31–40 of 59 posts
I wonder how long it is going to take the fickle and rabidly cynical usual suspects to realize that "Our DRM / lack of DRM / pseudo-DRM / loud opposition to DRM is different " is, in fact, Marketing 101, and that they hate marketing almost as much as they hate paying for software.
I don't mind paying for free software, if I think it's worth it. But I wouldn't take their proprietary software even if you paid me.
"Firewall Revenge of the Titans so it can’t ever contact Puppygames and get your totally free full game" Using DRM at all in such a setup looks quite pointless to me.
Think of it this way: DRM is effectively a way of monetizing the inconvenience of pirates. With traditional DRM, an unscrupulous person has two options: either buy the game immediately, or wait until it is cracked and then maybe deal with malware or crack-induced bugs.
The Puppygames DRM adds a third option: download the game directly from the creator (no malware or bugs) and play the full game, but with the inconvenience of only playing it offline. This makes the game less likely to be cracked at all -- there's little glory in cracking a game that practically comes pre-cracked -- and a crack is less likely to see wide distribution when the creator is a more reliable source. So maybe more people will experience the minor inconvenience of playing offline, and maybe more of them will pay to have the inconvenience removed.
"Firewall Revenge of the Titans so it can’t ever contact Puppygames and get your totally free full game" Using DRM at all in such a setup looks quite pointless to me.
I agree, but what they are describing sounds less like the DRM we've come to know and hate (yes, I know that's the point of the article, but let me explain). When I think of DRM in, say, music purchases, I usually think of some way of restriction. But here the title DRM actually makes sense: it's Digital Rights Management . This actually enables the developer to distribute the right to the full version of the game to…
My computer is mine. I can give others limited access on them in terms of user accounts. However, I will not give myself a user account and give them root.
The pirates can be said for getting things free. They are also more free due to less restrictions on their version of the code.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, but it's not going to minimize piracy at all. Big-name games get pirated more and more and their attempts to "minimize piracy" are much more intrusive. If those don't deter people, a little flash of a name isn't going to deter people. The people who consume pirate media are just going to wait for it to pop on the torrent, just like anything, and crackers will have it out in a jiffy (assuming there's an audience t…
Big-name games get pirated more and more and their attempts to "minimize piracy" are much more intrusive. If those don't deter people, a little flash of a name isn't going to deter people. How do you know they wouldn't have been pirated even more without these measures? In this particular instance, I think the fact it's a small fish game actually helps, since it will be harder to find well seeded torrents of it compa…
Unless the DRM can somehow stop everyone from the first group (in this case it won't), the second group will not be affected at all. For them, what DRM is used is irrelevant.
This DRM doesn't do anything; it just seems like extra code to maintain for no reason.
They make a big deal about the download having your name and address embedded in it to deter people from spreading their copy all over the net. And then they said that their demo version will be full version until it contacts the server... And you can download the demo without an account. They defeated all of their own protections.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it just one guy now? I know for a while it was at least two, possibly three. Also, PuppyGames are the people responsible for LWJGL[1], which IMO is the best way to go for making games in Java. [1] http://www.lwjgl.org/
AFAIK there is just one programmer, and he is on the LWJGL team but is by no means the only LWJGL developer. There might be someone else working with him, I couldn't really find anything about it. EDIT: apparently there are 2 people, Cas & Chaz: http://www.javagaming.org/index.php/topic,23005.msg190715.ht...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Big-name games get pirated more and more and their attempts to "minimize piracy" are much more intrusive. If those don't deter people, a little flash of a name isn't going to deter people. How do you know they wouldn't have been pirated even more without these measures? In this particular instance, I think the fact it's a small fish game actually helps, since it will be harder to find well seeded torrents of it compa…
Here's how it works. There is a small number of experts that crack games. Then there is a large number of non-experts that download cracked games. Unless the DRM can somehow stop everyone from the first group (in this case it won't), the second group will not be affected at all. For them, what DRM is used is irrelevant.
However, there are presumably many not-quite-expert crackers who may not even realize the game has DRM beyond displaying a name and e-mail address. These people will register the game with a suitably anonymous credentials, maybe test it on a couple more machines, then upload it. They won't know the "crack" is ineffectual until they get an e-mail asking them to reset their ten registrations. And unless they keep replying to this e-mail for every ten downloads, their upload will stop working.
Two key questions: How many wannabes are there for every expert? And how many times will someone download an ineffectual crack before giving up?
sad they say they aren't doing so well: "It means if our DRM system breaks, like for example our server melts down with the floods of sales we unfortunately aren’t getting, or Puppygames goes completely bust because you buggers aren’t buying nearly enough games for us to survive ," ... " Hint: you’re not :("
That's nice and all, but most games have much more invasive DRM yet they still get pirated. What stops someone from hacking the game to not display their name and to also never check in with the server?