Piracy and DRM

[Hormalakh]

No I actually do think that piracy will and has hurt PC gaming's future if people continue to not speak out. P:E specifically might also be hurt. But I can't put numbers on it. It would be folly to do so.

 

Edit: I've added this to my previous post.

 

I disagree that piracy has hurt PC gaming's future, and future is the most important word here for me. The effect piracy or perceived piracy has had on PC gaming is indisputable. We have a shift of larger publishers to consoles, draconian DRM, and really just rage spouting from every corner. However, piracy is here. It is possible. It will not be stopped any more than any of the other crazy stuff on the internet will be stopped. And you can't expect all people to self regulate. It will not happen. If any luxury is to survive the digitial age, it has to evolve. The reason kickstarter excited me so much, and the reason you'll hear me advocating P:E moving completely over to a kickstarter model, is that this could be a way for the PC gaming industry to evolve. Let people pay for games they want upfront, before any cracking could possibly happen. Make the game, get paid exactly what the game was worth to make, then release it out into the world. No need to worry about expensive DRM or losing money to pirates. Just games people want being made for the amount of money they were actually worth. Maybe I'm being wildly idealistic, maybe I just have no idea how anything works around me. I don't know and I know I don't know. This is just what I think I see and what I'm hoping for.

 

I understand what you're saying. PC gaming definitely has changed, and not necessarily for the better. However, I don't think PC only games should be relegated to kickstarters only or MMO F2Ps. That would mean we would never have huge PC only single-player game budgets. Deus Ex 1 would have been less likely to happen. And all these console trash games that really suck on the PC will continue.

[Hormalakh]

I hate DRM and I hate steam (which is an opinion and not an argument).

Forcing me to use either of them will directly lead to me losing total interest in the game and stop me to support it any further.

I understand the point of view of the companies but I also understand the fact that we live in a free market economy and I don't feel like paying for renting software, which is basically stripping several rights off me which I'd like to have for being a honest customer, especially if pirates are able to enjoy them.

In essence, the following article sums pretty much up what I think:

http://foobarrant.fo.../CopyProtection

 

I don't pirate any games and I agree that pirating should have a worse image in society, but DRM is not the way to go to achieve this.

Imho, a much better approach is proposed by this fine sir:

http://foobarrant.fo....php/Main/FSNCP

 

So copy protection is cool by you (per what the article is describing)? That's fine by me. What ever way is most effective and at lowest price to limit piracy. Piracy will happen. I don't argue that it won't. DRM isn't necessarily the right answer. But something should be done and we as gamers should be alright with it.

Edited November 29, 2012 by Hormalakh

[Dream]

It's not about pirates being a bastion of good will. It's about the fact that when a game is as cheap and easy to get as P:E is then anyone who pirates it would have most certainly never bought it in the first place (it's about a thousand times easier to click buy on steam than it is to sift through torrents and cracks and what not to pirate a game). The fact that they own the game can in no way hurt the product.

 

I'm not sure I quite understand what you're trying to say. If they download any game without discretion (like let's say they're a collector), they aren't planning on playing it anyway. So this doesn't really help increase word of mouth. If they are planning on playing the game and intentionally downloaded the game from the torrent site, then they should buy it or pay the devs to help support them. Buying from Steam is buying, not piracy.

 

If they willy-nilly torrent everything, then when they do play it, they should pay for it.

 

What?

 

Pirating is about saving time and money. Arguments about pirating taking away sales made sense when the only way to get games was to trudge out to a brick and mortar and throw down half a c-note. Nowadays if a pirate is so broke or cheap that they'd rather go through all the rigmarole of pirating rather than going on steam, paying 20 bucks (which is basically nothing now), and being done in 10 seconds then there is no way they would have bought the game in the first place.

 

Once they pirate the game they're obviously going to play it (who the hell pirates everything under the sun just to collect it?), and at that point they may (or may not) tell their friends about the game (or even buy the game themselves). Regardless of what happens there is no downside to them pirating that game.

[Wirdjos]

I disagree that piracy has hurt PC gaming's future, and future is the most important word here for me. The effect piracy or perceived piracy has had on PC gaming is indisputable. We have a shift of larger publishers to consoles, draconian DRM, and really just rage spouting from every corner. However, piracy is here. It is possible. It will not be stopped any more than any of the other crazy stuff on the internet will be stopped. And you can't expect all people to self regulate. It will not happen. If any luxury is to survive the digitial age, it has to evolve. The reason kickstarter excited me so much, and the reason you'll hear me advocating P:E moving completely over to a kickstarter model, is that this could be a way for the PC gaming industry to evolve. Let people pay for games they want upfront, before any cracking could possibly happen. Make the game, get paid exactly what the game was worth to make, then release it out into the world. No need to worry about expensive DRM or losing money to pirates. Just games people want being made for the amount of money they were actually worth. Maybe I'm being wildly idealistic, maybe I just have no idea how anything works around me. I don't know and I know I don't know. This is just what I think I see and what I'm hoping for.

 

I understand what you're saying. PC gaming definitely has changed, and not necessarily for the better. However, I don't think PC only games should be relegated to kickstarters only or MMO F2Ps. That would mean we would never have huge PC only single-player game budgets. Deus Ex 1 would have been less likely to happen. And all these console trash games that really suck on the PC will continue.

 

I honestly don't think porting console games to PC should, or will, continue. Porting in general just doesn't seem like a good idea. But anyway...

 

As for no huge PC games in to future, I don't agree. By creating a direct link between developers and gamers, the way games are released can change with both parties happy. I'm sure people will like this less than supporting any level of piracy, but I really think DLC is the future. Games could be funded and released in sizable chunks, with the chunks adding up to any huge game we have now. Because the DLC is directly funded by players before it's made, players can make what they want known better. Pointless, unwanted costume packs and such things geared toward profit and not content can be vetoed before anyone wastes anything on them. Again, idealistic, but I see the potential for DLC to make better games by filling content gaps that weren't apparent before a few playthroughs.

[Durinax]

Just make the game only available on Steam. Works as DRM but also has many benefits for the user, a perfect solution!

not steam, I have a lot of problems with that application.

[Hormalakh]

Pirating is about saving time and money. Arguments about pirating taking away sales made sense when the only way to get games was to trudge out to a brick and mortar and throw down half a c-note. Nowadays if a pirate is so broke or cheap that they'd rather go through all the rigmarole of pirating rather than going on steam, paying 20 bucks (which is basically nothing now), and being done in 10 seconds then there is no way they would have bought the game in the first place.

 

Once they pirate the game they're obviously going to play it (who the hell pirates everything under the sun just to collect it?), and at that point they may (or may not) tell their friends about the game (or even buy the game themselves). Regardless of what happens there is no downside to them pirating that game.

 

Oh I see what you're saying now. Well, yeah you can't really completely stop pirating: you could probably have world peace before that happens. But you can try to dissuade as many as possible. My point is to make it difficult to pirate a game. Effective, unobtrusive copyright protections can do that. But these need support from gamers. I think we're on the same page.

Edited November 29, 2012 by Hormalakh

[Hormalakh]

Just make the game only available on Steam. Works as DRM but also has many benefits for the user, a perfect solution!

not steam, I have a lot of problems with that application.

Yep. Using only one distribution channel isn't optimal.

[SophosTheWise]

While I have some strong views on this topic, I'm not going to burn my hands on it

 

Indeed. Although I will say a few things.

 

I'm a pirate, I support the pirate party of my country (where pirating is mostly legal). I think copyright laws are a mess and the whole concept of intellectual property is inherently wrong. I'm not in any way saying I'm a valiant defender of freedom but I'm not going to say that I just do it for my own good either. This goes out to you OP, one can be anti-DRM and pro-pirate without being a hurrdurriwantmywarez1!1-dude. One can be pro-pirate also because one thinks that the proposed economic dynamics are just a load of absurd, made-up crap to maximize profits. I don't want to start a flame war, I just wanted to clarify that there is more to the piracy-debate than OP implies with his post.

 

And what I find baffling, especially as a journalism and corporate communications student (and maybe because I'm also a bit of a cynic sometimes) is the fact that you seem to think that developers like Obsidian are your friends, altruistic knights in shining armour that pay their respects to the gamers. As much as I'd like that to be true and as much as I like Obsidian myself, you're just romanticizing. Obsidian is still a business with an interest in profits and not some sort of philanthropist organization that creates a game out of idealism. PE is very clever marketed, Obsidian does a hell of a job in branding themselves and they clearly know how to appeal to their targeted audience. To me, it just seems a little bit illusory to talk about a bond or relationship between "us" and Obsidian.

 

To be clear: I'm not suggesting Obsidian isn't an authentic team, I just think everyone should treat things attached to emotions (and we're talking powerful emotions like nostalgia here) with caution.

[Streamlock]

Well, as someone who does work in R&D I have some pretty hard set realities on an individuals or groups right to protect their IP. I could write 20 pages on the subject probably.....So to try put this more succinctly....

 

An individual or group not only has the right, but the responsibility to protect their IP from theft, abuse or fraud. Regardless of the source of that IP (something tangible, like a better mousetrap, or less so like the script of a book or code of a game). Unless or course the creators of said IP explicitly choose to allow others to utilize/share it in a specific or non-specific way. (You know, I want everyone to share in this beautifully written prose, or I just hate mice and want everyone to apply this knowledge in building the better mousetrap to assist in ending the mouse scourge).

 

For a capitalist based economy to function-this has to be the case. The copyright and patent protections are in place to facilitate this. Allow the free flow of ideas within society while encouraging open competition, profit motive, and private investment. (It's of course a little more complicated-but you get the jist of it)

 

That being said, as a consumer there are some things one expects when allowed the right to exploit the works of another (whether the right to make and market a better mouse trap utilizing another's contribution to mouse trap design, paying to listen to a single performance of a song, or purchasing the right to enjoy that song anytime one wishes via purchasing a CD or MP3)

 

This is where it starts to get a bit complex.....To focus on the applicability to PE, at what point does the content creators responsibility (not just right to) to protect their creation unfairly (both legally and morally) begin to interfere with the groups/individuals consumption of that creation. Consumption that included transfer of material wealth for the right/ability to consume that content? It's not an easy question to answer.

 

Truth of the matter, PE, or any other digital content is created and distributed with technology specifically designed to allow for fast and easy transfer of information, not one designed to limit it. The technology simply does not exist at this point to fully reconcile the situation/s when applied to digital content creation and distribution. It has become a mathematical equality. You can no longer take away from one side of the equation without taking something away from the other.

 

Technology is quickly evolving, and hopefully one day something comes along that can change that equation, but for now we are stuck in this quagmire of DRM and consumer rights with no specific solution.

 

As a final note, or warning even.....Using the math analogy from above-setting one side of that equality to zero always end up getting the other side of that equation solving for no value. And that is not a situation beneficial to anybody. (Note: I was kind and did not use a calculus based analogy)

 

(edited)

Edited November 29, 2012 by Streamlock

[Wulfic]

I'm pirating games constantly. REALLY. Mainly because developers are screwing us really hard. I bought AC3 for my birthday and what ? Its buggy as hell and has a terrible optimization. I nearly bought RAGE. RAGE is boring, linear and has a terrible optimization. That doesnt mean I download every game and dont buy it even if I enjoy it, no. I have NWN2 with all expansions, Witcher 1 and 2, and Drakensang and all Infinity games and many many more. But I wont, I WONT buy a game that is garbage. And to many developers have screwed me. P:E I will ofc buy without testing because this is one of the games which I KNOW I wont regret like with both of the Witchers and Skyrim.

[Hormalakh]

Indeed. Although I will say a few things.

 

I'm a pirate, I support the pirate party of my country (where pirating is mostly legal). I think copyright laws are a mess and the whole concept of intellectual property is inherently wrong. I'm not in any way saying I'm a valiant defender of freedom but I'm not going to say that I just do it for my own good either. This goes out to you OP, one can be anti-DRM and pro-pirate without being a hurrdurriwantmywarez1!1-dude. One can be pro-pirate also because one thinks that the proposed economic dynamics are just a load of absurd, made-up crap to maximize profits. I don't want to start a flame war, I just wanted to clarify that there is more to the piracy-debate than OP implies with his post.

 

And what I find baffling, especially as a journalism and corporate communications student (and maybe because I'm also a bit of a cynic sometimes) is the fact that you seem to think that developers like Obsidian are your friends, altruistic knights in shining armour that pay their respects to the gamers. As much as I'd like that to be true and as much as I like Obsidian myself, you're just romanticizing. Obsidian is still a business with an interest in profits and not some sort of philanthropist organization that creates a game out of idealism. PE is very clever marketed, Obsidian does a hell of a job in branding themselves and they clearly know how to appeal to their targeted audience. To me, it just seems a little bit illusory to talk about a bond or relationship between "us" and Obsidian.

 

To be clear: I'm not suggesting Obsidian isn't an authentic team, I just think everyone should treat things attached to emotions (and we're talking powerful emotions like nostalgia here) with caution.

 

I don't think Obsidian is my friend or anything like that. I'm not supporting Obsidian because I love them. I'm supporting them because I benefit from it as they do. There is a contract between the backers of the game and the developers. We paid them; they promised to make a game. Until they break that bond of trust, there's no reason for me to act tactlessly and without consideration for the other party. Acting suspiciously to every action that they make would be to surrender to some weird paranoia.

 

Look, I live in a capitalist society where money talks, but that doesn't dictate my own ethics or morals. You can talk all about how the copyright laws are a mess in your country or world-wide and how everyone is being screwed over and I would probably agree with you. But a poorly written legislation does not excuse poor ethics and morality. I don't want to make this an ethical or moral issue, but there is one to be had and one that suffices for many people. But by not engaging in a discussion about this directly, we let others do the talking for us. There is obviously more to the debate that what I've posted in the OP, but some of it is irrelevant and most of it counterproductive to the point that I was making, i.e. it leads to flame-wars.

 

I've started this thread because I care about my own gaming experiences. The way I see it is that PC gaming sucks currently. We get crap games and hand-me-downs from the consoles. We don't get good PC-only games and we need to look in the mirror. DRMs suck, yes. But so do pirates. Now with a new kickstarter dynamic, we should have this piracy conversation before it gets all out of control.

Edited November 29, 2012 by Hormalakh

[Hormalakh]

P:E I will ofc buy without testing because this is one of the games which I KNOW I wont regret like with both of the Witchers and Skyrim.

 

All I care about is this. I'm happy.

[SophosTheWise]

Indeed. Although I will say a few things.

 

I'm a pirate, I support the pirate party of my country (where pirating is mostly legal). I think copyright laws are a mess and the whole concept of intellectual property is inherently wrong. I'm not in any way saying I'm a valiant defender of freedom but I'm not going to say that I just do it for my own good either. This goes out to you OP, one can be anti-DRM and pro-pirate without being a hurrdurriwantmywarez1!1-dude. One can be pro-pirate also because one thinks that the proposed economic dynamics are just a load of absurd, made-up crap to maximize profits. I don't want to start a flame war, I just wanted to clarify that there is more to the piracy-debate than OP implies with his post.

 

And what I find baffling, especially as a journalism and corporate communications student (and maybe because I'm also a bit of a cynic sometimes) is the fact that you seem to think that developers like Obsidian are your friends, altruistic knights in shining armour that pay their respects to the gamers. As much as I'd like that to be true and as much as I like Obsidian myself, you're just romanticizing. Obsidian is still a business with an interest in profits and not some sort of philanthropist organization that creates a game out of idealism. PE is very clever marketed, Obsidian does a hell of a job in branding themselves and they clearly know how to appeal to their targeted audience. To me, it just seems a little bit illusory to talk about a bond or relationship between "us" and Obsidian.

 

To be clear: I'm not suggesting Obsidian isn't an authentic team, I just think everyone should treat things attached to emotions (and we're talking powerful emotions like nostalgia here) with caution.

 

I don't think Obsidian is my friend or anything like that. I'm not supporting Obsidian because I love them. I'm supporting them because I benefit from it as they do. There is a contract between the backers of the game and the developers. We paid them; they promised to make a game. Until they break that bond of trust, there's no reason for me to act tactlessly and without consideration for the other party. Acting suspiciously to every action that they make would be to surrender to some weird paranoia.

 

I'm not suggesting that we should be suspicious, I'm simply implying that this contract is all there is. We paid money and have fulfilled our contract, now Obsidian makes a game. That's it, that's all there is. So you basically don't have to act at all because you've already done your part. I think discussions on this topics are not going to help as long as they focus on premises upon which not everybody agrees. Discussions about piracy should be handled entirely different - by grabbing the topic by its roots and talking about sharing in general, about economic mechanics, about ethics and such, about alternative ways of enforcing a "copy right" and so on.

 

IThe point where we disagree is that I do not think that pirates suck. I think piracy is a constructed problem to artificially maximize capital and not a problem that is doing any real damage.

 

But I think we should leave it at that, it's getting off topic

Edited November 29, 2012 by SophosTheWise

[Archmage Silver]

I don't like DRM as a matter of principle, so I'll get my copy from GOG. I see no point in using DRM, it can all be cracked by people inclined to do so. WoW had/has pirate private servers, so that scheme didn't work out either. You might just as well skip utilizing DRM. In fact, many crackers and pirates will buy a license for a game they want, even moreso given the lack of DRM.

 

Personally I don't participate in piracy nor do I condone piracy of any kind (Jack Sparrow and Hector Barbossa are exempt from this ), but I know people who just don't care - they don't have the money, yet they still want their fix of games and whatnot. I keep telling them it's not the same thing, but they just shrug it off. They'll only buy the games if they're really fans of the series or they just can't get the game otherwise, the latter of which rarely happens.

 

DRM doesn't stop crackers, it only slows them down for a time (OK, StarForce worked to an extent, but no developer in their right mind uses SF as DRM anymore).

[Hormalakh]

I'm not suggesting that we should be suspicious, I'm simply implying that this contract is all there is. We paid money and have fulfilled our contract, now Obsidian makes a game. That's it, that's all there is. So you basically don't have to act at all because you've already done your part. I think discussions on this topics are not going to help as long as they focus on premises upon which not everybody agrees. Discussions about piracy should be handled entirely different - by grabbing the topic by its roots and talking about sharing in general, about economic mechanics, about ethics and such, about alternative ways of enforcing a "copy right" and so on.

 

IThe point where we disagree is that I do not think that pirates suck. I think piracy is a constructed problem to artificially maximize capital and not a problem that is doing any real damage.

 

But I think we should leave it at that, it's getting off topic

 

If this game does not sell any copies, the contract means that we do not get an expansion pack. Sales only come if the game isn't completely and utterly pirated. Pirates will actively taking funding away from myour expansion.

Edited November 29, 2012 by Hormalakh

[Hormalakh]

DRM doesn't stop crackers, it only slows them down for a time (OK, StarForce worked to an extent, but no developer in their right mind uses SF as DRM anymore).

 

Apparently Russian game devs still do. Slowing down pirates is still effective. A portion of them theoretically give up and buy the game. See "Day-0 pirating and Day-1 pirating."

Edited November 29, 2012 by Hormalakh

[SophosTheWise]

Indeed. Although I will say a few things.

 

I'm a pirate, I support the pirate party of my country (where pirating is mostly legal). I think copyright laws are a mess and the whole concept of intellectual property is inherently wrong. I'm not in any way saying I'm a valiant defender of freedom but I'm not going to say that I just do it for my own good either. This goes out to you OP, one can be anti-DRM and pro-pirate without being a hurrdurriwantmywarez1!1-dude. One can be pro-pirate also because one thinks that the proposed economic dynamics are just a load of absurd, made-up crap to maximize profits. I don't want to start a flame war, I just wanted to clarify that there is more to the piracy-debate than OP implies with his post.

 

And what I find baffling, especially as a journalism and corporate communications student (and maybe because I'm also a bit of a cynic sometimes) is the fact that you seem to think that developers like Obsidian are your friends, altruistic knights in shining armour that pay their respects to the gamers. As much as I'd like that to be true and as much as I like Obsidian myself, you're just romanticizing. Obsidian is still a business with an interest in profits and not some sort of philanthropist organization that creates a game out of idealism. PE is very clever marketed, Obsidian does a hell of a job in branding themselves and they clearly know how to appeal to their targeted audience. To me, it just seems a little bit illusory to talk about a bond or relationship between "us" and Obsidian.

 

To be clear: I'm not suggesting Obsidian isn't an authentic team, I just think everyone should treat things attached to emotions (and we're talking powerful emotions like nostalgia here) with caution.

 

I don't think Obsidian is my friend or anything like that. I'm not supporting Obsidian because I love them. I'm supporting them because I benefit from it as they do. There is a contract between the backers of the game and the developers. We paid them; they promised to make a game. Until they break that bond of trust, there's no reason for me to act tactlessly and without consideration for the other party. Acting suspiciously to every action that they make would be to surrender to some weird paranoia.

 

I'm not suggesting that we should be suspicious, I'm simply implying that this contract is all there is. We paid money and have fulfilled our contract, now Obsidian makes a game. That's it, that's all there is. So you basically don't have to act at all because you've already done your part. I think discussions on this topics are not going to help as long as they focus on premises upon which not everybody agrees. Discussions about piracy should be handled entirely different - by grabbing the topic by its roots and talking about sharing in general, about economic mechanics, about ethics and such, about alternative ways of enforcing a "copy right" and so on.

 

IThe point where we disagree is that I do not think that pirates suck. I think piracy is a constructed problem to artificially maximize capital and not a problem that is doing any real damage.

 

But I think we should leave it at that, it's getting off topic

 

If this game does not sell any copies, the contract means that we do not get an expansion pack. Sales only come if the game isn't completely and utterly pirated. Pirates are actively taking funding away from myour expansion.

 

No they are not taking away anything.

I think it's preposterous to generalize pirating as a "loss of revenue" because that constructed revenue doesn't even exist virtually. Just to use an example. If there is a free or cheaper alternative to Project Eternity about which I feel the same way - does buying this instead of Project Eternity also take away revenue? Or does the dev of the cheaper/free game take away the revenue of Obsidian by creating an alternative? No they don't. As much as I'm not taking away any revenue of things I wouldn't have bought in the first place by instead downloading it.

[Wirdjos]

I'm not suggesting that we should be suspicious, I'm simply implying that this contract is all there is. We paid money and have fulfilled our contract, now Obsidian makes a game. That's it, that's all there is. So you basically don't have to act at all because you've already done your part. I think discussions on this topics are not going to help as long as they focus on premises upon which not everybody agrees. Discussions about piracy should be handled entirely different - by grabbing the topic by its roots and talking about sharing in general, about economic mechanics, about ethics and such, about alternative ways of enforcing a "copy right" and so on.

 

IThe point where we disagree is that I do not think that pirates suck. I think piracy is a constructed problem to artificially maximize capital and not a problem that is doing any real damage.

 

But I think we should leave it at that, it's getting off topic

 

Please don't stop. Obvoiusly Hormalakh should have more of a say as this is his(?) thread, but I've really enjoyed your perspective. It's not one I'm used to hearing. I'm not sure if that's because I'm in America and we don't and will never foreseeably have a pirate party or not. So thanks for your perspective and thanks for turning me on to Order of the Stick which I am reading between posting here.

[Hormalakh]

^OOtS is awesome.

 

I am a big advocate of sharing ideas and letting reasoned discussion be the judge. I might not be the most qualified to speak about the subject however.

[Hormalakh]

No they are not taking away anything.

I think it's preposterous to generalize pirating as a "loss of revenue" because that constructed revenue doesn't even exist virtually. Just to use an example. If there is a free or cheaper alternative to Project Eternity about which I feel the same way - does buying this instead of Project Eternity also take away revenue? Or does the dev of the cheaper/free game take away the revenue of Obsidian by creating an alternative? No they don't. As much as I'm not taking away any revenue of things I wouldn't have bought in the first place by instead downloading it.

Oh God...we're gonna start having analogies now...

 

Before we go on, I want to state that I care only about P:E. The question here is specific and we're not dealing with a vague idea, thus the examples should be relevant to P:E.

 

If a pirate wasn't going to buy the game regardless of copyright protection, no amount of pleading/DRM/CP protection will dissuade him. But for those who would purchase the game if there wasn't a "free" copy for them to steal, I would argue that yes many of them would be deterred by buying it. Reasons for buying might be to play the game when it first comes out (day-0/day-1 piracy), not having to deal with cracks or hunting for them on DRMs, etc.

 

These are the pirates that I worry about. The numbers aren't known, but they are not 0. Even a 1% (hopefully more) conversion of these pirates to possible customers can be the difference between sufficient revenue for a good or a bad/buggy expansion. This is because, as stated in the kickstarter, we knew that the revenue would be used strictly for the development of this expansion. This is something that has been promised by the company. Now if all of a sudden I hear that the revenue isn't being used to fund an expansion and is being used to fund someone's beachhouse in Tahiti, then I would be upset.

 

As for your example, allowing market forces to play their role is not what devs worry about when pirates pirate. Instead, pirates aren't following the social contract and are breaking that contract for whatever reason. The pirates that I and many devs worry about are those that would purchase the game (along with the alternative) because they would want to play that specific title. If P:E had a competitor that undercut them by making an equivalent game at half the cost, normal market forces and the public wouldn't care. The most competitive win in a fair market. But if the rules are broken, then you cannot say that the market is fair any longer and those who break those rules should be held responsible. There shouldn't be a different set of rules for the supposed "robin hoods."

 

Edit: Clarity.

Edited November 29, 2012 by Hormalakh

[Agelastos]

Hah! I thought the Pirate Party was an exclusively Swedish phenomenon. I had no idea it had spread to so many countries.

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, considering how successful the Swedish Pirate Party was in the European Parliament election of 2009.

Fascinating.

 

Sorry! OT, I know...

[Dream]

Pirating is about saving time and money. Arguments about pirating taking away sales made sense when the only way to get games was to trudge out to a brick and mortar and throw down half a c-note. Nowadays if a pirate is so broke or cheap that they'd rather go through all the rigmarole of pirating rather than going on steam, paying 20 bucks (which is basically nothing now), and being done in 10 seconds then there is no way they would have bought the game in the first place.

 

Once they pirate the game they're obviously going to play it (who the hell pirates everything under the sun just to collect it?), and at that point they may (or may not) tell their friends about the game (or even buy the game themselves). Regardless of what happens there is no downside to them pirating that game.

 

Oh I see what you're saying now. Well, yeah you can't really completely stop pirating: you could probably have world peace before that happens. But you can try to dissuade as many as possible. My point is to make it difficult to pirate a game. Effective, unobtrusive copyright protections can do that. But these need support from gamers. I think we're on the same page.

 

Ubisoft has some of the most draconian DRM ever and even their games are up on crack sites and torrents BEFORE they're released. The only truly effective DRM is an always online approach where a portion of the game's data is handled on the outside servers (D3, WoW, etc.). Seeing as pretty much nobody wants that, putting any amount of time or effort into DRM is simply a waste of resources.

 

As for making pirating difficulty; it already is. It is far easier to buy **** on steam, origin, gog.com, etc. than it is to torrent cracks and scan them with anti virus software (not to mention having to repeat this process every time there's a patch or dlc). Anyone who is willing to go through all that bull**** to save a few bucks would not have bought the game in the first place.

 

If a pirate wasn't going to buy the game regardless of copyright protection, no amount of pleading/DRM/CP protection will dissuade him. But for those who would purchase the game if there wasn't a "free" copy for them to steal

 

Those people don't exist anymore.

Edited November 29, 2012 by Dream

[Hormalakh]

Ubisoft has some of the most draconian DRM ever and even their games are up on crack sites and torrents BEFORE they're released. The only truly effective DRM is an always online approach where a portion of the game's data is handled on the outside servers (D3, WoW, etc.). Seeing as pretty much nobody wants that, putting any amount of time or effort into DRM is simply a waste of resources.

 

As for making pirating difficulty; it already is. It is far easier to buy **** on steam, origin, gog.com, etc. than it is to torrent cracks and scan them with anti virus software (not to mention having to repeat this process every time there's a patch or dlc). Anyone who is willing to go through all that bull**** to save a few bucks would not have bought the game in the first place.

 

There are DRMs that stay uncracked for years. They exist. These DRMs, perhaps with the caveats I stated, can be effective barriers to a significant amount of piracy. Other than DRMs, there are other copyright protections that could be taken (someone else posted about this in this thread) to reduce piracy.

[jezz555]

This is pretty ridiculous. IIRC The game was fully community funded, Obsidian is essentially working for themselves here so it's not like PE has to make a huge amount of money. Obsidian have a lot of loyal fans as the kickstarter proved, and I'm sure if the game is fun they will gladly kickstart a sequel (if that's what your worried about) regardless of how many copies people decide to make so lets not fuss about the pirates. If Obsidian were just in it for the money they would have made a call of duty clone, this is a labour of love, the more people get to enjoy it the better.

[Hormalakh]

This is pretty ridiculous. IIRC The game was fully community funded, Obsidian is essentially working for themselves here so it's not like PE has to make a huge amount of money. Obsidian have a lot of loyal fans as the kickstarter proved, and I'm sure if the game is fun they will gladly kickstart a sequel (if that's what your worried about) regardless of how many copies people decide to make so lets not fuss about the pirates. If Obsidian were just in it for the money they would have made a call of duty clone, this is a labour of love, the more people get to enjoy it the better.

 

This is another way to look at it- if you are a backer, you can look at it this way. I am also a backer, and I look at it differently. I "don't worry" about the sequel as much as I "worry" about the expansion. The bigger concern is to show publishers through sales information that games like this still do sell. Obsidian isn't the only developer making PC-only games. A lot of indies are being made and being funded through kickstarter. Clearly there is a market for PC-only games.

Edited November 29, 2012 by Hormalakh