Drm Restricted Commercial Games

[NoidZ]

If I really like a game I'll buy it. Everybody should do that (you'll play a game much longer when you buy it instead of downloading it, I think)

 

[jansport]

What kills sales is the price of the product, piracy is just an excuse that the industry uses to explain the decline in sales to avoid pointing out the other obvious factors. If I ever illegally obtain a cracked version of Vektar I'd be willing to send cash straight to the developer along with a written letter of apology.

 

[Parkydr]

DRM is always bad and pointless.

1) If it's SD card based it will stop me make one SD card with all my games on it.

2) If platform based I could own 2 GP2Xs and only be able to able to play on one of them.

3) In the future a GP2X emulator will come along on some future handheld and I won't be able to use any of these games that I paid for.

4) Someone will crack the games anyway and put them on the internet so who is this DRM protecting. Professional pirates will be unaffected while the law-abided user is treated as a criminal and is told how they can use a product that they paid good money for.


Glad I got that off my chest

 

[rokdcasbah]

in the days of the floppy disk software, piracy via disk copy and bbs was rampant and hurt a lot of the small game houses. no, it didn't kill the industry, it just hurt the little guys, and now the big guys are so big that they don't feel it. but the gp2x is still a niche market and pirating could be a big problem. just because you don't steal doesn't mean others won't. especially when we're talking about a lot of young kids who don't have credit cards, etc...the temptation is that much greater.

i'm not saying drm is great, and if this were a discussion about music i'd be saying "steal steal steal" but really, having to swap sd cards, or for that matter, game discs, is not a huge inconvenience. typically drm limits the type of devices that you can use your media on, but there is only one device so far that plays gp2x games.

 

[FluffyPanda]

Pirating gp2x games will kill whatever interest any developers have in releasing anything for our console..

I couldn't agree more, but DRM will not stop piracy and a lack of DRM doeas not mean that a game will automatically become pirated by everybody with sales figures dropping to nothing. This whole "games need DRM to stop piracy" arguement confuses me. Games without DRM are no more heavily pirated than those with. The pirates don't care!

I just bought Galactic Civilisations 2 for the PC, it doesn't have any copy protection on the disc and you don't even need it in the drive to play. Sales are massively more than they expected (I can't find the forum post, but the project leader said it was already about 10 times what he was expecting and they were still having distribution problems in america iirc). None of the apps / games I have ever bought for my palm came with anything more than a key code. People can and do make money of software without annoying copy protection.

in the days of the floppy disk software, piracy via disk copy and bbs was rampant and hurt a lot of the small game houses. no, it didn't kill the industry, it just hurt the little guys, and now the big guys are so big that they don't feel it. but the gp2x is still a niche market and pirating could be a big problem. just because you don't steal doesn't mean others won't. especially when we're talking about a lot of young kids who don't have credit cards, etc...the temptation is that much greater.

But are these pirates without credit cards even worth bothering about? Surely they won't be buying the game anyway so what do we care if they get a free ride? Sure, it kind of sucks that we're all paying and they aren't, but it's not actually hurting the devs.

In other words, what difference does it make to the "little guys" if 3000 people pay for their product and nobody can pirate it, or if 4000 people pay and 10,000 more pirate it. I'd be happy with the second, but people obviously think "oh no! there's 10,000 lost sales, we're totally screwed."

i'm not saying drm is great, and if this were a discussion about music i'd be saying "steal steal steal"

Really? I wouldn't promote piracy.

 

[Parkydr]

The Galactic Civilizations forum is here

Even the developers don't like DRM.

 

[FluffyPanda]

Cheers Parkydr, those links were exactly what I was looking for. They're a much more entertaining read and much more to the point than what I wrote too... I hope everybody reads them.

 

[Iorgy77]

GP2X games need some form of protection, it is a very small market and not protecting the games would make the market even smaller. People just wouldnt buy games they can get for free. There are those few who would send the developer the money after they realise they enjoy the game and are happy to pay. But sadly this is the real world not some fantasy land and these people are the minority. I would rather have commercial games with protection than no games at all.

You say crackers will crack them eventually right?

Ok I'll set you a challenge, get me a cracked GP32 version of pinball dreams. I bought the game and still enjoy it on my FLU. I am getting a BLU now and the company is no longer selling it, because of the protection I can't play it on my BLU.

I would rather have it on my FLU only than never at all.

Just like Vektar there is a demo you can try before you buy.

 

[Vimacs]

Iorgy77, you can easyly crack it yourself, you will find out how by searching a bit.

 

[Horscht]

DRM. I can see why people hate DRM on MP3s, videos etc.

But I don't see the harm in a game that is specificaly encrypted to a certain SD. A DRM protected game that is encrypted to an SD wouldn't mean you couldn't back it up. You could as well back it up to your PC, and in the unlikely event that the SD ever gets corrupted, you'd just re-format the SD and copy the game back over.

But I actualy feel a bit worried about encrypton to the machine. I experienced this problem with my GP32. At one point, i got my GP32 replaced by a buddies machine (we swtiched because he sold his unit in order to get a BLU and his clocked higher). Now, what to do with my paid for "Pinball Dreams" and the worms clone (forgot the name)? and GPCinema? would I have to rebuy those? Luckily GPcinema was released for free a few weeks later and was announced by the time we switched. Ok, GPCinema problem solved. But what about PD and WC? I was lucky enough to find a program on the net that would allow me to crack these games, as long as I had access to the original machine the game was encrypted for. Luckily, I didn't exchange my GP32 because it was broken, so I was still able to crack them for myself. (so yes, Iorgy. There is at least one version of PD available that runs on any machine. Even if the only copy is in my hands )

now this story is to show the problems of how encryption to the machine could cause problems. But I would still most probably get a download version of the commercial games on GP2X. By the time I would have my GP2X replaced (if at all), I am sure there will be instructions floating around on how to crack it yourself.

So unless the price range is too high for commercial games, I am most likely to get 1 or 2 or even more.

Point made. DRM != Bad thing

 

[aapje89]

Iorgy77, you can easyly crack it yourself, you will find out how by searching a bit.

yes, it is possible, but not that easy to find how, it took me a long time to find it out.
Google isnt really helpfull about secumax decryption.

Firefly is nasty, he shows the damn screenshots on his site, but no downloads

anyways, not that I have ever cracked a gp32 game, I was just curious. (I didn't own one so there was nothing for me to crack).

 

[FluffyPanda]

Horscht: I fail to see how all the trouble you've had with DRM just because of one bad gp32 somehow leads to "Point made. DRM != Bad thing".

Iorgy77: I never had a gp32, but vimacs and Horscht seem to suggest that it was easy to crack the DRM protected games. Regardless, if it wasn't easy to find a crack that could just demonstrate a lack of desire to pirate them, rather than a lack of ability.

 

[Fishbong]

Professional pirates will be unaffected while the law-abided user is treated as a criminal

Treated as a criminal?

You mean they´ll put us in jail?
That´s got to me the most stupid comment i read today. :lol:

Seriously, even if it´ll be cracked at some point, that will take some time, and it will limit the piracy as not everyone will be able to pot a zipped image of their SD card on Bittorrent and share it.

Also, what you´re calling "DRM" is no real "Digital Rights Management" anyway, its just the same old Copy protection we had 15 years ago in its different forms, every recent console has had it, so stop whining.

 

[Iorgy77]

Horscht: I fail to see how all the trouble you've had with DRM just because of one bad gp32 somehow leads to "Point made. DRM != Bad thing".

Iorgy77: I never had a gp32, but vimacs and Horscht seem to suggest that it was easy to crack the DRM protected games. Regardless, if it wasn't easy to find a crack that could just demonstrate a lack of desire to pirate them, rather than a lack of ability.

Pinball dreams cost me $10US iirc, if this was still available I would buy another copy for my BLU.

What you are suggesting (protection free games) is commercial suicide for any company that would make cheap games for a small market like ours. If a couple of people don't buy because of protection well thats still better than everyone getting it for free and nobody buying.

 

[Deed]

Ok I'll set you a challenge, get me a cracked GP32 version of pinball dreams. I bought the game and still enjoy it on my FLU. I am getting a BLU now and the company is no longer selling it, because of the protection I can't play it on my BLU.

That's funny, you're a pro DRM, and you give to anti DRM one of the better (if not THE better) argument they could imagine to justify that DRM is bad :rolleyes:

Oh, and by the way, where is gone the companythat sold you pinball dreams ? Apparently, DRM protection do not prevent them to disapear from the surface of the earth This shows that this argument (no DRM = commecial suicide) is also pointless. You're really the best anti DRM defender, iorgy777

 

[Horscht]

Horscht: I fail to see how all the trouble you've had with DRM just because of one bad gp32 somehow leads to "Point made. DRM != Bad thing".

it wasn't any trouble. It was pretty easy to crack the software with tools provided. I am just saying that a similar thing could happen to a GP2X. You could need to exchange it rendering software encrypted for it useless for you. But I also think by the time there will be easy sollutions made for people to use. Just like the GP32.

 

[jbrodack]

the main thing is I haven't heard of any downloadable version of vectar or any commercial games for gp2x. if the drm is limited to keeping the content locked on an sd card it just makes everything more expensive. why not make it downloadable but require a registaration code to play or unlock the full version. by offering the game for download there would be less overhead and more profits for everyone involved. i dont want to have to pay $30 and more for shipping for a commercial game which is around what games cost for commercial handhelds. i was hoping the gp2x commercial scene would be more like the pc shareware scene. where you usually only pay $10 to $15 for a download.

 

[Parkydr]

Horscht: I fail to see how all the trouble you've had with DRM just because of one bad gp32 somehow leads to "Point made. DRM != Bad thing".

it wasn't any trouble. It was pretty easy to crack the software with tools provided. I am just saying that a similar thing could happen to a GP2X. You could need to exchange it rendering software encrypted for it useless for you. But I also think by the time there will be easy sollutions made for people to use. Just like the GP32.

Doesn't that make you a software pirate? (even though you have a legal copy)

 

[Iorgy77]

Oh, and by the way, where is gone the companythat sold you pinball dreams ? Apparently, DRM protection do not prevent them to disapear from the surface of the earth This shows that this argument (no DRM = commecial suicide) is also pointless. You're really the best anti DRM defender, iorgy777

So what they made some money from the game, It was one of the best selling gp32 games at the time that I knew of. If they didnt have some form of protection they wouldnt have sold it at all. Nobody is in the business of giving things away.

NO DRM = NO GAME!

No matter how much you and others cry about it gp2x games need to be protected in order for the gp2x market to remain viable to small companies.

 

[White Demon]

I will have no qualms about buying the game as long as it is locked to the SD card and not the GP2X. As someone else wrote here, I can still backup the game to my PC and if the game corrupts, a quick reformat and copy the game back onto the card would (hopefully) get me going again.

Swapping SD cards to play is no problem too, after all you've gotta do that with GBA/DS/PSP (and every other console in existance) games.

If the game locks to the unit however then that's one situation where I won't wanna buy. I don't like the idea of if my GP2X becomes FUBARed, requiring a replacement, then I would have to buy my previously paid for games all over again, which is just plain wrong.

But I wanna quote something that FluffyPanda wrote previously. I think it provides a good argument about using vs not using DRM.

In other words, what difference does it make to the "little guys" if 3000 people pay for their product and nobody can pirate it, or if 4000 people pay and 10,000 more pirate it. I'd be happy with the second, but people obviously think "oh no! there's 10,000 lost sales, we're totally screwed."

Now before I go on, let's just forget linking it to Vektar and/or GP2X for a minute. The examples are for an imaginary game.

In the first example above, a game has DRM encoded in it, and 3000 people have bought a copy while no pirate copies exist. But the second example shows that in a game without DRM, 4000 people have bought it. People will of course say 'yeah but there's 10000 pirated copies there, that's 10000 lost sales'.

But think about it. In the second example, MORE people have actaully BOUGHT the game than in the first example, and none of those 10000 people who obtained a pirated version would have bought the game anyway, really, so any possible money loss there is irrelevant. But, because there is no DRM, a whole 1000 MORE people have actaully BOUGHT the game, earning the developer/publisher MORE money than in the example where the DRM exists.

Well done FluffyPanda, that was a very good example and something for others to think about.

EDIT: check out Parkydr's post on the second page of this thread for links to a software developer that has shown that providing no copy protection whatsoever has actually worked in their favour.