Fallout Boyarsky says copy protection would have helped Fallout

[King Crispy]

I bet a lot of [BR] Codexers would't be here if they didn't buy this magazine in the early 2000s.

And oh, how glorious that would have been.

 

[Kalin]

Ah yeah, a friend let me borrow his burned CD and I made a full humongous installation.

Ended up liking it so much I bought it several times though, probably have some 3 or 4 CDs lying around.

 

[Sigourn]

There's nothing wrong with wanting people not to pirate your game. It's very easy to put the blame on developers and their anti-piracy measures, as opposed to blaming the pirates playing games they shouldn't be playing.

 

[Tito Anic]

crime

 

[Morkar Left]

 

[TemplarGR]

The eternal "piracy hurts the industry" argument... These imbeciles will never learn...

I first played Fallout 2 using a pirated copy. I had a guy in my high school who made pirated cds, and i couldn't find Fallout 2 anywhere to buy so i went to him. Sure it was cheaper, but back in the day cdrecorders weren't exactly cheap and widespread and the cost of pirated cds were high enough that if you really liked a game, getting a genuine copy wasn't such a bad idea, if you could find it in a store, that is...

For the record, i had only played the demo of the original Fallout(from a magazine democd), as i couldn't find Fallout 1 in a store either, and even the guy who made pirated cds didn't have Fallout 1... I first played Fallout 1 from a PC Magazine a few years later...

Now you may think that this cost Interplay, but you would be wrong. Fallout was like crack to me. It hooked me into western style CRPGs, as prior to then i was primarily a console gamer. A few months after F2, BG 1 was released, and i went to the store and bought it day 1. I didn't care about reviews much, it was a new hyped CRPG from Interplay so i went in and bought it blind. So Interplay GAINED A NEW CUSTOMER by "losing" a few dollars. If Interplay wasn't so badly mismanaged and existed to this day, i would still be a customer. And they didn't just gain the money from me buying Fallout Tactics, and all the IE games. They gained a lot of good mouth to mouth publicity. This is also valuable. They gained a fan. Most people pay to have advertisements, you gained that for free, you idiots. Just because i pirated 1 of your games.

Of course all that is moot. As a communist, i spit on copyright laws anyway. The only reason i buy a select few games is because i want to support the (mostly indie) developers and for no other reason. I have no remorse for pirating and i don't find it morally wrong. Copyright law is obsolete. I don't care about violating a moronic and obsolete law. I don't care about corporate profits either. Developers are hard working and deserve a good salary but the vast majority of profits don't go to them anyway, so why would i care? So the shareholders can buy another Ferrari?

I will start being a law-abiding citizen when the rich shareholders stop using tax havens to avoid paying taxes... Fair?Fair.

 

[Sigourn]

The eternal "every pirate is like me" argument... These imbeciles will never learn...

Apparently some people are too stupid to understand that just because you pirate and then become a fan (whatever that means, see below) that doesn't mean everyone who pirates games will also become fans.

Moreover, being a fan of a company doesn't mean you will buy their products. It may simply mean you will continue pirating their shit. "Piracy doesn't hurt anyone" also ignores the cases were you pirate a game, think it's shit, and now you have effectively shat on that company because I doubt many of you buy games you think are awful after you've pirated them.

But please feel free to tell multi-million dollar companies what is best for their interests, I'm sure they will take your advice to heart.

 

[FreshCorpse]

As a communist, i spit on copyright laws anyway.

It's funny though, the reds charged fat licensing fees for Tetris

 

[TemplarGR]

It's funny though, the reds charged fat licensing fees for Tetris

Why not? You seem to misunderstand something:

When you are living inside a system, you play with the rules of the system. If you change the system, you change the rules...

So yeah, the reds selling tetris TO CAPITALIST countries, played by the capitalist book... What, did you expect a gift?

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

Where is your god now, RPGcodex?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

He says no such thing.

 

[Daemongar]

Just some thoughts:
* Fallout was released in '97, the game was about 600MB (pretty big at the time) and any available download would have taken some time and the download probably would have a virus to boot. Folks also forget that most downloads (at the time) would have quit if there was a disruption to download - that is to say you'd have to start over.
* I think if I would have downloaded it in '97, it would have been pulled from usenet and reassembled from about 1200 individual file downloads. That is, I would do it if I was broke, but not worth 8 hours of time. Same for movies at the time, and quality pornography.
* Yes, warez were around in '97 but in the US you couldn't buy them in a store. You'd have to buy the game, do a full install, and return.
* CD-Writers weren't commonplace like they were later on. At the time in '97, CD-writers were still expensive - that would change rapidly, but when Fallout was released, CD-R was still pretty expensive. Article linked from 97 mentions the price at $500-$600.
* In '97 I was still limited to dial up in my area, unless you had a friend who had a copy, it was hard to get. I remember as UO came out in '97 as well, and I couldn't run it over DSL (how little it mattered!) until '99. Was still on 56k. Also remember downloading an OS/2 Warp patches that took.. forever.

All that being said, the Fallout manual was a pretty sweet tome and I pity those who couldn't hold one while playing the game for the first time. if anything hurt sales, it was Diablo, but that's a different topic.

 

[Dodo1610]

Was there even a working DRM in 97?

 

[FeelTheRads]

If not for piracy, many games - Fallout included - would never have been popularized.

I'm guessing maybe he sees that as irrelevant since that didn't translate into money in his pocket?
Dunno.
But if he's at any point proud of how Fallout 1 and 2 are still alive and played and MODDED he should remember that this was mainly helped by the efforts of eastern Europeans of which most have been pirating the games.
Without that they would've been left at the mercy of the likes of GOG who may or may not have done more than set the compatibility on the exe.

 

[FreshCorpse]

When you are living inside a system, you play with the rules of the system. If you change the system, you change the rules...

but

As a communist, i spit on copyright laws anyway.

err...

 

[MRY]

Just some thoughts:
* Fallout was released in '97, the game was about 600MB (pretty big at the time) and any available download would have taken some time and the download probably would have a virus to boot. Folks also forget that most downloads (at the time) would have quit if there was a disruption to download - that is to say you'd have to start over.
* I think if I would have downloaded it in '97, it would have been pulled from usenet and reassembled from about 1200 individual file downloads.

(1) "the game was about 600MB" -- Nah, it was reduced in size by the warez group that distributed it. I believe they ripped out the portraits, the cinematics, the voice (?), and the death animations. An ISO could be downloaded with all that stuff, but the cut-down version (which I think were somewhat confusingly called "rips" but I can't remember) would've been more popular.
(2) "most downloads (at the time) would have quit if there was a disruption to download" -- Things were always broken into RAR parts, so no one would be downloading the whole 700 MB in one file. Also, most IRC bots supported resume.
(3) "it would have been pulled from usenet and reassembled from about 1200 individual file downloads." -- Probably from IRC channels, probably in ~20MB parts.
(4) "not worth 8 hours of time." People would just leave downloads running overnight.

While there was much less piracy in those days, the PC games market was also much smaller and much savvier. Thus, the cross-over between people who would play FO and people who would have the wherewithal to pirate it was probably about the same as it is today in the market. Piracy per capita might have been higher for all I know.

Also, a relatively large percentage of the game's demographic would have been college-aged boys, who likely would have had Ethernet access at school.

Was there even a working DRM in 97?

Sure, there were various ways to check whether the game's CD was in the drive when it was being played. Warez groups cracked these CD checks. So they could've put a copy protection on, which would have perhaps pushed it from a day-one release to a few days later.

With respect to Primordia, my view has always been that piracy is just part of life. Make your game cheap enough and good enough, and you'll manage at least some sales. If other people are playing it for free, at least they're playing it! (In that sense, I agree with Luckmann -- better to be known and pirated than unknown with 100% sales rate.) That said, I'm skeptical that most piracy is because people truly can't afford it because most people I knew who pirated stuff were quite wealthy and easily could afford what they were pirating. I just think many people take things that are in seemingly infinite supply when they think they can get away with it. (Plenty of people who grouse about game piracy probably look for ways to bypass the New York Times paywall.) But piracy is at least somewhat responsive to pricing and availability -- for instance, I suspect more people pirated music before iTunes was available because there was no quick and easy way to digitally purchase a single song. If iTunes raised its prices to $5 a song, more people would go back to piracy, I'm sure. Not because they couldn't afford the music, but because if they feel like the seller of an infinite good is being too greedy, their already low moral inhibition on piracy will be overcome.

Finally, I'm not sure how developers reconcile worries about piracy today with the trivially low completion rate on Steam, or the vast numbers of unplayed games in most people's Steam libraries. If people are already buying more games than their playing, how many games do developers think they should buy...? Or is the thought that if we got rid of piracy, then we'd also get rid of bundles and sales and games would be so expensive that players would only buy the ones they have time to finish?

(Incidentally, as a non-pirate, I feel like I'm sometimes in the worst of all worlds -- stuck watching endless copyright warnings and previews and menu animations on my legally purchased movies. So it goes.)

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Just some thoughts:
* Fallout was released in '97, the game was about 600MB (pretty big at the time) and any available download would have taken some time and the download probably would have a virus to boot. Folks also forget that most downloads (at the time) would have quit if there was a disruption to download - that is to say you'd have to start over.
* I think if I would have downloaded it in '97, it would have been pulled from usenet and reassembled from about 1200 individual file downloads. That is, I would do it if I was broke, but not worth 8 hours of time. Same for movies at the time, and quality pornography.
* Yes, warez were around in '97 but in the US you couldn't buy them in a store. You'd have to buy the game, do a full install, and return.
* CD-Writers weren't commonplace like they were later on. At the time in '97, CD-writers were still expensive - that would change rapidly, but when Fallout was released, CD-R was still pretty expensive. Article linked from 97 mentions the price at $500-$600.
* In '97 I was still limited to dial up in my area, unless you had a friend who had a copy, it was hard to get. I remember as UO came out in '97 as well, and I couldn't run it over DSL (how little it mattered!) until '99. Was still on 56k. Also remember downloading an OS/2 Warp patches that took.. forever.

All that being said, the Fallout manual was a pretty sweet tome and I pity those who couldn't hold one while playing the game for the first time. if anything hurt sales, it was Diablo, but that's a different topic.

Not to mention the internet was limited, for a month we had a cap of 2, 5 or 10 GB for the most expensive.

Also something my internet provider was doing is setting up local servers where they will put games, movies, music and porn and for small fee a month you could download without limits. Fun times, I remember downloading Rome Total war two days straight as it was 1GB and kept crashing the download and had to start all over again.

 

[visions]

But piracy is at least somewhat responsive to pricing and availability -- for instance, I suspect more people pirated music before iTunes was available because there was no quick and easy way to digitally purchase a single song. If iTunes raised its prices to $5 a song, more people would go back to piracy, I'm sure. Not because they couldn't afford the music, but because if they feel like the seller of an infinite good is being too greedy, their already low moral inhibition on piracy will be overcome.

5 usd a tune would be extremely greedy and stupid though. Let's say a normal album has 10 songs, so 50 bucks for an album? That would more than twice the cost of a new LP.

Wikipedia article on iTunes says songs there cost 99 cents and albums 9.99 usd, that's already near (or even equal to) the price of a CD. So their prices are as high as any non-retard would pay as it is, any higher and it would be cheaper to just buy the CD.

 

[Raghar]

I remember from 20 years ago people who made games because they wanted. And if they didn't earned enough money, they found part time job in development of guidance for torpedoes. (Actually, it was theirs main job, because game company isn't obliged to ONLY make computer games.) When there were only few game companies cooperation with military was quite nice. They got cash, military got cheap reliable software. And considering game developers were solving similar problems, game developers self-educated into important skills...

Nowadays people grab engine and then play with in-engine scripting. Years ago, they wrote integration of airflow, or pretty realistic guidance for missiles when they wrote flight simulators.


I never heard any problems with piracy and FO. But let's say something straight, nobody has right to swim in money. When they do, it's either luck, or by theirs own effort and it should be viewed as a something extra. BTW I have FO games for free on my GOG account and I didn't paid a dime.

Edit:
Also folks. There are some rules in piracy discussion.
1. Don't try to make excuses "I bought more games because of piracy." Retards would hear word piracy and would use it as excuse against you. (Remember Anti-FA is throwing stones at "fascists".)

 

[Valky]

Fuck DRM and fuck the cockgobblers who defend it.

 

[MRY]

But piracy is at least somewhat responsive to pricing and availability -- for instance, I suspect more people pirated music before iTunes was available because there was no quick and easy way to digitally purchase a single song. If iTunes raised its prices to $5 a song, more people would go back to piracy, I'm sure. Not because they couldn't afford the music, but because if they feel like the seller of an infinite good is being too greedy, their already low moral inhibition on piracy will be overcome.

5 usd a tune would be extremely greedy and stupid though. Let's say a normal album has 10 songs, so 50 bucks for an album? That would more than twice the cost of a new LP.

Wikipedia article on iTunes says songs there cost 99 cents and albums 9.99 usd, that's already near (or even equal to) the price of a CD. So their prices are as high as any non-retard would pay as it is, any higher and it would be cheaper to just buy the CD.

Obviously it would be a dumb price point. (Most prices are set to maximize revenue, so it's all greedy.) My point is that people pirating has less to do with actual inability to afford it and more a visceral reaction to whether they are being overcharged. Such small frauds are endemic (like people lying about their kids' age at Disneyland, etc.). Sometimes people cheat because they cannot afford not to, but a great deal of it (including piracy) comes when people think that the party benefiting from the rules is overreaching. "You're telling me that a game that can be won in 3 hours is worth $60? Fat chance!" Etc.

 

[Urthor]

I find your belief that large companies know what they are doing highly amusing

I mean you have to give EA credit, judging by their dividend payments they are absolutely good at exactly one thing, which is ripping off mainstream gaming proles.

Any company as money obsessed as EA is has to be doing a cost/benefit analysis of Denuvo and whether it's worthwhile.

Frankly I highly expect that the large amount of people who are too lazy to wait for Denuvo cracks for pirated software and will buy on day 1 means that Denuvo undoubtedly pays for itself on EA's high margin high marketing budget software.

Given that, idk why a company like EA or Activision wouldn't use copy protection. It's not like they care about their customers anyway, have you seen what EA did to ruin FIFA online play to get a quick buck?

 

[Norfleet]

Moreover, being a fan of a company doesn't mean you will buy their products. It may simply mean you will continue pirating their shit. "Piracy doesn't hurt anyone" also ignores the cases were you pirate a game, think it's shit, and now you have effectively shat on that company because I doubt many of you buy games you think are awful after you've pirated them.

On the flipside, if you pirate something shitty, you don't go posting rage reviews on Steam, either.

 

[Grauken]

There's nothing wrong with wanting people not to pirate your game. It's very easy to put the blame on developers and their anti-piracy measures, as opposed to blaming the pirates playing games they shouldn't be playing.

You're right, nothing wrong with it, put putting in DRM-measure that mainly hurt your customers and convinces them that pirating your stuff would have been the better option, or worse, not bothering at all with buying games from you in the future, is idiotic

That said, DRM these days is much more benign than a few years ago, although occasionally you still have the always-online bullshit for singe-player or even more rare the "only three installs" that gets patched out soon after

 

[unfairlight]

If you pirate a game, you clearly think it isn't worth paying for in the first place unless you happen to be really broke, in which case you will either save up for it or buy it on sale. Way back when it was also a distribution issue, as piracy could distribute any game, anywhere and do it faster than retailers. There's a reason why piracy has gone down so much with digital distribution and it isn't because DRM has gotten more common, it's the opposite.

There's so many good games on that cover. It's hard to think that a time when you could have over 4 games you are interested in, all be on the cover of one magazine.