I read about pirated Demigod causing bad Gamespot review

Yeah Piratebay would be a good choice considering the creators of Piratebay have just been sentenced to jail recently.

Stardock recognizes that DRM only hurts sales by infuriating customers. All games are cracked, and 99.999% of those who pirate the game simply download instead of cracking it themselves. By not including DRM, they can hold onto a few more customers who would otherwise be turned off. Additionally, they know that only legitimate users will have access to the upcoming free content (at least two new demigods, with microexpansions to follow), so in the long run piracy doesn't pay.

Swish!    

I hope that case set some precedences...I would love to see publishers/developers start laying lawsuits on those morally bankrupt asses and their theiving visitors. 

Eh, don't think you'll see much of that. It'll never be stopped. They'll always be one step ahead of the "law". It's a game of cat and mouse and the mouse has a huge upperhand. The mouse is basically a mutant super rat from some crappy horrow movie

People will cry, devs and publishers will bitch but who's really being hurt? It's like the music industry, it's archaic and napster and the like showed this and forced the companies to change. That's a good thing, now we have things like itunes where people pay for their music and they can pick and choose what they actually want. The artist wasn't actually losing money, the record company was, and they were losing it because they were retarded. Now artists are even giving away their music for whatever. Pay them nothing or pay them 1000 bucks. It's all an art form, it's all subjective, you can't put a price tag on it. It's worth to you what its worth to you.

At the end of the day you'll find people are willing to pay and support an artist they like, regardless of the medium.

(Regarding the Pirate Bay thing)

Based on everything I've heard, if the case had been decided upon what was presented in court, they should have been cleared. There wasn't really a case presented. The judge allowed lots of evidence that wasn't dealt with in the Discovry phase, contrary to the law. Somehow the pirate bay lost. Now it comes out that the Judge is very much in favor of tougher copyright. A prior judge had to not take the case because of (from what I can tell) a weaker conflict of interest.

This, no matter which side you are really on, should be looked at not as a victory for copyright, but a travesty of justice. Incompetent prosecuters and a Judge who had a big conflict of interest.

I'm glad you bought the game. I bought it mostly for two reasons, I have liked a lot of the Supcom stuff that GPG has done, and the lack of DRM. I like the lack of DRM, though in my opinion that's not enough reason to buy a game. It's damn fun.

On the other hand, I don't particularly like the system of updates requiring logon. Due to problems, likely on my end, prior to downloading Impulse, Sins was a pain to get updates for. Perhaps if I'd liked the game better, I'd have installed Impulse earlier, but as someone who casually played with Sins, it was a real pain in the rear. I know a lot of things are moving to that model, and have been for a while. I like being able to have a disk with all the updates for my games and applications, when dealing with Windows, and while not preventing it, certainly makes it harder to assemble them. (Especially as I usually assemble them on a different box.)

Each to his own, I suppose.

Persistant updates that are only available to legit customers I think are the best way to curb piracy.

Wrong. Pirate Bay Judge Accused of Bias, Calls for a Retrialg.

Source

Game companies could start making a vicious virus and embedding it into their software that, if the exe is changed, the virus releases into the machine and shuts down all those who attempt to crack it.  That would be an effective deterent... illegal, but effective.  Granted the pirates will crack the virus file itself, but I suppose if it uses the system files themselves, it'd be far more difficult to track down.

I would personally not purchase a software that had such measures in place, but its an interesting idea.

I like the german copy protections...

In Settlers II even the cracked version played normally, but after some time, every building started to produce sheep instead of timber, gold, pigs, etc.
In Drakensang, even though cracked, important Quest NPCs went missing. You noticed after hours of playing, when you realize you are stuck.

Imagine the fun in the forums where "honest buyers" log in to report a "bug".

Operation Flashpoint had something like that...after a certain period of time your guns started to shoot very innacurate, vehicles handled like a port-o-potty on wheels, and stuff like that.

The problem with people screaming YEAH! BURN THE WITCHES! is that there are legitimate uses for p2p. Like say..... playing Demigod.

And that judge definitely had some serious conflicts of interest if you care to google about it.

You don't really want any precedent set about it, whether you think you do or not. People getting whipped into a fervor over the evil will only harm legitimate people (traffic shaping, port blocking, etc.). As someone else said, the pirates will always be one step ahead anyway.

Piratebay hosts what are effectively links. What is the difference between that and Google?

It doesn't matter that they are obviously marketed to copyright violators if the end result is the same.

Pirating is not going to go away ever(imo). Smart companies need to embrace methods of converting pirate downloads into sales rather than trying to stop what is only going to be even more difficult to counter as download speeds and limits only get faster and larger.

Things like steam are the future imo. They offer really affordable means of getting games easily where it really does offer a good alternative.

To me games in Australia have been severely over-priced for years. Particularly console games-  i mean, i aint going to pay 120.00 for an xbox 360 game unless it's practically guaranteed to be worth it - ie high reviews and really positive feedback from gamers usually determines this for me.

For PC games though - same deal. Problem is, you shell out 90 bucks and if the game is a piece of crap - you feel totally cheated. The trend with games becoming more online focused is titles being released only half-finished - knowing full well they can make the sales then 'finish/fix' it later. Really piss-poor from this side of the fence - hence why a lot of people have been upset about Demigod's multiplayer fiasco. However, it is good to see Stardock legitimately doing their utmost to curb this. I wouldnt be surprised if they actually released some free stuff really soon like maps/demigods etc as a sort of thank you for your support and loyalty throughout this period.

I can tell you for one - i have been extremely frustrated by this game. I really enjoy playing it but the connection issues trying to just PLAY it have been really, really difficult to deal with. Sure i could go back and play dawn of war 2 - but i dont want to. I want to be playing demigod, goddamnit - and to me, playing vs ai does not cut it. In RTS for me, it's vs players or not at all.

But my point here is despite the frustration, stardock's regular (and really quite honest) communication has been what's kept me from uninstalling and requesting a refund. I do feel this developer seriously cares. I don't feel like it's a game rushed out the door(like warhammer online for example) where they happily take your money expecting you to be happy about that while they fix what should have been fixed or present at release. I feel that there has legitimately been some oversights or under-estimates and the developers really are trying to get on top of it as soon as humanly possible - if that makes sense anyway.

I have some concerns about longevity with the game remaining to be interest, but that's another story for another thread.

Actually, that matters a lot.  Intent is one of the principles of criminal law...that's why there is a distinction between Murder I, Murder II, and Manslaughter.

You're right, that WOULD be illegal. It would be illegal, would cause a huge uprising, and in all likelihood, would end up failing on a regular basis. There are more reasons to alter a program's files than piracy. Tweaking game files to optimize performance could trigger something like that, as well as modding or, over a digital distribution network, a corrupt patch could be enough. The day that happens is the day I stop playing games =P

Then it matters in cases where people die. So you're saying digital theft is just like murder?

Wow...that one went whizzing right over your head lol.  Intent matters in all criminal cases, I just used murder as an example.

Maybe the point is whizzing over your head that if nobody died, your intent doesn't matter because you cannot be tried for any count of murder or manslaughter.

That more clear?

They are not giving people copyrighted materials.

Whereas the intent may matter with regard to an action taken, there has to be a criminal act somewhere for there to even be a crime.

What the hell are you talking about?  My comment was regarding drawing parallels to Piratebay and Google, and how intent does matter.  Having a nice conversation all in your head I see lol...who's winning?

Anyways, just to address your silly point, they did break the law.  You don't have to actually distibute the material to break the law...meerly facilitating (with intent )  other people's breach against copyright laws is illegal.

Are you from Switzerland? Have you read anything at all about the case?

I'm done with you now. Thanks for playing.

Haha...right...all your points were shot down in a blazing glory, and now the only retort left for you is retreat.  And yeah, I have read all about it...obviously more then you.

You know...it's one thing to steal and just say you don't give a damn...it's another thing entirely when those theives pretend they are some kind of defenders of freedom.  The level of delusion required for that one is off the charts.

Anyways, if you want some funny reading check out the comments on TPB website for the verdict post...some people are comparing those criminals to Jesus

If you knew what you were talking about you might have noted that the case was in Sweden not Switzerland. Ego Fail.

It's been my experience that piracy doesn't prevent legitimate purchases.  I recently attended a LAN of 14 players who had never played the game before, we played the game at the LAN... After the LAN 5 player bought it so we could play online.  That's a pretty good conversion rate.  I suspect it would have been higher if there weren't lots of technical issues during the LAN.

Stardock's interface code that locks up while it tries to make a http request is a terrible implementation.  Use threads guys!