Bethesda: "50% of tech support inquiries are from those with pirated copies." - by EvaUnit02
dj_ivocha on 27/10/2008 at 14:57
Quote Posted by Phatose
They're trying to show that a pirated copy, rather than being a non-sale which neither loses nor makes the company money, actually costs the company money, thus totally discrediting the oh-so-common 'they wouldn't have bought it anyway' piracy excuse.
Yes, because there has never been or will be a single person in the world, who only heard of game X because his buddy pirated it and then this person went on to buy it*. :rolleyes:
I'm not defending piracy by any means, but it's not all as one-sided as you and most publishers/developers are trying to paint it.
*Of course there's the case when said person thought the game was crap and didn't buy it, but that's hardly the ebil pirate's fault, now is it? ;)
Gryzemuis on 28/10/2008 at 00:32
Quote Posted by dj_ivocha
Yes, because there has never been or will be a single person in the world, who only heard of game X because his buddy pirated it and then this person went on to buy it*. :rolleyes:
Saying that pirating is good advertisement is retarded.
The developer is the owner of the game. It is up to him to decide how to package, sell, and advertise a game. I've got this hunch that they don't want to advertise through piracy.
If you don't like it, don't buy the game. It is not up to pirates to set the standards on how games should be made, sold, packaged or advertised. Customers do have rights. But pirating software because of any reason, is just bullcrap.
Neb on 28/10/2008 at 00:39
Quote Posted by LittleFlower
But pirating software because of any reason, is just bullcrap.
You seem pretty emotional about it.
Vraptor7 on 28/10/2008 at 05:34
The developers of Titan Quest claimed that there were a couple of crash bugs that only persisted in the pirated version of the game, and that they were able to tell the proportion of their community who were pirates through those complaints. Theoretically it could be possible to have checks in the code but at the end of the day once pirates get wind of that it's just a matter of when they find it and hack it out.
Shadowcat on 28/10/2008 at 05:44
That of course turned out to be a disaster, because pirates were posting to forums saying how unstable the game was, and it just became bad publicity for the game.
Gryzemuis on 28/10/2008 at 05:48
Quote Posted by Neb
You seem pretty emotional about it.
Not emotional.
But I see it as a huge problem.
And I have no solution. Do you ?
In the past, distributing information was just as expensive, or just as troublesome, as the information itself. If you bought an elpee for 10 euros, half that money would go to the record company and the artist, the other half would go to the shop, the distributor/importer, the factory that printed the vinyl, etc.
With electronic media, the cost of storage and distribution is approaching zero. Ten years ago, copying a DVD over the net was still a bit troublesome, because 6 GB of data was a lot over your 56kbps line. Now 6 GB is nothing. And network speeds will only be upgraded. That means that soon a 12GB DVD, including a 2+ hour movie, in full HD, will be sent over the net as quickly as you send an email now. I don't buy (or download) MP3s, because I find the sound quality crap. I play my old CDs mostly. But within the foreeable future, music distribution will upgrade from low-bitrate MP3s, and go to something comparable to CD/DVD quality. Because everyone has the bandwidth, and everyone has the storage. When that happens, there will be zero difference between electronic distribution, and the old-fashioned one, via stores. That is nice, that is progress.
But what if there was no DRM ? Or no solution to the piracy problem. What if you could send full-length HD-quality movies, in a matter of seconds ? Who would buy them ? Who would copy them illegally ?
I hated the record companies in the past. I don't like movie companies. But if they don't get paid, and if artists don't get paid, a lot of the creative work will stop. Is that good ? I don't care for blockbuster movies, or movies with a lot of special effects in it. But even a simple movie costs $100Ks or maybe even millions. I believe that the piracy problem is gonna cost us quality in the end. And there is already so much rubbish in the world .....
Renzatic on 28/10/2008 at 20:16
Quote Posted by Vraptor7
The developers of Titan Quest claimed that there were a couple of crash bugs that only persisted in the pirated version of the game, and that they were able to tell the proportion of their community who were pirates through those complaints. Theoretically it could be possible to have checks in the code but at the end of the day once pirates get wind of that it's just a matter of when they find it and hack it out.
I can vouch for this. I ordered TQ online for some stupid reason or another, and, par for the course, it didn't arrive at my house til a few days after release. That few days wait made me more impatient than I could bear, so I went and grabbed the pirated copy to tide me over until my own copy showed. "Hey, I've already bought the game", I thought, "ain't no harm".
So, having played both the pirated and retail DVD versions practically side by side pre patch, the pirated copy really did have performance issues and couldn't be played for more than 15 minutes without a CTD ruining your fun. The bought-with-my-sweat-blood-and-tears version ran without a hitch. Course the Iron Lore boards were filled with tons of people complaining over issues that I knew from experience were specific to the pirated version, and who swore up and down they'd never buy another IL product because they were such "shitty fags that didn't test their games".
Kinda sad, really.
june gloom on 28/10/2008 at 21:06
I wonder what, specifically, the problem was. Perhaps the cracked .exe (I'm assuming that's how it works, I've never even thought about playing the game) was faulty?
Renzatic on 28/10/2008 at 21:44
It's been awhile, but I think it was a combination of a hastily done crack mixed with an early, untested rev of the game. I remember people using the crack that came along with the torrent would crash on exiting a certain area. It was one of the biggest points of bitchery on the boards.
Zygoptera on 28/10/2008 at 23:06
Quote Posted by dethtoll
I wonder what, specifically, the problem was. Perhaps the cracked .exe (I'm assuming that's how it works, I've never even thought about playing the game) was faulty?
Yeah, the crack was faulty:
Quote Posted by Wikipedia
SecuROM v4.84 and beyond includes "Trigger Functions" which allow the developer to program multiple and fully customizable authentication checks throughout the entire application. As the protection places itself between the application's code and the OS, it can alter the behaviour of selected system functions.
Consider the following pseudocode:
if (GetCurrentDate() == '13-32-2999') then
WorkCorrectly()
else
PreventProgramUse()
end if
Obviously, a "normal" GetCurrentDate() function will never return '13-32-2999'. However, as SecuROM can modify the function's result, the application can check for the protection's presence during runtime; if the protection has been removed, the function will return with some other valid value, giving the application the opportunity to display an error message or render the application unusable (e.g. provoking a crash to desktop or making enemies invincible).
There are many different ways how "triggers" can be integrated into a program, making it much more complicated to universally circumvent the protection.
Same thing happened with early cracks of Mass Effect, the galaxy map would stop working after a certain time due to one of those checks.
The TQ people were immensely dim about how they implemented it, mainly because once it is known what is being checked it's easy to circumvent so they did not want to make it obvious why the crashes were happening- thus the game itself got blamed rather than the bad crack.
