kchenisp

@R

He said "Unreal 3", as in the sequel to Unreal and Unreal 2, which were single-player FPS games along the lines of Doom, Half-Life, and funnily enough, Gears of War.

Not "Unreal Tournament 3", the sequel to the Unreal Tournament series.

It's ok if you don't know anything about PC gaming, just be more careful about the way you reply to people who actually understand the subject.

The intended frame of reference was not "everybody in the world" but "everybody who played GoW1". I did not mean to say that everyone owns a newer video card, but if you played GoW1 with your PC you can play GoW2 with the same hardware and do not need to upgrade.

I have to assume that CliffyB was being sarcastic, because otherwise what he said wasn't just stupid, but it doesn't even make sense. Why would anyone need to upgrade their PC to play GoW2? The 360's hardware is three years old and a low-end 9800 goes for about $150, half the price of a 360, and you'd still be guaranteed an experience at least as good.

What CliffyB's comment amounts to is that anyone with a video card that is less than three years old must be a pirate.

Of course, Epic made their fortune from PC titles like the original Unreal and UT/2k3/2k4, all for which Epic willingly patched out the copy protection. And for all the success that the PC gave them, what did they do with the capital? They created Xbox-exclusives. But hey, it's one thing to be a business and go after the money, it's another thing to go out of your way to insult the people who fed you back when you had nothing. Or I suppose all those Unreal players with their Voodoo cards were all pirates too? CliffyB, tell us the secret to how you printed your own money since you made nothing during all those years.

Or, he was just joking. Let's hope.

That depends on the copy protection in question. I'm not sure how bad Securom has gotten, but we know that the more invasive schemes like StarForce require source code integration, and the dev is responsible for making sure it works with the game. It's more than likely that a standard contract from any of the big publishers includes a clause that the developer must implement any copy protection measure that the publisher wants, irrespective of whether this ultimately requires effort by the devs.

Of course once the contract is signed, the dev is legally bound to use whatever DRM the publisher asks for. The point is that the dev is fully in power to refuse that clause, insist on one that forbids DRM, or shop the game to another publisher (like Stardock) before they agree to any contract. The reason they don't do this is because they get more $$$ by doing EA's bidding than they would by trying to negotiate these terms or signing with a smaller publisher.

Publishers are the ones who provide the impetus for DRM, yes, but it doesn't change the fact that the devs are essentially bought out to go along with it. You might as well say that politicians aren't responsible for corruption, the lobbyists are. It's true only in the most asinine sense. Bottom line is that the publisher wants DRM and the devs sold us out to get the most profitable contract. Both parties are responsible for DRM, and it's only a question of semantics as to who is more responsible. Devs know they are riding a gray area here because the nature of the publishing model says that they essentially have the luxury of not worrying about sales. So they can be against DRM, blame it on the publisher, and at the same time they type the code that puts it into their game. If they had to self-publish the game, as Blizzard does, then they would have to worry about sales and would probably end up doing the usual -- put Securom or something even worse on the disk just to satisfy their own paranoid fear that not doing this will bankrupt them when they otherwise would have made billions. The simple fact is that you don't know how any dev would really act if they didn't have the publisher acting as an umbrella.

The only entities that can be measured as good or bad are the publishers, and we've seen examples of both good (Stardock), and plenty of bad. The question now is, why aren't devs signing with the good publishers? Why are they signing with ones we know to be bad? Of course it's always about money, and devs, no matter how talented they might be, can still be greedy bastards just like everyone else (as above, sites like Joystiq seem to encourage cults of personality -- but even game designers are only human). Giving them a free pass on the DRM fiasco is wishful and naive. Now, those devs that are actually walking the walk, putting their own finances on the line to make PC gaming more equitable for paying customers, like Stardock and Gas Powered, you can give them props. Most other devs still need to put up or shut up.

This story makes it sound as if the pirates here were lifting thousands of dollars worth of 0-day warez and selling them. In fact, the pirated games in question are NES titles. They're abandonware, and not currently sold by their owners.

Ok, granted, these guys are technically breaking the law (as are most of you, if you've ever downloaded ROMs and such for an emulator, or have certain trademarked characters appearing as an icon). And they're a step above the casual pirate because they're profiteering. However, these things are only illegal because of the perversion of copyright. Under original copyright laws, games this old would already have been forced into the public domain, and it would be, and should be, perfectly legal for anyone to reproduce and sell them, if they were willing to take on the financial risk in doing so (that's how old books get reprinted).

The fact that the publishers have no interest in publishing these games should indicate that they have long passed the point of fair compensation for these works. It doesn't benefit society to have these properties locked up forever, and it is *only* the law that prevents copies from being distributed.

So yes, under the current copyright system, these guys committed serious offenses and you can't say much else from a legal standpoint. But if anything, this should serve as a wake-up call to voters to block new copyright addendums, and for legislators to overturn the addendums that have been added in the past. Note that these laws make it so that YOUR grandchildren will likely be dead before Super Mario Bros enters public domain. And it doesn't answer this question: what did Shigeru Miyamoto's grandchildren do that they should be entitled to collect royalties from yours?

Current copyright law has nothing to do with fair compensation, it currently serves only to build IP dynasties and allows authors to renege on their part of the social contract. Copyright is not a human right. It is a government-granted monopoly that was created for economic, not moral, reasons. There is no moral right to stop people from copying things, only a right to receive fair (not "eternal" or "limitless") compensation for creating the work. As a non-violent crime that has only economic damages, the penalties should not include lengthy jail time. Send the guys to the poor house but let them keep their freedom and let them get jobs doing something productive. Sending these people to prison for years, where they'll be living off your dime as a taxpayer, where previously they were productive, non-violent, self-sufficient individuals, is not smart. The payoff for society will come at the end of those prison sentences, when we put two now-hardened criminals back on the streets because someone decided that this was a great tradeoff to get game publishers a few more bucks on their inventory of old games.

To me, this is another example of how the ESA is only interested in working for game publishers and not for you.

Surprised no one mentioned it yet, but you've all seen those nvidia bumpers (that is, advertisements) when you start just about any game?

What did you, as the consumer, receive in exchange for having to watch a commercial that runs every time you start your game? Nothing.

From the dev/publisher's point of view, the pirates buy hardware and then steal the software. Ok, fair enough. But then the hardware manufacturers give free money to the dev/publisher. Those ads run with absolutely no benefit to the consumer -- they don't get a price break for the game, they don't get free stuff from nvidia. It's money that the dev/publisher gets to pocket for doing absolutely nothing except selling your time to nvidia. They have no right to complain about pirates who only buy hardware, because they're reimbursed by nvidia. The people who do have a right to complain is, as always, the legit consumer.

You're the one who has to watch the ads -- for nothing. You're the one who has to subject yourself to DRM -- for nothing. All of these things are costs that are put on your shoulders, and they don't actually do anything to stop the pirates. So what we really have here is a situation where dev/pubs include piracy as part of a business model, and use it to justify making life harder for you, the paying customer, because they're not willing to absorb the cost of piracy as a cost of doing their business. It's been a long time since piracy has affected any dev/publisher, it only affects you, the buyer.

This is a perfect example of how the ESA does NOT serve consumer interests. Mary Bono is one of the people who were thanked by name for drafting a shady new IP law with international consquences. In addition to attacking torrent indexing sites, this bill would also make illegal the very site where it was reported: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Proposed_US_ACTA_multi-lateral_intellectual_property_trade_agreement_(2007)

Note that the bill is called "Anti-counterfeiting" but has exactly nothing to do with fighting counterfeiting.

Do not support the ESA. They won the Manhunt case in court but that didn't get the game to us any less censored. They are there to support publisher profits, not the creativity and content of games.

Thanks potato for bringing up those points. It's entirely true that the ESA represents the game industry in the same manner that the RIAA/MPAA represent theirs. It's an association of game publishers who want to make sure that the market remains as profitable for them as possible. Sometimes, that coincides with our interests as game consumers. But it should never be assumed.

A point about lobbying vis-a-vis free speech: it doesn't actually matter if the ESA fights or wins these cases in court. The triumph of political freedom is muted by the need for marketability. Manhunt 2 being the obvious reference. They could have released the game as-is, on PC, but because Sony, MS, and Nintendo refuse to release AO titles, it was financially untenable. And why do the console makers refuse AO games? Because they want to sell hardware units to parents of small children and they think this is going to make a difference. What's the point of paying the ESA to fight for free speech when some of the most important companies in the ESA conduct their own forms of censorship?

The real purpose, of course, is for the ESA to keep the market open for the products that the big publishers want to sell. It has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with profitability.

You don't have to be an ESA member to get your games rated by the ESRB, so this doesn't affect their storefront presence at all.

The ESA does, however, get to set policy and stuff like that, so basically Activision and Vivendi are giving up their "vote" in those processes. Apparently they didn't feel like that privilege was worth the membership dues.

It'll be interesting to hear why, specifically, they decided to leave, but it won't really change anything.

Silly man. If you could sell copies of your game on ebay (that is, you could self-publish), why didn't you do that to begin with instead of giving it to a publisher? If you don't want publishers to do whatever they want with the gift that you gave them, then you shouldn't have given it to them in the first place. By the way, you can't reply to this post. I'm only giving you permission to read my work, not reply to it. Also, Joystiq isn't allowed to make copies of this so make sure you exclude this post from your site backups.*

*Just kidding, I grant Joystiq permission to do whatever they want with this post, not that you would actually need permission.

Once you have given someone something, they own it, and they can do what they want with it. If that bothers you, then again, don't give it to them. The only way you would have a say in what they do with it is by contract. If you send a publisher a demo disc unsolicited, then yes they can put it on ebay though most likely they'll just lose the listing fee when it doesn't sell. Now, if someone breaches the contract, you can sue them for THAT, you can't sue someone down the line simply because they ended up in possession of the property and wanted to sell it. As it turns out, you know that car you drive? It was actually a showroom model sent to the dealer and was not supposed to be sold. Now, who is responsible to the manufacturer for covering the loss? The person who actually has a contract with them for the cars they receive, or you?

Also note, this case isn't about copyright and should not be confused as such. The demo discs in question are originals, not copies. They are not stealing the author's work, they are simply selling the medium on which it was distributed, just as you would with a used copy.