Piracy, DRM and HoS

[DarknRahl]

I just read a really good article on piracy and how the emphasis in the past few years has turned to consoles for game development due to greater sales volume and reduced piracy, even power nerds like John Carmack are prioritising consoles first these days. I highly advise you give it a look through as it is well researched and uses straight forward data to explain the current situation of PC gaming.

PC Game Piracy Examined

The reason I bring it up is HoS is being developed by a top bunch of folks with PC users as the priority and with a lot of fan consultation which is absolutely awesome. For this reason I will be purchasing HoS even if it somehow turns out to be a highly average game. I want to support the developers so they can make more great games. Same goes for a game like Natural Selection 2, another game fully supporting the community by releasing game code for modders which means everyone wins by having more maps and play modes and gives you a gaming experience that lasts for years instead of months.

After reading that article it can be seen that if you can avoid having a game cracked for a couple of weeks after release it really increases the amount of legitimate copies purchased. I'm wondering how tripwire will approach this with HoS. Being primarily a multiplayer game I imagine most people will be purchasing the game anyway but I'm curious if there will be some form of DRM or online mode every time you play, whether single player or otherwise? Will there be a demo released prior to release of the final game? How would people feel if such a measure was introduced?

 

[Zetsumei]

Steam itself is a form of DRM, which is why quite some people oppose to it. Next to that there are no manual released patches, for a cracked version to stay updated is quite hard.

So that generally makes it that multi player won't have a high amount of pirates on it. In general TWI and its community are often actively looking for cracked releases and cheats so that if they work they won't for long.

SP is a different beast, but I think the key of ROHOS will be the multiplayer. Where the SP is something for fun, hopefully a lot like the rainbow 6 titles.

I'm not expecting more than seeing the multiplayer campaign in the sp, I just hope that around the mp maps they design a nice sp campaign. For instance not having soldiers continuously respawn but be there from the get go.

 

[DarknRahl]

You're right about Steam being a form of DRM. I just wish it was a little less flaky and charged reasonable prices here in Australia. We get most new release game prices doubled over here. It's cheaper to go out and buy it retail or get some mate in the US or UK to buy it on steam and gift it to you and you paypal them the money or whatever.

As that article alludes to the market is moving to multiplayer only games for PC as it is one way of drastically reducing piracy issues. I just don't want to see awesome single player games go the way of the Tasmanian Tiger. Will I ever play another game as immersive as System Shock 2 or Stalker...

 

[Ender]

Good game = buy
prated game does not equal a sale.

Give people a good reason to by and they will. Its as simple as that.

 

[DarknRahl]

Good game = buy
prated game does not equal a sale.

Give people a good reason to by and they will. Its as simple as that.

I'd agree with you but how many people after downloading a game, finding out they actually play it for more than a few hours then make the decision to then buy a legitimate copy. Very few I'll wager.

I totally agree with the sentiment that the gaming industry is a lot like Hollywood these days in that 95% of what is produced is absolute dross. Games these days are like Ashton Kutcher movies and the same idiots eat them up.

 

[Ender]

I'd agree with you but how many people after downloading a game, finding out they actually play it for more than a few hours then make the decision to then buy a legitimate copy. Very few I'll wager.

I agree that most people will not go out and by a game that they got for free but for a game like HOS you would only be getting at best 30% of the game since most of it will be MP. I really don't see why someone would want to inconvenience their paying customers to try and stop someone that in all likelihood will not buy their product.

I don't like steam 100% but it adds enough benefit to out way the things i don't like.

 

[Lt_Kettch]

If you consider the steam games to expensive on launch day then don't buy them! Never!

The normal boxed versions of new games are cheaper here (Germany) too. But steam has some nice discounts once in a while.

So don't see steam as a form of buying games but as a service to manage your friends (playing with the people you want to is a lot easier with steam), update your game (can't remember when I last downloaded a patch) and of course steam is a form of DRM but the kind that benefits players and developers.

And one thing you should never forget TWI's pricing policy is always fair, if RO:HoS will be 50$ (random number) on steam at launch, you can a) expect a preorder discount and b) that it will be the same price as in the US in the respective currency of that location.

Fact :IS2:

 

[Grobut]

I'd agree with you but how many people after downloading a game, finding out they actually play it for more than a few hours then make the decision to then buy a legitimate copy. Very few I'll wager.

It doesen't really matter though, because how would you stop them from doing that? DRM? nope, doesen't work, people can do it anyway, and any additional sales a game might make in a week with uncracked DRM, will be offset by all the people like myself, who will refuse to buy the game because of the DRM, if not infact make less sales overall for that reason, see Spore and any recent UBIsoft game as examples of that at work.

 

[dogbadger]

Will I ever play another game as immersive as System Shock 2 or Stalker...

just to try and clear this one up - unless you haven't played thief or deus ex yet- no, unfortunately you wont.

 

[MEGADETHTHRETH]

I think Red Orchetra ostfronts best Drm was the bots themselves in singleplayer, who the hell would pirate the game and play with them stupid bots, either they would turn off the game and buy it for multiplayer or not buy it at all.
The problem this time is the bots are good so some pirates will just play the single player, on the other hand they will really like it and say if this is good, multiplayer will be amazing. So I dont know.
What I cannot understand is why doesn't game companies take a look at the way Rise of flight does DRM, its perfect, a small Russian company makes a great solution to drm and ubisoft, a multi million dollar company makes a piece of crap.
When the whole world have access to internet, I feel Drm will be at its strongest

 

[OneDuck]

Just a quick headsup that that article in the OP is filled with a lot of factual errors and misinformation. It's been debunked several times over the net and on forums like Slashdot.

As for piracy, I think Tripwire should do like the Minecraft author did, he said he didn't care for pirates since he didn't have time to spend on them, rather he should spend his time with his customers, the legit gamers, and he now makes $100K per day, sometimes going as high as $350K.

Care for the gamers, they're your market, not the pirates.

 

[Grobut]

Just a quick headsup that that article in the OP is filled with a lot of factual errors and misinformation. It's been debunked several times over the net and on forums like Slashdot.

Indeed.

As for piracy, I think Tripwire should do like the Minecraft author did, he said he didn't care for pirates since he didn't have time to spend on them, rather he should spend his time with his customers, the legit gamers, and he now makes $100K per day, sometimes going as high as $350K.

Care for the gamers, they're your market, not the pirates.

Bingo, that's the way forward, the only real way to turn pirates into customers, is through customer satiesfaction, and not via punishing your paying customers with DRM, in a vain attempt to, maybe, make a few pirates pay for it at the expensive of your legit customers.

And TWI doesen't have much to fear in this regard, because they do treat us well, they price their games sensibly, they provide us with lots of free content for their games, they interact with their community in a positive way, and they are doing lots of cool things to help other indie devs get into the game, instead acting like greedy scrooges, EA, UBI and Activision style.

And that's something gamers take note of and respect, there's a good reason many of us here, perhabs even most of us, will preorder Ro2, and it's not just because it looks like it'll be a good game, but because we want to support this company, and no DRM can buy that kind of loyalty..

 

[Apos]

Imho best anti-piracy solution was this one from Bad Company 2. Using pirate version you actually could play single player, but nothing more b/c you have to have proper game account with activated game key. That system was implemented into game, so couldn't be hacked by cracked exe. It has double role - self commercial (piracy user can play SP, check out game and maybe buy it so he can play online) and doesn't allow pirates to play multiplayer. Steam only protection doesn't work, cracked Steam clients are easy to download and play steam games @ pirated servers.

I agree with steam and something like above, but please no, nothing like Ubi's DRM.

 

[DarknRahl]

just to try and clear this one up - unless you haven't played thief or deus ex yet- no, unfortunately you wont.

Played Thief (loved that also) and my mate keeps telling me to play Deus Ex, still haven't got round to doing so.

Also does anyone have any links to counter arguments to the original article? I'm quite aware of the inability to prove profit loss from pirating. I'd be curious either way.
I'm not some fan of DRM or the article as a whole but I think it makes some valid points. I definitely don't think the weak sales in PC games compared to consoles are down to just piracy either. PC gamers tend to be more discerning and critical of games, especially crappy ports thus they won't buy yet another military shooter that runs at 30fps with crap graphics.

 

[Amerikaner]

What I cannot understand is why doesn't game companies take a look at the way Rise of flight does DRM, its perfect, a small Russian company makes a great solution to drm and ubisoft, a multi million dollar company makes a piece of crap.

Rise of Flight DRM? Really? You had to connect to the authentication server for every mission even in sp. Everyone hated it. What if the authentication servers go down? You're out of luck. What if the company goes bankrupt? You're out of luck. What if you're internet connection goes out? You're out of luck. I think now they changed it to be able to play some things offline. I'm not familiar with it now but if that's the case its basically just Steam support with a less trustworthy system.

Everyone else in here covered my thoughts on the DRM. Steam is sufficient. I don't believe TWI has the want or need to do anything more and would be surprised if they did.

 

[SiC-Disaster]

Pirates will be hunted down and shot for their heresy

 

[OneDuck]

Also does anyone have any links to counter arguments to the original article? I'm quite aware of the inability to prove profit loss from pirating. I'd be curious either way.

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/20/178259

Read especially these 2 replies although most of the messages just so the huge strawman the article is.

http://dbzer0.com/blog/the-reverse-fallacy-of-impartiality

A 5-part extensive debunk on the article, even if the author supports file-sharing, he doesn't say either legal or illegal sharing, he pretty much debunks this article until nothing is left.

Googling this article also shows it being discussed in many forums and being debunked in them as well.

 

[Hans Ludwig]

Gabe Newell on Piracy 1:08

YouTube - Gabe Newell on Good Game

 

[DarknRahl]

Cheers for the links. Especially liked Gabe Newells opinion on the whole thing.

 

[=GG= Mr Moe]

Cheers for the links. Especially liked Gabe Newells opinion on the whole thing.

Agreed. Good link Hans.