Scandalous news about Starforce

[Aldarion666]

From Celestail Heavens, a Heroes of Might & Magic V fansite:

The Starforce made the headlines once again when an administrator of their forum posted a link to a torrent site distributing Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords, as a proof that software piracy was bad for sales. The post has since been edited. The publisher of the game, Stardock, reacted by posting a rather diplomatic editorial on their own forums, calling the admin's action unnecessary. The post is also an interesting description of the current state of software piracy, along with Stardock's own way to deal with the issue: "Our primary weapon to fight piracy is through rewarding customers through convenient, frequent, free updates. If you make it easy for users to buy and make full use of your product or service legitimately then we believe that you'll gain more users from that convenience than you'll lose from piracy."

Here's the image of the incriminated thread (torrent censured)
http://www.galciv2.com/temp/starfo2.jpg

So...Starforce just hit a new low...no serious developer should have relation with a such self-righteous comany like it.

Spread the news EVERYWHERE, maybe this time we can bring some good developer back to reason...

[!HaGaR!]

Sorry, bit confused... Can someone explain to me what the above means and what the .jpg should show us?

Who is reacting how and why...

Sorr, if its a dumb question, but I didn´t get the point.
English is not my native language...

GRx

[munsterbuster]

In short words, one of the Starforce crew is trying to hype their protection on a very low performance. They try to argue, that Galactic Civilizations 2 would been sold more with a protection.

[maylat]

thats is not ture you can get in torren toca 3 for example or other starforce game and i dont thik this afect the sales, if is true right now there not be any games for pc or consoles along time ago now this is my tough i dont suport warez but there is people or countries they cant suport buy a game if they dont downloas anyway they dont buy a game ,why the game company instead spending money in protection dont make a games more cheaps like 20 us or less , anyway i alwasy buy the original i only need a backup ,and i dont buy starforce games
sorry for my english

Originally Posted by munsterbuster

In short words, one of the Starforce crew is trying to hype their protection on a very low performance. They try to argue, that Galactic Civilizations 2 would been sold more with a protection.

[I_Will_Never_Die]

Thats the most stupid thing Ive ver heard. Piracy does infact affect only a little or doesnt affect the sales. People who but pirated goods are the ones who can't afford the game in the first place. Meaning they dont have the money, not that they have the money but wont spend it on the game.

Anyways, someone should post on that pathetic forum a link to a torrent where people can download POP :TTT (a starforce protected game) just to embarass those bastards.

[DABhand]

Originally Posted by I_Will_Never_Die

Thats the most stupid thing Ive ver heard. Piracy does infact affect only a little or doesnt affect the sales. People who but pirated goods are the ones who can't afford the game in the first place. Meaning they dont have the money, not that they have the money but wont spend it on the game.

Anyways, someone should post on that pathetic forum a link to a torrent where people can download POP :TTT (a starforce protected game) just to embarass those bastards.

Spoken like a true Warez Protector..


1. Its nothing to do with money, ok, it doesnt matter if it was £200 or £20 or even £2, people would still steal it. People who buy from Pirates are infact no net connection or very slow connection, if they had broadband well they wouldnt buy it if they could download it.

It doesnt matter what excuse is used, ive seen and heard em all. Simple fact is people are thiefs.

2. No lets not get people to do that with torrent links.

3. Of course it affects income, nobody is buying it! It isnt such a hard concept. You buy game they make money, you no buy game and steal it they no make money, multiply by 100000's of people who download it = big possible drop in income.

[rlsuth]

It was stupid of Starforce, because I can tell you for certain, Galactic Civ. 2 would have had, at least, one less sale (me), if it had included Starforce.


Not only that, but the point is, yes people will download the game, but they cant get it working because it badly needs patches, and those you get from registering with Stardock.

[XdaywalkerX]

for germans

http://www.krawall.de/news.php?s=Kb5...&news_id=19376

[BarryB]

!HaGaR!, basically a Starforce employee has posted a link to a Torrent Website where a 'warez' copy of Galactic Civilizations II, another Developers game, can be downloaded!

This was done to show how widespread piracy is, not to encourage it, but the way in which it was done has made Stardock, the developer of Galactic Civilizations II, not very happy as people could have gone there and download the game.

This was a bit stupid of Starforce.