Software Piracy

[Martin]

With the recent theft of Halo 2 (well, actually le Halo 2.) Read the story here, as well as the seemingly imminant pre-leak of Half-Life 2, what are your thoughts on piracy.

It seems to me that the gaming industry is very concerned to crack down on it. Now, on one side of the arguement, much like music, games are far too expensive at the moment. Half-Life 2 Silver will sell for $75 canadian. On the other hand, this could be due to the fact that they realize how widly pirated their game will be.

Now, if the gaming industry wants to fix this, they are going to have to crack down on software pirates, but they are also going to have to adapt. Games are going to have to be cheaper.

This is a vicious circle: on one hand, I realize that piracy is wrong, but on the other hand, spending $75 on a game makes me feel like I am getting ripped off.

Morally, regardless of the price, theft is wrong. If they were selling games for $1000 a piece, piracy would still be wrong. Games are not essential to life (regardless of what you may believe).

I'll stop rambling; what are your thoughts?

[Dan]

There is a easy way to fix this with is cd keys for the online part of the game. Shure poleop will still crak the game but they will not be able to do online play. Then the pricary whould ataclky make your game sell better since the poleop who dling will like it (if it is good that is) and whont to play online. Tho this whould be assuming online part of the game is free, so then u are realy paying 70ish doloars for a life time of online play with the game.

Tho this gose wrong when comapnys start geting the idea to ban poleop based on the CD key since it whould be like taking back there product and not paying you for it.

On the musick side of things i see nothing wrong with dling songs. 1st off it realy is hurting the reconding industry more then the aritsits and in canada you pay a tax on recorderable meaida any how that basiclk pays them back (or at least i think you do...). Also when u download songs it makes it more likey that you will buy the cd. And the recdoring isustry should make money on this if they are smart, if they set up good pay for muscik dling sites where you say pay like $10 a month and can dl as much as you whont/can then i think poleop whould sing up.

[josh]

Hacker Dan wrote:

And the recdoring isustry should make money on this if they are smart, if they set up good pay for muscik dling sites where you say pay like $10 a month and can dl as much as you whont/can then i think poleop whould sing up.

I would pay for it.

and yah, their is a tax on all recordable media that is sold in Canada (so if u buy a spindle of CD's it is charged per CD in the spindle e.g. u buy 50 cds u pay a fee on each 1). Since the canadian RIAA manged to convince the courts to put this tax on they really can't do to much about persecuting downloaders cause ppl just say that they already paid the fee for the song. And so far it seems the judges are agreeing with the ppl.

As far as games go, I do think they are way to expensive and I recently read an article on CNN that says, due to inflation, they will soon raise prices again. I think EA Games is raising thir price $5.00 next year.

[Martin]

Canadian Recording Industry Association of America, eh?

Not even $10 to download songs. I'd go with $5-$10 a CD. The system now is rediculous.

[templest]

Hacker Dan wrote:

There is a easy way to fix this with is cd keys for the online part of the game. Shure poleop will still crak the game but they will not be able to do online play. Then the pricary whould ataclky make your game sell better since the poleop who dling will like it (if it is good that is) and whont to play online. Tho this whould be assuming online part of the game is free, so then u are realy paying 70ish doloars for a life time of online play with the game.

Tho this gose wrong when comapnys start geting the idea to ban poleop based on the CD key since it whould be like taking back there product and not paying you for it.

On the musick side of things i see nothing wrong with dling songs. 1st off it realy is hurting the reconding industry more then the aritsits and in canada you pay a tax on recorderable meaida any how that basiclk pays them back (or at least i think you do...). Also when u download songs it makes it more likey that you will buy the cd. And the recdoring isustry should make money on this if they are smart, if they set up good pay for muscik dling sites where you say pay like $10 a month and can dl as much as you whont/can then i think poleop whould sing up.

You mean like Diablo? Yeh, I can vouch for that. Before I got a job, and I did a great deal of downloading games, the only four games I had to buy were:

1. Diablo II
   
2. Starcraft
   
3. Warcraft III / : TFT
   
4. Counter-Strike
   

It seriously works. As games get, more and more, on-line dependant, it'll be _much_ easier to implement this. But either way, the cd-key thing really does phuck up the downloader's game.

[josh]

I heard that walmart is now pusing record labels to sell CD's for under 10.00 American. and with Wal Marts buying power who knows whatll happen

Article Here

[Mazer]

Any brilliant new form of copy protection for single player games? Besides the ol' find-the-codec-frequency-on-the-cd-case trick and others like it.

[wtd]

Copy protection is inherently security by obscurity, and it's doomed to fail.

[AsianSensation]

it doesn't matter how hard companies tries to protect their CDs, I seem to find pirated version of the game all the time in China, selling at about 5 yen each (1 Can dollar). Those short Chinese guys...they are really good at bootlegging.

In the cafes, there were not a single legal copy of CS or Starcraft or Warcraft. Every computer was loaded with a bootlegged copy of the game.

[Martin]

I have the ultimate copy protection idea:

1. Give the game a really stupid name, like Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3.
2. Make the game incredibly huge, like 34 DVDs and requiring 70 gigs of HD space to install.
3. Make the CD-Key contain non ASCII characters.

Piracy problems would disappear.

[SuperGenius]

Martin wrote:

I have the ultimate copy protection idea:

1. Give the game a really stupid name, like Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3.
2. Make the game incredibly huge, like 34 DVDs and requiring 70 gigs of HD space to install.
3. Make the CD-Key contain non ASCII characters.

Piracy problems would disappear.

lol.. what a nice way for the gaming people to shoot themselves in the foot...
but with the way things are headed i wouldnt be suprised to see them take more desperate measures, if not quite this drastic.

[Martin]

The new way to do copy protection is to actually install third party software without you knowing (Oh, it's all in the EULA) that then does all of the detection in the background.

[templest]

I had to buy starcraft 3 times because of daemon-tools. I hate swapping discs, so I rip iso's onto the HD and use those instead. But thanks to starcraft's _new_ security measures. If the CD (or in this case the image) doesn't include their "Security ID String... blah, blah, blah" which is one obscure, note: inaccesible (at least directly), partition on the CD, then starcraft auto-downloads a file to corrupt your starcraft installtion and auto-bans your key from being able to go online. So now I'm forced to use the CD.

[josh]

isn't it illegal for them to auto download stuff to your PC like that???

I think if it wasn't b4 it is now with the new anti-spyware laws in the states,

[rizzix]

mind u guys.. i think games are underpriced.. the complexity of algorithms etc. used in some games.. pfft.. we dont pay for what we get.. if u want to reduce the cost of something it should be those foolish easy to program.. word-processors and other such foolish apps.. that people use for businesses.