I seem to recall that one or two people were slightly unhappy with the anti-piracy measures on Bioshock. There was no big deal about it, was there? Of course there bloody was. Folk don’t take kindly to being told they can install something they’ve just paid real Earth money for a limited number of times. Now that the shouting’s died down, Gamespot’s reporting on a recent talk by 2K Au… 2k Austra… 2K Arrrrgh, no, can’t do it, sorry – Irrational’s Martin Slater about the controversial measures.
“We achieved our goals. We were uncracked for 13 whole days. We were happy with it. But we just got slammed. Everybody hated us for it. It was unbelievable… You can’t afford to be cracked. As soon as you’re gone, you’re gone, and your sales drop astronomically if you’ve got a day one crack.”
I agree and sympathise with him – those torrent sites are very busy these days, and I really can’t believe it’s not hurting developers – but I did feel Bioshock’s measures were far too stringent. If you crossover from protecting your game into insulting the guys who have keenly thrown their money at you, frankly you’ve gone too far. Seems Irrational are somewhat on the same page: “I don’t think we’ll do exactly the same thing again, but we’ll do something close.”
So it is going to happen again. And hardly surprising, really – this piracy thing isn’t going away, is it? DRM, when in a form that prevents me from using something I’ve bought on any device I want to, makes me angry (and you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. I stammer pathetically and get flecks of spittle in the corners of my mouth). However, I’m broadly in favour of a system like Steam uses – you can download and play your game on any PC hooked up the web, just by logging into an account. It’s DRM, but it’s not DRM tied to a specific machine. The trouble with it is that, as demonstrated by the almighty poostorm kicked up upon the retail release of Half-Life 2, it locks out the guys who don’t have broadband, plus anyone uncomfortable with the regular messages to the mothership involved. So really, the only answer is forcible, even violent, re-education of everyone who’d still rather buy a game in a plastic box than download it through a legitimate service. And horrible, screaming death for any publishers not yet signed up to Steam, of course.
Anyway, enough sociopathic babble from me. There’re some compelling, and honest-sounding, insights into quite how piracy affects developers in the report. Well worth a read if you’re one of those convinced it’s not hurting PC gaming.
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Why not do without? Because I wish to be entertained, to enjoy experiences, as I have little else to enjoy, and while that might be a minority stand on the issue, it’s still a worth while justification. Why should I endure repetition and boredom while scrounging off what I can from what I can manage to “buy”, and by that I mean “license” since you can’t technically own anything once your on the grid.
I like developers, I really do, hell I used to be one till things fell apart, but I don’t have the money to throw at them that I’d need to buy all the titles I could potentially enjoy. However, there is no reason for me to enjoy all of them and only buy what I can afford, given that it’s a sparse amount to begin with. It’s a “principle” of the thing, thing, and that just doesn’t cut it for me.
I help people when I can, and I feel bad when I can’t, but that’s about the limit of what I can do when I can do nothing for someone.
It’s entirely arguable that downloading illegally copied games harms sales. But it’s still distinct from, say, stealing a car. A car is a physical commodity and if you take one from someone else, that someone else no longer has that car. When one copies a game, that game is still for sale in exactly the same quantities.
It’s not true that Bioshock’s DRM issues have been resolved. Admittedly, there were some particularly severe issues caused by overloaded activation servers and glitches in the software that are now gone, but the activations are still limited and all the other issues SecuROM has remain 100% in force. I am pleased that in theory it will be removed after some unspecified time period, but a) why not now, since it’s no longer holding off the pirates and b) I will refrain from applause until that actually happens. (Mind you, I object mostly in principle. I bought Bioshock shortly after release through Steam, never encountered any DRM-related problems, and would never have even known they existed if I didn’t spend a lot of time on gaming sites.)
And I do agree with Chris Delay – the best way to ward off piracy is to give legit users something the pirates aren’t getting, be that multiplayer, cool feelies, quality manuals, free content updates…or whatever else one can dream up. Doesn’t mean a given person will necessarily *care* about that content, but you can only do so much.
Finally – I agree that right now most of a game’s sales are in the first couple of weeks, but I strongly believe that that’s an artifact of the way they’re sold and stocked right now, not an inherent part of the medium. Yes, time causes a stronger fall off of interest than with books or movies, but it’s far from total and I don’t think it would be anywhere near as fast if games remained available and visible the way those other media do.
DWARF FORTRESS is free, and they send little stories and crayon drawings to people who give donations. Very attractive. This personalised touch doesn’t really generalise to much larger audiences though.
Still, extra box content encourages purchases, even if it isn’t personal.
Why not do without? Because I wish to be entertained, to enjoy experiences, as I have little else to enjoy, and while that might be a minority stand on the issue, it’s still a worth while justification.
well, if i ever meet you, i promise to steal your shoes. both for the sake of principle and because i’ve always really wanted to!
i.e. i mean, i’ve had this conversation in variation with a number of people online, but never in person and i’ve always wondered what someone would do if i started taking their shoes. i have no idea if you have nice shoes or not but it’s art, philosophy and shoe-stealing all in one giant swoop.
a win-win situation (win-win because there’d be two shoes)
i don’t know everyone would appreciate the artistic statement in stealing someone’s shoes off of their feet while they’re trying to have a conversation about how other peoples’ hard work being transmuted from thought into actual existence isn’t really real because it’s not physical, but it’s the sort of thing artists have to deal with every day. especially someone like me, who just wants to steal shoes to make a point about discipline. as someone who lives on the upper tier of the body size and weight distribution, i can easily take someone’s shoes presuming i don’t really give them any warning and i think it makes an interesting statement about both the supreme importance of private property (he’ll never think about his shoes the same way i betcha) and the failing of “i do because i can” as a justification for human behavior.
as a sidenote, a friend of mine plays dwarf fortress pretty hardcore, and goddamn is that game impressive in detail and scope. it’s the game version of calculus or something, and about as far beyond my understanding as, well, calculus.
If anyone ever steals my shoes, then they are directly preventing me from wearing them, and will thusy be whacked with a heavy object
Last I checked, Deux Ex was still available for purchase online. Or in Game, at £5 a copy. Or typically part of a Three for £10 deal.
I buy games i enjoy because that means that they make more games like that. If you dont buy the game, you are invisible to the developer in terms of them knowing what gamers want. Its sad when pirates moan that games are shit, because they are the reason that games they like do not get made.
In this day and age, a developer has to make games that sell, not games that are popular. Being popular with pirates will not pay the developers salaries and rents.
Plus I think its just fcking wrong to take someone people worked on for years without paying them for their work.
if you are without a credit card, debit, or other means of online transaction, buying items of the net is impossible really
If you can’t buy something, but want it, and can get it without paying as well as without stealing someone else’s opportunity to buy it, then why not? There is no logical reason except some sort of moral code that specifically forbids such a thing for the principle.
When I was a teenager and young adult, I pirated quite a bit, everything from games to utilities. Now that I’m all grown up and have a family and a job, I purchase software. I plunked down the cash for Office Ultimate the other day, and bought Capture NX earlier this month. This isn’t even counting the one or two games I buy per month. I pirated games because I couldn’t afford them. Now, I *still* pirate games (cracks, technically), but I still buy them. Why? It’s nice to be legal, but I can’t stand DRM. Hell, I have a legit Windows XP Pro licence and I’m still using a cracked version, simply because I can’t stand authorising my copy every time I reinstall my OS. I’m also lazy, and would rather play one game and then another without swapping out my disk. (That, and my kids once made a coaster out of some older LucasArts game a while back, so I tend to keep my DVDs not readily accessible.)
Chris’s post was terrific: I was one of those kids who pirated Uplink and downloaded the upgrades. Now, I’ve got a legit copy of it somewhere, along with Defcon (which I pre-ordered before I even played the demo simply because I liked the idea and Introversion itself). Introversion certainly does treat pirates like potential customers, and that attitude wasn’t lost on me.
My point is that people grow up, sooner or later, and they usually get the point that they understand that buying games means that more games are made. Give the games to the pirates, and they’ll figure it out eventually. Hell, give them the games early, let them post on official forums, and let them beta test them for free! Saves the hassle for legit customers.
And for the record: I loved System Shock 1 and 2 (both of which I pirated, then later bought), but until the DRM is removed from Bioshock, I refuse to buy it (or any other games protected with similar schemes). I’d love to try it out, as I have a lot of faith in Irrational, but this issue with invasive DRM has gone too far and I, for one, feel that I need to take an ideological stand. Perhaps this is a bit ironic, considering my past life as a filthy pirate, but that’s the thing that most companies don’t get: pirates really are undecided customers.
I’d like to point out (as others have) that while broadband is cheap in the US and the UK, that isn’t the case everywhere across the globe.
Heck, here in Australia the minimum broadband available costs $50 extra, and that’s one of the better deals around. The broadband is rather slow, but worst of all, heavily capped.
People need to be careful with their downloading habits because otherwise their internet gets ’shaped’. My limit is 10Gb Offpeak and 10GB during the day. It’s incredibly easy to cap such a limit by just playing WoW and watching several YouTube videos. Downloading games off steam is a dreadful thing indeed. Worst of all, by the way, is that I can’t even play steam games until all patches have been downloaded.
The whole “Broadband is cheap! If you can’t afford it, you don’t deserve to play games” is a little self-centered..
Yeah, pirating happens, boo fing hoo. As they said themselves it took only 13days for a bunch of unemployed kids to break through there advanced protection that probably took dozens of high skilled programmers to build. And i will say, man, i wish i had waited for those kids to do they’re work, but no, i said “this game’ll be good, no need to play it first”, so i went out and wasted $60 on bioshock, and then found out it is a crap game. There are those people like me who will steal a game, play it, and if enjoyable purchase a legit copy just to support the company. What i do forces developers to produce superior products, otherwise i wont support them.
And what gives you the right to the developer’s labours for free? I mean, sorry but your stance seems so arrogant I thought it only fair to come back with an equally arrogant counterpoint.