Question about owner rights - SOW BOB

[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.

[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.

[zapatista]

starforce killed two dvd writers in my pc's and it took me ages to get my system back to normal, never again !!

some form of copy protection should be used on BoB, to stop the average mr-citizen or the teens copying it for their buddies at school, but other then that the more aggressive and intrusive the DRM becomes, the more inconvenient it becomes to use the game for normal legitimate customers (like RoF not worth buying basically )and the more they will loose in sales. i suspect they will loose more in customers that way then actually gain.

i am sure oleg will find a sensible balance between protecting his program and not making it a major inconvenience to use, for ex by having a stricter owner check when going online versus standalone offline use etc..

[Lucas_From_Hell]

Zapatista, the Starforce version that sometimes played "Terminator" isn't being used anymore.

The newer Starforce versions don't install any driver at all, and will remove itself after you type the activation code.

I don't see any disadvantage in this one. Ask any DCS player - problem-free and dumb-proof

[TheGrunch]

Originally Posted by Lucas_From_Hell

I don't see any disadvantage in this one. Ask any DCS player - problem-free and dumb-proof

Equally though, I don't see any problem with someone avoiding a firm's products because they used to produce malware. Especially given their terrible customer service and blind insistence that it wasn't their copy protection that was causing problems. Also the fact that an administrator on their forum posted a link to a torrent of one of Stardock's games because they don't use copy protection to "demonstrate how easy it is to pirate a game". I wonder whether he searched for Starforce protected games at all...personally I think they were previously a slimy, underhanded company and whether they have changed their conduct is irrelevant to me.