DRM / Activation

db0 wrote:These two sentences were irrelevant to each other.The first one is explaining how casual copying happens through torrents, not CD swapping, and in torrents, no serial is needed anyway.

The second sentence just shows the weakness in that mentality.

And yeah, uh, I am no businessman. But halving the price of your product to stop pirates doesn't seem like "the solution" to me. That's like telling a person with a nice car that they should've bought a cheaper car if they didn't want it stolen.

That is a weak analogy. A car is nothing like a digital good and sharing is not stealing. And yes, reducing your price can easily reduce piracy.
Think of it as a car dealer reducing the price of his cars in order to compete with someone who is renting out cars for zero cost.

You're the one with the false analogy here. To blame the theft of a good on the price is still completely ridiculous. The price for setting your price too high in the business world is lower sales, not theft.

Further, if you end up "sharing" by downloading the program onto somebody else's machine, which most novice computer users can do, that's getting the other person the full copy without them paying for it. It's not like you bought a console game disc or cartridge and are lending to somebody else. In that scenario, you have NO access to the program until the other person returns the item. In this, you've recreated the item and distributed it yourself free of cost.

I don't think you understand what they mean by casual copying. They aren't trying to avoid the torrent sites so much as they want to keep Joe Average from giving everybody his copy because he's a dickhead with a warped sense of justice.

But yeah. Back to your analogy:

It doesn't fit. There aren't two competing businesses here. There are a large number of people that would give download keys away casually, and Hothead. One offers the product for a cost, and is trying to make a profit. This is because they worked to CREATE the product, and thus want to benefit from their hard work. The other paid for the product, but then due to the digital nature of it has been tossing around copies and taking away customers from Hothead. Hothead cuts off this sort of copying, by people who wouldn't use torrent sites, with a simple check. And it works.

You're the one with the false analogy here. To blame the theft of a good on the price is still completely ridiculous. The price for setting your price too high in the business world is lower sales, not theft.

There is no theft. There is file sharing.

Further, if you end up "sharing" by downloading the program onto somebody else's machine, which most novice computer users can do, that's getting the other person the full copy without them paying for it. It's not like you bought a console game disc or cartridge and are lending to somebody else. In that scenario, you have NO access to the program until the other person returns the item. In this, you've recreated the item and distributed it yourself free of cost.

Most novice users know how to use a file sharing program well enough. Hell, file sharing programs are one of the first things that users install on their PCs.
In the last 5 years I only had to lend a game CD/DVD to a friend once. Generally they just download it.
Your scenario has been the minority case for the last few years.

I don't think you understand what they mean by casual copying. They aren't trying to avoid the torrent sites so much as they want to keep Joe Average from giving everybody his copy because he's a dickhead with a warped sense of justice.

Oh, I understand very well and I've had such discussions before. What I'm disputing is that "casual copying" is so widespread and/or more than file sharing online, that such measures prevent it and that that it does more good than harm.

It doesn't fit. There aren't two competing businesses here. There are a large number of people that would give download keys away casually, and Hothead. One offers the product for a cost, and is trying to make a profit. This is because they worked to CREATE the product, and thus want to benefit from their hard work. The other paid for the product, but then due to the digital nature of it has been tossing around copies and taking away customers from Hothead. Hothead cuts off this sort of copying, by people who wouldn't use torrent sites, with a simple check. And it works.

I'm not arguing that Hothead should not be rewarded for their work, I'm arguing on what is the best way to do that. Believe you me, I want more PA games to come out in the future and I'd like them to be as succesful as possible.
What I am arguing is that it does not work, or rather, it works better without DRM and lower costs.
It's economics. The nature of the good (Digital Game) makes it infinite, thus its cost will always be driven to zero. Thus Hothead needs to compete with a zero priced good and the only way they can do that is by providing extra value to the product that file sharing cannot monetize on (like tangible goods) or appeal to ethics by removing DRM and offering a low enough price. As I have seen simply from the threads that exist solely to thank Hothead for giving out a Gnu/Linux version (and how many people bought it because of that fact), doing the right thing works.

Finally, you may gnash your teeth all you like about piracy but it will not stop it happening. Either work with it, or lose out.

Mistwraithe wrote:

Ogremindes wrote:

Doctor Nick wrote:...Stardock. Read this to see their views on DRM.

I just did, and their DRM is pretty much the same as Hothead's, the chief difference being that Stardock requires the use of a special program to download while Hothead simply requires a code and an internet connection. I'd say that Stardock's is more restrictive really.

Not true at all.

Yes, you need to use your serial key and an internet connection to download anything from Stardock. That includes upgrades and the install files for the game if the version you bought didn't come with a DVD. This is unavoidable by definition - if you have bought a version of the game which doesn't have media and can only be downloaded then obviously you will have to download it over the internet!

However, if you buy a Stardock game which comes with a DVD (either at retail or online with it mailed to you) then you don't need any internet connection. Just use the DVD. From memory I don't think you even need to enter the serial number during install from DVD. If you want to upgrade your game to the latest version then yes you need to download them from Stardock... hardly an unusual scenario for patches though!

Even if you did buy the download only version I believe you can archive the install files for the game so once you have downloaded them once you don't need to again. You can also use these archived install files to reinstall it on a new computer without having to download (I have done this to transfer my Stardock games to new PCs without downloading the install files again).

Frankly Stardock is still standing head and shoulders above any other reasonable sized game developers in terms of how they treat their customers.

Long may it continue!

Just making sure I understand this correctly: the "activation" is simply sending a serial key to Stardock to download the game, you don't need to actually activate the game once you have downloaded it? If this is the case, I'm re-heartened towards Stardock

. Like I explained above, authorizing a customer when they use a service makes perfect sense and isn't DRM at all.

Hi there folks, I think I should clarify the Stardock thing seeing as I bought Sins of a Solar Empire, the no DRM thign was a big seller for me.

Stardock Central is used, but it is only used for downloading patches / multiplayer maps / mods / replay data. Essentially it's like a user-name for logging in to participate in community stuff.

In fact, you can install and play RIGHT out of the box, as it were, nothing's stopping you from playing the game. however paatch updates and mods / community data is what requires you to login via Stardock Central.

That I think is the big difference, and one I'd happily support, no cripple-ware to force me into submission, and no DRM so I don't have to go pleading to them to give me activations if I need to upgrade my machine.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 06/23/2008 15:44:47

I much prefer Stardock's system.

Please take note Hothead. I love Episode One, but I hate your authentication system. I'll be more inclined to recommend it to friends to purchase if this was removed or replaced.

I am extremely against piracy of games, but hate DRM and we-assume-you-stole-this systems even more. When I buy a book I don't have to call the publisher to get permission to read it, games should never have such systems.

yutt wrote:I am extremely against piracy of games, but hate DRM and we-assume-you-stole-this systems even more. When I buy a book I don't have to call the publisher to get permission to read it, games should never have such systems.

Unless there is a book-cloning device of which I am not aware that allows its customers to make duplicates of books and send them through a pneuma-tube system, that is a flawed analogy.

Iron Curtain wrote:Unless there is a book-cloning device of which I am not aware that allows its customers to make duplicates of books and send them through a pneuma-tube system, that is a flawed analogy.

Photocopiers and scanners.

ATimson wrote:

Iron Curtain wrote:Unless there is a book-cloning device of which I am not aware that allows its customers to make duplicates of books and send them through a pneuma-tube system, that is a flawed analogy.

Photocopiers and scanners.

Touché.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 06/24/2008 12:31:55

Iron Curtain wrote:Unless there is a book-cloning device of which I am not aware that allows its customers to make duplicates of books and send them through a pneuma-tube system, that is a flawed analogy.

I'm not sure if you are aware, but ATimson is spot on. Combined with OCR systems there is a vast network of illegitimate ebooks. You can find virtually anything; transcribed, proofread, edited, and formatted into almost any file type text can be sent in.

With the recent invention of printers, these can then be brought back into the realm of the corporeal.

yutt wrote:

Iron Curtain wrote:Unless there is a book-cloning device of which I am not aware that allows its customers to make duplicates of books and send them through a pneuma-tube system, that is a flawed analogy.

I'm not sure if you are aware, but ATimson is spot on. Combined with OCR systems there is a vast network of illegitimate ebooks. You can find virtually anything; transcribed, proofread, edited, and formatted into almost any file type text can be sent in.

With the recent invention of printers, these can then be brought back into the realm of the corporeal.

Did I not say "Touché?"

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 06/25/2008 06:41:52

ATimson wrote:

Iron Curtain wrote:Unless there is a book-cloning device of which I am not aware that allows its customers to make duplicates of books and send them through a pneuma-tube system, that is a flawed analogy.

Photocopiers and scanners.

I still don't think that's a valid analogy. Photocopying a typical novel of, say, 300 pages takes hours. If you have it in digital form, just printing it takes a lot of time as well, and at least $10 in paper, ink and printing supplies. Then you have a bunch of unbound papers that are too many to staple. While I've happily payed more for printed editions of public domain texts, just because it's nice to have a decent hard copy, I wouldn't think of paying for a stack of paper.

So the analogy doesn't apply, because:

unlike copied software, home-printed books are not nearly as nice as the commercially sold alternative.

unlike copied software, which is basically free (assuming you have an internet connection anyway, which seems fair, especially if we're talking about games that are distributed over the internet) , the cost of home-printed books is in the same order of magnitude as the price of the legitimate product.

unlike copied software, printing your own books takes a lot more effort than just buying it.

So I don't think book publishers are in real danger of missing out on sales because of illegal copies of books.

Scanning and OCRing a book does not take as long as you think, and regardless of how much effort is involved, it occurs, so your point there is irrelevant. The barrier to copying is breached, and the piracy occurs.

I'm also not sure why you mention the cost of time of printing, as I've never heard of anyone going to that effort. We have laptops, PDAs, phones, Amazon Kindles, and our flatscreen monitors which make perfectly capable reading devices. This is effectively no cost to those acquiring it, and considerably faster and easier to acquire than a video game.

If you want to debate the popularity of ebooks, that is fine; but Project Gutenberg says perhaps you are just unfamiliar with this and underestimating its popularity.