I've just finished reading a very interesting rant from a developer at StarDock (A mostly desktop enhancement developer) about PC Piracy.
I definitely feel for game developers who want to make kick ass PC games who see their efforts diminished by a bunch of greedy pirates. I just don't count pirates in the first place. If you're a pirate, you don't get a vote on what gets made -- or you shouldn't if the company in question is trying to make a profit.
The reason why we don't put CD copy protection on our games isn't because we're nice guys. We do it because the people who actually buy games don't like to mess with it. Our customers make the rules, not the pirates. Pirates don't count. We know our customers could pirate our games if they want but choose to support our efforts. So we return the favor - we make the games they want and deliver them how they want it. This is also known as operating like every other industry outside the PC game industry.
This is just an exert from near the end of the rant. I'd recommend you read the whole thing as he raises several great points as to why people think PC gaming is dying, and how its the fault of developers, not pirates.
Read the rest Here.
I for one agree with him 100%. It's nice to think of developing games as art, but the fact is it's a business; and if you don't view it that way, you'll fail. Why do people pirate a game? Cause they aren't going to buy it in the first place. (Usually)
So rather then developers spending valuable time and money trying to stop pirates from stealing their games, perhaps they should rather put those resources into making a game they're customer's will love. He talks about "Sins of a Solar Empire", currently the best rated and best selling game on PC, and how it doesn't have any sort of copy-protection at all.
By following the PC industries crap excuses, "Sins" shouldn't have sold well at all, after all Pirates don't even need to crack it right? Clearly pirates aren't the problem; DRM is.
What do you guys think?
I've been saying that allllllll along, it's good to see that point coming from a developer for a change, however, you'll find that it's the publishers ehem cough EA cough, ehem.
As i was saying, the publishers who make more money from console sales that will insist on copy protection for pc games, knowing well that it adds more hastle for a pc gamer, who if they really wanna play the game can buy it for console, pay a premium, and not have to worry about how the drm is going to affect the final product.
On a side note, i was rather board last night, so i decided to go through my pile of old(er) PC games just for something to do, towards the bottom of the box i found X2 the threat (21st century elite *pc gamer*) and decided to install it.
YEAH THANKS FOR THAT, the DRM that installed with that just kept resetting my PC, I couldn't even boot into XP fully before it would through up the error and kill the kernal.
i had to fight my way into safe mode, disable the DRM service it installed, and then the game wouldn't run, so i just had to uninstall it. couldn't even load the game once.
and there was no point attempting to install it under vista cus that would just cause a whole heap of trouble.
And they claim DRM doesn't hurt the end user's PC, i'm still trying to fully remove the last DRM rootkit, finicky thing's worse than any virus, it copy's itself to another location when it detects a delete request. ARG. i hate EA and any publishers that force these Draconian measures that treat me like a criminal.
I'm already forcing myself to look at who's involved in the games development/publishment before i even consider buying it, so far on my list of publishers i refuse to buy from anymore
are
EA
Atari
Enlight Entertainment, including any console games not just PC.
Im just for now going to stick to Valve/indi/stardock games for PC.
Clearly pirates aren't the problem; DRM is.
Treat your customers like criminals, and criminals they shall become.
Yep, this argument has been going around for a while. It's sad because pirates almost always end up cracking your game, and when you're loaded with DRM, it's not uncommon for the free cracked version to run better than the version you charge for. This pushes people towards the cracked one. Why not do something like Valve's steam? Make it so convenient and easy to get the game that they are willing to pay money to get it rather than the trouble/risk it would take for a cracked version, even if they know how to get the cracked version.
Many of these cracked game downloaders probably wouldn't bother paying for your game anyway, so you can at least use them to spread positive word of mouth. Consider it marketing at no real cost (other than the loss of purchases from a group that probably wouldn't purchase it anyway, at least 90% of them).