It could also have been someone working at a store or the like too. But look on the bright side - pirated copy means no Impulse registration, so no Day 0 patch for them.

Let them be, Stardock's antipiracy method is the best I have seen. Sure, they can pirate it (I have downloaded games like that before, I will admit that) but Stardock games leave you without updates which add so much.

I applaud Stardock just for thinking of a way to make people WANT to buy instead of pirating, hence my adoration to them now. I have three games of their games, all official, and it was so well worth it.

That's not so bad. The Sims 3 was pirated and released WEEKS ahead of release.

Regardless, I bet you nobody is even pirating it because Stardock is so awesome. Who'd want to rob the nice guy? You know.

... then again, recession.

I bet you this is why the initial release was somewhat buggy. The upcoming patch will make it even more fantastic.

Pirates suck.

I know we can't stop them, that's unrealistic to even think possible. But, I Also Know Stardock does go after pirates if they can catch and prove who did it. They went after some jack ass who was passing around free Windowblinds Skins or something through DeviantArt and got that removed IIRC. Of course they probably won't be able to get the site I found the listing on to take it down, but they might at least be able to find out who put it up there to begin with and if they can prove that they can formally file charges against the individual.

Being so personally attached to Elemental I'd at least like to see them "try". Hell, if I knew what kind of "hidden tag" or sign to look for to trace it back to an individual user I'd try to track him down for Stardock myself and give his contact info to the appropriate people.

I'd be a hypocrite if I said I never had or played a pirated game. All of us probably have at one time or another either knowingly or even possibly unknowingly. We've all been young and stupid in the ways of the Internet at one point or another too. I did a lot of things back in my late teens and early 20's I'm not particularly proud of now days. Once I hit the real job market and started earning my own money and making it with my own blood, sweat, and tears, I learned the real value of money. For people who have to pay for their families survival with this work seeing it passed around actually hurts. I've understood that for a long long time.

I also completely agree that Stardock's position on piracy is definitely the best way to go. I don't buy Ubisoft games anymore because of their horrid and invasive DRM, which is really sad to me as a gamer because I loved the quality of most Ubisoft games. Say what you will about their business practices, I don't think I've ever seen them release a "bad game" or a "broken game". Stardock wins hands down viewed from their stance as developers and their views as gamers themselves.

Actually it was probably leaked by someone who works at a retail store.

The thing is, this will be the release version which, at least from what we've seen, has a few flaws. It is not a big problem - we'll get patches, after all - but for my part it's currently the game I play that crash the most, for instance. That gives bad word-of-mouth publiciity. Not as much as certain games that had a copy protection that made the game subtly unplayable for pirates - word of mouth basically killed them - but that's the flip side of that strategy.

Bohemia Interactive (Arma, Operation Flaspoint, Arma2) has an interesting copy protection called FADE.

Basically if the game detects it's running a cracked version it won't tell the end user, instead it will slowly (days, weeks) begin to change things about the game.  Accuracy slowly getting worse and worse.  Sometimes the player would turn into a bird.

Yet another example of pirates getting free access to premium "content" that legitimate users are denied.

What if I want to be a bird?

For some reason I thought you meant pirates within the game, I was like "oh great, bandits attack my ships too?"

Yeah, pirates get games way in advance through mysterious means, so I'm not shocked. Still Stardock has totally the right attitude, I rarely prepurchase a game but them letting me get into the beta and listening to the forums suggestions is a huge incentive to not only buy the game, but buy it at full price (instead of 6 months from now).

What a lot of publishers / studios fail to realize is that (the majority of) pirates are not their target audience.

Imagine this: you're walking through a mall, people are handing out coupons and hats and stuff. Nothing amazingly exciting but hey! the shit is free. So you accept the free stuff.

Imagine the above example, but now you're being forced to pay: odds are you won't and you'll walk away happily without the coupons, etc.

Exactly. They get my money because they dont treat me like a fuckin criminal, lockin me out of my own fair and square bought game.
Not to mention that DRM companies and the entire concept is a huge scam in the first place. Think about it..

Without piracy, DRM demand is null.
With DRM, there is still piracy (honestly there's not even an hour delay between game release -> game leak these days, DRM has no effect).

Yet game publishers keep shelling out hundreds of thousands (or whatever a DRM licence costs), even though it has no effect, the games are still pirated, and any average joe can DL an extra copy for his mate to use at a LAN party, without even encountering the DRM in the first place.

Case closed, its just a huge fear-factor scam. If they released a proper hardcoded/hardwired DRM, piracy would end, hence the need for DRM would end, hence their corporations would go bankrupt.
A nice analogy would be cigarettes and nicotine patches. If there was no cigarettes and no nicotine addiction, the nicotine patch corps would all go bankrupt. Hence they need the cigarettes and smokers who's addiction they strive to reduce.

Its a symbiotic relationship masquerading as enemies.

And if you want to see it from the game developers "but they need food on the table!!" perspective, consider that the game industry keeps growing by leaps and bounds, and has on many occasions surpassed the movie industry in revenue. All while piracy is as rampant as ever. Obviously making money isnt a problem. If galciv2 could without drm, so can others if they just get their asses in order and produce quality products.
Thats where money comes from, not DRM protection. (which has no effect other than sapping the devs or publishers of their already tight budgets)

Do you people speaking out against piracy honestly have NO pirated software on your computer whatsoever?