[INTERESTING ARTICLE; See Page 8] Discussion: Thoughts on Piracy

[the dark side]

if the games companies dont want to get pirated, they should

1, make games that are actually worth buying! instead of just hashing out yet another buggy, rushed, clone of this years Call Of Duty/Gears or War/Burnout multiplayer and tacking on a 2 hour tutorial for SP, you cannot charge 60 quid for that, i genuinely agree that many of todays games are too expensive for what they are, for what they offer, to me at least, most are not even worth a tenner,

2, they should make DRM more fair, "Online pass" should only Block Multiplayer if not activated, it shouldn't remove content, like guns or cars, from the single player mode. and a new pass should be FREE, Not 10 quid a pop. The game should also have a DRM that lets you play a BIT of the game, say, the first 4 levels, before it does something to stop the player getting any further, you know, like the immortal pink scorpian in SSIII.

always online DRM should only affect MP mode if you ask me, for offline, the game should come with an Install code, multiple use, printed on the disk face (not the manual, manuals can get misplaced or torn remember!), or sent via email from the digital provider, the code should have NO use limit, its just to prove its a legitimate disk/Download, meaning, even if Steam goes bump, or when all the EA servers shut because mainstream gaming collapses taking them down the porcelain tunnel with it, youll still be able to play the SP mode, its just MP mode that will be dead.

as for "pirating to test" the answer to that is so simple. Bring Back Shareware! the first 5 or 6 levels of the game, free, on a disk with say PC gamer, or off a special page on Steam (wich will alow you to get the game straight after you have finished the shareware via steam, meaning more buyers, and thus more money).

i totally disagree on piracy, because it puts people out of work, and its meant some great studios like "People Can Fly" have ended up running out of money, getting snarled up by some greedy american megacorp like Evil Alliance, and has eneded up being forced to make boring, generic Call of Duty clones (cough, bulletstorm, cough) while there new paymasters fire half the staff to make the studio "cheaper to run" so they can suck more money out of the profits to buy lear jets. and then end up all loosing there jobs when the new IP fails, because, basically, it sucks, because its just a direct clone of COD in terms of gameplay with a cheap knock off of Gears Of War serving for an "art style" and isnt what the studios old, Established, fans want, and the casuals wont buy anyway because it doesnt say "Call of Duty", or "Battlefeild" on the box.

but sadly, i also must state that the mainstream games industry, with its unfair DRM, its downright Discriminatory hatred agaisnt people on a low budget who have to buy second hand, and charging FAR to much money for what the games they make actually are worth, as well as there focus on technologically inferior consoles and, if all the controll hints are anything to go by, virtually brain dead casual gamers resulting in pc versions that are graphically useless and full of glitches, as well as being short, far too easy, and extremely boring to play, that would be overpriced even if they were free, has bought this tide of piracy down upon itself, it deserves every bit of bad treatment it gets.

and as much as i hate pirates for what there selfish behavior has done to people like PCF, IDsoft, 4A studios and GSC gameworks, if they cause EA, Activision, Ubisoft, THQ and all of the other big american megacorps to crash wich means gaming can reset itself because all the casual gamers will go away as there will be no one providing for them, i am afraid to say, in my opinion, the CRIMINAL (Piracy is a crime, thus those who pirate are criminals who should, in my opinion, be locked up) behavior of these pirates will be worth it.