Pay to Play?

magick

Just touching on the point that when doom 3 was leaked on the internet a lot of people downloaded/ played and never bothered to buy the game, with the links for p2p software out there now, and DSL on the cheap and getting (i hope) cheaper its more wide spread for people to downad movies/games/music for "free" , so if you had say....the latest game/movie, on your hard drive would you pay full price for the "offical" one?

Syth

People have been able to download music off the internet for years now. The music industry hasn't collapsed, infact sales reached record highs this year (or was it last year). I think a lot of industries (like music, film, gaming) should look at their existing business model, look at recent technological developments, and cop on that they should either change or the market will make them change. You don't have to get every single user to pay for your product. This isn't like manufacturing, where every item cost a little bit on it's own, you just need enough income to stay in business.

R_Tribesman

Well, i'm on a t1 downstream and when it comes to games i usually download them to try it out, and if im impressed i'll go to the store the next day and buy it(thats presuming i dont already know this game is gonna be uber, in which case i'll just buy it). Theres nothing like actually owning a game that you think is good, plus it supports the company in a small way therefore your contributing in a very small way to a possible sequel in the future .

I would buy all of my games but i supposed A:Im just too lazy go to the store. B: I couldnt be bothered waiting the couple of days delivery with online stores. I can download games in no time on this baby *pats his modem*.


Niall.

RuggieBear

R_Tribesman wrote:

Well, i'm on a t1 downstream and when it comes to games i usually download them to try it out, and if im impressed i'll go to the store the next day and buy it(thats presuming i dont already know this game is gonna be uber, in which case i'll just buy it). Theres nothing like actually owning a game that you think is good, plus it supports the company in a small way therefore your contributing in a very small way to a possible sequel in the future .

I would buy all of my games but i supposed A:Im just too lazy go to the store. B: I couldnt be bothered waiting the couple of days delivery with online stores. I can download games in no time on this baby *pats his modem*.


Niall.

Where do you get a t1 from? :cool:

RuggieBear

Syth wrote:

People have been able to download music off the internet for years now. The music industry hasn't collapsed, infact sales reached record highs this year (or was it last year). I think a lot of industries (like music, film, gaming) should look at their existing business model, look at recent technological developments, and cop on that they should either change or the market will make them change. .

I agree with most of that up till

You don't have to get every single user to pay for your product. This isn't like manufacturing, where every item cost a little bit on it's own, you just need enough income to stay in business

Developers will be taking a gigantic risk if they don't get every user to pay for their product. What's the incentive for them to spend 4 years of their lifes producing a game (at huge cost) if they are not going to get more than "enough income to stay in bussiness"!?

R_Tribesman

NTL done 1mbit cable in parts of dublin up to recently when it upgraded to 1.5mbit for free. 600k was upgraded to 750k and 128k to 150k

Stephen

That's still not a T1. A T1 is a leased line - uncontended. You're contending for bandwidth with other NTL subscribers. Plus, we don't have T1's in Europe (They're a US/Japanese standard). Over here the equivalent is an E1 (2.048 Mbps).

LegacyUser

god damn. Why can't ntl spread those wings?

Come to Dun Laoighre...

RuggieBear

Stephen wrote:

That's still not a T1. A T1 is a leased line - uncontended. You're contending for bandwidth with other NTL subscribers. Plus, we don't have T1's in Europe (They're a US/Japanese standard). Over here the equivalent is an E1 (2.048 Mbps).

That's what i thought! I'm still dead jealous tho:D

Have to put up with Clicksilver..... :eek:

p

Rew

Iv a bit better then T1 (Doom 3 took less then 30 mins ) and I still buy games if they are worth playing and paying for, if they arnt they get deleated. The worry about Doom 3 is that it wouldnt work on my laptop (which it does, saying alot for the Pentium M 1.7 chip).

I mainly only play BFV which I have a legit copy of but tried out from a download first.

Syth

pekelly wrote:

Developers will be taking a gigantic risk if they don't get every user to pay for their product. What's the incentive for them to spend 4 years of their lifes producing a game (at huge cost) if they are not going to get more than "enough income to stay in bussiness"!?

Sounds like the same kind of FUD that has been said about OpenSource/Free Software/Linux for years.

Has development/innovation stopped in the open source world? No.

Also they might create games because they like creating games!

RuggieBear

You could well be right!! I really don't know enough about open source stuff to comment....I just feel that it's right that if these guys make a decent product they should be rewarded for doing so...

But on a kinda related note....

i think it's retarded the amount of effort that goes into anti-piracy measures. FFS a cracked version of DOOM3 was on net within a couple of days of it going gold.

Farcry wont allow me to have any of my virtual drives...that really pissed me off. It almost drove me to get a cracked version of the game just so i could run some of my other perfectly legit software...Bastards!

Why should i be pissed of and struggling to install a game i bought, while a warez monkey has no such troubles and gets the game for free...

Anyway i hope my contradictory statements kinda make sense!!?
p

Rew

pekelly wrote:

You could well be right!! I really don't know enough about open source stuff to comment....I just feel that it's right that if these guys make a decent product they should be rewarded for doing so...

Farcry wont allow me to have any of my virtual drives...that really pissed me off. It almost drove me to get a cracked version of the game just so i could run some of my other perfectly legit software...Bastards!

Why should i be pissed of and struggling to install a game i bought, while a warez monkey has no such troubles and gets the game for free...

Have you tried Deamon Tools? BFV wont work if a virtual drive on the machine but it cant tell the diferance between a Deamon tools virtual drive and a real one.

Have to have the CD in the drive is a pain in the ass. I play off a laptop and it means I have to drag the bloody CD's everywhere.

Funny thing about the groups that release games, they could hack the servers not to require valid keys but they dont. They want people to buy a copy of the full game.

RuggieBear

Rew wrote:

Have you tried Deamon Tools? BFV wont work if a virtual drive on the machine but it cant tell the diferance between a Deamon tools virtual drive and a real one.

Have to have the CD in the drive is a pain in the ass. I play off a laptop and it means I have to drag the bloody CD's everywhere.

Funny thing about the groups that release games, they could hack the servers not to require valid keys but they dont. They want people to buy a copy of the full game.

Yeah mate i use use daemon tools and clonecd....farcry wouldn't play with either installed on my machine....

p

Ponster

I got DOOM a few hours after it came out 'cos I just couldn't wait anymore. I had it preordered but it still isn't offically out here in France.

I used to admin an FXP board until recently with 2000+ members and I've been impressed by how many bought the game when they could have just leeched it. I imagine it'll be the same for Half Life 2 and Quake 4. I guess it's the online element that forces some to pay for something that they'd rather not pay for?

But in saying that, we have a Soldier of Fortune II server running and while we could disable the CD-KEY checks we prefer to leave them on so that only those that have bothered to buy the game get to play as at least it helps weed out the time-wasters.

Rew

pekelly wrote:

Yeah mate i use use daemon tools and clonecd....farcry wouldn't play with either installed on my machine....

p

Thats a pain, I found that taking the drive letter off the clone drive worked when I was still using clone cd or Alcohol 120%

RuggieBear

Rew wrote:

Thats a pain, I found that taking the drive letter off the clone drive worked when I was still using clone cd or Alcohol 120%

You're telling me....and they wonder why more and more people prefer cracked versions.... :rolleyes:

Syth

The industry is hurting itself with all this anti-piracy stuff. It's driving people to cracked copies. Plus it's interfering with people legitimate use of their software. The music industry seems to have leasd the way here. Hopefully they will cop on eventually.

swiss

I would agree that a lot of game developers should try to develop their retailing model to take advantage of the better connections which people have. When it comes to the purchase price of a game, which is typically EUR60 for new releases, much of that price is taken by packaging, shipping, distribution and of course the retailers costs. Imagine the much lower cost model associated with giving the option to consumers to download the software for a price. I could easily see prices dropping to at least a third of their RRP's. In this case, I could only see the hardcore warez monkey going to the hassle as well as the risk of finding an illegal distribution channel, for a limited version of the game (i.e cannot be played online).

Stephen

But of course, they'd just charge the retail price (or very close to it) for a downloadable version anyway.