There has been quite a bit of discussion in the past couple of weeks about piracy, Demigod, and the possible effect on the industry as a whole. In reading various blogs, community forums, and talking with gaming 'experts', there has been a wide range of responses from both ends of the spectrum on this.Demigod was officially released two weeks ago but as we covered here last week, it had its street date broken by Gamestop, which led to pirates around the world to slam Stardock servers with illegal copies of the game. At one point, there were over 100,000 more players than anticipated on their servers, and only around 18,000 legitimate copies of the game sold at that time.
MSNBC.com has a video about gaming piracy, in which Stardock CEO Brad Wardell comments and adds his thoughts about how it affected Demigod, and possibly the industry.
As I said, I will watch it when home. I'm just being more sceptical based on the previous stuff I've seen come out of their network. I am not sure if I worded my response bad or not, but it was intended to clearly say I'm not judging yet.
+1
Game reviews are not usually not done after the game release, the review might be published after the game release, but that has absolutely nothing to do when they actually play the game.
The game will either have been judged from a pre-release beta version, or the final retail copy when it goes gold.
So obviously the game failed on it's poor out of the box balancing, it failed on the poor interface(Especially with the 4 weakest demigods, the generals) and it just simply failed because it didn't deliver.
It's a shame they blame pirates on not properly revolutionizing a community-made game, making this alienate all the DoTA players, and leaving new players with a shoddy game.
If there is more than one IP address using the same CD-KEY at the same time. The CD-KEY will be considered as hacked and will become unsuseable until the original owner can prove he got a legitimate copy.
Then you he has to contact support and wait on a reset? That sounds a bit extreme and would put me off your game.
But upping the limit to something higher. Say, 5 or 10 should cure that problem as the user should really only be using 1. Then if he has a problem and ends up throwing a second or third IP at you it won't cause an alarm or the user any problems.
The Pirated stuff will def. hit a limit of 5 easily so no worries there. The only piracy you end up letting through is casual "borrow my game" piracy, but that isn't what you have to worry about as much, I imagine (I don't do game software).
Of course, but there would be a lag period from when the connection is dropped via something like a router reboot and the server notices it. The connection would usually have to timeout on the server side as it notices that it hasn't recieved any data in X seconds. That is the "edge case" that I was explaining as possibly happening.
As a developer you have to always think about these edge cases whenever your write software.
Now if his system is able to detect that edge case and handle it internally in a time window of a few miliseconds then he probably doesn't need to care about it. But he would still have to think about any other edge cases his customers might encounter.
Why would you be trying to play multiplayer when you don't have internet access?
The only real protection you can do is online, such as multiplayer. Like the server will only allow the user to connect if their serial is not being used elsewhere. When a thef connects chances are someone is already connected so they get refused.
um maybe he has a lan party goin on
It's their own fault.
It's their own fault.
I'm sure they thought of adding DRM before they launched it. Problem with DRM is that it can still bypassed with cracks while legitimate users suffer of problems because of DRM.
The best way to deal with piracy is to have CDKEY verified by the server while completely eliminating cd checks. See Diablo2/Warcraft 3 as examples. If you want single player you're welcome to get your pirated copy but if you want to enjoy battle.net goodness then you need your valid cd-key.
Obiously this cannot effectively be done for single-player only games. And requiring an internet connection to play offline single-player is retarded.
Realistically DRM hurts those who actually buy the game as the pirates usually rip all that stuff out pretty easily and pretty fast.
I agree with Harbinger, that companies should only seek to restrict online multiplayer access, while leaving other things untouched.
It's their own fault.
No, they should have had a better network infrastructure to begin with. If all those people had been paying customers the situation would have still been the same...Poor planning.
It's their own fault.
No, they should have had a better network infrastructure to begin with. If all those people had been paying customers the situation would have still been the same...Poor planning.
If those were legitimate sales, they could at least justify upgrading their infrastructure with the revenue.
Seriously, it is painful to listen to.
Sure, stealing a car surely isn't as easy as downloading a file, but when you add no sort of protection at all, you're really shooting yourself in the foot. Anyone willing to spend a dedicated amount of time on something should really do more to protect their investment.
I believe the general consensus from the community is that, look: protect your game, but don't start installing bullsh-- on our computers that can really screw with our system. Other games have protection built in them, but you don't see people avoiding those games, do you? So long as you're not jumping out doing what EA did with Spore or anything, we're okay.
As much as want to, I simply cannot offer any bit of sympathy for Brad, Stardock, or the developers at Gas Powered Games.
But I agree with some of what you said. They don't need DRM per say to add protections to online play. Just doing a simple hash check to verify that the same user is loading the game online could help them out quite a bit.
You end up saying "I'll keep the DRM out and the pirate can play offline, but can't enjoy the added value of multiplayer" which is fair. That leaves added value that the pirated version can't match and an incentive for those who like the downloaded game to purchase the legal copy.
After all, DRM is a failure. The pirates yank it out anyway so adding it doesn't do you any good. It is seeing where you can add value for those who do legally pay without stabbing those customers at the same time.
Game makers have the right to protect their games, but a compromise is needed. IMO steam is good at that compromise.
+dead.cell: You raise a good point but it's really about trust. It wasn't that big of an issue with Sins of a Solar Empire, another Stardock game. Actually, the game sold many copies within its first couple of months. It even sold more in its first month than Call of Duty 4 did in 2 months. All without any copy protection and minimal media coverage. Imagine that!
All in all, I'm sure piracy would die down if developers and publishers would cut-down on the DRM. Also, appealing to the needs of everyone instead of the hardcore PC gamers with state-of-the-art gaming PCs would go a long way in improving sales and decreasing piracy. Unfortunately, that's unlikely to happen.
Office 2007 did quite well. As did Sins of A Solar Empire, Orange Box, Call of Duty 4.....
Good Software sells.
They didnt do anything wrong.. blame Gamestop...
They didnt do anything wrong.. blame Gamestop...
I think maybe you're misunderstanding what was being said. Gamestop released the game early. So people who had the game early were putting torrents out for the game so people who were waiting to buy it online could then get it before it was available (through impulse). Which is the problem..as far as I know. So yeah, part of the problem is Gamestops early release. I think I got that right?
well, I guess they where not ready server side.
driving even more devs into bad DRM schemas and driving the politicians to filter and censor the net.
The problem lies somewhere else brad and scott, so please don't follow this route any longer.
It was ok in the beginning, but you should not overdo this topic.
Stick to your initial drive with the gamers rights and try to look at the real problems.
Then it is ok.
lolwut?
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