Anti-piracy

from Elemental Forums

For the record; I think Stardock has come up with the best anti-piracy system possible, while still keeping their games easy to use. I am extremely happy for instance, that they do not require an official CD in a drive in order to play. I find that sort of thing extremely annoying. Having to log on to an official site in order to get updates is a non-issue, as my system remembers passwords and such. I think their system might even be a tad easier than the old standby of download/install of most other game's patches.

Most consumers are utterly oblivious of the problem caused by piracy to the world's game publishers. The simple fact is that a company with a game that could sell 100,000 copies that had some sort of decent anti-piracy on them would be lucky to sell 10,000 copies if it had no protection and could simply be downloaded (and patched) from any pirate source and played. Having an anti piracy system that requires you to register your game in order to get patches from the official source, is in my opinion, absolutely the smartest thing a game publisher could do.

(Originally composed as a followup to another thread that was discovered to be locked 'after' I had written this.)

7,549 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

You have some points, but you are just making up numbers here.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Elemental can be downloaded from torrents with patches without any problems I think. I do have legal copy but that DRM is useless and annoying.

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting joasoze, reply 1
You have some points, but you are just making up numbers here.
End of joasoze's quote

If anything, I am understating the case. I make a living selling online, videos I have created. Before piracy became ubiquitous, I could easily sell 100-200 copies of any such video and easily afford to make more. Nowadays a new video will sell around five before it is uploaded to pirate sites and no longer purchased. Needless to say that I no longer create new videos. Piracy destroys that which it would steal.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

There is a difference between videos and games. Videos are VERY easy to copy and I really sympathise with your problem. Still, there is no way that Stardock would sell many times as many games without piracy. The marked for strategy games arent that big. There are also differences between types of games (what audience they target).

I agree that Stardock has a good solution and is on the right side of the fence. Steam is just on the other side as I dont want the client to run when I play.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I have had issues with Steam myself. I bought Fallout through them. A year or so later I went back to replay it and had an issue with the steam client due to a bug such that it could no longer recognize my login and so I could not play. I foolishly tried uninstalling it so I could do a reinstall, and steam uninstalled Fallout, including a whole mess of mod work I had done. Needless to say, the Steam folk got a rather nasty Email.

There is a right way and a wrong way to do this sort of thing on line. Stardock is doing it the right way in my opinion.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting konjad, reply 2
Elemental can be downloaded from torrents with patches without any problems I think. I do have legal copy but that DRM is useless and annoying.
End of konjad's quote

You mean using an automatic updating tool to update your game - shit, it even gives you the option to not update - is useless and annoying?  What?

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

That's not the DRM.

Noone's pretending that Impulse isn't a form of DRM. But I think it is a very good kind of DRM, that isn't invasive and annoying.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

except of course for all the commertial popups impulse gives you

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Redwind85, reply 8
except of course for all the commertial popups impulse gives you
End of Redwind85's quote

which you can turn off (right click and untick any options that offend you.)