next »

[Schoq]

yeah making pirated copies a secretly worse version of the game giving it a bad reputation is a great idea

[ProgramGamer]

What are you talking aboot, kicking pirates in the rear is fun and harmless.

[Dacke]

Except that plenty of studies have indicated that the good PR from people sharing stuff has a net positive effect in other areas, like music and maybe film. Word of mouth, pirates being the biggest paying consumers anyway, more willing to try new stuff, trendsetters in their cliques and all that. Which you loose out on if you silently make a shit version and upload that.

Then you're better off doing something fun, like Darwinia. Where the fucked up version was a demo followed by fun messages and crazy stuff.

[pelle]

Torrent your game before anyone else can from three different accounts and put a virus in two of them. Then on the clean one put a shitload of comments saying it's filled with viruses and to use another dl. Boom! End of piracy!

That would actually be pretty brilliant. I've wanted to make a thing where if you download a game illegally, the game would silently let you play but would crash before letting you fight the final boss, effectively becoming the most frustrating game to pirate ever.

In Chris Crawford on Game Design the author describes doing just that in his Patton Strikes Back (1991) and being SO proud about it. I think it is the by far most stupid thing Crawford ever said or did. The only result I can imagine is the game gets a bad reputation for being buggy. The only thing entertaining about this is that the game was so boring I can't imagine anyone got close to the end of the game. I know I didn't (with the pirated copy I used to have).

[s0]

yeah making pirated copies a secretly worse version of the game giving it a bad reputation is a great idea

this has never happened with any game ever. at most it puts pirates to shame when they complain about a "broken" game on a forum

otoh the only reason anyone even knows about game dev tycoon (a clone of kairosoft's game dev story) is because the anti piracy measure generated some articles on sites like kotaku and rps.

[Schoq]

there's no point in me rephrasing what dacke said already, but it's impossible to prove one way or the other so rip

[s0]

it'd actually be pretty dang easy to prove if such a thing had ever happened

i mean also, a negative reputation on gaming forums doesn't hurt AAA sales because 1. most people dont care about internet "gamer culture", 2. gamers just can't keep themselves from buying hyped games even if they swore they were going to boycott them

[gimymblert]

Meanwhile GoG is taking market share and is launching galaxy, have no drm

[s0]

gog is tiny compared to steam

oh also i support drm free releases. i just don't support piracy.

[gimymblert]

it's taking market share i didn't say it was comparable, the hint is that they come from pirating games themselves, that's how cd project was founded, in fact it's in their name too

[s0]

idk what your argument is, sorry

[gimymblert]

It's was a wink to the fact they started as pirate and they kept a bit of that culture as big corp™ now

[s0]

yeah sure, good for them

listen i think i made myself look more hardline here than i actually am

[gimymblert]

That's how I failed hard a joke comment anyway

[gimymblert]

Windows 10 Disabling Pirated Games

[Cobralad]

they are just putting a check for cracked windowses and stuff, i doubt they can check all the software

[s0]

yeah sure, good for them

listen i think i made myself look more hardline here than i actually am

to clarify i don't really think piracy is that horrible (it's not GOOD either). what pisses me off more than anything is the dumb rationalizations people come up with, such as "wouldn't have bought it anyways" (who cares), "sticking it to the man" (when "the man" doesn't give a fuck and piracy mainly hurts smaller creators) or "try before you buy" (have personally never seen anyone do this). i guess my rants on tig prompted some people to give me some justifications i can accept as legit, so thanks for that.

[Sik]

Then you're better off doing something fun, like Darwinia. Where the fucked up version was a demo followed by fun messages and crazy stuff.

Sounds like Puggsy, which if it detects running on a copier will stop playing after the fifth level and tell you to get a real cartridge (this game is the whole reason why emulators let you disable save memory, in fact - the real cartridge doesn't have it but copiers do, so the game checks for this).

[sodap]

yeah sure, good for them

listen i think i made myself look more hardline here than i actually am

to clarify i don't really think piracy is that horrible (it's not GOOD either). what pisses me off more than anything is the dumb rationalizations people come up with, such as "wouldn't have bought it anyways" (who cares), "sticking it to the man" (when "the man" doesn't give a fuck and piracy mainly hurts smaller creators) or "try before you buy" (have personally never seen anyone do this). i guess my rants on tig prompted some people to give me some justifications i can accept as legit, so thanks for that.

what "wouldn't have bought it anyways" means is that piracy has no negative impact on the creators' income from the game, and is potentially good for the word-of-mouth. Not saying I agree with that, just saying that it's not intended as a justification for the pirate but a way of saying "who cares if someone pirated your game, they wouldn't have bought it anyway".

[JWK5]

I actually used to try-before-you-buy with DS games (via emulation) back when I had one. I actually wanted the games on cart, I just had a limited budget and especially where tactical RPGs were concerned (which the DS has many) I wanted to make sure I was going to actually like the game before taking the plunge. Emulation made it pretty easy to take them for a test run.

Everything else on the other hand...