An idea to combat the piracy of PC games.

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Well I don't know if you have ever used torrents(they are legit as long as the stuff is freeware/shareware) but when there are fake ones people give them negative comments and loads of thumbs down. People will be very wary of the torrent with 1,000 thumbs up and about 750 thumbs down. So a nice idea but it will only stop them for about a day until they find the real one.

 

[Zannah]

How about to stop piracy, you start releasing affordable, finished games with fun gimmicks in the box, as opposed to rushed out sequel bug-fests for absurd prices with nothing but a dvd and a two page booklet?

Just sayin...

Yeah no,
by that logic, excellent, finished games would be pirated vastly less often than shitty rip-offs. Which is not the case.
The affordable part might actually make a difference, but only to those who genuinly considered buying the game and WOULD have bought it if it were 10-15 bucks cheaper, but ultimately decided against it, due to monetary concerns.
Which is what ?
10 percent of all , conservative estimate ?

Wrong. Moving away from the policy of releasing "good products" to "release stuff vaguely sellable with the least possible effort cause we'll get away with it zomfg $$$$" is what drove large quantities of people to at least "pirate-testing" games in the first place. Right now, being a legitimite customer to games publishers means getting ripped off in a way that few other industries could get away with. Turn that into "happy customers, and pirates missing out on cool stuff", and you're actually combating piracy, because the only ones left pirating will be people unable to afford the game in the first place (i.e. no potential customers)

 

[Ldude893]

While I think it's useless to stop Video game piracy, the makers of Batman: Arkham Asylum did something rather clever to combat piracy of the game. What they did was make certain functions of the game not work if pirated, like Batman's ability to glide.
It doesn't prevent piracy, but it sure hell does make it harder to get a genuine free copy of the game and it's a better alternative than using DRM.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

It could work, but it would only really slow the rate of piracy rather than stop it. Once the pirate realises it's fake they'll just go and download others till they get the right one. They won't stop at inconvenience and think they'll buy it.

It won't beat the determination of piracy, nothing ever will, that's the problem with all anti-piracy ideas.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

It doesn't prevent piracy, but it sure hell does make it harder to get a genuine free copy of the game and it's a better alternative than using DRM.

Errr... Gimping Batman's glide ability was part of the DRM, only more creative than most.

 

[TheAmazingHobo]

Wrong. Moving away from the policy of releasing "good products" to "release stuff vaguely sellable with the least possible effort cause we'll get away with it zomfg $$$$" is what drove large quantities of people to at least "pirate-testing" games in the first place. Right now, being a legitimite customer to games publishers means getting ripped off in a way that few other industries could get away with. Turn that into "happy customers, and pirates missing out on cool stuff", and you're actually combating piracy, because the only ones left pirating will be people unable to afford the game in the first place (i.e. no potential customers)

What are you talking about ? What "move away from the policy of releasing "good products" to "release stuff vaguely sellable with the least possible effort" ?
Games today cost more time and manpower to make, are higher quality, have generally better production value and require VASTLY more effort to produce than ever before.

Or are you talking specifically about half-finished, bug-ridden games ? Games with low-production value and shitty execution ?
But why would you pirate those ? They are bad. Yes, not worth your money. But also not worth your time.

Edit: Oh yes, as an appendum: I do not believe that any significant amount of piracy is due to "pirate-testing". If you want to know whether or not a game is for you, you can read reviews, watch the games being played on youtube or even find a Let´s play. Should be more than enough to make an informed decision.
Note that I said "any significant amount". I do not dispute that there are people who do this, I just don´t think the number of people is high.

 

[Xaio30]

There's already been a solution like this. Read up on Media Defender.

 

[TiefBlau]

How about to stop piracy, you start releasing affordable, finished games with fun gimmicks in the box, as opposed to rushed out sequel bug-fests for absurd prices with nothing but a dvd and a two page booklet?

Just sayin...

Yeah no,
by that logic, excellent, finished games would be pirated vastly less often than shitty rip-offs. Which is not the case.

Perhaps not shitty rip-offs per se, but games people generally never expected to be all that good are the most pirated ones. Games that are essentially updates of a previous version (Sims 3, Civ 5), triple A mediocrities (Darksiders, Crysis), and, unfortunately, popular indie games tend to top the list.

Not going anywhere with this; just pointing out what I see to be the trend.

Simulator games also seem to be pretty popular among pirates, perhaps because they feel that they're not necessarily games or something.

In any case, if your game is good enough to be "honorable mention", but not good enough to win an actual award, you're probably at the highest danger of piracy from what I see, because people will think you're worth their time, but not their money.

 

[warprincenataku]

I've had this discussion many times before. One solution, stop PC gaming altogether. Epic Games refused to publish Gears of War because Cliffy B said the games would just be pirated.

Another more practical solution would be a constant contact DRM, although annoying, it would help to crack down on a good portion of pirated titles.

Another way, as much as I hate to say it, do away with digital distribution. This way, you can add some sort of lock to disk games making it impossible to rip information from them. If the information is in a dd format, then half the work is already done.

 

[TheAmazingHobo]

Perhaps not shitty rip-offs per se, but games people generally never expected to be all that good are the most pirated ones. Games that are essentially updates of a previous version (Sims 3, Civ 5), triple A mediocrities (Darksiders, Crysis), and, unfortunately, popular indie games tend to top the list.

Not going anywhere with this; just pointing out what I see to be the trend.

Simulator games also seem to be pretty popular among pirates, perhaps because they feel that they're not necessarily games or something.

In any case, if your game is good enough to be "honorable mention", but not good enough to win an actual award, you're probably at the highest danger of piracy from what I see, because people will think you're worth their time, but not their money.

Mhh, the last data I actually remember suggested that Starcraft 2 and Mass Effect 2 were amongst the most pirated games of 2010 (amongst the top 5 I think), both of which I consider fairly excellent. But I could be wrong and do not have anything up-to-date on hand right now.

Generally, the entire "Games are not as good anymore (or rather not good enough compared to their price anymore)" seems to me more of an excuse, than an actual justification or explanation.
I´ve been a gamer for a long time and am generally fairly happy with the state of games today.
I mean, yes, there is a lot of crap. But there is also Portal, Mass Effect, Modern Warfare (the first that is) and of course the best game, most awesomest game of 2010 and ever, Recettear.
So I just don´t feel that one.

 

[Carbel_Charumba]

Pirates are like landlords for the ocean, but don't let that give you the wrong idea. A labrador can't change it's fdifgundgd you know? But don't let that get you down. Because I care about all of you.

-Carbel_Charumba

 

[Bobzer77]

Now this is easy for me to say and I'm not endorsing piracy here but from what I see every time piracy is mentioned it's always about how much damage it's doing or asking how we can stop it.

It's been around since games started being sold, maybe it's time people started asking, "how can we use this to our advantage?"

 

[ImpofthePerverse]

It doesn't prevent piracy, but it sure hell does make it harder to get a genuine free copy of the game and it's a better alternative than using DRM.

Gotta agree.

Say if I'm interested in a game, but can't afford it for a while, I then make the decision to download it illegally (hypothetically of course). What I download is a version that gives me a look and the feel for a game which, when I can afford, I then buy. If I downloaded a version that was a bug ridden mess, even if it was a early version of the game, I'd be less inclined to buy it and more likely to spend money on something else. While this probably doesn't apply to the vast majority of pirates there's bound to be a significant number of people who think this way.

Also look at X-men Origins: Wolverine it leaked before it's release, an estimated 4.5mil illegal downloads, and yet it still did quite well at the box office. Fox blamed it's under performance in some territories on piracy, but it still did well on DVD/Blu-ray when it was released, 3.9Mil copies sold in 6 weeks.

Maybe the "lost" revenue was caused by piracy, but also maybe because the film was very poorly received critically, some of those people who saw the early version decided it wasn't worth paying for. It's easy for a company to blame piracy for a products poor (or less than expected) sales, but really there's still not enough evidence to suggest a copy of something pirated is a lost sale.


All trying to combat piracy seems to accomplish is the pirates trying even harder to pirate your stuff.

 

[Rayansaki]

And then 1 person uploads a legit file, gets a thousand thumbs up, and everybody just downloads that file.

Several "fake" torrents have no impact if there is 1 obvious good one.

You could arrange for the fake uploaders to get their thumbs-up, too. It would be labour intensive, but it could work.

Torrent searches are only used by a very limited number of people nowadays.

Most people find this stuff through release log sites, and those usually link to a specific file, or a third party website that lists only verified torrents.

You can have a thousand fake torrents, and they will not show in either of these sources.

 

[havass]

That's...not gonna work, actually. Common sense tells us that once the first 50 people download it and find out it's fake, they WILL rate the torrent as a bad torrent and will also stop seeding it. Really, all it's gonna do is lead a few pirates down the wrong route.

 

[SlyderEST]

I'm inclined to agree with this, but the problem is that very few companies do this. What tends to happen instead is that a 'special edition' is released, which costs about three times the price of just the game, and people are far less inclined to pay that money

But if something was thrown in without the price going up, I think that it would work as you said, and people would be more inclined to buy it

I sort of liked the map that came with Oblivion. I don't remember how much the whole thing cost, but I could still boast with it. Now, though, I know that games in retailers here tend to cost around ~70 euros, while on Steam they are 50. I'm buying all the games from Steam or online now becouse of that. Would be kind of unfair if someone would get a trinket as well while i only get the game.

 

[Danish_4116]

Apparently they did something like this for Batman Arkham Asylum. People who pirated the game found that they couldn't jump (ingame of course) and thus rendered the game unfinishable.

 

[Denamic]

You don't.
You work on making services more attractive to legit customers rather than punishing them.
The pirates will just remove the DRM and play the game without the hassle while the actual customers gets shit on.
Pirates will always exist. You just have to adapt.

I just got "Deerslayer" in my captcha.

Apparently they did something like this for Batman Arkham Asylum. People who pirated the game found that they couldn't jump (ingame of course) and thus rendered the game unfinishable.

Sure, this is a possible route to take.
A similar thing was done with Assassin's Creed 2.
They had a few things from the game removed, like plot essential NPCs and such.
You had to be connected to their servers to actually download those assets while playing.
That kept the game uncrackable for almost 2 entire weeks.
Although you could still play a part of it with the work-around that appeared like 2 hours after launch.