What will stop cracked versions of Starbound from connecting to legit servers?

It will be done with an account, which will be creatable using the gamekey, but this is still in flux.
Anyways, its all optional.

 

Yes that's the question I was wondering for some time already! That means we have a Game Launcher with Login!
(or a game activation launcher to link the copy to an account)

 

Governments already do employ censorship and technically, they already know everything we do and type. They may not care enough to sift through all the data to read what most people are saying or doing, but they have the data all the same, stored in ridiculously huge servers. Of course, they will focus in on certain individuals if they type in certain key words that their computers are programmed to focus in on.

But yea, While Piracy is generally a service problem, not a pricing one, there are simply tons of people that will "get the game for free" because they couldn't give a rat's ass about who developed the game, and how their thieving will affect that person and studio

 

Thanks for the answer!

 

One think I think is key is to have some securities but not make it a burden to play for honest people. *cough...Diablo 3.

 

well, its been proven time and tiem again, that always online DRM does not work. It is not worth having this platform if people won't be able to play for the first couple days or week. You cannot count on the majority of the playerbase being understanding individuals that knows how server load can cause bad things to happen... and break things.

Personally, I think they should go for the source of the problem and actively seek out the crack sights/downloads and not only ban out the distributor, but track down the IP addresses of everyone that has downloaded it and blacklist them as well even if it is pre emptive. If the person complains they were unjustly banned, they could e-mail chucklefish and PROVE that they have not pirated their game, or Prove that they have indeed purchased the game.

 

I have to say that that's a pretty harsh line there against pirates, sir. While piracy is considered bad and undermines the profits of a company, it also leads to introducing a game to a significantly large market. In many examples in this thread, people have pointed to Terraria, and I can agree with them. I decided to give it a try before purchasing, and am definitely content with my buy. Had I not had the aforementioned experience playing the game for myself, I doubt I would've gotten to the point of going ahead and buying it. The elephant in the room that really demonstrates this, and which I at first doubted, was Minecraft. Once again, same scenario for me and many others. Did the crack, then immediately bought it after the game showed all of its potentials in multiplayer, the modding community, a simple but effective login, etc.

The games that do get hurt the most by piracy, in my opinion, are those that price themselves as AAA titles (or close to that) and offer too little replay-ability. Other times it may be just the content for the game. As Geordi quoted:

If a game fails to be able to entice an individual towards buying the game and enjoying satisfaction in what they purchased, it has not truly done its job.
If Starbound is going to be setting up a good security system, I wouldn't be surprised if they do something along the lines of Minecraft, just as simplified and/or even faster response times during the logging-in process. And hey, I have a quote for that too from Bacon:

P.S. After going back through and checking the middle section, I also forgot to note that other heavily-pirated programs normally regard editing software, like Sony Vegas, Music/Audio editors, etc. However, because they were not games, per se, I did not include them, but the point still stands that they have a massive pricing issue that leads to said piracy.

 

It would be alot better if you had to activate the game. such as if buying from steam
You have bought this game!
Activation code: ****-****-****
It would prevent mass piracy with the game because you would need to activate it.
*listens to theme song of captian of the carribeans*
*Still doesn't know how to spell Carribean*

 

That is the main reason, overpriced things lead to piracy, and that is the good side of Piracy, when something does not worth what they ask for it, there are tons of requests for crack it, even that low-priced games still get cracked, when people see the game worth it or become fans of the game, it's very likely they will buy it (my case with Terraria).

Terraria is a good example, even if that every single version were on Piracy, it did sold millions, everybody could simply go there and get the game for "free", but at the end people gone to buy the game. With Starbound same thing will happen

 

Do something like Minecraft did, with the username/password system. Although that did not stop pirating, it made it so pirates couldn't join legit servers unless the server admin specifically added a mod to do so.

 

Any DRM would just encourage them, try to stay away from a restrictive username/password like minecraft, I hate being restricted to one name without paying for another, one of the many reasons I left minecraft early. Being unable to change your username is tedious as shit. Avoid all that bullshit and we'll be fine!

 

I bought terraria for 2 dollars. All my friends got it cracked. I preordered starbound , all my friends pre ordered starbound. We have too much respect for this game to pirate it.

 

Unfortunately that doesn't apply for the rest of the hackers on the internet. As long as starbound exists, there will be hackers blatantly declaring, on legitimate servers, that their copy of starbound is hacked. We will proceed to ban them, and the circle of no-life continues.

 

I believe most servers wont ban non-legit copies that most, since some people want to play with their friends that (usually) uses pirated copies.
But as happened in Terraria when they saw it was a nice game, they buyed it.

Then it's the circle of things. Pirated or not, some just don't buy games anyway, so It wont affect Starbound much, Indie games are more supported than the Big AAA Companies with tons of DLC, etc...

 

On my server unauthenticated Starbound accounts won't be allowed to connect.

The reason why is simple, security. An unauthenticated Starbound account can be anyone. Suppose you allow unauthenticated accounts and you try to ban someone (for grief or whatever), they'll be able to join your server just by telling it it's another account. The same thing happens on "cracked" minecraft servers where hackers join with the admin's account and take over the server and stuff.

 

I'm sure there will be pirates, just like every other game out there. If there's a usename and password, there's going to be someone that gets around that and lets you play on servers that allows unauthenticated people, and the single player. It'll happen just like every other game. The difference with Starbound is, most people don't mind dropping $20 on it, and more then likely after trying the game they will go and buy it. I pre-ordered as soon as I saw they were open personally, but that's cause I've been waiting for that long.

I'm guilty of pirating some AAA Titles. The REASON I did that, was because I needed to know if my laptop would run it before paying $60 for a game that I might not be able to play. Sometimes because someone told me that a game wasn't very good, so I wanted to try it to see how it played before I bought it. See, $20 I can justify when buying a game, it's still a small chunk but it's low enough that if I like the look of the game, I will buy it, but $60 is triple that and I can't just throw down that for a game I don't know if I'll play or if it'll even run. I know I have done that before, I bought a game for $50 and it didn't run even on minimum settings, so I haven't been able to play it and pretty much wasted my money.

Now back to Starbound, I doubt many people will pirate it, some will I'm sure because there are cheap people out there but I'm sure a good chunk will go out and buy the game proper afterwards. Others will pirate it because they don't know if they'll like it, or they don't have the money at the moment and want to play it with a friend. Since the minimum specs don't matter all that much, it really comes down to that.

 

Servers runners can choose to run authentication i dont remember how it works but omni talked anout it

 

It has RSA style authentication/token? Nice. Hackers and griefers with illegitimate copy can bugger off. Hackers and greifers with legitimate copy will think twice before doing anything naughty.

 

I hope we dont have pirates as starbound will be just to good but for those who do choose to find ways to pirate it all i have to say is not in my house

 

I take great offense to that! I'm a proud pirate!
(still, I have a legit copy of Starbound though! No, really!)