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World of Goo piracy rate: 90%
- Thread starter GC|Simon
- Start date
IronicallyTwisted
Banned
firehawk12 said:
Who called the 360 piracy proof? Taking a modded 360 online is very dangerous, it isn't easy at all.
junkwaffle
In Front and Drawing Away
dark steve
Banned
junkwaffle, you can't just turn every thread into an appreciation thread
Hunter D said:
Console games are a different scenario, since not all 360 owners have their 360 hardware modded. I bet you over 90% of people with modded 360s pirated it though.
Hunter D said:
*facepalm* Of course people will still pirate games. Noone ever said otherwise. Are you seriously suggesting that people said 100% of pirates pirate the game because of DRM? Stop putting words in our mouths.
Nathan Rain
Banned
junkwaffle said:
Props.
Nobody pirates games because of DRM, that's just bullshit and everyone knows it. People who pirate games will always pirate no matter what.
Legit people will either buy a game they want, or just not buy a game. Not liking the strings attached to a product doesn't make it okay to steal.
I really do feel that "piracy" and "pirates" should no longer be used. The proper terms are theft, thieves, and stealing. That's what it is, plain and simple. "Piracy" is a euphamism that has done it's job at making ordinary people not take it seriously.
Legit people will either buy a game they want, or just not buy a game. Not liking the strings attached to a product doesn't make it okay to steal.
I really do feel that "piracy" and "pirates" should no longer be used. The proper terms are theft, thieves, and stealing. That's what it is, plain and simple. "Piracy" is a euphamism that has done it's job at making ordinary people not take it seriously.
charlequin
Banned
Zzoram said:
This is true. (Although if you try to derive piracy statistics from something like "downloads of a no-CD crack" you're not actually going to get the correct numbers; there are definitely plenty of people who do crack the DRM on their legitimately-purchased games.)
No, they aren't. Like using the term "intellectual property" as an umbrella for copyrights, patents and trademarks (in order to confuse people about how these three things are different), this is a piece of industry spin designed to get people on board with arbitrarily pro-industry policy rather than well-thought-out copyright rules that effectively combat piracy.
Theft is the act of taking a physical object or non-duplicable possession from another person. It has two distinct results -- the thief receives possession of an object they are not supposed to have, and the victim loses possession of an object that is rightly theirs. The well agreed-upon, societally-accepted punishment for thievery is primarily based on the latter aspect, as can be easily demonstrated by considering a "Robin Hood" type of case -- someone who steals things and immediately gives them away will still face the same punishments.
Copyright infringement only involves the infringer getting something they didn't pay for, but doesn't involve taking anything away from someone else -- this is why the general moral intuition of society is much more favorable to it than actual theft, and why it needs to be addressed differently if your goal is to make it stop happening rather than to indignantly get mad at people who do it. None of this is to say that it's okay, but rather to point out that it's a unique and essentially unprecedented form of negative behavior, and a similarly unique approach is needed to deal with it.
Well I downloaded the game through bittorrent, played the first five levels and never toched it again because it isn't my cup of tea. Had they released a demo, I would've downloaded that and then never looked at it again. Am I a pirate now? The closets full of original games I have here seem to tell something else.
EDIT: oh I just visited the site and I saw there was a demo released, stupid me
well anyway, had I known that, I would've opted to download that instead.
EDIT: oh I just visited the site and I saw there was a demo released, stupid me
well anyway, had I known that, I would've opted to download that instead.
An application I bought a few weeks ago uses a form of DRM I can get behind: Every download has an individual watermark, your real name and an account id. If anyone decides to share it, he can be identified, and they'll revoke the account (no more updates and support, banned from the community etc.). It's something that seems to be reasonably secure (judging by the lack of cracked/ pirated versions), and it doesn't hurt legitimate users. Quite the contrary, actually - it feels good to have a personalized copy.Haunted said:
I find that kind of reasoning hard to believe.
I feel like I'm the personified antithesis of their IP/profile-based reasoning.
I am on a DSL line that changes IP every 24 hours. Every single day I have played the game since launch I have submitted my score using a different IP. Nearly every German is on a similar arrangement.
I have installed WoG on my W2k box, which crashed and burned, then on my Mac box to help look for errors as requested by the devs and to tide me over, and finally on my Vista 32Bit box that replaces the W2k box. I'll wipe the Vista installation and install a 64Bit Vista soon, so there's yet another installation of WoG. Each and every time I created a new profile. It has the same name, so I don't know whether there's some UID stuff going on in the background, but if there isn't I have personally caused 3 profile creations from different IPs, with another one incoming. When they release a Linux version I'll add another.
But whatever. Not like it really matters. They're making money and seem to stay levelheaded about the piracy issue. Great start. Now keep on trucking and don't succumb to teh ehvul DRMz.
I feel like I'm the personified antithesis of their IP/profile-based reasoning.
I am on a DSL line that changes IP every 24 hours. Every single day I have played the game since launch I have submitted my score using a different IP. Nearly every German is on a similar arrangement.
I have installed WoG on my W2k box, which crashed and burned, then on my Mac box to help look for errors as requested by the devs and to tide me over, and finally on my Vista 32Bit box that replaces the W2k box. I'll wipe the Vista installation and install a 64Bit Vista soon, so there's yet another installation of WoG. Each and every time I created a new profile. It has the same name, so I don't know whether there's some UID stuff going on in the background, but if there isn't I have personally caused 3 profile creations from different IPs, with another one incoming. When they release a Linux version I'll add another.
But whatever. Not like it really matters. They're making money and seem to stay levelheaded about the piracy issue. Great start. Now keep on trucking and don't succumb to teh ehvul DRMz.
CoG said:
when i was in university, good ol '90's, our favourite past time was going to the record store and buying cd's, singles and especially used cd's... Sure, we did not have 300000 cd's.... but everyone had 10-20, some more.... my friend had collection of hundreds of VHS movies (original).
those places used to be full of people...
... I cant imagine that happening now anymore. It is so much easier to simply download mp3 than going to the store + pay for it...
So yeah, pirates would not download 300,000 songs if they had to pay for it... but at the same time, they wouldnt stop listening to music or play games... they would simply buy 100 mp3's that they listen to... and 15 movies, etc..
stuburns said:
it's very simple, there are two levels of sharing on PSN, if what you say is true, and Sony did not intend to let people share with people they know, then every game would release with the higher restrictions that come with Warhawk and GTPrologue's US release.
wmat said:
This entire thread is a difficult conversation.
Do you know what your so called "half-decent DRM" does?
For instance, when a new version of StarForce comes out, a new version that took dozens of people to code, dozens of people to bug-proof it, millions of dollars invested into creating it, a "hack-proof" version of it, not to count the amount of dollars any publishing company will have to pay for this thid-part DRM software. Do you know how that ACTUALLY affects the pirate release of the game?
One Week.
It takes the "game releasing scene" one week AT MOST (most of the times it's just 3 days) to crack a "half-decent" DRM. And nobody has to do any magic hacking underground searching to find the crack themselves either - they usually come WITH THE GAME they're downloading in the first place - all it takes is the exchange of one file.
And i'll even logically tell you why this happens: First of all, no matter how bug tested and bug proofed a software is, it will always have ways around it. Be it because of poor programming, be it because somebody didn't think of all possible ways to circumvent it while programming it, be it because the OS in which the DRM runs on top of it allows you to circumvent it. Software is always flawed, and there's people out there that will discover these flaws.
The other problem is that there's hundreds, if not millions of people out there ready to get "cracking", literally, on any release any company puts out there. Be it the blockbuster game of the year or the run-of-the-mill shovelware crap. People will "brute-force" their way into whichever DRM shows up.
Steam has the best DRM out there, as somebody said here earlier: "the bought games are tied to your ID in a database somewhere over the mountain. That is, in fact, Digital Rights Management, just not tied to a hardware ID, an OS hash, ..., but instead tied to your identity as given at registration. It's obviously less restrictive than for example EA's DRM."
It's the best type of DRM out there. It's not intrusive and does it's job... or does it?
The sad truth is that every Steam game is also pirated. But there's a difference: Since it's a pirated copy, you don't have your Steam ID (and if you do, it's going to get banned), so you can't play the game with people that actually bought it.
So Steam's DRM is really good for one thing: Preventing people with pirated copies of the games to play with the actual community and enjoy the perks of having a community (like friend lists, updates, online gameplay, etc etc etc).
And that is, in my opinion, what it should be all about. If it's Software (in case of games) or information (in case of music/movies), it's going to be copied. That's pretty much a given in the world we live in today. What can't and won't be ever copied is the service provided to whoever buys the original game (hassle-free online gameplay, community, decent support, online leaderboards, hell, even packaging). People who will want to play the game properly will have to buy the "package". That's the keyword, the "package". The package of services offered with that piece of software.
This is where, in my opinion, Microsoft kind of failed this generation. With the 360, they went as far as anybody ever went in preventing piracy on their console. I won't go into detail, but they created layer after layer of checkpoints, traps and all kinds of clever stuff to prevent people from running unsigned code on the machine. They, literally, killed homebrew in favor of preventing pirated copies of games to ever run on their console. And they were pretty successful. Until somebody cracked one of their layers: they tricked the DVD drive into reporting a pirated copy as a legit one.
And from that, a person could use all of the "community" behind that game. Leaderboards, online gameplay, updates, services, everything. Sure, Microsoft has (and will continue to, i hope) found ways to prevent these people from acessing the community features (from banning their consoles), but they can still play their free copies of their current and future games.
I, personally, as a software coder, don't see a way to prevent the copy of digital propriety. Signing up to a database and saying to that database "hey, i have this game, and i will be playing it now" and making that database go "ok, he does have that game" or "wait a second, he never bought that game" and acting accordingly (pay attention, it's not preventing the player to play the game if he doesn't have it. It's acting accordingly. In other words, taking action AFTER you noticed there's something wrong with it), which is kind of what Steam does, is the only direction that makes sense in my mind.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that all that money that was spent into creating, updating and selling a DRM software solution could've been poured into better services for the end-user, giving them more reason to buy the game (hey, if i buy this game i'll get some kickass online community going on) than to pirate it (oh, if i buy this game I'll only be able to install it 3 times in my lifetime).
Edit: holy smokes batman, what a wall of text.
Whatever your feelings on piracy it seems that there are a lot of people playing World of Goo right now. I'd hope that the developer can make good use of all this positive feedback. Perhaps it will translate into something like brand loyalty, which can be exploited for the sequel. More than likely the developer will move away from the PC platform and towards the consoles, which are a little more secure.
I hope they make a good profit and are encouraged to keep making original and clever games for us to play.
I hope they make a good profit and are encouraged to keep making original and clever games for us to play.
poppabk said:
Considering how piracy is a constant for any game out there, I don't see why it's an issue. It's never going to be resolved, so there's no sense in constantly bringing it up.
The only variable here is DRM. And as 2DBoy seems to speculate, it does nothing to affect sales, and is a waste of time and money. I highly support the death to DRM cause.
Smiling Bandit
Banned
Let's say one million people played this game, of which 900k didn't pay for it and 100k did. Now according to their own numbers with anti-piracy measures they could only get 1 out of 1000 people who pirated the game to actually buy it. In this case that would be 900 people and that's less then 1% of the actual sales of the game.
Works for me. I had two crashes to the desktop, but only after leaving the game on for quite some time. Looks & plays & sounds just like the Windows version, but uses a bit more CPU. Was to be expected: They're relying heavily on crossplatform capable / open source libraries like SDL, ODE and IrrKlang.Mdk7 said:
(Powermac G5, 1.8GHz singlecore PPC, 2GB RAM, NVidia FX5200)
drakesfortune
Directions: Pull String For Uninformed Rant
CoG said:
Right, and you know this how? They certainly won't buy it if they're willing to just take it for free. And to the guy that wonders how many of the people who pirated it ended up buying it? Probably between zero and zero percent. Come on man, don't be so naive. I know you want to believe these people are going to do the right thing, but they simply don't and won't. That's reality.
Smiling Bandit said:
So lets say in this scenario each game makes the publisher $5.
900 copies missed out on is $4,500.
If it cost less than that to add DRM that recovers the 1% then it's worthwhile. If it's more expensive then don't bother.
I've never been a big fan of piracy, I even own several games on multiple formats for convenience.
In the wide world though game piracy has never been bigger or easier, and needs to be tackled. The R4 in particular means that anyone can give their kid ALL the games for a pittance, hopefully the DSI will give us the convenience of all our games in one place and remove some of the need for that particular little device. I'd hate for the casual players who DL lots to force us regular players to go online everytime to prove that we are not theives.
drakesfortune
Directions: Pull String For Uninformed Rant
TheExodu5 said:
We put man on the moon, if we can resolve the issues surrounding that, certainly DRM issues will be solved as well. It's going to be inconvenient, but the developers can either find a solution, or just stop making games for PC. Certainly putting games on the PC and watching 82% of the people that play your game steal it has got to make developers question why they put their games on PC in the first place. That's GOT to hurt the sales of their games on consoles as well. If there's an outlet to get a game for free, then that's a lost sale on the 360 if the person has both.
hydragonwarrior
Member
Zzoram said:
feel sorry for devs
we feel outrage (like in this case) for a game not selling well due to piracy
but we'll bitch too much if they add counter measures to piracy
drakesfortune said:
It won't be resolved. You live in a fantasy land. Nothing short of forcing you to play games on a closed system, in a closed environment, under pressure of gunpoint by security guards, is going to stop games from being cracked.
Developers and publishers need to learn to live with it. Instead of imposing restrictive DRM that does shit all but restrict the legitimate consumer, make it so the legitimate consumer has added incentive to purchase the game. For online games, this one's easy, since the online community is restricted to anyone without a legitimate product. For offline games, do like CDProjekt and their release of The Witcher, focusing on a fantastic package that will only be available to those who buy the game. Same goes for Sins of a Solar Empire. These guys truly understand how to succeed in a world with piracy. EA, on the other hand, is slowly killing itself with all the restrictive DRM it's shipping with it's games, and is destroying their repuation for no reason whatsoever. Take a look at all their latest Amazon pages riddled with anti-DRM reviews. This will have a greater effect on their sales than piracy.
Althane said:
PC version has better controls. The PC version also can look better if you change the resolution in the .ini file (very simple to do...but shame there's no resolution option in game). Wii version lets you play on the TV and with other friends. Wii version is $5 cheaper.
Personally, I got it on PC. And damnit you really need to pick up this game. Honestly, even with MGS4 and LBP, this is my GOTY. I was totally surprised when I played the game. Hands down one of the best games I've ever played. Right up there with Portal for short, fun, amazing games.
poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Well this is the way that a lot of publishers/developers are going I think, in that they are moving to consoles exclusively or at least releasing on consoles first. I know that consoles are not completely closed systems but they are much more closed than a PC, and will only become more so when we move to the next generation. Consoles, as exemplified by Live, potentially have the "Steam" community type advantage you are talking about, but it is a forced, single community which is also tied to the hardware.TheExodu5 said:
Metal Gear?!
Member
No, DRM is just one approach to copy protection, one that is fatally flawed by design. It's like trying to get to the moon by drilling underground.drakesfortune said:
Copy protection itself is a problem that will always be tackled in new ways, and some will be successful in that they can succeed at making things harder to copy, but no copy protection system can ever make things impossible to copy the same way that no spacecraft can make a trip to the moon 100% safe.
Durante said:
I think a lot of people think of this game as YOPG (yet another physics puzzler).
The problem is that there is so much more in this game. The brilliant musical score. The wonderful hand drawn artwork. The interesting themes and "story" seen through several cutscenes, backgrounds, sign posts, and so forth (similar to Portal. There, but not forced on you. A bit more abstract than what is presented in Portal). The use of various goo types, obstacles, and environments to offer creative and new experiences with nearly every level. Hell, even the little sounds the goo's make when you pick them up. Everything in this title works incredibly well together. If you took away everything but the physics game, it wouldn't be remotely as good. There is a reason this game is seeing such critical acclaim.
I agree with GOTY sentiments. One of if not the best titles of the year.
RubberJohnny
Banned
READ THE FUCKING LINK
READ THE FUCKING LINK
READ THE FUCKING LINK
READ THE FUCKING LINK
READ THE FUCKING LINK
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READ THE FUCKING LINK
READ THE FUCKING LINK
READ THE FUCKING LINK
READ THE FUCKING LINK
READ THE FUCKING LINK
READ THE FUCKING LINK
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance_(psychology)Zzoram said:
But for that to be true, you make the assumption that the larger company has a lower overall piracy rate. That may or may not be a valid assumption.Jackson said:
Well said.drizzle said:
charlequin
Banned
spwolf said:
Did you even read the article in the OP?
The entire point is that DRM is pointless for a game like this; it won't prevent enough piracy to meaningfully increase the quantity of sales, and your piracy rate is not in and of itself a determiner of your success or failure (since that 9-pirated-copies-to-1-purchased-copy ratio is pretty close to standard across many different games.)
Nathan Rain
Banned
Mdk7 said:
...uh...trick question?
I thought it was PC only?
just wanted to fix your urlSlavik81 said:
-> from Wikipedia Reverse Psychology
hahaha :lol i remember this!wikipedia said: