An apology to the developers

Let me see if I understand this.. you got banned from the forums, and you actually care so much what the devs think of you that you're going to circumvent the ban an in so doing tell them that you're not such a bad guy and its all a misunderstanding?

I think you're a little unclear on the concept.

I think it shows how much i care for doing the right thing and for the work they put into the game...

caross73... you can always dont like something and look at it from a dark perspective if you put your mind to it....

+ i wont post anywhere else but in this post until they let my know its ok.. just to be fair about the ban

if they ban me again i wont re-register again.. they would have made their point...

"I think it shows how much i care for doing the right thing and for the work they put into the game..."

Someone who announces publicly that they may or may not buy my product, after having "acquired" it and gained the benefit of it without compensation, is not someone whose opinion I personally would care about. But perhaps thats just me. I gave up looking for pats on the back from anonymous "potential" customers a long time ago. 

What baffles me is why you think what you think of them matters to any of the rest of us, on this semi-public forum that you couldn't send an email and not create a sock-puppet account. What exactly are you looking for here? 

"Someone who announces publicly that they may or may not buy my product, after having "acquired" it and gained the benefit of it without compensation"

honestly ... read the thing... where did i say that i will play the game without buying it...? 

playing a game takes many hours/days(that's where the buy part comes).... trying it.. takes 30 mins to an hour if its more complex... and if it doesnt have a demo or i cant try it at a friend i will download and try it ... simple concept... no harm done...

"What baffles me is why you think what you think of them matters to any of the rest of us, on this semi-public forum that you couldn't send an email and not create a sock-puppet account. What exactly are you looking for here? "

Opinions always matter and should be taken into consideration no matter where or who/they come from...  i read every reply and considered every point... did you? ...

Vladimir... Buddy...

Your diggin yourself a hole here. The people here are against piracy, even for the sake of trial. They are against piracy because Stardock, one of everyone heres favorite developers goes out of their way to make their games as unintrusive (Don't think that's a word but I'm gonna use it.) as possible to paying customers like myself. This means a lack of DRM which shows considerable trust by Stardock to their potential customers. This trust in the modern age is a rare thing. Now if you knew me, you'd know I don't believe in morality... I think the very idea is utterly ridiculous. That being said, I do believe in honor and the importance of honor. It is for example very honorable of you to announce your intentions directly and be honest with your intent. Sadly however, the base of that intent is to betray the trust of Stardock which is very dishonorable indeed. Now I have some sympathy for your situation. I know what its like to have a serious lack of resources despite ones best efforts (Read: Lack of money) however despite your financial situation you have to understand that in betraying the trust Stardock shows you, you inherently foul the reputation of yourself and any race, religion, organization, creed etc that you may be associated with.

In this age when no-one cares about what others think of them I think its refreshing that you muster an apology and try to plead your case, but it would be best to just let sleeping dragons lie.

If your really interested in trying Elemental you can hope that a Demo is released... Otherwise you can do your research check out videos and if it looks like your thing, go for it... If not... Leave it be.

I've bought the vast majority of my games with research and reviews alone to go on and I've never purchased one I'd consider a "stinker".

Funnily enough, unintrusive is a word, I just don't know how it's spelled.

While it is good of you to want to apologize, Evil/Vlad (coincidence?) this is the wrong way to go about it. Send a PM to kryo and explain. . .whatever you can. I'm not sure how he'll unban you after previous statements, but it's worth a go. Stardock people are by no means soulless corporate capitalist drones (save Brad ) and if you argue your case intelligently, you can maybe be unbanned, or avoid a second.

Not much to add, other than the word that you're looking for is unobtrusive, somewhat counter-intuitive.

Really? Thank you, then. I r fail. That is rather counter-intuitive. I'm going to go sit in a corner and feel stupid for a couple hours.

I just have to comment on this topic.
Because I think that it´s not that easy.

"If you can´t afford it, don´t buy it!", for example.

It´s quite simple - if one can´t afford a game, the company producing it will not get money from this guy.
So, the respective won´t-be-customer can get his hands on a "license-infringed" copy of the game without harming the company (at least, if he doesn´t use online-servers and by that causing traffic which costs the company).

In the end it´s all just about getting your game (or music, or movie, etc.) to as many people as possible, making as many money as possible.

In order to sell as much copies of a game as possible, the best thing to do would be to sell it for an individual price to every customer - if the customer is a millionaire, he can easily pay 500 bucks, if he can´t afford the game, you can just as easily give it to him for free.
At least that´s the theory.
Because, especially when it comes to games, in reality you can´t demand different amounts of money from every customer.
You may have a collectors edition and maybe even an extended collectors edition for those people who absolutely love the game and have the money to spend 20-30 Dollars more on the game, but those editions also cost the company more money in producing them.

Still it remains true - if somebody can really not afford a game, he or she may just copy it without harming the company.
Getting a game out to as many people as possible can also be quite positive for a company.

The problem is just people copying games and not buying them, even though they COULD afford it.
And probably even jamming the online servers with their amassed presence while complaining about how bad the cracked version the game was in general, thus influencing others not to buy it.

It even get´s more complicated when people copy a game, play it a while and then buy a low-budget version of it a few weeks or months later, even if they could have afforded buying it for the full price and do like it so much that they also would have done that, had they not had already copied it.
Buying a game for one fifth of it´s original price will also generate something around only one fifth of the income for the company.

Now I´m a little bit torn, because on one hand I absolutely hate DRM-measures, especially when they demand a working internet-connection, but on the other hand I´ve seen so a great many developers going down the drain in the last 10 years.
New World Computing (Might & Magic) - gone. Origin (Ultima, Wing Commander) - gone. SirTech (Wizardry) - gone.
Iron Lore (Titan Quest) - gone, Flagship (Hellgate: London) - gone not even a year after releasing Hellgate: London.
To name only a few.

The last example on the other hand shows a problem that could be responsible for illegitimate copying of games in the future - that I as a customer can´t depend on the developer anymore.
If I buy a heavily DRMed game today, the developer could be gone tomorrow, closing his servers, leaving me with a game that can´t be played anymore.
And looking at Silent Hill Homecoming, this scenario isn´t that far fetched (Said game has a great amount of critical bugs that have never been solved, featuring one single patch that can only be downloaded via steam, and even that doesn´t work for quite a few customers. Support doesn´t seem to be existent.), meaning that it seems legit to asume that at least quite a few developers wouldn´t even give out a patch to remove the DRM, before they shut down business, if there are developers that don´t even care to patch a game to a playable level.

Today it seems like (some) customers and developers were at war, harming both.
And I´m asking myself if something could be done about that for the benefit of both customers and developers?
It probably would help to make it "kewl" for game-leechers to buy games that you like, as soon as you can afford it.
At least, that´s what would make the most sense - to get those people to buy your games that would normaly just copy them. Like some guy from Iron Lore said 2 1/2 years ago - "If only one tenth of those guys would have bought the game, the company could still be there, producing a sequel." (freely quoted)
And when I´m looking about what was said about Demigod (18.000 sold copies, 120.000 users online...), that seems true to me.
Honestly, I was a little shocked when I read about that. Would never have imagined, that THAT many people copy games, especially not in the first weeks after they´re published.
These numbers should really be passed on to the game-leechers, perhaps then they would realize how much impact they have.

The problem is that people who are willing to pirate a game have no sense of Honor. It doesn't matter to them if someone suffers for their actions because they don't feel guilt, they don't feel guilt because they are disconnected from the potential damage. Lacking the maturity necessary to properly analyze ones actions and the possible repercussions either that or being wicked enough not to care either way.

If its just a matter of you can't afford it I have to echo the sentiment that its a luxury and therefore you can go without. Most people who "Can't afford things" are doing tons of drugs anyway.

No Vlad, opinions are like ... something else ... Everybody has one, most of them stink, and some people put theirs on the internet.

And as for the 'not able to afford it' argument, its funny how many people manage to have money to buy DVD-Rs to burn their downloads to, pay for internet connections, go on holiday, and tons of other 'luxuries' and yet can't ... manage... to buy ... one particular game. You'd think all the people with high-end computers, the most recent graphics cards, two console systems on their flat-screen tv, were paupers the way they complain about the high price of video games.

@Caross73

And that is what has become the primary problem of today's world... No one cares.

Reputation, family reputation,personal honor... These used to mean something... Not anymore.

But who cares right?

I suppose honor is just another name for not biting the hand that feeds and keeping things in perspective.

Perspective seems pretty rare nowadays.

Honor is a matter of personal integrity and accountability.

In the past if you were dishonorable people would know because your reputation would sour and you would be treated accordingly unless you did something to restore said reputation.

In today's world people don't care about their reputation so when they are confronted about their dishonorable actions it means little to them.

Women are whores... Men are scum, the world keeps spinning.

Sure you have a few who are honorable and worthy of trust, but are they upheld as the role-models they should be? No, our country "The United States" prefers to have Celebrities as our role models... You know the coke addicted pyschos who want you to feel sorry for them because they are rolling in money.

It all just disgusts me.

I do not consider this dishonorable

As mentioned  by others perspective is pretty much the problem i can see here. I have trouble seeing a developer putting their perspective into someone who has enough internet (which lets face it is a luxury item) to pirate the game and enough gal to say to the producers of the game to make it so that it doesn't have drm as well as enough money to buy games after he knows he likes them but then does not have "enough" money to buy a game he doesnt know he likes yet and feels like he should have input into the construction of a game hes going to steal. 

Im sure he could see the perspective of the developers where they want him to buy the game, i just dont imagine anyone making the game seeing his. 

All of us, every Human on the planet, we're All "whores" for one thing or another. Whether it's food or drugs or money or power or even feelings like Love. We're all whores.

I'd say it would have to depend on the usage. As I say above, we're all whores in our own way. If I was walking down the street with my wife though and some-one (man or woman) called her a whore I'd snap their neck like a f'kin twig. Sick or not, I can still kick ass if I have too.

Ok, I gotta say this. I gotta give this kid "some" credit. At least he had the Balls to come back and say he was sorry and that he made a mistake. If someone from the staff replies kindly to him, maybe, Just Maybe, they'll be turning a Pirate into a Legitimate Customer for Life.

I have freely admitted multiple times that the first Stardock game I ever saw or played was a pirated copy of Gal Civ 1 that was given to me way back in the day. Since then I've Bought every Stardock game that's come out that I was interested in, some times going without other things I wanted and needed just so I could afford the game.

Also, obviously this kid isn't in the US (or at least his English isn't that good). Some parts of the world are being hit financially just as hard if not harder then the US is right now. In some parts of the world people are Starving. How do any of us know or not know if this kid is from some-place like that? Maybe he doesn't have enough money to even buy food? Who knows?

I'm not defending his first post, which I agree if I would have seen it on my forums when I worked for Origin I would have banned him too, but, He deserves a "little" credit in my book though for coming back and saying "he's sorry".

In this situation I wouldn't have the opportunity to do much more than re-snap the already snapped neck.  She's too fast for me.

Well said. The kid is obviously sorry. I think he got stomped enough on the first time so there is no need to completely "crack"  him. He learned his lesson (I guess).   

Videogames are not in the base of Maslow's Pyramid. They are a luxury (as Kryo mentioned in the other thread), one kind that it's totally optional and non necessary in our lives (can you imagine all that people in the whole world who have never played one? Or listened to a MP3? Or watched a movie?). No one needs videogames to survive. You need food, water, health... but videogames? No. So while up to certain point to steal food for survival can be acceptable (it's selfpreservation, after all; and supposing that the thief isn't some kind of lazy person who wants to live from other people's work...), stealing luxury is not.

Who is responsible of all this? Well, companies first and foremost for sure. They are capitalists. They need to sell products in order to stay in business. If there is no need, you create it. If there is a need, you exploit it. If you can get a monopoly, you get it. Something along Weber's Iron Cage but for capitalist companies.

So between the selfish nature of most human kind (self entitled to everything they can think of and more) and undiscriminated exposure by the companies to products (and some supposed "rights" which are nothing but hooks, which make the situation even worse), we get things like replica clothing, music piracy... and companies complaining that they cannot exploit us fully lose money.

Selling products based on the money of the user? Wouldn't that be cool? We might as well all receive the same salaries because it'd be fair to pay, for anything in this world, based on our monetary capacity. But if it's already impossible to have taxes to be based on that, forget about videogames (the more money some people has, the less they want to pay... and then complain of how people with less emulates them in the "We don't want to pay" department, especially if we consider that low-middle classes are the ones always paying for everything; to all that said, add the already mentioned selfish nature of human kind).

So we are all guilty, go figure. And the only way to change it is if we all do something about it (together and in the same direction). I'd expect world peace before something like that happens. (and I don't believe in world peace) Or maybe Google assimilating us all for better exploitation (power corrupts, absolute power...). So... if you cannot afford it, really forget about it. Or save for it the same you would save for a house, a car, or something else. And if you have internet, you can access all the information about a released game and get to know if it's worthy your money (forums, videos... it takes time but we are talking about not wasting money).

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And please people of the forums, stop insutling moralities and then go "Honor is all". Honor is nothing but a moral code, the same as military chain command is one. Change the names, change the rules, and you still get the same in all of them: behaviour rules.

Kinda Off-topic but I just want to point out to Infantes that some of the guys behind Titan Quest set up a new studio and have a new game on the way (which looks awesome) - http://www.grimdawn.com/index.php

I believe the game is at least, partially fan-funded. Which is cool.

@Thiryn: Thanks, I´m gonna investigate that. =D

@Wintersong, Saije and others:

Sorry, but that´s not helping. As Wintersong has pointed out "it´s all behaviour rules".
Of course you can find it dishonorable or whatsoever to copy games. Of course you can tell people who don´t have the money to spare, not to play a game at all, if they can´t afford it.
But that won´t help.
Not because people were disconnected to moral codes these days, but because there is no harm in copying something digitally that you wouldn`t have bought either way.
I mean, it´s trivial, we all know that - copying games is not like stealing in a supermarket, robbing people in a dark alley or actually being a pirate who boards ships and kills the crew.

And calling everybody who is copying games (or whatever) for his/her own use a dishonorable person who willingly let´s others suffer because he doesn´t feel any guilt and is either an immature or plain wicked drug-addict - that is probably the right attitude to burn witches, but not the one to talk to or about monetarily poor people who copy games that they just can´t afford.

I´d rather "incorporate" those people than offend them, cause, let´s just be realistic, it´s the developers who are more fragile - as we have seen in the past years.
So, the message should rather get out to the community of game-copyers - the message that it really depends on each and every one of them if a game will be succesfull or not, if a developer can continue or not.
Cause I don´t think that these people really understand that.
I guess, each of them just sees himself, not thinking about what he becomes a part of by not buying a game that he could afford (lack of perspective as mentioned here).
And as was also said here - there surely ARE enough guys with a state-of-the-art computer and plenty of other hardware that COULD afford to buy a game. People who just would have to decide to do that.
And I honestly doubt that insulting those people is gonna help with that.

It´s rather the other way around. Like what Stardock does. Letting people participate, letting them feel that it is THEIR game.
Getting into a creative discourse with the customer, tayloring the game to his wishes while getting full-price-preorders acting as a financial cushion - I do hope that this is a concept that will work out nicely, I really do.
Cause it´s something like my last best hope for the gaming-industry.

PS: To point one thing out more precisely - I think that fans and developers will have to come closer together for both to get what they want.
Alienating possible customers is doing the opposite thing.