Indie game developer strikes back at pirates

[Icaras]

Apogee did Commander Keen? Yeah it was episodic but each was the length of a game. I think the first Duke Nukem was shareware. Jill of the Jungle episode one, also as long as normal game. Cosmo. That's just what I remember on my first Windows 3.0 pc.

Actually the whole idea of the "Apogee Model" was that they took the full game and split it into episodes, to encourage you to want to buy the rest.

Shareware was originally a system where people would basically share full version programs and then expect users to register/pay for it if they continued use, but these were generally small time programs but solo programmers. When Apogee came along, most people switch to their method and programmed in limits to unregistered software or only gave you part of a program.

[Gilian]

They complain so much about piracy while they keep increasing prices and keep bringing out games with way too many bugs/problems. "We are losing money but it is not our fault it's the consumers who steal from us!" After they ripped us off.

Life is not fair. I pay ridiculous prices for your products and get ripped off, I rip you off by downloading your products for free. Both are legal and both are unfair.

Make a great game, be fair (not greedy) and you will be rewarded.

[Evil Inside]

Actually all figures so far have shown that the losses due to piracy are miniscule at most. The vast majority of pirates would've never ever bought the game. What really hurts the industry are parasites such as Gamestop which etablish themselves on the back of the developers and publishers by leeching of their work without contributing in any kind of way.

That being said. This is hilarious and I love the reaction of the guy trying to research DRM. Sadly DRM only ends up hurting the people who actually play the game because pirates/crackers remove it altogether.

In massive corporations, piracy has a negligible effect yes, however in this case it has a much bigger and more dramatic effect on the producers since they're just an upstart and not a massive corporation.

[Seani]

Unfortunately I think the irony will be lost on a lot of these pirates.

[Gilian]

Would you be happy paying $20 for a game with 1/3rd the levels, 1/3rd the models, 1/3rd the graphics...

Basically we are already doing that. For games like BF3 and CoD they release DLC's for, to be realistic, insane prices. If I remember correctly the first DLC of either Black Ops or BF3 was already on the disc, all you had to do was transfer € 15 and download a file of a few kb to activate it.
Besides that, in a DLC that you paid € 15 for you only get a few maps which in older FPS games were created by the players themselves and were shared among them for free (counter-strike for example).

These companies will push it as far as they can to make as much money as possible. I really have no pitty for them. They also make ridiculous amounts of money that no human being needs. That's how it works in this world but I am really not going to defend them on this matter and I really don't feel bad when I download a movie or videogame.

---------- Post added 2013-05-10 at 01:30 PM ----------

I don't get this complaining anyway considering you can pick up almost any PC game a year later in the $10 bin. So what if you aren't playing every game at release? That's the cost of being a cheapskate.

Hell I remember when I was a kid and games would come out at $100 at release. Damn Australian dollar!

If you buy it a year later they make sure it is outdated. CoD titles come out every year, you can still play the older titles but they won't support them anymore and there is more chances on cheaters for example or other problems. Prices won't drop to € 10 either, maybe € 25.

[Deleted]

Basically we are already doing that. For games like BF3 and CoD they release DLC's for, to be realistic, insane prices. If I remember correctly the first DLC of either Black Ops or BF3 was already on the disc, all you had to do was transfer € 15 and download a file of a few kb to activate it.
Besides that, in a DLC that you paid € 15 for you only get a few maps which in older FPS games were created by the players themselves and were shared among them for free (counter-strike for example).

These companies will push it as far as they can to make as much money as possible. I really have no pitty for them. They also make ridiculous amounts of money that no human being needs. That's how it works in this world but I am really not going to defend them on this matter and I really don't feel bad when I download a movie or videogame.

I think it was Mass Effect 3 that had the Day 1 DLC content on the disk that you could unlock for free by changing an INI file. or pay to get.

When companies do trick like this I loose all respect for them, Fine if your going to release a DLC Do not do it on day one, and certainly do not put it on the installation disk and expect people to pay you for it.

[Nerraw]

I think it was Mass Effect 3 that had the Day 1 DLC content on the disk that you could unlock for free by changing an INI file. or pay to get.

When companies do trick like this I loose all respect for them, Fine if your going to release a DLC Do not do it on day one, and certainly do not put it on the installation disk and expect people to pay you for it.

The character's framework and his skills were on the disc in order to make the cutscenes properly, nothing else. Cinematics, recruitment mission, dialogues, etc. were all downloaded when you bought the DLC.