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Forums - PC - Game Informer: downgrading MW2 is a good thing, and dissenters are nerds

Kasz216 on 26 October 2009

The people who I know that pirate games do buy games.

Though not based on ease of piracy. They buy games they're excited about, and pirate everything else.

If a game is hard to pirate AND they're not interested in... they just tend to avoid it.

Well that and I have a couple frineds who only pirate games they're already going to buy and want to play early.



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max power on 26 October 2009
Mudface said:
Piracy's always been a red herring- the publishers want to kill the second hand market above all else. Anti-piracy measures are just the excuse they need to do so.

 

Yep.  Who's going to buy a mediocre map pack when user-created ones are free, and often better?

 

I miss the days when these companies were run by nerds, rather than suits who want to antagonize nerds :(



Jereel Hunter on 28 October 2009
vlad321 said:
Jereel Hunter said:
Xelloss said:

Yes, outside of making someone who worked on something rightfully angry that his work is being stolen - Piracy from those who would assuredly not have bought the product has no effect on sales, and no bearing in business decisions. Irritating customers, and paying exhorbitant sums to defeat something that doesnt cost you money is bad business.

Yes, clearly the majority of piracy is not an actual lost sale - but many are. Think of the people you know who have pirated games. Do they pay for some games that are harder to pirate, like WoW? Do they buy console games? While granted, most pirates games wouldn't have been purchased anyway, if piracy were eliminated, it would result in higher sales. Even if it isn't most of them, there are still SOME that would buy.

 Many , especially the purveyors of anti-piracy tech like to put forth every illegal download as a lost sale. Now, when talking about people in the USA Western Europe, especially people in demographics that do have a degree of disposable income, this has some weight. Amongst some groups, there is certainly a high percentage of folk who may in fact have bought the game had they not been able to pirate it so easily.... however the numbers of these people are far far lower than, say, the number of Africans eastern Eurasians etc who live in areas where their currency has so little purchasing power in terms of USD$ that the major publishers do not even make serious attempts to serve the market.

Agreed - clearly not every pirated game is a lost sale. But when you take a came like Assassins Creed, where 17x the pirated copies were DLed than the real game - it seems to have a very real impact on sales sometimes.

 At the very least, when trying to make a comparison between number of people who pirate and number of people who buy in either an ethical or a business argument, the numbers used should only include ones relative to the debate. Blaming the "PC community"  , as in - the US and maybe Western European PC community for overwhelming piracy is silly if the overwhelming majority of  actual pirates are in Russia, or China etc. Ethically, its different groups of people - and businesswise you are assured beyond reasonable debate that the folk overseas were a lost sale from the get go, and no amount of anti-piracy invesment is likely to glean money from them.

Bear in mind, this is only true during the short-term. If piracy were squashed, these countries would eventually take steps to obtain the software legally, be it by reduced prices and alternate methods of acquiring it. In many countries it is so easy/penalty free to pirate, that no effort is made even if the economy could support valid sales. And to a large extent, this includes our own country - plenty of piracy goes on in our borders. Heck, chances are th elisted statistics don't even include a lot of these other countries. How many people in lands with valueless currency and poor economies do a large number of people have access to connection speeds that allow them to just download several GB files?

 This is actually the reason that Microsoft tuned down the anti-piracy lawsuits and rhetoric a good bit a few years back (at least in regards to targeting the individual home consumer). They came to find that this scenario was the case, and their efforts turned to international enforcement of copyright, shuttering true bootleg schemes ( Genuine Windows campaing) etc, and efforts of that nature. Because after the numbers were crunched and the data analyzed, the vast majority of people in the USA were using, or intending to use legit software. The small minority of hobbyists who reinstalled all the time and had many home machines , and the smaller minority of dedicated pirates who never paid for anything were an eyesore, but no threat to their business model.

Well yes, in the case of an OS, the overwhelming majority of people in the US use valid copies - however MS isn't a good example. MS's licensing requires that major PC manufacterers buy a license of their OS for every PC they sell - whether it ships with Windows or not. Since a handful of major brands comprise nearly all the PC sales in the US, Microsoft is, at most, worried about piracy from custom built PCs. A market, sure.. but nothing compared to the likes of Sony+Compaq+Hp+Dell+Toshiba+Acer(and on and on).

 

Can you stop cherry picking with AC? That game succked, at least pick a good game, like Witcher or Warcraft 3. What's that? They weren't pirated that much? What a shame....

WarCraft 3 was pirated to a ridiculous degree. You seem to think because it wasn't in the top 10 in 2008 that it wasn't pirates much. (A game that released in 2003)

As I've said, more than once, WC3's amount of piracy canbe easily seen by the number of custom servers running illegal copies using it's LAN functionality. You've just decided to ignore this. Unfortunately, there aren't any published stats on this, however anyone who plays WC3 somewhere other than battle.net can see this.

Edit:

Wow, just came across Monday's Penny-Arcade, and it reminded me of this discussion. It's dead on, and applied to numerous members of this thread.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/10/26/

Quoted:

As to why they want to create their own matchmaking network in the first place, the ability to make money selling maps is floated as a reason, and it makes a lot of sense - presumably they would rather make a million dollars than zero. A centralized defense against piracy is also suggested, and things tend to go downhill quick after this. It is not a mischaracterization to say that conversations with the hardcore PC community about software theft follow these tenets:

- There is no piracy.
- To the extent that piracy exists, which it doesn't, it's your fault.
- If you try to protect your game, we'll steal it as a matter of principle.

It's like, who wouldn't want to bend over backward in their service? You need to know it, because nobody else is going to tell you: you guys sound like Goddamned subway vagrants. Of course when you speak exclusively to each other, it all sounds so reasonable. It'll be reasonable when you all board the bus, and the songs you sing en route to excoriate your enemies will be forceful, but within reason; and when you douse yourself with gasoline and immolate yourself in front of the offices of Infinity Ward, one assumes this will be reasonable also.



vlad321 on 28 October 2009
Jereel Hunter said:
vlad321 said:
Jereel Hunter said:
Xelloss said:

Yes, outside of making someone who worked on something rightfully angry that his work is being stolen - Piracy from those who would assuredly not have bought the product has no effect on sales, and no bearing in business decisions. Irritating customers, and paying exhorbitant sums to defeat something that doesnt cost you money is bad business.

Yes, clearly the majority of piracy is not an actual lost sale - but many are. Think of the people you know who have pirated games. Do they pay for some games that are harder to pirate, like WoW? Do they buy console games? While granted, most pirates games wouldn't have been purchased anyway, if piracy were eliminated, it would result in higher sales. Even if it isn't most of them, there are still SOME that would buy.

 Many , especially the purveyors of anti-piracy tech like to put forth every illegal download as a lost sale. Now, when talking about people in the USA Western Europe, especially people in demographics that do have a degree of disposable income, this has some weight. Amongst some groups, there is certainly a high percentage of folk who may in fact have bought the game had they not been able to pirate it so easily.... however the numbers of these people are far far lower than, say, the number of Africans eastern Eurasians etc who live in areas where their currency has so little purchasing power in terms of USD$ that the major publishers do not even make serious attempts to serve the market.

Agreed - clearly not every pirated game is a lost sale. But when you take a came like Assassins Creed, where 17x the pirated copies were DLed than the real game - it seems to have a very real impact on sales sometimes.

 At the very least, when trying to make a comparison between number of people who pirate and number of people who buy in either an ethical or a business argument, the numbers used should only include ones relative to the debate. Blaming the "PC community"  , as in - the US and maybe Western European PC community for overwhelming piracy is silly if the overwhelming majority of  actual pirates are in Russia, or China etc. Ethically, its different groups of people - and businesswise you are assured beyond reasonable debate that the folk overseas were a lost sale from the get go, and no amount of anti-piracy invesment is likely to glean money from them.

Bear in mind, this is only true during the short-term. If piracy were squashed, these countries would eventually take steps to obtain the software legally, be it by reduced prices and alternate methods of acquiring it. In many countries it is so easy/penalty free to pirate, that no effort is made even if the economy could support valid sales. And to a large extent, this includes our own country - plenty of piracy goes on in our borders. Heck, chances are th elisted statistics don't even include a lot of these other countries. How many people in lands with valueless currency and poor economies do a large number of people have access to connection speeds that allow them to just download several GB files?

 This is actually the reason that Microsoft tuned down the anti-piracy lawsuits and rhetoric a good bit a few years back (at least in regards to targeting the individual home consumer). They came to find that this scenario was the case, and their efforts turned to international enforcement of copyright, shuttering true bootleg schemes ( Genuine Windows campaing) etc, and efforts of that nature. Because after the numbers were crunched and the data analyzed, the vast majority of people in the USA were using, or intending to use legit software. The small minority of hobbyists who reinstalled all the time and had many home machines , and the smaller minority of dedicated pirates who never paid for anything were an eyesore, but no threat to their business model.

Well yes, in the case of an OS, the overwhelming majority of people in the US use valid copies - however MS isn't a good example. MS's licensing requires that major PC manufacterers buy a license of their OS for every PC they sell - whether it ships with Windows or not. Since a handful of major brands comprise nearly all the PC sales in the US, Microsoft is, at most, worried about piracy from custom built PCs. A market, sure.. but nothing compared to the likes of Sony+Compaq+Hp+Dell+Toshiba+Acer(and on and on).

 

Can you stop cherry picking with AC? That game succked, at least pick a good game, like Witcher or Warcraft 3. What's that? They weren't pirated that much? What a shame....

WarCraft 3 was pirated to a ridiculous degree. You seem to think because it wasn't in the top 10 in 2008 that it wasn't pirates much. (A game that released in 2003)

As I've said, more than once, WC3's amount of piracy canbe easily seen by the number of custom servers running illegal copies using it's LAN functionality. You've just decided to ignore this. Unfortunately, there aren't any published stats on this, however anyone who plays WC3 somewhere other than battle.net can see this.

Ok so magically it sells legally and makes sales charts, yet it doesn't make pirate charts. I'm fairly sure that means it doesn't get pirated nowhere even close to the levels which you are implying.



Tag(thx fkusumot) - "Yet again I completely fail to see your point..."

HD vs Wii, PC vs HD: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=93374

Why Regenerating Health is a crap game mechanic: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=3986420

gamrReview's broken review scores: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=4170835

 

Jereel Hunter on 28 October 2009
vlad321 said:
Jereel Hunter said:

WarCraft 3 was pirated to a ridiculous degree. You seem to think because it wasn't in the top 10 in 2008 that it wasn't pirates much. (A game that released in 2003)

As I've said, more than once, WC3's amount of piracy canbe easily seen by the number of custom servers running illegal copies using it's LAN functionality. You've just decided to ignore this. Unfortunately, there aren't any published stats on this, however anyone who plays WC3 somewhere other than battle.net can see this.

Edit:

Wow, just came across Monday's Penny-Arcade, and it reminded me of this discussion. It's dead on, and applied to numerous members of this thread.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/10/26/

Quoted:

As to why they want to create their own matchmaking network in the first place, the ability to make money selling maps is floated as a reason, and it makes a lot of sense - presumably they would rather make a million dollars than zero. A centralized defense against piracy is also suggested, and things tend to go downhill quick after this. It is not a mischaracterization to say that conversations with the hardcore PC community about software theft follow these tenets:

- There is no piracy.
- To the extent that piracy exists, which it doesn't, it's your fault.
- If you try to protect your game, we'll steal it as a matter of principle.

It's like, who wouldn't want to bend over backward in their service? You need to know it, because nobody else is going to tell you: you guys sound like Goddamned subway vagrants. Of course when you speak exclusively to each other, it all sounds so reasonable. It'll be reasonable when you all board the bus, and the songs you sing en route to excoriate your enemies will be forceful, but within reason; and when you douse yourself with gasoline and immolate yourself in front of the offices of Infinity Ward, one assumes this will be reasonable also.

Ok so magically it sells legally and makes sales charts, yet it doesn't make pirate charts. I'm fairly sure that means it doesn't get pirated nowhere even close to the levels which you are implying.

I am still waiting for you to, just once, read my post before responding to it. You only posted a single piracy report from bittorrent referring ONLY to 2008. And yet, that qualifies as WC3 "doesn't make piracy charts" when it was 5 years old in that year. No. Just like you won't see StarCraft at the top of piracy charts anymore, because it's 10 years old. Clearly piracy is a bigger issue for newer games. When people buy an old game it's often because they want a bargain. Pirates have no reason to wait years to steal a game, because it's the same price. Naturally piracy would taper off earlier than sales on a game with massive legs(like all blizzard titles).



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SeriousWB on 28 October 2009
Jereel Hunter said:

WarCraft 3 was pirated to a ridiculous degree. You seem to think because it wasn't in the top 10 in 2008 that it wasn't pirates much. (A game that released in 2003)

As I've said, more than once, WC3's amount of piracy canbe easily seen by the number of custom servers running illegal copies using it's LAN functionality. You've just decided to ignore this. Unfortunately, there aren't any published stats on this, however anyone who plays WC3 somewhere other than battle.net can see this.

Edit:

Wow, just came across Monday's Penny-Arcade, and it reminded me of this discussion. It's dead on, and applied to numerous members of this thread.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/10/26/

Quoted:

As to why they want to create their own matchmaking network in the first place, the ability to make money selling maps is floated as a reason, and it makes a lot of sense - presumably they would rather make a million dollars than zero. A centralized defense against piracy is also suggested, and things tend to go downhill quick after this. It is not a mischaracterization to say that conversations with the hardcore PC community about software theft follow these tenets:

- There is no piracy.
- To the extent that piracy exists, which it doesn't, it's your fault.
- If you try to protect your game, we'll steal it as a matter of principle.

It's like, who wouldn't want to bend over backward in their service? You need to know it, because nobody else is going to tell you: you guys sound like Goddamned subway vagrants. Of course when you speak exclusively to each other, it all sounds so reasonable. It'll be reasonable when you all board the bus, and the songs you sing en route to excoriate your enemies will be forceful, but within reason; and when you douse yourself with gasoline and immolate yourself in front of the offices of Infinity Ward, one assumes this will be reasonable also.

I'd like you to point out which post in this thread follows any of those tenets.  Also if you could address my last post directed at you before you locked horns with vlad, I'd appreciate it.



Jereel Hunter on 28 October 2009
SeriousWB said:

I'd like you to point out which post in this thread follows any of those tenets.  Also if you could address my last post directed at you before you locked horns with vlad, I'd appreciate it.

Sorry, I missed it:

SeriousWB said:

Again, moving to Steam activation was enough combat for piracy, removing dedicated servers causes more problems for normal players.

I was under the impression that steam activation could be cracked like anything else.

"Many players don't need it" is so wrong, so so wrong.  Do you know how ridiculous it is for European/Austrailian/Many other countries players to play with people from the US on listen servers? On top of the distance, some countries don't have the infrastructure to support decent internet connections for gamers there.  Say hello 250+ ping as a low standard.  Even a US citizen playin with someone on the other side of America, is still demanding on the average internet connection.  Removing dedicated servers is seriously shafting countries far from the US, now add those people with my previous examples and you have a lot of disadvantaged players.

"Many players don't need it" is 100% correct. I didn't say "All players don't need it." Many would find it useful, clearly. P2P connections allow matchmaking to connect users in a region together in order to minimize pings, if they take advantage of that.

The max players in these listen servers will be 8-16 at best, and will still have lag problems.  The average persons upload speed just cannot take the stress of hosting such games. If you play TF2 you'll know that even though the standard games are 8v8, the most popular servers for casual players are big 16v16 games on dedicated servers console modded to allow such numbers.  So yes, unless you have any facts on the matter (especially for pirated Steam games online) I think you are exaggarating your claims.

I agree that this is a big loss to a number of people - however I choose to blame the pirates who make such measures necessary over the companies. As for piracy stats, those are easy enough to find in a google search - but I have no idea what piracy rates are like for steam games specifically.

As for posts which fall under those tenets, I only see a few at first glance (not going to reread the entire thread)

Only a couple examples are below, but one thing this thread shows, is that if someone like me suggests that piracy is the problem, people swarm to fight about it. However the posts below have virtually no opposition indicating that many thread members give the thoughts expressed their tacit support.

 

1) - There is no piracy. (or downplaying it majorly)

Won't bother finding ones for this, as half the responses to my posts were people downplaying piracy, questioning stats given by developers, publishers, and independant security companies, or justifying piracy in poorer countries.

2)- To the extent that piracy exists, which it doesn't, it's your fault.

vlad321 said:

ASSASSIN'S CREED WAS A POS GAME ON THE PCs. NO ONE GAVE A FUCK ABOUT IT! It had a frikken 79 on metacritic. It's a shit game, shit games get pirated. Ok I'll give you that... So make a good game then?

 

3)- If you try to protect your game, we'll steal it as a matter of principle.

Alterego-X said:

I totally don't care about this game, but after these event, I will pirate it just for the principle, and to seed the torrent.


Xelloss on 28 October 2009
Jereel Hunter said:
SeriousWB said:

I'd like you to point out which post in this thread follows any of those tenets.  Also if you could address my last post directed at you before you locked horns with vlad, I'd appreciate it.

Sorry, I missed it:

SeriousWB said:

Again, moving to Steam activation was enough combat for piracy, removing dedicated servers causes more problems for normal players.

I was under the impression that steam activation could be cracked like anything else.

"Many players don't need it" is so wrong, so so wrong.  Do you know how ridiculous it is for European/Austrailian/Many other countries players to play with people from the US on listen servers? On top of the distance, some countries don't have the infrastructure to support decent internet connections for gamers there.  Say hello 250+ ping as a low standard.  Even a US citizen playin with someone on the other side of America, is still demanding on the average internet connection.  Removing dedicated servers is seriously shafting countries far from the US, now add those people with my previous examples and you have a lot of disadvantaged players.

"Many players don't need it" is 100% correct. I didn't say "All players don't need it." Many would find it useful, clearly. P2P connections allow matchmaking to connect users in a region together in order to minimize pings, if they take advantage of that.

The max players in these listen servers will be 8-16 at best, and will still have lag problems.  The average persons upload speed just cannot take the stress of hosting such games. If you play TF2 you'll know that even though the standard games are 8v8, the most popular servers for casual players are big 16v16 games on dedicated servers console modded to allow such numbers.  So yes, unless you have any facts on the matter (especially for pirated Steam games online) I think you are exaggarating your claims.

I agree that this is a big loss to a number of people - however I choose to blame the pirates who make such measures necessary over the companies. As for piracy stats, those are easy enough to find in a google search - but I have no idea what piracy rates are like for steam games specifically.

As for posts which fall under those tenets, I only see a few at first glance (not going to reread the entire thread)

Only a couple examples are below, but one thing this thread shows, is that if someone like me suggests that piracy is the problem, people swarm to fight about it. However the posts below have virtually no opposition indicating that many thread members give the thoughts expressed their tacit support.

 

1) - There is no piracy. (or downplaying it majorly)

Won't bother finding ones for this, as half the responses to my posts were people downplaying piracy, questioning stats given by developers, publishers, and independant security companies, or justifying piracy in poorer countries.

2)- To the extent that piracy exists, which it doesn't, it's your fault.

vlad321 said:

ASSASSIN'S CREED WAS A POS GAME ON THE PCs. NO ONE GAVE A FUCK ABOUT IT! It had a frikken 79 on metacritic. It's a shit game, shit games get pirated. Ok I'll give you that... So make a good game then?

 

3)- If you try to protect your game, we'll steal it as a matter of principle.

Alterego-X said:

I totally don't care about this game, but after these event, I will pirate it just for the principle, and to seed the torrent.

 

 Statistics dont lie, but liars use statistics. I am sure you have heard that saying. Oh, and yes many areas of the world that do have extraordinary rates of piracy, do in fact have semi-decent PCs ( 2 yrs or so behind USA in many cases) and at least cheap DSL. The exact situation varies by region, in any case its unrelated to USA piracy discussion. Also, a big big big chunk you are forgetting is PC cafes, which are extraordinarily popular in many parts of the world. You may remember the hubub around Valve and their PC  cafe stance some years ago, because so many cafes werent partnering through their program and were effectivly pirating Steam games ( in Valves view). That obviously wasnt a huge deal for the USA, simply because PC gaming cafes as such are practically non-existant here.

 Also, WoW is pirated to hell and back. There is tons of server emulators available, and ton sof people who play on them. The fact that millions of people pay for it each month is a testament to the fact that if you offer a good service like WoW does, people will pay. Anyone with google and some very basic comp skills could be playing emulated wow with their buddies in minutes.

 Thirdly, IE decision for IWnet was not because of piracy, they even said as much. Just like a wow server can be emulated, IWnet will be emulated. And even if it was not practical, there is still no reason to keep the server hosting as P2P from a technical or anti-piracy standpoint. There is no reason a stand-alone dedicated server platform could not be integrated in IWnet with the same piracy safeguards, and even locking the map rotation to "official" maps and those who have purchased DLC maps, as a client-based P2P listen server. None. This brings us away from piracy and even desire for $$ from DLC in the IWnet discussion, and back to the real reasons they made the move. Like arrogance, and utter contempt for their established fanbase.

 Last, I do question the numbers and methods used by anti-piracy companies. For one thing, they are motivated by money.. which is not bad in of itself, but fundamentally their services provide NOTHING to the consumer, or even the publisher. Find me one anti-piracy DRM platform outside Steam that even does a little to deter piracy. Proof? Its all cracked at launch for the most part, most games are cracked pre-launch. So how are intrusive software, limited activation, etc helpfull to either the customer or the publisher when this state exists? This is why DRM is bad, if the draconian anti-piracy measures did jack or shit, a lot more PC gamers including myself would find it much easier to swallow. This is why many including myself are OK with Steam, because Steam type platforms actually do have some positive effect ( it is not perfect but fake steamauth is not as easy or reliable as a 3MB crack to DL), plus Steam provides some added value in terms of being able to re-download, easily reinstall, and your purchases arent tied to one machine - you can play them on your new PC quickly, easily and without permission from anyone.

 Find  a DRM that works, and you will find yourself with a valid argument in favor of the anti-gamer DRM measures that some companies take.

 I could spend all day ripping apart the flawed statistics and logic used by peddlers of anti-piracy measures, and the publishers who parrot the powerpoints shown them by said anti-piracy companies but it really is not worth the effort because the flaws are so plain, those who do not see them usually will not be convinced even if you point them out.

 Promoting piracy is bad, I agree - however I would say that apologizing for companies that act in deceptive, underhanded, or just plain ignorant manner is no better. It does not help us as customers, and ironically it does not help the developers and publishers either. DRM peddlers in general are not productive members of the gaming community, nor the development or distobution supply chain (with the exception of the DDL providers) , they are parasites who provide nothing yet make owning and playing games more cumbersome, eat up huge dollars paid by publishers which are passed on to the customers yet fail to deliver any real measure of anti-piracy. They do not deserve to have anyone come to their defense.



SeriousWB on 28 October 2009
Jereel Hunter said:
SeriousWB said:

I'd like you to point out which post in this thread follows any of those tenets.  Also if you could address my last post directed at you before you locked horns with vlad, I'd appreciate it.

Sorry, I missed it:

SeriousWB said:

Again, moving to Steam activation was enough combat for piracy, removing dedicated servers causes more problems for normal players.

I was under the impression that steam activation could be cracked like anything else.

"Many players don't need it" is so wrong, so so wrong.  Do you know how ridiculous it is for European/Austrailian/Many other countries players to play with people from the US on listen servers? On top of the distance, some countries don't have the infrastructure to support decent internet connections for gamers there.  Say hello 250+ ping as a low standard.  Even a US citizen playin with someone on the other side of America, is still demanding on the average internet connection.  Removing dedicated servers is seriously shafting countries far from the US, now add those people with my previous examples and you have a lot of disadvantaged players.

"Many players don't need it" is 100% correct. I didn't say "All players don't need it." Many would find it useful, clearly. P2P connections allow matchmaking to connect users in a region together in order to minimize pings, if they take advantage of that.

The max players in these listen servers will be 8-16 at best, and will still have lag problems.  The average persons upload speed just cannot take the stress of hosting such games. If you play TF2 you'll know that even though the standard games are 8v8, the most popular servers for casual players are big 16v16 games on dedicated servers console modded to allow such numbers.  So yes, unless you have any facts on the matter (especially for pirated Steam games online) I think you are exaggarating your claims.

I agree that this is a big loss to a number of people - however I choose to blame the pirates who make such measures necessary over the companies. As for piracy stats, those are easy enough to find in a google search - but I have no idea what piracy rates are like for steam games specifically.

As for posts which fall under those tenets, I only see a few at first glance (not going to reread the entire thread)

Only a couple examples are below, but one thing this thread shows, is that if someone like me suggests that piracy is the problem, people swarm to fight about it. However the posts below have virtually no opposition indicating that many thread members give the thoughts expressed their tacit support.

 

1) - There is no piracy. (or downplaying it majorly)

Won't bother finding ones for this, as half the responses to my posts were people downplaying piracy, questioning stats given by developers, publishers, and independant security companies, or justifying piracy in poorer countries.

2)- To the extent that piracy exists, which it doesn't, it's your fault.

vlad321 said:

ASSASSIN'S CREED WAS A POS GAME ON THE PCs. NO ONE GAVE A FUCK ABOUT IT! It had a frikken 79 on metacritic. It's a shit game, shit games get pirated. Ok I'll give you that... So make a good game then?

 

3)- If you try to protect your game, we'll steal it as a matter of principle.

Alterego-X said:

I totally don't care about this game, but after these event, I will pirate it just for the principle, and to seed the torrent.

Since Xellos took care of of your post, I will address what I still find outlying.

1) "(Or downplaying piracy)" did not exist as one of the original tenets, and you also have no proof piracy is being downplayed in posts as some posters are under the impression you are exaggerating.

2) Conceded, that post falls perfectly in that tenet.

3) That post has nothing to do with it, "If you try to protect your game" is not the same as removing dedicated servers as dedicated servers don't only deter pirates (my last couple of posts have repeated this).  Find me a post that says they are pirating the game purely because of an anti-piracy measure, something that does not effect anything else.

So you have one post, as an example for only one of those tenets.  Oh, and no, cracking steam games is harder then other games.  Which makes it much less likely for a casual pirate to attempt it (or would likely give up after seeing the procedures).

You also repeated "many players don't need it" even though I just said that a vast number of TF2 servers are modded (and regularly full of players) to increase the amount of players or respawn times.  This is a steam game in which dedicates servers are used so the example is very valid.

You agree it's a loss for a number of people, but blame the people who choose to pirate?  TF2 and Left 4 Dead are steam games, they allow dedicated servers.  To sum up, if those game can do it without apparant problem with piracy, why can't MW2?



Jereel Hunter on 29 October 2009
Xelloss said:

 Statistics dont lie, but liars use statistics. I am sure you have heard that saying. Oh, and yes many areas of the world that do have extraordinary rates of piracy, do in fact have semi-decent PCs ( 2 yrs or so behind USA in many cases) and at least cheap DSL. The exact situation varies by region, in any case its unrelated to USA piracy discussion. Also, a big big big chunk you are forgetting is PC cafes, which are extraordinarily popular in many parts of the world. You may remember the hubub around Valve and their PC  cafe stance some years ago, because so many cafes werent partnering through their program and were effectivly pirating Steam games ( in Valves view). That obviously wasnt a huge deal for the USA, simply because PC gaming cafes as such are practically non-existant here.

Well, I wasn't limiting the piracy discussion to just the US... in countries where they have decent PCs and at least DSL-speeds, there's probably some sort of software market... it's just likely a lot smaller than it would be without piracy.

 Also, WoW is pirated to hell and back. There is tons of server emulators available, and ton sof people who play on them. The fact that millions of people pay for it each month is a testament to the fact that if you offer a good service like WoW does, people will pay. Anyone with google and some very basic comp skills could be playing emulated wow with their buddies in minutes.

I'm not questioning that people will pay for a good service - actually my stance was that yes, a good service will sell enough to make money, meanwhile it will also be pirated more. What I said about WoW was that it's a lot more difficult to pirate... I suppose I was wrong about it not being pirated as much. Thanks though, as my stance was that piracy is rampand, and it was, in fact, Vlad who insisted that WoW(or rather, blizzard games in general) don't get pirated. 

 Thirdly, IE decision for IWnet was not because of piracy, they even said as much. Just like a wow server can be emulated, IWnet will be emulated. And even if it was not practical, there is still no reason to keep the server hosting as P2P from a technical or anti-piracy standpoint. There is no reason a stand-alone dedicated server platform could not be integrated in IWnet with the same piracy safeguards, and even locking the map rotation to "official" maps and those who have purchased DLC maps, as a client-based P2P listen server. None. This brings us away from piracy and even desire for $$ from DLC in the IWnet discussion, and back to the real reasons they made the move. Like arrogance, and utter contempt for their established fanbase.

The decision may not have been amde because of piracy, but in the end, it's still to blame. The fact is, where PC gaming used to be the bread and butter of FPS game developers, nowadays it's just a drop in the bucket. Most of them (with the exception of Valve and maybe one or two others) get 90% of their sales on consoles, and thus programming similar solutions (and DLC that than can be sold on consoles and the PC) gets the support. Because of widespread piracy, most developers focus primarily on consoles now. And if the boycott successfully hurts their bottom line? Congrats, they may phase out PC versions all together.

 Last, I do question the numbers and methods used by anti-piracy companies. For one thing, they are motivated by money.. which is not bad in of itself, but fundamentally their services provide NOTHING to the consumer, or even the publisher. Find me one anti-piracy DRM platform outside Steam that even does a little to deter piracy. Proof? Its all cracked at launch for the most part, most games are cracked pre-launch. So how are intrusive software, limited activation, etc helpfull to either the customer or the publisher when this state exists? This is why DRM is bad, if the draconian anti-piracy measures did jack or shit, a lot more PC gamers including myself would find it much easier to swallow. This is why many including myself are OK with Steam, because Steam type platforms actually do have some positive effect ( it is not perfect but fake steamauth is not as easy or reliable as a 3MB crack to DL), plus Steam provides some added value in terms of being able to re-download, easily reinstall, and your purchases arent tied to one machine - you can play them on your new PC quickly, easily and without permission from anyone.

Well, I'm not supporting all these DRM platforms that don't work. However I can see why companies deter methods that make piracy even easier. For instance, your friends can easily set up a custom server to play on for many games - but games with built in LAN functionality can take it to another level. A private server can make their own large scale service allowing all the benefits of a full, real hosted server, yet using pirated copies. So easily. So what do the companies do?Lock it down so the pirates have to do more work, and restrict what they can do so you can't get the complete experience without the full game. Great for gamers? No. Bad for pirates? Yes.

 Find  a DRM that works,and you will find yourself with a valid argument in favor of the anti-gamer DRM measures that some companies take.

 I could spend all day ripping apart the flawed statistics and logic used by peddlers of anti-piracy measures, and the publishers who parrot the powerpoints shown them by said anti-piracy companies but it really is not worth the effort because the flaws are so plain, those who do not see them usually will not be convinced even if you point them out.

 Promoting piracy is bad, I agree - however I would say that apologizing for companies that act in deceptive, underhanded, or just plain ignorant manner is no better. It does not help us as customers, and ironically it does not help the developers and publishers either. DRM peddlers in general are not productive members of the gaming community, nor the development or distobution supply chain (with the exception of the DDL providers) , they are parasites who provide nothing yet make owning and playing games more cumbersome, eat up huge dollars paid by publishers which are passed on to the customers yet fail to deliver any real measure of anti-piracy. They do not deserve to have anyone come to their defense.

I guess you can look at it that way. But I've never really considered "our efforts aren't working, let's not even try anymore" to be a good reason to just stop. Instead of a new DRM, a lot of companies are removing the features most taken advantage of to easily pirate their software, and give pirates the full enjoyment of the game. It effects everyone, yes, but then again other than for a few of the biggest developers, PC development is just barely worthwhile at all. If it hinders just a small number of pirates, and salvages even a handful of extra sales, then it may be the difference between them developing for the PC, and not.