Never underestimate a buisnessman's lack of understanding of how the market works.

So i take it Brad is not going to have many friends in the game industry now, is he?

More and more these days it seems anyone who believes in Freedom of Information or anyone who is a forward liberal thinker is deemed a "Pirate" or a "Anarchist" by society in general. A lot of people try to seem "Morally Superior" by condemning pirates and others on the internet who skirt by legal systems by hosting things in countries like China that don't give two sh*ts about American and European copyright laws. In general video game and movie piracy is a bad thing. When it's done for a profit by someone selling bootleg material it's Definitely a bad thing, but, in some cases (more specifically in video games) piracy can and indeed Does help sales.

I'm not gonna lie, I've had pirated games in the past. The first time I played Gal Civ it was given to me by a buddy who downloaded it and burned me a copy. It was awesome but I was frustrated by not being able to apply official patches and game-play fixes so I went out and Bought Gal Civ 2 and All the expansions.

Most pirated games have a lot of glitches and they almost never support multiplayer. I know a lot of people who bought games they pirated first because they wanted to play it online. In some rare cases piracy also helps a game when the company behind it doesn't put out a demo.

As Brad has pointed out multiple times (and personally I think is 100% correct in thinking) anyone who likes a game and wants it Will buy it. When it comes to making money, pirates really don't matter at all. I'm now a dedicated Stardock fan. In the last few years I've bought all the Gal Civ 2 series, Sins of a Solar Empire, and a few other games all because someone gave me a pirated copy of one of their games a long time ago.

I don't even want to think about the ammount of money Stardock has made off me since then...lol.

I've wondered why it took companies this long to break out the common sense.  You don't need fascist DRM, install limits, or such measures to reduce piracy.  All you need is to limit patches and multiplayer to paying customers.  If people like it and want the additional features and fixes, they will eventually break down and buy it.

This of course isn't a green light for publishers to start releasing games with intentional bugs and missing features on release.  I'm looking at you day 1 DLC...

PC Gaming was profitable before Limited Activation DRM, and it will be again without it, they were still making games in the Don't Copy that Floppy Age, and they were still good games, the problem is, is customers are as fed up with some developers as they are with pirates, I know I will never buy a PC game with Limited Activations if I know about it before hand. But on the bright side they can take there uninspired clones with them when they finally decide the market isn't worth it anymore (a old threat), and maybe make room for some truely innovative developers, and the publishers that support them.

Oh by the way I'm fully aware that games cost alot more then the Don't Copy that Floppy era games, but I think that has more to do with a mass emphasiation of graphic art, and you don't need jaw dropping realism to enjoy a good game. I guess I'm one of those gamers that would care less then being control of a character in a movie theater.

P.S On the off chance it comes up, I pay for all my games.

You know, I do think availability is a huge factor behind most piracy... every single game on my computer was gotten legally, most through Steam or Impulse but a few others through retail. But over half of my PS2 game collection is "pirated", simply because the titles were never available here in my country, and I'm not paying $60+ in shipping, handling and import taxes just to play a game (if I can at all, many titles are region-locked and so I'd have to import another PS2 as well, with all the troubles importing electronic equipment entails).

Stardock in that respect does it the right way: GalCiv 2 isn't available anywhere in my country (believe me, I looked), but I bought it through Impulse without a single problem, no need to resort to "piracy" or any such thing to play it. Sure a few people may still pirate it but chances are it's because they're unsure they'd like it and those that do would probably end up buying it sooner or later anyways.

I wouldnt have bought GalCiv II if it hadnt been for promotions like this one.  Kudos to Stardock!

No Stardock does allow there store Impulse to have games with other forms of DRM in it, I my self was going to get a game but it was hooked up with a limited number of installs via TAGES.

just by looking at the title.....i thought frogboy was scolding the diplomacy beta players who were complaining that the pirates are too strong now, ........lol

btw, frogboy, are u reffering to any patricular article related to pc piracy??

I would say Stardock has some pretty darn high requirements for its games. Being a low-profile game publisher and developer, seems like other developers don't have much to complain about. Priacy is a big issue, but it depends on with what games. Like it didn't affect the sales of Mass Effect, but it sure did one in for Titan Quest because the leaked copy had bugs and those lived with the game even past release. The game wasn't all that good, but it sure was pirated a lot by most of its projected audience. Steam, Impulse, and D2D weren't around in the same form either.

The console argument is one I've been saying for a while now. There are more people buying 360 and PS3 games these days than PC games unless the game only comes out on PC or is specifically a high profile first-person shooter.

Yeah, 3d D2...  Well, no, I think it was less entertaining.  I'm a terrible person to comment on them, oh how the genre bores me.

It's a pretty engine, but that's wasted on the grainy, low res surface textures that make the ground fluctuate as you move across it.  The system requirements were high, the visual appeal was low, and the game itself is too generic for me to get through it.  I'm assuming I'll eventually try again, but I doubt I'd ever get even halfway through it.  I thought they did pretty well considering they hosed themselves with a stupid method of DRM.

Spending that much money on something that's already been done and rarely sells well was a major blunder.  The typical Diablo clone doesn't even make the store shelves.

Pretty sure as long as game companies and other software manufacturers require disk in drive to play/run there will always be pirates.  Regardless, I can't think of one game company that has lost its fortune because of pirates.  What has happened over time is that game companies used to deliver full game demo's. Then demo's were pulled out and had to start paying money up front for something that you hoped was good and then many times failed.  Pc user's in general felt swindled by new corp pc gaming dynamic(give us $ first then maybe we will get game to work)  So those of us who have played these games for while have a different attitude than you younger crew about what software piracy really means.  If you get stuck in the rut of saying pirating is just bad then you probably have no historical perspective to software piracy.  Gaming piracy is just a facet of intellectual software/hardware control.  I'm sure Mr. Wardell and several other's at Stardock could give a better sumation to what I have said.  By the way, I don't steal.  I own all the games and other software through purchasing.