Kotakoooed
So apparently the copy protection blog post made it to kotaku. Some reasonably intelligent debate followed, which makes a change, although I got a lot of blog comments that just had a go at me, or told me to go get another job etc. ho hum.
To clarify:
I don't like DRM and have historically not used it
I totally understand and sympathise with honest gamers who are inconvenienced by on-line
checks
I don't want to spend any time on this, or inconvenience anyone
I don't feel entitled to earn a living from my games, but if people like them enough to play beyond the free demo, I feel i have earned the right to charge them $22.95 for it.
I will probably go ahead with on-line one-off server validation, to prevent casual piracy. I will also almost certainly remove that with a free patch within a year. The chances of 'me going bankrupt' and leaving people with games they cannot play is zero.
People get very upset and angry if you say you are going to do something about piracy. The thing is, those people almost never make their living from developing digital content. Working your nuts off for a year to create something original, and then seeing it being given away by other people for nothing the day it goes on sale is totally soul destroying. Especially when the idiots doing this get upset if someone does not 'thank them for their work', meaning their forum post with a rapidshare link.
Something has to be done about piracy if we expect to still get anything but half-finished amateur content in the future. piracy is getting too bad, and the PC market is already falling to bits. Who really expects people who want to keep making commercial PC games not to try and do something about it?
To clarify:
I don't like DRM and have historically not used it
I totally understand and sympathise with honest gamers who are inconvenienced by on-line
checks
I don't want to spend any time on this, or inconvenience anyone
I don't feel entitled to earn a living from my games, but if people like them enough to play beyond the free demo, I feel i have earned the right to charge them $22.95 for it.
I will probably go ahead with on-line one-off server validation, to prevent casual piracy. I will also almost certainly remove that with a free patch within a year. The chances of 'me going bankrupt' and leaving people with games they cannot play is zero.
People get very upset and angry if you say you are going to do something about piracy. The thing is, those people almost never make their living from developing digital content. Working your nuts off for a year to create something original, and then seeing it being given away by other people for nothing the day it goes on sale is totally soul destroying. Especially when the idiots doing this get upset if someone does not 'thank them for their work', meaning their forum post with a rapidshare link.
Something has to be done about piracy if we expect to still get anything but half-finished amateur content in the future. piracy is getting too bad, and the PC market is already falling to bits. Who really expects people who want to keep making commercial PC games not to try and do something about it?
posted by cliff at
3:14 PM
