Everyone I know irl and plays games owns only 2-3 games at best. They read warezsite news to d/l the newest games for free as soon as they arrive with programs like torrent and dc++. There are "elite" warez insider clubs too where you can d/l them even sooner.
Then everyone you know in real life is pirating software, and when you wonder why software has such huge and unpleasant copy protection, and why software is developed more often first on consoles, rendering PCs the redheaded stepchild of development platforms, you should have an answer that readily springs to mind.
Squeek said:
So game makers aren't responsible for the copy protection they put into their games; game buyers are responsible? That's what you're saying, right?
Yes. That is exactly what I'm saying. When the post
directly beneath yours talks blithely about how nobody buys software because it's easier to pirate it, then yes, the gamer culture of software piracy gets to take a good hefty portion of blame for the corporate culture of oppressive software protection.
I don't like having to be connected to the Internet to play a single-player RPG. I don't like having to use my CD-drive as a glorified dongle. But I understand why it's happening. It's a response, an attempt to at least cut the casual pirates to stem a little of the blood loss.
That seems awfully convenient to me. While I don't blame game makers for wanting to protect their profits, I think it's a little weak to take pot shots at customers who don't like the sound of being inconvenienced.
Post below yours, man. Shall we talk weak? This isn't a warez site. This is a site ostensibly devoted to love of the genre, and right here, out in the open, with no shame, people are talking casually about pirating.
If people talked casually about stealing money from your company, would that maybe inspire you to get slightly obnoxious about the locks on the doors? Because I'm not pulling in the big bucks. A whole lot of my salary depends on yearly bonus, and a whole lot of that bonus depends on how well our games sell. This isn't a faceless conglomerate of evil nameless people, a system that everyone should feel satisfied to screw over. This is me. This is another guy, the lead systems designer of BioShock, who's active over on ENWorld. This is men and women who are in this because they're trying to make games that people will love, when honestly, we'd be making more as SQL programmers or marketing copywriters.
So, uh, no. I have absolutely no trouble getting behind copy protection. I'll be first in line when something better comes along, a system that doesn't penalize legitimate users as much but offers at least the same level of protection. No argument there. I'll mourn the PC coming in a distant last place in terms of development priorities. But ultimately, I can't blame the higher-ups for making that decision. Too many people think that pirating is an acceptable solution.
If you don't feel a game is worth your money, don't buy it.
Why hasn't the software industry come up with an effective solution to this problem that won't inconvenience loyal customers? Why does it produce so many products that customers feel weren't worth the money they paid for them? And why is it so hard for customers to trust anything the software industry says?
Maybe while we're busy looking in our mirrors, you could take a look in one of your own, Patrick, and ask yourself those kinds of questions.
Dude, I'm a writer. I'm not a programmer. So putting me up as the one who has personally failed if we can't redesign new copy protection standards? Weak.
That said: "Why does it produce so many products that customers feel weren't worth the money they paid for them?" Because young gamers feel justified in pirating. Post below yours. Right there.
You want to sling mud, you go right ahead. Apologize for the pirates. I hope that self-righteous indignation serves you well when the next hot game comes out on the consoles first, and is then dumbed down and ported over to the PC as an afterthought.