Codemasters CEO: Beat Piracy With Unfinished Games

[baconfist]

Well he sure makes DRM sound good. I was hoping companies would move to platforms like steam instead of pulling lame crap like this to stop piracy. I also hoped they would understand that piracy isn't that big of a problem since most people I know that do pirate things never intended to buy them anyway, so at best you stop them from playing your game illegally but you don't make them go spend money. Looks like I get to add one more company to my 1 man boycott list.

 

[Cody211282]

Was this guy dropped on his head as a child, this is literally the dumbest thing someone could come out and say.

 

[Another]

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?

You know what that sounds like?

Half-Life 2

Buy first game and you get the first and main arc. Download the next episodes separately. I'd be cool with that. Just make sure that the disc I bought has most of the game (i.e. the main arc) and I'm cool with a separate cheap purchase.

But If he's going to be a dick and put up the illusion of charging 50 dollars a disc, so it seems cheaper, then 20 to 30 bucks for dlc (so 70 to 80 total) just to complete the main game, I would be pissed.

However, I've seen dlc and episodic content on torrent sites before so I still don't get how this helps. >_>

That said Half life content was so nice I bought it twice. (orange box on PC, then on 360)

 

[Motiv_]

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?

Y'see, I'd be perfectly willing to agree with you, if it was released on a digital distribution service like Steam. Now, before I get jumped for being a PC fanboy, allow me to explain.

Steam requires you to be connected to the internet to download games, and update them. Therefore, if you bought the game off of steam, you have very few excuses for not having internet.

However, PS3 and Wii games don't require internet to play, as do Brick and Mortar PC games. So what the coming nightmare is that you buy the game, come home, open it up, and realize that unless you connect to the internet will a credit card or a paypal account, you're only getting half the game.

The Xbox 360, knowing Microsoft, would require Xbox Live Gold to use, meaning that if you didn't already have it, you'd only get half the experience.

Not to mention this is not going to stop piracy, it could slow it down a bit but if anything may push customers toward piracy, because why pay for and download addons when you can get them for free, especially if you have a download cap?

That IS, if John is right and they don't charge 60$ for it right out of the box.

Edit: BRILLIANT FUCKING IDEA
Pay 30$, get the singleplayer and local multiplayer services. If you want online multiplayer, just go online, purchase and download the addons. If you didn't have internet, you wouldn't be playing online multiplayer in the first place, and it's next to impossible for pirates to play online anyway.

 

[Uber Waddles]

So, let me get this straight. This guy proposes that in order to fight piracy, they should sell us unfinished products and let us download the rest of the game? Ignoring the fact that it bones consumers with bad internet, no router, or no services to their console, and owners of consoles that dont have a harddrive (or much space).

I dont pirate, but Ill start if something like THIS happens. Its a slap in the face. I dont mind the be online DRM, but cmon... The industry is maker RECORD PROFITS. And it thinks "lets fuck over our consumers" in an ENDLESS FIGHT.

Fuck. You.

 

[fun-with-a-gun]

There are many flaws in this theory.

1) YOU ARE SELLING UNFINISHED GAMES! LISTEN TO YOURSELF FIRST!!!!!!! if you are selling un-finished games then people will lose interest long before you can come out with the patches. (patches to cover holes that were made on purpose)

2) Pirates will be able to crack the updates too.

3) You would lose all credibility if your games are known to be junk until you pay extra for the real game.

4) What you just said, was that you were going to increase the price of games for making gamers pay for additional pieces of a broken game. People don't like paying more to fix something that could have been released properly in the first place.

5) If you don't have an internet connection, you've just been scammed by a faceless and (now) evil corporation.

 

[mrdude2010]

this is such a stupid idea. video game companies nickel and dime us to death as it is. if you want to play halo 3 online and get access to all the playlists, you already have to shell out like $90 for the game, the legendary map pack, and the 2 parts of the mythic map pack. same with fallout 3, if you buy all the DLC when it comes out you've paid $100 for content that shouldve been included in the game to start with. every game already ships incomplete. when you buy a video game, you shouldnt just be buying the disk, you should be buying the rights to the content of that game, including DLC. it's even more frustrating when a game company has DLC available on launch, because you know they deliberately withheld content from us to make a larger profit. that in itself is a defense of piracy. greedy corporations that try to nickel and dime us out of every cent we have to play their games dont deserve my money, or anyone else's

 

[Yarrghman]

An interesting but underdeveloped idea: not enough time went into the design of the plan alone. Though DRM like Steam may seem a good and acceptable way to push something like this through, the amount of work that has already gone into preventing pirating of all sorts for decades combined with this idea just ends up being referred to as a bad marketing decision.

There are too many problems already with DRM, and adding separate downloads for every aspect of the game not mandatory for its operation means that servers will be constantly crowded. Let's take Elder Scrolls 4- Oblivion for example.

RANT BEGIN. This would make sure that every single piece of DLC would have to go through certification (all the steps), signals sent, server acknowledges, server starts download, depending on the number of down-loaders at the time and size of the file and constant certification to ensure that the DRM would know where all copies of all files transferred were, a 2mb file could take up to a day to download, even on a fast connection. RANT END.

And that's just for single player. Picture you have a multilayer game with DLC and the feature described in the article, and DLC runs through the same servers as the transferring content. This would inevitably cause lag and thus, the game would lose players, and thus, the publisher would lose buyers.

This is another example of a bad attempt to stop pirating by punishing all who want to play it.

Make Good Decisions

 

[Withall]

Well.... most of us should remember the game demo era. Why not bring that back? See how that works?

 

[poiuppx]

This is such amazing, impressive fail, it almost feels like it HAD to have been produced on purpose for the intent of being fail. Pure fail like this can't be an accident.

Seriously... even if you THINK this, why in the plu-perfect hell would you EVER say to your consumer base you INTEND to sell them incomplete games?!

 

[phenity]

The only way to stop widespread piracy is to make your games worth the cost to consumers, whether that be increasing the content quality, or lowering the cost of the game to match the quality of the content.

Pirating is a result of the pirate not feeling as if buying the game is worth the money. DRM, which can be removed in a lot of cases, that punish legitimate users more than hackers who end up cracking them anyway is definitely not the answer regardless.

 

[Dommyboy]

Online components are require authentication like multi-player is the best anti-piracy placement. Like needing to use a key for online. Though of course this leaves single player games out of it.

That's dumb and, once again, it's punishing all users as if they were criminals. So much for corporate goodwill.

Stardock has a great solution that I'm surprised no one else has copied. It releases games with limited (or in some cases NO copy-protection) and relies on registered keys for updates and additional content. It's not perfect but it seems to be working.

Stardock's cursor software is some of the only software I've ever seen that is pretty much impossible to pirate. Though, maybe nobody has cracked it or crackers are having a spot of good will for Stardock.

None the less, registered keys are the way to go for online components.

 

[BboyTeddyBear]

Well.... most of us should remember the game demo era. Why not bring that back? See how that works?

I'm actually with you on that a bit. But hasn't that kinda been going on a lot already? Steam does it, i've seen demos on PSN once and a while, and xbox live did it too.

 

[L-J-F]

"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."]

Yep, he's all about stopping piracy, I don't smell anything related to ripping off customers for even more money. But really, if it was just about the piracy the DLC would be free wouldn't it? You're cutting it ouf of the game in the first place, and then charging the customers extra?

Oh dear Codemasters ...

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

That worked for neither Bioshock or Fallout 3 one using DLC and one using a dll and exe file to downlaod to make the game complete.

Piracy is easily defeated boys and girls...you ignore it, you go through the steps to do basic protections but you can not do anything past that simply because whatever you do will be circumvented.Thus you are spending more money to capture the non paying audience than the non paying audience would ever spend on you.(don't think that it will help any to force the newest games to use the newest frimware/code version,ect of the console even forcing it to be online can be circumvented by duping parts of the live network from a PC app).

Build better media people are more likely to buy and stop worrying about the people who will not buy it no matter what you do.

 

[AvsJoe]

So, wait, lemme get this straight...

He wants us to buy the hot new game for $59.99 (or much much more depending on where you live) only to find out its broken. Then we can pay an additional "micro-payment" every time something gets patched or fixed? What's to stop publishers collectively jacking up the prices of these repairs "to stay competitive" or some other corporate jargon? What's to stop them from turning a $60 purchase into an $80 one through these additional and possibly necessary payments? I hope I read this wrong because this seems like a terrible idea for the honest consumer.

There is a creative yet reasonable solution or two to piracy out there but this isn't one of them.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

So, wait, lemme get this straight...

He wants us to buy the hot new game for $59.99 (or much much more depending on where you live) only to find out its broken. Then we can pay an additional "micro-payment" every time something gets patched or fixed? What's to stop publishers collectively jacking up the prices of these repairs "to stay competitive" or some other corporate jargon? What's to stop them from turning a $60 purchase into an $80 one through these additional and possibly necessary payments? I hope I read this wrong because this seems like a terrible idea for the honest consumer.

There is a creative yet reasonable solution or two to piracy out there but this isn't one of them.

The creative way to do it is less is more, as anything you can think of to prevent a unlicensed copy from being played 10 other people can find 5 to 10 different ways around it.
Its simply inefficient and silly to spend more money on protection than what you would get out of the non buying populace.

 

[Kurokami]

Okay, this guy is out of his gourd.

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

This, also a ***** for us to HAVE to download games we purchase.

 

[Gunner 51]

this is such a stupid idea. video game companies nickel and dime us to death as it is. if you want to play halo 3 online and get access to all the playlists, you already have to shell out like $90 for the game, the legendary map pack, and the 2 parts of the mythic map pack. same with fallout 3, if you buy all the DLC when it comes out you've paid $100 for content that shouldve been included in the game to start with. every game already ships incomplete. when you buy a video game, you shouldnt just be buying the disk, you should be buying the rights to the content of that game, including DLC. it's even more frustrating when a game company has DLC available on launch, because you know they deliberately withheld content from us to make a larger profit. that in itself is a defense of piracy. greedy corporations that try to nickel and dime us out of every cent we have to play their games dont deserve my money, or anyone else's

You sir, are a man after my own heart with a post like that. The constant Nickel and Diming treatment that legitimate customers are getting at the hands of the publishers is getting silly.

What hasn't been thought of by Codemasters are the second hand gamers, the kind of folk who cannot afford crazy-high launch day prices. How will they get to enjoy the full game, this wasn't mentioned in the article. They have also paid to play the game, and I think that they are every bit as entitled to play as much as the launch day buyer.

I don't think any effort should be made to combat piracy as it stands because they cannot truly be dealt with without hurting the paying punter. But a way to try to avoid the pirates is twofold:

1.) Make a high quality and fully finished product. Because a good product will generate it's own hype. Furthermore, a good product will sell itself because if a product is worth having - it's worth buying.

2.) Make the product much more readily available. Make the gameshops the first port of call for every game. It annoys me to no end to go into a gameshop and find out that said product is already sold out - this means a week's wait for me and a trip to a torrent site for a pirate.

When it comes to DRM and DLC - not only the fact it doesn't work - but I hate to be treated like a thief by it.

*Case in point*
Dragon Age: My X-box Live connection is pretty tenuous at best, so if that connection is lost - I cannot pick up where I left off. I paid good money to use that DLC and I don't like being denied access to my saves with Shale etc like this.