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Iron Lore shuts down

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If ARMA II will prove to be worth the money I will get it but I will not buy it in a store. I'm tired to donate my money to distributors, sellers, and so on. It's time to cut those dry branches.

I want to buy it online, but I want to get it without crappy protection systems that could cook my optical drive and to pierce my ears, I want the possibility to backup it on CDs/DVDs/USB drive and the possibility to re-install it on my machine endless times.

Too much requests for something I'm going to pay for?

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Quote[/b] ]I want to buy it online, but I want to get it without crappy protection systems that could cook my optical drive and to pierce my ears, I want the possibility to backup it on CDs/DVDs/USB drive and the possibility to re-install it on my machine endless times.

If am not mistaken, this is already true for copy protection we used in most (if not all) digital distributions. Definitely the first point is non-issue for them - as there is no physical media anywhere, there is nothing which would try to play with the CD/DVD drivers at all, which is something which is usualy done by the copy protection when you buy your game on your physical medium.

The problems some of them were/are experiencing are different, like unreliable or not fast enough support or not reliable enough delivery of the license keys.

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COD4 sold like ass on the PC, maybe a few hundred thousand copies, meanwhile millions of copies got downloaded.

The game sold millions on consoles.

How can you guys still argue about piracy not effecting anything?

It's often the publishers fault if we're talking about EA games and such, but most of the time the people who dl don't want to pay, it's that simple.

Anyways, you can argue against it all you want, the fact is most devs are going to consoles and canning their PC versions.

The low sales of cod4 and crysis can be explained in simple: common people using pc dont have the hardware required to play them unlike console users.

You sound like there isnt piracy in consoles. That is far from the truth. Go check a torrent site and you will find everything that has been published to consoles as pirated versions also.

No, CoD4 runs on my computer perfectly fine at low and medium settings.

I only have 512 MB of RAM, CoD4 runs on a turd of a computer.

That isn't an excuse.

I torrented it because i'm not a fan of the series and i was right, i deleted it anyway. But still i know lots of people who dled it and love it and play it. They would've probably bought it.

Games are overpriced, since most people who play them are around 13 years old and have to ask mom and dad to buy them anything. 60 dollars is a fortune for a 13 year old...

CoD4s quality is not the excuse, since the game runs perfectly fine and is high quality with lots of polish. It's also not a lack of interest, since the game got dled and is being played by millions on the PC, but only a few hundred thousand bought it. Explain that!

Dling games for a console requires hardware modifications to the console, welding stuff onto it is not something most people do. You get banned off of Xbox Live if you do such mods anyway.

The game sold millions on consoles and only a fraction on the PC, because people got the game for free.

I don't mind, this isn't about some moral high ground here, but lets just fess up to it. Buying PC games is a rare thing. I don't even know anyone who does that.

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Quote[/b] ]Buying PC games is a rare thing. I don't even know anyone who does that.

and you wonder why game companies go balls up. Maybe get a part-time job mate and save those $$$$$ Did you buy Arma? My guess would be no Its tards like you that bugger these small game companies

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Quote[/b] ]Buying PC games is a rare thing. I don't even know anyone who does that.

and you wonder why game companies go balls up. Maybe get a part-time job mate and save those $$$$$ Did you buy Arma? My guess would be no Its tards like you that bugger these small game companies

That is what I asked. If he bought ArmA. But I felt it wasn't my business and reported the post to the moderators. As he actually admitted to downloading a game illegally.

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Well anyone stupid enough to admit an illegal act has to be banned if nothing else but to protect BI from liability.

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About the copy protections, i think personnally it is playing a big part on the loss of sales that are just lost (everyone not buying a game will not necessarly download it "for free") or are going to piracy.

If you look closer, the situation in its majority is this :

-"we have a product in which we implemented starforce/securom/drm/limited online activations/other legit customer annoyances/etc... and you pay for it"

on the other side you have :

-"we have the same product but we have removed starforce/securom/drm/limited online activations/other legit customer annoyances/etc... and you just get it for free"

For me it is simple, there are games i don't buy but really would have liked to, but in the end i boycott them as i totally -refuse- to install something that will be an annoyance for me on my system, so i just don't purchase any of them.

Sure, i don't download them "for free", it is not like my free time is monopolized by games or that i "need" games so i must get them or i'll be sick, but in the end it is the same for the publisher : a sale that is lost, they will never recieve my money because they have choosen to annoy me.

I strongly think removing the copy protection annoyances from the retail and legit products would really help to fight piracy.

Make your customer "feel" that you are caring for them (despite they perfectly know you care for their money a bit more wink_o.gif ) and in return they will like you and will buy what you sale to them,

adding an annoyance for your legit customers will not make them feel anything good for you, and the result is that they will not buy another product.

It seems to works for Stardock, and their game can't be described as "low quality".

In the far away past, a reason to buy a retail game instead of just getting a copied version of the tape, was that game packages were attractives (rpg games sold with nice maps and comprehensive rules manuals and sometime mini booklet about the universe of their games, i remember i even bought a wargame on my old cpc464 that featured tanks and units in plastic so you could actually play on hexagons real maps).

I understand that nowadays, with the current game being really expansive despite they have nearly the minimum (the cd case, the manual on pdf in the dvd, a simple paper for the keys used etc..), making packages like in the old time would make the price skyrocket even more.

But in the end , the concept remains : give your legit customers something like "an advantage" , not an annoyance and i believe the sales will be better.

Of course, piracy will never stop, but making the customer wanting to buy will not make piracy grow.

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Quote[/b] ]But in the end , the concept remains : give your legit customers something like "an advantage" , not an annoyance and i believe the sales will be better.

While this sounds nice in theory, in practice this is quite hard to to. The problem with all digital products is it is hard to provide any "advantage" over an exact copy of the product, other than trying to make "annoyances" to those using illegit. copies (or trying to make making of the exact copy hard).

Most people do not care at all about packages, manual, and support - they are not interested in it, they want to play the game (watch the movie, listen to the music).

While competition is healthy, it is impossible to compete with my exact copy offered at a fraction of cost.

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The problem with all digital products is it is hard to provide any "advantage" over an exact copy of the product, other than trying to make "annoyances" to those using illegit. copies (or trying to make making of the exact copy hard).

But the problem with trying to do this is that it will always end up just being an annoyance to those who bought the legal copy, while those who get the illegal copy still get the "hassle free" version. No worries about copyprotection being incompatible with your hardware/software and no need to insert the disc to the drive and so on.

While new "strong" protections often can be a bit of an annoyance for illegal user for a while (But those also seem to be the ones causing the most trouble to legal users), even then I would imagine that that annoyance alone would is not enough to make such a person buy the game - It a choice between paying ~30-50 euros for the product or spending a bit of an extra effort making the copy.

I personally find the packaging, big manual (especially for simulator games), posters, etc. extra to be very valuable. For internet distribution those are not possible, but there can be other "digital" extras given too. For example Egosoft provided a 'bonus area' on their website when you entered your game serial on your profile, and members on their forum who have done so were marked as having bought the game. Similar thing is also visible on the Live for Speed forums, and every now and then there are people who get "busted" for using an illegal copy when they ask for help with some full version content when they do not appear as having a legal copy. They pretty much never receive any help and get banned pretty fast.

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But the problem with trying to do this is that it will always end up just being an annoyance to those who bought the legal copy, while those who get the illegal copy still get the "hassle free" version. No worries about copyprotection being incompatible with your hardware/software and no need to insert the disc to the drive and so on.

In case of ArmA, it took quite long before the "Illegal copies may degrade" was at least partially circumvented - therefore users of the illegal version have something to worry about. There are still some parts of the DRM even a long time after the game release which stay annoying the owners of illegal copies, most important of them being online CD verification.

I would prefer of not annoying the legitimate customers at all, and we try to annoy them as little as possible - one of our practice is always to release a patch which makes the game to no longer require the physical media in drive when playing the game.

The reason why copy protections are being used are that we and our publishers are convinced they increase the sales, not lower them.

I agree with the original poster on the PC the situation is very specific - while there is some illegal game copying done on consoles, it is very little compared to the PC, and this definitely contributes to the fact PC is less and less attractive as a platform to develop for.

One somewhat related article which you might find interesting is

Gamasutra: Casual Games and Piracy: The Truth (free registration might be required).

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I personally find the packaging, big manual (especially for simulator games), posters, etc. extra to be very valuable. For internet distribution those are not possible, but there can be other "digital" extras given too. For example Egosoft provided a 'bonus area' on their website when you entered your game serial on your profile, and members on their forum who have done so were marked as having bought the game. Similar thing is also visible on the Live for Speed forums, and every now and then there are people who get "busted" for using an illegal copy when they ask for help with some full version content when they do not appear as having a legal copy. They pretty much never receive any help and get banned pretty fast.

While all of this is nice, this is not about "most of the people". Most of the people playing games are not interested in any added value like this. One example easy to prove: Most of the people playing Flashpoint or ArmA never posted in this forum. My guess (although this is something I am unable to prove) is most of the people playing Flashpoint or ArmA did not even visit the forum at all.

The copy protection on the PC is not aimed at the hard core players - those will probably find some way no matter what we do. Its purpose is to prevent "random piracy" like "Hey, Joe, this is a nice game, can you make a copy for me?".

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First of all I like downloadable games.If I can buy and download my games online it is my preferred choice.I don't have to go to the store this way and in the end it saves money all around.

Lower PC sales may have other reasons...For example the numbers of free content available and mainly the reason that alot of people don't use their pc's for just gaming.Alot of people are just doing other things with their pcs.People that buy consoles are "gaming" and a  majority of people that have pcs aren't gaming anymore. My relatives mostly chat and do other stuff on the pc and never install a game.My kids and wife play online web-like games from Disney and Nicktoons.Sites you can join and play several new games a month for a fee usually (not sure if they are including those in pc game sales?)

Sometimes I can keep busy downloading and trying free beta games and just the number of free stuff and content.reminds me of older days of BBS when you can spend every night trying out the new shareware releases.

I think the market is flooded with too many games at the moment and I just wait a bit to see what games take off before I purchase anymore.I just wait for something better.

But many nights I just am not gaming every day now. Theres plenty of other stuff to do (browse forums is another example)

Money is more valuable nowadays (economy bad) and I don't just go buy a game or two a week anymore.

I just buy good titles like BIS games !

edit: also to add. Most people that I help fix ther pcs (most of spyware or virus problems) Are not using their pcs for gaming.Its hard to convince them to buy say a 200$ video card to play games not to mention the price of games.People already have expenses of good internet connections and such.

Major companies that market and sell pcs are not including gaming video cards.People think cause they have a 4gig cpu pc or they just bought it that its fast.When they buy and install their first game and it runs like crap they think something is wrong with their pc.I tell them its cause of their video card and they are confused as they just bought the pc and was told its fast or will run anything.So they stop buying games till they upgrade which never happens.

Only serious gamers are dumb enough to spend 200-400$ or more on a video card.In the real world thats like buying a new tv or such.For that matter you can buy a whole new pc for 400$

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imo you can get a decent pc for 300 $ or less but it wont run the state of the art games in highest settings... biggrin_o.gif

But hey it all comes down to how picky you are, can you live with decent graphics but a onboard soundcard that gives low quality sound compared to a external sound card? smile_o.gif

Building and buying pc's is for us who like to choose our loadout and gear and equip us with the screwdriver and tech away smile_o.gif

Console owners imo are sheep who has to do with what they get i the console and have to pay extra for small extra contents that can be found free for pc owners.

I would even say console gaming is dumbing down people and removing them from their freedom and democracy...

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If you see a game that is being simultaneously released on both a console and a PC beware. They are usually dumbed down.

If I had more money I'd probably buy a game or two more. As it stands right now, I don't even play games that much. The only game I have played in the past few months is ArmA. And even then I spent exactly fiften minutes playing and then back to modding or screwing around in max. I can't stand games that can't be modded nowadays. I usually like to change certain aspects in a game.

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But the problem with trying to do this is that it will always end up just being an annoyance to those who bought the legal copy, while those who get the illegal copy still get the "hassle free" version. No worries about copyprotection being incompatible with your hardware/software and no need to insert the disc to the drive and so on.

In case of ArmA, it took quite long before the "Illegal copies may degrade" was at least partially circumvented

Actually a fully working cd image was "released" 16.2.2006, which is the same day as the official legal UK release I think.

Quote[/b] ]one of our practice is always to release a patch which makes the game to no longer require the physical media in drive when playing the game.

Which is very good, I just hope more developers/publishers would do the same.  smile_o.gif

Quote[/b] ]While all of this is nice, this is not about "most of the people". Most of the people playing games are not interested in any added value like this. One example easy to prove: Most of the people playing Flashpoint or ArmA never posted in this forum. My guess (although this is something I am unable to prove) is most of the people playing Flashpoint or ArmA did not even visit the forum at all.

True, but this does not mean that it would not be profitable to do something like it anyway. Say, setting up some exclusive bonus area on the game website like Egosoft did would not be that much effort, and the game box having some "Access to exclusive content at www.game.com" slogan on it would appear as an "extra value" for someone judging wether the game is worth the money or not. Most people might not care about it at all but even some percent of extra sales would propably make it worth it (Either directly, or when Joe copies his game to his friend but this friend cannot access this area). There's over 270 000 registered users on the Egosoft forum for example, which I think is a rather good number of (potential) customers.

Quote[/b] ]The copy protection on the PC is not aimed at the hard core players - those will probably find some way no matter what we do. Its purpose is to prevent "random piracy" like "Hey, Joe, this is a nice game, can you make a copy for me?".

This is propably where it really works. However, for this I think you dont need a "strong" protection system (ie. Starforce, SecuROM, Tages) which have the largest potential to cause problems to legimate users too by doing complicated checks using some windows drivers/services which need administrator access... Some much more simple check would propably block non-technical users just as well in most cases.

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Quote[/b] ]
Quote[/b] ]

While all of this is nice, this is not about "most of the people". Most of the people playing games are not interested in any added value like this. One example easy to prove: Most of the people playing Flashpoint or ArmA never posted in this forum. My guess (although this is something I am unable to prove) is most of the people playing Flashpoint or ArmA did not even visit the forum at all.

True, but this does not mean that it would not be profitable to do something like it anyway. Say, setting up some exclusive bonus area on the game website like Egosoft did would not be that much effort, and the game box having some "Access to exclusive content at www.game.com" slogan on it would appear as an "extra value" for someone judging wether the game is worth the money or not. Most people might not care about it at all but even some percent of extra sales would propably make it worth it (Either directly, or when Joe copies his game to his friend but this friend cannot access this area). There's over 270 000 registered users on the Egosoft forum for example, which I think is a rather good number of (potential) customers.

That is a good idea to get the user to register his key in order to have access to extra content or support patches. With an up-to-date key banning , it could be interesting to avoid "joe copy friend games"

In the same time it adds an extra layer of anti piracy protection that is not an annoyance by preventing bad copies to ever register to get access to bonus/extra/suppoprt content, while additionally giving an advantage to the customer by delivering the legit user such access.

I remember there was something similar in bioware website, not sure if it was extended to the extra content, but at least you could only use their support boards if you had registered your cd key with them. I think Stardock used more or less something similar at some points too.

About Arma/OFP customers in regard to their usage of the game support and extra content.

It is true not every ArmA/OFP owners ever visit or read this forum, but there are hundred of ArmA/OFP other boards on the net, and some very popular board often has their dedicaced thread about these games.

So even if few may visit the official board (either by lack of interest or because english is not understood by everyone), i am sure the heavy majority of ArmA/OFP owners are very well aware of what is going on in regards to support/extra contents.

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I have said this before that I like the account type protection.

Cdkey assigned to a login.

But then that requires a login server and only works for MP and the possibility of non-internet users unable to install the game depending on the type of installation

I hate to say the name again but like BF2 I can play my account on any installation.

If they had never released the dvdrw , movie and gaming companies could have just released their stuff on dvd.

And people would only had the reader or ROM

If they could get together and start a new standard and NOT release the hardware for copying it would really help the industry.

Something like PS2 games where the discs are stamped and/or including errors whereas the burner won't reproduce the errors and the copy unable to work

But then China will make and sell whatever they want including new copying devices

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another poor excuse if they got balls they go with STEAM, GamersGate, Stardock, Direct2Drive ...

oh wait Titan Quest is on STEAM ...

just sales from these would solve the financial crisis ...

so let me guess ... some CEO bought own private island and forgot tell rest investors smile_o.gif

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Didn't Iron lore make the latest Warhammer 40k expansion?   If so ,will this all turn into another "TROIKA" when it comes to patches?  

As for outright piracy , I'm against it.  But I do like abandon ware ,which as far as I know isn't piracy.   Try to find a copy of X-COM at your local gamestop....it ain't gona happen unfortunately.

Copy protection , was BIS's OFP CP  "FADE" ever broken?   PC gamer even commented on it's non intrusive protection, wondering why companies still wanted to use starforce.

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They made a diablo clone and a fairly disappointing Dawn of war expansion. Doesn't surprise me that they kicked the bucket. Also, yes FADE was overcome.

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Piracy is a huge problem but its been that way for a long time... i dont think piracy is the major culprit in the decline of PC gaming.

PC games have become more demanding and less scalable to middle/low range PC HW: "will it run or should i buy the xbox version?"

PC HW is expensive and ageing faster than games are coming out, SW is not keeing up.

Consoles took over, they are cheap, capable and easy to set up.

Publisher investment is all over the console market and disregarding the PC platform for quite a while now.

There was a time (for me anyways) where the sky was the limit, people gathered and drooled imagining what future developments in both HW and SW would bring... well, it didnt really bring much in the last few years.

Im a PC gamer, i buy my SW (games) but i dont find myself purchasing games because there are none to few that interest me.

Im more likely to pick an old game (dx8 era) and have fun than with a recent tittle, matter of fact Arma is the only recent tittle i have installed on my PC.

Basically im running past generation video games with a high end dx10 video card, ridiculous or what rofl.gif ?

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Quote[/b] ]But in the end , the concept remains : give your legit customers something like "an advantage"

thats called multiplayer ... need a valid cd key to play it in most cases (same goes on consoles, you can chip it, play downloaded games but no online mode)

Quote[/b] ]Of course, piracy will never stop, but making the customer wanting to buy will not make piracy grow

most dont care about : making the customer wanting to buy,

why they already want to buy ...

it can stop if publishers find solutions... like more demos; ability to try before buying ... make games cheaper ...

Quote[/b] ]The copy protection on the PC is not aimed at

nowadays copy protection on pc is useless ...

dont know why every people care about piracy ... care about your customers no?

maybe there are more cops around me that i think ...

Quote[/b] ]Well anyone stupid enough to admit an illegal act has to be banned if nothing else but to protect BI from liability.

ahah ahah everybodys perfect here

first i like the name... piracy, care dangerous boy,must go to jail... prefer downloading as most pc users even dont know to build a network...

make me laugh like on servers, you are playing war, killing people, but you cant say shit ...

Quote[/b] ]

My guess is most of the people playing Flashpoint or ArmA did not even visit the forum at all.

first i really like you people for this great game, nothing like this elsewhere... but

maybe there are 2 reasons, first, depending on the hardware (the first day i bough arma, i installed it, launched it, but arma says : desktop ... again and again) so why going on forums support the game, if you bought it, and you cant even play it

second (in my opinion) you didnt wrote the right thing in the

manual/ingame, just the adress of the official website, and somethings about modding at the end of the book (its "little"), maybe something like :

for addons missions mod news addons visit ...url

something that catch the user ...

im pretty sure 50% of users dont know they can add content to the game

third i dont know how much time you spend on the game and how much time it costs to solve a bug like ladder one, but seriously, cant you wait 5 days, tell customers we found a bug, correcting it, so the game will be out 5 days later ...

and why 30 vehicles ? make 3 of them but fully functional if you intend to write ingame : best sim ever ... so many civilian cars etc ... youll never use

Quote[/b] ]wondering why companies still wanted to use starforce.

they got too much money, they propably try to spend it ...

Quote[/b] ]Piracy is a huge problem but its been that way for a long time

easy one, no more piracy=destroy every computer on earth

even if he isnt interested by the game ... most people making cracks serials, do that just for fun, to practice...

think a beta like for frontlines help, an 1gb demo, 2 mp maps/ no sp (1 map is enough) so you can trully test the game, find bugs before the game goes out...giving key to beta test your next game to active people on the forums could help too

make your games for consoles, youll sell more, get more money, make better games (dont follow EA state of mind)

sell more ...

Quote[/b] ]"Access to exclusive content at www.game.com"

could be great

remember they made a study ... people dowloading files will never buy it for 90% of them, for the simple reason they dont got the money, so how this can make something decline (musci/games/software etc...)

just the fact that companies find a new way to take people money...

i think most pc games are superior to console versions, first cause you can modify/add your content.second there are no sims on consoles.thrid, pc hardware, better looking game with good pc, trackir, laser mouse ...

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Quote[/b] ]ahah ahah everybodys perfect here

first i like the name... piracy, care dangerous boy,must go to jail... prefer downloading as most pc users even dont know to build a network...

make me laugh like on servers, you are playing war, killing people, but you cant say shit ...

What?

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everybody talk about piracy -> just some people downloading files, games, nocd patch, apply nocd patch (=doubleclick on it) ... is diferent than opening the exe in the editor, finding the good line ... making the nocd exe... (in my mind, this is piracy, you crack lines of code)

on most cs, bf2, cod4, ... servers, you kill people, stab them, bomb them and then get banned if you say the word "shit" or something like that...

i dont prone bad language every sec or for bad language ban, something between... need to be in agreement with yourself ...

sry if its confused, i have some lack of expression/english words

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