Iron Lore post-mortem interview

[EFG]

The fault lies partially on the shoulders of pirates, and partially on the shoulders of whoever created and implemented all those ill-advised copy protection "crashes".

[eFFeCTiVe]

Lets say, I have gotten more than one game through piracy, but, the games that I think will be worth it, I buy. But eventually, it will kill PC gaming. The more people do it, and word of mouth will have everyone doing it, and the technology the industry uses today will pretty much end any company that tries to make a game. =( Thats just my opinion though =) (I have to say that because I know one nerd will come back here in 5,6, or 7 years and tell me I was wrong)

[StrictlyFire]

Mixed feelings on this subject. Since I have never 'pirated' a movie or game, I am unaware of the technology that exists to circumvent the attempts of the companies to protect their software, so forgive me if I say something untrue.

I played a game recently (last couple of years) called Sacred Gold. RPG, swords and sorcery, etc etc. When it first came out, only way to play it was to have the CD in the drive, or it wouldnt play. After the game had been out fot a while, they removed the need to have the CD in the drive, allowing many gamers who played the game on LAN networks to play much easier than loading one computer, then loading the next, etc etc.

So, to me at least, the solution seems to be in creating a CD that cannot be copied. But I suspect this will be very similar to the radar situation many of us drivers face every day. The same companies making the radar guns for the police, are supplying the radar detectors to the public. Win-Win for the company, and everyone else get screwed. I suspect the companies who are creating anti-piracy code for the CD's are prepared to sell it for the right price.

[EFG]

That's a good point, and it brings to mind a rumour I heard about an anti-virus company producing and unleashing viruses that only its product could remove. It's a sad state of affairs when single companies are simultaneously creating and solving the same problems just to make money.

[yerkyerk]

Piracy is certainly a problem, but I think battle.net is one way of effectively dealing with that problem - they allow for players an 'enhanced' gaming experience. As long as they have legit cd-keys, they can play on closed servers. Open servers are completely messed up, so that's a no-go.
And for those without online access, they still have access to the (possibly pirated) single part of the game. Single player might even be considered as a demo to some and therefore a good incentive to buy the game legitly.

On the other hand there's the tonload of crap games that come out of which you have no telling wether they're good games or horrid additions to the gaming industry (demo's are usually not very informative). Prices are often very high and it seems as if many games were severely shortened, so they can sell more parts (Crysis is a good example in this, with 6-7 hours of gameplay).
Than there's the copy protection bullcrap - legit users get the most trouble for this. And although the commercial companies will claim it, copy protection cannot be blamed on piracy, it's a policy of the game maker/publisher to keep their profits safe. Often there are ways thought up to increase profit that are clearly morally wrong (look at the regional coding of, among others, the Wii)

All-in-all; piracy is bad, but commercial companies are too...

[EFG]

The around-about of battle.net is hamachi, with which I know many people that use pirated copies of starcraft, mostly because it's impossible to find in stores. I live in a smallish town and excuse me if I don't make the big trip to town for $20 of gas to buy a $10 game.

[yerkyerk]

Mail-order, Steam, D2D...

[EFG]

The way I see it, if a new copy of Starcraft is bought it won't help Blizzard, I really doubt they even produce them anymore. However, they are currently maintaining and upkeeping servers, which I can't use unless I pay for the game. I don't "steal" games, I test them to see if I want to buy them, because I've been burned by a few terrible games that I'll never be reimbursed for. I stopped playing Starcraft shortly after I got it, and therefore can't justify spending actual money on it.

I did, however, pay for TQ, TQ:IT, COH and CS:Source (to name a few) because I like them enough to want to play them online (and TQ is fully playable SP so I wouldn't have been able to justify pirating it to myself at all).

[yerkyerk]

O, I think your 'tactic' is fine, better than playing crappy demos (btw do you really buy all the games you play extensively?), but not being able to get the game is usually a bad excuse..

Btw, you say you bought TQ:IT to play online, but do you even need a legit copy of this game to play online? (I've only gone there once or twice, I seriously dislike open servers, too bad closed servers are hacked too)

[EFG]

Well I'm pretty sure the servers won't let you on without a legit CD-key but I never tried, because I never DLed TQ:IT because I bought it before I put this system into place, back then(2006) I just bought games, and I bought IT because I knew it was good because I knew TQ was good.

As for being unable to get SC being a bad excuse, if I want to ever go on B.net, which I never have and probably never will, I'll buy the game. Other than that, I see no reason to. I don't play the campaigns of these games (they are horrible and boring), and I don't even play the game anymore. Why should I pay for something that failed to keep my attention?

The other thing I download is PS1 roms and the emulator, because my PS1 broke. A system failure is no reason for me to give them more money (It broke while I was playing it, no physical influence on it on my part. I don't care how old it was, it broke and I'm not buying another, and I want to keep playing my games). And I only downloaded games that I already owned (Maybe I could have used my discs to produce my own roms, but I'm not putting in the time and effort when I can let my high speed internet do the work for me).