Re: Space Empires V Pirated!
 

Can we set up the same for SEV and Dom3?
I would gladly help ...

Re: Space Empires V Pirated!
 

I figure all the broadband users here, we could definitely disrupt it on a large scale. Anyone else interested?

Re: Space Empires V Pirated!
 

I'm not, because disrupting it would mean that they would be all the more motivated to pirate it. Pirating perhaps does help increase sales of a product, and the SE5 torrent possibly attracts more attention to SE5 than usual.

Re: Space Empires V Pirated!
 

No not me. It may sound funny but doing that just seems like a negative thing to do; maybe because I view it as a purposeful deception? To me one negative [pirating] does not justify another. Pirating is bad but it is going to happen so long as you have to pay for anything.

Re: Space Empires V Pirated!
 

I'm struggling to see how pirating SEV helps increase sales. The logic works for music because some people do indeed download a few tracks from an album, decide they like it then go and buy it. That doesn't really work with a game... you either have SEV or you don't.

If we really want these torrents removed the best thing to do would be this:

http://www.mininova.org/faq
Obviously, either Malfador or Strategy first would have to do it; preferable Strategy first, Aaron has better things to do http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/yawn.gif

Re: Space Empires V Pirated!
 

Don't understand me wrong , I'm not PRO-Pirate.
But through pirating I got to know SEIV 1.49, so simply said : without pirating I would NEVER BOUGHT SEIV-gold and SEV. And I would neither infected 4 friends, 1 brother and 2 nephews with the Space Empire Virus (they all bought SEIV and the most of them are going to buy SEV (or already did))

So, I know it's NO excuse but it's an simple example on HOW pirating can help a game to get known (see it as an extended demo)

Re: Space Empires V Pirated!
 

Pirating software increases sales like this.

1.) Download Torrent
2.) Pirate tells others about the game and Torrent
3.) ....
4.) PROFIT!

No offense, but I think people who buy software after pirating it is maybe 0.01% of all software pirates.

Now while the dummy-torrent plan is deceptive, it's basically a ploy to sour the milk for would-be pirates and discourage them from attempting to pirate it.


On the other hand, we can have a bit more fun with the dummy torrent and load it up with advertising materials, the demo, and such and distribute that in its place of the actual game. This wouldn't discourage piracy of it, but expose the game's demo to more and more people.

Re: Space Empires V Pirated!
 

Tim_Ward, unfortunately that wont really help, because torrents are not only usually posted to multiple sites, but there are torrent sites which index other sites torrents as well.... basically they spread.

What I do is put up torrents of each patch as they come out. And when there is a good stable version of the demo I intend to put up multiple torrents of that. A slightly different form of marketing you might say http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

As to the suggestion of seeding bad torrents, yes it will work, but the word usually gets spread pretty quickly if a torrent is bad. So it would be necessary to seed a new torrent occasionally, make sure it is the EXACT same size as a real SEV upload would be. And the file name would have to be something like spaceempires5.iso,or as a rar file. If you are just seeding a bunch of random files, it wont work. Because the bittorrent clients report the names of the files they are downloading.

And yes, if it is not obvious I am frequent torrent user. I download lots of porn, old movies, and tv shows. So I guess I'm a pirate, arrrrr.

Re: Space Empires V Pirated!
 

No, if your a programmer the real fun is including the actual game..with critical bits missing. Say, it installs and runs fine, but dies with a "Don't pirate me" message a third of the way through. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Space Empires V Pirated!
 

when my friend did it, he encoded all of the nice little moon shots we included as a multi-part RAR file and we seeded 10-15 bad torrents each using popular names of other piraters.