Proposal Discussion How to beat the software pirates... lenslok

[Ben Ryder]

How can we beat the software pirates or should we even bother.

How about one of these?

Good ol' Len'

 

[Memnoch]

It would be far cheaper to print out varying sizes of circular pieces of paper, lining up the holes to represent pages and lines from a manual. Much easier to photocopy than a lenslok though, sadly. Though the better ones are printed black on brown to make this trickier.

Spoiler

 

[Evilroco]

I remember after first encountering Elite on our shared BBC B .Awsome

Then purchasing a nicely boxed Firebird(BT wasn't it?) Spectrum version to go with my very own Speccy+ and kempston , then the often hours of frustration trying to decipher the code with my Lenslok™ until I started plotting many of the characters on graph paper.

Character building you could say

 

[Iain M Norman]

Character building you could say

*Groan!*

 

[Evilroco]

*Groan!*

Thank you , thank you :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frd53vbCHLg

 

[Aleksej]

Software pirates' problem should be solved by setting up right prices for different regions of the world, even for different countries. Having pretty good monthly income (like myself) it is possible to purchase software, however lots of people here in Latvia have minimal salary which is about 300EUR per month. How can this people afford to buy AAA title game with a price of 70 EUR for Europe, which is a quarter of their monthly income? The same game in US would have a price of $70 (much less than 70EUR), even Steam UK prices in £ are lower than Steam prices in EUR.

 

[Harrimon Hoxx]

You've taken me back to the time my friend stood on mine and broke it. I didn't think you could get a replacement. I still have the occasional nightmare.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

It would be far cheaper to print out varying sizes of circular pieces of paper, lining up the holes to represent pages and lines from a manual. Much easier to photocopy than a lenslok though, sadly. Though the better ones are printed black on brown to make this trickier.

Spoiler

i remember rocket ranger on the amiga having one of those.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Software pirates' problem should be solved by setting up right prices for different regions of the world, even for different countries. Having pretty good monthly income (like myself) it is possible to purchase software, however lots of people here in Latvia have minimal salary which is about 300EUR per month. How can this people afford to buy AAA title game with a price of 70 EUR for Europe, which is a quarter of their monthly income? The same game in US would have a price of $70 (much less than 70EUR), even Steam UK prices in £ are lower than Steam prices in EUR.

i believe steam has 2 euro price tiers. low and high. IIRC DB has said he is not concerned about piracy. He said there is so much that pirates will miss out on by playing an offline copy that it may almost end up being the gateway into buying the main game. the thing with lower prices is that many people will just use a proxy and get the game cheap. I know people who got titanfall from brazillian origin i think it was for half the price of the uk.

 

[Aleksej]

i believe steam has 2 euro price tiers. low and high. IIRC DB has said he is not concerned about piracy. He said there is so much that pirates will miss out on by playing an offline copy that it may almost end up being the gateway into buying the main game. the thing with lower prices is that many people will just use a proxy and get the game cheap. I know people who got titanfall from brazillian origin i think it was for half the price of the uk.

Most of the games I buy are playable offline. Proxy did not work with Origin for me. Also Origin uses Digital River, which checks that credit card address matches the address entered in billing. If not, than you get you credit card and bank account locked for any purchases via Digital River you will need all the luck you can get to unlock bank account because Digital River support will tell you that it is not their problem and you should contact the seller and EA support is the worst support you can get they do nothing to resolve this problem, they even do not want to try contacting Digital River if you tell that the problem might be with Digital River. Ubisoft has easily resolved my problem when I said that it is Digital River that might block transactions.

 

[Valkyrie]

Trying to stop piracy wont work and will only make things more difficult for legitimate customers.

Besides the fact we bought a DRM free version of the game, even if updates were only available through Frontiers servers, software crackers will find a way and use that to gloat to others.

I think Frontiers best bet is to be involved with their community which will garner respect from gamers who will make an effort to spend money on their products. Consumer trust will go a long way, especially where others are failing.

 

[Jason S]

FD cannot stop piracy for the SP experience.

They do have control over the official living and changing elite universe on their servers and that cannot be pirated, so I would think they should not worry too much about piracy, just make sure all their patents and IP's are in order.

 

[argus1]

Could pricing of Elite be less like capitalist corporate state $ or £, and more related to the hours of labour of the buyer? Of course then you don't want a senior bialout broker at the bundesbank hiring a Latvian bricklayer to buy ED for him, so how about if a Latvian bricklayer buys ED for a price equal to n hours of bricklaying in Latvia, that copy won't work at an ip adress in Berlin. It would be a huge software challenge to authenticate buyers, and the saussage eating millionaire would say that it was a gross invasion of privacy to have to declare his excessive earnings so that workers everywhere else get the game for a lower price than he'd have to pay. How else could it be done fairly?

 

[Aleksej]

Could pricing of Elite be less like capitalist corporate state $ or £, and more related to the hours of labour of the buyer? Of course then you don't want a senior bialout broker at the bundesbank hiring a Latvian bricklayer to buy ED for him, so how about if a Latvian bricklayer buys ED for a price equal to n hours of bricklaying in Latvia, that copy won't work at an ip adress in Berlin. It would be a huge software challenge to authenticate buyers, and the saussage eating millionaire would say that it was a gross invasion of privacy to have to declare his excessive earnings so that workers everywhere else get the game for a lower price than he'd have to pay. How else could it be done fairly?

ED price is 40EUR, it is cheaper than most of AAA titles so it is affordable to more people. Also this price is the same for all regions.

 

[Toumal]

I hate the word "piracy" because you're not commandeering a vessel and executing its crew. You could as well say "Software company murdering", same hyperbole.

But if it's about freeloaders and people copying the game without paying you for it, there's two very effective steps to do this:

1) Make buying the product more convenient that pirating it, and

2) Treat illegitimate copies as a distribution method.

(Actually, David Braben himself said that last one in one of his talks to investors, when someone asked him whether he worries about "software piracy")

Do I torrent music these days? Hardly! Well, only if I can't get it on amazon or something like that (See Point 1), because then the inconvenience of using bittorrent and potentially waiting for days to get an obscure album to finally get some seeders is potentially worth it. The moment it's on amazon or bandcamp however? Why bother with torrents when I can get it RIGHT NOW, in great quality as DRM-free MP3? I'll gladly pay a euro a track on bandcamp, knowing that a large chunk goes to the artist AND I even get a silly FLAC if I ever wanted that

But I digress. Make buying the game easier than pirating it and set the price point right, and the few people pirating it would not have been your customers anyway.

 

[Styggron]

I still have my two lensloks
Great piece of history.

I think it would be really funny to have a tick box in ED where it would activate the fact you had to look something up in the manual. I know it would not be practical and it would be unnecessary code....I'm just saying it for a bit of fun. people would only use it once or twice...so not really worth it. I am one of those people that love big manuals, I read them all cover to cover plan things before I jump in. Part of the experience for me. Dare I say immersion ?

Although a wireframe mode would be fantastic especially for my poor laptop. Yeah yeah I know I need to get something better but I'm not......yet.....

 

[Dante80]

The best defense against "Piracy", is to make your product so good that people would want to buy it, even after playing it pirated. There will always be people that will pirate it and never pay a dime, but those people are irrelevant. They would never pay a dime anyway.

Essentially, saying that you cannot compete with free is like saying that you cannot compete, period.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...-free-is-saying-you-cant-compete-period.shtml

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I hate the word "piracy" because you're not commandeering a vessel and executing its crew. You could as well say "Software company murdering", same hyperbole.


But I digress. Make buying the game easier than pirating it and set the price point right, and the few people pirating it would not have been your customers anyway.

Agh its the "Hyperbole police again

however this time you are wrong.....just because 1 definition of piracy is having a beard, a peg leg, a hook for a hand and a parrot, whilst swigging rum from a tankard does not mean that calling software theft piracy is hyperbole

unless of course you are going to send the oxford dictionary to hyperbole prison for crimes against extravagant speech

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/piracy



(which reminds me... I really must check out the new Assassins Creed)

 

[Aleksej]

Could pricing of Elite be less like capitalist corporate state $ or £, and more related to the hours of labour of the buyer? Of course then you don't want a senior bialout broker at the bundesbank hiring a Latvian bricklayer to buy ED for him, so how about if a Latvian bricklayer buys ED for a price equal to n hours of bricklaying in Latvia, that copy won't work at an ip adress in Berlin. It would be a huge software challenge to authenticate buyers, and the saussage eating millionaire would say that it was a gross invasion of privacy to have to declare his excessive earnings so that workers everywhere else get the game for a lower price than he'd have to pay. How else could it be done fairly?

Here you are joking about Latvia, however do you know the prices on EA titles in Russia? All games are about 2 times cheaper than EA Europe. The same applies to UBI. So it is perfectly doable.

Steam offers games in Russia for significantly lower prices and they have implemented exactly what you have written, e.g. you can get Assassin's Creed Black Flag Digital Deluxe Edition for as much as about 20EUR under the following condition: "This version of the game will only be playable in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan".

 

[Phil^]

I still have my two lensloks
Great piece of history.

I think it would be really funny to have a tick box in ED where it would activate the fact you had to look something up in the manual. I know it would not be practical and it would be unnecessary code....I'm just saying it for a bit of fun. people would only use it once or twice...so not really worth it.

Agreed if it is along the lines of the Frontier style police check.
I'm almost certain I gained a grey or two back as a kid when I misplaced the manual and had to go on a massive tidying/hunt to find it again.