Purkake

The carbon content was off, they're all rusted now Not sure if this has been posted yet, but

What I want to know is how it took 14 years to squeeze it out. It should have one of the longest and most impressive campaigns of all time. Development time vs quality is on a bell curve, too little time and it's crap, too long and it's been restarted enough to turn it to crap.

Instead, we only have Unreal Engine 3

I never even mentioned DRM and you're right it isn't a factor. It's just that some publishers won't sell their stuff without DRM. My point was about offering a better service than the pirates, making your products available to everyone and focusing your efforts on the paying customers.

Yup. Though by taking down the site/provider, you get loads of evidence if the files aren't encrypted. At least that's how they caught several "power users" when they raided that finnish server I was talking about. The only way industries can win the battle is if they can "destroy" all the groups releasing pirated copies (not very likely) or manage to take down every **** server that pops up (not gonna happen). Since they sure as **** can't ever fully take down the end users. Unless their fear campaign of random raids suddenly scares pirates into law abiding citizens.... ISPs don't want to do it because they would lose that customer and 2342342 others to the company that doesn't care at all. The extra work isn't that much and wouldn't really require all that much effort. Though the company I worked for did actually shut down 3g wireless internet connections from time to time. Due to "malware and other harmful software". No idea how it was being monitored etc. since it was done by an other department. Did get few calls from puzzled customers though I meant the extra work of tracking down individuals from IPs. Blocking sites is easy-peasy, but bad for business. You "win" by offering an equal or better service like Steam has done. That is you focus on the actual paying customers and ignore the pirates, not the other way around. The entirety of Steam *is* DRM...and they do not ignore the pirates. In fact Steam has a very harsh stance on pirates and they have been known to close entire accounts (and all the games within) if the detect you are running a pirated steam game. I guess that example was somewhat lopsided, they do focus on the paying customers with the sales and whatnot though. I guess a better example would be GOG or maybe some indie game developers like 2D Boy or Amanita Design.

Dat pop-in in Alpha Protocol *cringe*

Yup. Though by taking down the site/provider, you get loads of evidence if the files aren't encrypted. At least that's how they caught several "power users" when they raided that finnish server I was talking about. The only way industries can win the battle is if they can "destroy" all the groups releasing pirated copies (not very likely) or manage to take down every **** server that pops up (not gonna happen). Since they sure as **** can't ever fully take down the end users. Unless their fear campaign of random raids suddenly scares pirates into law abiding citizens.... ISPs don't want to do it because they would lose that customer and 2342342 others to the company that doesn't care at all. The extra work isn't that much and wouldn't really require all that much effort. Though the company I worked for did actually shut down 3g wireless internet connections from time to time. Due to "malware and other harmful software". No idea how it was being monitored etc. since it was done by an other department. Did get few calls from puzzled customers though I meant the extra work of tracking down individuals from IPs. Blocking sites is easy-peasy, but bad for business. You "win" by offering an equal or better service like Steam has done. That is you focus on the actual paying customers and ignore the pirates, not the other way around.

What exactly have they learnt from Bethesda, especially considering that they're (obviously) not in charge of the marketing? Anyway, happy for the Feargus' slaves if DSIII sells well. I'm only making an observation, I've not noticed many of Obsidian's previous games having the marketing ubiquity of Dungeon Siege, other than New Vegas. Well, not delaying it 4 times and being multiplatform helps too.

There's quite a big difference between taking down the sites/providers and the end users. ISPs don't want to do this mainly because it's extra work for them that they're not getting paid for.

Not really sure how easily police can get the IP information from ISP's in different countries. But the poster would leave his IP from posting on the forums, and proof he pirated the game. Enough proof to get a warrant to have look at the person's computer? Even by catching one pirate you can get to others if they push hard enough and threathen with severe punishment if he doesn't co-operate. And by co-operating I mean naming other pirates from school/work. Just today I read an article how 1 out of 4 hackers are actually FBI informants, because they don't really fancy the idea of getting locked up in prison... You can get millions of IPs from torrent sites along with confessions and whatever you want. If the police started arresting pirates they wouldn't have time for anything else. Oh, and an IP doesn't give you the person, it gives you the computer and even that only if the ISP decides to cooperate.

Yes, only if one/few companies does it. But let's say all of the big publishers team up on this, since it's safe to say they are all losing money because of piracy. Even then it would only help them catch a very small amount of pirates, the really stupid ones. And it would be business as usual for the rest of he pirate "scene". Catch as in ban from their forums? They'll just the the new crack the next day and it'll be business as usual. Didn't you say a few hours ago you wanted MORE companies? Huh? Anyway, I was sarcastically mocking Flouride's post.

You know, you can make it more subtle. Like it doesn't crash the whole game. Just some weird *** bug that would stand out and people would react to it, that would make them go to the forums, post and get caught. All this gets you is horrible PR. Any copy protection has to make it clear that whatever it's doing is caused by it. Any copy protection has false positives and companies are in the business of maximizing profits, not pranking pirates.

I wish companies would put more traps like that in their games and then bust everyone comes out and whines about the trap "bug" I wish more companies would sabotage their sales and be the engineers of their own demise.

Most complains of that sort aren't about people writing off the game, but more about them judging it and spreading the word as if they had played the full game . You'll get those people no matter what and with every game. As for the Iron Lore Titan Quest thing, that was a hilarious backfire indeed.

Not before you finish your nap.

I swear it's like a kindergarten here at least half of the time.

And my point was that if it's not possible to show the game accurately in a demo, explore other options of marketing. You were the one complaining about people writing the game off after just playing the demo, the failure there is on Obsidian's part not those peoples'

Are you new here? Well, excuse me for trying to change the cycle of stupid that springs up every now and then.

Hey guys, maybe we can create another 20 genres while we're at it? What's with the never ending need to label things rpg or not rpg? Who cares what you personally call it?

Gee, if the demo can't give an accurate representation of the game, maybe Obsidian shouldn't be releasing them?

It's the reputation, whether you think it's deserved or not doesn't come into it.

If by "stand strong" you mean not get worse then sure, but Obsidian's reputation as it stands outside these boards is really bad. I'm not so sure about that. Granted I mostly only see GT comments, but most of the people don't even seem to know the company. Or they don't care. Obviously I mean people who know the company. At least on GAF Obsidian is synonymous with "buggy mess" these days.

If by "stand strong" you mean not get worse then sure, but Obsidian's reputation as it stands outside these boards is really bad. Luckily that is a small fraction of the market.

No idea, can't really speculate on that.

Yup, the other option is that Obsidian made a bad/non-representative demo, but that would be their fault and not the players'. EDIT: High five, C2B