What can Developers & Publishers do to combat Piracy?

[D0WNT0WN]

Other than adding intrusive DRM what can Developers & Publishers do?

I like what they did with Arkham Asylum and they took away the ability to glide which made it impossible to progress through the first part of the game but it was fixed by pirates and they got their way.

 

[Marter]

I have a great idea! It's unconventional, but it'll work. Trust me.

Okay, so you know how, like, making a game means it'll eventually get pirated? Well, my idea is simple: Stop making games. It'll work. No more pirating can be done on new products, because, you know, there won't be any new products to pirate!
...
...
I got nothing.

 

[Aircross]

Make a great game so that consumers will pay the developer to make more great games.

 

[Radeonx]

Intrusive DRM doesn't even work.
Every single one of Ubisoft's games that have the DRM have been cracked and working in a pirated version within a few days of release.

So I don't really have any ideas.

 

[Bobic]

Make a great game so that consumers will pay the developer to make more great games.

Because only bad games get pirated? I point you towards the Arkham Asylum example above.

 

[FEichinger]

Lower. The. Price.

Honestly, having to pay 50 bucks for a game, THEN add 25 bucks for the DLCs that pop up over the following year simply is too much. Why on Earth would anyone want to pay that much money for a game they don't even know whether they'll like? Of course that ends up with them not paying at all - if possible.

 

[Radeonx]

Make a great game so that consumers will pay the developer to make more great games.

Check the top pirated games list.
They are all popular/good AAA titles. Batman, Call of Duty, Starcraft, Assassin's Creed, all of these are massively pirated, and all of them are good.

 

[Epona]

Since they can't seem to combat piracy without hurting legit customers I say: Don't combat piracy. All you do is combat your legit customers while pirates get around your anti-piracy techniques.

As an example, Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7 came out 2 days ago but the Securom prevents the game from running. No PC customer can play it until they get this worked out.
http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Harry-Potter-Years-5-7-Pc/dp/B0051TON12/ref=sr_1_12?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1321230890&sr=1-12

 

[Michael Hirst]

DRM is a problem it's always cracked within a week and just makes the official version more tedious to play, don't give pirates the advantage of convenience they already have the advantage of being free.

More needs to be done to reward the honest people who bought the game even if it's just early access to demos/betas of later games or some bonus weapons/items that don't severely affect the game but do make it more fun.

I remember Operation Flashpoint being said to have an anti piracy measure that just made the game too damn hard to play to deter people from buying it. Then there was the Dark Souls thing with people who were playing it early (most likely official copies acquired pre-release) and the devs flooded them with max level black phantoms to ruin their shit.

 

[Rawne1980]

No matter what they try, people will find a way to crack/hack it.

There has always been software *pirates* and there will always be.

Where there is a market for pirated software then there will be someone to supply that market.

What they can do is release games good enough that people want to pay for.

I don't download pirated games but I only purchased a few games this year because the rest were utter shit (personal opinion) and not worth spending my money on. In fact, by the end of the year i'll have bought 4 games total (not including Witcher 2 that my daughter got for me for my birthday).

If I still had my 360 I would have got a few more used just to see what they were like.

Releasing demo's would help aswell. People generally don't want to pay for a game that has a chance of being complete crap.

The be all and end all is, if people don't believe a game is worth paying for then there is a chance they will just torrent it. If they made games people wanted to pay for then those people would probably buy them.

There are still those that want games that can't afford them so they download them. It's all well and good saying "if they can't afford it then they shouldn't play them" but they don't need to pay with a pirated version.

I've said it once and i'll say it again, some games are not worth the £40 price tag they come with. Add DLC on top of that and it becomes a joke (people know my stance on DLC so I don't need to go into that here).

Dragon Age 2 I borrowed off a friend when I still had my 360, I did enjoy it but no way in hell would I have paid for it myself. It doesn't matter that I am lucky enough to be financially comfortable and able to buy any game I want when there are no games I want to buy.

As I have also said before, I don't buy games to support a developer I buy them for my enjoyment only. The only developer/publisher I do support is Bathesda but thats because the kind of games they release allow me to make my mods and appreciate them letting us do that.

If more games were released that I enjoyed then I would be willing to part with more money (but still not buying any bloody DLC).

 

[lRookiel]

Heres an epic idea, make games free, Boom! goodbye pirates!

/Thread

 

[babinro]

I know of no convenient or realistic solution to combat piracy from a Developer and Publisher standpoint. Barring them actively hiring teams that continually sue every person who file shares to the point where the average person fears taking the chance.

All companies can do is provide incentive to buy new at the cost of their own profits in hope that they'll gain the lost revenue back from pirates. Some general ideas for this could be:
- lower the cost of the video game
- provide a coupon that grants a percentage discount on future products of that developer/publisher with purchase
- give free non-game additives with all purchases at no extra cost. In other words, make all games like collector editions providing physical objects that someone who pirates would not obtain otherwise.
- Provide free DLC and patches to the game frequently to purchasers throughout the games lifespan. A pirate would constantly have to look for the newest and best version of the game, thus putting more effort into the act itself and possibly justifying a purchase for convenience.

 

[Jodski]

Make games that work on day one and don't require patches 6 months after release.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Lower. The. Price.

Honestly, having to pay 50 bucks for a game, THEN add 25 bucks for the DLCs that pop up over the following year simply is too much. Why on Earth would anyone want to pay that much money for a game they don't even know whether they'll like? Of course that ends up with them not paying at all - if possible.

It would only work if they pay people to play their games.

You can't beat 'Free'.

OP: Include a virus with every copy that completely melts your computer if you do anything do the game files besides play the game. Everyone wins!

 

[DarkRyter]

Invest in some sort of Coast Guard for infested waters.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Heres an epic idea, make games free, Boom! goodbye pirates!

/Thread

More or less, yeah. Make money from really blatant product placement, or if it's online, from online transactions.

Now, whether or not a game in which Ronald McDonald had to kill the Burger King would be any good is another issue.

 

[Vausch]

Here's an idea: Reward people who buy games legitimately. Make a deal with retailers or have a card put into each physical copy and/or a code given to downloaders, have it take, say, 5 codes and you get a 20-40% discount on any game either from said developer or (if they're all willing to partake), retailers included any game you choose. Exclude this from used game buyers, pirates won't be able to use it, etc.

Flaws: Keygens, card theft, card copying (Can be fixed if codes are databased so they only work once).

 

[Azure-Supernova]

Other than adding intrusive DRM what can Developers & Publishers do?

They can suck it up and just accept they'll always be one step behind pirates. I can't think of anything they could do with software that would prevent a crack team from making a workaround.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Here's an idea: Reward people who buy games legitimately. Make a deal with retailers or have a card put into each physical copy and/or a code given to downloaders, have it take, say, 5 codes and you get a 20-40% discount on any game either from said developer or (if they're all willing to partake), retailers included any game you choose. Exclude this from used game buyers, pirates won't be able to use it, etc.

Flaws: Keygens, card theft, card copying (Can be fixed if codes are databased so they only work once).

Keygen is the major flaw with that idea.

Uncharted 3 is doing the online pass thing, and a program was released on day 1 that will generate a working code so people can get online for free. The problem is, it has to generate a working code...so there are a bunch of people on ND's forum saying that they their code isn't working because it said it's been used already. Because it has been. By someone else.

Edit: Really, Developer/Publishers have two options. They can discontinue DRM completely and admit they can't stop piracy (Will never happen), or they can come down HARD and smash the pirate scene into non-existence. (Which will also never happen. Partially because the methods needed to do that are both illegal and will have a great deal of collateral damage)