Re: Tom's Hardware on Starforce (slightly OT)
- From: Richard Carpenter <Rich_Carpenter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 21:33:40 GMT
Mean_Chlorine <mike_noren2002@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:lrg9k1l065vdfme8rqcb7jjifce60vc337@xxxxxxx:
> Thusly Quaestor <no-spam@xxxxxxxx> Spake Unto All:
>
> <how to get companies to understand that starforce hurts sales>
>>A posting, especially on their own forums, stating, "I will never buy
>>from this company again, because ..." has proven effective for me, in
>>getting them rattled if nothing else. And if they're rattled, they're
>>at least listening.
>
> My experience is that posts like that tend to get deleted. Still, it's
> about the only avenue there is.
>
>>>Agreed also. Personally I wouldn't mind copy protection IF IT WORKED.
>>
>>The problem with all "copy protection" schemes is that they are
>>deliberate attempts to prevent the machine from working the way it is
>>designed to. This is inherent in computers. There is no data which
>>can be used which cannot be copied. No program is beyond cracking.
>>The only encryption that can work is the encryption where you just
>>don't have everything, such as an account setup CD key system (online
>>games are basically free of piracy because of this).
>
> IMO this is the road PC games should take. Disk-based copy protection
> is a flawed concept from the start; it protects the wrong thing
> (physical access to the disk) by doing the wrong thing (introducing
> errors, conflicting with hardware/software, making the whole system
> unstable, adding encryption & secrecy where none is needed...) and
> everyone knows it CAN NOT work (it is impossible to securely protect
> software where the user has access to all of the code & data).
>
> Disk-based protection has a 20 year track record of abject failure -
> you'd THINK the publishers had learned by now.
>
> Valve had the right idea with steam, they just didn't go far enough:
> there should not have been an offline mode. The offline mode is what
> made steam incapable of protecting HL2 from pirates.
>
> Today a sufficiently large proportion of gamers have access to the net
> (as proven by e.g. WoW and Lineage), so IMO it is time to go to online
> account based security. It's the only way PC games will ever get
> profitability comparable to that of console games; piracy is just too
> widespread for that to happen while disk-based protection is used.
>
>
I would tend to agree. While my first reaction to Valve's use of Steam
was negative, it occurred to me that my only real problem with it was
the fact that it hurt the second-hand market. A lot of people sell their
games when they are finished with them to help fund the purchase of
others, or merely give a game to a friend upon deciding they didn't care
for it after all.
Valve didn't make that impossible to do, but they did take a big step
toward making it impractical. I'm all for online authentication. I'd
just really like to see the second-hand market not suffer from it.
--
Richard Carpenter
"Write something worth reading, or do something worth writing."
-- Benjamin Franklin
.
- References:
- Re: Tom's Hardware on Starforce (slightly OT)
- From: Mean_Chlorine
- Re: Tom's Hardware on Starforce (slightly OT)
- Prev by Date: Re: Oblivion trailer on Fileplanet
- Next by Date: CoV free for CoH players!
- Previous by thread: Re: Tom's Hardware on Starforce (slightly OT)
- Next by thread: Re: Tom's Hardware on Starforce (slightly OT)
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
