ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: DARKSPORE

[RandomGuy]

This is just an easy way to get around how much gamers suck at boycotts. No amount of piracy has ever hurt a company, ever,

World of Goo had a 90% piracy rate. Machinarium had a 90% piracy rate. Some indie games with zero DRM reach 98% piracy rates. Heck, there was one Indie game bundle that cost literally 1 cent and it still got heavily pirated. If you're seriously arguing that none of those hurt the companies, you're totally delusional.

 

Meanwhile, on our end, we don't give any money to EA. And not giving money to EA, no matter how you go about it, is a noble effort. And maybe they'll even notice that their fancy DRM is counter-productive because the more they do it, the more their games get pirated (which is the actual trend, for the record), and they'll stop with pointless DRM that doesn't work and annoys the shit out of their customers. Probably not, though.

Except this is a load of bullshit. Ubisoft has repeatedly said that DRM requiring an online login drastically decreases piracy rates. It's impossible to determine if sales increased due to better DRM (how would you even run an experiment like that? You'd need a parallel world where one game is released twice with a strong DRM and without), but it clearly combated piracy in a time where piracy rates for non-DRM games can get into the 90s.

 

An Indie game company did a study and found out that every time they changed their DRM scheme, their sales went up and piracy went down for a while until it was cracked, then sales fell again. Coincidentally their sales going up coincided with their downloads going down.

Fix 1 – Existing Exploits & Keygens made obsolete – Sales up 70%, Downloads down 33%

 

Fix 2 – Existing Keygens made obsolete – Sales down slightly, Downloads flat

 

Fix 3 – Existing Cracks made obsolete – Sales flat, Downloads flat

 

Fix 4 – Keygens made game-specific – Sales up 13%, Downloads down 16% (note: fix made after the release of Ricochet Infinity)

The death of the single-player market in China (read: 1/5 of the human species) puts to bed the claim that piracy doesn't hurt games and DRM is unnecessary. Chinese developers have more or less abandoned single-player games for freemium games in the face of rampant piracy. The rest of the world is slowly following suit.

 

EA's excuse for the always-online DRM? Piracy. Of course, EA games are actually pirated more the more intense their DRM becomes, because piracy is DRM-free and their DRM is a complete pain in the ass, so they're just giving away a little of their sales, so assuming people running an enormous corporation that masterfully manipulates the markets is not impossibly stupid, there has to be another reason.

Prove right now that more DRM means more piracy. Indie games, Ubisoft, and China all say the opposite.

 

You also seem to be ignoring the video game industry's incredibly razor thing profit margins. The average is like 3%. EA is the most money-grubbing of these companies, and their average profit margin for the last five years is 2.78%. This, at best, puts them considerably below average for 212 companies (7.5%) despite them using every trick in the book to squeeze money out of the consumers and despite most of that probably coming from multiplayer-only games and shovelware. The profit margins for online-only game companies and casual game companies, by the way, is considerably higher.

 

Then again you're probably one of those people who think EA's profit margins are 36%.

 

and they can just blame the pirates even for dick moves they pull with games just about nobody pirated since idiots like you are so eager to buy into that bullshit.

Nobody but you brought up Gears of War 2.

 

And that's not even getting into the fact that piracy and boycotting have exactly the same effect on the company and the market, and companies are incapable of telling the difference

They have a much different effect actually. Namely, one actually cuts into their profits seriously but can only be answered with more severe punishment, while the other will probably just be ignored overall, because a lot of people pirate but no one actually takes boycotts seriously.

 

you're an idiot for buying their excuses.

LOL. If you want to make this about personal attacks, should I bring up the Armenian genocide thread? Pretty much nothing but a non-stop flurry of stupid on your part.

 

If you DON'T want to make this about personal attacks, then good.

 

and always-online single player games (like EA does all the time). Those have nothing to do with piracy. That's just EA's planned obsolescence, masquerading as true DRM.

Except always online games are consistently harder to pirate.

 

Fun part? The least pirated games of all time are most indie games. They don't HAVE any DRM. Oh, and let's not forget Stardock's old games, which were pretty popular for a while. I have some pretty fond memories of Galciv. Once again, no DRM. Didn't get pirated much.

You're full of shit. Piracy rates for Indie games are insanely high. Reality has proven that pirates will NOT just agree not to pirate if a game has no DRM. In fact they take that as encouragement. The first Humble Bundle cost literally 1 cent with no DRM and its piracy rate was still 25%. Spore had one of the worst piracy rates for a professional game ever, and proportionally the Humble Bundle's was nearly the same despite it, again, costing literally 1 cent. 500,000 copies of Spore were pirated in the first two weeks of sales, while 2 million were sold legitimately in the first three weeks.

 

But this thread has been derailed too long. I've said all I need to.

Proceeds to type up more walls of text.

 

This is not a bad idea. There also isn't anything morally wrong with it because EA is not going to be hurt by it, and even if it did they CAN'T treat their employees any shittier than they already do and EA itself is not a person. I have always been for using piracy as a form of punishment.

You are the stereotype of the whiny entitled gamer that people point to as justification for ignoring legitimate complaints, like the ones Ross has. You make this board look bad by association. With you repeatedly advocating and admitting to theft, on top of repeatedly picking fights with people and being an obnoxious and toxic individual in general, I'm frankly amazed you haven't been banned by now.

 

I like how your great moral stance also results in you gaining hundreds of dollars worth of content without having to pay for any of it though. Clever.

Edited February 21, 2016 by Guest (see edit history)

[Heliocentrical]

@RandomGuy listen, I disagree with Seattleite as much as you do. But for the sake of keeping Ross's operation out of this let's move this discussion elsewhere. I mentioned that we could use the PM conversation system instead to explain our positions. We may have our disagreements but it's important that we remember conduct ourselves properly as well. I feel that it would be much more appropriate to make that call now as our discussion doesn't really have much to do with Ross's objective for the operation. Agreed?

Edited February 21, 2016 by Guest (see edit history)

[RandomGuy]

I already had most of that typed it up before the last ten or so posts. I'm not really interested in PMs either, because the point of arguments like this is not to convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced, but to make them look silly to observers. If barging and saying "yeah bros we should totally pirate all these games, that'll make people listen to us" didn't make him look silly enough.

 

I'll stop now if no one else says anything about it. I just thought that my post contained some important information that people needed to see. Specifically the parts about World of Goo, profit margins, the Humble Bundle, and China.

[Binky The Rabbit]

I didn't come here to add unnecessary tension to this topic, i just wanted to throw in my two cents..

It's cool I was just eager to steer the discussion away from that. We had one last month in another thread, and it just left people with bitter tastes in their mouths. One of the most volatile subjects I've ever encountered!

One letter a day, everyday a different person (finish the list, start from the beginning) , do it for 3 months. If everyone do it like this, i think there's bigger chances to cause something. 100 letters today and no letters tomorrow, it's just one day: "Hey pete, remember that day you got a bunch of letters?" or "Hey pete, does the letters are still coming?" . Which one sounds better?

Heh, I'm imagining an eventual situation similar to the Hogwarts letter from The Philosopher's Stone..

 

Though thinking logistically, would that mean everyone sends one letter per day? That would cause both situations with a constant stream of letters. Which would be highly effective, but financially risky. Although, I don't know how much it costs to send a letter in America, but being a British citizen, I don't think I could afford more than a few letters. :/

[Box Tactics]

EA's already sent shills, Ross's plan is working! EA is just more evil than he could comprehend.

[Seattleite]

Although, I don't know how much it costs to send a letter in America, but being a British citizen, I don't think I could afford more than a few letters. :/

 

Well, why not do the online part, then? Mass Emailing, that kind of thing.

 

I'd love to see a DDoS, but I'm a bit more bloodthirsty when it comes to EA than most of the people here.

 

EDIT:

Okay, a lot more bloodthirsty. They killed Maxis and Westwood, this is personal for me. They're the only company I can think of that not only kills games for no good reason, they kill entire franchises and studios for no good reason.

 

EDIT 2:

Hmmm... If we set up a massive enough mass mailing system, maybe a nice botnet, we could overwhelm their mail servers, and effectively launch a DDoS with nothing but strongly worded Emails... But I don't think that's practical.

 

EDIT 3:

No, I don't *actually* want a DDoS. I'd LOVE to see it, but it wouldn't be productive, at least towards the intended goal. Though it also wouldn't hurt, if Anonymous caught wind of the outrage and just decided to get some target practice in with the LOIC, that'd be okay.

Edited February 21, 2016 by Guest (see edit history)

[Box Tactics]

EDIT:

Okay, a lot more bloodthirsty. They killed Maxis and Westwood, this is personal for me. They're the only company I can think of that not only kills games for no good reason, they kill entire franchises and studios for no good reason.

And PopCap Games, the indie company that once raised the bar for "casual" games (frankly a bullshit category if I've ever heard one; where would gaming be without Tetris?) and now lowers it. I mean sure, it still exists, technically, but it's all EAed up now. Their games are F2P microtransaction fests, and they fired a lot of the old guard in the creative staff, and are gradually dropping support for games released before the EA takeover. That's fuckin' right, EA is buying up other companies and killing their games. Fortunately they weren't online-only, but good luck finding tech support. Or, y'know, buying them.

[Box Tactics]

RandomGuy, your support for DRM is incompatible with Ross's opposition to killing games. Tactics that majorly inconvenience legitimate customers in exchange for minimally inconveniencing pirates are not a legitimate response to piracy; they're a power grab.

[Seattleite]

RandomGuy, your support for DRM is incompatible with Ross's opposition to killing games. Tactics that majorly inconvenience legitimate customers in exchange for minimally inconveniencing pirates are not a legitimate response to piracy; they're a power grab.

 

Dude, he won't listen to you. He's the single most thick-headed guy on the site. I blocked him several years ago, because he's the kind of guy that has mastered the art of double-think, the art of "TL;DR" and the art of rectal conjuring. Which is to say it doesn't bother him when he contradicts himself, he won't actually read what you write, and he pulls things straight out of his ass that are conveniently impossible to find a source for. I don't give up trying to convince people easily, and trust me when I say you're wasting your time.

[Heliocentrical]

@Seattleite I said drop it, so just fucking drop it already.

[Binky The Rabbit]

Moving swiftly on...

 

Well, why not do the online part, then? Mass Emailing, that kind of thing.

True, but Ross is right - physical letters feel more serious. I'll see what I can do.

 

Then again, how about regional branches, in different countries? Or should it be solely at the Head Office?

[Seattleite]

@Seattleite I said drop it, so just fucking drop it already.

 

1. Do not presume to give me orders.

 

2. I am trying to convince him to NOT get involved with the troll, so we can stay on the topic we JUST got back onto, you dunce. I don't want another page of this crap.

 

@Binky

If you find regional offices, that might work. Aim for marketing directors. But as for mass emailing, crossing the line into email bombing might be the only option to make that stick.

 

That means save the letter as a compressed attachment, put as many as you can on each Email, and save as a draft so yoi can send it over and over again. Automate it to keep sending, have multiple people do it.

 

This ties up the malware scanners, and it can't add Emails that aren't scanned. Soon they will not be able to receive any Emails until the attack has stopped and the rest are sorted through. Spam filters generally don't block this, as it continues to check those flagged as spam. Not sure this is still practical today, but it was murderous in the early 2000s.

[Jeb_CC]

Seattleite won't be a part of the discussion anymore, so please... I would like us, from now on, to all be on a FRIENDLY on-topic route, please. Thank you~! No need to comment on his off-topic and unnecessary comments, that'll just fuel the mess train that this thread has already been railed onto. XP

[RandomGuy]

RandomGuy, your support for DRM is incompatible with Ross's opposition to killing games.

So because I support methods that have been proven effective in reducing piracy, I support killing games?

 

BTW I more or less support what Ross said on page 2. DRM and required online access are fine as long as the game isn't just deleted forever.

 

Tactics that majorly inconvenience legitimate customers in exchange for minimally inconveniencing pirates are not a legitimate response to piracy; they're a power grab.

Correction: tactics that minimally inconvenience customers and majorly inconvenience pirates. By and large pepole don't care about always being online.

 

I wouldn't support these measures if many consumers WEREN'T entitled babies. If DRM-free games didn't suffer 90% piracy. If an Indie developer couldn't charge 1 cent for a DRM-free game and still get it pirated at a 25-30% rate. If piracy didn't outright kill the single player industry in the world's biggest country, forcing devs there to concentrate on freemium. If MMOs and mobile games didn't make up the majority of gaming profits now. If big single player games weren't dying.

 

Unfortunately that is not the world we live in.

[Box Tactics]

Collective punishment is barbaric and more befitting ISIS than a corporation that intends to make a profit selling a product to consumers.

 

If people care about accessing content, pirates will find a way to break its DRM. The side that wins the DRM/piracy pseudowar is consistently piracy.

[Bman]

The idea of sending letters it's about this, most things you do on the internet, they mean nothing. An email it's just a click away of being nothing, you don't even need to put some pants to send it. That's the thing about letters, it shows that it mattered enough for someone to put some pants and walk to a post office, nowadays this is more than you need to buy a fridge or a sword or (and here's the funny part) the games that we're trying to save. So sending some letters is harder than buying games.

I mentioned flowers, but anything else that can get more attention like pizzas, food baskets, giant teddy bears etc etc... (already payed) things that you can't miss no matter how hard you tried. Things that are inoffensive but will rise the chances that the message will reach the right people... i don't think i need to say this, but IED does not qualifies as inoffensive

And remember kids, Ross started this, so any crazy things one of us pull off could go on his shoulders and the poor man has no chances against 20 bloodthirsty EA lawyers

So the game dungeon could be from a real dungeon and about good games like "don't drop the soap" or "find the shiv".

 

hope something that i said can be of any use.

 

And a personal one to Ross: The Punisher was a terrible choice, he's not about justice he's about punishment. The guy's not trying to help the living, just avenging the dead.I would choose someone with a little more hope in there, like spiderman or Captain boomerang. just a thought.

[RandomGuy]

Collective punishment is barbaric and more befitting ISIS than a corporation that intends to make a profit selling a product to consumers.

 

If people care about accessing content, pirates will find a way to break its DRM. The side that wins the DRM/piracy pseudowar is consistently piracy.

It's not collective punishment. It's a trivial security measure that very few people care about.

 

Splinter Cell 3 and Hawx 2 taking over a year to Crack says you're wrong. DRM-free games getting the shit pirated out of them says you're wrong. Ubisoft and an Indie game company both explicitly saying that their DRM drastically reduced piracy says you're wrong. China vs USA says you're wrong.

[Box Tactics]

Are you a TSA fan?

[RandomGuy]

Totally irrelevant red herring. Are you a fan of piracy?

[Box Tactics]

Not a red herring at all. You seem very attached to security theatre.