Funny thing about spore is that the pirate version has a crack that removed the securom DRM thingy and due to some australian store releasing the game early it was available to download from the internet before the release date. As bad as internet piracy is, I feel that they are shooting themselves in the foot by pissing off legitimate customers. You buy the game, you have to deal with shit like DRM + copyprotect. You pirate the game you get a nice DRM free game. It is probably faster and easier to just download the game than it is to travel to your nearest gameshop and buy it. Plus it is free. In my honest opinion if you have a choice between paying money for a DRM riddled piece of shit game or getting the thing quicker and easier for free, you are a retard if you buy it.

If it's such a piece of crap then why pirate it either?

If a game is bad or has onerous DRM on it such that you won't buy it, then great, don't buy it. But that's no excuse to then jump online and pirate it. Say what you will about the executive's choices (and inform your buying descisions accordingly), but the devs and artists deserve to be paid for their work if you're going to be enjoying it. So buy if you want it, or just go without. Even more so, pirating it just makes you a statistic that they'll use to back up even worse DRM next time.

I have a stack of game cd's about 1foot high. I have probably spend thousands of euro on games, some are good, some are shit. At least 1 I could not install because it had starforce on it and royally fucked up my PC so I never got to actually play that one.

The way I see it. If I like a game I buy the game. But to be honest this whole war on piracy is a war to protect their profits. I would love to see EA financial figures. They are continously buying out smaller companies and releasing tons of games. Any time someone mentions piracy the gaming industry, as well as the music and movie industry immediately jump to the conclusion that piracy will utterly destroy them and drive them out of business which fortunately is complete rubbish. I have no figures on games but I can quote the top 10 highest grossing films. Titanic, $1.85 billion. lord of the rings: return of the king, $1.1 billion. pirates of the caribbean: dead mans chest, $1 billion. harry potter, $976 million etc.. (I would like to point out that on the wiki top 50 grossing films a vast majority, if not all 50, are made by hollywood studios(an american business). So why should anyone outside america care if hollywood shuts down. They are making laws and policing the entire world to protect american profits, you really think any other country cares?)

If these people are making $900m dollars a film, and that is just box office takes, they still sell dvd's and make games and all types of crappy toys and stuff, how can they justify the claim that pirates are 'destroying hollywood'. I know this argument is about games not films but the arguments game developers use are very similar. They have been doing this cry-baby act for years. Piracy has been around for years. I remember playing games on my amiga which is probably 20 years old by now and they had copy-protection on it. That is 20 years of piracy and what do we have now. A gaming industry that has gone from strength to strength increasing profits continously over the years. I remember when games were developed by small studios, sometimes even a single person, now we have EA with studios spanning the globe and sole rights to hundreds of games, making millions(probably billions) of dollars a year and, not satisfied with their profits, are now demanding the right to squeeze every penny from their customers.

I am not just ripping on EA or anything. I am just saying that the current trends toward increasing amounts of 'pirates' on the internet point to a change in the way society views the entertainment industry. Pirates were copying books when the printing press came out, pirates were copying films when the vcr came out and pirates will continue to copy games and films no matter how hard hollywood or anyone tries to stop them. You can not govern social change to protect profits, people will not allow it and will fight back.

Hmm, edit not working. Anyway. Would just like to point out that Radiohead released their new album for free on their website. There were more 'illegal' downloads from filesharing websites than their website indicating that pirates are not motivated by their greed or refusal to pay for something. They are doing it out of principle or to make a statement. If the entire world pirated a DRM game and they ended up selling nothing do you really think EA would just up the severity of their protection? or will they realise that copy-protection might stop some people from downloading it but it will probably push others to download it just because of the copyprotection. The problem is that most people nowadays do not have their own opinion, they watch too much tv and read too many magazines that they just regurgitate what the media say. We do not need the entertainment industry, there are plenty of indepentant films and freeware games on the internet. Hollywood and major game developers like to tell people that without them entertainment will end, we will have nowhere to get our 'precious' games and films. I disagree.

My PoV:

When a game is sold to me that does not work on my machine despite contacting support multiple times, and in fact appears intentionally designed not to work with other legitimate programs based on that support, and no one is willing to give me all (Or even a portion of) my money back... Then I'm going to play that game, one way or another.

But yes, buy the thing first.

Exactly, you start off by buying games but as they become more and more troublesome just to be able to utilise their product and the companies seem to become more reluctant to believe you are a customer and not just a pirate you will lose faith in them. What started off with people buying games and when they didnt work etc.. getting them illegally will eventually turn around and more and more people will just skip the paying money part. I do not play any EA games anymore because of this reason, I had a bad experience and decided to boycott that company. I also avoid starforce for a similar reason(is starforce still around?)

I believe the industry is fighting piracy the wrong way. You want to entice people back to legal ways of getting the games. If they could make a copy-protection which did not interfere in any way with legit customers that would be fine, but they are making life more difficult for honest customers just to protect their profits. The way it is now, most copy-protection is no more effective than simple cd-keys yet a lot more invasive. As well it is probably a lot more expensive for the company and possibly the user too if they decide to pass on the extra costs.

True, but what I was getting at more was the occurrence of lockups or disabling of non-related software.  Most of us in the know have heard these claims for a long time now.  SecuROM continues to be prevalent.  That's all I'm getting at.

Appropriate methods of DRM have been talked about to death and will continue to be hashed out.  However, making silly claims that extremely popular games are garbage and aren't selling because of DRM is just ludicrous.

It is quite ludicrous, currently. However the way the industry is using these DRM and copy-protection is not helping. Anyone who stops buying games from a company because of their use is very unlikely to ever go back. And as more and more people become aware of these systems they will themselves stop buying games, if this was not bad enough as more and more people start to dislike DRM and copy-protection more and more people will start to make anti-copyprotection statements and increase awareness on the internet. The problem will increase exponentially. They are pushing a small minority of their target audiance away while doing absolutely nothing to get them or anyone else back. As internet piracy becomes more and more common across the internet these companies will eventually start to see diminishing returns. It is an unsustainable business model. Basically all you have to do is piss someone off once and they are probably going to be gone forever and intrusive or restrictive copy-protection systems are quite an effective way to piss people off.

I would say don't pirate anything, just don't buy crappy games. Also make sure you buy good games.

But I know that isn't realistic to expect from a world where its simply EASIER to be a pirate than a legitimate user and the legit user gets treated like an idiot.

I can almost see the people laughing at the common sense in that post.

You are exactly right. It is becoming faster and easier to use a pirate copy of the game than a genuine copy. Young people today use the internet to download more and more, in their mind there is nothing wrong with it. They do not consider IP as something you buy. As these young pirates grow up and become voters, society will start to change more and more towards piracy. It is happening. Copyprotection is not doing anything.

And using copyprotection is not helping. Take spore for axample. A cracked version of the game was available to download an entire day before the release date and it had no DRM. Not only can pirates install the game more than 3 times, unlike genuine owners, they also got it earlier than them, and for free. As more and more people lose faith in the game industry they will turn to piracy to get their games.

Try as hard as you can but a pirate group will just crack the copyprotection. The group is probably a bunch computer programmers and computer engineers anyway, they know what they are doing. So you have a pirate copy with no copyprotection and genuine copies with copyprotection. Which people are affected? The legitimate owners or people who download for free off the internet?

 The game looks "pretty" ... but the gameplay is too limited, easy & repetitive -- before the Space Age. And then ...

The irony is that they recently released a first patch ... and if you visit the various forums, you learn that a lot of people who had experienced no problems with version 1.0 now have a patched version which crashes !

My version 1.0 works fine.   But I'm not a « tween » anymore ... so I'll invest more time & energy into Demigod.