Just because the government allows something doesn't mean it right. Someone here in US has clearly got by from stealing large amount of money from others which the government has basically done nothing. Of course to a store owner point of view stealing one of their copies is worst to them than stealing off the internet.
It's not just the fact people steals from the internet but they turn away and tries to justify it.
Someone stole my debt card number and went shopping yet I doubt anything will be done to the one responsible as it wasn't huge amount. Yet just because it didn't cost me anything (got my money back) it's still is stealing. The same with those who steal cable often if they get caught very little is done as going to court would end up costing a lot more.

Not sure what you think we're going to do here. We don't like people pirating the game, but if they do buy it afterwards we aren't going to do anything about it, since they're a paying customer either way--that's always been the case. Anyone who pirates the game without buying it though is generally going to get banned the moment we find out.

Pirated copies do have a cost, even if the pirate never would have bought it--

- Pirates still try to get support, wasting our time and making delays for legitimate users. With the large number of people getting the game, this is a very real issue.

- If cracks are needed, pirates may experience issues that legitimate users do not, due to sloppy cracks. Again, wasting developer time with bogus bug reports.

- Pirates waste forum bandwidth, even if they only lurk for strategies and such.

- Even if it costs nothing to replicate, the fact is you're still gaining from our work without giving any compensation. Games are a luxury item. If you *can't* get them legitimately, then find a way to make it happen legitimately or learn to do without.

there's a nice discussion about this topic in an old topic of mine

to whiteskull86 : Amen to that brother

no offence and in a way i agree with u but try selling this idea to for example Afrika, or a country like Ghana.

wich is why i say make it a monthly fee of a couple of euro's a month.
In the end ull get more muney from the customers who like the product and the people who dont pay nothin get a demo perhaps with only half the game but showing what u get when u get the whole game, war rock style...
this way both sides win.

oh and i agree completely with whiteskull on all points, and even if they'd move to consoles, ever heard of the updateable wiikey for example?



oh and for the record, i just named some country's i know are poorer(sorry to use the word, i know in a way its our fault ) than mine(holland) to make a point, im not sayin anything about any country for the record, im just makin a point.

The comment was not meant to be taken at face value. It was meant as a metaphorical statement. The fact you guys do nothing about such statements and even get involved such threads or for that matter permit such discussions is sufficient evidence of tolerance and support for your customers - all of them.

The situation far different on other official forums. For example on many forums if the word "pirate" pop-up in a thread the thread is locked or removed. If people make a link to any torrent site that person gets booted. If people bitch about DRM they get warnings. If a person admits to first being exposed to the title as a pirate then they get suspended for sometime or even banned.

There is more but I'm sure I made my point. None of these happen within this community. So if all things are equal one could get the idea that there is a sort of amnesty program here.

ye he's right man, u got some rare community support where a lot of companies namely EA can take a good example of, as a developer i must say stardock and ironclad rule fucki8n BOMBAHCLAAD!

SERIOUSLY, ur support and and overall involvement in the community rulez.

Extremetech just published an article entitled "Piracy, Copy Protection, and the Evolution of PC Gaming" on the topic at hand as well. You can read it
here.
It should be noted that SD/IC is prominently featured in the article.
Although the closing remark seems a little illogical to me in a sort of discounted way. I would love to see Frogboy hop in the comment thread and speak his mind on the topic.

Your article does clearly point out that piracy indeed does cost especially to PC gamers. As Newton law goes "For every action there is an equal opposite reaction."

Thus more people pirate and "justify" pirating cause the developers to reaction by to finding new ways (which costs money) to protect their investment which upset consumers who despise their protection measurements who in turn justify more piracy which in turn more extreme protection measurements and so on.

People asking for support for a game they didn't pay (or anything else for that matter) should get shot on sight

@Smidlee - which begs the question "why do it?".

On a side note, if you learn a little about the history of SD you will gain some insight into some interesting stuff. I have been involved with SD under one user name or another since Brad was in college and doing OS2 programming and preaching the gospel in Usenet posts and if there is a text book example of why the current system is bullshit then SD is the it - pure and simple.

Another story has just been publised on NexGen about the topic. You can read it here.
GameIndustry has also just published a review (of sorts) on the IL closure. You can read it here.


Regarding the original editorial for this thread I have updated the post. GI has officially released in under the title User friendly and credited Rob Fahey with inking it.

It seems this story is gaining momentum. I wonder where it will go...

I've been a long SD fan myself but let be honest Brad is insane. He kind of like the "Alexander the Great" of game developer. While most of his follower thought Alex was being brave he was really just crazy thinking he was invincible.

Even I had fears on how well this game would sell with no copy protection as we all know people will pirate this game no matter how good Brad has been to his consumers. (This game runs with no patch better than some PC games with patches) I want games like this to really sell for the future of PC gaming.

I laugh everytime someone uses this as an argument. If someone invented an 100% full proof way of making pirating impossible then all pirates would stop playing games with that logic. RIGHT. They would find a way to save up money and start buying games. You would see a increase in all game sales.

@Smidlee - Brad is not crazy. Like me, he seems to believe that people are basically honest, reasonable and fair. If you treat them with respect, offer them value and support them as a person and more importantly as a merchant, then you remove all the general excuses/reasons people use to exploit or take advantage of you. This is of course unless they are simply corrupt and there is no point in trying to change those people. So dont waste time and resources trying to struggling with them at the expense of your real focus; the decent people.

This is a big issue with me and my game hobby. What the discussion always boils down to is pirates arguing that it isnt stealing and game companys and others arguing it is stealing. Fact is, it is wrong to pirate your games. Fact is the punishment far outwieghs the crime, but thats not a surprise in capitalist corperate sponsored goverments, IMO the biggest crime to humanity there is.

The issue is that game companys, in thier futile fight, screw over the folks that actually buy their products in the name of piracy. DRM does create bugs with games and generally huge hassles for the legitimate user, while doing absoluty nothing to stop piracy. Infact the only thing DRM does is to make a challenge and notoriety for people who crack them.

It is so nice to know that at least one company understands this, kudos to you SD. Unfortunatly most games come out of corperations now, and they only see the numbers and really do not give a shit about the consumer once they have your money. I had big hopes when THQ released COH without DRM, but agian the big shots saw the game getting pirated and then COH OF got released with the most fustrating pain in the ass DRM they could come up with. I spent hours trying to get the game to run before finally giving up in fustration. The next day, a little calmer, I did get it working after a few hours, and for all the bullshit I had to go through did their game not get pirated? Did they get a huge boost in sales? Nope just a bunch of pissed off paying customers.

One, there are other costs to piracy than just lost sales. For example, with TQ, the game was pirated and released on the nets before it hit stores. It was a fairly quick-and-dirty crack job, and in fact, it missed a lot of the copy-protection that was in the game. One of the copy-protection routines was keyed off the quest system, for example. You could start the game just fine, but when the quest triggered, it would do a security check, and dump you out if you had a pirated copy. There was another one in the streaming routine. So, it's a couple of days before release, and I start seeing people on the forums complaining about how buggy the game is, how it crashes all the time. A lot of people are talking about how it crashes right when you come out of the first cave. Yeah, that's right. There was a security check there.

So, before the game even comes out, we've got people bad-mouthing it because their pirated copies crash, even though a legitimate copy won't. We took a lot of **** on this, completely undeserved mind you. How many people decided to pick up the pirated version because it had this reputation and they didn't want to risk buying something that didn't work? Talk about your self-fulfilling prophecy.

Prime example, they blame the pirates, but this game failed bacuase of their futile attempt to stop piracy. What did they gain with their DRM? a bad rep which led to poor sales and ultimately out of a job. Wake up, if you had put no DRM in your game at all, the game rep would not have been ruined and you would have sold many more copys then you did, and would probably still be in business. But hey much easier to cry foul and blame someone else eh. Yup self-fulfilling prophecy all right, so worried about pirates that you DRM'ed your way right out of business.

Absolutely disagree. There is no difference between walking into a store and shoplifting and item and downloading software/music/video without paying for it.

Zero difference.

Stealing is stealing. There is zero justification for it.

The difference is a store will have a guard, a camera, the threat of the police, and the fact that society doesn't look kindly on stealing to deter a shoplifter.

For whatever reason, some people think that stealing intellectual property is just fine. Nobody is watching you, the "police" don't do anything about it, it's easy to get away with.

But theft is theft.

Some people want to say that there are unlimited copies of digital media or downloads but you're still stealing. There doesn't have to be a physical item for it to be theft. You are taking something that someone else owns without their consent. That's being a thief.

For anyone who thinks pirating software is just fine, ask yourself this. Do you have a job? Do you expect to get paid for your time, or do you just do 8 hours a day of volunteer work? Why should you expect people to create games/movies/music for free for you to steal? Don't those people deserve to get paid just like everyone else?

I purchased "Star Wars: Empire At War" for the PC when it had launched. Due to the copy protection I had made 3 attempts to replace the game with the retailer. I was recieving a msg along the lines of "place the original disc in the drive", etc.

As it turned out, the security malware used in Empire At War also disabled my CD burner. After several emails to developers, distributors and the DRM producer, they all claimed it was someone else's fault and provided no assistence.

Wanting to play the game I had purchased, I was forced to download a pirated copy of the game. The "crack" effectively broke the copy protection allowing me to play the game I had purchased for full retail price.

In the past I had occasionaly "pirated" software to test it out. The incident with Empire At War has unfortunately caused this to become the norm now even though if I had decided to purchase a game it would have still caused issues. I've developed a huge amount of dissent for distributors over the issues I had faced with that game and to this day I will NEVER purchase a Lucas Arts product regardless of their envolvement. Pirating of their games is enough recourse for their actions, even though I doubt I'll bother with them.

Thank you StarDock and IronClad! By not placing any malware on the disc it secured my purchase without even playing the game. I knew it would interest me being the sci-fi fan I am and making your product consumer friendly IS exactly what the industry needs to adopt. If I were sceptacle I would have "pirated" a temp copy of Sin's, but your stance on these issues won me over!

"I laugh everytime someone uses this as an argument. If someone invented an 100% full proof way of making pirating impossible then all pirates would stop playing games with that logic. RIGHT. They would find a way to save up money and start buying games. You would see a increase in all game sales."

And i laugh every time you think the avrage pirate does not buy games.

been stated many times in this thread that they pirate to try and then buy whats good.

Now if people could return games they didnt like then there would be elss need to pirate and try, or allow demos to be full version of the games but with like a 72hour timer hours only go down while they play.


"There is no difference between walking into a store and shoplifting and item and downloading software/music/video without paying for it."

both are theft but they are both diffrent they are NOT the same people, its common sense to figure that out.

"For whatever reason, some people think that stealing intellectual property is just fine."

because the goverment makes and enforces the law, and not once have they arrested anyone for downloading a game yet they do arrest and stick people in jail for theft in sotres car theft etc..

And yes ONLY the goverment gets to decide whats illegal in the end, your morals dont mean shit to them and your morals do not mean its law right or wrong.

You really believe that the majority of people who pirate a game go out and buy it if they like it? If 5% of pirates do that I would be shocked.

Just a disclaimer before I begin, I am in no way condoning pirateing your entertainment, as my parents taught me, two wrongs do not make a right.

Game\music\movie industrys and their supporters are always out condemning people as pirates and theifs, pot calling the kettle black IMO. These industrys are some of the biggest thiefs on the planet, they have been stealing from the general public for decades and nobody bats an eye. Maybe thats why the police are pretty lax in defending their copy rights. The fundamental of price indexing is 'supply and demand' but in these industrys there is unlimited supply, so in theory the prices of these products should be extremely low, but they are not, why? Becuase of collusion between companys to set a false price point far above what economics would justify, as far as I know that is highly illegal, I don't see the justice system jumping all over them. Of course its because they lobby(bribe) the people in power to look the other way. Just like they lobby the same folks to make laws that make copyright infringement more of a crime then rape or child molestation, WTF, pirating is bad but IMO it is far lower in scale then what the industry has been doing to the public for decades.

Lets take the music industry, they have been around the longest and are therfore further down the trail of utter failier. The cost of purchasing a music CD is way overpriced to the point of the industry showing ultimate greed. When CD's first hit the market, the price point was justified, becuase they had a huge infrastructure to build. But once that infrastructure was paid for the prices should have, under economics dropped big time. Why, can you tell me is a CD more expensive to purchase then a casset tape, when a casset tape costs more to produce? I will tell you it is because the industry got together and through collusion set a false price point and they could all make profits beyond thier dreams. The public although generally stupid, isnt completely retarded and when an alternative came around they jumped all over it. The industry instead of realizing they could no longer work under the kind of monoploy system they had in the past and therefore dropping their prices to resonable rates, instead have gone in another direction and are trying in their last death throws to keep their monoploistic greed system alive. If the movie and games industry do not learn the lesson here they will also be on the same path as the music industry. There is no competition in these industrys only collusion, so you can understand if I do not give a flying shit about their problems, IMO they and pirates are of the same breed, birds of a feather folk together.

Greed, IMO the most destructive thing in our society, almost all crime when traced to its source will point to greed.

Saying that pirating a game is the same as stealing from a store and you should face punishments doesn't make it true. I think people who make such comparisons are idiots, few thins in life are so simple.


Stealing from a store results in a direct loss to whoever owned that item and money is lost.

Software does not require any money on the developers part to copy and transfer the software to someone else. Yes it costs money for bandwidth or to store it on a CD, but once the software is put onto a torrent sites then it is out of their hands and no cost is incurred to them. (and please don't be stupid enough to argue that i'm saying it costs nothing to make the software)

There is also different levels/types of pirating.

1- The common image of someone who likes a game and pirates it instead of buying it. This is stealing.
2- A person who pirates a game to see what it is like, be it no demo/crappy demo/said person does not trust demos. This person then either likes the game and buys it, or doesn't like it and discontinues use of the game. This is not stealing.
3- A person who is poor and will never buy the game. This person probably shouldn't have a computer able to play higher end games if he/she is this poor, but they do. If they have the money later in life to buy the games they pirated, then no doing so means they had stolen the game.
4- When a game has horribly DRM, the best thing to do is to boycott the game, but pirating it similar to boycotting it. You are still stealing, but the developer will never see your money anyway.
5- People who don't feel the game is worth the money and decide to pirate it instead of paying anything for it. This is stealing.
6- People who copy the game they have and give to friends who will never go and buy a copy for themselves. This is stealing.
7- People who pirate the game after they can not get their legally purchased copy to work, or have lost/destroyed their game CD. This is not stealing.
8- People who pirate the game for a second computer they own and no one else uses. This is not stealing.

The reason why i believe which case is stealing and which is not is based on the 2nd/3rd paragraph. You do not have to agree with me, but i won't agree with you.

"You really believe that the majority of people who pirate a game go out and buy it if they like it? If 5% of pirates do that I would be shocked."

I would be shocked if atlest 50% of the pirates did not buy some of the games they enjoy, just to play MP.


Ya if a game is like bio shock with SP limted replay etc.. i doubt very many went out and bought it, no reason to( i rented it for my 360) even more so cause of the limted installs and not being allowed to resell when they where done because of the limted installs.

Prima Giedi is 100% right price fixing atlest in the US is illegal yet they all do it, not just cd movies and games but even gas companys, and they get away with cause of bribes in the form of contrubtions(SP?)

I mean ffs i still remember when i used to pay less then a $ for gass, now its 3$ on avg and the gas corps are posting there biggest profits ever.

Exactly - you don't even own the software within. If you abide by every law the software lisence holds you to, Stardock could say "Nobody can play this game anymore, you all have to buy new copies" and there's nothing you can do about it.

So how about the fact that rape has a lighter sentence than downloading a copy of "Enter Sandman"?

On the other hand, I bought a copy of Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 and it refused to run, at all. I battled Atari's support for weeks, enduring the constant re-replies of "UPDATE UR DRIVERS AGIN LOLOLOLOL".

Ultimately it turned out that it wouldn't run because I had Daemon Tools loaded - I had to download YASU to get it to launch - a feature of SecuROM or whatever RCT3 uses that the developers clearly knew about, but wouldn't share.