Why Not Digitial Distribution?

[Toran]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Same with the docs as pdf thing. Just because pirate sites have it doesnt mean its worthless to protect it. As long as pirate sites openly declare themselves to be pirate sites then they arent much of a concern. But making it possible to get it from non-pirate sites would be disastrous to any effort to control it.

Why does it make a difference where the file originally comes from? In the end, either legitimate customers will get it with their product, or they will pirate it from one of various different sources. Most copying this day isn't done "from a friend to a friend" (although you gave protection as a means to inhibit that one), but just by spreading it over the web.

Yeah, I know, the "casual copying" will be avoided, but then it's just again the old game: The "good guys" (that would maybe just hand a friend a copy) get their DRM/protection stuff, and the anonymous masses in the web use an unprotected version of the game....

That's not meaning I'm a big fan of digital distribution - I will sometimes consider it for "small" investments or "small" games/tools, but not for games/programs I might also use/"need" in the far future where I might rely on certain servers to activate my product. Yep, I know, there are different methods, but in the end I hate all DRM and tend to use cracks on my original products where they help me with "comfort".

Anything that is less comfortable than what the pirated version offers is a bad thing IMO. Treat the customer friendly, don't try to limit him.

[thejeff]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Except in implementation. If you provide a code which allows a person to download to any machine, then you are back to allowing "casual copying" between buddies which has always been the main reason for DRM. Not pirates. As people say, you cant stop pirates.

But the current version allows a person with the CD to install it to any machine as long as they have the key. They're allowing "casual copying" between buddies now. They can't play MP together, but that wouldn't change with downloading.
The only difference is that it would be easier for buddies who aren't physically close to copy.

Personally I don't really care, but some of these arguments are silly.

[lch]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Except in implementation. If you provide a code which allows a person to download to any machine, then you are back to allowing "casual copying" between buddies which has always been the main reason for DRM. Not pirates. As people say, you cant stop pirates.

Same with the docs as pdf thing. Just because pirate sites have it doesnt mean its worthless to protect it. As long as pirate sites openly declare themselves to be pirate sites then they arent much of a concern. But making it possible to get it from non-pirate sites would be disastrous to any effort to control it.

I don't understand what you're saying, or what your point is. The game as it is now does not depend on the CD as a physical medium to be present in the disc drive itself when installing. For machines that don't have an optical drive, I just copy the files on it over the network. The authentication of the game copy happens by the user when he starts the game the first time after installation, by typing in his serial code. Exactly the same could be done with a copy that has been downloaded over the internet.

As long as the game manual hasn't been made available for free download, other sites won't be able to offer it for free, too, and will refrain from doing so. Making it available then will be no less illegal than it is now.

What I've been saying is: There is no technical detail to the game that forbids digital downloads.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

And I wouldnt say "no chance of detection". Im a netcop and forensic consultant. Ive had my fair share of involvement in busting hackers, crackers, s-kiddies, wardialers, wardrivers, unlockers, and pirates. And the sites that go with them.

Yeah, but that is distribution. That doesn't stop a cracker from destroying the cp. Those tactics also stop hackers/etc from distributing programs without cp.

I disagree with you about the casual copying stuff, and the locking stuff remembers people that they break the law argument. As my experience totally differs, people that I know in the middle of nowhere hardly lock their doors. But I have no other experience than personal experience. And in the grand scheme of things, that doesn't count. So I'll let that part stand, and stop discussing it.

(Perhaps I don't have problems with downloading cracks, as I have a lot of games for which I had to download a crack to play the game I legally bought. I also have had games which shipped without a manual. Somehow, most support people don't believe you when you say the game hasn't shipped with a manual, and it takes ages to even get a reply. (Not to mention that the turnover rate of game companies is rather high). So for me the line of illegality of going to a crack site doesn't exist).

And downloading a game from the internet is not illegal in some countries. Offering it for download is. The problem with downloading is a moral one, not a legal one. (Yet). It is of course still a issue. But a totally different one.

Originally Posted by lch

As long as the game manual hasn't been made available for free download, other sites won't be able to offer it for free, too, and will refrain from doing so. Making it available then will be no less illegal than it is now.

Good point, it remains illegal. But as soon as a pdf file is offered as documentation by illwinter it will be in a moral grey area. It is clear that is illegal and immoral to give away the code to the game. But it will feel less immoral to only give away the documentation. "It is not the game right?". "I'm only sharing the documentation, which is useless without the game. So it isn't a problem, right?". Right now the position of illwinter/shrapnel is very clear. Sharing the manual is illegal, and they don't want it. A pdf manual would be useless in comparison with a irl manual. So that is why the manual is not provided in pdf. Seems pretty clear right? When they now start to offer the manual as a pdf, it will be a less clear statement.

Personally I doubt that a pdf manual would be useful. It is way easier to search in a normal book. I love my manual, I doubt the pdf one will feel just as great. And if you really want to have a pdf manual with your hardcopy one. You could always download one of a pirate site. In most places it isn't illegal to download stuff you already own.

[thejeff]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

Personally I doubt that a pdf manual would be useful. It is way easier to search in a normal book. I love my manual, I doubt the pdf one will feel just as great.

I like the hardcopy manual too, but it's much easier to search in a pdf. I've paged through the manual many times looking for things that a quick Find command would have found in seconds.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by thejeff

I like the hardcopy manual too, but it's much easier to search in a pdf. I've paged through the manual many times looking for things that a quick Find command would have found in seconds.

I found the multiple indexes in the manual rather easy to use actually.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Except in implementation. If you provide a code which allows a person to download to any machine, then you are back to allowing "casual copying" between buddies which has always been the main reason for DRM. Not pirates. As people say, you cant stop pirates.

Stardock's system is actually exactly backwards from this. Since you must be logged in to your Stardock account to download/apply your patches, a pirate has a very difficult time enjoying their stolen product on even an SP level. Meanwhile, they have made statements that if someone downloads a game they purchased, on multiple machines in the same household, that it doesn't concern them so much if multiple people play off of that same purchase, though they "prefer" if only one person plays at a time.

Granted, unless you have an "always-on" internet connection like cable, there is some degree of inconvenience to this. However if you have constant internet access, then the DRM itself becomes hidden beneath the same patching process that you would endure for any game - but totally without requiring physical medium, or even a CD key.

I think that if it were feasible for Shrapnel to use that model, it could work fantastically for them. However, any company that doesn't make the leap to a system like that, is going to be in some way hampered by their need for some sort of DRM. One thing that I learned early on, with the Commodore 64, was that no DRM at all meant free copies for all. I was just a kid, but I learned very quickly that most games kind of sucked, and that I could never afford to wade out there and figure out which ones I liked, by simply buying every new $40 title out there.

Personally, I think that cost of media should relate to usage. So maybe it only cost you $5 to download something, then there would be an ongoing "subscription" fee, probably with a hardcap (if not a softcap that drops to a few pennies at the late end) at the eventual full price of the media. So if you grab a new game, and you find out that it is either incredibly shallow, incredibly short, or unappealing to you, you are not out a large sum of money, and as long as you use their web dialogue to uninstall, you won't pay full price for the title, and you can pick something else with relatively little risk. This would enable two factors to change the quality of games we see on the market - first it legitimizes the concept of "software returns", where your $5 initial download fee is like your restocking fee, but you aren't forced to eat a $60 loss for the worst game ever, and second it shifts the focus away from flashy, but stupidly short games, as if 90% of your players are just done with the game in a week, you will stop earning revenue very fast whereas a game with long term playability like Dominions would generate an ongoing revenue stream for years.

[AstralWanderer]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

1) The likelihood of Impulse/Stardock going out of business anytime soon is nil.

Mm, quite a statement to make. Have you access to Stardock's accounts to back this up? If not, I would suggest such confidence to be misplaced. The most successful companies in the games industry can be brought to their knees within six months by poor decision-making, difficult trading conditions or actions taken by others (e.g. Interplay, Looking Glass, Black Isle).

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

Due to Brad's disposition, and his strong stance on these issues, I would not doubt that he would personally see to it that all products purchased prior to dissolution of Stardock, would be allowed to be used in perpetuity.

Company bankruptcies can be sudden and dramatic. Even with a well-intentioned CEO, there is no guarantee that customers would be allowed to continue activating products. It would be up to the creditors/administrators to decide this and it would seem more likely that this service would be cut (in order to save costs) or customers made to pay extra to continue activation. Shamus Young's Authorization Servers article has more discussion on this.

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

But to imply this is a possible scenario with Stardock, is to express lack of understanding of what Brad Wardell and Stardock are trying to accomplish.

I think I understand very well what Brad is seeking to accomplish. He's trying to make "his DRM" seem better than "everyone else's DRM". However if you check the implementation of Stardock's activation (an installation keyfile tied to a specific system) and the changes in terms and conditions they have already made (most notably, the imposition of a re-activation fee if they think that software has been transferred - see point 3 of this post), this should show that the downsides for Stardock's consumers are almost identical.

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

Supporting Stardock/Impulse, actually discourages conventional DRM.

Any system where multiple products are tied to a single account leaves customers open to digital blackmail at a later date (via annual or even monthly fees levied to keep that account active). Whatever Stardock are like now offers no guarantee as to how they will behave in the future. If there is any guarantee it is that companies will act in their own interests and should that involve bringing in a regime of regular payments by hook or by crook, then that will happen.

However, as Impulse sells games with "conventional" DRM, supporting it really isn't likely to make any difference.

Impulse has another specific disadvantage - it requires .NET Framework which not only makes it a slow application but one which adds a great deal of bloat to the Windows Registry (1.2MB - most other software adds 50KB or less) resulting in either reduced performance or greater memory usage, depending on whether that data is cached or not.

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

Personally, I've come to despise physical media. I've seen more disk failures in my life than I care to count, some of them irreplaceable.

The two times I've had CD failures were due to my not having installed no-CD patches (and hence using those CDs excessively). As long as CD/DVDs are kept packaged away and only used to install software, they should last for decades - no download site has this level of surety. The key thing is that software longevity is (almost) totally under the customer's control.

DRM-free software (like Dom3) is certainly the best choice, but media-based DRM involves less risk for the consumer than any online DRM.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by AstralWanderer

Mm, quite a statement to make. Have you access to Stardock's accounts to back this up? If not, I would suggest such confidence to be misplaced. The most successful companies in the games industry can be brought to their knees within six months by poor decision-making, difficult trading conditions or actions taken by others (e.g. Interplay, Looking Glass, Black Isle)..

While the companies produced great games, I don't know if any of them were financially successful before their bankruptcy. At least Looking Glass wasn't, according to this article. It does describe high risks of game development and especially self-publishing game developers, but AFAIK Stardock is still making money from their non-gaming software and that should help them quite a bit.

[S.R. Krol]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

but AFAIK Stardock is still making money from their non-gaming software and that should help them quite a bit.

Which is where Stardock differs from most other indie game publishers/developers. Their business software is their backbone, allowing them to venture into the game side.