Development Info Gothic III and StarForce break up

[kingcomrade]

Starforce is the only effective copy protection system and that what's making it unpopular.

hahahahahahaha

 

[Seboss]

Starforce is the only effective copy protection system and that what's making it unpopular.

hahahahahahaha

Ok, SF is hugely unpopular and I sound like an idiot trying to make you admit that it's effectiveness is somewhat related to its unpopularity, I got it.
But what's so funny in my post ? Protection systems that are bypassed by a widely available cdrom emulation software and a few clicks here and there cannot be described as effective, can they ?
At least please admit that SF is a real bitch to crack/bypass and thus is the most effective protection system, while it's not the nicest.

 

[LlamaGod]

That's like saying the most effective way to keep someone from leaving a room is to shoot them in the head.

 

[Twinfalls]

Title of the thread suggests they were once starforce-crossed lovers

 

[EEVIAC]

I don't know what all the fuss is about, G2 didn't have any sort of copy protection that I can remember. You didn't even need to leave the CD in the drive. The game was begging to pirated, though, not because it lacked copy-protection, but because it was released in a Bumfuck, Nowhere market in limitted numbers a good six months before it was shipped in North America.

 

[Frau Bishop]

The G2 protection kicked in when you tried to reach the "Minental". The passage entrance was there.. the exit missing. So it was kind of a demo, clever idea.

 

[Drakron]

The problem with SF is what LlamaGod said, it goes above and BEYOND that it sould do ... making the rights of the copywrite its defending being more important that the rights of the user.

 

[Seboss]

That's like saying the most effective way to keep someone from leaving a room is to shoot them in the head.

This hyperbole is the result of an oversimplification of the problem at hand.

The problem with SF is what LlamaGod said, it goes above and BEYOND that it sould do ... making the rights of the copywrite its defending being more important that the rights of the user.

That could be said about every DRMs as well.

In any case, you're right. Let Starforce/Frontline/whatever die. The Galciv incident is more than enough to kill the company's credibility anyway.
But I am pretty sure that the next major protection system, even unobstrusive and clean, will be as unpopular as SF is.

 

[Lumpy]

So, Seboss, the developers are dropping StarForce because they don't want to upset the people who want to pirate their game? And 90% of the people on forums do? Right...

 

[Seboss]

So, Seboss, the developers are dropping StarForce because they don't want to upset the people who want to pirate their game? And 90% of the people on forums do? Right...

I did not say that 90% people pirate games. But I'm pretty sure that most of the people that worked so hard to slander SF are. You know how easy it is to start an uproar about something that annoys people (like a piece of software that prevents you to play a game grabbed on a torrent) especially on the Internet.
Btw, it's not developers who drop SF but publishers. And the publishers did the math. A strong copy protection certainly help sales. But they can not risk to stain their reputation by associating their name with an unpopular nazi/spyware/rootkit/yourpick piece of software.
Publishers dropping SF don't prove anything, except that 50 billion flies can't be wrong.

 

[LlamaGod]

A strong copy protection certainly help sales.

galactic civilizations 2

 

[Naked_Lunch]

Heroes V

 

[bryce777]

So, Seboss, the developers are dropping StarForce because they don't want to upset the people who want to pirate their game? And 90% of the people on forums do? Right...

I did not say that 90% people pirate games. But I'm pretty sure that most of the people that worked so hard to slander SF are. You know how easy it is to start an uproar about something that annoys people (like a piece of software that prevents you to play a game grabbed on a torrent) especially on the Internet.
Btw, it's not developers who drop SF but publishers. And the publishers did the math. A strong copy protection certainly help sales. But they can not risk to stain their reputation by associating their name with an unpopular nazi/spyware/rootkit/yourpick piece of software.
Publishers dropping SF don't prove anything, except that 50 billion flies can't be wrong.

I never pirate games, but I had my computer actually completely die after installing starforce. ALl my disks started fucking up, including my dvd reader/writer. It was crazy. It also fits the symptoms described by people fucked by starforce. I ended up needing a whole new machine.

You don't normally simultaneously lose every HDD and your cd burner....

 

[Seboss]

A strong copy protection certainly help sales.

galactic civilizations 2

Heroes V

You can't only count on US market. On the asian and eastern Europe market, no piece of software can go unprotected. I mean if you want to get some profit out of it. And of course, protecting the Asian version and not the Euro/US version is idiotic.

Besides, Galciv is the exception. It is a great game and it sold well unprotected. Great.
But take the Dreamcast example. The copy protection was a joke and the CD burners became widely affordable then. The console totally bombed because of that despite it was a great machine and had excellent games (far better than the Saturn in any case...)

The problem with the whole piracy, anti-piracy stuff is that we don't have a clue. Some games sell well unprotected, other bomb due to wide scale piracy despite their quality. Some pretend copy protection boosts sales (anti-piracy consultants obviously) and others pretend the opposite.
Considering the argument we just had, the only thing that seems to really matter is the impact on the customer. Which is generally bad especially with SF. So what, do you think that no protection at all is the right choice ?
Do you think that Mount & Blade (a widely acclaimed indie game around here) would have become what it is now if it went unprotected ? Would you have paid $7 to see what's beyond level 6 if you didn't have to ?

 

[SlyDrak]

--

 

[Kraszu]

A strong copy protection certainly help sales.

galactic civilizations 2

Heroes V

You can't only count on US market. On the asian and eastern Europe market, no piece of software can go unprotected. I mean if you want to get some profit out of it. And of course, protecting the Asian version and not the Euro/US version is idiotic.

Not true, if that would be true nobady would publish not translated game that was already cracked in Poland.

Besides, Galciv is the exception. It is a great game and it sold well unprotected. Great.But take the Dreamcast example. The copy protection was a joke and the CD burners became widely affordable then. The console totally bombed because of that despite it was a great machine and had excellent games (far better than the Saturn in any case...)

And what about ps2 and xbox they protection is a joke. What about gamecube never cracked in any usable form.

The problem with the whole piracy, anti-piracy stuff is that we don't have a clue. Some games sell well unprotected, other bomb due to wide scale piracy despite their quality. Some pretend copy protection boosts sales (anti-piracy consultants obviously) and others pretend the opposite.
Considering the argument we just had, the only thing that seems to really matter is the impact on the customer. Which is generally bad especially with SF. So what, do you think that no protection at all is the right choice ?

If that is true then yes. I think that it has some impact but it is not as big as most peapole think.

 

[Seboss]

And what about ps2 and xbox they protection is a joke. What about gamecube never cracked in any usable form

At least they need a modchip as softmod don't work with lots of games - or so I heard.
With the Dreamcast it was just a matter of burning the game with Disc Juggler, inserting the disc in the console and voilà.

 

[Gambler]

People who want to have official games wait for official releases anyway. People who want to have stuff for free have suff for free anyway. Get over it. Drakonian DRM are just dumb ways to screw up paying customers.

Would you have paid $7 to see what's beyond level 6 if you didn't have to ?

Yes, I would. I could get 90% of my games for free, yet I buy them.

 

[bryce777]

People who want to have official games wait for official releases anyway. People who want to have stuff for free have suff for free anyway. Get over it. Drakonian DRM are just dumb ways to screw up paying customers.

Would you have paid $7 to see what's beyond level 6 if you didn't have to ?

Yes, I would. I could get 90% of my games for free, yet I buy them.

This is mostly what I feel.

I think that the biggest issue with flops is that the games all just suck. They deserve to flop, plain and simple.

The problem with RPGs is that they require some brainpower, so now that computer games are mainstream, we are not being served in this respect the way we used to be. The market is still there, but shelfspace is unbelievably expensive now. I think that RPG games will have to start over and be sold in specialty stores only once again, if at all, or the web.

Otherwise all we will see are diablos and oblivions.

 

[Claw]

You can't only count on US market. On the asian and eastern Europe market, no piece of software can go unprotected.

I don't know that my version of Gothic has any copy protection.

Some games sell well unprotected, other bomb due to wide scale piracy despite their quality.

So?

Do you think that Mount & Blade (a widely acclaimed indie game around here) would have become what it is now if it went unprotected ? Would you have paid $7 to see what's beyond level 6 if you didn't have to ?

And by "have to" do you mean being asked to, or being unable to crack the game? I never even tried to crack the game. I played to level 6 and decided I enjoyed the game enough to pay. Heck, I bought Legacy of Kain: Defiance after completing the game.

 

[LlamaGod]

Seboss seems to think that if a game is piratable, that every single person on the face of the earth is going to pirate it.

 

[Seboss]

And by "have to" do you mean being asked to, or being unable to crack the game? I never even tried to crack the game. I played to level 6 and decided I enjoyed the game enough to pay. Heck, I bought Legacy of Kain: Defiance after completing the game.

So I did.

Seboss seems to think that if a game is piratable, that every single person on the face of the earth is going to pirate it.

That's not entirely true. I agree that people who don't want to pay won't pay. They either play the game or use the application with a crack if possible, of drop it altogether. In that situation a copy protection is pointless.
Still publishers/devs should have a minimal protection such as a serial or an online activation (like Mount&Blade does but that requires an Internet connection which is not systematically available to the user) to avoid - say- 'unintentional' piracy (if I can burn the game on a cd and give it to my friends, why shouldn't I ?).
That's not necessarily true for games, where that kind of 'piracy' could be a nice way to spread the game (kind of viral marketing). But that's certainly true for professional/educational applications. Corporate versions of Windows that can be installed on any number of PCs without activation certainly hurt MS sales (but I don't feel sorry for them).

Moreover, like I said earlier, some potentially very juicy markets such as Eastern Asia have a real 'piracy culture'. There, you need a strong way to prevent high scale piracy, at least that's what executants think. Maybe that's one of the reasons why MMO are so successful there, you can hardly pirate them unless you play on cracked server, which is of course pointless.

Now, RPGCodexers are respectable gamers and buy their games, that's nice. But last time I checked, there was 50,000+ people leeching games such as Oblivion, Prey, HOMM V, and that was only one Torrent, I don't count newsgroups, other P2P softwares, FTPs... so yes a lot of people pirate games so I understand that publishers tend to become paranoid and approve systems such as SF.
Thus, copy protection systems won't disappear soon IMO. They are generally annoying and hinders diffusion (Gal Civ example once again) but they are necessary somehow. You can boycott SF protected games (that's too bad cause a lot of them are very nice) but it's the devs you hurt the most, protection nazis such as SF will always win as long as there will be numbers such as those I cited earlier.

 

[Kraszu]

One torrent file is usually posted on many big torrent websites. What makes the situation complex is that we don't know how that 50.000 peapole downloading game would hit sells. I don't see reason why publishers that produce games that sell well should got paranoid, piracy can't go any future so maybe they should just concern about making good product that peapole would want to pay for. I buy games that are good, and sometimes borrow pirated game from friends that I don't care much about (game not friends). Also the're adons that pirated version don't have like books for the game (it should be someting more then instruction ), map would be nice.

 

[Lurkar]

I thought I was cynical, but fuck, Seboss seems to think just owning a computer with the internet will make me foam at the mouth and pirate every game I can find.

Seboss, you ever think of getting involved in religion? They love guys like you.

 

[Seboss]

I thought I was cynical, but fuck, Seboss seems to think just owning a computer with the internet will make me foam at the mouth and pirate every game I can find.

Seboss, you ever think of getting involved in religion? They love guys like you.

One - You are just paraphrasing what Llamagod posted earlier
Second - False. I pirate, you pirate, EVERYBODY pirate from time to time. We all have a friend that someday crashed to out place with a super leet pre-retail release of the next big game. I never said that everybody was foaming pirate maniac.
I just said that piracy exists, always had, always will and that piracy impact on sales is difficult to measure and so that copy protection is justified most of the time. I mean, if you can't prove that piracy don't hurt sales, you can't prove that protection system hurt them either.
I also said that most people -that I know- who spits on SF are people who can't crack it. I said that I never had any single problem with it, nor that I have any problem at all with my computer. Lucky me ? Maybe. But I suspect that the computer that SF supposedly kill were not in such good health (software or hardware) in the first place.
Finally I said that boycotting SF games may be a good way to kill SF but it's also an excellent way to kill devs whose publishers chose SF to protect the IP.

Maybe I don't express myself clearly but I think you're putting words in my mouth here and that's getting annoying.

EDIT: I do think that the popularization of Internet worldwide and especially broadband made piracy easier though. At least it did for me.

Btw, I am being cynical on purpose here. I don't think that copy protection help sales. I don't judge people who pirate games. I did. A lot. I still do. But now that I earn some money and that I know how hard it is, I buy games I play for more than 15mn (that's not many of them). I do think that most games plain suck. That they are too expensive and that the business model of videogames need to evolve. I think people like StarDock and Valve (Steam) got it right and that low price, direct online sale is the future of the industry. I bought most of my games online lately (even Oblivion - bite me) but I'm worried about the 'episode' trend (Sin, HL²...).