"We're not going to treat our customers like criminals"

Yeah was said on the Evil Avatar Radio podcast tonight.
Its one thing i love about SD and IC, no BS with copy protection as it will get cracked anyways.

So please support the 2 companys by buying there game

If only more companies worked this way.

It's worth mentioning that I've seen this sentiment echoed on numerous gaming forums over the net. Many people have repeatedly reacted very favorably to Stardock and now Ironclad for taking this stance.

I don't know how badly, if at all, piracy impacted GalCiv2 sales more or less than other PC games, or how its impacting Sins, but I do know that the goodwill you're building is an asset that few other gaming companies have.

Not to mention the fact that I am a big fan of Stardock Central. I am not the most organized with my cd keys and disks so its nice to have a program that allows me to download and install any program I have ever bought that SD published

Plus - they're only about 15min away from where I live. Supporting the local economy!

I know, I was there. Just meant that I don't remember which of the 2 made the statement.

That was the best line, just barely above "Q: What motivated you? A: We were bored."

I know, just letting other know

The podcast should be available as mp3 soon i guess


haha yeah

Loved that one too!

We both say it every chance we can but Craig had dibs on the "don't treat them like criminals" line this time

Edit: Yes Brad said it first, but we like it and say it whenever we can as we believe the same thing. In this particular case it was Craig's turn to speak about it. I'm not trying to say we came up with it.

That need's to be your tagline, that or: "Fighting boredom with kickass games since XXXX"

That line, and method of thinking, is one of the reasons I've become a fan of Stardock, along with the awesome games. I would never have pre-ordered an game like Sins for the full price from any other company, even if they'd offered access to the beta. With Stardock and Ironclad I not only knew the game would be at worst decent (good enough to enjoy) but also that I would be supporting a company who actually cares about it's customers, and that's enough for me .

Well, i can say that any game you can think of i can find on the internet to download, no matter what copy protection it came with. And also say that if it was not for being able to try this game first i would have never bought it.

Its hard to 'return' a pc game, more or less impossible in most all cases. Expecting people to buy something just because a review website said it was good is silly.

The only form of 'copy protection' that has EVER worked is CD keys for online services such as multiplayer things. That works, thats a good idea, it doesn't screw anything up.

But there are several games i own that have various copy protection on them that screw with my PC (starforce anyone?), so what do i play on? A cracked version=p

I get the feeling sometimes that the only reason we see copy protection is because developers know their games are trash and want to try and sell boxes on hype before the crack comes out and people realize how bad the games are.

I also have to say that you need to sell more than just the game in order to sell things well. I remember years ago i was walking down the isle at target, and i saw a box for a computer game. It had a big nifty emblem on the front and said "STARSIEGE". I picked it up and boy was it heavy! I shook it around some and it sounded like there was a lot to it, more than just the game itself on a disk. I looked at the pictures and figured that was pretty awesome looking. With out knowing anything else about it i bought it. It just felt like it had 'quality' seeping out of the box.

So far, with this game and also galciv2, stardock has managed to project a 'completeness', like im getting something more than just a bunch of code and a piece of plastic.

I will say its kind of disappointing that the collectors box lists a hotkey card and a tech tree as part of the 'bonus'=P Those things should come standard, shouldnt they? Then again the retail box is cheaper than most games, so i suppose its forgiven=p

Usually the MP3 is up by late tuesday or wednesday. (It takes time for them to cut out the commercials) I'll make sure to post here and let folks know. Maybe you can link it in a front-page news item when the MP3 goes up.

I think your benefactor had dibs on that with his little anti-anti-piracy rant about GC2 a year or two ago

I believe Brad actually said this way back when he was promoting GalCiv2. Around the time of the big Starforce debacle.

-HM

Guys I'm not saying Brad didn't say it, I'm saying that whenever Craig and I speak, one of us has to say it and this time it was Craig's turn.

Or just subscribe to the RSS feed and it will automatically download when available.

I subscribe via iTunes, personally, but I know a lot of folks here probably don't

No copy protection is kind of relative. Stardock, being the publisher, has a good infrastructure in place that allows for a certain leeway against illegal distribution. You need to have proper access in order to get the additional good stuff that gets developed - which is based on player feedback. But the end result is the same if an SOB player gets the additional patches into the web.

At any rate, this kind of proactive and friendly stance towards players - when the exact opposite happens in most cases - is what really makes this business model shine.

The drawback here is that developers have to work twice as much for a game that's already been released and paid for (though a long term investment) and having to put up with some of the crap that gets posted in the forums. For us players, the drawback is that some features are probably kept from the original release in order to enhance the player-driven additions. The obvious weak Diplomacy and lack of victory conditions in SINS seem to reinforce this idea.

Then again, it's an all out customer-driven business model and that's really a good thing. At the very least, I know that I made a worthy purchase, I'm not at all feeling like a criminal nor I have the desire to share this jewel illegally.

Stardock is a company first and foremost, and I have reason to believe that in their experience, copy protection secures absolutely no fiscal advantage that overcomes the outrageous costs of licensing said copy protection in the first place. As Brad has said before about GC2, copy protection is always broken in less than a week anyway (there's a few rare cases, but they're generally more the 'Starforce' kind that refuse to let you run anything until you uninstall any program that may remotely be tied to piracy - Alcohol 120%, Daemon Tools, uTorrent, Firefox, or whatever because the software is buried in Root Level Fuck).

And, remember that SecuROM is there to make money too. And it's not cheap. SecuROM promises that publishers will save X-billion dollars, and I'm sure regardless of whether or not they actually save that (as it's pretty much imaginary numbers they're working with), they demand such a large chunk BECAUSE of this make-believe money they might pull in, that any real money they DO save is lost to these companies anyway. I'm sure to some pencil-pushing suit whose experience with video games is whatever his kids want for Christmas, the thought that 'saved capital' and 'capital lost to piracy' are utterly impossible, fictional stats, is lost on him.



You mean like they used to, before PC gaming was about raping consumers from their money?

Remember Starcraft? Didn't Blizzard release a new map like once a week or something?

@Uranium - 235

Not having to pay any copy protection fee crap and us not to endure it, was one big smart move. Period.

And yes, I do remember Starcraft of old and feel a similar, better refined commitment with this company. But there's an eye-candy approach in Blizzard's games that I don't see fully with this one. Sins is very well coded, similarly polished in gameplay, beautiful graphics, but the old-school interface could use some improvement.

Those big rectangular buttons in the different menus, the motionless plain pictures of the different races and that very human handshake icon in diplomacy (when dealing with different space-faring species) made me feel like I was playing quite an old-style game, not a groundbreaking one.

Sometimes I feel like a prison shower room victim (:( but thats mostly EETs fault.