Piracy

Hello This is my very first ever thread, now i have a question about piracy; most people know lots of people pirate games, ANYWAYS what are you (the devs) going to do about it. I know money can be very tight but i am hoping there is some kind of online sign up, and maybe something for every patch, so the people have to keep on creating new cracks. In my opinion people shouldn't pirate from indie devs. ( I hope I did ok )

 

This is the area for suggestions, not questions.
But anyway, they aren't going to do anything about piracy, pretty much no indie dev can without using unethical and consumer unfriendly practices. As I've seen so far, starbound is free of those.

 

The part of a game that is used to ensure that only a legitimate user has access to it is generally called the DRM, or digital rights management. the problem with DRM is that it cannot fully work in any situation other than "always online" type games such as MMOs and large name titles which can afford to run servers 100% of the time. in any case other than that, DRM merely slows pirates down, but can seriously get in the way of legitimate users (who are generally not as computer savvy on average compared to pirates). there have been cases (the sacred 2 expansion, for example) where the DRM caused such problems for legitimate users, that they had to download the patch/crack that was released by software pirates just so that they could play their game. other cases (older versions of the starforce DRM system) actually caused physical damage to legitimate users' machines. in light of these unfortunate events, many developers, especially smaller studios, are choosing not to include any sort of DRM in their products to ensure that their users do not run into these sorts of problems. another reason is that the inclusion of DRM would increase the development time, and many indie studios cannot afford to do this.

it should also be noted that not all artists and developers believe that piracy is necessarily a grievous blow to their business. some independent musical artists will go so far as to post their content on pirate websites as a way of getting free advertising, and to allow people to listen to their music before purchase. clearly not all pirates will be so ethical as to support the artist or studio that produced the things they have downloaded and enjoy, but some do - and as no one is going to stop piracy any time soon, the advantage will go to those who are willing to either harness it as just another form of viral marketing, or at the very least to those who don't waste their efforts trying to fight it when they may be better spent improving their product instead.

hm... didn't mean to write a book, but there it is.

 

lol if what bartwe tells us is true for beta at least they would have to make a new crack every 8 minutes to keep up lol

 

And they would do just that.

 

persistent assholes I know lol

 

Nothing close... if anything, while I don't approve of what they do, I respect how stubborn they are. (Simcity, I'm looking at you.)

 

Pffffffttttttt...
You can't stop piracy.
The second the games come out,pirates will be like:"ARRRR get dat booty!!!"
I sware it will have like 5000 seeds on the first day.

 

You can't stop the Pirates, and I'd argue that it's a good thing. Nearly every Minecraft player I know started with a pirated copy.

 

People mostly pirate because they can't afford, but maybe if you have some deals once a month or two, they might reconsider.

 

Most indie game developers focus on developing their game, which seems like a better idea than wasting time and resources trying to block the pirates; which always seem to find a workaround anyway.

 

I'm in that group. Pirated Minecraft in alpha, bought it two days later. Did the same with Terraria. Not everyone pirates simply to get a free copy of a game. Some use "free" copies as a means to demo the game without paying first. I don't know anyone who would prefer purchasing a game they might not like vs. trying it first for free.

 

Even if SB gets pirated, it's made over two million dollars in pre-orders. It wouldn't affect Chucklefish as badly, especially considering they are a cool group who people would gladly pay to support and not a bunch of schweinhunds like EA or Capcom.

 

Swiggity Swooty I'm coming for that booty

 

I don't believe they should concern themselves with piracy.

People who have been stung by buying a game which wasn't cracked up to all it ought to be, or people currently out of pocket/no access to a payment method are bound to. But eventually somewhere down the like they're likely to do so. A great model for them might be only having protection for multiplayer exclusivity, the best way to convince a non-gamer to play a game is letting them play it for themselves.

 

Swiggity Swaggity I am coming for you're daddy

 

I agree with the online thing, because I know for a fact lot's of pirates can't play online.

 

Pretty much all they can hope for is that people won't sink so low that they'll steal from a small indie company trying to make a name for itself.