Thread: No SecuROM on Sims 3

If you pirate you are stealing - period.

That's a bold statement for someone whose signature (inaccurately) quotes Benjamin Franklin.

I don't know about (and don't care for) the situation in the gaming industry, but the (illegal) download of MP3s makes me buy more records: if I like it, I'll buy it - if I don't like it, I won't listen to it anyway. But I can see that the situation is probably different with respect to software.

Anyway, in a free market, the customer decides about the distribution model. If you don't like DRM protected games, then don't buy them. By spending money on things you don't like, you keep getting sold things you don't like.

Greets,
Philip

Originally Posted by Snafuist

I don't know about (and don't care for) the situation in the gaming industry, but the (illegal) download of MP3s makes me buy more records:

I love music and I hate to hurt the feelings of all those millionaires of whom I am I fan, but I think the whole issue that piracy (cassettes, mp3s, whatever) "hurts the industry because musicians need to make money" is very lame. I am sure it could totally destroy people in the "music industry" who are not musicians, but so what? Before there was a recording industry, there were professional musicians of all sorts everywhere in the world already. Most of the musicians I've known made most of their money performing; selling units was just a bonus. In fact, one could see profiteering in the sale of recordings as something that hampers music sans industry.

I don't know how this maps into gaming stuff (don't play em! never will!) but it seems a bogus comparison; those people cannot make money just by performing. Caveat: The comparison is fair in so far as the royalty concept affects the industry: obviously there is no chance of this, but they (the game industry) might have contributed more to a better world if they had conceived of a different business model, like, one based on covering production costs. After that, the game is free to the world (but not until the production costs, eg, salaries for people, are covered). There would be so many good free games around, piracy would be way less of a factor.

At this point it should be clear that so much money is available -- programmers would not lose ANYTHING*. Beyond that, you are just defending the absolute worst kind of capitalist pig scum -- THEY ARE THE ONES MOST UPSET ABOUT PIRACY, BECAUSE IT'S THEIR BILLIONS. They would invest in anything. Most importantly THEY DO NOT GIVE ANYTHING BACK, FOOL (you just think it's great because there is no alternative reality to contrast). There is no morality there and no respect deserved.

But w/r/t to soggy brainz, tumble dry -- YMMV.

*except the ones who are shareholders too! Whaaahooo!

Of course, not every product a company works on is ever making profit. For each really succesful game, how many do you think there are that just don't make it to the customer for some reason? Sure there are SOME companies that produce really good products, and nearly all are a success. But there are plenty that don't make it in the world.

So just making each game free when it turns profitable won't work, for two reasons:
1. There is no real incentive for the producers of the game to make it a (big) success.
2. Who is going to cover the cost of the flops? Ok, so some of those eventually recover their costs, but I'm sure only 20-30% of the games released actually make a good profit. Another 20-30% break even. The other half or so makes a loss. [That's counting number of titles - obviously, in number of games sold, probably 80-90% make a profit, since the big sellers will beat the poor sellers by factors of 10-100x].

I'm not saying a company shouldn't give something back, or that all should be about making money. But we do (most of us at least) live in an environment where money is important. A company needs to make ENOUGH money to pay it's employees salaries and then a bit to reward those who paid for the company to start (stock-holders).

--
Mats

Originally Posted by matsp

Of course, not every product a company works on is ever making profit.
So just making each game free when it turns profitable won't work, for two reasons:
1. There is no real incentive for the producers of the game to make it a (big) success.

So if there was never another Beatles or something you'd never get to hear any music?

I would really question what the "cost" of an individual game is conceived of as, esp. w/r/t to MARKETING cost*. People really do not need advertising to hear about the existence of video games (or music). So everyone lines up on day one and the game sucks? What difference would it make then if you never even heard of the release, except maybe a week later cause a bunch of people loved it? Or from someone with similar tastes?

I certainly do not believe that just because you are a computer programmer who like to write games, you deserve money. If the game you write cannot sell enough copies to cover "production costs" (ie your salary), then too bad -- your salary just went down. It starts at zero, but it should still max out because God hates a total pig. So it is just as stupid to say that a good game (written by someone else) should then charge more to cover the salary of the loser who wrote the bad game. You may think what you are doing is worthwhile, but if no body agrees with you, the only reward you "deserve" is the satisfaction of doing what you believe is worthwhile. If that's not enough, do something different. I think this is already tempered by the concept of R&D, which allows a company to have people working on things it's members consider important without requiring them to directly contribute code or whatever to a money making product. Long live the gaming industry.

*hey I totally change my mind, they pay for cboard too. Or not.

I am going to be honest, I have pirated some games in the past. That being said there have been a lot of times I have pirated a game because it did not provide a sufficient demo for me to try before I buy it. If I enjoyed the game I will go buy the real game, and if I didn't enjoy it then I don't buy it.

I utilize a lot of the community created cracks, and have even done a few of my own because I hate it when a game requires a copy of the CD/DVD to be in the drive while I am playing. I shouldn't have to keep my discs all in a case near me, and have to get up (because my computer is not positioned to be easily accessible due to my space) and change the disc out if I have the game installed.

I am a developer and can appreciate the time and effort folks put into creating the software, which is why I use piracy as a sort of demo before I buy, instead of just using it as the way to obtain the whole game with no cost and not support the developers. At the same time I don't want to waste my money on a bad product.

MS Visio is an example of a non-game that I have used the same technique for. I used the visio knock-offs for a while but wanted to try the real thing so I pirated a copy of it, found I loved it and bought real version of it. Not all piracy is bad, and I would have never purchased visio unless it was bargain binned for a couple buck, if you know what I mean.

Exactly, give me a 10 day demo and I will really get to try things out, give me a single level, with only 2-3 of the skills usable and 1 weapon, I doubt I will get a good enough feel to judge if I want to buy it

Originally Posted by Bubba

Of which so far all attempts at this have failed.

Yes, this is our current predicament to which a solution must be found or PC games will die.
People seem to forget some things - we will always have to pay a price for something, whatever it is. We cannot get everything for free - in this case, I'm talking about the DRM. There WILL be restrictions. Keep the game in the drive, or such.
Just as we lock the door. Just as we have one year warranty instead of forever.
It's never perfect and we will have to live with these kinds of things. We must accept this.
But when it comes to games, we tend to forget...

However you are forgetting that, at least in the USA, you cannot 'take-over' people's computers just because they bought 1 piece of software. In this instance the courts have ruled in favor of the consumers.

O_o I never mentioned such a thing... Nor do they do such a thing either.
I think you should read the article a little more carefully.
It's true that some DRM do install stuff on the computer, but they never (or should never) interfere with your day-to-date use. If they do, then they are taking over your computer, yes. And that they should never do. But they should try to stop piracy.

Games can make it just fine without DRM.

I believe the article proved that all companies that tried it has suffered severe losses in case of piracy, even if the game was popular?
Now, if the game had a DRM system to prevent casual piracy AND was popular, now THEN the company would actually rake in money on the game as they should. And that is what DRM is for.

Perhaps its more a question of why aren't those sites who provide clearly illegal downloads being targeted by the corporate lawyers instead of the consumer who paid for the product? It appears to me that going after the source would be more beneficial than attacking it through your paying customer base.

I do so agree...

There are other ways to combat piracy but they are not being utilized as of yet. Improvise, adapt, and overcome or die. The market changes daily and this is nothing new. Steam has a very good approach except that the games phone home which is not all that great to me. However the benefit is that your friends can see if you are playing and it is very easy to get an online game going. Now if Steam provided boxed copies as well through an online store and allowed you to both digitally download or buy the boxed copy it would be nearly perfect. I really wouldn't care if my boxed copy phoned home to Steam but I'm one of those guys that really want the box, the manual, and the security knowing that my next hard drive format won't thrash all my games or force me to go through lengthy downloads and cd-key hunts just to get them back. Steam also has great deals running from week to week. About 3 weeks ago they ran a special on some very good games and they were only about 20 bucks. They said their sales increased almost 600%. In fact they made so much money as to overcome the discount price and actually came out far ahead of where they would have been if they had not discounted the games.

I now have over 375 games in my quickly growing collection and every single one of them is bought and paid for. 2 of those are direct downloads from Steam and about 5 or 6 of them are from my hardware vendors providing free games with their products. The rest are from various retail stores. I am in no way advocating piracy and I cannot believe how many of my friends are so quick to pirate any type of media when their very job relies on media much like what they are stealing from other companies. That just blows my mind. If you pirate you are stealing - period. No justification in my mind.

Kudos to Steam. They've done it well. But do note that Steam is a sort of DRM, nevertheless, but one that is not too intrusive.
Btw, you know that there are backup services on the web that you can purchase for a mere sum per month that will keep an online backup of your entire hard drive? Some can keep copies of specific files - that way you won't lost your information in case of a crash. Might be worth looking into. Many offer unlimited space.

Originally Posted by Elysia

I believe the article proved that all companies that tried it has suffered severe losses in case of piracy, even if the game was popular?
Now, if the game had a DRM system to prevent casual piracy AND was popular, now THEN the company would actually rake in money on the game as they should. And that is what DRM is for.
.

What do you mean by 'casual piracy'? All pirates are casual pirates! The number of people actually involved in cracking the DRM protection can be expressed with less than 10 fingers. As soon as the releasegroups are done cracking a game, the crack is distributed within a matter of hours, and everyone can apply it and play for free.

Whether or not the developers used SecuROM, Starforce, or just an old fashioned CD-key, has 0% to do with how fast the 'casual pirates' can gain access to the game content, as soon as the crackers are done, everyone can play.

No, but seriously, there are always people who can't do something.
Not to say it isn't hard, but DRM scares some people away, which is part of what it is meant to do.
"Casual" simply refers to those who are scared away or just can't do it for some reason.

Originally Posted by Elysia

No, but seriously, there are always people who can't do something.
Not to say it isn't hard, but DRM scares some people away, which is part of what it is meant to do.
"Casual" simply refers to those who are scared away or just can't do it for some reason.

So SecuROM and the likes, scares away some of the pirates who has to replace one or two files in the install directory, and instead encourages people to go through the hassle of getting it to work the legal way, e.g. online activation, phoning in to get more activations, putting up with activation server downtime, having to remove all disk drive emulators and turning off ECN, putting up with rootkits being installed with the game as well as device drivers and so on.

Honestly, i think DRM scares people into pirating, not the other way around.

Then you haven't been reading facts.
Look at the article I presented at the beginning of the thread.

Originally Posted by Elysia

Then you haven't been reading facts.
Look at the article I presented at the beginning of the thread.

Neo1 is right about this. I've heard that many people download cracks for their legit games because of annoying DRMs.

Originally Posted by maxorator

Neo1 is right about this. I've heard that many people download cracks for their legit games because of annoying DRMs.

I have done this on several occasions. Zeus was one notable example, the program simply would not run on my system, so I installed a crack and it worked perfectly. Diablo II also had DRM issues, both these games are old, but the newer stuff also causes problems. While I no longer downlaod cracks, for technical not moral reasons, When I encounter these malware programs, I simply note ther company that published them, and find out their parent company, then I stop buying products from them. I spend a lot of money on games each year, I dont have time to bother with fascist game companies screwing up my system so they can increae sales by 1%. I think they need to be held liable for the effects their faulty software has. If I buy a car and the car explodes adn burns my house to the ground the car company is held liable, but if their software crashes my systemand causes me to lose 2 years fo research, they cant be sued for that loss.