Ways to battle piracy without screwing the customer?

[Astromarine]

stop focussing on reducing piracy and start focussing on improving sales. They are MOST DEFINETELY not the same thing. One gives you direct revenue, the other doesn't.

 

[kingcomrade]

Improving sales is not stealing because nothing physical is being taken from an inventory.

 

[Zakhal]

There is no way to totally remove piracy - but there are ways to make it as hard as possible. Forcing PC players to mod chips too is a start. Another good way is to make all games - singleplayer or multi - client/server based like guild wars. GW sold like 5 million and it can be played pretty much as singleplayer.

Piracy might not be stealing but it is leeching. Paying customers support the development of games so that leechers can play them for free.

In computing and specifically on the Internet, being a leech or leecher refers to the practice of benefiting, usually deliberately, from others' information or effort but not offering anything in return, or only token offerings in an attempt to avoid being called a leech. In economics this type of behavior is called "Free riding" and is associated with the Free rider problem.

Free rider problem:

Example

Suppose there is a street on which 25 people live. There is a chance to install a street-wide litter collection system to reduce unseemly garbage, the cost of which is $2,500. Suppose that each person is prepared (i.e., able and willing) to pay $100 or more for the benefit of a cleaner street.

If the system is installed everyone will benefit. However, it is possible that some people on the street will refuse to pay, anticipating that the system will be installed in any event.

Despite the fact they may be prepared to contribute $100, they will claim that they are not prepared to pay, and instead hope that others in the street will pay for the system anyway, and they receive the benefit for no personal expense.

The result is that it is possible no system will be installed, an example of market failure. This is despite the fact that allocative efficiency would be improved.

 

[Radech]

loads of patches that all require a unique cd key if it's for a singleplayer game, multiplayer games imo have no problem with piracy since you need a unique key to participate online.

basically make it complicated for pirates(having to get cracked patches every couple of months for a bugfree game) and most importantly make it as simple as humanly possible for legal customers, there shouldn't be a single drawback for paying customers other than having to pay for the game. And no of that Peer-to-peer patching crap they had in world of warcraft, which was so unstable and slow many legally paying customers got their patches elsewhere.

another thing could be that the game connected to a key database whenever it was online(this should off course take as little computing power as possible, and should not hamper the game in anyway, just a simple logon check logoff run automatically), and if the key wasn't legit the game would lock(kinda like what windows has just strickter, it shouldn't just disable updates it should be unable to run), so that pirates would have to unplug every time they ran the game and would be unable to patch their game, which is gonna get annoying real fast, there should be no requirement to go online or any such thing, so not to inconvinience people without internet connection. This off course assumes that an online key checker could be made sufficiently descreet and "lightweight" so it would have no impact on the paying customers gaming experience, and also that it couldn't be disabled, which probably is impossible

but basically hassle the pirates as much as possible, and hassle the paying customer as little as possible, copy-protection should be the pirates problem not the paying customers.

Btw in response to OP's example they did the same thing with sims 2 afaik, locking out the build mode if you had a pirated version even though crackers eventually fixed it, it took some time before they discovered it, hassling a lot of pirates and no customers, a good method just improve it, and throw some taunty messages if they try to use the locked out features "nanananana you're a dirty pirate you can't play my game", to shame them into not posting about how buggy their pirated game is

 

[JarlFrank]

another thing could be that the game connected to a key database whenever it was online(this should off course take as little computing power as possible, and should not hamper the game in anyway, just a simple logon check logoff run automatically), and if the key wasn't legit the game would lock(kinda like what windows has just strickter, it shouldn't just disable updates it should be unable to run), so that pirates would have to unplug every time they ran the game and would be unable to patch their game, which is gonna get annoying real fast, there should be no requirement to go online or any such thing, so not to inconvinience people without internet connection. This off course assumes that an online key checker could be made sufficiently descreet and "lightweight" so it would have no impact on the paying customers gaming experience, and also that it couldn't be disabled, which probably is impossible

This was done with Company of Heroes, if you tried to play it without a crack and a pirated version, the game couldn't load as long as you were online. Crackers eventually fixed that problem with good cracks, but you couldn't play the pirated version of the game without a crack if your internet connection was on.

 

[kingcomrade]

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/0 ... no-pr.html

The Motion Picture Association of America said Friday intellectual-property holders should have the right to collect damages, perhaps as much as $150,000 per copyright violation, without having to prove infringement.

I recently decided that I have the right to shoot MPAA members in the head with a shotgun in self-defense without having to prove that it was in self-defense.

 

[pkt-zer0]

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/mpaa-says-no-pr.html

The Motion Picture Association of America said Friday intellectual-property holders should have the right to collect damages, perhaps as much as $150,000 per copyright violation, without having to prove infringement.

I recently decided that I have the right to shoot MPAA members in the head with a shotgun in self-defense without having to prove that it was in self-defense.

This isn't so horrible, aside from the crapload of money you could get sued for. Download an album and be prepared to sell a kidney.

 

[kingcomrade]

This isn't so horrible

Come again?

 

[ushdugery]

The only real way to stop piracy is to screw your customers and there are to ways to go about it:
1- Everytime someone torrents your game go over to their house and ass rape them.
2- become their everyone's lover so they won't pirate your game because wouldn't want to hurt you.

See guys only two ways to stop piracy that actually work and both involve screwing your cusomers literally, in four or five years developers will realise this and the prostitution industry is gonna end up in a real wierd legal battle with them.

 

[Castanova]

If computer speed and internet bandwidth progress enough, it's pretty clear that people won't need to own PCs as we know them. The cheaper option would be to own something like a "thin client" and all applications (and your accompanying personal data) would be accessible remotely. You would never actually have access to any of the program's code so it would be impossible to distribute a cracked version unless it came from an internal breach of security. You would need some kind of credit-card (or something like a retail-sold phone-card) linked account to access the applications/games. Also, the costs for the consumer would be reduced drastically - instead of buying a new rig every so often, you might just need to periodically get a faster "modem" or whatever the device would be called then. Additionally, the concept of a "console" (and the ability to discern it from a "PC") would no longer be valid... same with an OS, for that matter.

 

[Destroid]

That sounds much more expensive than sailing the seven seas.