[dogscoff]

Another idea: Get Shrapnel to add a few dollars to the price of the game and pass the extra cash straight onto PBW. Ppl buying the game would be subsidising the pirates but hell, that happens anyway.

Perhaps for SEV this could be integrated into the overall game marketting strategy:

-Sell the SEV CDs and manuals at cost+shipping, and have the game as a free download. Encourage ppl to distribute the copy the game for their friends. Maybe restrict the number of AI players possible in a game whilst allowing loads and loads of humans, but otherwise have the freely distributable Version fully functional.

-Now hard-code the game so that the only way to play Online multiplayer is via a specific PBW server. Maybe take hotseat out, but I'd say leave it in.

-Then you simply charge for each PBW login & password, either a one-off payment or a recurring fee. Obviously for this to work Shrapnel and PBW would have to be somehow integrated into one-another, business wise.

In other words, the one-player game would become effectively freeware with the money coming from access to the multiplayer functions. Maybe some hacker could get in and alter the game to allow multiplayer without the PBW servers or somehow fool the game into connecting to an illegitimate server, but it sure wouldn't be easy. Piracy would therefore be redundant, since you want everyone to have a copy of the software, and all you'd have to police would be access to the game servers.

Just an idea. Two, actually.

[ September 09, 2002, 16:33: Message edited by: dogscoff ]