Yes, yes I do. Doesn't everyone?? :look:

I run a MAC because I lost a senior thesis back in '97 when I got my bachelors degree and posponed graduate school for 9 months while I worked to restore/recreate a new thesis. Today it would be really easy because I have written so much since then, but it was very difficult back then. So I switched. Never cared much for PC gaming until GalCivII.

I have a legit copy. I paid them directly. They even sent me the modified codes. Why can't there be an alternate method for patching, like DL. I downloaded on my MAC and transferred to the PC.

I am not sure why I am arguing with other players. This done.

hi, my name is ____ and im a pirate

i will admit, when this game first came out i pirated it. it was a good game to, i enjoyed it. after reading this company's thoughts on copy protection i deleted the game and waited till i can afford it. the reason being you guys made a good game AND you guys trusted your customers.

i bought this game plus expansion now....THANK YOU FOR TREATING ME LIKE A PERSON!

you are right about the counter productive. there was a time when i would have bought a cd, or would have downloaded it depending on the song and the band...now i wont even look at the cds, why should i spend money on something i can get for free while also supporting this kind of childish behavior. i know this thread isnt about the RIAA and more about games but it all is one big ball. the same goes for games, why should i pay for the game that is nothing but a inconvenience to get to work, and is probably poorly written and a dumb game at that. its easier and more economic sound to download the game for free and fiddle with the crack. however, with this game its not easier to do that, i can easly get all the updates and its a solid game. i am living proof that copy protection does not work.

Agreed, a good product is worth a LITTLE effort... unfortunately some of us have had to put forth a LOT of effort for something that shouldn't be this way. A game shouldn't be released with bugs/issues. People like you say that corporate greed and the rush to put out the product is the root of this problem... okay then, if Stardock doesn't have shareholders and it isn't about the corporate greed/rush scheme, then why would Stardock release a game that isn't up to snuff? If they can have all the time in the world (remember, according to your argument, ceo's and shareholders are a part of the problem)to develop a 'pretty much bug free' game, then why didn't they? I don't care anymore what kind of trouble my saying this causes, nor who I piss off by saying it. As I posted elsewhere, this excuse that games with bugs are to be expected pretty much says to me that the industry standards are quite lax and need to be changed to protect the end user, the consumer, not the company. My small amount of money helped make Stardock what it is, as all of ours have, so should we not be considered the 'shareholders' in this case? Should we not get what we pay for?
You buy a car, it has problems, who fixes it? You? I don't think so, unless it is out of warranty, then that is your problem. I like how the gaming industry avoids all of this liability all together... just like the disclaimer that if the software damages your system in any way, you are SOL... what kind of business practice is that?
It's all hand in hand... and about piracy, who really cares? As everyone has said, if someone wants something bad enough, they will find a way to get it.

Well for what its worth here's my $0.02.

SD is what the game industry could be. I won't say they are perfect because everything can be improved upon. However I have never bought a game that has had this level of support. I can't think of any other game ever where you could go to the company forums and actually have the person who writes the code reply to customers. Or the fact that the development team is actually still together and actually still working on the game. That alone is unheard of in the game industry at large.

Most of the time you get one patch may be two and then that's it. Hit a bug late in a long game and you are basically screwed. All that time and effort wasted because you can't finish the game and no one can help you because they've all moved on to their next game project.

Right now I think the game industry is overdue to make a major change. For the longest time its been seen as kind of the bastard child at the table of entertainment. It really is a shame that some in the industry are still hampered by that image. Think of what games could really be if the industry as a whole would wake up and say *Hey we can do better*.

I used to read those *Chose your own adventure* books when I was a kid. I loved them more then normal books for one simple reason: I got to decide what happened. Not fully because I still had to move within whatever universe the author created. But it was that ability to chose that compelled me to read. This is what drew me to gaming all those many years ago. The ability to play an active part in what happens on the TV rather then just sitting passively watching others.

I do know one simple way to change the industry though. Consumers need to stop buying junk games. Unfortunately the system is set up such that we consumers have no way of knowing if the game is junk until we plunk down the $50 to find out ourselves. Demos don't cut it. I've played a lot of demos which were fun but then the full blown game turned out to be repetitive drivel that I had no way of knowing that the first level would be identical to the last level. So what happens when we aren't satisfied with a product? Well nothing. You can't get your money back. You can complain till you are blue in the face and no one will help. Your only real option is to never buy another game from that developer again. Which in my case has severely limited my current gaming options . Thank god we've got GCII to play or I'd go bonkers.

Pirates are people oppossed to the idea of paying for software. Why would preventing piracy make them suddenly so keen on buying a game?

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There's a heap of interesting stuff in here, mostly the usual arguments back and forth on the subject but some interesting twists.

To the person with the Mac and the serious PC/Internet phobia - seek some help. So you had a bad experience once - well I got run over crossing the road many years back and I still cross the road when I need to.

To those with the unresolved technical issues - maybe it's your machine. It needn't actually be broken but there are far more different system configurations that it is practical to test against - you could simply be one of the unlucky few. It happens.

To the ones that think all software should be perfect and bug free well ... My name is _______, I'm a software engineer and the software I write has bugs in it. There I said it. The project I work on has getting close to 2million lines of code with 6 developers. That's more than 300,000 lines of code each. Try this little experiment, write a short story, or a short report on a subject you know well - three of four pages should do. Spell check it and proof read it. Now give it to someone else and I will guarantee they will find errors in it. Your story only has about 200 lines. Our, somewhat longer, "stories" also have to make sense no matter what order the reader chooses to read the pages in.

To the self righteous pirates who think they are justified and "forced into it". No you are not - there is a little thing called free-will. You can choose your own actions, if you don't like the way someone does business, or the conditions they attempt to impose on you when using their product you can choose to simply not use that product.

I love computer games, I adore computer games and have been playing them for more than 20 years - but I have never pirated one in my life. If I loan or gift someone one of my games then it will be the original and I wont be able to play it until they give it back. I'm not quite Mr. Perfect, I will copy CD's to mp3 for my own use on my portable mp3 player - I view this in the same light as taping records for my old Sony Walkman - but I wont go to extreme measures if the CD refuses to copy.

To the person who wants a video-hire like system - I am very pleased to say that it is already here. In the UK, and France, there is a service called Metaboli which offers over 100 games (and growing) on monthly subscription (including GalCiv 1) all completely legit. Paid up members can play any of the games at any time. The only catch is that you must be on-line whilst playing but they are hoping to add off-line play in the future. You can play them from any machine. One neat technical gizmo is that the streaming technology they use allows you to start playing the games before they are fully downloaded.

The above system also solves the problem of buying a game to find it's rubbish (or broken) - just pick a new one instead - at no extra cost.

Oh, and there is one HUGE benefit of downloaded games - us yokels in the UK no longer have to pay the extortionate $-per-£ costs those money grabbing B******* have been conning us out of for years.

OK, thats all I've got to say. I hope I haven't unduly (and unintentionally) upset anyone.

Stardock does block excessive multi-activation. No idea what the threshhold is though- I'm sure it's something very reasonable.

Exactly why I'm not playing Gothic 3 right now. I got a new PC with 64-bit Vista and now my game has turned into a coaster because they've got some insane copy protection.

Yow! Now wait a sec, if that were true then you might as well leave your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition. It's more convenient for you and, by that logic, if anyone wants to steal your car they will do so whether you lock the car or not.

Piracy prevention schemes WILL stop some users from stealing the game and some of those WILL go out and buy it. However, it will also prevent legitimate customers from playing - and those customers will be ticked off about it, as will the stores who have it returned to them. (Just as you might accidentally lock yourself out of your own car in an effort to keep others from stealing it.) In the case of game software, I suspect ease of distributing cracks is making it so easy to steal games that there are a lot more ticked off legit users than theives turning to a life of legitimacy. Even if you make a game with such good copy protection that nobody can crack it, the pirates will just go play a different game, hardly any will go buy your game.

hmm what are the statistics on this stuff? i know copy protection software costs money, doesn't seem like it is worth it in the end. practically every game that is pirated can be downloaded from a torrent. really doesn't make any sense to use copy protection.

There are many ways to protect yourself now, plus it's always a good idea to back up important stuff, no matter what OS you use.

I've been using PCs for years, and I've seen it all - viruses, power outages, hardware failure, etc. But I've developed strategies to deal with that kind of stuff. I've got both security and redundancy measures on my PC, so that my data is safe and I can still access the Internet without fear.

Security is not just about what type of computer you use - Even Macs are not perfect and steps should be taken to ensure security. Indeed, all computers, no matter what brand, have components that will wear out and stop working eventually (or get replaced via upgrade), so keeping a backup of your data is vital no matter what system you use.

Risks come with everything - lightning can strike your house and fry your computer, and power spikes and brownouts also threaten it. It's all a matter of doing what you reasonably can to minimalize those risks.

Very sensible. I like you. You understand where I am coming from. I learned my lesson well from back then. Everything is backed up, and synq'ed as well. Though at this point, I have 5 MAC's (a tower, a Mini, and 3 laptops.. the oldest being 7y.o. and still heavily in use).

I use my PC exclusively for gaming, and the wife will occasionaly use a statistics program called prizm (pro app/pc only). To prevent my PC from becoming a virus/spyware ladden machine, I keep it off the net completely. For example, I am really curious about spore, but when I saw that it must be connected to the net like my Wii (24-connect style feature) to get the full experience from the game.. I decided to pass up on it. For online play I have a x-box 360 and a PS2. My PC is for RTS or TBS vs. the computer AI (which is why I really dig DL/DA).

I am currently talking to a programmer from SD, so I hope we can resolve this.

If you connect your PC to the net through a router, it won't become a virus/spyware laden machine, especially when your only playing games.
If you really don't want it to have a internet connection, you could just enable the network adapter in windows when you want to download galciv2 updates, and afterwards disable it, problem solved.

There are no industry standards, which is part of the problem. While it's unlikely you'll ever see completely bug free software it would be possible to minimalise it's occurence. In order to do so though you'd need to standardise the PC. Quite frankly, I think more people would be pissed off if precisely what hardware and software you could use on your PC was dictated to you.

You paid for the code, you got the code.

No offence, but bugs in games are a lot like insanity in people. If the vast majority of people are experiencing the same thing, then it's a bug (or normal). If you're the only one then it's your machine (or you're insane). There's a moral obligation for the developer to fix a bug in the code, they have no obligation to fix your machine.
To use your analogy, if you buy a new car and decide to fill the tank with water, is the manufacturer liable for the car no longer working?


Sufficient security will prevent it from that kind of thing. In fact, given the amount of hardware you have available you could create an incredibly secure network.

As noted above, if you have a router or external firewall and don't do web browsing or email (specifically, with IE and Outlook, but even using something else you *could* download a trojan) on your PC, you've got little (if any) risk, in my experience.

I've never had a single virus infection myself, simply by using a firewall and practising common-sense internet use (I have an AV of course, but about all it actually does is automatically toss virus emails in the garbage bin for me--I could just as easily teach Thunderbird to do that with its junk filtering, I'd bet). And unless you use IE, spyware can really only be gained by manually installing software that installs it along with it--also entirely avoidable with no special effort.

That's sounds silly to me. Think about what many people have on their PC. Things such as emails, passwords, and 'stuff' that often fall into the category of "personally identifiable information". The issue for me is that if someone does manage to compromise my home computer, I'm at risk for "identity theft" along with a host of other issues. If I happen to use my home PC for business, there is a broader set of risks to a larger audience of people (co-workers, clients, etc.) as well. In the end, I'm happier when my PC doesn't have to phone home to 3rd parties. The convenience of not having to mount a disk to play a game is unquestionable as well. Fwiw, part of my decision to purchase GCII and the expansion was swayed by Stardock's approach. I'd also recently bought another company's product (X3, from egosoft) as their recent updated DVD eliminated starforce. In fact, I stopped using the Steam download version I'd purchased and bought the DVD version for the simple reason that it reduces my exposure to risks I'd mentioned above. In contrast, my experience with another online distribution format (direct2drive) was horrendous. Patches to the game I'd bought through them were late in coming and in one case non-existent. Further, performance was impacted negatively as their system was always phoning home, and after a system crash and associated data loss last year, I had to jump through hoops to get access to another download. Not worth the effort at all.

The short story is that eliminating DRM is desirable for me as a consumer. My priority isn't to ensure that developers have constant assurance that I haven't pirated their wares. Not to sound harsh, but that's their issue and the impact shouldn't be passed on to me. My priorities are convenience, as well as security and stability for my property (my computer). After all, software devs/publishers won't rush to my aid if their flavor of copy-protection creates technical support problems for me, or results in an exploited security flaw or data loss on my system. While I'm not all that excited about Stardock's methods for protection for Object Desktop, GC2 is a breath of fresh air after all the BS with DRM/copy-protection from other games/software. I'd like to see the GC2 trend continue, and if Stardock can provide an update process/mechanism to account for systems that aren't always connected to the internet, then appears (to me) to be another great step in a good direction.

In my opinion, MOIISKA isn't very bright.

these guys are paranoid. if they'd learn how to use a computer they wouldn't even need anti-spyware and anti-virus software, like me. first of all, IE6 & 7 have tons of security flaws, so if you're still using them, well then shame on you. with that said, it is the hacker's choice browser because it is installed by default with Windows and therefore the most commonly used.

Was thinking of saying this earlier, successfully resisted but I'll succumb now.

I'm one of those "evil pirates" out there.

When I want a program, game, app, mp3 or any type of software my first course of action is to check my DC++ rar only hub for it. If it isn't there I search the torrentsites. If it's not there either I'll ask around to see if anyone on my msn list can get it. If that also fails I check an .nfo site and ask if what I want will be released.

With only the legal ways left I'll check the Swedish equivalent of pricerunner and play.com and get it as cheap as possible.

A few years ago I wanted to start selling pirated stuff but the antipiracy burea and conscience is too active here so that can only be done locally to none computer wizzies.

So StarForce, DRM and even nastier stuff is needed to stop me.

I've only ever bought 9 PC games and got 11 legal ones. What made me buy GalCiv 2 instead of pirating it was heavily because Brad said that the updates wouldn't be piratable. Imagine my disappointment a bit later on when I find public links to GalCiv 2 updates....
So then I thought of selling it but kept it because I want to support quality A.I development.

Here's a little something.

I'm from the Philippines and piracy is a way of life around these parts. More than half the machines in the country run on pirated software, and of the gamers I know around here, almost all of them play from pirated copies.

It's not that we like these games. Pirated copies have lousy side-effects on your computer. Sometimes they contain malware, and sometimes they cause your computers to crash. Sometimes they cause the game to hang mid-game and never proceed, and half the time, they don't work at all.

And you get no guarantees. If your pirated game doesn't work, you're SOL. There are times when you have to buy five to ten copies just to buy a game that works, and even then it only sort of works. If you think that's a bed of roses, think again.

So what? It's free, right? Nope. It's not. Music and computer game pirates get fat and rich because they make money. That means that their "customers" pay for content.


If it's so lousy, why are you paying for it?

Quite simple.

It's the only way we can afford it.

There are parts of the world where $45 constitutes half a month's wages, and you have to deduct the tax off of that. Once you factor in electric and water and food and rent, there just isn't all that much to go around.

I could save for years and years and years and buy a legit Windows version that I'll use for a few hours a day, or I can just buy a pirated copy.

And no, no one sane scrimps and lives on bread and water for years just to get a functional OS.

The thing that most Westerners don't realize is that heart of all this piracy stems not from people who would've bought their software anwyay, but from people who never had the capacity to buy their software in the first place. They lost no money, because it wasn't a sale they ever could have made.

It's the pirate way or the highway, and many people who can't find a pirated source simply don't use computers or play games. That's the way it is.

All too frequently, if someone wants to play a game around here for less than an arm and a leg, the only option he's got is a pirated version. He WANTS an original, but it costs so much it's practically suicidal to buy one.

To put it in perspective, what if, just to suppose, GalCiv2 costed $11,000? Would any of you ever buy one? Of course not. What if there'a pirated version that sells for $20? And everyone did it? And you'll never be sued?

If you really want to stop the Pirates of the South China Sea, the solution is to hire local workers to bring down costs, and then sell the content at competitive prices. Paying up to 300% of pirated software costs is no big deal. Almost everyone I know who buys pirated software wishes he didn't have to. Even if he had to pay three times the price, he would buy original software, just so he didn't have to deal with the headaches.

But he can't. Because GalCiv2 costs $11,000.

This is off topic, but related... I have a large DVD collection (all legit). I love movies, lol. The thing that's really annoying to me, is to have to sit through those anti-piracy messages every time I put a movie on, because they put them on every damned DVD. Sometimes you can fast forward them, but with some you have to sit and watch them. It's frustrating, and the irony is a pirated version will probably have this message removed. So, why punish the paying customer? Its so annoying, if I knew anyone who pirated movies I probably wouldn't say anything. Frak 'em, if they want to ruin my viewing pleasure. Maybe I should try and get copies instead of originals too. No anti-piracy messages, and a hell of a lot cheaper too. Wow, sounds great! [/end rant]

I will look into this. I never thought of this.

Thanx.






Just a little.

:tinfoilhat:



**Phew**

Luckily for me, no one is asking for your opinion where my brightness/or lack-there-of is concerned.

I do not know you, so I will forgo the flaming retort and everything that it entails, and just say this.....



BRILLIANT.

Stardock can probably scrape by without the market segment who can't figure out how to hook a PC to the internet for 5 minutes without getting a virus.

Walk the cable from your MAC to your PC, plug it in, and don't open any friggin email using Outlook. You'll be fine. Or just be an obstinate ass and "give up" on the game. I am sure Marathon is still available for the MAC someplace.

"I have to hook up my PC to download a patch? Waaah!". Tough luck flocko.

IMO - I will ALWAYS pay for a game, if it's worth it. But so many games don't put out proper demos - a TBS game that the demo lasts for 5 mins is a good example.

Stardocks game is so killer - i played it over at my g/f's house - it sold me the first day and I've remained hooked. Bought the game for myself no less than 24 hours later.

The real way to stop piracy? Release good games.