This post for tracking purposes since the one Frogboy references seems not to be tracked on this system.

Related threads are:

Piracy: The Gaming Industry in Perspective & the Coming Storm

Iron Lore Entertainment's copy protection bites them on the butt

No unbreakable copy protection exists for anything in the history of the digital world that was popular enough to warrant buying. I know people who have modded consoles of every kind, and piracy of those is getting worse. The only advantage is that the companies know the hardware and don't have to generalize, but there is a lot more piracy than there used to be. There's just the plain fact that when you give somebody the access they need to play a game, there'll be some guy who can mess up all your safeguards and pirate the games. The only way to avoid having somebody getting their jollies from breaking your hypothetical cripplingly secure DRM is to not actually give them your product for their money, a policy that is illegal in nearly every jurisdiction ever. It's either that or giving people enough value for their product that the sales take the sting of piracy and ensuring that your copy protection doesn't drive people to pirate your product.

Forgive the rant.

I am moderately sure I already posted this in another thread but here goes again.

Piracy is a good thing. The # of games I have bought based on WHETHER OR NOT THEY WOULD RUN on my computer thanks to piracy is... well, almost all of them (with the exception of the Dawn of War series of games). I didn't pirate Sins, but I thought about it, instead I just pre-ordered the collectors edition when I saw the min-specs.

I play with a group of players online (5-6 people) and ORIGINALLY I was the ONLY legitimate copy of sins. Now they ALL own it. Even the guy in (Estonia? I think it is, that East European country) who had to get it DirectDL since they don't even SELL it in stores near there.

Yeah, theres probably a few assholes out there who haven't and never will buy their copy - but will play the game. They aren't hurting stardock though, there are ALWAYS people who will do that - and they can't even waste Stardock's bandwidth or anything cause you can't get on ICO without a legitimate Cd-key.

Now, Stardock's method of getting access to multiplayer and whatnot is a step AHEAD of most of the competition, its not like they couldn't do it too.

That said, if the rest of the PC industry would just STOP GIVING US Eye-candy without half-decent fucking storyline or coding (8 patches anyone?)... They'd get sales just like Sins. I would pay MORE than 50 dollars for half-decent fucking PC games.

If it ever happened that a game as good as Sins was released every month... I would damn well buy it - every month. Even poor as I am - but they don't. Besides Soulstorm (which was very dissapointing), SoASE and Starcraft II, I don't expect any good PC games this year.

Well gaming piracy a bit different from software piracy (especially dependent on software, things like ACAD and movie and image editing software are EXPENSIVE and you KNOW they're going to be using it/getting monies worth if they know about it and need it), different from movie/song piracy... I don't support the rest, just PC gaming piracy. I think we were just speaking of JUST game piracy.

Hooray for common sense! I get so sick and tired of all these, "pirates destroy everything" rants. Galactic Civ and Sins both have been a huge success and they have minimal copy protection. All copy protection does is hurt end users and give money to copy protection (thug) companies. Pirates *ALWAYS* get around the protection.

I'm a loyal paying customer of Stardock games because they don't use this crap! They support users by beating pirates with features instead of crappy copy protection.

being someone who will most likely end up as an academic i think that everyone should have access to any information they want whether thats software, music, books, news whatever, but i don't think this freedom is unconditional you must respect the creators rights in that you must make it clear that he or she made the info... "piracy" gives people access to stuff and in a way it is a good thing because it lets you chose what you want to support and doesn't force you to thought money at people or corporations that don't deserve it.... this choice (assuming that you actually want to support great developers and thinkers like stardock) is probably the best way of advancing games and other software

sorry for the rantiness

If you didn't pay for it, don't use it.

Idiots who can't get this would of course whine if someone was to steal their house, their car, but when it comes to other's property, their fine.

Hi there, I just wanted to add my comments to this thread.

I wanted to try out a new game the other day, so I went on my favourite torrent website and decided to browse for games. I sorted the list to show torrents with the most seeders on top and found Sins of a Solar Empire as number 1. I had never heard of this game, but thought I would give it a shot since so many people where downloading and sharing it.

I tried the game for a couple of days now and I have to say it's one of the best games I have ever played. So I just purchased the collectors edition box set version of the game, and feel very good about doing so.

I can imagine many will look down on me for illegally downloading games. But my point is that I probably would never have heard of this game if it wasn't so popular on the torrent website I use.

I think this is a good example of how removing copy protection can sometimes be beneficial and even lead to better revenue for gaming producers.

All my thanks to the Stardock / Ironclad team for making such a wonderfull game.

Of course I am speaking for myself. I'm certainly not speaking for you or the guy next to you.

FPS games are dumb and boring, in my humble 27 years of computer gaming experience. They are for mindless zombies with no concept of grand strategy. They are for grunts and peons. RTS games, on the other hand, are for Generals & Commanders! Leave those fps games to the peasants.

The reason why more people play FPS games is because most people are not natural born commanders, which is required to enjoy RTS games. Most people are grunts by instinct and therefore genetically enjoy the grunt work much better. They simply don't enjoy commanding a multitude of units. They would prefer to run around mindlessly and try to take the objective which has been designated for them. They simply do not enjoy leading and commanding. There will always be more FPS gamers than RTS gamers for this genetic reason. Some of them will mature out of the FPS genre and into the RTS genre as they get older and more experienced with gaming.

I've played (and mastered) plenty of FPS games and they're just stupid. I will not be buying anymore.

I hate to be the troll here, but I bet Kruelgor feels that way because he gets fraged every time he joins a FPS FFA. Plenty of people play and enjoy FPS and most of them would agree it requires great skills to be a good FPS player, me being one of them. Before you go and outright call FPS gamers "grunts by instinct" "peons" "mindless zombies", you should consider that MANY of the top strategy gamers are also top FPS gamers and enjoy both.

Anyway,I don't thing this has much to do with the OP.. lets get off this thread or stay on topic, I think?

I love it. irrnt, you are not the troll, Kruelgor is. Once one starts saying things like his last post (coupled with the other things he said above), it's clear that he's simply trying to upset people, because his logic is so, well, illogical, that it now makes me laugh. Opinion and truth are two different things when it comes to gaming genre preference. Only five year olds think they're the same.

Sadly, I fell for these antics, but I won't again.

And yes, what the heck does any of this have to do with piracy?

-HM

Nope. I still stand by what I originally implied. People who love FPS games over RTS games are mindless zombies. Indeed.

This is why the magazines favor those types of games over RTS games since everyone qualifies for FPS games. RTS games, on the other hand, requires a special type of person.