GREAT IDEA MISTER.
No, seriously, this won't work at all.
[QUOTE=Shibbey;21962680]Whatever happened to physical copies? Alot of "Collectors" or "Gold" editions have stuff like comics and art booklets, hell, even figurines. On a smaller scale this could be applied to normal stuff. Some old RTS' had strategy guides, maps etc.
You can't pirate a physical object.[/QUOTE]
Well with a flatbed scanner, then you can pirate maps and strategy guides.
i would suggest reading this:
[url]http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy[/url]
And then try again.
[QUOTE=SkinkYEA;21963541]My idea: Replace all files on torrent sites and pirate bays with gay porn.
It won't stop it but it will SOMEWHAT stop it.[/QUOTE]
Like they'll ever get access to TPB's servers :haw:
They're located in a locked up Bunker
[url]http://www.cyberbunker.com/[/url]
[QUOTE=gman003-main;21954984]Okay, I've been thinking about game piracy, DRM and stuff like that a lot. One of the biggest criticisms of any anti-piracy scheme is that it makes the game worse for the users. I think I've come up with something that would reduce piracy, but not affect legit users at all.
My idea involves no DRM. In fact, it is not connected to the game itself at all.
The idea? Spam.
Not email spam. Spam the torrent sites. Upload dozens of indexes for the demo, each slightly-differently labeled, but each seeming to be the full, cracked game. People trying to pirate it instead get a demo copy, which works to make them want the game more (if the game is any good). Repeat for major non-BT piracy sites.
Yes, the indexes will start filtering things more. But, short of having someone do a full playthrough of every submission, they will never be able to completely filter the spam out.
Yes, people will still upload actual, pirated copies, but most pirates will give up trying to find them. Remember, this idea is about making it hard for the pirates, not making it impossible. It's a fact of life that people will pirate a game.
The best part of this idea (to the publisher, at least) is that it works alongside any other DRM. You can spam the torrents whether you're using Starforce, SecuROM, Steam, a simple CD Key, or nothing at all. It will cost the publishers nearly nothing: hire an intern for a few hours, set up a couple dinky servers to make the torrent seem active.
Sure, the pirates will hate this. People who use BitTorrent for legal reasons might dislike it if you chose bad keywords. However, the former are costing you some lost sales (nowhere near 1:1, mind you, but some), and the latter are few and far between, and usually frequent different torrent sites than the pirates.
I do believe this plan is what's called a "win-win". The players get less DRM, since there's fewer pirates, and the game developers get more money from ex-pirates who gave up and bought the thing.
Is this enough to stop piracy period? I doubt it. As Slashdot has proven, good community moderation/metamoderation can let just a few people manage a massive site. They'll figure out a way to keep the cracked versions flowing. But doing this will make things hard on them. And most of all, it won't hurt the players, the actual customers.
As an aside to any game companies reading this, make sure you keep a list of what you yourselves uploaded. Don't get caught in the Viacom situation, where you sue someone for illegally hosting your content only to realize you uploaded it yourself. Also be sure to chose keywords and such properly, to avoid affecting people who aren't even looking for your game.
So, Facepunch, can you find any flaws in this plan? Seriously, I'd like to know if you can figure out a way this hurts legit users, or if it violates some law I don't know of. Maybe false advertising, if you claim the game is "100% CRACKED FOR REAL THIS TIME", and it's just a demo. Maybe some weird court ruling. I don't know; I'm not a lawyer. I'm just a guy who had an idea.
Yes, the pirates will find a way around it. To quote some famous guy, probably Churchill, "The bombers will always get through". This isn't about stopping all of them, it's about stopping some of them.[/QUOTE]
No @ your entire post.
Personally, I feel entertainment costs too much, so I don't feel guilty about pirating games or movies. Especially DS and GBA games. I'll buy MOST of my PC or console games, but hand held games? $20-40 for a watered-down, most likely sub-par knock-off of something that would be much greater on a console system? No thanks, I'm not paying for that.
And WiiWare games, same thing. I'm not paying $10 or whatever the Wii Point equivalent is just so I can play a game I've already owned/played on a new system. That's a steep convenience charge, if you ask me. I'll just hack the system myself and download some roms and an emulator. So no thanks, I'm not paying for that.
Same thing with movies. If I want to REALLY enjoy a movie, I'll actually pay to see it in theaters, on a big screen, with great sound, and possibly in 3D. But I'll be damned if I'll pay more than $5 for a DVD, if anything at all. You charge me $8-15 to see something in theaters (which you make literally millions off of), and then once it comes out you charge me upwards of $20 so I can watch it on my crappy tv with my horrible sound system? No thanks, I'm not paying for that.
Now, software I actually DO feel guilty about stealing (when I do pirate it, which is NOT always). Because the software I'm using becomes my livelihood, my source of income, I really ought to just buy it, you know? Which I actually plan to do. Once using a piece of software earns me enough money, I'll actually buy the software. No harm, no foul, in my opinion. You'll get your money, just pretend it was a trial period.
That's me, anyway.
[quote]since there's fewer pirates, and the game developers get more money from ex-pirates who gave up and bought the thing.[/quote]
Video game companies are making enough money as it is. "Final Fantasy 13 Has Shipped 5 Million Units of the Game Worldwide", and that's it's first day in the US market.
By the way, have you imagined this? If a PSP couldn't be hacked, it's sales would cut by half. That's why Sony hasn't been stepping up it's AP policy.
Furthermore; Imagine if I want to use photoshop. I consider it a piece of shit, I am not going to buy it (or rather I do not consider it worth my money). If I cannot pirate it, I will not buy it.
This results in $0 (zero) lost revenue from Adobe. This is just an example.
You will also get nowhere calling people thieves either. The image explains it simply. Piracy is not theft. It's Piracy. It's in many cases, copyright infringement. If I steal (actually steal here, not most anti-pirates definition) a loaf of bread from Walmart, I have removed it from their possession. They can no longer sell it.
If I make a copy of a file you have, it does not change your ownership of the file in any way whatsoever. Unless I told you I had done it, you might not even know. One does not simply copy a loaf of bread.
There's also the issue of DRM and draconian copy protection in software and games. They make it incredibly easy for the pirates to offer a superior, less restricted product.
If I cared about Assassin's Creed 2, I would pirate it and thus not be forced to needlessly ensure my internet connection remains stable throughout my (single player) play time.
Let people download music, record companies don't even deserve the money.
[QUOTE=Cheezy;21964747]You can't stop piracy.[/QUOTE]
The idea is to reduce the incentives associated with piracy. It's very lucrative to pirate, as you have no invasive DRM, and you get it for free. It becomes a very consumer friendly product; the (few) downsides to piracy are usually outwieghed by just those two facts.
Typicially there are three (general) reasons a person will pirate. It's easy, it's free, and it's a better product.
It's hard to get rid of benefit of it being free, but developers can do things about one and three. The people pirating it because it's free are likely to not spend much (if anything) on games if there wasn't an alternative.
[QUOTE=gman003-main;21964340]I'm not planning on eliminating piracy. I'm trying to offer a method to reduce piracy, and thus convince the execs that they can reduce their DRM.[/QUOTE]
Reducing piracy simply does not work with any offensive tactic, that's my main argument and I think that's where we don't agree. The only way to combat piracy is to embrace the pirates and reach a compromise, a very worthy compromise for both partners. Sabotaging the pirate infrastructure will never work, because the whole point of it is that it's supposed to be unstoppable. Yes, sabotage might slow down users, but it will never eradicate them, and it'll only make more people pissed off, and pissing of your costumers is a very idiotic thing to do. Whatever happened to [I]"The customer is always right"[/I]?
[QUOTE=gman003-main;21964340]The problem that happens when someone pirates a game "as a demo" is that they have no incentive to buy, no matter how good the game is. They already have the full game. They probably played through the whole story. It takes a very ethical person to send them money after the fact.[/QUOTE]
Actually, I don't think it's that rare that people buy games after downloading them. And even if I am very generous and agree that only 5% of the downloaders do it, compare that to if they never did download it.
Contrary to what you seem to express, although I don't think you would disagree, a download does not equate a sale. Just because people download a game, does not mean at all that they would pay for it. Therefore the percentage that would buy the game if the torrent did not exist shrinks even smaller.
And you're not considering the massive boost in free advertising a popular game might get from a pirate recommending a game to his friends or on a forum. Because it does not cost anything for the initial pirate, he can try out games he would not have considered. And the people he recommend it to can also try it out for no cost. This will help it spread even further. And even if 75% of the people who plays the game due to this recommendation do pirate it, the 25% is well worth the free publicity in my opinion.
In the end, the only thing that can save the "copyright industries", that I like to call them, is adaptation, a thing that all of them frankly seem to be extremely lousy at, with the obvious exceptions of some companies.
[editline]08:56PM[/editline]
[QUOTE=sami-pso;21965107]i would suggest reading this:
[url]http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy[/url]
And then try again.[/QUOTE]
That blog post has some very good arguments and I agree fully, except in their stating that most pirates are poor. I would agree that people who only pirate and never buy any games is probably poor. But what I see as the biggest group of pirates, are what I would call the modern pirate. Those that downloads games [B]and[/B] buys games. These people most likely buy more or an equal amount of games as a regular costumer does, but the games that they end up not buying and download instead might very well contribute to the piracy percentage. Most of the games the modern pirate downloads, he would never pay for simply because he does not think it's worth that much money, because he has already spent enough money on games that month or something similar.
I would argue that most pirates in industrial countries could be classified as modern pirates, at least to some extent.
[QUOTE=gman003-main;21964340]The thing is, the biggest use of torrents is for piracy. That much is non-debatable. The sites themselves may not be illegal in and of themselves, but the ones that have a main goal of piracy are almost definitely guilty of some ancillary crime.[/QUOTE]
Boy, am I glad you don't make laws. You'd be arresting handgun owners for murder and whatnot.
[QUOTE=Jacam12SUX;21965121]No @ your entire post.[/QUOTE]
No @ [b]your[/b] entire post, sir!
Many of your points are valid. However, simply by pirating something you are indicating that you consider it of some value. After all, if it was completely valueless to you, why pirate it. Therefore, you would pay [i]some[/i] amount of money for the product.
Most of your "arguments" are simply justifying your own actions. Portable games, for instance, are not all crap. That's like saying every post on this forum is crap. Sure, a decent amount of them are, but not all. For the WiiWare, if you already have it on one system, why do you need it on another? If you don't want the VC copy, bust out that old Super Nintendo.
As for the profit levels, remember how long FFXIII was in development. Take 300 people and pay them for five years. At average industry salaries, that's 75 million dollars. Add in the cost of the computers and software they used, the advertising, printing the discs and manuals, and shipping it to all corners of the globe, they may not have broken even yet.
And when did I ever call pirates thieves? Do not confuse me with "The Man" at the MAFIAA. I do not believe piracy justifies draconian measures. I do not advocated any DRM heavier than Steam's, nor do I advocate the obscene fines levied on pirates. I am trying to offer an alternative to all that. One that works to punish the pirates, not the customers.
Apparently, you are able to disagree with arguments I did not make. In fact, several times you were in disagreement with things I directly contradicted. Nice job actually reading my words, not what you're used to hearing.
Good effort, but no :saddowns:
[QUOTE=Zeke129;21966748]Boy, am I glad you don't make laws. You'd be arresting handgun owners for murder and whatnot.[/QUOTE]
Wow. Just, wow. That kind of logical leap is just incredible.
First off, you missed a crucial distinction I made about intent. If you buy a gun for hunting, plinking, self-defense, what have you, then there's no problem. In your analogy, I would no be going after gun owners, I would be going after the gun shops that advertised "Best Gun to Kill Your Wife, $1999!" or "Going Postal? We Can Help!".
In any case, it's become apparent that people are responding negatively to this idea simply because I said that piracy is bad. You assume that by taking that position, I am automatically aligned with the MAFIAA, something that couldn't be farther from the truth.
I will no longer be replying in this thread until people start responding to [i]my[/i] words, not those of someone else.
The site owners will just choose people who are legit piraters and make sure that their torrents are listed before those of everyone else.
Durrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
[QUOTE=gman003-main;21967179]Wow. Just, wow. That kind of logical leap is just incredible.
First off, you missed a crucial distinction I made about intent. If you buy a gun for hunting, plinking, self-defense, what have you, then there's no problem. In your analogy, I would no be going after gun owners, I would be going after the gun shops that advertised "Best Gun to Kill Your Wife, $1999!" or "Going Postal? We Can Help!".
In any case, it's become apparent that people are responding negatively to this idea simply because I said that piracy is bad. You assume that by taking that position, I am automatically aligned with the MAFIAA, something that couldn't be farther from the truth.
I will no longer be replying in this thread until people start responding to [i]my[/i] words, not those of someone else.[/QUOTE]
I... wow..
[img]http://www.mydwynterstudios.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/normal_colbert_headdesk.jpg[/img]
Piracy and torrenting is somehow connected to 4chan.
No game company wants to mess with that.
Oh, and, NO.
[QUOTE=Hatashi;21967450]Piracy and torrenting is somehow connected to 4chan.
No game company wants to mess with that.
[/QUOTE]
err, what
but the idea is terrible. How about you just use the usual drm (cd-key auth, a client such as steam etc.) and leave all the unnecessary bullshit out. They won't loose lots of sales because people will go like "Finally, a good game without a terrible drm!" and will like the company.
Look at ubisoft's drm now. Whenever a game with that drm gets released, everybody goes like 'what the fuck you pieces of shit why do you use that drm' and will statisfy no one. When a new (good) game comes out, and it states that it uses a (more) simple drm, people will be happy.
And the pirates? They will pirate it as usual, no drm will stop that.
[QUOTE=BrQ;21967700]err, what
but the idea is terrible. How about you just use the usual drm (cd-key auth, a client such as steam etc.) and leave all the unnecessary bullshit out. They won't loose lots of sales because people will go like "Finally, a good game without a terrible drm!" and will like the company.
Look at ubisoft's drm now. Whenever a game with that drm gets released, everybody goes like 'what the fuck you pieces of shit why do you use that drm' and will statisfy no one. When a new (good) game comes out, and it states that it uses a (more) simple drm, people will be happy.
[b]And the pirates? They will pirate it as usual, no drm will stop that.[/b][/QUOTE]
Indeed.
Splinter Cell Conviction's DRM got cracked at the same day the darn game got released.
[QUOTE=Konze;21961678]Make games cheaper. :<[/QUOTE]
This.
I mean it's not like companies already lose money due to piracy, so maybe lowering price would lower the rate of piracy.
Also as previously said;
Benchmarks.
Demos.
lol
nice idea
Bad ideas for threads:
[B]Your awful idea for fixing x global crisis. IT SUCKS[/B]
Do it the Valve way. Don't give a flying fuck and don't bother with a DRM.
The best anti-piracy is making a good game.
That's why I'll never EVER pirate a Bioware, or VALVe game.
[QUOTE=fenwick;21955212]There are already systems set up to counter spam/virus links, even on public trackers. Look at the colored skull system on Pirate Bay.
Have you ever used a torrent site?[/QUOTE]
You seem to know alot about piracy, pretty much infact.. :smug:
Maybe if some of those damn game companies didn't re-hash the same game over and over again, I'd actually buy it. Hell, I don't even pirate those games, that's how shitty they are. There are very few game companies that I actually still enjoy games from (Valve, Bethesda, and Bungie). Granted, on Bungie, I didn't like ODST, but I am actually liking the Reach Beta. It may actually convince me to go out and buy a game, as lately, I have been playing free online games.
Quite a lot of people can't afford 80£ games, just saying...
Unsolicited network traffic is illegal, no business could legally do this.
[QUOTE=Craptasket;21961269]Dumbest Idea I read all week[/QUOTE]
Changed so it fits me.
[editline]04:08PM[/editline]
[QUOTE=dragon1972;21990381]The best anti-piracy is making a good game.
That's why I'll never EVER pirate a Bioware, or VALVe game.[/QUOTE]
It obviously sucks that people don't follow this.
Gl hf spamming private torrents.
OR developers could think like Valve and just put more effort into actually creating their games/movies/music and people will just buy it.
Viacom itself tried this, by poisoning torrents. It doesn't work. [B][I]At all[/I][/B].
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