Stardock publishing Demigod, praying for domination Feb. '09

yes it's supposed to be like that.

It also helps in the whole "Best selling PC game so far in 2008"

Kinda destroys the idea that Piracy is killing the PC Game industry.

Well, they busted it out truthfully. People will find ways to pirate. So why punish the people who buy the protect to temporarily annoy those that don't? Plus, usually the upgrades and patches to the games only go to buyers of the software.

Frankly, I'll admit it. I've pirated games in the past. But just to see if they work on my rig. Once you open that package, you can't get your money back.

"Kinda destroys the idea that Piracy is killing the PC Game industry."

Meeeh "kinda" is the operative word here. Stardock games are niche titles with reasonable budgets and more focused target audience. The no copy protection scheme works for them, absolutely.

That does not mean it will work for everyone in the PC industry. Titles with million dollar budgets targeted at masses - games that need to sell a ton to *to the average gamer* to be profitable seemingly do not benefit from the no copy protection approach.

Apples and Oranges... maybe this just means the big budget PC only mega hits are dieing (save MMO's) and maybe thats a good thing. PC gaming certainly isn't dieing, maybe just a certain branch is.

ratman, the people who steal your game are going to steal it regardless. Majority of the protection methods used by these companies have turned PC gamers away from PC gaming. So while you may say "protection is needed," I ask why?

Why am I forced to install a game on a C drive and have the disc in the drive everytime when these protection methods have been bypassed by pirates day 1? Why does my malware installed with the game constantly degrade a partition just because some developer is fighting a fruitless battle and I'm the one that suffers? Look, piracy isn't going away. But the the harder they make it for average consumers to get their legitimate copies to work, it's the consumers that WILL go away.

Let's just put it this way, remember installing spawns? I loved that, you could lan party 8 players in a game without the grand cost of $400. That's the era PC devs need to be going for again. Remember having to check a history book to get a promotion in Carmen Sandiego?

Why am I being forced to hack my games just to play them?

Sir Fidlious Wong:

Thank you for regurgitating all the standard pro piracy arguments while completely ignoring the original post which simply states that stardock != the entire PC industry and what works for them and their market will not necessarily work for bigger companies. The point was that stardock's lack of protection alone does not prove that no copy protection will work for everyone. They are different companies going after different markets. When stardock releases a game that cost them $40,000,000 to produce and needs to sell millions to joe frat boy to make a profit - then we'll see if their no copy protection policy is still good business.

Again, the *only* thing being said here is that stardock's success with no copy protection does NOT conclude *every* company would have similar success. Thats not to say *no* company would have similar sucess - just not *every* company and pointing to stardock's success *alone* does not "Shoot down the piracy is killing PC gaming argument".

ARRRRRrrrrghhh!!! Me true colors be shown!

The lack of copy protection helped, but the reason Stardock is enjoying success as a publisher is because their games scale well (they look beautiful on high end rigs, they run fast on low end rigs) and because their games are incredibly good/fun.

The games that need copy protection are typically the games that people will ignore because they suck. The games that succeed will succeed whether or not they have copy protection. The degree of success will depend on how good it is and how intrusive the copy protection.

I don't like to point at steam as an example, but they've done incredibly well because, partly, their copy protection (despite every game they've released being cracked and on your favourite torrent site) is rather non-intrusive, but mostly because their games target a wide audience, scale well and are fun.