maybe there DOES need to be copy protection on games

[mtk2a]

I DO NOT CONDONE PIRACY.

That said, what has already been mentioned is true, copy protection only inconveniences the people that pay for games.

I have never seen a torrented game that included DRM.

 

[wordsmith]

Of course no one will admit to ever pirating a game

My name is Wordsmith, and I pirate games.

The big thing about security is this: The pirates who the security is meant to stop DON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH IT. The legitimate customers suffer, the pirates don't.

Your analogy fails because rather than someone breaking into your house and STEALING a ps3, they are breaking into your house, seeing how the PS3 works, creating their own, then leaving (leaving your machine fully intact and completely un-altered).

 

[beholdmycape]

Fucking wall of text.

I mean seriously, who the fuck writes like that? that's some Ritalin stream of conciousness bullshit right there.

 

[Hexenwolf]

I believe that the analogy to a car, or to your house is ridiculous. Locking the door to your house is a very simple thing that doesn't really inconvenience you. Having to go through all sorts of DRM and possibly have programs installed on your computer that you didn't want on the other hand, is very much an hassle.

If they can find a way to make it difficult for pirates to pirate games without severely inconveniencing legitimate consumers, then I will support it.

 

[mtk2a]

If they can find a way to make it difficult for pirates to pirate games without severely inconveniencing legitimate consumers, then I will support it.

 

[Samurai Goomba]

Argh. I wanna say something about how copy protection hurts only consumers and not pirates, and just encourages more people to pirate in order to get better versions of the games (without spyware/malware and obnoxious download limits), but everybody else already said it! Grr... Now I just feel redundant.

But yeah, pirates don't suffer for squat. It's a complete non-issue for the Internet brigands, except that it takes them maybe an additional 30 seconds to crack the game.

Meanwhile I can't play my game that I rightfully paid for because I had to clean out my hard drive one time too many. In theory, anyway. The day I buy a PC game with EA-style DRM is the day *insert something graphic about myself and sharp objects.*

 

[JediMB]

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.

That's just plain false.

A lot of the time you'll read about fully cracked copies of DRM-protected games being torrented before the game is even in most stores.

 

[Simriel]

LIES!!!!!!!!!! As Thor, God of Thunder (seriously should I stop making these claims?) I say copy protection is just an inconvenience for people who actually buy the game!

 

[DragunovHUN]

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.

Yeah right, when was the last time a game wasn't cracked on or before release date?

 

[Booze Zombie]

If I steal your car, is there a button on my garage that says "copy"? Fuck no.

But, continuing with your horrible example... If I covered my car in barbed wire, filled the gas tank with sugar and painted it pink, no one would steal it. Hur, hur... subtle DRM refrence, hur, hur.

But that's not practical, because it completly negates the point of owning the object in the first place, for it's purpose, which is also why it was disirable as an item for stealing (before I ruined it, trying to be secure).

DRM is like if I bought a car, but if I use more than 3 garages I need their permission or I can be fined.

 

[JediMB]

LIES!!!!!!!!!! As Thor, God of Thunder (seriously should I stop making these claims?)

Må den mäktiga Mjölner mala dig till stoft!

 

[captaincheese]

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."

Chinatown wars wasn't a piracy victim. Not sure about Demigod, but my guess would be that as they're not releasing it in Europe until the end of May, a load of European gamers downloaded it so they could actually play it online, instead of having to wait til everyone else had gotten bored & moved on to something else

 

[zahr]

Copy protection fails because pirates are always smarter than the dumbasses who support and make copy protection.

When a game has copy protection, particularly things like securom, they're basically telling the players, "Please pirate this game."

 

[Chipperz]

OK, let's turn this around. If DRM doesn't work to deter pirates, what WOULD? I'm actually very interested in what people think about this.

I'm thinking Valve has got the right idea. Steam helps immensly with getting people cheap games quickly and easily, and it also means they can put a world-wide release into effect to placate places like Australia and Russia, who don't seem to get games until at least 12 months after their release date in the rest of the world for some reason. Discuss.

 

[zahr]

OK, let's turn this around. If DRM doesn't work to deter pirates, what WOULD? I'm actually very interested in what people think about this.

Quality assurance. When a developer says something about a game and we know with confidence that what they've said is actually true. When we get screenshots that aren't treated. When we get system requirements that aren't made up. When trailers are about the same game they're selling us. When next-gen withers and dies. When we know what we're buying.

Piracy is a necessity for many of us because we need to decide which games to buy, and to do that we need to play them first, since developers are so very dishonest.

 

[Lord_Jaroh]

OK, let's turn this around. If DRM doesn't work to deter pirates, what WOULD? I'm actually very interested in what people think about this.

I'm thinking Valve has got the right idea. Steam helps immensly with getting people cheap games quickly and easily, and it also means they can put a world-wide release into effect to placate places like Australia and Russia, who don't seem to get games until at least 12 months after their release date in the rest of the world for some reason. Discuss.

The idea for Steam is sound, however Valve implements it poorly.

Deterring pirates? Make a good game. If you make a quality game that people like, they will buy it. Case in point, Diablo II. Old game, yet it still sells like hotcakes. Why is that? Why don't people just pirate it (this is barring the online capabilities of B.net)?

The problem with companies is they think every pirate would have been a sale in the first place, which is false. So cater to your actual customers and make things convenient for me. Screw the pirates. They can do what they want, just like they always have. The regular Joes are where your money is at.

There is no quality control for me as the consumer. How am I protected if I shell out money for a game that I was fooled into buying from a fancy trailer? Can I return it? No. I can trade it in...for less than I purchased it for, which is hardly fair. So as a paying consumer I have to go on their word that the game is good, and more often then not, that was a lie.

Look at the way the hype machine is set up on your favorite gaming sites. "This game is going to be awesome!" "Greatest game of this generation" for every game that is going to be released. And then what? It turns into a mediocre at best game, but it sold well as everyone bought into the hype and bought it at launch and then read the reviews and or played it.

The only protection I have right now as a customer, is piracy, and try before you buy. I've sunk too much money into games/media in general to be fooled any more. I try the game, and then buy what I like. If companies were more honest with their consumers, I think piracy would not be as bad as it is today. Now however, it's almost a too little, too late situation, and it's going to take a lot for a company to earn the trust of the consumer back enough to prevent the piracy. Stardock is going about it properly. There just needs to be more, larger companies going with them. That and if companies were to stop releasing shitty games just to make a quick buck off preying on consumer ignorance...

Cater to the consumer and not the money.

 

[Zephirius]

That's just plain false.

A lot of the time you'll read about fully cracked copies of DRM-protected games being torrented before the game is even in most stores.

Yeah right, when was the last time a game wasn't cracked on or before release date?

The games of which you speak are the pretty big-name titles or those which use older versions of DRM. Try to find anything that hasn't had the shit advertised out of it, and you'd be lucky to find a well-working version that has more than 10 seeds (on or close to release day).

 

[The_Rev]

Ever played any of the Titan Quest series? They were great, but the studio just couldn't survive the piracy. Here's a bit of an interview posted at Edge-Online where a director slams the practice. LINK [http://www.edge-online.com/news/pc-piracy-a-titanic-problem-says-thq-director]

In the wake of developer Iron Lore's closing, Michael Fitch, director of creative management at THQ, has strongly attacked PC piracy and hardware vendors which make developing for the platform "a freaking nightmare".

"It's a rough, rough world out there for independent studios who want to make big games," Fitch wrote in a post on the Quarter To Three forums following the announcement that Iron Lore, developer of THQ-published PC RPG Titan Quest, was closing its doors. "Trying to make it on a PC product is even tougher, and here's why... Piracy.

"Titan Quest did okay. We didn't lose money on it. But if even a tiny fraction of the people who pirated the game had actually spent some god-damn money for their 40+ hours of entertainment, things could have been very different today.

"You can ***** all you want about how piracy is your god-given right, and none of it matters anyway because you can't change how people behave... whatever. Some really good people made a seriously good game, and they might still be in business if piracy weren't so rampant on the PC. That's a fact."

Fitch also noted that for games lacking a "Madden-sized advertising budget... word of mouth is your biggest hope". He said that Titan Quest's sales had been negatively impacted by a botched pirated copy of the game that was littered with bugs and prone to crashing.

"So, before the game even comes out, we've got people bad-mouthing it because their pirated copies crash, even though a legitimate copy won't. We took a lot of shit on this, completely undeserved mind you. How many people decided to pick up the pirated version because it had this reputation and they didn't want to risk buying something that didn't work? Talk about your self-fulfilling prophecy."

Fitch then criticized hardware vendors who make trying to develop PC games "a freaking nightmare... Integrated video chips; integrated audio. These were two of our biggest headaches. Not only does this crap make people think - and wrongly - that they have a gaming-capable PC when they don't, the drive to get the cheapest components inevitably means you've got hardware out there with little or no driver support, marginal adherence to standards, and sometimes bizarre conflicts with other hardware.

"Making PC products is not all fun and games", Fitch concluded. "It's an uphill slog, definitely. I'm a lifelong PC gamer, and hope to continue to work on PC games in the future, but man, they sure don't make it easy."

The Entertainment Software Association recently filed a "Special 301 Report" highlighting the ongoing battle against software piracy in a number of countries. It urged a number of nations where piracy is rife to clean up their act by bringing their copyright and enforcement regimes up to international standards and opening their markets to legitimate products as a matter of urgency, warning that countries that failed to combat piracy could be subject to "damaging trade sanctions".

Pay for your games, boneheads.

 

[Ghost]

i like CD-Keys, and they could be very effective with most new games being aimed at multiplayer.

 

[The_Rev]

The only protection I have right now as a customer, is piracy, and try before you buy.

Seriously, man? That's a pathetic argument. Your only "protection" is piracy? We all know adverts are meant to promote, so read reviews, look on forums, get user feedback before you buy. Hell, isn't that the entire point of half Escapist forums?

How's that sound? Sounds a hell of a lot better than saying "I have to steal to protect my investment."