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Space Empires V Pirated!
Well it had to happen at some point. SE V is being pirated and so is Dominions 3. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif This is why the small developer cannot survive. Some low life scumbag, and you know that you are that, has posted these games on many torrent sites. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif
Disclaimer: I say the following as a person and not as a member or moderator of this forum. My opinion is my alone and has nothing to do with Shrapnel Games or any member here. FLAME RANT TO FOLLOW - Read At On Risk - RATED (M) for Mad! (Does contain some harsh negativity so please do not read if you are easily offended.) DO NOT READ PAST THIS POINT IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED! To the low life scumbags who are behind this, you are utterly pathetic. I will bet that you are middle aged, balding fat *** loosers who still live at home in momma's basement. I bet that the only time you have ever seen a women naked, apart from you porn collection, was when you spied on your mother taking a shower last week. Oh the joy that must have brought you down in the basement after everyone had gone to sleep. You SOB's are the VERY reason independent game developers, quite literally the guy next door, cannot make it in this industry. You parasites take their work and post it for any a jackass cheap bastard to download for free. You indictable peaces of sh** should be hunted down and beaten to death with your own biohazard filled keyboards! You are a cancer upon the body of niche gaming, one that feeds upon the hard work and dedication of people who lack the resources or money but still try and develop games for a market that has been utterly abandoned by the big gaming companies. You should be ashamed of yourselves, not just because of the way you look and live, but because of your actions! You nose picking bugger eaters need to stop stuffing your pimpled infested unshaven faces long enough comprehend the deplorable actions of your reckless disregard for the small guys. "Oh the internet should be free. Software is for everyone!" Go tell it on the mountain you obese pile of dog vomit! Your holier than though self righteous free the program mentality has only served to undermine and jeopardize the small independent developers while doing nothing to the big huge MS conglomerate machines that suck up ideas and spit them out as Windows version! You cripple the little guy by feeding the cooperate monsters! You are lower than snake sh** and I hope that someday someone steals something of value from you so that you can suffer the way you are making these small game developers suffer! |
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Nose picking bugger eaters?
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The sad part is that the Space Empires series is actually WORTH money.....unlike say games made by EA which are pieces of crap on a cd, wrapped in celaphane (sp), sold for $50-60, then have more turds added to them in the form of $20-30 expansions.
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Booger.... bugger, whats the difference? They eat snot that they pick out of their own noses... enough said.
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Unfortunately it was pirated all the way back in October, and I completely agree with your outlook on this. But... if you are refering to the recent torrent that went up, it is NOT the pirated version of the game, only the patch.
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yeah, sadly I saw SEV on *edited, please do not post URLs for pirate sites* long ago...
Uhm, I use it to rip off TV shows I miss... I hope that's 'more' ok... Javaslinger |
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Do they contain the commercials?
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uh no....
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I am just peeved about SE V and Dominions 3 being on torrent sites. Those are the focus of my rant. The SOB's who posted them are the kind of people whom I wish harm to come too. It just angers me to no end that they are willingly jepordizing the future of these game franchises by giving them away. Neither of these independant developers deserves to be cheated out of funds for their games. Its like kicking a bumb when he is down and all he wants to do is try and sit up. Its pathetic *******ism pure and simple. They dislike the game so they are going to help undermine the developer. That is just complete utter childish bullcrap and the people that did this aren't worth spit. I wouldn't give them the sweat off my groin if they were dying of thirst in the desert, that is how low my opinion of them is.
Any one who would do this to Aaron or the guys who developed Dominions 3 are just scum sucking bottom feeders, and they know they are. |
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Well, to be honest, active torrents are a sign of popularity. If it wasn't popular, it wouldn't be actively pirated. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
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Meh. Hardcore pirates don't buy games anyway. Casual piracy, if anything, can help a game's popularity by spreading the word. How many reading here pirated IV and either went on to buy a legit copy of it or V when it came out? I read an article somewhere years back that suggested for every legitimate copy of SEIV there were at least 5 pirate copies in use. (and to avoid the inevitable I bought my copy of SEIV from a specialist UK wargaming store for about the equivalent of $90 at the time having got hooked on the demo.)
The truth is publishers are probably the biggest cause of independent developers going out of business so if there's the need for a childish tirade perhaps that's where it should be getting directed. (and for what it's worth as far as I can see Shrapnel isn't a bad publisher. Or Stardock or, for that matter, Steam.) |
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Probably very few.
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Ahhh you could be right. However it's definitely true that a pirated game does not equal a lost sale.
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IMO that is a very poor arguement. It's kinda' like saying that stealing cars is OK cause you'll increase their popularity and that you can 'try it before you buy it'. Hey, that's what the demo was for wasn't it? |
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Good point about the demo. I hadn't thought of that for use in a response.
It isn't really the pirating aspect that angers me, its that someone pirated THESE games knowing full well that they were independantly developed by small one to two man operations who depend upon the income from the sales of their games to help cover the cost of developing other games. They basically stoled from these people, people whom I admire and respect greatly, and that is what pi**es me off so much. |
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I read a comment from Sid Mier (sp?)(I think it was his article)(or Chris Taylor....hummm
) and he commented on pirating as such, "The majority of people that pirate a game would have NEVER bought the game in the first place. So, we aren't really loosing sales." |
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People should take a step back and relax a little. It's the lack of visibility on the high-street and mainstream games stores that likely harms independent publishers more (less chance of impulse purchases) and the fear of piracy is what engenders consumer-hostile monstrosities like StarForce. |
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A few years back, a friend of mine released a program that was pirated pretty bad for a few weeks, we countered it by creating dummy-torrents filled with dead files (such as overly-large scans of various body parts in TIFF and BMP format) and distributed them to various torrent sites under the same name. I think we got about a dozen people in on the prank so that in the end, 9/10 torrents for his program was really one of us showing the dark side of the moon.
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the one with a giant canyon, of course
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It is illegal to pirate software. The outcome can be expensive and it hopefully helps funding SE 6.
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SE6 is going to be 100% funded by Strategy First since they now own the Space Empires property. When it's getting built by the Brigade E5 team you remember what I said about publishers being the worst thing to happen to independent developers.
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Stolen is stolen. A piece of software is not a leaf of bread or a glass of fresh water.
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Yes...IMO the majority of the ppl who download pirated copies never planned to buy the original in the first place...many of these ppl, however, are likely to buy the original version sooner or later.
Of course this does not make it right...it is illegal...end of story...but... Lets take Dom3 as an example...a persona might download the demo, play with it, and decide to buy it...HOWEVER, the price they ask for Dom3 for some ppl is really too much regardless the game quality, the small dev team and so on...it is still too much no matter the reason. People earn their money in this World so they choose carefully where to allocate them...they are called customers...u can ask as much money as u want for a game but have to face the consequence of ppl not buying it because it is too much. I don't know what kind of market research they have carried out but still...for many potential cutomers it is still too much no matter what kind of arguments anyone is going to put through. And also the point which states that there are worse games aout there, that the game is worth the money...bla...bla...bla...it's still not enough. For a lot of potential customer it will still be too much. Said that...a lot of this potential customers who are not willing to buy the game they tried are probably going to download the game illegally...this is inevitable. I was going to be one of those potential customer because i seriously wanted to buy...but when i saw the price i just decided that it is really too much for me. Of course i'm not going to download it because i think that it is not good for the two ppl who developed the game...HOWEVER, how many ppl are going to be honest? So, the price of the product helps againsta pirates IMO. |
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I am sorry, all because they don't plan to buy Space Empires V or Dominions 3 in the first place really isn't a valid excuse for downloading them. Its like saying "Well I wasn't going to buy that car in the first place, so its ok for me to go out and steal it." That is by far the most druggie indused moronic logic that I have ever been forced to consider in my life. It makes absolutely no sense at all. A person might as well have two first names and live in a trailer if that is the logic behind their day to day lives.
I don't really blame the people who download the software, its out there so its fair game. I blame the SOB retards who posted it in the first place. In my opinion they had no right to pirate Space Empires V or Dominions 3 at all. They took these games, and posted them for any and all to download freely and in so doing, intentionally compormised the future of both game franchises. I agree that people will be people and if stuff is free there going to take it regardless of right or wrong, but those who POST the stuff for others to download have no such excuse. They are not stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, they are simply just stealing something that took somone quite literally years to develop and they are giving it away for free and it isn't theres to give away! Who the hell do they think they are to take something as precious as one of these games and give it away as if they own the rights to do so? F*** them! They should be strung up and hanged from the nearest light pole for all to see with a sign around their necks that reads "I Pirated Space Empires V and Dominions 3." You know who you are and I know that you don't give a s**t about what you did and that is why I think your lower than snake sh** and would love nothing more than to see you gutted by a dull butter knife and left to die an agonizing death in the heart of the hotest desert on Earth. |
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Yes, if someone downloads SEV (or anything else) and decides to keep it then they should pay for it if they are able. There are however enough cases of people being burnt by commercial game demos that ended up being very different from the full release, to justify them being cautious and wanting to try a full download first (even if a warez one) before making a decision. Those who can but won't pay are not worth spitting on, let alone discussing further here. |
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Can we set up the same for SEV and Dom3? I would gladly help ... |
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I figure all the broadband users here, we could definitely disrupt it on a large scale. Anyone else interested?
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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.
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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.
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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 Quote:
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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) |
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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. |
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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. |
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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
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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.
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And of course something else that would work even better.
Seed up torrents that contain whatever (it would be best if they contained the demo or something that could be mis-identified as SEV without containing junk files) , then when they are at around 95-98%, disconnect them. That way the entire torrent will never be downloaded, and it takes a long time for people to usually realize they have a dead torrent when it gets up to that kind of level. This bypasses the problem of the downloaders discovering that they have a bad torrent, and spreading the news. |
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I have no problems with people who download avaiable software that they eventually buy. My problem is with the person or persons posting Space Empires V and Dominions 3 to these sites. Those are the POS's that I dislike.
Alow me to clarify. I don't blame the pirating of space empires v or Dominions 3 on the people who chose to download the software, I blame it on the person(s) who uploaded it in the first place. I don't want to sound calus, but I ONLY care about space empires V and Dominions 3 and that was the whole purpose behind my posts here. Whoever posted those two games to the BT sites is the pirate and that person should be held responsible for all the sales lost to both game publishers. I would hope that any one who downloads these games would choose to buy them in order to support future games. |
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AT, you realize with a torrent that everyone who downloads also uploads, right?
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I'll freely admit I was a pirate. I pirated SEIV back in my younger days, before I had any money to spend on it after I tried out the demo. Then, when I had the money, I bought SEIV and was happy with that decision. I didn't pirate to get it free, I pirated as a method of...delaying payment for the game that I was going to buy anyways http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif Condemn that if you will, it won't bother me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
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We all have our skeletons in the closest, I am no hypocrit, I just dislike the fact that someone, quite possibly a member here, could be so bitter that they would willingly undermine the success of Dominions 3 and SE V by posting them to a BT site. To me they are traiters to the franchises, the fanboys, and the games themselves. They represent the scum that should never have been aloud to evolve into human form.
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The publishers know how much they have to charge to make enough money to stay in business. How much customers want to pay is only one factor in the pricing decision. |
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You'd never get rid of it entirely, but the more sites you can get it taken down from the less people will find the torrent and the less people therefore will pirate the game. If you really think that'll help sales. |
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actually, you target the original uploaders.
See, any copy of SEV that is copied from the CD, I believe, uses a key, correct? If so, that key can be traced to the original person who pirated it via strategy first's shipping logs. If it's sold online, we have a credit card and a shipping address. If its sold in a store, then we can trace the cd key to the batch shipment sent to a store, then check with that store's purchase logs to find out who bought it and even get a picture (and if we got time, maybe play a rousing game of one-sided chair beatings). Once we find the SOB, we then look at his torrent uploading stats and the number of down loaders for that torrent and pull a page from the RIAA, We take that information and times the number of down loaders times the number of days available times the full retail price to determine how much he owes aaron. And if he's outside the country or unwilling to pay, I'm sure more than one of us will be more than happy to play the aforementioned chair beating game with him. |
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I like your thoughts Azselendor.
Only thing against it is if they have made a key generator. I'm not sure how hard that would be to create, but if only a simple algorithm was used... |
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