No CD Petition

[sjm]

I can't be arsed to read the entire 6 pages, but I am a great hater of protection systems. They are only an annoyance to paying customers. We all know how easy it is to download either the entire game or a crack off the internet - meaning that it's really simple to copy the game anyway. Most of the time, cracks for games are available within, say, a week of a game's release.

The company selling the game would be much better advised to offer something to paying customers that makes it actually worthwhile to buy the game, rather than rewarding those who are financing their salaries with an inferior product. Add to this the fact that in most countries, if you DO download a No-CD crack, even if you own the original game, you are theoretically breaking the law.

I have a laptop which moves around a fair amount with me, and the last thing I want to do is lug around all my game CDs (easily 100+) on the off chance that I might want to play one of those games. I would prefer not to have to do that - in fact, I don't see why I should! I bought the game, why can't I just play it?!?!

Then there's the fact that most copy protection systems in use are not compatible with many CD/DVD drives, won't run if certain (legitimate) software is installed etc. etc., and it's enough to make you wish you had just downloaded the cracked game without all the hassle, than spending your money on a product that treats paying customers as if they were the thieving scum of the earth.

I have several games that I cannot even *PLAY* without installing a crack (and one that I can't even install for god's sake), because they are not compatible with my CD drive. Theoretically, I am breaking the law, but I feel that from an ethical and moral point of view I am perfectly withing my rights - and that it is nothing more than blind stupidity on the parts of the software company to even contemplate employing a system that would (only ever) deny legitimate owners of the software the option of actually using the goddam thing.

So to all developers reading this: Your software is going to be copied anyway, whether you protect it or not. Live with it. If you don't like it, look for another job. Don't punish those of us who actually buy your products, because we feel they are worth it. We are your loyal paying customers, and deserve to be treated with respect, much the same as you feel that you ought to be treated with respect by your users in the form of them supporting your work by paying for it.

And to top it all, developers pay money for these stupid things - money that could actually be invested in making a superior product or, heaven forbid, paying themselves a higher salary in the first place.

[sparkyal]

Personally, i do think it helps cut down on piracy to require the cd. Here's a situation: a 10 year old buys the game. Maybe his family has a couple of cimputers on the network. so he installs it on all the computers and invites a couple of his friends to play CIV IV MP for free over the home network. you can take the situation anyway you want. The 10 years tells his freinds, they all borrow it and soon half the school has got the game and Firaxis has make no money on the deal. they're 10, maybe the know better, maybe they don't. they ceetainly aren't going to break the protection code.

I'm well aware that it doesn't stop piracy, but it does curb the incidences described above, and that does help. Heck, where I live you can't even get a legal copy...I had to but it while I was on vacation in england!

sparky

[SpencerH]

I use iso versions of all of my PC games (all 10 or so - civ, TW, and couple of others) and I've carped about the pathetic anti-piracy software since it first became more annoying for those of us who buy the games than those who do not. Nothing is gonna change the industries opinion about it. Strangely, I think TW has finally found 'the solution' for those of us who use images. M2TW is 10 or 11 gigs. Who'se gonna make an image of that? It'd take days to generate.

[Leuenberg]

Originally posted by sparkyal
Personally, i do think it helps cut down on piracy to require the cd. Here's a situation: a 10 year old buys the game.

Seriously how many 10 years old buy CIV ? I could follow your rationale for a game targetting this population but we all know CIV is for a mature audience.

Besides, I can garantee you that at 12 my brother was perfectly aware of the ways to obtain a pirated version of any game around. And he is definitely not computer-savvy.

[Leuenberg]

[SIZE=1] I think TW has finally found 'the solution' for those of us who use images. M2TW is 10 or 11 gigs. Who'se gonna make an image of that? It'd take days to generate.

That's just 3 DVD, so it would be less than 2h on my laptop which BTW has a 100GB HD.

I play only a few games (CIV, EU2, WC3) and all have been ISO'ed on my HD. But seeing the price/size ratio of HD plumetting every day, having many games like this one ISOed should not be a problem.

And I forgot to mention GalCiv II in my list of games, but this one do not need a CD ! At least one game editor is not completely clueless regarding these stupid CD protection schemes (kudos Stardock )

[CreepyD]

May be a silly question, but how exactly is using a no-cd crack breaking the law when you have purchased the game legally?

[sjm]

Originally posted by CreepyD
May be a silly question, but how exactly is using a no-cd crack breaking the law when you have purchased the game legally?

Depends where you live, but in most countries, you are not allowed to modify the code, if you do not own the rights to it. If you read the EULA, it's probably in there somewhere.

Note that some countries, e.g. Russia, have very different laws. In Russia, you are perfectly within your right to do so. You are explicitly allowed to reverse engineer software. In fact there was a high profile case where a Russian scientist who reverse engineered software in Russia was then arrested upon entering the United States, where it is a crime (maybe someone has more info on this?). At least this was the case a couple of years back, and I don't think they've changed the laws since. Hence the fact that so many warez sites are hosted in such countries. They're untouchable there. Host them in the US and you'll be sued to high heaven.


Note that when you buy a game, you theoretically have not actually bought a game (according to software companies, I think it's a load of bollocks myself), but the "right to use the software" (a license). Personally I think that's absurd; imagine you didn't buy a car, but purely the "right to use the car". You'd be pretty bloody annoyed wouldn't you. I use the car analogy as it's a perennial favourite for comparisons of the software industry to other industries.

It's all part of the current heavy-handed approach towards "intellectual property", which is actually more about perceived means of increasing profits than protecting the rights of artists.






And as to the 10 year olds... When I was 10-15 years old, I had easily over 150 pirated games (and another 50+ legally owned games, one of which was civ I, so yeah, younger kids like civ too ); and this was 15 years ago, before the advent of the internet. It's nothing short of naive to think that today's kids aren't tech-savvy enough to use google and a point-and-click file sharing application.



In fact, I think that today's PC and software industry actually has benefited massively from the fact that software is easy to distribute.

Just think of the sheer number of PCs that were sold in the 80s and 90s because people could copy the software from firends at work/school/uni. These people would *never* have bought the hardware, if they hadn't been able to copy the media. And if they had never bought the hardware, they would never have bought even a *single* piece of legitimate software. The PC industry would never have developed as quickly as it did and in the directions it did (multimedia, sound, graphics), had it not been for the demand by consumers (not businesses, who were happy with dull spreadsheets most of the time) for the hardware. Even if every PC owner only buys one piece of legitimate software, that's millions of copies of software that would never have been bought if it hadn't been possible to copy software, and hence no one had bought the hardware. Because it's the ease with which the media can be copied that made/makes the hardware so appealing in the first place.

If I look back, I got an Amiga and a PC because I could get copies of the software. Since then I have bought hundreds and hundreds of legitimate games, and nowadays only buy games legally (having a steady job means I can afford to do this now). That's thousands and thousands of dollars/Euros/punds the software industry would have missed out on, had I not been able to get hold of cracked software to start off with.



But anyway, I don't buy into the argument that it's fair enough to piss off millions of paying (!) customers on the off chance that there is one 10 year old in the world who has a PC but doesn't know how to use the internet, or know anyone who will tell them how to find the sites they need to copy/crack games. Why does the non-paying user deserve so much more attention than the paying user?!?

[sparkyal]

As for the 10 year old, I'm not sure on the demographics on consumer purchases of CIV IV, but I would think there would be quite a few out there. they may not be great at the game, but you never know.

I think the idea that I was trying to bring up is that if the protection WAS NOT there, piracy of the game would be higher. You may not agree, and that's fine with me. Personally, there isn't really an inconvienence of having the game in my PC. Actually, it sort of sits in there the whole time.

On laws in russia? Well, that's complicated, the laws change here...a lot.Who knows what the law actually is, it is more dependent upon how the locals enforce it. sometimes they enforce the American law on US software and sometimes the Russian law. It kind of depends on your standing with them

sparky

[Leuenberg]

Originally posted by sjm In fact there was a high profile case where a Russian scientist who reverse engineered software in Russia was then arrested upon entering the United States, where it is a crime (maybe someone has more info on this?).

That was Dmitry Sklyarov

On the bias of this disgusting DMCA law voted by dumb politicians, gullibly swayed by the RIAA & MPAA.

An I wholeheartedly support your post