Why Not Digitial Distribution?

[Ylvali]

Yes it is, because it is kind of hard to get going without the manual. I have noticed that one of the most usual questions from undercover pirates in these forums are those asking for a downloadable manual.(I lost my manual blah blah...)

[Illuminated One]

I don't think it would be that much of a problem for a pirate site to let people download the manual together with the game.

[Gandalf Parker]

Im amazed that anyone thinks "its pirated so why bother" works as an argument. Thats like "thieves get in so why lock your doors"

Besides there are many pros and cons of DD.
You should see the impact on Shrapnels servers when a new patch is released.
Can you imagine the load when a long awaited full version sequel.
Even the demo of such a game is a problem and thats with many other servers helping make it available.

Also, one of the many requests for DD comes from people overseas who dont like to wait or dont like the questionability of their postal service. Do you think that overseas download will help that or create a digital version of the same problems. And as Ive said, tracking broken downloads to allow restarts is a major problem.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Im amazed that anyone thinks "its pirated so why bother" works as an argument. Thats like "thieves get in so why lock your doors"

The lock argument is equally flawed. You lock your doors so it takes longer for them to break in or it makes more noise so they are more easy to detect. It also depends on other social values. A locked door in a large busy city is good anti theft prevention. In the middle of nowhere a lock will not prevent thieves. The locks are only part of the security.

But of course you know that you shouldn't compare locks to copy protection. Pirates (or the better term would be hackers/crackers) have all the time of the world to work on a crack. They can do it from their home. No chance of detection. So in the end they will crack it.

I don't know if you have noticed the recent GTA debacle? They had some very advanced and nasty copy protection in the newest GTA. With a lot of stealth copy protection, after a few hours the controls would freeze, or act wierd. And a lot of other different things. But the game is also very buggy, I'm not saying that these bugs are related to the DRM. But it would have been better to spend the money that was now spend on the DRM, on improving the game. It took the pirates a week to crack this new copy protection.

But there is no doubt that piracy costs sales. I only wonder if copy protection really helps to prevent this. If cp is cost effective. I personally don't think so. BUT, I'm an industry outsider. And I have no data to back up my claims. And I don't really trust the piracy numbers that some companies use as an anti-piracy argument. (The music industry piracy losses are so high, that piracy caused the current recession)

More ontopic, of course the position of shrapnel on digital distribution has been clear. And they used the best arguments possible, imho. They did the math, it would not be profitable. They used science! Science, it works *****ez! I think this could be more clear in the FAQ.

I like the hat colour quote, Gandalf. My experience with youth and younger adults (>30) differs. Most either pirate, or use open source products. The crack site line, does not really exist here. But that is of course my experience. A lot of people still like to pay for stuff that they use. And I know a lot of people who donate money to open source products, help with open source products, and buy stuff they pirated before because it is that good. Of course, my experience is mostly university students and graduates. So I guess your hat really gets whiter when you grow older. (And as long as I still am a student of my university, I can use a lot of different software packages for free).

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually I lock the doors to keep out the multitude that would walk easily in without locks. Some of which would do so without realizing that they werent supposed to. Thats how I look at copy protections also.

Ive also known quite a few kids who would not cross the line and go to a pirate site for something that foiled them at casually copying it.

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.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

A locked door in a large busy city is good anti theft prevention. In the middle of nowhere a lock will not prevent thieves. The locks are only part of the security.

I have personal experience from living in the middle of nowhere, and I can say that a lock will do a great deal to prevent unwanted visitors. They COULD break in when no one is home, no problem, but only people who can think "I'm going to break in and take a look" do that. Most people don't want to think of themselves as burglars, so they won't do that. Going in to "see if anybody's home" and "I thought nobody would miss this" isn't an actual "theft", it's just, well, something that happened.

As Gandalf was saying, locks and copy-protection might only slow down a professional law-breaker, but for the common man, it both marks the difference between legal and illegal and forces them to take their time and think if they really want to break the law.

[Toran]

Guys, all that "The manual mustn't be available as PDF so it can't be pirated" is rather moot, since, well, in certain shady sources it is already available. So...?

I have heard of a friend of a brother of a cousin that was using the pirated version of the game and reading the manual while waiting for his game to deliver.. he decided the game's worth the buy after testing anyway (we have to admit - without the manual, you don't have a clue what's happening in the game, not even with the tutorial).

[llamabeast]

"friend of a brother of a cousin" is presumably a friend of a cousin?

[lch]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

And as Ive said, tracking broken downloads to allow restarts is a major problem.

Only for games which require that you may only install the game exactly once with the copy that you bought and which adopt a DRM scheme for that. This game allows you to install and play the game on more than one machine, but not at the same time - you will get penalized for that in MP gaming. So, for this game it's not an issue at all.

While I can understand that Shrapnel doesn't want to provide direct download options because they don't have the technical means or because it's not profitable, there is no technical aspect that would be a problem to make the Dominions series available via direct download.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by lch

Only for games which require that you may only install the game exactly once with the copy that you bought and which adopt a DRM scheme for that. This game allows you to install and play the game on more than one machine, but not at the same time - you will get penalized for that in MP gaming. So, for this game it's not an issue at all.

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.