An Open Letter to the Community

[Cyb0rg]

:D

[GranCalvo]

You should read this: http://draginol.joeuser.com/article/303512/Piracy_PC_Gaming That guy is the Stardock CEO and says...: [i[The reason why we don't put CD copy protection on our games isn't because we're nice guys. We do it because the people who actually buy games don't like to mess with it. Our customers make the rules, not the pirates. Pirates don't count. We know our customers could pirate our games if they want but choose to support our efforts. So we return the favor - we make the games they want and deliver them how they want it. This is also known as operating like every other industry outside the PC game industry.[/i] It's worth reading it, specially for ED

[urze]

Thanks, I did.

And now you should read this thread.

[GranCalvo]

Thanks, I did.

And now you should read this thread.

 

I did it So, what's your opinion about that link?

[Koriel]

 

ED/TFC is afraid of something thats not there... and "saying" that a small fraction of the community are "thieves". I have news for ya - Nobody else (outside this community) likes this game and NOBODY else outside this community is going to buy this game. We are few and chosen.

 

True, I believe that of all those leechers some download the game just for the hell of it, but most do it because they just can't wait. ( Bad affliction, I know, I've got it bad... ). Those that just can't wait will buy the game anyway. Seeing how many people upgraded their PC's to run this, bought a HOTAS setup and rudders, Trackir 4 with clip.. ( He! that's me !!! just paid 2000+ euro's for al that, ) You think they won't buy the game to save a few lousy dollars/euro's? I'll bet quite few would like both the russian and Multilanguage version, and are willing to pay top dollar for it.

 

And what's suprising, or maybe not really considering the people who are torrenting BS, is that nobody has uploaded BS to usenet yet. People want it, but no-one wants to share it.

Edited October 27, 2008 by Koriel

[leafer]

Look, you may not care, but I do and it's none of your business. Simulators like this are not really coming of the track..

 

And where did you come up with the 10 year figure? Oh, yes. Silly me. Today's financial market is so stable that it's impossible that some companies go under in the near future, especially in the niche games industry..

 

It's not that I don't care -- I'm just not the melancholy nor the infinite sadness type. I came up with the number while speed reading through my astrology chart.Umm...what I'd like to know is, is a patch to reverse engineer the installation limits or the CD check or the phone activation is really that hard? How many man hours would it take to crank out a patch like that?

[Tango]

How many man hours would it take to crank out a patch like that?

If it's one of the established systems, not long.

 

My beef is with the fact it has been taken from sale for the "West", but is still available in original form to Russia/CIS as if nothing happened.

 

I wanted to legitimately purchase the Russian version, but due to piracy, I'm prevented from doing this, but it is still on sale in Russia/CIS? This doesn't make any sense to me, for the two reasons I stated in my first post in this thread, on page 6.

 

Instead, it only serves to offend me. :(

 

Piracy is a fact of life. As has been stated a zillion times now, these people wouldn't buy it in the first place. Please make it available to those of us who do actually wish to pay for it, so we can enjoy your many years of hard work.

 

Best regards,

Tango.

Edited October 27, 2008 by Tango

[leafer]

If it's one of the established systems, not long.

 

 

Good to know.

[GGTharos]

Since people have been mostly mature about this ...

 

FYI, ED bases it's CP decisions by their own personal experience of LO and FC.

 

I will note that although CP will not change, you may express your thoughts on CP in this thread in a mature and friendly manner. CP posts outside this thread will be removed as we will not allow this forum to just become a discussion on CP.

 

Again, if things get out of hand the thread will be closed.

[GGTharos]

In response to the staggered release, please realize that there are factors that caused this to happen that you may not see. Some of them are:

 

- ED's contractual obligation to 1C.

- The International (no, it is not ENGLISH, it is INTERNATIONAL. Many languages, not just 'english version') still has work being completed on it.

- The International version must go through rating bodies etc before being released in the west.

- Without using a western publisher, the time between providing final code to distributors and the product hitting store shelves is about three months. While companies going through publishers may be able to turn that time around faster, the reality is it will take 3 months for ED.

[Tango]

- Without using a western publisher, the time between providing final code to distributors and the product hitting store shelves is about three months. While companies going through publishers may be able to turn that time around faster, the reality is it will take 3 months for ED.

Even if using a UK publisher to release in the UK, it can still take this long, so not a big deal really.

 

Best regards,

Tango.

[leafer]

I wish ED would mod me up; I'd take care of business for them. I'd clean up this mess broke ass mountain style. :D

[CAT_101st]

that dosent sound very sanitary:puke:

[joey45]

....I'd clean up this mess broke ass mountain style. :D

 

Thinking more along the lines of Deliverance ;)

 

As soon as it goes to the rating people we'll have a better time scale.

Edited October 27, 2008 by joey45

[Vosene]

GGTharos

 

Since people have been mostly mature about this ...

 

FYI, ED bases it's CP decisions by their own personal experience of LO and FC.

 

I will note that although CP will not change, you may express your thoughts on CP in this thread in a mature and friendly manner. CP posts outside this thread will be removed as we will not allow this forum to just become a discussion on CP.

 

Again, if things get out of hand the thread will be closed.

 

Thanks GGTharos, the opportunity to provide feedback on the official forums is appreciated.

 

As one of EDs potential customers I'd like to say that the use of the chosen CP has put me off purchasing, as has online activation and limited installs DRM. While I respect EDs decisions and those of other people who don't have any issue with this, I would simply ask ED to focus more on their customers and less on the pirates as I'd don't think this a battle they will win. Meanwhile people willing to pay for their product are being lost in the cross-fire.

 

I still play Falcon with an online squad 10 years after it's release even though Microprose and Spectrum Holobyte are long gone. If it had this type of DRM on it then it would simply be a coaster sat on my shelf.

 

As a way forward: If ED were to promise to remove the DRM (including SF) say 6-12 months after release, by way of a patch, when most of the sales were done then I'm sure this would be viewed as a suitable compromise between protecting the product and giving paying customers want they want, they may even see an increase in sales as people like myself buy the product.

Edited October 27, 2008 by Vosene

[Feuerfalke]

Thanks for the input, GGTharos.

 

Personally I don't care if it will be SF or not. I never had a problem with SF, so I can't say anything negative on this sort of copy protection, other that it is mostly a waste of money. There are 20 programmers in a company trying to program a secure protection and 200.000 out there ready to crack it. It doesn't take much to realize these efforts are futile, as sad as it is.

Even running in danger to repeat myself: IMHO a solely printed manual with the game IMHO would be *FAR* more effective, just like it was initially done with the Falcon series. Going through the process of copying or scanning 500+ pages of manual, maybe even including copy-protected ink would be a lot harder to "crack" and 99,999% of your customers would love to buy this sim with a printed manual, anyway, even if it would cost more than the average game.

 

But establishing sharper copy-protections for Western Release-Versions won't prevent the cracked version from spreading, nor will it increase protection on the Russian version. So the only circle of people who are directly effected by these things, are the loyal customers. :(

 

I'm not up to date on the DVD-Version, but if it will have limited activation, too, I won't buy BS, sorry.

[159th_Viper]

At the Price one is requested to Pay for the End-Product that one gets, even with an Eccentric quirk or two.....An Ultra-High-Fidelity Sim vs Less than a Night out on the Pi$$.....It's a No-Brainer :doh:

 

Hell - Even if it Shipped with a MiniMe Chuck Norris Doll for Enforcement it'll still be a No-Brainer........:D

 

 

 

One must not lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day, for ALL of us, the DCS series is just a Hobby........For ED and the team DCS is their Livelihood!

 

Personally I find it a Great Pity that the some of the posts do not reflect the above........and taking into account that it's evident in a Community such as ours I find it even more disconcerting and an even Greater Pity Indeed!

[Dudikoff]

Even running in danger to repeat myself: IMHO a solely printed manual with the game IMHO would be *FAR* more effective, just like it was initially done with the Falcon series. Going through the process of copying or scanning 500+ pages of manual, maybe even including copy-protected ink would be a lot harder to "crack" and 99,999% of your customers would love to buy this sim with a printed manual, anyway, even if it would cost more than the average game.

 

That's a very good idea. The packaging would have to be larger, but, I don't think this is the kind of game you would expect to buy in the supermarkeets anyway (I've read that they ultimately brought the game boxes down to these small DVD thingies we now have). In that case, I would suggest some manual updates to give it a more "official" look. The current format looks like a plain Word document to me. It would be cool to have some backgrounds and some stuff on the sides.

 

I'm not up to date on the DVD-Version, but if it will have limited activation, too, I won't buy BS, sorry.

 

It seems it will. I have a downloaded FC and it can really be a hassle with frequent computer upgrades and laptops so I'll have to get the CD version as well so I can play it ten years from now if I'm up to it.

 

I'll still buy the Black Shark and any other expansion, of course, but would still be hoping that a patch which removes the online activation might come some time in the future if this DCS system doesn't take off.

 

I have read somewhere that it's most important to have a working (or at least annoying) protection for the first few months when the interest and the sales is, thus, the highest. When the game comes closer to the end of its lifecycle, a patch without the protection is sometimes released (e.g. Soldiers: Heroes of WWII, Armed Assault, etc.).

 

I liked the Armed Assault protection. The first cracked version removed the DVD check, but there were some later checks which would let you play the game but would then interrupt you at the half of your mission or something. I think it took the pirates some time to detect and remove them all (which they did, eventually). Plus, the game had lots of bugs at first so there were a lot of patches coming. The later patches were checking the serial key and comparing it with the keys available on the internet (I don't know if there was a working keygen made available). ED could maybe follow the same way with serial checks in the patches (with some longer keys and complex algorythms for generating the keys). In that case, maybe the first release of Black Shark should not be completely bug-free :)

[Feuerfalke]

One must not lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day, for ALL of us, the DCS series is just a Hobby........For ED and the team DCS is their Livelihood!

 

Exactly!

 

That's right on spot.

 

 

But that also means that I don't have to buy it, but ED needs to sell it. :smilewink:

 

 

@ ijozic

 

I'm very sorry to hear that. There were several other games I was looking forward to for years, that had limited activations for DVD-Versions I didn't buy either. As you wrote, I'll hope for an official patch to remove that limitation then, before buying it.

Edited October 27, 2008 by Feuerfalke

[GranCalvo]

Thanks for the input, GGTharos.

 

Personally I don't care if it will be SF or not. I never had a problem with SF, so I can't say anything negative on this sort of copy protection, other that it is mostly a waste of money. There are 20 programmers in a company trying to program a secure protection and 200.000 out there ready to crack it. It doesn't take much to realize these efforts are futile, as sad as it is.

Even running in danger to repeat myself: IMHO a solely printed manual with the game IMHO would be *FAR* more effective, just like it was initially done with the Falcon series. Going through the process of copying or scanning 500+ pages of manual, maybe even including copy-protected ink would be a lot harder to "crack" and 99,999% of your customers would love to buy this sim with a printed manual, anyway, even if it would cost more than the average game.

 

But establishing sharper copy-protections for Western Release-Versions won't prevent the cracked version from spreading, nor will it increase protection on the Russian version. So the only circle of people who are directly effected by these things, are the loyal customers. :(

 

I'm not up to date on the DVD-Version, but if it will have limited activation, too, I won't buy BS, sorry.

 

That's what Blizzard says with "improve content in videogames". Create a good packacge is more effective against piracy than Limit activations.

[jamiroq]

now that there'll be activations on both the dvd and download versions it seems kind of pointless to sell two different versions of the game, imho. one version sold via download and on dvd would simplify things somewhat, i think. instead of activating the game via a key with limited activations the user could activate it via a master accout to which the key was tied (same as it's done with the digital-dl version of flaming cliffs). the account would be either the one used on www.digitalcombatsimulator.com or a new account, created when the game was installed. one account could be used to activate all the games in the dcs series, when their keys would be tied to that account.

the digital-dl version of armed assault uses a similar protection and it works nicely, imho. a steam-sans-steam approach :P.

i don't know if starforce supports that kind of activation, though. and implementing such a protection would probably be impossible this late in the game...

[funkman]

It is usualy a requisite from a publisher to put certain copy protection rather then a choice of the developer, in DCS case it might be differen. There is nothing wrong with having a limited amount of activations and then providing extra if needed, however this is not selling the product this is RENTAL. The whole point of purchase is that you own the item, it's yours, forever and in 200 years your great grand children would still own it. You never own a product with limited activations, you are Renting it and in my opinion it should be clearly marketed as so. Just like the licenses for big software packages are (photshop, 3dmax etc). I believe this is something that is being addressed by the game at the moment but the argument is that a lot less people would buy the product which they will never own.

[deviletk]

The thing is though that people that crave flight sims of this caliber WILL buy it. And since we who baught the sim can prove it also can reactivate more installations, i see no real problems. The real problem would be imo that later on ED wont support BS and the installations runs out. But if that happens, maybe there is an option to deactivate the limitation. Who knows.

 

So maybe this is just paranoia from our side.

 

Regards

Alex

[Kuky]

I personally don't like activations especially if they are limited. I don't like gaving to put the disk in the drive either. I actually quite like the idea that instead of making such SP better approach would be not to have any PDF files on the disk itself and no keyboard bindings etc. Everything from key bindings, tutorials and learning info about the systems etc should be on printed manual that should be available only with boxed version. I believe this would completely eliminate anyone piracy as for anyone who'd wanna play this would find it impossoble to learn anything without printed manual. I believe in this case torrenting the disk content would be useless... and I don't see people being able to download full printed manual online. I guess people could still scan the book but I don't think that would be nearly as effective?

[deviletk]

Completelly agree with you there Kuky. PDF manuals makes the pirates able to fully use the pirated programs. The sim people would buy the sim even if it was a bit more expensive due to a printed manual.

 

However, a cracker can also scan the printed manual and release it as PDF along with the cracked sim. Much more work, but we know how much some of these people work to become (in)famous...