Lame NoCD Cracks !

[DABhand]

Originally Posted by omni555

One other thing about the inflated prices... I have heard a number of people talk about pirating games SIMPLY BECAUSE of the often outrageous prices. If the cost could come DOWN a LITTLE (maybe by eliminating the expense of copy protecting the games???) I know at LEAST a dozen MORE people who would become PAYING CUSTOMERS and actually BUY games rather than go through the hassle of pirating them!

I do not CONDONE their actions, but in today's climate I can at least UNDERSTAND it.

Unfortunately not true because...

1. People are greedy bastards and wont buy nothing even if it was cheap

2. Price excuse has been around since 8bit computers, its just an excuse to hide the fact that most wont admit they are stealing.

[Joe Forster/STA]

And game publishers are stealing from you (who playes the game) and the game manufacturer (who creates the game) because they charge money for doing pretty much nothing useful. See the same problem with pressed audio CD's; it's not as black and white as you'd think...

[DABhand]

Its up to them what they want to charge, like I will charge what I like if I fix someones PC. Thats how it is.

Again the price excuse, still doesnt mean you have to steal it yes? If you disagree with a price then dont buy it.

At the end of the day, people are gonna steal even if it is affordable.


And for the people who are going to come in and say Prices blah de blah, remember why the prices are so high.

Its like the old conundrum, "What came first the chicken or the egg?" as in this case "What came first high prices or piracy?"

[Joe Forster/STA]

Hey DABhand,

Apparently, you need to learn a bit more about this topic - docs are lying around the Net...! Game publishers say they want to disallow "casual pirates" from copying original CD's/DVD's by introducing copy protection.

However, exactly "casual pirates" are the ones who are having major problems with the sophisticated and, as Starforce's example shows, sometimes very incompatible copy protections. Also, "mass CD/DVD duplicators", complete factories manufacturing pirated copies of CD's/DVD's in some countries, are not affected as they have enough money for their own means of defeating, circumventing or duplicating the copy protection.

Conclusion: With copy protection, trying to make the honest customer stay honest is similar to trying to make the tall customer not get shorter. (A not letter-by-letter quote from a conference about the pointlessness of DRM.)

[Edit] Damn, I forgot to mention that "casual pirates" are the usual people who might be asked to copy their original games for the neighbor, without knowing they break the law by doing that...

Joe

[DABhand]

Originally Posted by Joe Forster/STA

Hey DABhand,

Apparently, you need to learn a bit more about this topic - docs are lying around the Net...! Game publishers say they want to disallow "casual pirates" from copying original CD's/DVD's by introducing copy protection.

However, exactly "casual pirates" are the ones who are having major problems with the sophisticated and, as Starforce's example shows, sometimes very incompatible copy protections. Also, "mass CD/DVD duplicators", complete factories manufacturing pirated copies of CD's/DVD's in some countries, are not affected as they have enough money for their own means of defeating, circumventing or duplicating the copy protection.

Conclusion: With copy protection, trying to make the honest customer stay honest is similar to trying to make the tall customer not get shorter. (A not letter-by-letter quote from a conference about the pointlessness of DRM.)

Joe

Im not sure as to what your argument is refering to in my posts. But yes I agree there is hardware that will replicate a hard-pressed master many times, you can get raid towers for home PC's that can do the same job.

They may have money, but that doesnt mean they have the means to defeat any protection.

Some protections like the PSX and PS2 games have their protection on the outer tracks of a disc, impossible for burners to burn there, but as said before if they have a master then it can be done on large scale machinery that spit out discs in seconds.

DRM as you pointed out will be the next step, and it is a bad one I agree on that, but at the same time publishers/developers have to protect their media, just like you protect your car with an alarm or a keycode lock. Again as I said its a business, and its about making money.

Sure it costs little to replicate discs and packaging, but when people are turning to piracy as a means, they businesses use this as an excuse to pump up prices and to in turn use whacky protections.

Its a Catch22 situation that will never go away, until perhaps the Cell CPU appears which promises to make protections go a step further.

[omni555]

Originally Posted by DABhand

Its up to them what they want to charge, like I will charge what I like if I fix someones PC. Thats how it is.

Again the price excuse, still doesnt mean you have to steal it yes? If you disagree with a price then dont buy it.

At the end of the day, people are gonna steal even if it is affordable.


And for the people who are going to come in and say Prices blah de blah, remember why the prices are so high.

Its like the old conundrum, "What came first the chicken or the egg?" as in this case "What came first high prices or piracy?"

DABhand, I can see much of what you are saying in this and your previous posts, but I am afraid that I cannot agree with you.

I have the ability to "pirate" almost EVERY game that I own - ues, I said OWN! - but I use this ability only to make things easier for me when I actually PLAY the game(s).

In the past, I have FREQUENTLY "pirated" copies of games when there was no good demo available, only to go out and BUY the retail copy when I saw that it was something that I would be wanting to continue to play. If the game was crap, I would simply destroy the "pirated" version and wave a fond "Bye-bye!" at the publisher!

There have been a NUMBER of games that, when the initially come out, are priced too high to make it practical for me to add to my collection. Usually, I wait either for them to drop down in price or to become available through the bargain bin or the "Pre-Owned" section of my local seller.

There ARE some lame-heads out there who just want to make a "game" out of getting whatever they can for nothing, and no matter WHAT anyone does, these people are ALWAYS going to find a way to GET what they want. They have a doggedness about them that makes it appear as a CHALLENGE to them personally when an "unbeatable" copy protection scheme is developed. Those people wouldn't buy a game if the games were FREE!!! They mostly enjoy the challenge of "getting one over" on the publishers, and THAT will never change.

The people I am referring to when I talk about lowering the prices to gain more PAYING customers are those who, like myself, don't see paying $40, $50, $60 and more for games that often come out buggy as hell and are often NOT what we anticipated. As I said earlier, I have MANY THOUSANDS of dollars worth of games within arms reach as I type this, and I know many OTHER people with similar collections - ALL bought and paid for with honestly earned money!

But getting back to the original topic, I firmly believe that copy protection is ONLY going to target those HONEST people who will be hurt by it in some way, and will NOT in ANY WAY affect those out there who are intent on getting "free" games to play.

As for who is laughing at whom, let me say THIS. The publishers are "laughing" at people like ME who would BUY and PAY FOR their games, and who are getting FRUSTRATED as all hell trying to get the game set up to run the way we WANT, but it is the REAL PIRATES who are sitting back laughing themselves SILLY at the PUBLISHERS for their lame attempts at making life harder for their TRUE CUSTOMERS while the PIRATES just take a few days longer and get what they want ANYWAY!

[Ehaaland]

moron. copy protection is there to deter piracy which means more people buy their games which means their games stay at a reasonable price. if there were no star force and such everyone would copy the game and to even make a profit the game companies would have to start charging 10-15 dollars more per game. now tell me that copy protection hurts the consumer when it keeps the price the same. also, the only reason copy protection causes you trouble is because you want to play the games you dont own. i can tell you with 99% assurance that if you didnt do anything to your system and you use NO cd cracks, every game in the market with copy protection will work, be it out of the box, or beyond no more than a simple patch from the manufacturer. sorry but it's the truth.

[Luciel]

Originally Posted by Ehaaland

i can tell you with 99% assurance that if you didnt do anything to your system and you use NO cd cracks, every game in the market with copy protection will work, be it out of the box, or beyond no more than a simple patch from the manufacturer. sorry but it's the truth.

WRONG! you need to do some research my friend, also, banned for a week, keep your language in the toilet

[Luci]

you're becoming more hatefull(is that correct???)than BW

[DABhand]

Originally Posted by omni555

DABhand, I can see much of what you are saying in this and your previous posts, but I am afraid that I cannot agree with you.

I have the ability to "pirate" almost EVERY game that I own - ues, I said OWN! - but I use this ability only to make things easier for me when I actually PLAY the game(s).

In the past, I have FREQUENTLY "pirated" copies of games when there was no good demo available, only to go out and BUY the retail copy when I saw that it was something that I would be wanting to continue to play. If the game was crap, I would simply destroy the "pirated" version and wave a fond "Bye-bye!" at the publisher!

There have been a NUMBER of games that, when the initially come out, are priced too high to make it practical for me to add to my collection. Usually, I wait either for them to drop down in price or to become available through the bargain bin or the "Pre-Owned" section of my local seller.

There ARE some lame-heads out there who just want to make a "game" out of getting whatever they can for nothing, and no matter WHAT anyone does, these people are ALWAYS going to find a way to GET what they want. They have a doggedness about them that makes it appear as a CHALLENGE to them personally when an "unbeatable" copy protection scheme is developed. Those people wouldn't buy a game if the games were FREE!!! They mostly enjoy the challenge of "getting one over" on the publishers, and THAT will never change.

The people I am referring to when I talk about lowering the prices to gain more PAYING customers are those who, like myself, don't see paying $40, $50, $60 and more for games that often come out buggy as hell and are often NOT what we anticipated. As I said earlier, I have MANY THOUSANDS of dollars worth of games within arms reach as I type this, and I know many OTHER people with similar collections - ALL bought and paid for with honestly earned money!

But getting back to the original topic, I firmly believe that copy protection is ONLY going to target those HONEST people who will be hurt by it in some way, and will NOT in ANY WAY affect those out there who are intent on getting "free" games to play.

As for who is laughing at whom, let me say THIS. The publishers are "laughing" at people like ME who would BUY and PAY FOR their games, and who are getting FRUSTRATED as all hell trying to get the game set up to run the way we WANT, but it is the REAL PIRATES who are sitting back laughing themselves SILLY at the PUBLISHERS for their lame attempts at making life harder for their TRUE CUSTOMERS while the PIRATES just take a few days longer and get what they want ANYWAY!

Well your one of the few that say this and do it, others use the same excuse to take away the fact they stole software bottom line.

Even if you do what you said you do, if no demo was available, you still stole the game.

Im not putting you down, far from it.

And yes at the end of the day its a business, they have to make money somehow.

But I disagree with you on the last paragraph, the people WHO are laughing is the CD-rw/DVD-rw manufacturers both media and hardware, they seen that kids with broadband are downloading illegally and seen the market for supplying the things to them for them to make copying profitable. Thats the biggest winners right there.