Why Not Digitial Distribution?

[Shovah32]

Even though alot of people seem to be against it, I support this too. I've spent plenty of money that I probably wouldn't have on things that couldn't be downloaded.
Digital Distribution is so much fun n_n.

[Revolution]

With Gal Civ 2 I was able to Download the game/cd key online and pay an extra 5 bucks to get the CD's shipped to me. Perhaps with Dom3 they could do it where you could download the game and get a password for the "I want to play now" aspect and then the person would get the actual CD/manual in the mail a week or two later.

[sector24]

I may be wrong here (and feel perfectly free to tell me so) but I think Shrapnel is very sensitive to piracy, far more so than some companies. Digitial download opens the dark door to the scary place. Some companies believe that the increased sales outweigh the small percentage of pirated copies, but I have never seen any hard numbers on this subject.

[Jazzepi]

sector24 said:
I may be wrong here (and feel perfectly free to tell me so) but I think Shrapnel is very sensitive to piracy, far more so than some companies. Digitial download opens the dark door to the scary place. Some companies believe that the increased sales outweigh the small percentage of pirated copies, but I have never seen any hard numbers on this subject.

I always find this type of argument very silly. Steve Jobs wrote an interesting piece talking about how the vast majority of music sold by CD-labels is sold DRM free, or with DRM that is so easy to circumvent that it might as well not even be there. CD ripping software is easy to use, and convenient.

On the flip side, said Jobs, the DRM you buy from digital downloads is atrocious.

Why then, if the vast majority of your output is unprotected, do you mire a rather small proportion of it in this draconic, DIVX style, DRM? The answer is, you shouldn't be.

So to make the comparison complete, the DRM on Dom 3 (CD-key) is relatively trivial. Pirated copies are out there on the internet, available with CD-keys. This is a reality of modern gaming that applies readily not just to Dom 3, but to all games.

So the idea that releasing it into a format with digital downloading would somehow increase piracy, when the game is already readily available in pirated form, is just silly. The genie is already out of the metaphorical bottle. By making the game available for download on say, Steam, which has decent DRM in place that would not require any more work by the illwinter staff AFAIK, they'd be able to reach a whole new audience.

Personally I'd /love/ to see Dom 3 turn into a block buster multimillion dollar product for the designers of the game. That way they could actually hire some people, and churn out Dom 4 with all sorts of neat goodies. Of which I would be first in line to pre order the gold version

Just to nip this in the bud, I have both a legitimate copy of Dom 2 and 3. I was thinking about taking a photo with my copy of the Dom 3 manual, but I seem to have misplaced my digital camera during the move =\

Jazzepi

[Nikolai]

Are you serious saying you would rather have Steam DRM'd version of Dominions III than version we have now?

Sorry, but this is nuts! From Steam, I get only games that I cannot get in a box and a CD, and then I play them only on my home desktop. I play Dominions III from two computers day to day, and two others when I move around. Can you even play Steam locked games without Internet connection?

[Jazzepi]

Nikolai said:
Are you serious saying you would rather have Steam DRM'd version of Dominions III than version we have now?

Sorry, but this is nuts! From Steam, I get only games that I cannot get in a box and a CD, and then I play them only on my home desktop. I play Dominions III from two computers day to day, and two others when I move around. Can you even play Steam locked games without Internet connection?

No, I'm saying that there is no digitally distributed version of DOM 3 and that Steam would be a potential candidate as a method of distro (NOT that a digitally downloaded version should replace the CD-only hard copy distro). Personally I don't care how they do it, I was just trying to refute the argument that "making something available by digital distribution = more piracy".

Also, I really like Steam. I would never buy a game off Steam I plan to install on multiple computers, but I do not have a laptop that is strong enough to run TF2, or HL2, or Portal, nor would I want to drop the grand or two that would be required to get good FPS.

I bought Orange Box on Steam, and I'm very happy with it. It installs itself, downloads its own updates right away, and I don't have to keep track of a serial # or a DVD.

FYI, Steam does allow you to play games offline as long as they're not in the middle of upgrading.

http://support.steampowered.com/kb_a...3160-AGCB-2555

Jazzepi

[Endoperez]

I got it the usual way. I also got DomII usual way, but I had to wait for more than 6 months for that, because I couldn't order it on my own and my parents thought it would have a negative effect on my grades.

That reminds me, even though the Shrapnel stuff probably knows the numbers a bit better then me, I'm pretty sure if you sold Dominions 3 on retail you'd have even more buyers! All those impulse-buyers who wander around in PC shops looking for something to buy would see it and buy it, because Dominions is so well known. Also, there are a lot of people who can't or don't want to buy games online, and I bet they'd all buy Dominions as well. Also, translating the game and the manual to multiple languages would be great. Something like esperanto would be perfect - there are probably speakers of esperanto in all countries of the world, which would be a huge boost in your market when compared to just those who understand English. Also, it would be so cool to buy Vatican-version of Dominions to play Marignon. Latin for the win!