Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price • Hacker News Board

Re: Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

#131

Post by bluedanieru » Wed, Oct 26, 2011, 11:54 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #118

bluedanieru wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a great way to give your game a reputation as a bug-ridden piece of shit. This happened to The Witcher. How about a delivery mechanism that uses technology in a sane manner and doesn't punch paying customers in the face with stupid bullshit?

Sounds like a great way to give your game a reputation as a bug-ridden piece of shit. Sounds like the same knee-jerk reaction. (Which usually shows you haven't really understood what I'm proposing.) If the consequences are greatly separated in time from detection, and there is strong bias towards false negatives, then the result will be to give the cracked copies a reputation as an incomplete, half-baked piece of cra…

Yeah, I get it. It's not a very complicated idea and it's been tried before. Your mistake is that you assume people are going to attribute the bugs to the cracked copy and not to the game itself.

People will look up the game and see that a level fails to load or the game otherwise breaks at some point, but no mention by the person reporting it that they're using a cracked copy. So they decide not to buy the game.

I'm not even going to bother presenting the evidence that DRM tends to increase piracy rates because I'm sure you've seen it and have simply chosen to ignore it. Just as you've ignored the truly best strategy for deal with guerrilla rebels.

Re: Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

#132

Post by shinratdr » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 1:10 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #130

shinratdr wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the relevancy of the StackExchange question at all. As for the business that resells PC games, they are doing so at great risk to themselves. I'm aware of every small game store in Toronto and I have never seen one that would even begin to consider reselling PC games. There might be a way to do it with a strictly warehouse model but in a brick and mortar situation it's just not feasible. Simply verifying…

>I don't see the relevancy of the StackExchange question at all. The parent asked "Who sells PC games anyway?" The stack exchange question is from someone who wanted to sell / give away retail boxed games with Steam activation.

I never meant that I didn't think anyone wanted do, just that nobody does it. The StackExchange question doesn't contribute to that, he wanted to but found out he couldn't and so he didn't.

Re: Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

#133

Post by zbisch » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 6:23 PM UTC

corin_ wrote: post #101

zbisch wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to sound critical but why do you think networks get sports right? I actually feel like this is one of the worst offenders. Say I want to watch every Chicago Blackhawks game this season (or any other hockey team). Well, then I need to sign up for Versus. In order to get that I need to sign up for a Cable/satellite service. But I don't want all the channels, I watch what I want on broadcast or rent/stream.…

Living in the UK means I don't have to put up with blackouts, so ignoring that I can say that options for watching US sports are immense compared to what we have in Europe. The fact that I can pay a hundred bucks and watch any MLB game live or on delay, on my PC, iPad or TV, in HD, with pausing, skipping to inning or batter, picture in picture, and more... that's mind-blowing for me.

Yeah, that sounds very awesome and like exactly what I want. Is this using the MLB streaming service?

I really wish I could do the same thing with hockey games. I just really despise the idea of either paying a chunk of money and not being guaranteed of watching every game, or paying way more for a bunch of stuff I don't want to get almost every game.

Out of curiosity, what sorts of options do you have in Europe?

Re: Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

#134

Post by corin_ » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 6:30 PM UTC

zbisch wrote: post #133

corin_ wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in the UK means I don't have to put up with blackouts, so ignoring that I can say that options for watching US sports are immense compared to what we have in Europe. The fact that I can pay a hundred bucks and watch any MLB game live or on delay, on my PC, iPad or TV, in HD, with pausing, skipping to inning or batter, picture in picture, and more... that's mind-blowing for me.

Yeah, that sounds very awesome and like exactly what I want. Is this using the MLB streaming service? I really wish I could do the same thing with hockey games. I just really despise the idea of either paying a chunk of money and not being guaranteed of watching every game, or paying way more for a bunch of stuff I don't want to get almost every game. Out of curiosity, what sorts of options do you have in Europe?

Yeah, that's with an MLB.tv Premium subscription - and same thing for NBA.

In Europe sports leagues (or at least the ones I've cared about) don't provide their own media options, it's all through TV networks. So you can subscribe to Sky Sports channels which are something like $50-$70/month, you can subscribe to ESPN which is something like $20/month (figures off the top of my head), etc. And then you can watch whatever games they chose to show.

And some games in some sports are shown on free to watch channels such as BBC and ITV, but these are highly limited. For example in football (sorry, soccer) you don't get any league games on BBC/ITV, but they will do the world cup (big international tournament every 4 years), and a few other things now and then.

I'd love to be able to pay for a digital service that gives me all Premier League (top level of soccer in the UK) matches - I tried, with a US proxy, Fox Sports' offering in this area, but the matches on offer were limited, and the video quality was truly terrible. It was painful to watch on my PC, yet alone TV.

Re: Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

#135

Post by stcredzero » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 3:12 AM UTC

bluedanieru wrote: post #131

stcredzero wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a great way to give your game a reputation as a bug-ridden piece of shit. Sounds like the same knee-jerk reaction. (Which usually shows you haven't really understood what I'm proposing.) If the consequences are greatly separated in time from detection, and there is strong bias towards false negatives, then the result will be to give the cracked copies a reputation as an incomplete, half-baked piece of cra…

Yeah, I get it. It's not a very complicated idea and it's been tried before. Your mistake is that you assume people are going to attribute the bugs to the cracked copy and not to the game itself. People will look up the game and see that a level fails to load or the game otherwise breaks at some point, but no mention by the person reporting it that they're using a cracked copy. So they decide not to buy the game. I'm…

People will look up the game and see that a level fails to load or the game otherwise breaks at some point, but no mention by the person reporting it that they're using a cracked copy. So they decide not to buy the game.

Here's a prime example of not understanding what I'm proposing. This would be the manifestation of DRM as a bug -- which is one of the things I say you should not do!