Taking advantage of piracy, how DRM lunacy caused low multiplayer player turnout

Depends what your goal is. If it is to create an accessible, widelly distributed game that anybody can get their hands on; to create a community of players, then yes, i would agree with you.

If you want to make money, then no, I do not. And that is the primary goal. That and having a good developper image, to sell more games.

You have to remember that "selling a game and making money" =/= "tons of players playing and enjoying a game a good game, for years to come"

What you want to do is try to get people to hear about your game, make it more accessible, but at the same time, you need them to buy it.

In my oppinion, the best thing you could do to launch a (multiplayer) game is to create a free demo version that is compatible with full retail games. So in a lan party, for example, if only 2 people have the game, but 8 want to play, then that is fine, but those 6 players with the demo will be limitted to Rook and Torch Bearer.

By doing this, the game will become more popular and better known. Players that had easy access to the game and that enjoyed the demo will buy full retail when they grow weary of Rook. Players who don't enjoy the game probably would not have bought it anyways.

By doing this, you have chances of reaching a larger audience and selling more copies. You get more money, and a better studio image.

no.

In my oppinion, the best thing you could do to launch a (multiplayer) game is to create a free demo version that is compatible with full retail games. So in a lan party, for example, if only 2 people have the game, but 8 want to play, then that is fine, but those 6 players with the demo will be limitted to Rook and Torch Bearer.

You don't even need the Demo in case of Demigod. You can just copy the Demigod installation to your friends and start it (and activate it with your email Address and key. Don't worry, they won't be able to do anything with your key, unless you haven't activated Demigod with this key on your Impulse Account).

@niz032: Your proposals will not have any effect on the sales of Demigod. The point is to convince the customer, that the game is worth its key with which you can play online with others. If you do not have any motivation to play online, you can just play it on LAN with one copy. And I don't think that many.. or even any customers will not buy Demigod, because they can only use the key for one account.

quote buttons isn't working for me for some reason....

make the demo work with full game and you will see way more people online and buying.

WilliamStanley: the Demo does work with the full game, you can even play online with it. Your you could at least, at the time. I don't know if it's still possible.

"@niz032: Your proposals will not have any effect on the sales of Demigod."

But the point is to build the community up so that users have a better experience, i.e. there is nothing gained for stardock and GPG by artificially limiting the communities size, we're talking about why only "23% of purchasers" played online, well then, if you want to see more people online if thats one of your goals to build an online community, then they should be going in the opposite direction. Demigod has been out for a while now and keeping the numbers of players playing online artifically low by restricting 'pirate' copies is not the right direction if you want more people online IMHO.

I'm talking about customer service relations here - i.e. people can find more games and people they ping well too if you let unofficial users of the game play with everyone else. I really think that the should move in the opposite direction. Stardock has been outspoken about not having any copyprotection on Sins of a Solar empire, IMHO they should move in the same direction with demigod in regards to allowing unofficial copies to update create accounts and play online, thus enhancing legimate customers experience (i.e. faster games, more people, etc, etc).

Quoting Spooky__,

reply 5

WilliamStanley: the Demo does work with the full game, you can even play online with it. Your you could at least, at the time. I don't know if it's still possible.

I wouldn't know. The only thing they on their website is a link to it.

I think the Demigod website is a major communication failure. If they intended Single Player and Lan to be free, then they should say: "Try out the single player camplaign free of charge, and play with your friends over Lan, download the Demo Now!"

But the point is to build the community up so that users have a better experience, i.e. there is nothing gained for stardock and GPG by artificially limiting the communities size, we're talking about why only "23% of purchasers" played online, well then, if you want to see more people online if thats one of your goals to build an online community, then they should be going in the opposite direction. Demigod has been out for a while now and keeping the numbers of players playing online artifically low by restricting 'pirate' copies is not the right direction if you want more people online IMHO.

I'm talking about customer service relations here - i.e. people can find more games and people they ping well too if you let unofficial users of the game play with everyone else. I really think that the should move in the opposite direction. Stardock has been outspoken about not having any copyprotection on Sins of a Solar empire, IMHO they should move in the same direction with demigod in regards to allowing unofficial copies to update create accounts and play online, thus enhancing legimate customers experience (i.e. faster games, more people, etc, etc).

But where do you want to draw the line? Having to use a valid key for online multiplayer is the best copy protection solution, for all games. It's unintrusive and makes sense for the customer. And it still gives the customer the opportunity to try out the game on LAN, without having a valid key (depending on the game of course).

I think the Demigod website is a major communication failure. If they intended Single Player and Lan to be free, then they should say: "Try out the single player camplaign free of charge, and play with your friends over Lan, download the Demo Now!"

I think no game has ever done that. Also Demigod has no single player campaign. And if it should say anything it's "Try it online with friends"

.

Quoting Spooky__,

reply 8

But where do you want to draw the line? Having to use a valid key for online multiplayer is the best copy protection solution,

My point is that it ISN'T a copyprotection solution it is an ILLUSION that it "protects" the game. It's just something to make game companies feel like they are "doing something". I bet you if demigod had no online copyprotection the sales would only be marginally different (less then 1%) then they are right now. Game companies think way too much of themselves here is what I'm saying, I'm saying that this is a delusion of their own grandeur that it "protects" the game and "enhances sales".

Demigod is not that important of a game when you have thousands of other games competing for peoples time. Stardock and GPG act like "their game is so important to gamers that they will buy to play online" the answer to this is NO! your game is not that important there are hundreds of other games I could be playing. Why play demigod where the games take so long to get started and then you have players drop because of a lack of players? There are enormous problems with demigod and there is good reason people pirate. No unranked games, people kicking each other for low %, etc, lack of ability to create new throw away accounts to play pub games with newbs, etc. I could go play something else.

So the idea that their restrictions on acounts is protecting their game is a complete lie and a delusion of game developers and such related companies.

The reality should be to make the most of the people that enjoy your game so that your legitimate customers have better online experience (more players, faster games, more players closer to each other, better ping, etc). It's recognizing the reality and trying something completely different and counter-intuitive. i.e. take risks and accept the players who like to play your game but didn't pay for it where the rest of the industry doesn't.

Quite frankly they should be thankful anyone plays their game at all and that they have any customers. There's plenty of game developers that have released garbage games and went under for completely legitimate reasons (i.e. the game sucked) just because a business makes product x does not entitle them to make money. The whole point is to serve your customers and it is my opinion that this "false indigination" of game companies is what is in fact the cause of their problems when in earlier times gme developers as a whole weren't such hard nosed stuffy people and allowed pirates and legit people to play (i.e. doom, duke3d, etc, etc). That's my point, many people remember developers getting greedy to "maximize revenue" and implement all sorts of stupid rules they think helps "protect" their game but it doesn't and it never has. The success of Doom, duke, and descent was predicated on SHAREWARE (i.e. piracy). Many of cool devleopers were (and still are) ecstatic to have their game shared, played and enjoyed by people. IMHO I think dev's need to go back to their roots and just accept gamers who don't pay and that they should be honored and take pride in the fact that people enjoy and play their product, instead of playing a mean corporate (expletive).

Quoting niz032,

reply 9

IMHO I think dev's need to go back to their roots and just accept gamers who don't pay and that they should be honored and take pride in the fact that people enjoy and play their product, instead of playing a mean corporate (expletive).

I'm sure that "pride" will mean a lot to them as they're evicted from thier homes because they can't afford their rent/mortgage anymore. I mean, you just said they should "just accept gamers who don't pay," yes, because that is a wonderful business model. The game developers made a product. If you want the product you should pay for it. A lot of people pirate games, especially for single-player. Honestly, I suspect that even more people would pirate if you could play multi-player without having bought the game. At that point buying the game doesn't get you anything more than simply pirating it, which ensures that some people who currently buy it to play MP wouldn't buy it.

And, of course, it would be nigh impossible to meaningfully ban trolls/stats abusers, since they could always retorrent it. This idea is one of the worst ones I have ever heard.

And if you're going to say that all of these ideas the devs have that any form of copy protection can be useful is wrong, then you need to back that up. Source your claim please.

And as a final sidenote, Stardock and GPG's DRM is by far the nicest DRM I have found on any game. Criticizing them about DRM is absurd.

My response to the OP is this:

Have you ever walked into a game store, or a store that sells games? I dont know if you have, probably not (I assume somebody bought you this game). If you ever decide to visit one, look at the difference in quantity of the console games compared to PC games. It is ridiculous. Computers are by far the most popular product, and PC gaming is the largest market, yet the stores have stopped selling PC games almost entirely. In my area PC games have two 4x4 shelves worth, and the entire rest of the store is dedicated to console gaming.

Why? It is very simple. Nobody buys PC games now.

Nobody buys PC games because they can pirate them for free. Your suggestion of making it possible to play a pirated version of a game would not improve sales (it could theoretically, in successive releases of games. But it would definitely not improve their profit with this game specifically, and it hasnt really been explored to see how effective this would be), at best it would improve the atmosphere in game. You are making it seem like if people can get the games for free, more people would be willing to pay. That is not the case my friend. It COULD be possible, but it is incredibly unlikely that allowing a pirated version would actually create such a userbase that it would positively affect future sales.

Forcing a CD-key authorization to play is the farthest cry from being greedy for PC games. Charging a monthly fee is (arguably) greedy, but a one time charge to pay for the product that they rightfully created and put effort in to is NOT greedy. The world doesnt work in idealistic ways. People are cheap and the purchasers of the product (IE. YOU) are greedy, expecting to get anything they like for free, and even complaining like in this thread when it doesnt happen.

Quoting Legolan,

reply 10

Quoting niz032,
reply 9

IMHO I think dev's need to go back to their roots and just accept gamers who don't pay and that they should be honored and take pride in the fact that people enjoy and play their product, instead of playing a mean corporate (expletive).

I'm sure that "pride" will mean a lot to them as they're evicted from thier homes because they can't afford their rent/mortgage anymore.

Your "moral indignation" is absurd, the point of the wole post is to increase the quality of the online experience for paying customers, your post is entirely irrelevant to the discussion of this thread.

You're talking about multi-million dollar companies here, not a mom and pop shop starving on the street. Supcom sold over a million units easily recouping its dev costs, Demigod is a very content light game and was made on the cheap, anyone with any dev experience can see that Demigod was them milking gamers. And the makers of supcom are rich by most peoples standards. they made 50 million bucks off less then 10 million investment, these guys have money and they have the NERVE to complain about "piracy". It's bullshit and marketing, stop being so entranced and run the numbers yourself.

Quoting niz032,

reply 12

You're talking about multi-million dollar companies here, not a mom and pop shop starving on the street.

You're absolutely correct. Mom and Pop companies could never pull of an achivement like developing a game like Demigod.

Quoting niz032,

reply 12

Supcom sold over a million units easily recouping its dev costs, Demigod is a very content light game and was made on the cheap, anyone with any dev experience can see that Demigod was them milking gamers. And the makers of supcom are rich by most peoples standards. they made 50 million bucks off less then 10 million investment, these guys have money and they have the NERVE to complain about "piracy". It's bullshit and marketing, stop being so entranced and run the numbers yourself.

GPG has over 100 employees today and have released 5 independant titles since the company was started in 1998 (ref wikipedia). When you come with statements such as this, you piss people off, for the simple fact that you're talking down at other peoples work and it seems you don't have any idea what your talking about. A game isn't made by a small group of hobbyists gone pro. I aggree that Demigod probably havn't been the top priority project at GPG, but still I expect that at least 50-60 years of total work has been invested in the title (including management and so on). To say that this is "made on the cheap" I consider very patronizing and disrespectfull for the people who's made this possible. I'm a software developer and know quite a few game and ex-game developers, and all of them are top notch developers who sink a lot of their pride and soul into the games they've been making.

You're talking about this immense time and work effort as if it's something which as if it's a corporate entity without heart and soul who stomps allong spitting out computer games. This is (in my opinion) not how most game developers work. Games are made with hart and soul by individuals doing amazing artworks of code.

Okay. Enough of the rant, and back to topic.

Demigod doesn't, as far as I know, have a DRM system. It does however have a lisence check for validating the lisences. This was a necessity since the number of pirated versions overloaded Stardocks Demigod servers just after release causing server downtime.

Before allowing the pirates to play online, we would need to consider the following aspects:

1: How could the pirates increase the gaming experience for existing customers

2: How should the pirates be tempted to buy the game

3: How would these modifications affect existing development plans

4: Secondary advantages/disadvantages

My suggestions:

"1: How could the pirates increase the gaming experience for existing customers"

- Shorter waiting queues for all players

- Lower ping on average (larger playerbase increases the chances for getting matched with someone on the same continent).

- Increasing the playerbase for noobs and bad players As the games grows older, there will be fewer new players. This will make it more difficult for new players to get to learn the ropes. This is what's going to kill the game. Fewer new customers will force GPG to use less resources on patching and supporting the game, since they won't earn anymore money on it. GPG/SD will have to use money to maintain the existing playerbase, so the amount of resources used on the next patch depends on the number of new players. As long as GPG/SD doesn't come up with a new business model for earning more money on the existing playerbase, such as addons, or downloadable content.

"2: How should the pirates be tempted to buy the game"

- No Favor items for non paying customers

- No stat logging for non paying customers. But this would be really bad for existing players, since we would have a brokan matchmaking system.

- The warm and fuzzy feeling inside knowing you helped put food on the table for the starving families of the GPG staff (or the warm and fuzzy feeling inside knowing you helped GPG resist getting eaten by EA).

- Penalty to stats

- Make them minor deities instead of full blown demigods. Someone who would fill a spot between demigods and creeps. So a typical game would have one or two demigods less, but with twice the number of lesser gods. Huge change, but maybe it could've been fun

"3: How would these modifications affect existing development plans"

- Extra cost for expanding server capacity. The exact cost would depend on the solution. Might be a big development cost if the server source code would have to be restructured.

- All changes would cause disturbances in the development plan, so at least a couple of patches would be put on hold.

"4: Secondary advantages/disadvantages"

- Increased chance of "converting" pirates to customers.

quoting post

In Ye old days (Diablo, etc) game developers USED TO allow more then one person to play off the same account with multiple copies in multiplayer FOR FREE. The original Warcraft, Warcraft 2 (via kali in the early internet days), doom, Descent, descent2, etc... This is why Doom, Duke 3D, descent, Warcraft, etc, got so popular.

Um no. These games were popular because they were the pinnacle of their popular genres. You can point to equally popular games today that DO NOT allow more than one person to play off the same account without multiple copies. Similarly there are 1000s of games that do allow more than one person to play that were complete failures.

There are any number of reasons DG multiplayer is not doing well. The fact that pirates cannot play multiplayer is not one of them. Not if you want to keep making games. How many DG Hamachi games are going on these days anyways?

Allowing reproduction of the multiplayer component of a game to ensure more people can play it is a nice feature, but hardly a requirement. If the Demo didn't convince people, I fail to see how this would do anything other than enable players to play the game over LAN without having to purchase a copy for all involved.

As for games from yester-year finding success through the shareware business model, this business model was phased out when it took more than five people to code an entire, AAA game. Tell me, what was the offical budget for Doom and what was the offical budget for Demigod? Any wonder that they are trying to protect their investments a little more zealously now-a-days?

In Frogboy's own words, SD makes games for profits and not to be declared cool. Even SD, with their softer stance on DRM, won't adopt this idea. It is a business and it doesn't make sense to remove the carrots and sticks that may drive people to buy a copy of the game. I mean - getting regular, frequent and meaningful updates if you own a legitimate copy of the game is one of the best incetives out there and taking it away does not make sense. Requiring a legitimate CD-key to play the multiplayer is another such incentive, although a smaller one IMO.

The problem with such ideas is that most people are not morally strong enough to resist this kind of temptation. Maybe it is because of the fact that PC piracy is such a new and easy to do thing that it hasn't entered the consciousness of the masses. Maybe it just shows the weakness of us humans. But it is a fact that many people can convince themselves that they have better thing to do with the $40 than to spend it on buying a game which they can get anyway. After all, it is going to those multi-million companies anyway.

Sounds like the OP needs to start a non-profit games publisher to fund his dream model of gaming development.

How would you fund these games? Freeware is created for marketing purposes or through private funds/personal development time due to a love of gaming. Neither source will pay the costs of a big-budget title.

"In Frogboy's own words, SD makes games for profits and not to be declared cool."

Frogboy also thinks devleopers who complain about piracy are whiners, he's been starting to come around IMHO. He realizes that treating your customers like numbers and abusable serfs is not sound business strategy. Frogboy admitted to the bad design decisions and lack of testing demigod here.

Quote brad Wardell

We’ve learned that you can’t treat networking as just another thing to plug in like you would a sound library or even a 3D engine. It’s a whole different animal. With Elemental (our next game), it’s single-player focused but its MP will be server based (and I mean we literally host the game). After Demigod, I don’t ever want to hear the words “socket” or “port” again.

http://frogboy.impulsedriven.net/article/352561/Demigod_So_what_the_hell_happened

I'm glad brad came clean that they were game development newbies who never dealt seriously with real networking before IMHO. All because of a lack of QA and proper testing.

Quoting Melchiz,

reply 17

Sounds like the OP needs to start a non-profit games publisher to fund his dream model of gaming development.

How would you fund these games? Freeware is created for marketing purposes or through private funds/personal development time due to a love of gaming. Neither source will pay the costs of a big-budget title.

There are already game developers who find other ways to make their money http://ace.subagames.com/ and many other asian and non asain based games, these games cost a lot of money to develop. In my opinion the western model of how games should be made is an artifact of habit, ignorance and lack of imagination.

Niz, so is your problem with demigod the fact that they are greedy or the fact that they dont have the imagination to copy how some other companies charge people to play?

Either way, your argument is ridiculous at best. The company is being MORE than fair offering you a game you spend countless hours on for 40 dollars.

Do you know how much it costs to go to a bar for even 3-4 hours? I sometimes come home from the bar with a tab that could buy 3 full price PC games. Stop whining about how they arent giving you everything for free. This is not greed, this is called a business. Wake up.

Quoting YoeUser,

reply 13

Quoting niz032,
reply 12

You're talking about multi-million dollar companies here, not a mom and pop shop starving on the street.

You're absolutely correct. Mom and Pop companies could never pull of an achivement like developing a game like Demigod.

Quoting niz032,
reply 12

Supcom sold over a million units easily recouping its dev costs, Demigod is a very content light game and was made on the cheap, anyone with any dev experience can see that Demigod was them milking gamers. And the makers of supcom are rich by most peoples standards. they made 50 million bucks off less then 10 million investment, these guys have money and they have the NERVE to complain about "piracy". It's bullshit and marketing, stop being so entranced and run the numbers yourself.

GPG has over 100 employees today and have released 5 independant titles since the company was started in 1998 (ref wikipedia). When you come with statements such as this, you piss people off, for the simple fact that you're talking down at other peoples work and it seems you don't have any idea what your talking about. A game isn't made by a small group of hobbyists gone pro. I aggree that Demigod probably havn't been the top priority project at GPG, but still I expect that at least 50-60 years of total work has been invested in the title (including management and so on). To say that this is "made on the cheap" I consider very patronizing and disrespectfull for the people who's made this possible. I'm a software developer and know quite a few game and ex-game developers, and all of them are top notch developers who sink a lot of their pride and soul into the games they've been making.

You're talking about this immense time and work effort as if it's something which as if it's a corporate entity without heart and soul who stomps allong spitting out computer games. This is (in my opinion) not how most game developers work. Games are made with hart and soul by individuals doing amazing artworks of code.

Okay. Enough of the rant, and back to topic.

Demigod doesn't, as far as I know, have a DRM system. It does however have a lisence check for validating the lisences. This was a necessity since the number of pirated versions overloaded Stardocks Demigod servers just after release causing server downtime.

You know, I had completely forgotten about that. Yet another point against the OP: pirates who use the online service cost the company money (albeit not a lot). If you suddenly allow as many people to use your servers to play unlimited games at absolutely no cost, you will go bankrupt. When Demigod was initially released there were far far more pirates online to such a degree that it brought down the servers (and, iirc, helped cause a lot of the initial favor problems etc). So niz's view of pirates not harming the company is completely absurd. Not only are they taking the product for nothing, but they also are using the companies services and decreasing the value of the product for the people who actually bought it.

Again, if you think it's such a great idea, then try it. There is absolutely no way that large-scale games of Demigod's quality (which took, iirc, millions to develop) could be sustained without charging a fee for the product. Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else has a right to the product GPG and Stardock developed. They aren't "obligated" to hand it over to you or anyone else because you want it, much less pay their money for servers so you can play it online.

Your idea is miles worse than even the normal "piracy where I wouldn't have bought it otherwise is fine" arguments.

Quoting Davetheman,

reply 20

Either way, your argument is ridiculous at best.

My argument that growing the player community to enhance the experience of paying customers in multiplayer is ridiculous? Right, try again dave. Lets try to stay on topic here. The main argument is that allowing unofficial versions to play online will benefit everyone since most people buy the game for single player (according to stardockian theory) therefore necessitating having legimate copy of demigod to play online is irrational, if you want to enhance the community of people that play online and paid for your game by having more people around to play with. It's sound customer service, please try again.

Deal with the logic of the argument, stay on topic please.

If you suddenly allow as many people to use your servers to play unlimited games at absolutely no cost, you will go bankrupt. When Demigod was initially released there were far far more pirates online to such a degree that it brought down the servers (and, iirc, helped cause a lot of the initial favor problems etc). So niz's view of pirates not harming the company is completely absurd. Not only are they taking the product for nothing, but they also are using the companies services and decreasing the value of the product for the people who actually bought it.

This is a lie of epic proportions, the whole point of me quoting the stardock PDF was to show that if online players are a minority of users, then allowing unofficial copies to play online is not costing them period, since you're growing the online community so that there are people to play with thereby enhancing customer service. There are not enough people online and the rationale employed against my argument is weak.

My argument that growing the player community to enhance the experience of paying customers in multiplayer is ridiculous? Right, try again dave. Lets try to stay on topic here. The main argument is that allowing unofficial versions to play online will benefit everyone since most people buy the game for single player (according to stardockian theory) therefore necessitating having legimate copy of demigod to play online is irrational, if you want to enhance the community of people that play online and paid for your game by having more people around to play with. It's sound customer service, please try again.

Deal with the logic of the argument, stay on topic please."

Of course a bigger community enhances the game. Nobody has ever argued against that. I said your reasoning for creating the ability to pirate the game is ridiculous.

I will focus on this specifically:

The main argument is that allowing unofficial versions to play online will benefit everyone since most people buy the game for single player (according to stardockian theory) therefore necessitating having legimate copy of demigod to play online is irrational,

Your premise is wrong. Allowing pirated versions online does not benefit everyone. It benefits pirates directly, and paying customers indirectly. It does not follow that this will benefit the company. In fact, it hurts the company. The company is the only thing that matters in this discussion. players matter to the limited extent of keeping them happy enough to buy future versions, but not to the extent that they need to be completely pleased with the product.

You are talking about rationality in a topic that is not of concern to the developers. There is no rational discussion to be made about enhancing the game for the customers if it is at a potentially large cost to the company. There are better ways to achieve this at little cost that can be just as if not more effective.

Will finish this later.. gotta go.

PS: Dont ever use necessitating like that again. Trying to use big words tends to have the effect of making you look silly, especially when a simple word makes your point much more accurately.

@Davetheman

"Of course a bigger community enhances the game. Nobody has ever argued against that. I said your reasoning for creating the ability to pirate the game is ridiculous."

The game is ALREADY PIRATED and ALREADY PLAYED multiplayer over programs that enable pirates to play it, don't believe it ask brad himself. I'm telling you that your argument is irrational - i.e. the pirates are already playing the game for free over other game services. And according to stardocks stats, multiplayer users are a small minority of demigod purchasers, so 80%+ of their customers buy it for singleplayer only, so the reasoning for not allowing unofficial versions to grow the community of players is mindboggling weak from a rational, evidence based perspective. Everyone would have more people to play with IMHO, and that is good customer service to those who paid but have to wait too long to get a game going.

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Taking advantage of piracy, how DRM lunacy caused low multiplayer player turnout