But stealing (larceny) is not the SAME crime as software piracy (copyright infringement).

What I most dislike about the current trends in DRM is that most of the schemes are hardware sensitive. Last time I upgraded (fairly major overhaul, keeping only case, drives and peripherals), I spent two days running around trying to get all my software reactivated on my "new" computer. Even now, months later, I have the occasional issue. I'm not even going to bother setting up a "games" hardware profile with all the miscellaneous junk turned off like I used to since I know it'll stop everything working again.

If I've paid for a product, I expect to be able to use it whenever and wherever I wish without having to jump through hoops. Can someone please hurry up and come up with a genius copy protection scheme that lets me do that!

GC2 activation, maybe ?

One of the things I find most annoying with our society is that people who live "normal" lives are completely incapable of understanding when others have situations arise in their lives that make it impossible to carry on in a "normal" fashion.

I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder- it's the single worst not-fatal disease one can have and will shut down your life faster than you can blink. Because of having it, I have been unable to find work for the last 5 1/2 years that I can perform. I filed for disability, but of course we don't fund it properly, so its been over 3 years waiting for a court date to determine once and for all if I can get it. Otherwise, I have no income, no assets, and no means to get income.

However, my life cannot remain on hold simply because others in society are not supportive or understanding. Therefore, I have every right to continue gaming- one of the few things in life that lets me escape from my horrible reality and live "normally" for a while, and reduce my anxiety to only about 3 times the normal level. (Most of you reading this, if you had my disease, would spend your days curled in a fetal position whimpering. It's a constant struggle for me every day to fight off what you would only feel if you were stuck in the ocean with 7 sharks swimming at you ready for a snack.)

I worked 7 days a week for 8 years straight, 12, 14, 24 hours a day as an award winning virtual reality developer. Due to circumstances outside of my control (a hereditary, incurable disease and the way our business society is flawed in how it works), I can't do what I used to do- and at the same time can't just "do anything" like other people can. (When's the last time your cashier at McDonald's collapsed onto the floor unable to do anything but whimper for "help" when you were giving an order? Never? I thought so.) In that time, I bought over 1500 games. I'd reckon about two dozen were worth the 40-60 bucks. The rest never got played once after the first 1-3 day experience, because they were full of totally flawed design concepts and had skipped the QA process- even apparent to those NOT familiar with the industry.

My point is, there are circumstances that are VALID circumstances for people out there who simply cannot buy games, but yet have every right to continue gaming- and making sure that when they DO buy a game, it is a working, quality title and not a "quick buck" type of product that will never see the light of day after one use. Demos simply don't cut it. A one hour trial is pointless, and locking down half the gameplay doesn't let one understand how the game TRULY plays. Only a full experience over a week of gameplay will let one know what the truth is about the game experience.

I think of the 5 or 6 games I've borrowed- and I DO mean borrowed, because that's exactly what it is (stealing is PERMANENT), I bought 4 and knew the other 2 were not worth any money. All got deleted once I knew my answer with a few days to a week, and no negative financial impact was caused on any of the companies- in fact, 4 of them had someone without income BUY 4 games because I knew they were worth my extremely limited resources!

There are so many other issues far more deserving of attention in gaming than "piracy"... it's simply a waste "slowing down" the pirates who will always, always break the system in place, not to mention the loss of customers who will not buy a game with intrusive root kit style copy protection or simply WRONG approaches like having a single player game REQUIRE internet connectivity. How should anyone be willing to buy a game, which they now have full rights to use, and yet be denied because they can't afford to have an internet connection that month with the high cost of gas and food? It's preposterous.

All that said, I can't wait for Spore- I need no trials, samples or anything for that one. It's simply going to be the best game ever made, period. =D

First, erring on the side of caution requires a one dimensional problem. If you err on the side of caution by driving slower in heavy traffic, you likely to cause a wreck when you piss off everyone behind you that needs to be somewhere in a timely fashion.

Second, I know because I don't live under a rock. I'll probably buy demigod, I have zero interest in it. I bought galciv2, it's too slow, I rarely play it. I knew before I bought it that I wasn't going to play it much at all. Sins I like, but don't. I'm a multi-player kind of person when it comes to rts games, I hate playing ai. I'm on satellite internet. Why did I pre-order a game I'd play solely online when I'm basically not going to play it online for the foreseeable future? I might hop on at some point after the balance is reasonable, it does run late at night, if with 1500 ping, odds are my forewarned companion will drop thirty seconds in like the last one did though. I'm not the only one either. I know quite a few habitual pirates with terabytes of games, movies and music who, on hearing about sins, went to the online store instead of the pirate bay. One in particular bought it simply because it was faster to download it off their server than it was off a torrent. Weird huh? Patience is a virtue, if pirates don't have any virtues...



Brilliant logic, if only they had any relation between each other. An intelligent person, when designing a protection scheme for spore, might have considered such an obvious, sensible tact. Alas, EA has no such marginally intelligent people making decisions. They could even use such a system to mass market a pseudo demo through the pirates. Skip copy protection entirely, and just require authentication to connect to the master server. The pirates would get to see the game, get addicted, and then have to buy it to get the full benefit that is a universe populated by the creations of the entire player base.



Copy protection isn't wrong, it's stupid. They have seen no magic increase in sales by increasing the protection. There have even been games that weren't immediately cracked. Rainbow Six:Lockdown holds the record if I remember right. What did Starforce do for Lockdown? Nada. Lockdown isn't one of the higher selling Rainbow Six games. Rogue Spear beat the pants off it. Rogue Spear was cracked on day one. The pc game industry goes and looks at the stats and thinks wow! 20 million people have downloaded this game and we only sold five! They aren't considering that half the people pirating it are probably just seeing if they're even vaguely interested in buying it. The rise of the internet and the so called doom of the pc gaming industry has been a steady, unfaltering expansion from one year to the next. The drop has never been shown.

I think you're confusing the right to play games you own with a 'right' to DL/pirate games you don't. The former is absolutely your right. The latter is not, no matter what condition you have. And if you own over 1500 games, I fail to see how you need to pirate to get the gaming fix you say you require to be 'normal' (if you're simply saying you're using a pirated version of a game to get a game you actually bought to work properly, that's cool, I can see that).

Mass effect is an awesome game. This is a shame

He said he bought 1500 games and only a couple dozen were actually worth buying. So now he pirates them to see before buying because he can't afford to spend fifty thousand bucks for a couple dozen games. Makes perfect sense to me.

I was completely uninterested in similar schemes before this announcement and I remain uninterested and committed to avoidance after this announcement. I do not and will not file a report to a corporate server about my activities; there is enough of this garbage in society as it is, this is a step in the wrong direction.

The last time I bought a Bioware game was with KotOR II (a mistake...). I was toying around with the idea of purchasing Mass Effect, but this kills it. Notice how Bioware began to suck when they got purchased by EA? Interesting pattern. Anyway, too bad - Bioware started out as a good company.

I suspect this is likely one of the primary reasons for the delays of both Mass Effect and Spore - so they could append their stupid copy scheme to the respective codes and test it.

I can`t wait to see the Unholy combination of adware, microtransactions, and constant copy protection embedded in Battlefield 3.

Way to PROMOTE piracy EA!!!

(big sarcastic thumbs WAYYYY up!)

(...)

KotOR II is not a BioWare title. It was done by Obsidian.

Mass Effect is an awesome game on the 360. I WAS looking forward to the PC release mainly due to modders which add "life" to length of games.

However, if I can not get a version without Securom or Starforce, I will not purchase it. Also I don't pirate, the point is I don't want that piece of trash on my machine in addition to the hassles that the copy protection schemes bring.

Securom == Starforce (In terms that they are both bullshit and no one should ever buy a game that uses those draconian measures) Yes I know one is hardware and the other software.


I love the co-interview of Brad Wardell with Chris Taylor of GPG and Chris doing the talking of how Stardock "gets it". One can only hope more companies will see the light. If they don't, I won't be missing anyone or shedding tears for anyone using Starforce or Securom on their games.


In the end, Mass Effect is now Mass Defect.

It's time to put the anti-piracy zealots in their place. I'm tired of getting caught in the crossfire between you people and your holy crusade against the evil pirate.

Can the comparisons to physical theft. Theft involves taking an actual physical item. If I steal milk from a dairy farmer, then that milk is no longer in the possession of said dairy farmer. The farmer has then lost a physical item and is no longer in possession of the milk. Anyone that can't tell the difference between making a copy of something and taking a physical item is a fool or a sophist.

Before the zealots rush in and, invariably, accuse me of being a pirate, know that I bought Sins and Gal Civ 2 + Dread Lords (and plan on buying Twilight when I have time to play it). I won't however, be buying Mass Effect or Spore despite being interested in both games.

Perhaps if people are so worried about piracy then they should stop making it so that the pirated version of a game is a better product. As it is, the pirated versions of Mass Effect will have less restrictions and more freedom than the legally purchased versions. Is Bioware trying to prevent piracy or drive more people to it? Because people are likely to pirate Mass Effect now, out of spite when they might have formerly purchased it.

No, "larceny" involves taking an actual physical item. Theft is a general legal term, which larceny is part of, but it is not limited to physical items.

If you're going to put anyone in their place, it's usually good to know what you're talking about first.

Um, guys, hate to burst your bubble, but it doesn't say anything about Spore whatsoever.

it says that on page 2. I updated the OP so there wont be more confusion

oh, ok thanks.

By slinging insults at a particular person you make yourself look like an immature fool on a soap box. I hope this discussion can continue without direct attacks on people. Their asinine arguments, sure, but not them, themselves. 8)




That is a valid reason, and I agree the most important, but once again, and this has been said numerous times, for the majority of pirates, they wouldn't have bought it anyway. If you make a CD, and I'm not going to buy it no matter what, then my friend hands me a burned copy, you didn't loose anything and I got a new coaster. Or if I like it a little, but still would have never bought it, you still haven't lost anything.

The key arguement here isn't that pirating is good, it's that DRM doesn't work. Every single game, since I've been playing games, has been available to those who know how to get it (and many who don't who will look for 10 minutes). No DRM has ever stopped it, no invasive protection/activation scheme/etc has ever stopped it. Not once, not ever. However, invasive DRM and marketing spyware (again, see EA's 2142), has at the very least stopped one person from purchasing a game. Me. So Not counting anyone else's support but my own, they're loosing money from paying for dumb DRM protection, and loosing money because people like me won't purchase their product, and not loosing anymore than they would be otherwise from pirating since they can't stop it. Doesn't seem like rocket science to me, seems more like a way to collect information on their client base, and insure that you can't play that particular game later on and have to buy new ones.








I don't remember the exact numbers anymore, but Napster brought an estimated (give or take) 10% loss in profit (by standard market analysis, not the IRAA lawyers who think every 1 pirate=1 lost sale), while the economy has dropped ten-fold that. They were, and have always been, above projected market values for their venue. That argument is irrelevant, and false, for the actual profit loss percentage versus how much money people are willing to spend on luxuries (music, games, etc), and for the above reason. Expanding a tertiary needs business in a receding economy and claiming you're being wounded by pirates is equivocal to complaining about the amount of sugar you lost because you caught an ant in your pantry.

updated the OP with info from the FAQ.

What a sad day to see something like this (:(

I gotta wonder, im quiet sure companys aint stupid, so why use so much cash and time on a copy protection that wont work anyways *confused*

To me it sounds like they want something else with this "every 10 day re-check" they are not telling the costumers.

Oh well, looks like Spore and Mass Effect will be number 2 and 3 on the list of games I was thinking about getting but won’t due to overly zealous copy protection (No. 1 being Bioshock).

I understand that by buying a copy of a game I do not 'own' it and have to use it in accordance with whatever rules they put down, but what they have to understand is that there are plenty quality games around, and I only have so much time to play them, so unless their game is something truly amazing I will simply spend my money elsewhere.

Why don't people just talk to a friend who has the game first?

And if you buy a bad game, give it a bad review on a popular website.

The reason I bought Sins was that I looked over about 50 different customer reviews, and very few of them were bad.

Securom certainly seems to be keen on trying to punish legit owners for the misdeeds of pirates...

But I'm not going to regurgitate my feelings all over again, when I just wrote them all down: http://www.totalgamingnetwork.com/main/blog.php?b=22

Dude, you take your laptop camping?

Not an important point in the grand scheme of things, but KotOR II was not a Bioware game. Bioware made KotOR, and then realized that they'd rather gouge out their eyeballs with spaghetti strainers than ever work with LucasArts again. KotOR II was shopped out to Obsidian, a company with gifted developers and a terrible knack for getting saddled with publishers who wreck their games. LucasArts bears pretty much the full blame for the terrible state of KotOR II, because LucasArts is the party that refused to allow Obsidian to make a patch for the game to fix its problems and forced them to release before the game was really finished.

I believe one of the Stardock staff did say that one of the best ways to prevent software priacy is to make it easier and better for a customer to actually purchase the game rather than pirate it. That means making it easily avaliable either through retail channels or via download (i.e. Steam), make it easy to install, and make it easy to run. Acquiring the game usually isn't much of an issue, but when a game starts wanting to do all sorts of extra "crap" during installation (i.e. authentication server connections or adding extra software) and won't run easily (you can't play because the game couldn't connect to the server), then that's where a cracked pirated version starts to provide a better user experience (don't need to buy it, it doesn't install extra junk, and you don't even need a CD).

Another thing that i'm wondering is how much $$$ would be saved if some of these companies didn't bother using these extravagant copy protection schemes? I'm sure SecuROM and Starforce does cost a rather significant amount of $$$ to integrate into games. On top of that, you may have to maintain a series of authentication servers (which costs more $$$). Are these copy protection costs outweighed by the amount of $$$ "saved" by combating piracy?

The other thing that's going to really annoy me later is that if/when sales of these games end up not meeting expectations, publishers/developers are going to start bitching and moaning about how "priacy" has hurt their sales (even if it actually is customers voting with their wallets).

it's true that reviews help a lot with games... i got into SINS because gamespot put 9.0 rating for this game... lol



but reviews are not always accurate especially customer reviews... sometimes they leave the worst part on their reviews and just say awesome game, good game, and etc... one possible reason is that it's an awesome game on the console...