What's YOUR solution to DRM/piracy?

Its coming from a survey. They took a random sample of people and asked them the question; only in the US though. It would be nice to compare piracy in the US to piracy in developing countries, I think.

http://torrentfreak.com/the-most-pirated-games-of-2009-091227/

 

What I find interesting here is video games have overtaken the music business and Hollywood in revenue. So although there is definitely issues with piracy, revenues from video games have been on the study rise for years (aside from the slump due to the global economic downturn).

The music industry is using the argument of "lowest profit margins ever" to penalize P2P users. Can't quite say the same thing for video games.

Actually lawsuits ARE expensive for big business. And the RIAA lawsuits have been reported in the past as vast money pits.

 

Which only proves that they are all the more evil willing to dump a disgusting ammount of money into such a thing. Remember when that aircraft crashed in france? Around the same time some woman was tried and fined for downloading like 2 dozen songs, and they made her pay a fee on each MP3. That fee ended up being more than the what the airline was fined for the deaths of all their passangers. Something is SO wrong there. I gotta find those news stories on both of those so I don't look like a complete nut, I'm at work right now though I'll do it later.

 

So I recently bought Race On from Newegg and Viva-Media is the publisher. I install the game in Windows XP and the game doesn't work, DRM maybe?

I'm getting an "invalid game data" error message when starting the game from DVD 1 in the drive. On top of that you can install the game via STEAM but there was no Activation code to be found. I emailed Viva-Media with both issues not once, not twice but three times over 3 days and still no response.

I researched the problem and it appears that a bad DVD drive can cause this problem, nice. First off both of my rewritables are within 6 months old, they are the same and they were purchased from Newegg. And all of my PC games install and work from the same DVD drives which Race On seems to have a problem with. The solution, buy another DVD drive.

I think it's a DRM issue that's incompatible with my drive ergo replace the drive. Newegg won't give a refund, I have no STEAM activation code and Viva-Media sucks cause they are AWOL. And you wonder why the people pirate, to avoid this crap. Sorry for the rant, but i'm pissed. I could have bought the game on STEAM for $25 but I prefer to play offline.

 

Invalid Game Data? Do you have Race 07 installed correctly?

 

No I don't have Race 07, isn't Race On a stand alone game?

 

No, it's an expansion to Race 07. Check the Steam page.

Might want to go back and edit that rant there.

 

Not so quick !

RACE 07 - The WTCC Game is included in Race On RACE 07 - The WTCC Game for PC - GameSpot

 

Maybe you have a different version than the one on Steam. Also, you might want to contact SimBin. They're listed as the developers/publishers.

 

Simbin defaults to Viva-Media who is publishing the game and they are MIA. I still don't have a STEAM code so I can activate it on STEAM. I think Race 07 was released in Europe and Race On was repackaged for the US at least that's what this description implies:

"RACE On will feature all of the cars and tracks from the 2008 WTCC season as well as the Okayama circuit. It will also include US muscle cars and some selected US tracks, as well as the Formula Masters series. It will be available as a standalone product or as an add-on pack for GTR Evolution. It will also include the STCC - The Game pack previously only released in Sweden or by Steam." RACE On (PC) : SimRacingWorld

 

make games free

 

The key to making big money for developers is to focus on a service-based model rather than selling games as goods. Any digital or digitizable media can be copied infinitely at almost zero cost, so it's impossible for developers to compete on a good-based model without strongly enforced regulation. Sure, copyright law exists at the moment, but enforcing it isn't really viable. What they need to do is provide services that cannot be duplicated by anyone else, whether that be through unmatched service quality, or other tricks. World of Warcraft is an obvious example of how a service-based model can achieve an enormous level of success.

Besides that, the industry needs to realise that many people are willing to pay money for a game even when they know they can pirate the exact same product for free and get away with it. The Humble Indie Bundle is a great example - sure, there was a 25% piracy rate among people who got the game off their site, but that's still 75% who were willing to contribute an average of $9.18, which made the developers almost a million dollars. Sure, that's nothing compared to the revenues of the bigger mainstream games, but for an indie project where costs are vastly lower, it's a great success.

Another issue which the indie pack highlights is game pricing. I'm sure that one of the biggest reasons for its relative success was the ability for gamers to name their own price. The point is that many people just aren't willing to pay the retail prices for games. This isn't so bad in the U.S., but in Australia where, for example, the default price for CoD:MW2 is currently $89.99 US on Steam, there's a lot more to complain about. Fortunately, many companies are still keeping their Australian Steam prices the same as the US ones, and Steam sales can be very nice at times, but some companies are simply taking advantage of Australians. It's no surprise that Australia's piracy rate is very high compared to other countries. Then there's stuff like Steam continuing to hold to $1 = €1, and various other high game prices in many countries. Despite this, the success of Steam's sales suggests that lowering prices can in fact make more money.


In the end, though, piracy is not so much a problem as it is a natural result of a flawed system - i.e. copyright. Consider the core purpose of copyright, as stated in the U.S. Copyright Clause - "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". It's quite clear that the more people have access to an experience, the better it is for society, but the idea of copyright is to temper this in order to provide financial incentive to creators. The ideal scenario is one where everyone has access to the media but the creators are still reimbursed through other financial models, and that is what we should work toward.


Those who can envisage how to make money in a world without any copyright whatsoever are the ones who will be successful in the future.

 

They will keep making security measures because it simply stops people from using it.
It is a fact that none of them are crack proof but when you take 100 people;
- 20 of them will be able to crack the game without problems
- 20 or 30 will experience some big problems but will not give up and make it
- The rest of them just simply does not figure it out and either leaves the game or will buy it
Mission accomplished for 50%

Now these are ofcourse no actual figures but you get the point
To them any security is better then none at all

 

create good games with constant updates.. one thing I learned from pirating is updating is kind of a pain in the . Often new nocd's are needed, new update patches etc etc. Creating a good game makes people want to play. Then following your project with updates helps b/c you know there's support and getting real updates always beats cracked ones. Which is why I love steam's easy patch service and valve makes terrific games.

Or add in a good multiplayer and have that kind of exclusive. I used to buy only MP games since they were harder to deal with, when it came to pirating.

 

I tend to agree that pricing is the biggest issue for several reasons.

1) You want to play what your mates are playing but you don't have the money to do so.
2) Games lose value very quickly
3) Games are released very quickly and often
4) Gamers have limited attention span so says the Nintendo Boss

I've been gaming since 1991 and I can't recall the onslaught of games that are published like it is today. I could be wrong as I missed the Atari, Nintendo days back in the 80's but in today's market you have what maybe 10-30 new games a week across different platforms. As the Nintendo Boss has said gamers no longer desire to play a game for 100 hours or more. They want to beat the game as soon as possible and move on to the next.

When that happens gamers don't want to pay full price because they know they'll be playing something else in a matter of weeks.

I have another idea which has been used before and works rather well. Install land mines in the games code which goes off if you run a cracked version. The downside is it takes away from the development of the game but is very effective because it will take some time to make new cracks and that's if the crackers even want to be bothered with it.

Mass Effect and Over Flanders Field were two games that included landmines. In Over Flanders Field the AI begins to do some incredibly stupid things and the game becomes unstable when you run a cracked .exe

 

Wait... People buy games for 60$? So that means I've been getting ripped off, I have over 20 ps3 games which I bought, all of them were over $100, most around 120$.

Even the PC games I have (I have quite a few) were quite costly at the time I purchased them, no where near as costly as my ps3 games but most of my pc games cost me over 60$...

(A few of my pc games)
http://i27.tinypic.com/18yfyp.jpg

 

What country are you in? In the US, the top-shelf new releases are priced at $60 for the PS3/XBox360. PC games mostly around $40-$50.

Given that this is a US site, $ should be taken to mean US dollars if it's not otherwise noted.

 

Well Steam certainly has an answer to piracy alright. As noted by someone else on the interwebz... instead of downloading games I want for free, I buy games I don't want for cheap from Steam sales!

 

this can be defeated by constantly updating the content delivered. again, it's a delivery model and a quality game model, rather than a speedy build with fancy graphics.

look at World of Warcraft - that game has millions of users and it's more than 5 years old. however, it has constant updates. then you could look at battlefield 2 or the counter-strike series. those games are also over 5 years old and both still have a ton of players. however, they were quality games.

oblivion and fallout 3 are quality games, and people to this day are buying those two games and playing through them multiple times.

a game can sell very well and have a long playability and value IF the developers CHOOSE to make QUALITY games.

 

That's not what the Nintendo Boss was referring to. He basically says that most gamers today have A.D.D. and are looking to move on to the next new game or console. I don't think adding DLC will help gamers who are already looking for something new. Besides WoW is an MMORPG, so those who dig that kind of game will love any new updates or content. That has it's own stereotypical community.

I have never played WoW because i'm not into those kinds of games. I like to play a 8-10 hour game, finish it and move on to the next thing. IOW I fall into the group the Nintendo Boss was talking about. Because of that i'm not willing to pay $60 for that kind of game.

 

Well I have spent over 100 hours on Borderlands. I have played HL2 and/or episodes once/year, and open world games that appeal to me and require ~40 hours to complete I really enjoy.

But for the most part I am sort of like Rodknee; I enjoy a good romp for 12-15 hours so I can move on to one of the many games in my backlog that I really want to play. Besides some games would just feel like they would drag if they went on longer. For me Doom 3 is a good example. It just went on WAY too long. One corridor and closet jumping monster just blended into the next until I was pretty darn tired of it all.

But for some reason I can't get enough of Assassin's Creed games these days. So I have both games, DLC and will probably pick up the hand held versions too. I guess it just comes down to what really appeals to you?

I think what the "Nintendo Boss" was saying is that the market is so saturated with good games, gamers are finding themselves with more games than time to play them. So shorter games allows for more opportunity to get gamers to buy the games they want. However $60 for a typical 10-15 hr game is not worth it imo. So I usually buy games on sale or wait for price drops.

 

You sir sound like a CAG'er. If so I salute you !

Cheap Ass Gamer - Cheap Video Game Shopping, Video Game Sales and Video Game Deals: CAG

 

Lower prices. I find myself waiting until a game hits the $20-$30 range (which typically only takes about 6 months or so) before I'll buy it. I refuse to use Steam out of principle, especially after reading about the fiasco posted in this topic where a user did nothing that they thought/knew was wrong, but ended up losing their whole account anyways. If anything screams "rental," it's that.

I refuse to pay money for something over which someone else still gets to exert complete control, even after I've paid for it. That's half the reason I chose Bad Company 2 over MW2, the other half being the horrible multiplayer implementation.

 

Heh heh yup, that's me!

To what are you referring? I am curious. Haven't seen the thread.

 

Someone who bought a game from a shady seller, it turned out to not be legit, and Steam did not only remove the game from his account, but disabled access to all the other games he had purchased as well.

 

Ah I see. So really it has little to do with Steam actually. You can buy from shady sellers anywhere. And maybe we aren't getting the whole story as I think you would be able to work it out with Steam if you were innocent.

 

Well he was trying to work it out with Steam, that's the current state of the topic. What is Steam's fault is disabling all of his games when it was only one that had any issue whatsoever.

 

Well I don't know the whole story. I suppose if he was involved with using pirated games via Steam they might have some issue with his entire account, hence the freeze. But considering the pages of praise I read about Steam everyday on various forums and tech sites, I don't think one person's troubles, to which no-one but the perp knows what really went down, is a fair argument against Steam.

 

That's possible even if innocent because Steam games are easily pirated.