Here is the thing, most pirates are just kids with no income. I dont think if you are 20-50 year old you would much bother with pirating much.
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Fan-based DRM!
What we do is, we all go knock on the doors of our respective neighborhoods. We ask each and every home (well, actually people in the homes, but you get it, right?) if they have a legit registered copy of Paradox games.
All who answer no get reported as pirates.
If asked how you know they're pirates, just say that as you were walking by their house, their curtains were open and you saw them trying on eye patches and you overheard them talking about purchasing a parrot so's they could train it to ride on their shoulder.
What we do is, we all go knock on the doors of our respective neighborhoods. We ask each and every home (well, actually people in the homes, but you get it, right?) if they have a legit registered copy of Paradox games.
All who answer no get reported as pirates.
If asked how you know they're pirates, just say that as you were walking by their house, their curtains were open and you saw them trying on eye patches and you overheard them talking about purchasing a parrot so's they could train it to ride on their shoulder.
Games like Diablo 3 are mostly saved on server so they can't be pirated unless someone creates the entire server which I believe has not succeeded so far. A friend of mine who pirates every single game and brags proudly about it told me so, at least. I wonder what the cost benefit of running a full server vs letting pirates pirate games is.
Many will disagree but I'm ok with an internet requirement and heavy DRM as long as they can actually block pirates from using the game. Alas, they almost always makes things harder for legitimate buyers only. I still can't play online multiplayer on my legitimately bought GTA 4 and 5 for reasons that I asked Rockstar support and got no answers from.
I support internet connection requiring DRM for Paradox games as long as...
1. Pirates can't play it. Not cracked in a week.
2. Not too many issues for legitimate users.
Many will disagree but I'm ok with an internet requirement and heavy DRM as long as they can actually block pirates from using the game. Alas, they almost always makes things harder for legitimate buyers only. I still can't play online multiplayer on my legitimately bought GTA 4 and 5 for reasons that I asked Rockstar support and got no answers from.
I support internet connection requiring DRM for Paradox games as long as...
1. Pirates can't play it. Not cracked in a week.
2. Not too many issues for legitimate users.
TW 3 is a GOD-like game. It should have sold 10 times as much. Games like Skyrim doesn't deserve their salesfigure. Sorry, just had to chime in there to show my love of the game.
The best way to lower piracy is to make good games !
Even a pirate will buy a game that he liked.
Maybe some will not get it but it actually works like this.
Even a pirate will buy a game that he liked.
Maybe some will not get it but it actually works like this.
I know that piracy happens. I thought a great recent game's approach to it wasn't DRM but was a gameplay change. Game Dev Tycoon if you pirated it made your games lose more and more money to pirates until you went bust.
If you could play EU/CK normally but just kept being attacked by AI pirates with fleets and doomstacks until you lost all your trade income and capitulated that would be fair. I don't see anyone putting up with that forever while it gives a better flavour of the game than a limited demo.
If you could play EU/CK normally but just kept being attacked by AI pirates with fleets and doomstacks until you lost all your trade income and capitulated that would be fair. I don't see anyone putting up with that forever while it gives a better flavour of the game than a limited demo.
The problem with this..... the main problem with this.....
There are many problems with this, not the least of which is that your point 2 can be shown to be impossible both by experience and by a few minutes of thought.
Companies have already attempted "required connection to play the game" DRM, and they have almost invariably experienced problems. The most recent "Sim City" game is famous enough and recent enough in memory that it requires no explanation from me as to the issues that occurred, but it is worth noting that even the game "Diablo 3", which you mention with apparent approval, was unplayable on the first day of release, due to the servers crashing.
Even if you could somehow guarantee that the servers would always function, that would not overcome all the problems with the "required connection" approach. Even in this day and age, not everyone has at-will access to the internet. Whether they are deployed oversees with the army, or simply live in a particularly isolated location, to make a game require internet access is to say "no game for you" to a non-trivial number of people.
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All this, of course, ignores economic issues on Paradox's side of the equation. However loathsome we feel piracy to be, it brings the games to the attention to people who otherwise would never have heard of them, and at least some of these people will like the games enough to go out and buy them. Meanwhile, Paradox being able to say "we avoid excessive DRM in our products" is something that will persuade a significant section of the gaming population to patronize Paradox instead of some other developer. In short, draconian DRM is unlikely to benefit Paradox, and might well be a net loss to them economically.
Yup. Paying money for someone's work so that smug people can take it for free has always been annoying to me. Damned leeches.
I usually instabuy all recent PDS grand strategies and DLCs the first day they are released regardless of my wallet. Piracy is not a problem for me =)
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