Not exactly true. Your saying that even if you download a demo version then its worth paying for it because it took you time to download and playing it?? that was pretty lame.
If you meant it as, if people who download a pirate copy and likes it then they should be paying for it, then yes I agree and many people do buy the product as a result.
BUT, if people don’t like it then they will simply delete the data and you cant force them to buy something they didn’t like, its unfortunate that not all games have demo versions and people is not willing to spend the money on the wrong game, so the only option for them is to download it from a P2P source.
Demos are always the place to start.
Unfortunatly when people download the whole game most people don't buy the game as a result of liking it. That's the problem.
Pirating the whole game as a "demo" doesn't make it right. People should use judgement on what games they will or won't like. I.e read reviews, recommendations from friends, knowing what type of games you like etc etc. This judgement will be the basis of what games to buy or not.
What you are suggesting is that people lack judgement and need to steal to make any kind of rational choice.
Ok, But how do you know something is not worth it?
How do you know you like.. let’s say chocolate? you had to "try" it at some point before you knew you liked it.. Right?, well, this applies to almost everything.
Yes but if you have tried chocolate in the past you don't need to steal the latest Cadbury bar to know you might like it. The first time you tried chocolate you bought it or someone bought it for you.
As far as I know that is the main influence for robbery in the world since ancient times.
Doesn't make it right. Hence the reason it's a crime that gets you locked up.
Personaly, I have never downloaded a pirated or cracked version of a game. I belive that companies are entiled to the money, even if they are money grubbing conglomerates. If I feel like the asking price is a ripp-off or unfair then I won't buy it.
I love all sorts of entertainment from music to movies to games, but I hate the big entertainment companies with a passion. I am talking about the big business who treat their legitemate customers like robbers and thieves. All this DRM and copyright protection is nonsense is getting out of hand.
I understand the need to protect your product, but don't treat your customer like a theif. All companies are doing with this DRM nonsese is making the pirates look good.
EA is now using SecuROM to 'protect' the Sims 2 games. All they'e done is piss-off legitimate customers and lose their trust. The pirates had a DRM free version of the game on the net within 24 hours.
If all that money used on that DRM crap was used to reward faithful customers instead of punish them then they would get a lot more customers.
In general demos are not a good way to learn if a game is good or not. Usually they select only a small piece of the game which they are especially happy with, so that people will play it and think "Wow, what an awesome game, I'm going to buy it". I have been disappointed in the past when I decided to buy games after I had played the demo, just to realize that the game sucks, and that there is only one cool place in the entire game. These days many game producers doesn't even give out demos(or they give out demos which are so insanely big that it's easier to download a bootlegged version).
But that doesn't mean copying it illegally is correct either, saying that would be like saying "The free mp3 samples the artist put out himself on his webpage were great, but I decided to download the entire album to find out if the rest of the album was great too" is fine too, which it really isn't.
Doesn't make it right. Hence the reason it's a crime that gets you locked up.
In messed up place like the USA, sure, but in most countries you just get a (usually smaller) fine or will be asked to delete the stuff you have illegally gotten your hands on. It has to be a pretty serious case for a person to get locked up, and usually it has to involve the person earning a lot of money on it too.
After all, there are more serious crimes than breaking copyright laws. It's pretty insane when running a torrent tracker gets punished so hard that you sit and think "Who did he kill?". I mean, 10 years for running a torrent tracker(EliteTorrents)? that's just insane! What good is that going to do? I mean, you're supposed to put him in jail for 10 years, and suddenly when he comes out he will be all nice and never download anything illegal again. If it was me, I never would have bought anything from those who put me in jail ever again. There are many ways to get their money, and suing to get them is in very poor taste.
Instead of suing those people, they should team up with them and learn how to make good and legal alternatives that all parts can be happy with. Suing people only causes people to hate them even more and refuse even hard to ever buy anything from them or anybody afflicted with them again.
I want the artist to get their money, of course, but the way it is done these days is under any form of critic.
I realize there are serious issues to be taken care of, but the current way of dealing with them just doesn't cut it.
If all that money used on that DRM crap was used to reward faithful customers instead of punish them then they would get a lot more customers.
I agree completly. I can't stand the DRM movement, especially when they blame those who download ilegall for it. Why should the rest of us suffer, just because some people have to copy everything they get their hands on? Beside, it's not like it usually prevents piracy either. Usually it just ends up annoying those who bought it legally, without preventing illegal copying.
The focus of the industry has been completly wrong. Instead of focusing on how to prevent copying, they should focus on why people decide to buy their products and what they can do to make sure more people want to buy their products. Instead of attacking their users with restrictive DRM, they should ally up with their users, and ask them what they want and expect from the product they bought.
People should use judgement on what games they will or won't like. I.e read reviews, recommendations from friends, knowing what type of games you like etc etc. This judgement will be the basis of what games to buy or not.
I'm just going to say Halo.
I've read reviews, 10 out of 10 across the board.
I've heard from friends, it's apparently a great game.
I've enjoyed other FPSs like Half Life and Timesplitters.
Finally played Halo. Hated it. Terrible. Bland. Boring. Mind-numbingly so.
I'm lucky I only borrowed it from a friend rather than paid the silly money they're asking for it, but if I had bought it, I'd be feeling pretty ticked off about it.
Seeing as I borrowed it from a friend, I suppose that makes me as bad as the people who download it illegally?
I didn't pay for the game, Bungie and Microsoft aren't getting any money from me, and I had a full working game which I decided I didn't like.
Conversely, I borrowed CMI from a friend a few years ago, and loved every second of it. A year or so later, I saw all three games in a bundle and bought them immediately.
If I hadn't played CMI before I saw it in the shop, I probably wouldn't have known about Monkey Island, nor got into Sam and Max or any of the other point and click games I love now.
I find it very interesting that this thread exists at all. On the forums of a games publisher. Unedited. I don't know if I should read more into that, but it certainly says a lot about Telltale's attitude to the customer. I somehow think a thread like this would not exist on any 'big' games publisher's forums. Not for long anyway.
My opinion? Well, it changes. I have pirated in the past, due to many reasons, ignorance being the main one.I do get angry when I have to jump through hoops to enjoy a product I legally purchased. While I do understand the use of DRM, I don't think it is the right way to deter piracy. What the right way is, I do not know.
Maybe someone will come up with a way to solve this problem in the future. For now, however, it's doing more bad than good. Just look at the music industry and what NiN and Radiohead is doing at the moment.
Just look at the music industry and what NiN and Radiohead is doing at the moment.
Or Amazon, with the legal DRM-less MP3s. I usually buy it from there unless they don't have it, so that's something. Then again I'm not the general populace.
Nor am I a goldfish. For real. Not a goldfish.
That is so true. I practically never bought anything before I started downloading stuff off the Internet(at that time, it was legal, because of old and outdated laws). I would buy perhaps one music cd a year, and that was if it was a good year with a lot of recommendations. I would never buy movies either(and I really mean never, I had no dvds, and the few vhses I had were recorded off TV.) I bought a few games, but usually I bought a few games at random(which was possible back then, but practically impossible now.)
Then when I started downloading different stuff, I discovered a lot of music and games I wasn't even aware of existed, and movies too. Suddenly I started buying more regularly, and I have been working on getting my collection complete since then. Now it's pretty much complete, but that's because I have decided to become more legal and stop downloading stuff at random. Thus I rarely get exposed to new music or movies which I didn't know about.
That's nearly my story as well. I listened to next to no music and rarely bought movies for myself all the way through high school. A few months into my freshman year at college, when living in the dorms, Napster came out. I found myself on a faster Internet connection than I knew possible (in 1999 it even cable and DSL were rare, so landing on a well-supplied university network was mind-blowing) with a piece of software that allowed me to get any song in the world guilt free. By the end of that year, I'd bought more new music CDs than I'd accumulated in the rest of my entire lifetime.
I've never really been like that with games though. "Back in the day" I downloaded a couple games, but deleted them almost immediately. If I wasn't sure if I wanted a game or not, I almost always either just tried the demo, or asked around to see what the word of mouth was among some trusted friends, and that holds true today.
EA is now using SecuROM to 'protect' the Sims 2 games. All they'e done is piss-off legitimate customers and lose their trust. The pirates had a DRM free version of the game on the net within 24 hours.
Funny, as an avid Sims 2 player, I have never found myself irrationally pissed off at the little message that pops up asking me to put my disc in the drive when I launch the game.
I've never really been like that with games though. "Back in the day" I downloaded a couple games, but deleted them almost immediately. If I wasn't sure if I wanted a game or not, I almost always either just tried the demo, or asked around to see what the word of mouth was among some trusted friends, and that holds true today.
Oh yes, I always were a lot more careful with buying games. I mean, the game companies never were a bitch about it, even though they have suffered greatly because of piracy. Those are the ones who has suffered the longest from this problem. They were "always" very creative about how to protect their products, and I really wanted to buy the games to have them on the shelf too. I loved those large old boxes, even though they took up too much space. Oh well, I'm such a sucker for hard goods, and games has usually provided more (extra) hard goods than music or movies has.
Perhaps I am just a tad odd, but I feel there is something special about buying retail software that downloading stuff just can't capture. Thay's why it's so cool that one get something to put on the shelf when one buy sam & max - season's. It's the only download solution I think is worth the cash(since I'm such a sucker for hard goods to put on the shelf).
The first years of when I had a broadband connection, it was cool to just download all stuff I hadn't heard/seen/played before. But after a while, I still prefer buying retail, and as much as I still think there are cases where illegal downloading can be justified, I don't understand the joy of just sucking down everything on the Internet until the disk is full.
Funny, as an avid Sims 2 player, I have never found myself irrationally pissed off at the little message that pops up asking me to put my disc in the drive when I launch the game.
Yeah... every CD-based game I've ever played in my life required that the disc 1 be in the drive. No big deal, personally.
Funny, as an avid Sims 2 player, I have never found myself irrationally pissed off at the little message that pops up asking me to put my disc in the drive when I launch the game.
to be fair, there was also a big hubbub regarding SecuROM at the BioShock launch. The SecuROM protocols (or whatever) required users to authenticate over the Internet before allowing people to play. The problem was that for whatever reason, those authentication servers were down.
Additionally, there was a "licensing" clause that only allowed you to install the game on two computers. If you wanted to install on additional machines, you had to not only uninstall off one of the existing machines, but also "authenticate" the uninstall to get your credit back.
This led to several scenarios:
1) People install for the first time could not authenticate and thus could not play.
2) People who tried to remedy the problem by attempting an uninstall/reinstall couldn't get "install credits" back and thus couldn't even install the game on the third try.
3) One install license only counted for one PC profile. Meaning that if Whizzer, Specs & Peepers all shared a PC with different logins, and Specs installed BioShock, Whizzer and Peepers could not play the game unless they were logged in as Specs. Their argument? "If one person buys the game, it makes no sense to let everybody play, right?"
I'm not sure how SecuROM handles The Sims security, but my own experience with BioShock was quite souring and insulting to me as a consumer.
I think online activation should always be avoided as the sole way to authenticate a product, seeing how many things could go wrong or that the consumer may not have access to (ie, internet).
In conjunction with something else as a failsafe, I don't see any problem with it though.
About games needing the disc in to play: I don't really see any problem with that. It's only like playing a console game, and I've never heard anyone complain ever about having to keep the disc handy for them.
I know it's different for people with laptops, but unless you're going away on hoilday (in which case, you'll have enough room for all the discs you want in your luggage anyway), you're not going to need to lug every game you own around with you, just the one or two you'd need for the day.
Apart from the discs being bigger, there's no real difference from bringing along DS or PSP games for the day.
Also, on the point about limited licensing, I think it's pretty daft. Just a quick disc check is more than enough. Even if the game is installed on 10+ computers, only the one with the disc will be able to play it at any one time.
The licensing system does nothing to change this except make it more awkward for everyone. I want to lend a game out to a friend, I can just backup my saves and uninstall the game from my PC in the meantime.
All it does is cause more hassle.
I can see why DRM is needed, but at the most, I think a choice between disc checks and online activation for a game is the most it should really require.
If a product is worth downloading and worth your time playing then it is worth paying for.
I do agree that every download might not have been a sale so it is difficult to say exactly what the sales impact on a developer was. However my view is..if it's not something worth my money then it's not worth playing in the first place so why download it.
I've just seen too many pirates use the "I wouldn't have bought it anyway so nobody is losing money" excuse to justify what they are doing.
Lack of money isn't an excuse for stealing something. Video games are a luxury not an entitlement. I'm sorry if some people can't afford them or lack the willpower and judgement to decide which ones to buy with what little money they have and not play the rest. Just because I can't afford to play EVERY video game that is ever released doesn't give me the right to download them all for free.
i agree with everything stated here. you kinda sounded like my dad though lol
Suppose you want to play an older game? Suppose you can't buy it easily anymore? Suppose that to play the game legally you'd have to not only buy it, but also a console and a TV?
Those could all very easily become reasons that YES INDEED, I wouldn't have bought it anyway.
But never did anyone say that it's not worth playing.
...suppose even that buying it wouldn't have gotten the developer a cent of that money anyway?
Funny, as an avid Sims 2 player, I have never found myself irrationally pissed off at the little message that pops up asking me to put my disc in the drive when I launch the game.
That's not the problem. Some players had their DVD drives stop working others said that their anti-virus stopped working. Some people simply couldn't launch the game. They were asked to put in an original CD and not a back-up. Some people were just ticked off that they had software installed without agreeing to have it on their PC.
All that is what ticked people off. EA must have been using a strong version of SecuROM with BV. My friend had her new DVD drive on her Vista laptop stop burning, and all she had was software that came with her Dell. Her Dell came with Nero. Maybe that's what ticked SecuROM off.
This is why I don't trust SecuROM and really wish EA had stayed with safedisk.
That s a true story for Sims 2 Emily, my little sister (no not talking about biososhock) had to use cracks for her games (i think it was from nightlife through businesses iirc) because the game would ask her for the original disk (and she obviously use originals, i buy her all the games for the special occasions -birthdays, easters, xmas, etc-).
Whenever i like a game/movie and feel the authors deserve to be rewarded, then i buy the thing. I am sure a lot of people think the same, those who don't wouldn't spare a dime for a game anyway, no loss.
Anyway, Sam And Max purchase was a no brainer for me, i am a fan, not even needed a demo. That was a gamble move (well to be honest i tried Bones, and i saw you guys were competent to handle the job)
When i remember the original Sam and Max, it reminds me how the games were ... 50 to 300 pages manuals/game related stuff (aaah Doctor Jones diary in Last Crusade), with stories or other things worth reading/doing (let s cut clothes for my Sam cardboard, yeah for Hawaiian style). Now all you get most of the time is a PDF manual and a 2 pages monochromatic printed leaflet telling the basic menus.
I never heard of safedisk disableing anything. Problems like DVD drives or Anti-Virus software not working were never reported. Safedisk also doesn't have a bunch of progames it blacklists.
SecuROM has a bunch of programs that i doesn't want to see running. I think Nero is on that list.
SecuROM is incredibly scalable. As a developer you can choose what pisses it off and what doesn't. As people who actually play a large number of games, including some of the copy protection horror story titles, we'd like to think that we're smart enough to manage the copy protection stuff in a realistic way that actual humans can enjoy. We tried to set it up in a way that would encourage ownership but wouldn't slap you on the wrist left and right for trying to use your game (for instance, we're providing permanent download links for our games, we're not requiring iTunes- or Bioshock-style de/re-authorization whenever you want to move the game to a new PC, and we're not installing weird things on your computer external to the actual protected game files. Also, as I've probably said more than once in this thread, the way all this stuff works is pretty important to us - especially us web guys who end up tasked with the job of building and supporting a lot of it - and we're always evaluating, always talking with each other at Telltale about how to make it suck less. Anyone who's been with us for a while hopefully knows that the way things are set up right now is better by leaps and bounds from where we were even a year ago, and we're not stopping.
I trust you guys That's why I'm OK with any copy proctection you choose (even if it comes from Sony). As you said, SecuROM is very scalable and I know Telltale will be fair. You guys always put the customer first and have gone above and beyond any other company. Seriously, I sort of feel like part of the Telltale family.
Funny, as an avid Sims 2 player, I have never found myself irrationally pissed off at the little message that pops up asking me to put my disc in the drive when I launch the game.
I think the problem is that most PC games nowadays just plop all the data on your hard drive so you don't need the disc anymore after installation. I kind of wish that more stuff was just kept on the disc, to be honest.
its the main reason I think gametap and such started(that and to ruin people from driving to the store to get games, now we are all fat and just get people to drop the mail off "A NEW GAME!" sigh
. So as to dl the games vs using them off discs.. personally I will again say if I own something im making a copy of it and using that only. I wont ruin my original unless I have like 8.. which Ill never have 8 of anything... I hope.
I think it would be awesome if you shot back to like ankh did.. make a turn wheel decoder just for kicks.. or a manual that suggests looking on page 3 paragraph 1 sentance 2 word 3 :P HAHA
Those were fun !! and just as pointless as todays copy protections :P
Next game Ill expect a full oddball copywheel or something XD but I doubt it will happens
PS im going to start a game to door delivery service that gives you groceries.. checks bed pans and kisses you goodnight for a lil extra cash.. no sex just a mom's kiss to the forehead... NIGHT DEAR here is your beer and new games! and pizza!
DINGDONG
Mama mia's pizzas n games is here! SWEEET!
In old games (from the early to mid 1990's), the copy protection would be in the form of having to type in something from the manual that came with the game. It would tell you to look in a specific place for the word or phrase. The idea being, that people who had copied the game (and didn't buy it) wouldn't have the manual.
Now this was in the age before the internet was a big place and it was not easy finding a copy of the manual. That sort of copy protection would never work in this day and age.
right, unless you knew the person you copied from. furthermore the "typing a word from the manual"-method lacks a lot of the style other stuff had. it felt way to mechanical. the best methods where the ones that included the copy protection into the story of the game, like the ultima series or indy did. asking you questions you would need the manual to answer. of course nowadays providing a pdf with the manual would be no problem.
at the moment i prefer the disc check. everything else bears a possibility that might not be able to play the game in a few years. what would happen if, let's say, steam would no longer work? even though i have all the games on disc they would be useless.
if telltale on the other hand went out of business, what hopefully will never happen, i still have my season one disc. makes me feel o lot more comfortable when buying.
by the way, does anyone know how the legal situation is on that?
if i own a game, with box and disc and everything, and yet it also requires online activation, which is no longer possible because the necessary server are no longer working, permanently, do i have the right then to crack my game?
in germany, for example, making backup copies is legal, but cracking any method of copy protection for the same reason isn't. so what if this would be the only possibility? is my property lost then?
Yes this is the era I mean :P And personally I find it way more fun and effective than the current protection.. although redundant its kind of a poke at how protection really doesnt protect.
But when I said the page 1 paragraph 2... that was just the start of it.. it got fancy later with wheels and game input from the docs
A few games asked riddles that the answers were found only in the manual too. I was just making a point though (whoosh)
Shocked someone here didnt know about it.. am I that old already?
I remember that age fondly as well. Sometimes the riddles had answers that you might also find in the real world (Conquests of Camelot), that related to the game world (Covert Action), or both. This made copy protection circumvention a fun intellectual passtime. Eternam made fun of it by allowing your character to obtain a cheat sheet and thereby circumvent the questionnaire in-game!
I remember that age fondly as well. Sometimes the riddles had answers that you might also find in the real world
Heh, reminds me of the age verification quiz in LSL. I bet many people who were honestly over 18 at the time were pissed if they truly didn't know the answer.
*Guy asks his friend the question from the quiz*
Friend: "Why do you want to know?"
Guy: "I heard that there's a slyly placed brown pixel in this game I bought, and I need to verify my age."
Friend: "I'm... uh... going to go now."
Guy: "Nooo! Do it for the jubblies! THE JUBBLIES!!!"
(Apologies to Squinky, Mel, Emily, and any other females on the forum )
Haha Al lowe even says there has been a way to bypass that age check since the game was made. check his site out for details and infos.
I think this really all started with the SSL games and the maps and logs you find on dead people. It would MAKE you open the journal aka manual and read journal entry 6 of the dead guy you found. That might tell you what to do next :P
Good stuff ya
Haha Al lowe even says there has been a way to bypass that age check since the game was made. check his site out for details and infos.
on one of those games you could simply press <alt>+<whatever> to skip it. but i think it didn't change anything in the game. imagine how disappointed i was to find that out after finding all the correct answers. :rolleyes:
btw, one of the lsl games had the nice copy-protection of having the manual as some kind of magazine. on some pages you could find several coupons and one of them was needed in the game to gain entry to some area. this was also a quite abstract puzzle, since you had to use a real item ingame.
All copy protection does is annoy legitimate consumers. I recommend just doing away with copy protection completely.
Well, actually, no.
It also prevents the casual customer from effectively lending his games to all his friends. By requiring a disk, it makes it more complicated to do this (cracks, ISOs, etc) and your average consumer who's mostly legal and definately doesn't want to be considered a pirate won't bother. In addition, the economically significant portion of the buying public doesn't care about this "annoyance", in moderation. From the perspective of your suggestion to abolish protection completely, It's mostly the vocal but economically insignificant minority made up of people like you that cares.
Let's call that the nice answer to your statement.
It also prevents the casual customer from effectively lending his games to all his friends. By requiring a disk, it makes it more complicated to do this (cracks, ISOs, etc) and your average consumer who's mostly legal and definately doesn't want to be considered a pirate won't bother. In addition, the economically significant portion of the buying public doesn't care about this "annoyance", in moderation. From the perspective of your suggestion to abolish protection completely, It's mostly the vocal but economically insignificant minority made up of people like you that cares.
Except that you're not describing lending the game to your friend, you're describing giving your friend a copy of the game. If all lending your friend entailed was loaning them the disc (that's what lending actually is), they would have no problem playing Season One.
Comments
Demos are always the place to start.
Unfortunatly when people download the whole game most people don't buy the game as a result of liking it. That's the problem.
Pirating the whole game as a "demo" doesn't make it right. People should use judgement on what games they will or won't like. I.e read reviews, recommendations from friends, knowing what type of games you like etc etc. This judgement will be the basis of what games to buy or not.
What you are suggesting is that people lack judgement and need to steal to make any kind of rational choice.
Yes but if you have tried chocolate in the past you don't need to steal the latest Cadbury bar to know you might like it. The first time you tried chocolate you bought it or someone bought it for you.
Doesn't make it right. Hence the reason it's a crime that gets you locked up.
I love all sorts of entertainment from music to movies to games, but I hate the big entertainment companies with a passion. I am talking about the big business who treat their legitemate customers like robbers and thieves. All this DRM and copyright protection is nonsense is getting out of hand.
I understand the need to protect your product, but don't treat your customer like a theif. All companies are doing with this DRM nonsese is making the pirates look good.
EA is now using SecuROM to 'protect' the Sims 2 games. All they'e done is piss-off legitimate customers and lose their trust. The pirates had a DRM free version of the game on the net within 24 hours.
If all that money used on that DRM crap was used to reward faithful customers instead of punish them then they would get a lot more customers.
In general demos are not a good way to learn if a game is good or not. Usually they select only a small piece of the game which they are especially happy with, so that people will play it and think "Wow, what an awesome game, I'm going to buy it". I have been disappointed in the past when I decided to buy games after I had played the demo, just to realize that the game sucks, and that there is only one cool place in the entire game. These days many game producers doesn't even give out demos(or they give out demos which are so insanely big that it's easier to download a bootlegged version).
But that doesn't mean copying it illegally is correct either, saying that would be like saying "The free mp3 samples the artist put out himself on his webpage were great, but I decided to download the entire album to find out if the rest of the album was great too" is fine too, which it really isn't.
In messed up place like the USA, sure, but in most countries you just get a (usually smaller) fine or will be asked to delete the stuff you have illegally gotten your hands on. It has to be a pretty serious case for a person to get locked up, and usually it has to involve the person earning a lot of money on it too.
After all, there are more serious crimes than breaking copyright laws. It's pretty insane when running a torrent tracker gets punished so hard that you sit and think "Who did he kill?". I mean, 10 years for running a torrent tracker(EliteTorrents)? that's just insane! What good is that going to do? I mean, you're supposed to put him in jail for 10 years, and suddenly when he comes out he will be all nice and never download anything illegal again. If it was me, I never would have bought anything from those who put me in jail ever again. There are many ways to get their money, and suing to get them is in very poor taste.
Instead of suing those people, they should team up with them and learn how to make good and legal alternatives that all parts can be happy with. Suing people only causes people to hate them even more and refuse even hard to ever buy anything from them or anybody afflicted with them again.
I want the artist to get their money, of course, but the way it is done these days is under any form of critic.
I realize there are serious issues to be taken care of, but the current way of dealing with them just doesn't cut it.
I agree completly. I can't stand the DRM movement, especially when they blame those who download ilegall for it. Why should the rest of us suffer, just because some people have to copy everything they get their hands on? Beside, it's not like it usually prevents piracy either. Usually it just ends up annoying those who bought it legally, without preventing illegal copying.
The focus of the industry has been completly wrong. Instead of focusing on how to prevent copying, they should focus on why people decide to buy their products and what they can do to make sure more people want to buy their products. Instead of attacking their users with restrictive DRM, they should ally up with their users, and ask them what they want and expect from the product they bought.
I'm just going to say Halo.
I've read reviews, 10 out of 10 across the board.
I've heard from friends, it's apparently a great game.
I've enjoyed other FPSs like Half Life and Timesplitters.
Finally played Halo. Hated it. Terrible. Bland. Boring. Mind-numbingly so.
I'm lucky I only borrowed it from a friend rather than paid the silly money they're asking for it, but if I had bought it, I'd be feeling pretty ticked off about it.
Seeing as I borrowed it from a friend, I suppose that makes me as bad as the people who download it illegally?
I didn't pay for the game, Bungie and Microsoft aren't getting any money from me, and I had a full working game which I decided I didn't like.
Conversely, I borrowed CMI from a friend a few years ago, and loved every second of it. A year or so later, I saw all three games in a bundle and bought them immediately.
If I hadn't played CMI before I saw it in the shop, I probably wouldn't have known about Monkey Island, nor got into Sam and Max or any of the other point and click games I love now.
Because seriously, it's been necro'd probably a dozen times now...
My opinion? Well, it changes. I have pirated in the past, due to many reasons, ignorance being the main one.I do get angry when I have to jump through hoops to enjoy a product I legally purchased. While I do understand the use of DRM, I don't think it is the right way to deter piracy. What the right way is, I do not know.
Maybe someone will come up with a way to solve this problem in the future. For now, however, it's doing more bad than good. Just look at the music industry and what NiN and Radiohead is doing at the moment.
Nor am I a goldfish. For real. Not a goldfish.
If you're a fan of something, you will spend good money on it no matter what.
That's nearly my story as well. I listened to next to no music and rarely bought movies for myself all the way through high school. A few months into my freshman year at college, when living in the dorms, Napster came out. I found myself on a faster Internet connection than I knew possible (in 1999 it even cable and DSL were rare, so landing on a well-supplied university network was mind-blowing) with a piece of software that allowed me to get any song in the world guilt free. By the end of that year, I'd bought more new music CDs than I'd accumulated in the rest of my entire lifetime.
I've never really been like that with games though. "Back in the day" I downloaded a couple games, but deleted them almost immediately. If I wasn't sure if I wanted a game or not, I almost always either just tried the demo, or asked around to see what the word of mouth was among some trusted friends, and that holds true today.
Funny, as an avid Sims 2 player, I have never found myself irrationally pissed off at the little message that pops up asking me to put my disc in the drive when I launch the game.
Oh yes, I always were a lot more careful with buying games. I mean, the game companies never were a bitch about it, even though they have suffered greatly because of piracy. Those are the ones who has suffered the longest from this problem. They were "always" very creative about how to protect their products, and I really wanted to buy the games to have them on the shelf too. I loved those large old boxes, even though they took up too much space. Oh well, I'm such a sucker for hard goods, and games has usually provided more (extra) hard goods than music or movies has.
Perhaps I am just a tad odd, but I feel there is something special about buying retail software that downloading stuff just can't capture. Thay's why it's so cool that one get something to put on the shelf when one buy sam & max - season's. It's the only download solution I think is worth the cash(since I'm such a sucker for hard goods to put on the shelf).
The first years of when I had a broadband connection, it was cool to just download all stuff I hadn't heard/seen/played before. But after a while, I still prefer buying retail, and as much as I still think there are cases where illegal downloading can be justified, I don't understand the joy of just sucking down everything on the Internet until the disk is full.
Yeah... every CD-based game I've ever played in my life required that the disc 1 be in the drive. No big deal, personally.
Additionally, there was a "licensing" clause that only allowed you to install the game on two computers. If you wanted to install on additional machines, you had to not only uninstall off one of the existing machines, but also "authenticate" the uninstall to get your credit back.
This led to several scenarios:
1) People install for the first time could not authenticate and thus could not play.
2) People who tried to remedy the problem by attempting an uninstall/reinstall couldn't get "install credits" back and thus couldn't even install the game on the third try.
3) One install license only counted for one PC profile. Meaning that if Whizzer, Specs & Peepers all shared a PC with different logins, and Specs installed BioShock, Whizzer and Peepers could not play the game unless they were logged in as Specs. Their argument? "If one person buys the game, it makes no sense to let everybody play, right?"
I'm not sure how SecuROM handles The Sims security, but my own experience with BioShock was quite souring and insulting to me as a consumer.
In conjunction with something else as a failsafe, I don't see any problem with it though.
About games needing the disc in to play: I don't really see any problem with that. It's only like playing a console game, and I've never heard anyone complain ever about having to keep the disc handy for them.
I know it's different for people with laptops, but unless you're going away on hoilday (in which case, you'll have enough room for all the discs you want in your luggage anyway), you're not going to need to lug every game you own around with you, just the one or two you'd need for the day.
Apart from the discs being bigger, there's no real difference from bringing along DS or PSP games for the day.
Also, on the point about limited licensing, I think it's pretty daft. Just a quick disc check is more than enough. Even if the game is installed on 10+ computers, only the one with the disc will be able to play it at any one time.
The licensing system does nothing to change this except make it more awkward for everyone. I want to lend a game out to a friend, I can just backup my saves and uninstall the game from my PC in the meantime.
All it does is cause more hassle.
I can see why DRM is needed, but at the most, I think a choice between disc checks and online activation for a game is the most it should really require.
i agree with everything stated here. you kinda sounded like my dad though lol
wait... dad?!?
Suppose you want to play an older game? Suppose you can't buy it easily anymore? Suppose that to play the game legally you'd have to not only buy it, but also a console and a TV?
Those could all very easily become reasons that YES INDEED, I wouldn't have bought it anyway.
But never did anyone say that it's not worth playing.
...suppose even that buying it wouldn't have gotten the developer a cent of that money anyway?
That's not the problem. Some players had their DVD drives stop working others said that their anti-virus stopped working. Some people simply couldn't launch the game. They were asked to put in an original CD and not a back-up. Some people were just ticked off that they had software installed without agreeing to have it on their PC.
All that is what ticked people off. EA must have been using a strong version of SecuROM with BV. My friend had her new DVD drive on her Vista laptop stop burning, and all she had was software that came with her Dell. Her Dell came with Nero. Maybe that's what ticked SecuROM off.
This is why I don't trust SecuROM and really wish EA had stayed with safedisk.
Whenever i like a game/movie and feel the authors deserve to be rewarded, then i buy the thing. I am sure a lot of people think the same, those who don't wouldn't spare a dime for a game anyway, no loss.
Anyway, Sam And Max purchase was a no brainer for me, i am a fan, not even needed a demo. That was a gamble move (well to be honest i tried Bones, and i saw you guys were competent to handle the job)
When i remember the original Sam and Max, it reminds me how the games were ... 50 to 300 pages manuals/game related stuff (aaah Doctor Jones diary in Last Crusade), with stories or other things worth reading/doing (let s cut clothes for my Sam cardboard, yeah for Hawaiian style). Now all you get most of the time is a PDF manual and a 2 pages monochromatic printed leaflet telling the basic menus.
Just curious, what's good about safedisk?
SecuROM has a bunch of programs that i doesn't want to see running. I think Nero is on that list.
Awesome! I think there are some dirty dishes in the sink that need cleaning, then.
that's funny
. So as to dl the games vs using them off discs.. personally I will again say if I own something im making a copy of it and using that only. I wont ruin my original unless I have like 8.. which Ill never have 8 of anything... I hope.
I think it would be awesome if you shot back to like ankh did.. make a turn wheel decoder just for kicks.. or a manual that suggests looking on page 3 paragraph 1 sentance 2 word 3 :P HAHA
Those were fun !! and just as pointless as todays copy protections :P
Next game Ill expect a full oddball copywheel or something XD but I doubt it will happens
PS im going to start a game to door delivery service that gives you groceries.. checks bed pans and kisses you goodnight for a lil extra cash.. no sex just a mom's kiss to the forehead... NIGHT DEAR here is your beer and new games! and pizza!
DINGDONG
Mama mia's pizzas n games is here! SWEEET!
Now this was in the age before the internet was a big place and it was not easy finding a copy of the manual. That sort of copy protection would never work in this day and age.
at the moment i prefer the disc check. everything else bears a possibility that might not be able to play the game in a few years. what would happen if, let's say, steam would no longer work? even though i have all the games on disc they would be useless.
if telltale on the other hand went out of business, what hopefully will never happen, i still have my season one disc. makes me feel o lot more comfortable when buying.
by the way, does anyone know how the legal situation is on that?
if i own a game, with box and disc and everything, and yet it also requires online activation, which is no longer possible because the necessary server are no longer working, permanently, do i have the right then to crack my game?
in germany, for example, making backup copies is legal, but cracking any method of copy protection for the same reason isn't. so what if this would be the only possibility? is my property lost then?
But when I said the page 1 paragraph 2... that was just the start of it.. it got fancy later with wheels and game input from the docs
A few games asked riddles that the answers were found only in the manual too. I was just making a point though (whoosh)
Shocked someone here didnt know about it.. am I that old already?
I wouldn't trust anything that came from Sony.
Heh, reminds me of the age verification quiz in LSL. I bet many people who were honestly over 18 at the time were pissed if they truly didn't know the answer.
*Guy asks his friend the question from the quiz*
Friend: "Why do you want to know?"
Guy: "I heard that there's a slyly placed brown pixel in this game I bought, and I need to verify my age."
Friend: "I'm... uh... going to go now."
Guy: "Nooo! Do it for the jubblies! THE JUBBLIES!!!"
(Apologies to Squinky, Mel, Emily, and any other females on the forum
I think this really all started with the SSL games and the maps and logs you find on dead people. It would MAKE you open the journal aka manual and read journal entry 6 of the dead guy you found. That might tell you what to do next :P
Good stuff ya
And im sure all of the "females" know about larry
I know, I was joking, due to me talking about slyly placed brown pixels and "jubblies" on a borderline-family friendly site :P
on one of those games you could simply press <alt>+<whatever> to skip it. but i think it didn't change anything in the game. imagine how disappointed i was to find that out after finding all the correct answers. :rolleyes:
btw, one of the lsl games had the nice copy-protection of having the manual as some kind of magazine. on some pages you could find several coupons and one of them was needed in the game to gain entry to some area. this was also a quite abstract puzzle, since you had to use a real item ingame.
Well, actually, no.
It also prevents the casual customer from effectively lending his games to all his friends. By requiring a disk, it makes it more complicated to do this (cracks, ISOs, etc) and your average consumer who's mostly legal and definately doesn't want to be considered a pirate won't bother. In addition, the economically significant portion of the buying public doesn't care about this "annoyance", in moderation. From the perspective of your suggestion to abolish protection completely, It's mostly the vocal but economically insignificant minority made up of people like you that cares.
Let's call that the nice answer to your statement.
Don't make me bring out the mean one.
Except that you're not describing lending the game to your friend, you're describing giving your friend a copy of the game. If all lending your friend entailed was loaning them the disc (that's what lending actually is), they would have no problem playing Season One.