Remote validation for games.

[Madus_Maximus 0]

"I find your lack of faith disturbing"

Sorry I had to say that. I remember when OFP came out, then when it came out in America nobody even knew what it was and I had to tell a few people (I'm in England by the way, ah the wonders of the internet) and I got them really excited about it, then it hit the shelves and they lapped it up. Sadly only the poeple who knew about it got it and it wasn't one of those "oo this look great, never heard of it before, I'll buy it" kind of things. I think a decent advertising campaign wouldn't go a-miss, especially in America, which is the biggest market. OFP got quite a lot of coverage, at least here in the UK. It didn't have any TV ads or anything but there were full 2 page spreads in mags and trailers on their cover discs and the like. I hope they do the same (only more because of the success of OFP 1) for OFP2 but in each country they sell it in.

[Mr_Tea 0]

Anybody who is not willing to pay 50-60 euros for a game, can get the game for the half of that money, a few month later.

After 6 to 9 month you can by these titles for 20 euros.

Btw, I got Aquanox 2 for free. Gamestar put it on the DVD of the 12/04 issue. They do such things every month.

[sanctuary 19]

My recommendations for fighting piracy would be:

- Make good, enjoyable games. Most games suck, people dont buy them because they dont want to, not because they dont necessarily have to.

- Add value to the product. Things like physical manuals, maps, posters, etc. in the game box won't be coming in a pirated version.

- Avoid leaking the game before retail release, tag press copies and use trustable CD factories.

- Release the game at the same time in the whole world. If you'll do an US release two months before european release, a very big part of your european customers will be bored with the game already before they'll even be able to buy it.

- Avoid harming the legal buyers. Copy protections like starforce or an USB based protection only causes trouble for the people who gave you money, the people copying the game won't have that burden.

I can't agree more than i agree actually with what Kegetys wrote there.

[Baphomet 0]

Total noob question here, but doesn't 128 bit encryption play havoc on the orgainization of data on your PC?

Apparently Half life 2 just makes a bloody mess of your PC and fragments the hell out of it within a relatively short period of time according to a fair amount of users, allegedly because of steam and it's 128 bit encryption for data.

Any truth to this?

[Homefry 0]

I don't see why I would... unless HL2 constantly deletes and creates files on your HDD....

[Baphomet 0]

Quote[/b] ]Sorry I had to say that. I remember when OFP came out, then when it came out in America nobody even knew what it was and I had to tell a few people

Same here. I told everyone I knew about how glorious OFP was. Even someone who worked at a computer store, which he said got him a commendation from management for moving so many copies of the game, which otherwise wasn't selling as well as it could or should have.

Oh and OFP did have some decent (albeit negative) media coverage. It got in PC GAMER at least, which was one of the most widely read pc gaming periodicals at the time.

They essentially spent a good portion of the magazine pretty much taking every opportunity to trash the game. I never read the magazine after that. Not only did they not like it, but they slagged it whenever the game had any occasion to be mentioned at all, constantly extoling the virtues of Ghost Recon. They even wrote rude replies to reader responses from that issue. I mean none of them as I recall were the least bit spiteful or juvenile. It was more like "How can you say this game is so bad?... etc." Which was met with nothing but snyde remarks.

I do think however in part at least. The fact that OFP found itself a specialized and loyal niche market, that it partially saved it from a lot of unwanted attention. Let's face it. The game in terms of mainstream media and opinion was not a big ticket item. Thus not so much a target for crackers.