Is piracy really a problem for Volition?

T0MMY3688 said:
it dont stop pirates but it make the paying customer suffer while pirated copy became the superior copy with all DRM disabled.
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THIS!!

All drm does is bother the legitimate customer; pirates get it too fucking easy and its just plain right more convenient to not pay and skip all the drm bullshit; thank fuck for steam making securom and other annoying drms obsolete I dunno what id do without it
 
I admit that as annoying as Steam can be, it does seem to do a decent job of being DRM as it were. It isn't even an 'always online' service if you can get online for a bit to get it to allow for offline mode. Unlike say Ubisoft's attempts where losing connection middle of the game.. where Steam goes "You lost net! You're not online! We'll watch for when that changes" in a little box, Ubisoft's stuff goes "Whoops! Guess you didn't want to play anyways!" and quits. Immediately. Typically a no-cd patch is the first thing I get for a game that doesn't need steamworks... I have a large connection of games and I don't want to have to dig through it for a copy when I play.. so in turn I install from disk, update patches, pop on a no-cd, and play happily whenever. If the game doesn't NEED a cd, then I'm not worrying. Assuming the DRM isn't too obtrusive (I can't install Bioshock without a crack anymore because I had hardware failures including an outright hard drive failure require reinstalls, and thus 'lost' the keys.).

So in the end, is piracy a problem? Maybe, but it's doubtful it's as much as anyone would say, considering you can't ever get real statistics on the issue, and they use Steamworks on the PC which is probably one of the better systems (and handles all that distribution stuff too!). They have far bigger things to worry about in regards to incomes, such as the best income to manhours ratio possible in DLCs, while still making content that people love and will buy. When that one is solved the money comes in as it does on its own, no restrictive DRM required. Besides, they publish for all 3 systems, and all 3 have their own ways to handle piracy (restrictive hardware which can be defeated with a modchip, as it were, and DRM locks involving bypassable encryption, but that's how it goes) so they're probably more worried about how the games pan out on systems and how the people play them as a route to make them better. I doubt most of the Vs who post here lose a lot of sleep over piracy, they'll have their own views on it but they make content first, and let the people who are paid to worry about piracy worry about it.
 
To be fair to Ubisoft, they don't have "always online" requirements any more, and i think they even changed the games that did have them to require only "online at launch", if even that, at this point. It's been a while since i looked into it. The new games still require UPlay activation, though.
 
They remove the need online to save but I think they cripple the game when running it offline, I remember my Driver San Francisco running a nice 40 FPS with it connected and 30 FPS lock when I'm offline.
 
I think it's a good point that they changed games that had it.. as in, they actually had done it in the first place, and only scaled back when they faced a full-on fan revolt. Remember, Sony's rootkits on CDs? "Oh, it's ok, they don't make them exploitable anymore"

The interesting thing is while they say "It's totally needed to stop piracy" with those.. notice they never give any supposed figures on how much it STOPS? Pirates will crack games. In fact, I sometimes doubt it's pirates so much as others who hate that sort of thing on a game. Remember Spore? Intrusive DRM, only 3 keys total ever.. and had a better unrestrictive FASTER pirate version, before launch date. That one ended up being the most pirated game ever.

So in the end, is piracy a problem? Maybe. How do you fix it? Probably how they do, by making fun games that get better with multiplayer (which is close to impossible to manage pirated games on).. and certainly not by DRM. DRM is good for the stockholder reports saying "Look at how we're fighting piracy!", not for the consumer.

Does make me feel very slightly guilty for not supporting them further by buying all the DLC Volition puts out, but I have a season pass, and don't care about the rest.. and I certainly wouldn't bother to pirate the DLC (although as soon as they release some good SR4 wwise tools to us I might consider the dubstep remix pack, for the extra song space..)
 
Okay, it's going to be a little hard for me to admit this, I feel ashamed - but - I am an ex-pirate. Yes, yes, I know, it's terrible and all that. I used to pirate games all the time. It was easier than buying them, right? But when I got into modding, it really put things in perspective - I began to respect the hard work and hours that game developers put into their games. After putting hard work and hours into games myself (through modding), I realized how I would feel if somebody pirated my content (mods are all free, but you get the point).

I just wanted to drop in and say that back when I was nasty peg-legged pirate, modding and updating games was just as easy as when I paid for games. Sure, it would take a bit longer for someone to upload the the content on the internet, but it was pretty simple if you knew how to do it right. Hell (this is gonna be really painful), I unfortunately have to count myself among those stupid people who show up on these forums sometimes, shouting, "OMG I totally pirated Saints Row! But it not working for me tho can u help pls!!?? :((((" AKA those who pirated Saints Row: The Third. I keep reading about how mods don't work correctly without a legit version of the game, but they worked perfectly back when I was an evil pirate. I don't know what I did right, but they worked fine.

But hey, now I am the proud owner of all the PC Saints Row and many other games! Believe me, legit versions are SO much better the pirated copies. I think I sometimes even see performance increases. I'm not proud of the way I stole from developers, but at least I'm moving forward :D.

Moral of the story: DON'T BE PIRATE. PIRATE IS BAD. LEGAL CONSUMER GOOD.

Edited Addon: On the subject of DRM, I think the way Volition is doing it is the right way. Invasive DRM is very painful to go through, and sometimes in those cases pirating is a lot easier, being that it removes the DRM.
 
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