Disturbing Facts

Lupusman · #1 March 24th, 2002, 03:42 AM

Just for people's info, I just searched through Kazaa for any Space Empires game, and found nothing. Found Stars! though, crappy game . .

And just to tell Shrapnel, if you are going by patch downloads, I myself got the Lastest patch no less than five different times.

Richard · #2 March 24th, 2002, 03:54 AM

No we don't go by patch downloads, we have very accurate ways of finding out what the piracy rates are for our games. And they are pretty bad. But they are pretty bad for everyone...

quote:
Originally posted by Lupusman:
Just for people's info, I just searched through Kazaa for any Space Empires game, and found nothing. Found Stars! though, crappy game . .

And just to tell Shrapnel, if you are going by patch downloads, I myself got the Lastest patch no less than five different times.

PvK · #3 March 24th, 2002, 05:03 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Arak Koba:

You just described Communism versus Capitalism.

Not at all. Not even Socialism versus Capitalism. Half of what I described is very close to what some of these mega media corps are going for: selling subscriptions to a whole range of media (e.g. cable TV). They're just still hung up about copyright enforcement. The bad part is that they probably are opposed to the other part of what I was talking about, which is compensating mostly the people that actually create the content, and doing it on the basis of customer satisfaction.

PvK

disabled · #4 March 24th, 2002, 06:18 AM

A drastic option I touched on earlier: Secretly put a destructive line of code into the program that will...

1.) Corrupt the Game master files.
2.) Corrupt all related game files.
3.) Place several (DOZEN) references in the registry blocking another install of the program.
4.) Encrypt the Registry Install blocks.
5.) Force User Registration of the program with Machine Code, CD Code, etc. This info should also be encrypted.

Just a few more pennies.

tesco samoa · #5 March 24th, 2002, 07:34 PM

The problem with Locking down hardware and software is that they punish the Users... All anti-pircy techniques will be broken. Who is punished then. The people who pay for the product.

Wheels and manual look up do not work. They're a pain. And once you lose that stuff it is a pain to replace.

And who owns the Registry? The user or companies.

I like to know what is going in there so if you encrypt it I think I would skip the product.

Piracy is a problem, but is also a reality. It will happen. Do you design games for a casual user who is going to play it a few times or do you design games for the people who play them over and over. Look at those people and you will see they purchase the programs because they want that product to continue having a life.

Question I would like to ask the software companies is why do they not go after a levy like the RIAA did in Canada on all blank media that is sold. They may as well beat the Movie Companies to the punch.

Content is king. and this copyright/piracy battle is going to screw us all in the long run.

Because the Content Companies are only looking out in 'our best interests'

Atrocities · #6 March 24th, 2002, 07:49 PM

Piracy is as wide spread as cheating in multiplayer games. Its a sad sick state of affairs when you log onto a Half-Life Counterstrike server and get killed by a cheater who is using a pirated copy of the game.

Us honest folks can't win to save our asses.

Lisif Deoral · #7 March 24th, 2002, 08:53 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Richard:
No we don't go by patch downloads, we have very accurate ways of finding out what the piracy rates are for our games.

I was wondering if the "ways" include getting some stats from this bulletin board...

And, no, I bought the game.