Question about owner rights - SOW BOB

[Lucas_From_Hell]

RoF isn't annoying at all.

I have the Rise of Flight DVD with me, and, despiste the time I was without internet connection, I had no problem at all with it.

You can mark a "Save Password" box in the game. With this, you'll only need to click "OK" after the game starts.

Guys, forget all this stuff people say about DRM. Yes, incidents happened with early versions of StarForce, but these were solved and don't happen. It's an effective protection against piracy, and ends up 'forcing' the ones who would be inclined to download for free to buy the real game. That helps a lot in finances.

[Letum]

When I spend cash to buy I game, I want to own it and be able to use it when
ever I want.

I don't want to just buy the right to connect to a master server to unlock the
ability to play the game only at the times when I have an internet connection.

That's not ownership of goods, nor is it a service (at least not a service to
me!), so why would I want to pay for that?

[Blackdog_kt]

Pretty much my view as well Letum.

In general, piracy is not stoppable by DRM. The only games that don't get cracked are games the pirates don't care enough about:

Originally Posted by flyingbullseye

Honestly I can see both sides of the argument but in the end it will be only a matter of time before someone cracks the protection to get around whatever DRM is used. The only thing we can hope is if/when that happens it's a ways down the road for Oleg and team to recoup enough money to keep the series alive in the future. Since BOB is much like 1946 in the way that its not a arcade sim the draw will be smaller than your typical twitch shooter and probably lessen the chance of a crack.

IL2 was famous enough to attract attention by pirates, but RoF for example is still a bit obscure in the gaming world (not many outside of the sim fans know about it) and the pirate crews don't want to spend time on it, as they do most of what they do for competition between them and not profit. That's why it's not pirated yet, not because the DRM is good. Since RoF's release i've seen 3-4 online-only DRM games circulating in pirated copies, it's just that the pirates prefer to crack a high profile title like Need for Speed Shift, Empire Total War or Modern Warfare 2, instead of a simulator that nobody knows about outside the sim fan crowd. You don't even have to pirate games to know all that, there are websites that list each pirated release and they are very useful to a buyer as well. For example, if you don't like the DRM method used in a game, you can check to see if it has been bypassed by pirates. If it is, then you can buy the game and download the protection bypass, so you can enjoy your legally bought game without DRM. The irony in this is of course in plain view, for a significant percentage of people purchasing a DRMed game is dependant on pirates.

Since any game will no matter be pirated at some point, a certain amount of lost sales is to be expected. The funny thing is, this amount of lost sales due to piracy could be about the same for all methods of protection, but the amount of sales lost to potential customer dissatisfaction is not the same for all methods.

For example, say that a game loses 10000 sales due to piracy if it uses an online DRM method and slightly more, let's say 12000 if it uses a simple cd check that is easier to bypass. However, the DRM version of the game would also lose at least 2000 sales from people who wanted to buy don't like the DRM. The irony here is that many legitimate customers who don't like DRM are waiting for the game's protection to be changed or by-passed before they buy, which effectively means that getting back those 2000+ would-be customers is dependant on the pirates releasing the "modded" version of the game's executables.

In any case, any kind of protection is only delaying the inevitable. All well-known high profile games receive the attention of the pirates at some point. What matters most is to have a game that takes time to crack, so that you can sell well during the first six months or so. Then, sales will gradually stabilize and the game will probably be already pirated anyway. At that point the DRM is already redundant and the money is in add-ons. A good compromise is what Bohemia Interactive is doing with the ArmA series. Recently, they released a patch that removes the DRM from ArmA2. This is a good balance between securing the important impulse buyer income during the early months of the game's release and making sure your customers don't have to deal with annoying DRM methods later on down the line. If SoW has any kind of troublesome DRM, i hope 1c will do the same and remove it after 3-6 months with a patch.

For me the best method would be a one-time activation that would not be dependant on your hardware. For example, Black Shark needs a deactivation before you make major changes in your hardware and then you need to reactivate, while RoF doesn't have this but it has an annoying always-online requirement and forced patching that you can't roll back if the latest update is causing your problems. So, why not take the best of both methods and leave out the bad? Let's say, instead of the activation process creating a registry key depending on your hardware (as it is in BS), it could create the key depending on user ID alone when you connect to a master server. The user ID could a combination of the game serial from the box, with the email/nickname and password chosen by the user during the registration process. The trick here is that this online connection would not need to be permanent like RoF, which will make it easier for you to play your game whenever you want and less costly on the developers since they won't have to maintain a lot of servers and bandwidth. It's just a simple case of connect, enter information ONCE and activate the game. Then you could use the software as you wished.

[doordie]

This protection is BULLSH*T

Stop treating "pirates" like criminals. I'm sorry but no one is perfect! I might download something, but when I buy it, I buy it in store, even if it costs $5 or $10 more. When I built my computer I lost probably $40 total than if I ordered on warehouse sites, but I did this so somebody in computer store has a job. Low wage yes, but it helps them get through university or something. Maybe some of you are criminals, destroying our wonderful society, because you bought IL-2 online? In another country? And didn't pay tax? It's all bullshit. They try to guilt you into everything. When people can afford to buy, they buy. Sometimes people never change, even when they obtain money they never buy. But these people will not be forced into anything. The bottom line is if people are enjoying the game, isn't the developers got accomplished? Maybe you guys have never been poor? When I was a kid some of my favorite games, like Oregon Trail, and such I only had as trial version. sometimes I would play till the end and it would say "If you liked this game send $5 to .... USA and wait 3-4 weeks for diskette of full-version" FIVE DOLLARS!! I thought. WOW. Today its different but $40,50,60 for just a game!?!?! Still seems outrageous. And I know I'm not poor, compared to millions of gamers, who are either kids with jerk parents who view video games as not serious things, harmful even, or people in eastern Europe, Latin America, etc who don't have such wages to pay $50 to Ubi.

In my experience everything is crackable. maybe it makes business for some security firm but in the end those who really want to play a game for free will be able to. even steam was hacked, cracked, everything imaginable. thousands used to play counter-strike source using emporio, all valve could do was keep making updates, patches, which would slow down the non-paying players maybe 2 hours, and would annoy all the paying customers in the process. and thats the thing with most protection for games & dvd films. it penalizes the customer, a lot of times it is easier to play a cracked game then to install off official cd, and for films they give you commercials! even on games they try to install mcafee or some search bar.

i think its very simple. using cd-keys makes it possible for only 1 person at a time to play the game online. this isn't 1995, most people want to play online. sure, they could hack it like emporio did counter strike source or play using things like hamachi, but most people do not want to go through this. if they download the game and like it, they will buy it!

all these bastards are doing is taking the poor 12 year old out of the mix. he'll give up and go masturbate or something. well done protection firms!

one more thing. i absolutely hate when they talk about 'lost revenue'. sorry but how many times did you buy a game and it was horrible? did you get your money back? instead you rewarded them for doing a bad job. it's like they're entitled to your money. publishers will release a game even if it is beyond bad, but simply unplayable! I remeber many Playstation (1) games like this. Flintstones Bowling! YUCK. they dont care that it might be bought as a present for some poor kid, his only game of the year. the game industry relies on "hits", like hollywood has "blockbusters", and the rest of the time tries to maximize profits/minimize losses on the unsuccessful titles. But when there is a huge hit, do we get our money back for when we bought junk??

so if SOW uses annoying protection will I not play it? in this case, i care about IL2 too much. even if i have to install weird programs i'll do it but i'll buy it used off someone, or rent it and copy it, whatever method i can to be sure 1c, ubi, whichever asshole it is doesn't get directly a penny of my money.

[brando]

"....but i'll buy it used off someone, or rent it and copy it, whatever method i can to be sure 1c, ubi, whichever asshole it is doesn't get directly a penny of my money.

Pathetic bullshit. Don't you see that it's the actions of pirates that raise the cost of the finished product for the honest people who are willing to pay for their entertainment? It's false to imagine that your action won't be taking money from the creative team as well as the publishers and distributors. Defending your willingness to cheat because of other, un-related games that were "horrible" really doesn't cut it.

If "...all these bastards are doing is taking the poor 12 year old out of the mix. he'll give up and go masturbate or something."....it might be worth hearing that most of us don't really care. He's having fun, and it's free - and that's about as much as a twelve-year old can expect.

B

[Skiiwa]

Copy Protection Has NEVER worked. All have been cracked. It only impeads end users who want to do the right thing by paying for the game.
Just give Us a bloody serial code.

Copy protection will NEVER work.

I Would go through the list of the games I have never got because of the hoopes to activate or keep my game running, But It is far to long.

I will tell U a game I Just got Because It had NO DRM. and I got the collector version.
"Dragon Age".
Im already bored of it but I have No regrets as the Publisher heard us end users and didnt punish us with Hoop jumpin.

The way Egossoft does X3 series Im ok with also. I have ALL the X series games. I still prefer Frontier elite though (Yes I still play the D3D version made by some russian guys)

[Lucas_From_Hell]

Doordie, did a protection software just kill your children, raped your wife and robbed your parents? No? Then chill out.

Newer protection software are "dumb-proof". Anyone ever had ANY sort of issue with Starforce online activation, for example? Damn, even I could do it easily and mine was in Russian (as a side note, my Russian is still pretty bad). How in Earth can someone screw up such an easy operation? Click button. Type serial number. Click "Yes" (or "Да"). Done! Oh my, that was hard, eh?

Yes, eventually some idiot will crack it. But then his solution will require such amount of work that most 10-year old children with a torrent client and an internet connection will just give up and go play Sponge Bob instead.

DRM is a nice option because it screws it for the pirate and offers no disadvantage to the guy who did it legally. For reasons I've already mentioned, I don't believe on-line activation is the way (and it seems neoqb agrees, as it is planning to change the log-in system for Rise of Flight)

Some are traumatized by some reviews on early StarForce versions when Flaming Cliffs just came out, as it was somewhat "agressive", but this is past, folks.

If you show me protection is useless with effective evidences, I'll then stand corrected. But so far, it seems that it's not quite the situation here .

[Blackdog_kt]

I don't think protection is useless. I don't think it's particularly succesful either. What makes developers money is good games and good public/community relations. Would i pirate Oleg's games? Hell no, because the guy and his team delivers good titles and listens to his customers. Ok, maybe if the US release of SoW was earlier than the EU one, i bet most of the european fans would download a copy while waiting for their original boxed set to arrive, but since they would buy it anyway that doesn't count as piracy

Just like i said before if a company wants to do something about it, all they have to do is chose a method that will delay the widespread pirating of the game for the first 6 months so that they can make some good sales because wether anyone of us likes it or not, beyond the 6 month point ALL high profile games are already cracked. At that point, the company can aknowledge this fact and instead of keeping in place a system that's already been bypassed by pirates, they can patch it away themselves and save some legitimate customers the hassle of dealing with DRM.

I mean, it makes sense as long it serves a purpose, if it has been cracked it doesn't serve a purpose any more other than to annoy legitimate customers with silly requirements. Again, just look at bohemia interactive and ArmA 2, they sold quite a lot of copies for a niche genre, the game eventually got pirated and they decided to remove the DRM from their game. This happened with the first ArmA as well, there was a patch that removed the copy protection for that too.

[AdMan]

DRM software kills PC games, most developers are wising up to this fact, I make a point to buy games that have no DRM, case in point: Dragon Age Origins, an EA game eho a couple years ago was the worst in this regard

[Igo kyu]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

Ok, maybe if the US release of SoW was earlier than the EU one, i bet most of the european fans would download a copy while waiting for their original boxed set to arrive, but since they would buy it anyway that doesn't count as piracy

Legally it is still piracy.

The anti-piracy sales people would count it as a lost sale (and lost money), too, even if it really wasn't.

Just like i said before if a company wants to do something about it, all they have to do is chose a method that will delay the widespread pirating of the game for the first 6 months so that they can make some good sales because wether anyone of us likes it or not, beyond the 6 month point ALL high profile games are already cracked. At that point, the company can aknowledge this fact and instead of keeping in place a system that's already been bypassed by pirates, they can patch it away themselves and save some legitimate customers the hassle of dealing with DRM.

Once most of the sales are made, there's no profit to be made on that game by taking the DRM off it, and there are costs to taking the DRM off, so the DRM will stay in most cases. On rereleases it may be doable if the DRM was notorious, but rereleases are usually budget, so removal of DRM doesn't happen often, though granted it sometimes has.