Codemasters CEO: Beat Piracy With Unfinished Games

[Kiithid]

"My answer is for us as publishers is to actually sell unfinished games - and to offer the consumer multiple micro-payments to buy elements of the full experience. That would create an offering that is affordable at retail - but over a period of time may also generate more revenue for the publishers to reinvest in our games."

Allow me to translate:

"We are going to beat the pirates by making our product even worse when compared to the pirated version."

Christ, and here was I thinking that online reigstration was annoying. Now they want to make what basically amounts to essential DLC. Someone slap this man.

Hey mate, how about I give you an unfinished payment for your unfinished game?

After your marked lines made me think, by elements he means... the controls? The ui? Difficulty settings?

 

[Paulrus_Keaton]

Reminds me of this bit from MST3K....

 

[Loonerinoes]

He DOES know that DLCs are being pirated as of right now already, right? Eh...guess not.

 

[tomtom94]

It makes a small degree more sense than oppressive DRM.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Talk about sidestepping a pothole only to fall off a bridge.

Said DLC will inevitably be leaked, distributed and then get patched into the main game, then distributed.

But he does raise a point in saying DRM's need to die. Frankly he's the only one in the business I've heard oppose this.

 

[TOGSolid]

And so we come back full circle to the original concept of Shareware.

Awesome. For all their idiotic tirades and bullshit schemes they're wanting to go right back to how it used to work in the 80s/early 90s. "Try our game all you want. If you like it, give us some money and we'll give you the rest of it."

In this glorious age of high speed internet, you'd think that this would have been the first thing they tried.

"That would create an offering that is affordable at retail - but over a period of time may also generate more revenue for the publishers to reinvest in our games"

If you sell me a game for >$5 bucks and then charge me DLC that opens the game up to a MAXIMUM of $60, I wouldn't care. In fact, that'd be awesome. Think of how many people wouldn't bother buying the single player unlock for Modern Warfare 2?

If you charge me $60 and then charge me money to "unlock" my own game, that's some bull right there.

This. Assassin's Creed 2 forced you to pay more money on top of the original full price to get the rest of your game. I can't believe people actually went along with that, but whatever. People are idiots.

 

[MikailCaboose]

No. Sorry, but game developers ALREADY give themselves enough excuses to half-ass a game as it stands. And if a game fails to give me a good, full experience, I sure as hell am not going to keep paying indefinitely until it does. *insert facepalm picture*

 

[Epitome]

It makes sense, to some degree. Think about it - if you're buying a game on impulse and you don't know if it'll be good, which would you be more likely to pick up? A $30 game which you can then make into a $60 game with DLC, or a $60 game? If both games suck, you lose much less with the cheaper one since nobody's forcing you to buy the rest of it.

I can see a flip to taht though, take the used games, if a used copy now only costs 10-15 and you can pirate the dlc then gamestop gets a tenner, pirate gets 60 worth of content and games industry nurse the bullethole in its foot.

 

[Danpascooch]

This is SO stupid, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING stopping pirates from pirating the new bits too, just look at the Sims 3 expansions, those are game additions that pirate just fine!

"If these games are pirated, those who get their hands on them won't be able to complete the experience. There will be technology, coding aspects, that will come to bear that will unlock some aspects. Some people will want them and some won't,"

As far as the bolded statement, let me be the first to say: The fuck is this guy babbling about?

I think he is saying "oh, the extra bits will have unbreakable DRM" which is the dumbest thing I've ever heard, because if you have unbreakable DRM (which nobody does) why reserve it for the addons and not just use it on the WHOLE DAMN GAME

I normally pirate games if I can. I downlaoded pirates sims 3 and it didnt work.

"Aw hell," I said to myself* "Well they got me fair and square. I ll PAY to download the damn thing!"

The version I paid for didn work either, turns out it was just a common issue with graphics. So my one experience of paying for entertainment doesnt exactly make me unbias.

*i just snorted and thought it. Talking to myself would be wierd.

That's hilarious, but you can't admit to piracy on the Escapist, it's a punishable offense, you better edit that post.

Yes it's a somewhat ridiculous and police-state like rule but it's the rule.

 

[solidstatemind]

I think people are misunderstanding - or rather, I *hope* they are.

If he's talking about selling unfinished games at $60 and then charging more, then the guy's out of his rocker. But it seems to me that he's saying, "Let's sell a half-complete game for $30" (or whatever) "and then finish it in DLC." In other words, it's just ... episodic content?

That is exactly how I took it. From the original article (emphasis added):

"My answer is for us as publishers is to actually sell unfinished games - and to offer the consumer multiple micro-payments to buy elements of the full experience. That would create an offering that is affordable at retail - but over a period of time may also generate more revenue for the publishers to reinvest in our games," he told CVG [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=255861].

"If these games are pirated, those who get their hands on them won't be able to complete the experience. There will be technology, coding aspects, that will come to bear that will unlock some aspects. Some people will want them and some won't," he continued. "When it comes to piracy, I think you have to make the experience the answer to the issue - rather than respond the other way round and risk damaging that experience for the user."

It doesn't seem outrageous to think that he's talking about charging $30 for the game, and then something like $5 times 4 for the remaining 'pieces'.

My concerns with the suggestion are many:
1) The sticking point on DRM has always been how do you determine whether or not a copy is legitimate? Do you make it 'phone home'? Do you limit the number of installs? Do you use a registration key? etc. etc. To my knowledge, all of those can be worked around by pirates at this point. The 'unavailable ability' method B:AA used was intriguing, but I thought that was predicated on a pirate obtaining a specific build of the game. (Could totally be wrong about that.)

2) Requiring downloadable content still bothers me: The ownership of consoles has far outstripped the penetration of broadband, plus some people don't want to be forced to join online communities in order to purchase the remainder of their game. And they can't offer a physical retail outlet alternative, because that's the same damn thing as packaging the full game in one box!

3) Episodic content still is has been more a detriment than an asset to AAA titles thus far. Yeah, it works in indie/small-box situations like Sam & Max, but HL2:E3 anyone? Or the SiN Episodes?

3b) Related: there is no way on God's green earth that the developers are going to finish a game, chop off half or a quarter of it, send the main part to duplication, and then sit on the rest of the code. Instead, they'll use this DRM method as an excuse to buy more time to 'finish the game', because marketing and the publishers are making them throw it out the door incomplete.

4) I blew through Bioshock 2 in one night, first time. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who tears through titles they've been waiting for as quickly as possible, to the point of staying up all night, taking time off from work/school, etc. The guy talks about not alienating the customers, but what is going to happen when somebody tries to play through a game they've been waiting years for, only to hit a wall that says "Please get the DLC..." which is not available yet? It may be the exception, but it will happen at some point.

on the positive side of the ledger, a selling point could be that you don't have to commit to purchasing a full game: you pay less, and if you get bored before you hit the end of the first chunk (and believe me, I've done that MANY times. I still have games I haven't even cracked the box on yet), you're not out the full cost of the game.

I dunno. I think the software companies are making a mistake: they need to look outside their industry for solutions, because pirates are very tech-savvy, and as long as you try to defeat them in the field of their abilities, you really only end up in what amounts to an arms race.

Personally, I'm thinking an RSA implementation somehow.

 

[JaredXE]

This is a stupid idea if the inital price is a full $60(which it will be).

On the otherhand, isn't this what Blizzard is doing with Star Craft 2 now? Sell you a incomplete game for full price and then charge more for the rest of it?

 

[Tiswas]

What games are these guys making?

Remind me to never buy from them again. I'm not paying for unfinished games.

Nice to see them restricting those who don't have access to the Internet on their consoles. (there still are a lot.)

 

[Heart of Darkness]

No no no no no. You'll just be punishing the people who won't have access to the DLC in the first place.

 

[Canid117]

Well Mr. Cousens I hope this was off the top off your head in an interview or something because it is way too stupid to be something a sane man would give much thought to. Then again most DRM is in the same boat but honestly this just seems like a bad idea to me.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

but can we go back to what Batman did? Bug out if you didn't buy it? Or like that Dating Sim!

Because the Batman thing was VERY easy to fix.

The dating sim's the same, except that it's a niche title on the DS, not likely to get "fixed".

 

[The_Graff]

to be fair this sounds like what they have been doing with PC games for some time, except they expect us to now pay for patches. come on developers, do not hide your own fucktarded laziness by claiming its an "Anti Piracy Measure". howsabout codemasters doesn't release any games at all, piracy could well fall to 0% if they try that.

 

[Carlston]

If I play a game eighty percent through then have to drop another 30 bucks on the ending?

I'm going to Youtube, watching what I missed and continuing my life.

So sorry chuckles. You fell short of the piracy solution.

 

[RelexCryo]

Oh look another plan to fight pirates that will only end up punishing legitimate customers. Getting rid of DRM is only nice if you don't replace it with something worse.

^This. Well said. I have nothing more to add other than to say I agree with this.

 

[2fish]

Sell your games with real super powers no one will pirate.

This is a bad idea, yet another reason for me to look at my hobby and wonder is gaming worth it anymore? I may just buy old games until the industry figures out what they are doing.

 

[thahat]

Okay, this guy is out of his gourd.

What's to stop pirates from patching the games themselves?

-aplauds- you get a cooky.
i wonder what brainfarts these people have, to not see things this obvius. you cant fight the copy-guys, they are like, the probably russian versions of modernday robinhood. AND THEY HAVE EXPERIANCE

hell hath no fury as a (woman scorned) nerd* enraged
*or other suitable name for one who is skilled enough to reverse engineer stuff in such a way as to have it for free.

they should just give up on DRM, and make games fun, accessable, and runnable ( please people, streamline your games so you DONT need a 500 euro graphics card XD )