Major Copyright Judgement

[GreyICE]

It's a single player game. And there is no offline mode. So if you can't connect to the internet you can't play the game, a game that you've paid for and installed on to your computer.

Once again, how is this horrible DRM? It installs nothing on my computer, adds no running processes, it just pokes the mothership occasionally.

You have failed to explain what is so horrible about this. I really do not care if my copy of a game goes 'ping-pong' to the mothership now and then.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Copyright infringement is wrong but you have to be honest about the debate and the impact.

Why should I be able to rent a movie, and a video game, but not a computer game or music?


Why are the latter two wrong but not the first two?

 

[chulbert]

Once again, how is this horrible DRM? It installs nothing on my computer, adds no running processes, it just pokes the mothership occasionally.

You have failed to explain what is so horrible about this. I really do not care if my copy of a game goes 'ping-pong' to the mothership now and then.

In general all DRM is horrible. While it is intended to inhibit pirates - which it does to a degree - it also annoys your paying customers. Whether or not it creates more sales than it costs is a hotly debated topic. Some are beginning to say that we need to essentially ignore the pirates and create software for the markets that actually exist and not the ones we wish existed.

 

[chulbert]

Why should I be able to rent a movie, and a video game, but not a computer game or music?

Why are the latter two wrong but not the first two?

I was not aware I made any claims on these.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I was not aware I made any claims on these.

You made a statement that if it was illegal it was wrong, well those are things that are legal vs illegal. So why is one fine and the other wrong, other than who had the better lobiests when the law was written?

The goal is to screw the public over as much as they can get the politicians to do.

 

[AvalonXQ]

You have failed to explain what is so horrible about this. I really do not care if my copy of a game goes 'ping-pong' to the mothership now and then.

Perhaps you live in an environment where internet connectivity is infallible and all-permeating. For those of us who don't, this sort of DRM is a real hassle.

 

[GreyICE]

Copyright infringement is wrong but you have to be honest about the debate and the impact. An instance of infringement does not cost you money unless it corresponds to a lost sale and the vast majority of pirates simply wouldn't buy your product if they were forced to choose. It may help you sleep at night to know that nobody enjoys your work without compensation but that has little bearing on your bottom line.

There needs to be a shift in perspective among content producers that pirates simply are not your customers, potential or otherwise. The steps you take to stop piracy do little more than annoy people who actually pay for your product.

Oh come on. A certain percentage of people who would have bought the product pirate it instead. That's simply a fact.

8%, 10%, whatever it is, it translates into lost money. At one point, Infinity Ward estimated that over half of the gamers online in MW1 were using pirated copies. Do you mean to tell me those people, who played online on that game, frequently for long periods of time, would not have paid $50 for it?

Piracy costs legitimate developers money.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Oh come on. A certain percentage of people who would have bought the product pirate it instead. That's simply a fact.

... and a certain percentage of people who would have bought the product without DRM fail to buy the product because of its DRM.
... and a certain percentage of people who would have bought the product at $35 fail to buy the product at $50.
... and certain percentage of those pirating the product would never spend $50 on it.
Once we know these percentages, as well as related percentages, then we can discuss the best way to market and sell the game.

 

[INRM]

The ISP shouldn't be responsible, and the ISP shouldn't be monitoring every moment of it's users online activity.

If the ACTA bill passes this will happen

 

[geni]

The ISP shouldn't be responsible, and the ISP shouldn't be monitoring every moment of it's users online activity.

In practical terms it would be foolish not to. Customer service requires you to have a solid idea what your customers are doing and what they want (as well as what they claim they want).

 

[INRM]

Geni,

Are you kidding me? Any benefit would be outweighed by the privacy violation.

 

[chulbert]

Oh come on. A certain percentage of people who would have bought the product pirate it instead. That's simply a fact.

8%, 10%, whatever it is, it translates into lost money. At one point, Infinity Ward estimated that over half of the gamers online in MW1 were using pirated copies. Do you mean to tell me those people, who played online on that game, frequently for long periods of time, would not have paid $50 for it?

Piracy costs legitimate developers money.

It is a fact. Some people pirate instead of buying; however, we cannot pretend that everyone does. What I said was that an instance of copyright infringement does not cost you money unless it also corresponds to a lost sale. The ratio is not 1:1.

Also remember that it cost you money to license and/or implement your DRM system. You have to keep the DRM servers running for years, you have to handle technical support problems from paying customers because SecuROM isn't compatible with their DVD-ROM drive, and you have to deal with angry customers whose activation codes don't work because of a bug in your code or something.

Some developers are slowly realizing that DRM isn't worth the cost and they are planning their development based on the real market of paying customers.

 

[geni]

Geni,

Are you kidding me? Any benefit would be outweighed by the privacy violation.

Might want to read you ISPs terms of service then.

 

[bigtim]

The first is that I don't really like piracy. At all. It's been killing the video game industry for years, and has almost entirely resulted in the death of large-scale PC only video games that are NOT MMORPGs.

sorry dude, but radio killed the video store... oops, I mean console games killed your pc games... not piracy...

There needs to be a shift in perspective among content producers that pirates simply are not your customers, potential or otherwise. The steps you take to stop piracy do little more than annoy people who actually pay for your product.

It used to be that you had to cause financial damage to the holder to have recompense enforced upon you. That was changed when the laws were rewritten to tighten what it meant.

Piracy costs legitimate developers money.

So does trading in used games... in fact it costs legitimate developers FAR MORE money than piracy. The numbers for piracy is all guess work... you can get hard $ on how much used game sales generate.

... and a certain percentage of people who would have bought the product without DRM fail to buy the product because of its DRM.

I tried to buy music online with DRM... it pissed me off and I refused to spend another penny on DRM music. When Amazon came DRM free I only buy music from them.

 

[GreyICE]

It is a fact. Some people pirate instead of buying; however, we cannot pretend that everyone does. What I said was that an instance of copyright infringement does not cost you money unless it also corresponds to a lost sale. The ratio is not 1:1.

Also remember that it cost you money to license and/or implement your DRM system. You have to keep the DRM servers running for years, you have to handle technical support problems from paying customers because SecuROM isn't compatible with their DVD-ROM drive, and you have to deal with angry customers whose activation codes don't work because of a bug in your code or something.

Some developers are slowly realizing that DRM isn't worth the cost and they are planning their development based on the real market of paying customers.

But here's the thing: I rather trust their analysis of whether it's worth the cost over yours. I agree SecuROM is garbage. Amazon's kindle DRM is garbage. By the same token, a lot of the objections to DRM are garbage. Look at someone pitching a crying fit on this thread because the application wants an internet connection, in 2010. Like... really? Sure.

sorry dude, but radio killed the video store... oops, I mean console games killed your pc games... not piracy...

Really?

http://gamerlimit.com/2009/05/and-yet-it-moves-developer-interview/

Felix: Yes, piracy – which we rather call bootlegging, because it is a more appropriate term – is an issue on the PC side and it also is one with And Yet It Moves. We currently have a bootlegging rate from approximately 95.5% which basically means for every game we sell there are 22 cracked version being played.

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/13940

Call of Duty series developer Infinity Ward has joined a growing list of companies to cite piracy as one of the reasons for the PC's fall from grace as a gaming platform. As Shacknews reports, the company's Community Relations Manager—who calls himself Fourzerotwo—has posted on his blog to express his amazement at the number of people who have pirated his studio's latest title, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Prefacing his comment by the heading, "They Wonder Why People Don't Make PC Games Any More,"

You'll excuse me if I trust them over you. Because I do, that is. Trust them over you.

It used to be that you had to cause financial damage to the holder to have recompense enforced upon you. That was changed when the laws were rewritten to tighten what it meant.

No, I'm pretty sure copyright violations never acted like you think. You were never able to take a book someone else published, photocopy every page, and hand out the book for free.

That wasn't allowed at any point.

So does trading in used games... in fact it costs legitimate developers FAR MORE money than piracy. The numbers for piracy is all guess work... you can get hard $ on how much used game sales generate.

Yes. I loath the used game market and the 'used game sellers' like EB and Gamestop. By the same token, 'zero day' used games don't really exist, unless the game is frighteningly bad.

Let me put it this way: I take Infinity Ward's analysis of the situation over yours.

I tried to buy music online with DRM... it pissed me off and I refused to spend another penny on DRM music. When Amazon came DRM free I only buy music from them.

Aww, so a shoddy implementation means the entire concept is flawed. Like the internet. I once got a virus when I used it, and now I just never touch the thing.

 

[lionking]

Once again, how is this horrible DRM? It installs nothing on my computer, adds no running processes, it just pokes the mothership occasionally.

You have failed to explain what is so horrible about this. I really do not care if my copy of a game goes 'ping-pong' to the mothership now and then.

Off topic, but my recently purchased copy of Titan wasn't working when the internet was down, which suggests that other games have adopted this approach without telling everyone. On the other hand it could just be a coincidence.

 

[dudalb]

It's a single player game. And there is no offline mode. So if you can't connect to the internet you can't play the game, a game that you've paid for and installed on to your computer.

Dumb idea, (even Steam has an offline mode) but if they tell you that upfront before purchase, I don't see anything morally wrong with it.

 

[AvalonXQ]

No, I'm pretty sure copyright violations never acted like you think. You were never able to take a book someone else published, photocopy every page, and hand out the book for free.

That wasn't allowed at any point.

I think what he means is that it used to be that if you handed out ten copies of a $5 book, you were liable for $50 -- if they could prove you actually cost them $50 in sales.
Now this would make you liable for as much as $1,500,000 without them having to prove anything about how much you cost them.

 

[bigtim]

FINE!!! I can't post freakin URLs yet, so I lost all the typing I did.

The point is yes, console games are taking over the market, your link doesn't many anything other than one person's opinion. THe growth in sales for console games exceeded PC games from 2006 to 2006 by a few billion dollars.

PC games are not ONLY mmorpgs, there are a ton of games a large market for smaller "casual" games as the "grognards" move from PC to Console. There is a shift, and it is happening, and it's got nothing to do with piracy.

 

[GreyICE]

FINE!!! I can't post freakin URLs yet, so I lost all the typing I did.

The point is yes, console games are taking over the market, your link doesn't many anything other than one person's opinion. THe growth in sales for console games exceeded PC games from 2006 to 2006 by a few billion dollars.

PC games are not ONLY mmorpgs, there are a ton of games a large market for smaller "casual" games as the "grognards" move from PC to Console. There is a shift, and it is happening, and it's got nothing to do with piracy.

Uh, did you read the links? The maker of an award winning casual game is not having viable sales. And 95% of the copies running are pirated. He's currently porting it over to a console platform to make a good return. That's an award winning game.

Developers like Infinity Ward are moving to consoles because piracy is a concern for them. They cite these reasons. Do you think the reasons that major developers say these things is because they're stupid?

Sure, casual, $5 games are doing okay, because they cost nothing to make and might as well be written in Flash. Woohoo. Go PC.

More complex games like "And Yet It Moves" (Still nothing like the production values we saw 5-10 years ago on the PC) aren't really worth it. Braid jumped ship to XBox Live over PC (and did really well there).

95.5% pirated copies. No real effect. Think about that one.

The most powerful platform is becoming the platform of $5 casual games and MMOs