week but I went hungry a lot.
Realistically, the only way for me to play the games of the time (Strike Commander, X-Wing, Stunt Island, etc.) was for two or three friends and I to each buy a fraction of the games and let the others take copies in exchange for taking copies of their games, ourselves.
Not noble. But when you're twelve or thirteen, nobility doesn't really factor in when compared to getting or not getting to play all the games the magazines were hyping up.
My best suggestion for this one?
They don't really have the income, nor are they going to get the income. You can't find a way to make people without money more profitable today.
What you can do is find a way to give them an alternative other than piracy so it's not so habitual when they finally do have money. Plus you can build their enjoyment of gaming so, when they do have money, they ultimately spend it on games. Perhaps some kind of a deal with after school computer clubs where the school systems get licenses for the games if the school wants to open them up after hours? Yes, gaming hardware, yadda, yadda... but many indie games don't push hardware in the same way.
2. Quick Network Game At Work
Everyone deserves the right to get a humiliating kill in on their boss from time to time. Getting ten or twenty people to all have a copy of a $50, just so they can play for an hour once a week, is plain crazy.
Games with real demo modes... get played on the demo mode (and those that enjoy it at work go and buy the full game for home use). Games with no demo modes get no CD cracks. With the number of discs needed, quick math has everyone asking, "Do I feel $1,000 bad about copying?" They never buy a copy afterwards as they already know how to crack it.
Solution 1: Good demos. The real old kind. Think Doom where you could play the first third of the whole game.
Solution 2: Charge for the server, online multiplayer, single player content. Give the LAN client away. Add a few extra loading screens to the LAN only install that remind you that the purchase gets you so much more. Let it serve as your advertising where you'd never get the sales anyway. 20 players all tempted to buy the full game if it's good beats the hell out of 20 pirates or 20 people who're playing something else.
3. A Lot Of Games Suck
Sorry, harsh reality check. We've all been burned by games that bought advertising on game review sites and strangely got very prominent placement and a more glowing review than they deserved. You only have to drop $50 for a Matrix game that sucks mightily, a D&D game that constantly fails its saving throw vs. crash to desktop, or Doom 3 that looks amazing yet leaves you staggeringly bored (holy crap, did I just imply I miss Romero?) and you get jaded fast.
In my case, now I'm older, money's less of an issue but time is, I tend to just skip a lot of games entirely. In the past, I'd take a copy just to try it and then... well... I had a copy, what was the point in finding $50?
Solution: Good demos again. Ones with a real, appreciable, chunk of the content.
You want to be even smarter with extra content? If there are eight chapters to your game, give away chapters 1 & 2 so people get a good chance to try it. Then offer the choice... The $40-50 box buy for all the rest or they can just buy what they want at $10/chapter via online activation. This way, your barrier of entry to the next chunk is WAY lower.
4. Nothing In The Box But Digital Data
Digital data can be grabbed from the internet or copied from a disc.
I remember a time when manuals came packed with back story, maps, hints and tips, walkthroughs of the first level or two, tables of information on spe
WHO is more important than WHY (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO, this is THE million dollar question here, it's more important to find out WHO, than WHY.
I remember when Sierra released a multiplayer game called Tribes. It had absolutely NO copy protection. It installed completely to the hard drive. No cd-key was required to install it. It never performed a CD check. Even though it was multiplayer only, it did no online checks. Even the crudest CD-writing software could make a simple backup. I remember reading a developer blog which mentioned that at peak times, there were about 50% more people playing Tribes online than actual CD's sold. However, the game made a decent profit, and Tribes 2 was given the green light for development.
This would be extremely useful information to justify expensive and time consuming DRM and anti-piracy schemes. I have not seen any studies done to see who pirates games.
If you knew from a valid study that 99% of the people who pirate your games are less than 15 years old and live with parents, you might not spend as much money on incorporating DRM in your product.
This would be an excellent PhD topic for some business graduate.
However, if the study returned data that suggested a majority of your pirates are people in their 30's making over $80,000 a year and owned a Prius, then something to prevent trivial copy/burn might be justified.
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Pirates deliver a more convenient product at a better price
The more convenient is the killer. I don't mind paying a reasonable amount for a game, but I won't buy it if it treats me like a criminal (I won't pirate it either, I'll just ignore it). I bought EV Nova a few years ago. I copied it across to a new computer when I replaced my old one and it told me I had to re-authenticate. Unfortunately, I had to authenticate via a protocol that was blocked by a firewall between me and their servers. I bought some games that needed the CD in to run. Playing them years later, often I couldn't find the CD, or it was scratched. Or I wanted to play them on a laptop on a train and the CD drive flattens the battery too quickly. I bought some with a serial number, but came to install them later and found that I could find the CD but not the case with the serial number on it.
Compare this with the pirated version of any game. It's typically an archive which you extract and then run. No fuss, no effort, nothing getting in the way of enjoying the game. Anti-piracy measures only ever affect the legitimate users. Pirates have fun circumventing them and then aren't bothered by them once they're cracked.
Parent
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
it's a question of which pirate channel you want to stop.
1) the "hey chris, want a copy of this new game I got? It's great and there is no protection"
2) the "Arrrr, we've stripped out all the protection so you can now put a copy of this on yer hard disk and make easy backups"
All games should have *some* method of trivial protection to stop case 1 because it destroys sales. Most people are immoral when they are anonymous.
The most effective protection I've ever seen is new content created by the developer on their web site that the game must phone home for. It must sign in with a unique id and after a couple successful downloads, that id is locked until the next content release. The protection is on the server side.
I would recommend the following model.
1) Create content on the web site that must be downloaded with an ID that updates the program as well. Tightly integrate the downloaded data with the multiple gigabytes of data that already exists. Don't be an idiot and make it a stand alone 2mb file.
2) Set an arbitrary date when the content will stop (12-24 months) and the game will be unlocked due to an expectation that sales will drop to a level that support for problems is impossible. At that point, make the game unprotected and get good will and trust from your customers. And even then, you'll still get new sales- but the main wave of "hey chris" copies has passed.
Parent
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe it just didn't occur to them that sharing amongst their friends is immoral.
And yet strangely, when they get a job, they expect to get paid for their own work.
Parent
Re:I think I speak for a lot of people when I say (Score:5, Insightful)
It's this poor attitude that is not only growing but becoming a staple of online communities with regards to stuff that can be transmitted.
And the truth is you don't get it for free. You get it subsidized by the people who do pay. But if enough people don't pay that something fails (IE the production loses money,) then it won't happen again.
Of course, rationalizations make it all easy to justify.
Parent