158 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

So when a car company sends you a request telling you they need your car brought in because there's a problem and its being recalled, do you angrily responsed that you have the right to drive whatever vehicle you want in whatever condition you want it?

 

I'm just wondering where this whole personal freedom trumps all stuff ends with your world view.

I wouldn't be angry at a request, no.

 

But if they remotely disabled my car and wouldn't let me drive it again until I got the update installed, yes, I'd be livid.

 

Making services available isn't bad.  Forcing people to partake of them is.

[Sylvius the Mad]

There's a crucial and gigantic, enormous difference.

 

Origin--and Uplay--allow you to play a non-updated version of a game. You can refuse the update. Steam does not. Steam locks you out of playing a game until you've updated it.

 

I bought Borderlands 2 recently, was playing it, got online in Steam today, to discover an update was necessary. I tried to go back offline and play, but no dice. Update must be installed.

 

You're right about rollbacks, but at least Origin (and Uplay) LET you prevent the update (which means you could prevent it, go online to find out if the patch changes things you don't want changed, and if so keep preventing the update permanently).

 

Edit: Glad to see a few people who aren't Steam fanatics. Seems like they're the only ones around sometimes.

 

Double Edit: Oh, and another thing. I used to not have home internet access at all, and Steam would lock you out of offline mode every two weeks. I don't know if they still do, because I have access now, but Origin has never had that problem.
 

Thanks.  I did not know about that.

 

I am now a bigger fan of Origin than I am of Steam.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Honestly, activation is THE most unobtrusive form of DRM out there. It just takes getting online once and you're fine.

 

And why are you blaming EA and Ubi? The industry has used online activation for at least a decade.

"The industry" isn't a thing.  Each publisher makes the decision whether to require activation every time a game is released.

 

We shouldn't give anyone a pass just because that's how it is always done.  They have a choice.

[Realmzmaster]

I believe that competition is good. No company should have a monopoly on any business. The only reason why you have some natural monopolies like electric companies is out of necessity. Even there cities, states are requiring the in place monopoly to play nice with other suppliers of the natural resource. Those other suppliers get to use the in-place infrastruture to supply the natural resource for a fee.

 

EA with Origin is doing nothing that Valve has not done with Steam over the years. I would love to see all software released without DRM and piracy not to exist. I also know better than to leave my front door wide open and expect everything to see be there when I get back. Most crimes I have witnessed are crimes of opportunity. I prefer not to give them the opportunity.

 

Pirates crack the protection and others take the opportunity provided. The chances of getting caught are slim and none with slim walking out the door. IMHO

[Schreckstoff]

I believe that competition is good. No company should have a monopoly on any business. The only reason why you have some natural monopolies like electric companies is out of necessity. Even there cities, states are requiring the in place monopoly to play nice with other suppliers of the natural resource. Those other suppliers get to use the in-place infrastruture to supply the natural resource for a fee.

 

EA with Origin is doing nothing that Valve has not done with Steam over the years. I would love to see all software released without DRM and piracy not to exist. I also know better than to leave my front door wide open and expect everything to see be there when I get back. Most crimes I have witnessed are crimes of opportunity. I prefer not to give them the opportunity.

 

Pirates crack the protection and others take the opportunity provided. The chances of getting caught are slim and none with slim walking out the door. IMHO

There is a monopoly on electricity where you live wth?

[Realmzmaster]

There is a monopoly on electricity where you live wth?

 

Commonweath Edison in Illinois and the city of Chicago had a monpoly on electric power generation until recently. The city has opted for a different supplier but that supplier still has to use the infrastructure setup by ComEd. So therefore has to pay ComEd to deliver the electricity.

[Schreckstoff]

Commonweath Edison in Illinois and the city of Chicago had a monpoly on electric power generation until recently. The city has opted for a different supplier but that supplier still has to use the infrastructure setup by ComEd. So therefore has to pay ComEd to deliver the electricity.

There's like 6 providers each household can choose from in Vienna, Austria locally. Th EU wants to open them nationally as well so there'll likely be even more.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I'm probably just being a fanboy there, but if we're casting blame we should cast it on all who are guilty.

Casting blame on one does not absolve the others.

 

But I see your point.

[Realmzmaster]

There's like 6 providers each household can choose from in Vienna, Austria locally. Th EU wants to open them nationally as well so there'll likely be even more.

 

Does each provider lay their own electric lines or do they use existing infrastructure?

[Schreckstoff]

Does each provider lay their own electric lines or do they use existing infrastructure?

Existing infrastructure.

[Fast Jimmy]

Existing infrastructure.

Is the existing infrastructure government owned, or privately?

[Schreckstoff]

Is the existing infrastructure government owned, or privately?

That's a good question it's probably government controlled but I couldn't tell you about the inner workings of the system. Whether private providers are the ones to jointly maintenance it or whether they have to pay for the usage, I don't know. What I do know is that changing provider is seamless. The only thing that changes is where the power cones from.

[In Exile]

Is the existing infrastructure government owned, or privately?

A lot of countries have infrastructure that was developed with public funds and then is either leased to private companies (through some form of bidding contract) or otherwise has been build with public funds and then sold off. 

[Fast Jimmy]

A lot of countries have infrastructure that was developed with public funds and then is either leased to private companies (through some form of bidding contract) or otherwise has been build with public funds and then sold off.

Yeah, that's why I asked. If the government funded the infrastructure, it makes sense that there would be more competition in such a model, as there isn't a single company that owns the infrastructure AND is providing the services, making anyone else coming in have to pay a fee that would make it difficult to price equally while offering the same tier level of service.

I've long hoped that the U.S. would move to a system where data infrastructure, including physical lines and towers, were owned and financed by the government and where ISP companies would compete with service alone. As is, we can have one network with next to no bandwidth right next to another with full bandwidth and, instead of a shared network, one company has to build another tower, which is becoming increasingly more difficult and expensive, particularly in metropolitan areas.

[The Baconer]

If that's the case, where did all the music industry revenue go?

 

Oh man, that's one of the worst examples you could have gone with.

[AlanC9]

Oh man, that's one of the worst examples you could have gone with.

Sometime I lob a softball, yep. It helps to clear all of the standard moves out of an argument. But I haven't paid for music in years, and it seems unlikely that I ever will again.

[Realmzmaster]

That's a good question it's probably government controlled but I couldn't tell you about the inner workings of the system. Whether private providers are the ones to jointly maintenance it or whether they have to pay for the usage, I don't know. What I do know is that changing provider is seamless. The only thing that changes is where the power cones from.

 

Commonwealth Edison has held its monopoly for 107 years. It started back at the turn of 1900. Chicago at one time had 30 competitors all supplying electricity of some sort. ComEd bought all the competition and installed all the infrastructure for Chicago and most of Illinois. It became a state regulated monopoly, but the infrastructure was privately owned.

[TurretSyndrome]

If that is the case then why is CDPR complaining about the piracy of Witcher 2. Here is a company with no DRM on their product but piracy and lost sales are still a big problem. Therefore far and few in between is not the case. Otherwise Witcher 2 sales should have been much more than they were. So it does actually matter.

 

CDPR frustrated with piracy(once!) has nothing to do with anything I said, let alone proving my point wrong. People buy them if they really want to, pirate if they don't, end of story. The hypothetical scenario you keep bringing up where "people would've bought them if they didn't have the ability to pirate" is very rare. 

[Realmzmaster]

I find Origin to be a better system for my purposes than Steam. Why can't I get my Steam games on Origin? I have more games on Origin than Steam. Could it be because Valve and EA compete against each other and both want to keep a bigger share of the pie?

[Realmzmaster]

CDPR frustrated with piracy(once!) has nothing to do with anything I said, let alone proving my point wrong. People buy them if they really want to, pirate if they don't, end of story. The hypothetical scenario you keep bringing up where "people would've bought them if they didn't have the ability to pirate" is very rare. 

 

You say rare, but if enough of those rare people buy instead it adds to the bottom line of the company. I  hate to tell you that CDPR has been frustrated with piracy more than once and I can guarantee more in the future as pirating of their games continues just like every other company in the industry.

 

So you are basically saying that a company does not have the right to protect its intellectual property?

[Sylvius the Mad]

Sometime I lob a softball, yep. It helps to clear all of the standard moves out of an argument. But I haven't paid for music in years, and it seems unlikely that I ever will again.

I paid for music within the last week.  Physical media and everything.

[TurretSyndrome]

 

So you are basically saying that a company does not have the right to protect its intellectual property?

 

Sigh... no. I'm saying that looking at the number of pirated copies and calling them lost sales is just ludicrous. They can never prove it, and it is very rarely the case. By simply glancing at the seeder and leecher count on a torrent site, it's very easy to reach that conclusion. But all it is, is flawed thinking and not at all true. I have seen game piracy myself at its best, having lived in India which is a gaming discouraging economically backward country, for 25 years.

 

Here in India, a lot of people, I mean a lot of them will never ever buy your game(I can say it's easily over 90%). They are the ones that mostly represent the millions of people you see online leeching that cracked version of the game, and they will never buy the games simply because they cannot afford such a luxury. If they can afford it, they are very firm in their beliefs that it is a waste of money, that money is better spent on more physical things. That's how the mentality is and it will not change despite what you or I think is right or legal. So getting all riled up because your game was downloaded 4 million times illegally, while only selling 1/4th of that  is to me, a waste of energy. It's the darker side of the industry developers have to bear with.  

 

As for protecting their property, I am not against it. But you can't really do that against piracy now, can you? Software or hardware, eventually it will end up in people's hands without the developer not earning a single cent. You may try and stop it, but you'll only end up spending more and more money trying to do that to no avail. A lot of developers learned that the hard way.

 

Look, all I'm saying is, just concentrate on releasing your game on a platform, then look at your sales. Piracy is going to happen no matter what, so see if you were able to make a profit. Either you were able to get enough sales of your game to warrant further support for releasing any more on that platform, or you weren't. Don't chase that phantom profit figure by taking into account the number of people who pirated your game. Honestly, I wish developers worried more about used game sales than piracy. People are actually spending money over there. They should be spending more time trying to steer people who do spend money on games towards buying original copies, if you ask me.

[Realmzmaster]

Developers do not worry as much about used games (They are still concerned.)  because someone had to buy a retail copy to even get a used game in the first place. So at least those sales are reflected in their bottom line. Also the court in the US and other countries have sided with gamers who wish to resale their physical copies of the game and in some cases the digital copies.

 

The article here: http://www.pcgamer.c...from-thousands/.

 

States that at the time CDPR was using a method developed by an external firm to track Witcher 2 piracy in Germany and other places. CDPR sent out legal notices to those alleged pirates. According to the article quite a few owned up to the theft and paid up. 

 

So the method being used may be more involved than just looking at torrent sites and downloads.

 

The developer can released the game and track its sales on the different platforms, but in the end if it does not make enough sales it is game over. The company goes out of business, leaves the industry, abandons the platform with the most piracy or enters are area of gaming where piracy is not as easy. 

 

It is a sad commentary that on society when over 4 million illegal users are enjoying your game and the people who worked hard to make it so will not be compensated as they should be.