Let's solve the piracy problem.

I have one simple solution: nuke them all! There will be pirates everytime unless there is a possibility to steal something. So if you kill all the people, who have a computer, or at least have the access to one, there will be no more software pirates anymore. And because it may be difficult to distinguish pepole with and without the access to a computer, I say, nuke them all!

piracy will and cannot be killed,    the only way it will happen would be that all and every country's introduce the law that downloading is illegal,  and since that wont happen   (no downloading isnt illegal uploading is however...)

to date, there are so many company's that use DRM to try and prevent people from pirating it,    like EA   on most of it's new games it has a function that only allows you to install the game 3 times,  after that the disk is useless unless u contact EA support

it's kind of a funny solution,   cuase what do pirates do?   they remove or bypass the DRM completly,  including this 3 x install only function, and even if it wasnt bypassable,  what's keeping you from downloading it again?  thus this only hurts the customers...

as long as company's come up with these funny idea's on so called pirate-control pirates rule the market (everything for free) 

stardocks however, keeps claiming impulse is not meant to be a pirate-control  system,  i agree.. it has some function other then keeping non-customers out....  but it sounds very similair to another funny solution for anti-piracy.... haven't checked it yet tough but im fairly certain someone, somewhere is working on the 1.1 patch right now

(i hope so rlly,  this will give offline persons the ability to use USB sticks to transfer the patch rather than using a flashdrive to carry the entire game with you.....)

ofcourse pirates will also be able to get it this way,   but rlly,  would you care for a pirate playing this offline?,   if he actually enjoys it,  give him the patch   he deserves to get it for free if he doesnt care for online play.....

yeah well, the problem here is the radiation fallout yknow..... all those poor animals

Well, yeah, first off, you can't stop piracy.  It's not possible, period.  People who are going to steal are going to steal no matter what you do to try to prevent it.  Shadow has a perfect example with DRM.  Companies make this high tech solution that only annoys consumers and does nothing to stop piracy.  Some consumers won't even buy these games because of it... they are in the minority but they are out there.

I think your #1 is a good point but really has nothing to do with piracy.  #2 is an interesting idea but I don't think will pull in many people who would normally steal the game.

The best way to fight piracy is simply to encourage friends, family, forum users, etc. not to commit piracy.  You may get lucky and win someone over... but don't expect it.

The thing is, it's obvious that piracy will never be ended completely.  But, I would venture to say that the majority of digital pirates would never, ever, ever, ever dream of walking into a store and stuffing a game, movie, or cd into their pants and walking out the door.  The only reason digital piracy is such a huge problem in the first place is because people can do it anonomously and never get caught.  The public shame would be too much to bear if they were busted shoplifting, but since no one knows what you do with your computer, eh . . . why not? 

It's gotten so bad though, that a friend of mine goes to LAN parties where gaming is actually not as exciting to the participants as swapping files is.  It's practically become the focal point for them.  It's hard to feel sorry for multi-platinum artists or 20-30 million paycheck earning stars when they lose a little revenue, but video game companies are much more likely to fold if they lose profit, and if you like what they produce, why try to kill it? 

cut down on piracy?  us?  what are you talkin' about.    Its just a bold move to have no DRM sure, if thats to what you are referring.  There is no evidance there is higher piracy with stardock games than any other popular titles.

You are right, piracy isn't going to go away on its own.   Its not going to go away if you fight it.  you can't stop piracy.  Nothing, not even the most frustrating DRM does, it just stops decent honest people from wanting to put up with the BS (I'm lookin' at you apple)

Piracy isn't even really a problem.   We don't want to stop people from having a good time.  We don't want to try stoping piracy, we want to increase sales and minimize costs.  I agree with having tons of stuff in the boxes, but that will just encourage me to fork over the extra 5-10 bucks to get the limited edition stuff, not stop the pirates from stealing.  (I'll do it stardock, don't think I won't.  You give me swag!)

Pirates are always going to exist, we shouldn't waste money trying to pretend we can make them go away.

Any one here remember star force copy protection? LOL in case you haven't heres a link, and go the bottom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarForce and read  on.

This program was known to take up massive system resources, even making systems unresponsive, some cases allegedly damaging drives because it loaded its own driver that communicated directly with the cd drive. Even if you removed the game it left the driver, still causing system performance issues.

The few games that used this, I knew a few people who went out baught the games, and then had to download the cracked version off the internet so the copy protection system wouldn't screw up their computer. This copy protection system also lead to many more people pirating in certain online communities just to make a point. Thus causing the software companies using it, to further lose sales.

Honesty stardocks approach to trusting buyers is a great approach, it removes the whole "hahah look what I can do" aura from copying the game. And I imagine those who are gonna pirate will find a way to pirate anyway. So its cheaper on their part I would think not to bother with copy protection. I will have to say you will never be able to end piracy, if you play it, install it, watch it, or listen to it, it can be copied.

Don't see much piracy on World of Warcraft.

So let's not be too hasty about saying piracy can't be stopped because that can lead to a dangerous road.

Companies should be focused on increasing their sales, not stopping piracy.  

I believe you could virtually eliminate piracy but the cost would be that you would greatly reduce your sales due to the hassle sit would introduce to customers.

For instance, I could easily have had Galactic Civilizations II had parts of its AI exist only on our servers such that you couldn't play the game at all unless you were logged on with a legitimate CD key every time.  There's nothing to "crack" in that example. You simply wouldn't be able to play the game without a legit copy.  But doing so would mean players had to be online to play the game which would eliminate a lot of sales.

I believe this policy will serve Starock very well in coming years, and give them an advantage over game outfits that do not agree.

I suspect that some of it has to do with the surrounding details of distribution agreements--why would a big-box store want to sell your discs if you are providing download versions that are cheaper? Swag in the boxes is nice, but not likely to help drive core sales. Stardock wants to accomodate as wide a range of customers as they can, so they need to have some disc SKUs as well as provide their download services.

As to why a long-time customer might pay the 'premium' for a downloaded version instead of waiting for the physical SKU to go on the discount shelf, well, I'm one of those "honor system" people that Brad scoffs (so far). The modest sums I've spent with Stardock are because I admire both their software design and their business practices. If I kept buying in physical stores, I'd be giving money to people with no sense of interior design (why are big-boxes so ugly and loud?), a tendency to waste my money by braying at me to spend more money, and, most importantly, *no* direct connection to producing the software that I want. Buying direct from Stardock means more pennies-per-dev from your purchase price.

I think what they meant is that piracy "can't" really be stopped unless some drastic decisions are made... like making a single player game to be online play only (and supporting the server costs for the AI calculations that would have to be made, because of course you won't transfer the exact algorithm to the client, unless you want the protection to be cracked ...)

or changing the kind of government for countries where the game is published to a more repressive one ...

or as one said, nuking the whole planet but then you won't sale anything to anyone which doesn't matter because there's nothing left to sale and nobody left to worry about the lack of sales ...

I agree you do not see much, but a lot of people aren't happy about 30 dollars a month, even though they pay it...heheh. You do see private servers around, but again they don't have the constant updates and the cool changes in the enviroment reflecting the seasons (IE christmas time and halloween).

Let's focus on another issue: Affordability. As I have a good salary, I can afford to buy the games I play. As I can buy on-line I can get them even cheaper, I can simply buy in a U.S. webshop like Impulse and get the benefits of the strong euro. As I hardly feel the costs, I can simply do a few mouse clicks and have a game on my computer an hour later. Piracy isn't even worth the effort it takes.

But now imagine a teenager that wants to buy Sins of a Solar Empire, He might get some money from his parents or has a small income by working in the weekends. Let's say his income is about EUR 150/month.

The cheapest option to buy the game is the Impulse store. But does the teenager have a credit card? Unlikely, at least, I wouldn't give my children one. So, no Impulse webshop for the teenager. Maybe he has a bank account with iDeal, he can shop at a local webshop then, for example at bol.com. If he hasn't, he must buy it at a local retailer.

Now let's take a look at the prices:

• Impulse store:  USD 39,95 ~ EUR 31,20
• Bol.com webshop: EUR 60,94
• Local retailer: EUR 69,00 

Now, the teenager may not be an evil person at all, but if your income is EUR 150/month, be assured you will think 3 times wether you pay EUR 69 just for the nice feeling of being fair to a few names on the credits screen of the game.

Stardock evades this problem by making games that appeal to people who have the salary to pay for their games. But it is not solved.  I believe solving the affordability problem is something the game industry needs to get under control in order to reduce piracy to acceptable levels, as it is a major motivation for piracy. Part of the solution may lie in making it easier for people to purchase the game using the EUR 31,20 option; the profit for the developer will probably not be lower than for the EUR 69,00 option.

I dont think that piracy is the problem. Bad games are the problem.

Its like viewing talkshows. Some people view them, but would they ever buy the DVD Best of ?

Music, movies, and games would all be pirated less if companies would simply lower the price.  For example, I was going to purchase the guitar pro software.  I had a pirated version before but I dont like messing with torrentz and risking a trojan so I thought I would buy it from the actual company.  They wanted 60$ for it, now there are probably millions who have this peice of software but I gurantee only like 1000 people have bought it legally because it is so damn expensive for what it actually does.  My point being is I had all plans to legally purchase it but no way will i ever spend that much money so ill probably find a cracked version somewhere.

People pirate good games, not bad games.

There is your answer.

People actually pirate anything that they think other people would like to use/have but not pay for.  What you're meaning by suggesting that people pirate good games not bad games is that the most popular downloads from pirate havens are the good games.  I am positive that there are loads of bad games also pirated. 

I like the post by dmantione because he has identified the exact reason some people will download material rather than buy it.  My only extension to that is "what happens after the download?".  Do any of these downloaders ever end up buying the title afterall?  Many are thinking "of course not cos they are evil scum that have no moral fibre" yet you'd be wrong.

Unlike movies, books, music all of which you can "try before you buy" to a certain extent, many games have no such option.  People aren't going to spend 1/3 of their disposable income on a game unless they are sure they will be getting many months of pleasure form it.

When I was first involved with gaming/retail it was in the days of Atari 400's and the like which took cartrige games.  In my country, there cost $150 and in those days, I was earning $170 a week at the age of 17.  On the plus side, the local retailer let his regular good customers play any of the new games for as long as they wanted in-store (and obviously depending on how busy it was etc).  He obviously realised that good customers will buy expensive games so long as they have had a good chance to try it out first.  (Question: How many of those good customers would have pirated the game if they could have?  Probably a lot at a guess)

These days games are cheaper - and incomes are higher but then again the game market is also much much bigger.  Competition for gamers money is also higher.  Few can doubt that Blizzard have set a new benchmark for what gamers are willing to pay for entertainment these days.  I think it was  a little under $US160 subs plus on average $US40 for updates a year I was happy to pay for several years.  In that time I bought no other games at all.  I had no time for them since all of my recreation time was spent on my second job a.k.a progression guild in WoW. 

It's easy to call someone a pirate based on behaviour so what about intent?  I frequently "try before I buy" and I don't mind admitting it because it's the only sane way to spend your money.  You look at some titles that come out after years of advertising and they are very poor compared to what was promised.  If you went along with the crowd and bought it before trying it you'd have been very disappointed. (I'm thinking of a recent title that converted to a poor DRM implementation recently which I won't name - bet lots of people bought it and have long since stopped playing it).  I tried that game, after 2 hours I realised how it's just a fancy paint program and not a game at all so I wasn't going to buy it.  Only problem is my kids (7 & 8) both tried it they love it so it'll end up as a stocking filler for christmas.  I may get banned after a single post here or worse but frankly some people need to take a step back and look at what they call piracy and decide if that's accurate. 

About the only title I am willing to buy sight unseen is anything from Sid Meir or in the "Civilization" series :P  There's been some flops but I forgave the series and besides the flops weren't really his..

MMORPG's I've played: Guild Wars, WoW, FFXI.  All good in their own ways.

Next Game I plan to try before I buy: GalCiv2 - and I see a demo version on the site so plan to d/l it after work

Server authentication is the answer to piracy, and is becomming more and more common.

Impulse is a version of this, were there is server authentication to get updates, and to play through the impulse matchmaking server online. 

Spore and other games were famous for their "ever x days authenticate" checks. 

Even the WiiSpeak addon has a single use server authentication code to download the exclusive channel.

These measures fight against piracy, as well as the used market.

welcome to the future. 

I agree with parts of this and I'll add that sometimes demos are too much aimed at making a sale ....

for example I tried a game several years ago about a flying shooting car in demo version and I nearly bought the game (the game was cheap like 20$)

then I realized that the 20 minutes of demo showed 99% of the content of the game (meaning repetitive as hell ...)

True, but without context it's meaningless.

Bad games don't get pirated for the same reason bad games don't get sold.  Word gets out and the sales tank.  The initial rush can be fueled by hype and reviews from brown nosing media, but it dies fast.  The pirates are no different, they put it up for download, people play, post that it's a piece of crap, and no one bothers to either download or buy it. 

Which is why bad games may indeed be the problem.  Word spreads faster from fewer sales and less people buy.  There have been quite a few really lame games that were just generic rehashes of previous ones with little quality to themselves.  The cookie cutter industry doesn't seem to fair too well under prolific piracy, where as new and interesting ideas can explode off the charts as Half-life did with the impressive change to the pc shooter formula.

I think people that say "piracy will and cannot be killed" are sorta missing the point.

Sure, we cannot get rid of it 100.000000%, but do we need to?

All we really need to do is to minimize it.

The best way to do that is to encourage legit sales and discourage piracy.

IMHO a great way to encourage legit sales is to offer extra benefits to customers we know are legitimate. Offering upgrades is one way to do that, and I'd highly encourage developers to offer more incentives as well. More maps, more features, more updates, etc if you can prove you're a legit customer.

Discouraging piracy is a bit more tricky, as a lot of stuff that's meant to discourage piracy treats legit customers like dirt. And of course the pirates work around it anyways, so it ends up hurting the legit customers more than the pirates. The client side DRM stuff just won't cut it.

The only REAL way that I know of that is anywhere near effective at discouraging piracy is something like frogboy suggested - put some stuff under server side control and make it so the client simply can't access all of the code necesary to run the game.

Unfortunately, something like that is also a major inconvenience, as it would require a constant internet connection the entire time you are playing the game.

Now, when I'm out publishing games of my own, perhaps I'll feel differently.   But right now the way I view it is that if I could make an awesome game and let everybody in the world play it for free, I would.   However I need to eat and I need to pay for others that help me make the game to eat.   So, I trust that if I make a really good game I will be able to satisfy the budget requirements of the game and get some saved up for the next title.   I really don't care if a few pirates play my game for free, because really I'm happy they enjoy it enough to go get it.   Its just unfair to those that did pay for it.  Thats the only problem I see.  At the same time, its unfair to those who paid for it to be hurt by efforts to ensure that everybody that plays it is someone who payed.  its a catch 22.

For some genre it would work even if it was an irregular internet connection but for many it would seem burdensome.  Like a storyline based adventure game would seem to be hindered by having to be connected and nothing to be gained.  Hmm but a serialised storyline based adventure game though... with users allowed to create their own servers with branch points from the publishers version allowing for multiple divergent storylines .. oops I digress - go for it someone if you can make money on that idea - I'd love to have played more HHGTTG..

One big question though: Do we really think that the future of entertainment will consist of anything other than being "online".

I believe I read somewhere (and without references that's like saying "In my opinion..") that gaming revenue will outstrip movie theatre revenue in the next 10 years.  As an avid gamer I can easily believe that.  The essence of gaming for me is re-playability which for me dictates the game type to a large degree.  Sociability is another stong factor and ever since my first 1200bd modem and BBS door games I've been an avid multiplayer game fan.  I really have no qualms in predicting that the future of gaming is 100% "Massively Multi Player".  Even single player games will be launched from your online portal environment. 

Game universes will be populated by anything imagineable and doors between gaming worlds will be the next revolution.  Meaning that you will enter your portal of choice and from there you may go play some of this or some of that, or may settle down with a couple of friends for a game of monopoly - whatever.  You won't be limited to one particular gaming world and ruleset.  You won't have an "Operating System" running on your hardware as this will be portable and net based.  The future will be in a way, back to the past - "dumb terminals" providing the interface into the "net" running virtual opcode whenever and wherever you want.  Of course these dumb terminals will be the most powerful GPU's in existence not very much unlike my original 16KB X-Windows terminal

In the future, since everything will be online you won't be paying much for software because all you will be doing is "enabling" your ID to play that game for that period of time.  And most games will charge the same as each other for the time you spend on them but then so too will the library site or the movie studio that's charging you to watch the latest "Die Hard".  Advertising will be everwhere just as it is now if you drive into any city in the world. 

And in this future I reckon I can see will there be pirates?

You bet there will.  People will pay to join rogue portals playing all their favourite games at cut prices.  Laws will be passed to make it illegal to do so but it will seem impossible to police until... oops better not spoil the surprise

Much is most definitely not none. World of Warcraft is such an immensely popular game, but I know at least four people who play it on a private server, and I could join then whenever I like, and recently stuff like not being able to migrate from a crappy pvp server to a pve server and having to wait years to fly places is totally tempting me.

I think that the real key to piracy is just convenience. It's much, much more convenient for me to leave BitTorrent on overnight than to travel 30 miles to a place that has a reasonable size game store. I could (and have done in the past) buy from Steam, one of the attractions of buying Demigod was the digital distribution. However I think there's a key issue which hasn't been addressed.

When you pirate a game, you don't pay for it. This means if it takes a million years to download, who cares? But when you buy a game, then you want to PLAY it now. It's worth a lot more to you. I don't know about you, but my 500kbs won't take 12GB of Crysis Warhead. If you have extremely high speed cable, then it might download in a reasonable timeframe. The thing about piracy is that this acceptable timeframe is much, much larger, because you didn't pay and the wasted time is nothing. Digital distribution is definitely the medium of the future, but I want a better connection before that happens.

And then of course we have games like BioShock which burn you with their hideousness after so much promise. What a waste of money that was. CoD4, I'm lucky that I didn't buy, played for a little while on my brothers at a LAN before I realized that it completely sucked that everybody else had a billion things I didn't have because I was new.

I think many publishers are a victim of their own hype. Spore was the most hyped game in a LONG time, and guess what? It's also one of the most pirated. Publishers like EA where their games have a history of being disappointing have higher piracy rates. Publishers like Stardock and Blizzard who are known for high quality, have much lower piracy rates. Am I surprised? No. It's Gamer's Revenge Surprise. The more your game gets pirated, the more overhyped and crappy it is. I could go out and pirate SoaSE (although I already own it :P), but Stardock have a reputation and the chances are that if I buy the game for online play then I can continue to recieve updates and good fun. Infact even now I am waiting for a big section of patch to be released (if it hasn't been already). Whereas Spore, no patches but mini expansions! Where have I seen that before...

There is nothing you can do to stop piracy except make your games worth buying for their online content.

I can believe it. Many people aren't aware of it, but games are a huge business. Especially games like The Sims and WoW. It's getting to be difficult to find somebody who hasn't played one of those games.

Frankly, I think this is a fantasy. Not a fantasy as in "the distant future," but fantasy as in "never gonna happen." Time has proven again and again that "dumb terminals," "thin clients," "net computers," etc are always fads. Idiots dream about them, but they never replace real computers. I seriously doubt they ever will.

Works in our school. Computing this way becomes more and more viable as more and more bandwidth is created on the Internet. Quantum computers could also use this, since IIRC a quantum computer can run an infinite amount of threads.