• True state of PC piracy revealed by Sports Interactive
    45 replies, posted
There's no way over ten million people downloaded a game about managing a football team
The thing with heavy DRM is it doesn't stop a casual pirate. It puts a roadblock in front of the crackers for maybe a day at best, but once the game is cracked, it's cracked and anyone can download it, you're spending all these man hours and all this effort to slow down the 100 or so people who are trying to crack your game. The people who download it have no idea about how cracking or anything works and they don't give a fuck, they're just gonna have to wait a few more days until a crack comes out, and if you aren't willing to buy something, I don't think a 2 or 3 day wait for the torrents to go up is going to sway you.
[QUOTE=Fatfatfatty;42860998]Stop making copy + paste games and incrementing a number and people might actually want to buy it.[/QUOTE] Stop buying the copy paste garbage.
[QUOTE=Fatfatfatty;42860998]Stop making copy + paste games and incrementing a number and people might actually want to buy it.[/QUOTE] By that logic, it's not even worth pirating the newest iteration of the game if you pirated the previous games. A small percentage of pirates actually try before they buy, while the majority are just assholes looking for a free game.
As i got older and more grown up, i wanted to actually own things of my own instead of just getting off the internet. Im pretty proud of my bluray, dvd, and game collection now.
176,000 lost sales out of 10,100,000 pirated copies to me seems an argument AGAINST DRM and not for it. Would have been nice to know how many copies sold as well though.
[QUOTE=Mr.95;42861774]There's no way over ten million people downloaded a game about managing a football team[/QUOTE] it's one of the most popular games on steam just because ~you~ don't like it doesn't mean it's a bad game.
I still believe the effects of piracy need studying, we should at least know the negative and positives. Right now we're floating in that space of no man's land as neither side has conclusive evidence beyond that somehow we buy more media yet we pirate so much.
[QUOTE=Swilly;42866722]I still believe the effects of piracy need studying, we should at least know the negative and positives. Right now we're floating in that space of no man's land as neither side has conclusive evidence beyond that somehow we buy more media yet we pirate so much.[/QUOTE] There is no real way to find evidence though. People pirate for different reasons. You can't take peoples words for good fish either, hardcore pirates will twist words and bring up legal definitions or simply lie about their reasons. The cultural significance of piracy and less strict copyright laws is not really something you can put down as an objective fact either, but there are lots of examples showing the creative freedom, expression and creation of new concepts and ideas it has led to which makes it easy to argue against the current attitude towards copyright. It is undoubtably true that the common sensus that piracy is first and foremost a service problem is true though. Norway is a country that has been lenient as fuck up until this year about piracy, there has really been no real consequence for it for the common man except for a very very small sample of unlucky individuals. The government has for the most part understood how crazy the whole "let's try and fine and jail every pirate out there" idea is and how it really does not work. That said they have never understood why piracy happens at all, those seeds have now sprung into a flower with the new law as seen here: [url]http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/piracy-drops-dramatically-in-norway/[/url]
[QUOTE=S31-Syntax;42860166]They can track IP addresses on a per launch basis because the executable calls home on launch. And no, its not illegal.[/QUOTE] Exactly. It could have been something as simple as the game retrieving the status of their online servers on launch and they were just tracking how many unregistered clients had done this. If your going to pirate, block the game executable's at the firewall level.
[QUOTE=Adarrek;42859875]Well im not sure... If it's uploaded to say piratebay how can they track the IP? Unless they programmed it so it tracks your IP address, in that case isn't it against the law?[/QUOTE] I think it has something to do with seeding. That's how I got two strikes from Comcast before they'd shut off our Internet. Never had that problem with Cox.
[QUOTE=FunnyStarRunner;42870461]I think it has something to do with seeding. That's how I got two strikes from Comcast before they'd shut off our Internet. Never had that problem with Cox.[/QUOTE] They can track the IP from a torrent because torrent trackers are about as stealthy as walking down a street with a new TV on your shoulder. Comcast, or whomever requested said strikes, just so happened to be watching it at that time.
Monitoring installations and played copies of your game isn't hard (just send a few packets to your servers, as long as they're online when playing), though I'm curious as to how they know which copies are illegitimate
[QUOTE=dgg;42866841]There is no real way to find evidence though. People pirate for different reasons. You can't take peoples words for good fish either, hardcore pirates will twist words and bring up legal definitions or simply lie about their reasons. The cultural significance of piracy and less strict copyright laws is not really something you can put down as an objective fact either, but there are lots of examples showing the creative freedom, expression and creation of new concepts and ideas it has led to which makes it easy to argue against the current attitude towards copyright. It is undoubtably true that the common sensus that piracy is first and foremost a service problem is true though. Norway is a country that has been lenient as fuck up until this year about piracy, there has really been no real consequence for it for the common man except for a very very small sample of unlucky individuals. The government has for the most part understood how crazy the whole "let's try and fine and jail every pirate out there" idea is and how it really does not work. That said they have never understood why piracy happens at all, those seeds have now sprung into a flower with the new law as seen here: [url]http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/piracy-drops-dramatically-in-norway/[/url][/QUOTE] We need to try and study it, because right now the only evidence we have is either generalizations created by faulty statistical analysis or the media industry hilariously wrong estimates. [editline]15th November 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Elspin;42872065]Monitoring installations and played copies of your game isn't hard (just send a few packets to your servers, as long as they're online when playing), though I'm curious as to how they know which copies are illegitimate[/QUOTE] Serial Keys wouldn't be on the official list? Keygens just create a key by using the game's algorithm.
[QUOTE=Ragekipz;42861355]Aren't pirates also the biggest consumers?[/QUOTE] A consumer in the most literal sense of the word, maybe.
[QUOTE=Swilly;42872203]Serial Keys wouldn't be on the official list? Keygens just create a key by using the game's algorithm.[/QUOTE] If 100% of the cracks worked by generating a false key and none of the keygens made one of the legitimate keys by coincidence then yeah that'd work, but in reality that method alone wouldn't be perfect.
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