Is it just me, or is that simply one of the promotional videos?

Here is the correct link, their embed is messed up.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/30392391#30392391

"If the publishers are convinced they are losing sales."

Now that's an excuse they (other publishers) will jump on. They will never admit as Brad did there, and here many times that those same pirates had no and nor will they, any intention of buying the game, or any product in question.

The publishers will use the pirate issue (And what happened with Demigod as their example) to further introduce and implement even more draconian DRM.

No matter the stance taken by SD or EA or anyone, the pirates will persist till either A), server side gaming is the norm, which will only serve to harm the PC game industry, or B, game developers start going out of business due to loss of profit and furthering the harm to the pc game industry.

What is needed, is to address the issue as to why people pirate, not if. There will always be pirates, whilst there are games at retail that won't change, but what, if anything can drop that number?

Price? It's the obvious, but that's not going to readily change, and with reason.

I'll admit, i have no answer as to what would drive a pirate to actually purchase a game, if anything, except that Stardocks approach to me at least, even though not favorably demonstrated here, is the best way to go about it, other than....nothing.

Piracy is here to stay.

But since the drones at EA and the like will take note of the 120K pirates and forget everything else, it will be a cold day in hell before they all see the light.

To them, killing pirates = more sales. That is the concept that needs to be changed.

Bingo!  Sadly, many people who pirate software don't believe they are stealing to begin with.  Though it is amusing to watch them bend over backwards justyifing their pirating.

Excellent suggestion.

Honesty, personal morality, social contributions - name it.

If Humanity has (somehow and continuously) evolved beyond barbaric behaviors and what else, i really don't see why the good can't crush evil ways for reasons close enough to reasonably profits *AND* fair standards for all. That's the philosophical point.

Economy wise, people are complaining right now about worldwide recession conditions *AND* free-market forces tolerating piracy (one of which Capitalism ideology). Innovation is at stake, ingenuity is on the extinction list, investment will slowly vanish. What we are risking (by ignoring both the consequences and Piracy itself) is more than enough to create social chaos, primal wars of virtual terrorism and as a result, hell on Earth.

Am i exaggerating? Who can cure possible epidemics such as the swine flu out of Mexico, lately? Collective paranoia? I wonder.

Money is the currency of Peace & Human Rights as much as stupidly overstocked weapons, missiles or nuking arsenals by maniacs politically border-lined in their very own mental illness. Yes -- USofA and China and Russia and France and UK... etc, i'm looking at you all.

For a real solution, pay people to work & live. Take it away, you're in for a deserved revolution by Pirates or not.

Went waaaayyyyy off-topic --- sorry, but i HAD to.

I consider Ironclad's Demigod as an incredibly huge success, not by numbers or server lags caused by online theft of bandwidths from pirated copies but more by the guts SD is showing to the gaming industry. DRM, copyrights, property -- i don't care. If *i* work hard enough, they get my cash... if THEY worked hard enough they certainly deserve it. It's a matter of value & principles.

And I'm saying that would allow companies insane access to your machine.  Not to mention what I'm sure some smart person would distribute viruses that way.  But yeah, you're an IT specialist...you know what your talking about I guess. /S

Well duh, they put all their income into company infrastructure.  Lol

Well, yes. If you launch any game with an exe file, you're already giving all access you can possibly give to that company. They don't need anything else besides that exe file if they'll be crazy enough to destroy their buziness and face charges in courts by adding trojans/viruses etc. to an exe file of the game.

And almost any game with internet access (say, for patching) technically can download viruses and upload your private information to companie's server. Once again, noone will be crazy enough to do something like that. Say, banks generally don't run with your money even if they have full access to it, so why should gaming companies do it? It's not really profitable (game will cost too much money so to make it efficient) and there are much easier ways to distribute viruses - say, use spam emails or exploits in operating system/popular programs...

In other words, you're a classical n00b who doesn't know what he is talking about.

Be nice, it's MSNBC, that's top grade material for those jokers...

I'd never purchase/play a server side game (PC platform) for serurity/privacy issues as well. It would also raise many of the same concerns now coming to light with cloud computing. You're wise user for not trusting others with that level of access to your PC.

Game consoles with locked down hardware, and used only to play games (minimum level of personal info involved) would be an ideal platform for server side gaming. After what's happened to Demigod, I believe it's clear that developing games for the PC platform is hopeless. DRM is all it's forms has failed, and just being a "good" company has also failed. I really don't know what else to say. This is a sad day, and a real eye opener for myself. I have always been a strong supporter of "fair use" and the need to reform copyright time limits. But this time the numbers don't lie. (12% legitimate users - wow)

Thats just wrong people buys the game, not pirate it

Stop making games for good*. Maybe then some "people" will learn of their "mistakes". Some people only value things once they have lost them. But that means that as always the innocent have to suffer because of the guilty... so don't stop making games for good UNTIL AFTER Elemental is done and patched, ok?

Also, no matter how many sales lost in the future, ban Gamestop from receiving any other SD game ever. If someone shows them that they have the "balls" to reject them for their obviously selfish reasons, maybe they wouldn't be so *BEEP*. Maybe they would fear that others could follow the lead. Maybe. Altough not likely with so much fear to piracy.

Demigod = in my book anyways.

* that means everybody, not just Stardock/GPG... Which we know won't happen.

The differences are quite apparent.  I have control of and can check and exe or other file I download.  Also I know that the patch came from the game company, baring a complete takeover of a website/fileserver for a VERY short time that would effect relaitively small amounts of consumers. 

On the other hand if a company/server had the ability to access and change files whenever I was playing a game...well...yeah.  And all someone would have to do is slip in a little extra.  People are not companies..but they work at them.  But, hey..I'm just a noob who doesn't know anything about tech stuffz.  (I added a z so I could look cool too)