Interesting Approach to DRM free Anti Piracy.

Grumpypants

This is a funny way to highlight piracy, but also shows the pit falls of DRM free games. When 93% of the people playing have not paid for it.

Game Dev Simulator creators released a version onto Torrent sites. When your game studio starts making really high scoring games people start pirating them. Your studio loses money and goes bankrupt.

The posts are hilarious people who pirated the game complaining that they can't keep their studio open because of pirates.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/04/29/indie-development-sim-game-dev-tycoon-gives-pirates-a-taste-of-their-own-torrenting/

RedXIV

Saw this article this morning, absolutely brilliant form of DRM

Must be fairly heartbreaking to developers to see that much piracy of your game but on the same token, I like that they had such a sense of humour when building it.

returnNull

Grumpypants wrote: »

The posts are hilarious people who pirated the game complaining that they can't keep their studio open because of pirates.

lol one poster completely missing the point

Can i develop a DRM or something?

pH

Grumpypants wrote: »

This is a funny way to highlight piracy, but also shows the pit falls of DRM free games. When 93% of the people playing have not paid for it.

It's a cynical attempt to generate press and blog interest for a game which has (by their own admission) 240 people playing it worldwide who bought it.

Many games/products have used this form of protection, there a famous sound system that slightly screws with your track timing when it knows it's a copy, and plenty of games have messed with the player, making the game harder/buggier/unfinish-able rather that display a "game is copied - can't play" message.

Fnz

pH wrote: »

It's a cynical attempt to generate press and blog interest for a game which has (by their own admission) 240 people playing it worldwide who bought it.

I thought it a perfect fit for a game about game development.

Sabre0001

pH wrote: »

It's a cynical attempt to generate press and blog interest for a game which has (by their own admission) 240 people playing it worldwide who bought it.

And it's working. It's novel though the point seems lost on some of the pirates...i.e. that guy who complains about pirating and wonders about whether he should invest in DRM or even bother doing a next gen game.

degrassinoel

that's the funniest thing i've seen all day, class!

ShadowHearth

RedXIV wrote: »

Saw this article this morning, absolutely brilliant form of DRM

Must be fairly heartbreaking to developers to see that much piracy of your game but on the same token, I like that they had such a sense of humour when building it.

Reminds me of this :

The pink Scorpion of DOOM!

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/12/07/serious-sams-drm-is-a-giant-pink-scorpion/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91q5BtlxK0

pH

Sabre0001 wrote: »

And it's working. It's novel though the point seems lost on some of the pirates...i.e. that guy who complains about pirating and wonders about whether he should invest in DRM or even bother doing a next gen game.

Call me cynical but that post is just a little too perfect and "newsworthy"

Fnz

pH wrote: »

Call me cynical but that post is just a little too perfect and "newsworthy"

Hmm... it would be difficult to manufacture a better post. Then again, there's always going to be a couple of people with a keyboard and no sense of irony.

SeantheMan

ShadowHearth wrote: »

Reminds me of this :

The pink Scorpion of DOOM!

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/12/07/serious-sams-drm-is-a-giant-pink-scorpion/

It was mentioned in the OP's article link

That’s why it’s always great to see copy-protection measures that specifically target, and hilariously mess with, inveterate torrenters. Whether it’s Batman’s uncontrollable cape in Arkham Asylum, or Serious Sam 3′s immortal pink scorpion, pirate-specific hijinks provide the best kind of schadenfreude.

BizzyC

I liked the story so I decided to give the game a go.

The price tag seems a little high for what the game actually is, but saying that I played it for hours yesterday and completely lost track of time, so it's probably well worth it...

Zero-Cool

Thats class! Here is a related piece with brilliant Piracy measures by game devs.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/04/29/eight-of-the-most-hilarious-anti-piracy-measures-in-video-games?utm_campaign=twposts&utm_source=twitter

Nody

I preferred the chicken gun in Crysis :P

pablomakaveli

I remember in pirated copies of Arkham Asylum Batman couldnt glide or something like that.

Zero-Cool

pablomakaveli wrote: »

I remember in pirated copies of Arkham Asylum Batman couldnt glide or something like that.

Yeah thats one from the link above. Brilliant move by the devs. I bet they actually get complaints that the game is broken when they find they can't get onto the next part because the glide won't work haha

landsleaving

After seeing this I bought it as well, and I'm mostly noticing that it's near-identical to Game Dev Story, which I don't think they have anything to do with... and if so, seems a bit foolish to give out about people stealing your intellectual property, while basically doing the same thing.

Tremendous marketing though.

H3llR4iser

BizzyC wrote: »

I liked the story so I decided to give the game a go.

The price tag seems a little high for what the game actually is, but saying that I played it for hours yesterday and completely lost track of time, so it's probably well worth it...

Oh my, it's about 7 Euro! How can it be considered high? It's more or less the price of a cinema ticket, and surely enough a game will keep you entertained for a bit longer than 2 hours - and sometimes doesn't even need to feature explosions to do so

Of course I would agree with you in the case of some mainstream games, often priced at nearly 50 euro and not really offering much (to the point that not releasing a demo, probably in fear of showing off how cr@p the game really is, became quite common).

Rant mode ON - The real issue is that the general public simply does not understand the value and complexity of developing any game/software. The fact that most people (93.6%!) would pirate a game worth 7 euro is absolutely telling: In this case, the "but it costs too much!" argument is null and void, it's an amount of money that anybody with access to a computer can afford to pay.
Rant mode OFF

This said, how do you think the current inundation of free apps/games on iTunes and Google Play affect the "lack of value to development" perception?

BizzyC

For an Indie game with this apparent depth, €7 seems like a lot.

But as I said, after digging into it a while and seeing how much time it consumed without me noticing, it's a fair price.

degrassinoel

I bought it, it's worth every cent. great little game!

ShooterSF

I bought it as I like my sims. It's fun but flawed IMO. Don't think I'm spoiling anything as there is no real plot but if ou don't want to know anything about it skip this post now.


I find it goes through the years too fast and is lacking opposing studios to compete against. I wish the research options had some description text to explain it or even to add some flavour and I'd love for these game dev sims to have fictional consoles so you have to pick which ones to develop for without the knowledge of which will be a success. It could add another lay of strategy.

ShooterSF

Just finished a surreal game there where my company "Westwood" having made it big on PC adventure comedies were struggling in the medium sized game market but got signed by the equivalent of EA to make a military strategy game which I called C&C of course (even if it was for the gameboy) which was a huge success and we went on to release a few more games before overstretching ourselves on a big sequel to C&C and going bankrupt only to be bought out by said EA equivalent. Sad times!

BizzyC

I had a similar game where I stretched too far after having some success.
Have a new game going now, getting a good few medium titles out on the xbox/playstation2 equivilants.

I'm focusing on my engines though, with every release comes a flurry of research.
After any well rated release comes a new engine....

K.O.Kiki

I'll try the demo, but I can't afford any games at all right now