Fantastic Anti-piracy Statement

[Kman]

I apologise sincerely and unreservedly for starting this thread.

Stay tuned for my next thread, Abortion: A Woman's Right or Murder?

lol don't feel bad, honestly I enjoy debates like this. As long as it's kept civil I don't see any problem with arguing over these sorts of things

[felixmole]

I think it would be more interesting to discuss ways to prevent piracy instead of the piracy itself.

• Demo. Games should have a demo available. I like the demo of Amnesia: shows everything you have to expect if you buy the game.
  
• DRM-freedom. Since most DRMs have proved to be inefficient, it is probably best either not to use them or to use "old-style" DRMs. Since it is obvious that it takes a couple of hours before the DRM is cracked, game publishers might as well put more effort into their game instead of their DRM. With a better game, come even more customers, even those who pirated the game prior to buying it.
  
• Awareness. Just like Greenheart games, game publishers should raise awareness from pirates and encourage them to buy their product if they liked it and explain to them that their money will be used for other new games.
  
• Pricing. Overpricing will remove many potential customers. I understand that game publishers are too afraid to sell their games at a low price and incur losses should it not be successful enough. Personally, I wouldn't have bought Far Cry 3 at 50 € (Fortunately I didn't have to, I had it for free, without even pirating it). I suppose I will have to wait for AC4's depreciation before playing it...
  

There are probably more items to explore but these have come to my mind.

[Kman]

I'm gonna reiterate what I said before: there is no way we will ever stop piracy. Developers may be able to make it harder to pirate games, but there is never going to be a way to stop it indefinitely that won't somehow interfere with the game itself or lessen the experience of legitimate customers. Like I said before, if there's anything we should be discussing it should be how companies can change the way they distribute their games to make it so pirating won't be a problem. For example they could use the strategy I mentioned before of putting their game up for free and leaving an option to donate to the developers. This has been proven to work in the past through several different mediums, including games, and it takes piracy into account and essentially eliminates the problem. This would also make it so dedicated developers that put out quality content would gain more attention and money which is yet another plus to using a marketing scheme like that.

[Focalize]

First of all damn you Internet, I should be memorizing quotations for finals which are like in less than 48 hours. So, I look forward to the abortion thread. Now I will puke out as much economic theories as I can in relation to piracy (of course under the influence of my own biases). Apple's autocorrect is ticking me off, but too lazy to get off bed to pc. Anyway, from the firm's perspective, they should know more than enough that due to the infinite supply of substitutes to their products in pirate land, the price elasticity of their goods is very high. Why spend money when it's free like fish in the sea, says the pirate. But fish is a common pool resource, firms aren't God, they can't make fish out of nothing. They made intellectual property which takes time and effort of coding and advertising and shit, of course they are profit-driven. Well then from a broke university student's point of view, information/intellectual property is too f**king expensive. If I paid for every textbook, every song, every video game and every database I have access to, I would be eating grass on campus next year, or maybe I can manage to have some campus geese. Information is supposed to be a common pool resource, not property because how can the poor break out of the poverty cycle without the great leveler (imo a useful brain comes before capital loan: if you can't use resources wisely then too bad, forever a loan)? Think about the positive externalities and happiness society gains from freeing up information and intellectual property! Suicide rates will fall as people begin to find meanings in life from free literature (except Camus and Plath, too dark), that's just epic. So firms should price discriminate, it works in a similar fashion as progressive taxation: let the more economically fortunate pay the price they can afford, under the assumption that the rich do not fall under the perfectly elastic demand of pirates. Idk auction out special video game/music collections with a piece of hair from the developers, whatever works. It sounds like donation but everyone forgets to donate. I'm not particularly worried about piracy, but locking up intellectual property will most likely start a zombie apocalypse. Why, I sounded like a socialist bastard. Off to eat more books.

[darkely]

felixmole: sorry, but "DRM-freedom" will not happen well at least not on releases from large companies. The companies know the DRM will be cracked, but it serves as a small deterrent.

kman: you mentioned earlier that Steam actually has various DRM techniques? is this one of them:

In Mirrors Edge there are supposedly a few check points that check something (to see if the game is valid or not) and if it fails the check it will slow the player down before the jump making it impossible to move on. Demo:

[felixmole]

Yeah I figured this wouldn't happen; it probably wouldn't change anything at all if they removed it, I think it's mainly a question of principle (so that one cannot copy the game so easily, without downloading it illegally that is).

By the way, by reading this: http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-18783.html, I wonder if FG didn't also implement that anti-piracy trick.

[darkely]

Yeah I figured this wouldn't happen; it probably wouldn't change anything at all if they removed it, I think it's mainly a question of principle (so that one cannot copy the game so easily, without downloading it illegally that is).

By the way, by reading this: http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-18783.html, I wonder if FG didn't also implement that anti-piracy trick.

I know that we have our differences felix, but you have to admit some of the anti-piracy measures such as the GMod error: "Unable to shade polygon normals; **STEAM ID HERE**" and running slow down to prevent progress in Mirrors Edge are somewhat humorous.

[Danny Boy]

What country exactly? I'm curious.

Last I heard it was in N. Korea, but they moved.

You do know north Korea as 0 people accessing the internet right? Because you know... There aren't any servers there? Also theres Dictatorship?...

[darkely]

What country exactly? I'm curious.

Last I heard it was in N. Korea, but they moved.

You do know north Korea as 0 people accessing the internet right? Because you know... There aren't any servers there? And also Dictatorship?

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-m...um-130304/

[Danny Boy]

wut