It seems every time I hear a discussion about copy protection and piracy people either act like it's not an issue or that the game developers need to find a way to deal with it but either way it ends with us the consumers not having to suffer at all. Of course no one will admit to ever pirating a game and act all high and mighty when the whole copy protection thing comes up. I have thought about it and after hearing about demigod being pirated over 100,000 copies and chinatown wars not selling and the whole crysis thing not to mention all the psps being sold and no games being sold, it got me thinking maybe there does need to be copy protection in games. In a perfect world I would leave my car unlocked at night and sleep with the doors and windows open in my house. But guess what, if I do someone might steal something from my house, so I close the doors and lock them and someone might still break into my house, but they would have to put some effort into it as opposed to there's an open door with a ps3 and computer on the other side. Same with my car, if I leave my car unlocked someone might open the door just because it's open, but instead I decide to lock it and put an alarm, so that if someone does decide to break into it, it will be very very very clear that they're doing something wrong both to them and to anyone within earshot. To not have copy protection on a game nowadays is the equivalent of me leaving a new game in your room, shrinkwrap off, box opent with no one to see you or judge you and saying "that's mine you can't play it unless you pay for it, i'm trusting you to keep your word even though i'm never gonna see you again nor do I have any way of knwing if you kept your word" and human nature isn't that good. That is why I feel that copy protection is perfectly acceptable in video games, seems everything else you buy has it. Your car your house, even your underwear has some sort of thing that reminds people that if you attempt to steal it you are doing wrong and might be punished, that might not persuade the house thief or car thief, but the casual klepto won't be able to play dumb and say "it didn't seem wrong."
maybe there DOES need to be copy protection on games
- Thread starter sleeperhit79
- Start date
Lack of paragraphs makes me sad and confused ;___;sleeperhit79 said:
Also: Your analogy doesn't work.
In theory gaming needs anti-piracy measures. In practice, all an anti-piracy measure becomes is an open invitation for pirates to crack it then use it as an excuse for piracy. Some companies like Stardock seem to realize this and think "OK, DRM is a waste of money that gives no return on investment, so let's just treat our customers decently and figure that we can't stop thieves anyway so it's not worth inconveniencing people who actually get their wallets out."
Problem is, pirates don't suffer from the effects of copy protection, for them there's always away around no matter how new and secure the companies think their products are.
It's the people who buy games honestly that seem to be punished, what with install limits and arcane installation procedures. You'd almost think it was all to get us to somehow gang up on the people pirating, give them a stern talking too and make them mend their ways.
You can lock your car all you want. Doesn't mean someone won't try and steal it eventually.
It's the people who buy games honestly that seem to be punished, what with install limits and arcane installation procedures. You'd almost think it was all to get us to somehow gang up on the people pirating, give them a stern talking too and make them mend their ways.
You can lock your car all you want. Doesn't mean someone won't try and steal it eventually.
What really needs to be done is reward people who actually got the game in some way, like being able to download content that would normally cost money for free.
How you do this, I am not quite sure.
How you do this, I am not quite sure.
its nothing like what you said it was, the whole issue is that consumers buy a 50$ game and are basically told "we don't trust you" right after paying 50$ dollars. Most people I know don't have a clue of how you compress these games down to iso's and create torrents to distribute them (though I would imagine its not so much hard as it is long and tedious) much less copy and sell games. People have problem with copy-protection because they fuck with your computer badly. Some games will out right refuse to run if you have programs such as Daemon tools (I believe the witcher is one), sometimes going as far as to install software you didn't know was on there and didn't want in the first place.
Look, it isn't unreasonable to be upset that Game developers find their stuff on the internet for free and want to do something about it, but treating your loyal customers like criminals is not cool, to quote star dock "Consumers are customers, not criminals" (I think, prolly got that one wrong) and there are ways to deal with it that are not blatantly generalizing must gamers as pirates who look to exchange games with each other.
Look, it isn't unreasonable to be upset that Game developers find their stuff on the internet for free and want to do something about it, but treating your loyal customers like criminals is not cool, to quote star dock "Consumers are customers, not criminals" (I think, prolly got that one wrong) and there are ways to deal with it that are not blatantly generalizing must gamers as pirates who look to exchange games with each other.
My main issue with your post is the fact that I counted exactly two periods in what should have been a five sentence paragraph.
That aside: Copy protection doesn't stop criminals, it stops citizens. A while back, Max Barry [http://maxbarry.com/2008/12/29/news.html], an author I'm quite fond of, wrote an article explaining his ordeal with a rented movie...
I have yet to see one person who doesn't work for one of these companies offer a valid argument as to why copy protection should exist, or why it helps stop pirates. And yes, I'm including you in this "not one person" group, and assuming you don't work for any company that makes videogames/movies.
That aside: Copy protection doesn't stop criminals, it stops citizens. A while back, Max Barry [http://maxbarry.com/2008/12/29/news.html], an author I'm quite fond of, wrote an article explaining his ordeal with a rented movie...
I have yet to see one person who doesn't work for one of these companies offer a valid argument as to why copy protection should exist, or why it helps stop pirates. And yes, I'm including you in this "not one person" group, and assuming you don't work for any company that makes videogames/movies.
I don't have anything against piracy protection really, but I have had a lot of trouble with it in the past. I bought the first Battle for Middle Earth game for $20 one day and in the copyright protection they had a command that would kill every single person on your team for an instant defeat to stop people from pirating the game. I couldn't run the game until I tried using a no-cd crack on it and it finally stopped the constant defeats.
The fact that cracking the game allowed me to play it when EA ignored my messages makes me feel that the concept of piracy protection is quite silly. The man/woman who released the crack was able to fix my problem, and at the same time crack the game so I did not even need a CD to play it. I expected EA would help me, but instead they assumed that I was merely another person stealing from them and decided I was not worthy of their time. From that point forward I pretty much accepted that there will always be a large quantity of free pirated games available, whether searching on line or not - since pirated games were already available pre-internet days and the companies that are interested in getting rid of it do not care to assist people having an actual problem with their program.
The fact that cracking the game allowed me to play it when EA ignored my messages makes me feel that the concept of piracy protection is quite silly. The man/woman who released the crack was able to fix my problem, and at the same time crack the game so I did not even need a CD to play it. I expected EA would help me, but instead they assumed that I was merely another person stealing from them and decided I was not worthy of their time. From that point forward I pretty much accepted that there will always be a large quantity of free pirated games available, whether searching on line or not - since pirated games were already available pre-internet days and the companies that are interested in getting rid of it do not care to assist people having an actual problem with their program.
True. As Shamus Young said, there is no way, no software you can install, no hidden DRM, no SecuROM, no anything that makes it impossible to pirate a game. It can make it difficult, impractical or expensive, but never impossible. To keep taking from Young's post, I can't give you an uncopiable book. I can make it have 3 words per page, I can make it cheap low contrast paper, I can print it in non-photocopy blue, but as long as you have the book, you can copy it, even if it means going word by word.GothmogII said:
DRM isn't limited to PC's either. It's on consoles in a lesser, but still annoying, way. If I were to say, buy a piece of DLC or Arcade title on XBL and got a new Xbox, only the account the item was downloaded with can use it when their online. While this is nothing in comparison to what PC players get, it still is really annoying the fact that I can't play Psychonauts because I got a new XBL account.
I see your paragraph-less wall of text and raise you a 'Yeah, I'm not reading that.'.
My stance on copy protection is that it serves its purpose overall, which is delaying pirates from gaining access to a stable, working version for the first week or two of sales, or much longer in the case of less advertised games.
Once they start severely limiting their customers (install limits, etc), and continue to spend far too much money on copy protection and no money on demos, (It's called try before you buy, genii, and at ?60 for a new game...Would you be willing to wager that much? Let's not forget most stores have a no returns policy on games..) they really need their community to punch them in the mouth financially, and make them realize what they are doing is complete and utter lunacy and they deserve to go bankrupt if they don't change their ways.
All in all, I support copy protection as long as it limited to CD keys, and even the whole disc-in-the-drive thing if (big if) they patch it later á la Warcraft III and remove said requirement. Online activation, go ahead, as long as there are alternatives. Making someone buy the game and then get scammed out of their money because they don't have internet (people like that exist) is bullshit, and I am not giving you my money so you can continue such my-way-or-the-highway policies.
EDIT: This turned out to be much longer and rantier than I expected. Hmph. Fancy that.
My stance on copy protection is that it serves its purpose overall, which is delaying pirates from gaining access to a stable, working version for the first week or two of sales, or much longer in the case of less advertised games.
Once they start severely limiting their customers (install limits, etc), and continue to spend far too much money on copy protection and no money on demos, (It's called try before you buy, genii, and at ?60 for a new game...Would you be willing to wager that much? Let's not forget most stores have a no returns policy on games..) they really need their community to punch them in the mouth financially, and make them realize what they are doing is complete and utter lunacy and they deserve to go bankrupt if they don't change their ways.
All in all, I support copy protection as long as it limited to CD keys, and even the whole disc-in-the-drive thing if (big if) they patch it later á la Warcraft III and remove said requirement. Online activation, go ahead, as long as there are alternatives. Making someone buy the game and then get scammed out of their money because they don't have internet (people like that exist) is bullshit, and I am not giving you my money so you can continue such my-way-or-the-highway policies.
EDIT: This turned out to be much longer and rantier than I expected. Hmph. Fancy that.
thieves don't suffer from stealing your car either it's you that does. And I know that thieves will steal it if they really want to. I understand pirates will pirate it if they really want to spend the time to download crack it, work out the bugs with installing the pirated copy and getting it to work and all that other crazy stuff, but not all pirates are crazy software experts, a lot of people simply download pirated software and if it doesn't work because of the weird steps that come with having secure rom and junk on a pirated copy they quit and just say "screw it" I'l just buy the darn thing. So no I can't stop the hardcore gone in 60 seconds guy from stealing my car, but if I can stop the loser who's doing it because he thinks my door's unlocked and the key is in the visor, that's a huge win and if I have to install an alarm and have it beep randomly at night at times, I think it's worth it.
When they find a way to actually stop pirates without treating honest customers like the same, lemme know.
Wow, I completely agree! We must be like cousins! My favorite part of your argument was where you backed up your argument instead of making snide, unsupported comments!Cid SilverWing said:
Great job!
As long as copy protection involves a code I need for installing the game I think it's fine. When it starts installing monitoring software, degrades my purchase to the level of a glorified rental, requires online activation or wrecks the shit out of my cheap-ass dvd drive, no.
So no. Thank you.
So no. Thank you.
I really think you misunderstand pirates. There aren't many that do that.sleeperhit79 said:
Most are either
a) Flat-out stealing it because they don't want to pay for games if they can get them for free. These people will just find another game to play because they've already downloaded hundreds of other games they CAN play.
b) Try-before-you-buy pirates. They aren't going to pay until they know they have what they want to have. In this case, they were going to buy it in the first place but wanted confirmation, or they found it wasn't worth the money/time and decide to not buy.
Either way, it doesn't equate to "oh I can't steal this one, I'm going to go buy it now!" To follow your (disgracefully poor) analogy, that's like having a car jacker come to your car, try the handle, fail, and then drive over to the nearest car lot and buy a car.
