Disturbing Facts
 

I have copied this from the Stars Supernova Forum regarding their look for a publisher. This is about copy protection and such.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>"It's not really copy protection, it's just cool - if you saw one, you'd want it. It's shiny gloss black on matt card. Basically, we don't believe we can defeat piracy - you just can't stop it. However, we want the customers to actually enjoy holding the product. We take a lot of care over production, and we hope that people - like yourself - appreciate the benefit. Consequently, rather than simply copying the game people will want to purchase it. In case your interested, let me tell you a couple of facts. We have sold around 2000 copies of Uplink, however there have been 12000 downloads of the patch. So, for every one copy we sell, 6 are being played.

I do find this a little disappointing, as the money we charge goes straight to us: the developer. There is no middleman (bar the internet charges) and �15 is dirt cheap for a game the standard of Uplink. I'm not slating piracy - half my CDs are copied, but equally I believe there is a difference between ripping of a massive corporation, who have hardly contributed at all to the actual art, and stealing from the artists themselves."<hr></blockquote>

My god, 2000 sold and 10,000 pirated! That is just unreal.... or is it?? How many pirated Version of SEIV Gold are now in circulation? I'll venture a guess of something on the order of 3 to 1. 3 copies to 1 original disk. And the Gold Version JUST came out.

Re: Disturbing Facts
 

Of course that is a worst case 10K.
I know that I've downloaded the Patches multiple times. Once when it comes out, and again when I tried reinstalling to fix a problem. Then again, when I had to go BACK a Version in order to play a savegame.
Now, I just keep all the patches I need in a 100MB (for Beta) superzip.

I'm not saying that its insignificant, but it is probably not quite as bad as it seems.

Re: Disturbing Facts
 

Ya or one for work and one for the office. If they're having trouble downloading the whole thing, they might do it more than once. Download failures, etc.

Re: Disturbing Facts
 

"I'm not slating piracy - half my CDs are copied, but equally I believe there is a difference between ripping of a massive corporation, who have hardly contributed at all to the actual art, and stealing from the artists themselves.""

Pot, here's kettle.

"YOU'RE BLACK!"

WTF *is* uplink, anyway?

Phoenix-D

Re: Disturbing Facts
 

Ya that was a little odd. This guy seems to think he's robin hood or something. Steeling is steeling, either do it or don't, there's no in between.

Re: Disturbing Facts
 

OMG! 20:1???? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Re: Disturbing Facts
 

An old friend of mine, he's in the Army right now, used to write programs. He had a problem with pirating of the beta, so I suggested a way he used to track the Users and people that pirated his beta copies by incorporating a Version checker in the game to find and download updates on his site.

Since each beta user had been assigned different passwords to run the beta, the Version checker could compare the passwords to a list he had stored Online. If the passwords didn't match, the beta would uninstall itself and send information to him on the violater. On top of that, it would write a thing into several places in the registry to not allow another install of the beta. He was clever in the registry code as it was made to look like standard system info that would be missed unless you looked for it.

Back to the topic at hand. Could a modification of this system be used. Perhaps the CD is required for play using the music tracks as the check and putting a similar 'check for update' system?

I dunno, but it's an idea I feel has merit (even if the original concept is borderline overkill)

Re: Disturbing Facts
 

There are two main problems with requiring the CD to be in the machine to play:

1. The ease with which practically anyone now can burn 20 copies of his/her original SE4 disk.

2. There are times when it is convenient to not be required to have the CD in the machine to play. (i.e. multiplayer on a LAN against a few friends that haven't bought the game (but will as soon as they get a taste of how great the game is http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ))

Re: Disturbing Facts
 

I'll have you know that Every copy of SEIII, SEIV and SEIV Gold I still have the Disk of each one I find it apalling (?) that people will do this (tho in my younger day I may have http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif )

Re: Disturbing Facts
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> How many pirated Version of SEIV Gold are now in circulation? <hr></blockquote>

It's hard to track this. We believe that SEIV Original was pirated at 20 to 1. That is based on numbers we could track and then figuring we were only finding a small percentage.

It really hurts. Just think of what Malfador and Shrapnel would be able to bring to you, if we had just 20% of those pirated in sales.