…And not buying the games will run PP out of business, remember that they are nowhere NEAR as large as EA, and even getting companies to allow them to sell games at less than half price is no easy feat…
I doubt this will mean anything in the long run, they aren’t using SecuROM or any particualrly harsh DRM, they already had to deal with V-mate…
I think eventually there will be a patch for this…
Also, at least they are telling us, EA didn’t say anything about it until people actually complained…
How much does this market mean to Will (or Circus, etc.)? Somehow, I doubt they’d lose any sleep if companies like Peach Princess went out of business, so we’re hardly in a position of power.
If what shade453 is saying is true, which I think it is, I can hardly imagine a scenario where one would be inconvinienced by all this.
Install-wise, you only need to register after completing the instaliation so that shouldn’t be a problem (authentication takes about 3-4 seconds). Download-wise, you get to dl the game 5 times each of which opens a 24 hour window for you to dl the game. You can pause or restart the download within that timeframe and still have 4 more such timeframes to download the game. I’m assuming you can request a reset of that counter if something goes horribly wrong (5 23-hour-long connection/power cuts in a row? :shock: ), but I’m not sure. It used to be that way with V-mate, though.
Honestly, I’m not getting what the fuss is all about. This isn’t any different than the game requiring the input of a plain cd-key. Actually, it is different, but you won’t be able to tell.
As previously mentioned, it’s somewhat bad for there to be a case in which a pirate gets a ‘better’ product than a paying customer. Anything that leads a good paying customer to seek out pirate groups in order to make their paid-for product “work right” increases the chances of that good paying customer deciding in the future to just get the product from the pirates instead.
Now, obviously, good paying customers who understand the need for companies to stay in business in order to produce new games will continue to buy the game and then alter it. And if the protection takes pirate groups long enough to break, it will usually gain some extra sales from people who didn’t intend to pay for it but got sick of waiting for it to be broken. There’s a lot of factors in play, and it’s NEVER really simple to say whether it’s a net gain or loss.
As a game developer, I can say that there are some trial protection schemes that are actually WORSE than useless, because they are breakable with a common key/technique which can be found all over the net. So it’s already cracked the second it goes on sale, and advertised as a new hacked game by all sorts of pirate sites. Whereas if the game had had no protection at all, it would have taken a lot longer to be distributed.
shrug If this product works as advertised it doesn’t sound draconian, it’s certainly not like the original V-Mate release that I kicked up such an enormous fuss about.
This DRM sounds a lot like the Securom most people are complaining about. The only difference is it lacks the background process.
EA told people about the DRM before the games were released. That’s why Mass Effect’s DRM was toned downed slightly before release and why there was that epic backlash against Spore before its release.
Interesting article you linked to Panzerhaust.
While in general I am against DRM, I tend to look at it kind of like placebos. That is to say, if it makes the publisher feel good for now without causing problems for me, then I’ll let them keep their delusion that adding DRM of any kind will stop piracy. As the article Overlord87 linked to suggests, eventually the publishers will get it through their thick skulls that DRM just doesn’t work.
Thanks for the feedback, it’s very helpful.
a) you can install the game on up to 5 computers with the system
b) if needed we can manually reset or remove licenses if need be (if you sell your computer or something) or send a new license, this is not something we’d ever refuse to do for valid customers
c) we give 5 download on the download system we use but cheerfully reset this for customers when needed. Since we moved to the new download system (24 hours per link), things have gone great and not one customer has needed to ask us to reset things for him, although we’ll always do it if asked
d) we haven’t had a single customer report the inability to activate or install the download games we recently launched with the new system, and believe it will be 1000% more problem-free than V-Mate is/was (occasionally V-Mate codes issued 1-2 years ago will think they’re no longer valid for example, and we of course issue new codes in these cases)
e) we in no way care about limiting the resale value of any games we publish. If you contact us and ask us to give you a new code so you can sell your game with the full five installs, we’d be glad to do that. (We’d deactivate the old code in this case.)
We’re aware that the original V-Mate was unpopular and we’re taking great pains to stay away from anything like that. Believe me, you are our fans we love you, and wouldn’t subject you to that kind of stuff again. I hope people realize that Spore sold however hundreds of thousands of copies from day one, but we have no ability to get our product into Amazon or any other major retail venue outside of the Web and can’t get the up-front rush of sales to make our licensing investment back. Hell, adult bookstores and other “adult” retailers largely shun us, because they have the imaginations of tofu and are convinced that no one in the world would pay for something that wasn’t live-action pr0n with big, fake b00bs. (ugh)
Personally, if we’d applied more draconian software protection like SafeDisc and required the game to be in the drive all the time, it would impact users a lot more. I hate games that require the CD to be in to play. This would theoretically be another option, if the costs weren’t very unreasonable. This option looks to be more elegant.
Of course everyone here is a fan and supporter of PC dating-sim games and hopefully wants Peach Princess/JAST USA to succeed and flourish. We think that this is the best way and we hope you will support us and trust that we’re doing the best we can for everyone.
So by that response, I’m taking it that this decision was overall made by PP itself, and this DRM will be included on all future releases as well?
I don’t think the comparison works. The banking system failed because of people’s greed, selfish manipulation, and poor prediction of backlash. The fault is the system itself - how it was poorly managed, how it allowed credit debt to climb so rapidly, how wealth was only horded by the wealthy and not redistributed back into the masses. There are DOZENS of people and organizations at fault… 15 minutes on CNN will reveal that: it’s that people are NOT going to be punished for it. Despite what the Western world will tell you, capitalism has many faults… and this crisis just revealed yet another of them.
Going by what Peter said, PP didn’t want to put software protection on the game, but Pulltop told them to put software protection. Thus PP had only two options:
#1: Release PW with software protection, and continue to have Pulltop’s support.
#2: Release PW without software protection, and piss off Pulltop, thus threatening their relationship with them.
Seriously… no win situation. Thus its, “God Most High” has decreed type stuff. In other words: do what we say, or suffer from it.
The true problem is that DRM doesnt stop piracy at all.
Piracy will always find ways around the protection mechanisms,
and I believe the best protection AGAINST piracy is making a great game that everyone wants to own,
connected to some exclusive box content that comes with the game.
Copy protections such as DRM, Securom etc make it only more difficult for honest customers
to play the games they purchased, without experiencing problems.
I understand that many companies are forced to use copy protections by their publishers,
but it would be great if one day the publishers would understand that it isnt achieving anything except
making their customers upset.
Just to be a Devil’s Advocate: companies like Working Designs went out of business following this selling model. Exclusive content costs money, so exclusive versions tend to cost more than standard versions. Standard versions that include a “freebie” tend to have a cheap one: artbooks or soundtracks - which can be scanned or ripped just as easily. There’s always the “toy” solution (like a plushie, action figure, medallion, etc), but that doesn’t move products… the anime DVD market can give you failure tallies of that.
I honestly feel that software protection technology isn’t user friendly enough right now. The concept is sound, but no one has come up with a solution that doesn’t have such an “upfront” factor. I’m sure someone will come up with a solution… and that person/company will be filthy rich. I’ve got a gut feeling that government defense contractors will be the one to have something: the CIA and military have encryption and tracking methods for software. Only real problem, is such programs are only for classified data… and thus not public market.
Yep yep, and to make it short, i’ll just quote one part from the article i linked to above:
Simple…
This can be applied to the case of MG, not PP. Yep, MG has plenty to fear, and i mean a whole lot.
I strongly disagree with you there: PP titles get pirated on hentai pirate sites. In fact I’m willing to go out on a limb here, and claim that the “major” hentai pirate sites have the entire PP library for grabs. Piracy has no boundaries. I can find a pirate copy of Dark Knight (a great Batman movie), just as easily as I can find a pirate copy of Batman & Robin (a terrible Batman movie). As a matter of fact, Dark Knight has more download requests than Batman & Robin… which means more people pirated it.
Sure… more people saw Dark Knight in the theaters… but that also means more people pirated it. Popularity dictates piracy by a significant amount: more people pirate a popular title, than they do unpopular title. Any torrent site log will tell you that. Sword of the Samurai probably has several ten thousand unique downloads… Civilization 4 is estimated to have been pirated at a million or two (both being Sid Meier games).
So to make a long story short: Great games sell more copies than shitty games, but great games get pirated more than shitty games. Claiming that making great games is a solution to piracy, makes as much sense as saying letting every country on Earth own nuclear weapons, will stop proliferation of nuclear materials… or that if everyone on Earth was rich, no one would want what their neighbors have. :roll:
While I believe DRM does nothing to “stop” piracy, it does slow it somewhat. Whether it produces more sales is debatable, and in the end it is more a problem for the legal user than the pirate.
I myself have no issues with non-intrusive DRM, even online activation, as long as it does NOT install software or drivers on my system.
My big concern is the covert installation of software such as SecuROM, which when the product it supoosedly protects is uninstalled, the offender remains. Not only does it remain on the system, it is very difficult to remove, in fact impossible without altering the OS and having a working knowledge of command prompts and registery editing.
Before anyone says it, let me address: I believe SecuROM 7.xx to be a security risk, while not malware in it’s current state, there is nothing to prevent Sony (or anyone with access to the SecuROM 7.xx source code) from altering the software on an “infected” system, thus creating a major security risk. This is why many Anti-Virus applications and rootkit search tools, have detected the software as a risk.
In any case, why would Sony use software that mimicks a trojan, to effect Digital Rghts Managment?
Well, i’m not saying that making good titles solves piracy (nothing solves piracy actually). It indeed raises piracy for those titles, and you know what? That is good, piracy is good. It’s a sign that the game is an success and so many people would be interested in it (including, of course, the pirates). Noone pirates crappy games (the pirates would waste their bandwidth doing so, and they know that well), and so only the good ones are pirated.
When I think about it, i realised that (true to that article) if, say, 10 people who downloaded a game encouraged 100 more to go and check it out in store then does that help the sale of that game being better? Well, it sure does, and i think among the people who downloaded it, there definitely are some will spend their money buying the actual game if it makes a good impression with them after a playthrough (well, basically they just love the game). But if the game is bad and does not make them bother spending a bit? Well, they won’t have a second thought about deleting the game right away, the game disappeared from their lives, like it has never got pirated. It’s funny how things often turn out.
That article is written from a biased prospective. Piracy is not good: exposure is good. What happened in that case, is that a product was given exposure through piracy. However to suddenly claim that piracy is good because it gave something obscure exposure, is a fallacy. Something already with high exposure and quality creation, is HURT by piracy. It is a sale which was not made. If something sells 1000 copies and has 100 copies pirated, that means 100 sales were lost. Those 100 illegal copies should have never been possible. 1100 copies should have been sold: not 1000.
The idea that piracy is needed to spread “word of mouth” is proven false in a vast number of things: for example the stock market, art galleries, and precious metals. Simply put: piracy is the means of obtaining something that you want, without having to pay for the price of getting it legally. That piracy can produce a positive outcome is true¬Ö however this is an exception to the rule. Creating still born clones of people, could do wonders for the medical field. Doesn’t mean that it should be done, because it’s immoral. Piracy is the same. Just because it doesn’t take a life, doesn’t mean it’s insignificant. Were it so insignificant, the people you’re pirating from wouldn’t care. Obviously they do.
Why don’t I just pirate dollar bills (i.e. counterfeit money)? Not like I’m hurting anyone… and money is only a tool of the wealthy to manipulate those who aren’t wealthy. Yea… that sounds right. I can’t imagine why its criminal.
I would also like to know if there are plans to apply this DRM to all (or a subset of) future releases, although I am willing to make Princess Waltz an exception to my usual stance of not buying anything with DRM on principle, I suspect that I may not make the same decision for some of the upcoming releases.
I just thought I should point out that this is not necessarily the case, if a potential pirate is prevented from getting a product, that does not necessarily mean that the person would have bought the product in the first place.
The logic behind the use of protection programs and systems is nothing but flawed. The only people that win in any of it, are the people who create and sell these ‘protections’, and the pirates. The paying customers suffer from the hassle and hoops they’re forced to jump through to enjoy a product they paid for. The companies suffer from the loss of sales they could have gotten had they not included hassle inducing protections, and the pirates try to use things such as DRM to justify their actions, and often tempts paying customers to seek out that better product.
Companies continue to use these protection measures because of all the numbers that keep getting turned out on how many people are pirating the product. Despite how much I dislike piracy because of the hindrance it causes me as a customer due to the ‘protections’, in most cases, none of those pirates would have gotten/seen the product anyway had it not been available for free. The biggest problem in all of this is that companies are looking at the numbers of pirated copies in frustration because they think all of these people could have been potential customers, and that potential money was taken from them. But again, in reality, all of those numbers are non-existent to the sales figure, with or without pirates. If a company only had access to the number of product they actually sell, and no access to the numbers that are pirated, I believe companies would strive more to increase the value of their product to increase sales, rather then try to increase the measures of protection to gain all those imaginary sales.
Piracy hurts the customers, not the companies(Until they use DRM or other draconian measures, that is).
This is my opinion, of course, and no one has to agree with it. I’m just one of those angry customers.
Let’s change the numbers Narg gave for a bit and make them a lil closer to the truth. In reality only 100 people would buy the game and about 2000 pirate it. If 1 in 10 of those pirates didn’t have the option of getting a pirated copy and decided to buy the game, the company selling the game would have a 300% sales increase. Huge difference.
The 1:20 analogy might be a little bit too optimistic actually. Stardock announced at one point 40000 sales of their game “Galactic Civilizations”. Checking some popular public and private torrent tracker stats, it would appear there were some 800000 completed downloads around the time that announcement was made. That’s not counting the miriads of 1) private trackers I don’t have access to, 2) trackers in languages I don’t speak or 3) means of distribution other than torrents.
