Not sure how many people check out Torrent Freak, but ... Interesting article. I support this. D:

 

Interesting. Someone not trying to charge an arm and a leg for total bullshit, cool idea.

 

I like the idea of this, although an average of 8 bucks for five games isn't really a sustainable business model for most developers or publishers.

Depending on the cumbersomeness of the process, if I were interested in those games, I would consider piracy as well, if it were much easier to just get the stuff somewhere else.

I very much like the fact that they took a realistic look at piracy, rather than go "hurr durr teh evul sue sue sue!"

 

Piracy is a lifestyle. I don't know about you guys, but whenever I see someone downloading I scream "FREEEEEDOOMMMMM" like Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

 

Piracy is just plain easier. It's easier to just find a torrent and fire it up than to find your credit card and punch in the details and wait for payment to be approved and then download it. And that's assuming you actually have a credit card, which, considering the state of the economy and what got it there, is a depressing thing for companies to be taking as a given.

 

I saw some people talking about this just after I saw it, actually. One of them claimed that if you used paypal to donate only a penny then it would end up costing the charity money. Were they just being fucktardedly stupid or is there actual truth to this that I was never aware of before?

 

Paypal charges the reciever per transaction, and it wouldn't be a percentage. I'm not sure of the exact details, but it wouldn't be at all surprised if this was true.

 

I'm not old enough to have a credit card, so even a penny is more than I can pay for an online purchase.

 

There's also the thing where pirated versions are sometimes flat out easier to install and use, especially when it comes to DRM. It's a thing where the method chosen in an attempt to curb piracy, only encouraged it.

 

This.

Plus look, I'll be honest. I rip off shit on the daily. Why? Because most of it is overpriced, total bullshit. Nintendo DS games? $30+ for glorified fucking cellphone games? Seriously? No.

Console games? $60 for 10 hours of play, if that, on shitty small maps, where I have to pay extra for multiplayer? No.

PC games? Becoming even shorter due to heavy cross platform development, often shitty. Free multiplayer is often the only reason I buy a game for PC. Now that said, I'll buy a game in a heartbeat if it's GOOD. Most aren't even close to worth the money anymore though sadly.

I'm leaning towards BF Bad Company 2 to play with folks here, but to me, from the vids I saw, it's nearly identical to BF2 from fucking 6 years ago, and yet, it's $50. Why the hell is it so expensive for a glorified graphics upgrade?

 

It was $110 on launch here. Fucking publishers, man.

 

So stupid. It's a fucking continent everything costs more on. Why don't they just open a disc printing company there or something, stream the info to them, and save a fuckload of customs and shipping problems !

 

Because most companies are money greedy little shitsticks that only care about money and not the customer. So then these people pirate shit instead, the comapnies inflate the numbers of pirates doing it, and blame the piraters instead of their greedy asshole selves.

 

Personally, with the exception of consoles, I say just fucking eliminate physical mediums. Sell a fucking license like vBulletin used to. One time Feel = life time ownership. Burn any copy you want to keep as backup, yadda yadda yadda...

 

I agree, but it'll never happen widespread. The publishers advertise, and push the game the code jockeys make, and they make most of their money back from overpricing the shit out of the box in the store. Hell, even when you do have an option to digitally download, it's barely any cheaper.

I'm all for cutting EA out of the fucking loop and buying directly from the game folks, but then, they'd rise and fall on their games, no innovation would be taken, since if a game didn't sell, they'd be fucked, unlike now where they'll get advances on the sales to finance the creation.

But in certain cases I think there should only BE digital downloads, like Aussies, etc. Think of the money and pollution it takes to ship a load of fucking games there, it's insane.

 

That's because they're not allowed to do that. Unless they want their games to be sold only per download.

The sad thing is: it's probably really not worth it to sell the games at 35-40$ per unit instead of 60$, because that's not going to make a difference to the majority of gamers. Those who pirate it won't suddenly buy it and those who buy it will buy it either way, because most have a certain budget that they use for games. They're not going to spend much more money on games just because they are cheaper.

Also: extreme anti-piracy measures seem to actually work: Ubisoft was pretty successful with Assassins Creed 2, despite the big outcry about the Launcher. (20% of international first week sales in Russia of all places, pirate heaven #1.)

 

I won't buy most EA games because they rush the fuck out of the publishers to produce, so bugs galore, and tend to pirate them instead. If they were cheaper I might consider it. If the games that only fucking last 10 hours were 30 bucks instead of 50-60, I'd buy them.

AC2 is a bad example, that game would of sold if it required you to do damned near anything. And it's pirated to fuck, the community cracked it within a week. Despite that, it's one of the few games to deserve the price tag stuck on it.

 

I think the only true method that's going to work is selling like... a physical USB key that has to connect to a server, sort of like AC2 does minus the key...

But hell, even then, probably not. I mean I had Mass Effect 2 a full week or two before it ever hit stores. It just depends on how dedicated to it people are.

 

I have multiple programs on my work PC that require $50,000 usb dongles hardware backed licenses per PC. We found a guy who did a work around, emulated the hardware, and now have it on over 50 computers.

If all quality games directly from the dev. that cost under 40$ and last more then 10 hours, piracy would plummet. I know I just can't rationalize giving 60 bucks for a few hours of buggy bullshit.

 

I skimmed early posts, but didn't read most of them fully, forgive me if I'm repeating someone's opinion here.

Someone already said that it was easier to pirate than it was to buy-This is worth repeating. Assassin's Creed 2-if I buy it then I have to be online 24/7 to play. Pirated version removes that. Hell, even good developers like Bioware have the basic disk-check requirement. Why the hell should I have to have a disk in the tray for a game fully installed on my PC that will run without it? I love Mass Effect 2, and believe it or not I bought the collectors edition. Then I went out and pirated it days before release and installed it with the released crack. Even now I use the pirated version because it's just too much of a hassle to find the disks every time I want to play.

Now let's talk value. For developers that have proved themselves to release good games, I will almost always be a great customer. For instance, Bioware can count on a sale with me for Mass Effect 3 & any coming RPG in the future-for just about forever. The same can't be said for EA/Infinity Ward which fucked up Modern Warfare 2 and left the bleeding corpse of what could have been a great game lying in the wind. A 5 hour story line and laggy multiplayer filled with cheaters that valve is too incompetent to take care of? Yeah, go fuck yourselves, I won't be buying any future product of theirs. I will however be downloading the new CoD when it comes out.