Lame NoCD Cracks !

[Joe Forster/STA]

Hey DABHand,

Let me rephrase what I want to say and be extremely concrete.

In China, there are complete factories that burn warezed CD's. Do they ask kids to download warez? No, they manage it themselves. Do they ask people to crack stuff for them? Doesn't matter as cracked stuff is available on the Net. Do they have problems with copy protected stuff? Of course, not. Are they making EXTREME profit with this? Oh, hell they do!

Your neighbor has a few kids. He doesn't want them to break his game CD's. Does he download warez from the Net? No, he hasn't even heard the word "warez" (yet). Does he know about the copy protection? Well, not yet, but as soon as he asks around and tries to back up his game CD's, he definitely will. At the end, will he be able to backup his stuff? Oh, hell he won't, not even after lots of struggles. Will the game publisher help him with sending him another copy of the CD,after his kids did manage to break the original? Yeah, for about 1/4-1/2 the price of another original.

Copy protection hurts the honest customer, the very person that all companies are making software for. Copy protection does NOT hurt people who try to make money from warez. And circumventing the copy protection has been an intellectual challenge for some people, just like "climbing the Himalaya, only for the damn reason that IT IS THERE" - and this is completely independent of warezing and pirating stuff...

Joe

[DABhand]

Im afraid to say that you seem to be fixed on the pro-warez arguments there.


Who said warez isnt hurting people, offcourse it does, the less thats bought the less money goes back into developers, next time their games will be crap because no-one had the decency to buy it or some job cuts cause they cant keep up with all the salaries, then that in turn hurts people around them, etc etc.


Copy Protections wouldnt be so severe if everyone werent greedy gits, thats a fact.


I know about protections as ive been removing them since amiga times and BBS's on 9600 baud modems! I still remember the fun of rewriting track 40 and injecting a intro into track 80 and 81.

But people still bought their games in a majority then, maybe around 70-80%ish.

Now with the advent of cheap broadband, kids find out how do use torrents, how to use XDCC bots, how to use ftp's, how to use newsgroups. And what will they do? They download and never pay.

But what I hate is when people have to use excuses to make their stealing look legal. "I wasnt going to buy the game so im not hurting anyone by downloading it" and the all time favourite of the mass "Im not buying any games as they are ripping us off with high prices".

Ill be the first person to put their hand up and say I once did it, everyone at one point has, maybe not games or movies but the most blatant mp3's. But now I choose to buy games as ive seen how piracy affects others, a guy (I wont name him) had a small time software house, he worked hard on a game he was working on and was looking at a projected $250k sales, the game an RTS was only $5 he made $30kish he couldnt pay for other things as he had to borrow money from a bank to start his venture. His site had a live chat script, sorta like the old livesupport script from years back, although you couldnt see him you could feel his pain in his words, he was apologising to people for not being able to send out his game to them after they paid him and was asking them to be patient. That then is when I decided to go down the straight and narrow.


I must say you have a very very jaded view of the scene, and very pro-warez in a manner of speaking.


At the end of the day, im not gonna buy a new TV so ill steal yours, that would be exceptable yes? Or maybe grab your (for arguments sake) wedding video and mass-manufacturer it and sell it, you gonna be happy im making a mint out of it at your expense? No offcourse not.

anyways

[/end of rant]

[kosmiq]

Uhmm.. Just a little thing I've noticed here... Isn't this thread about "Lame NoCD cracks"?

Or it might just be me getting it all wrong.
Please do not take this the wrong way now, the discussion is indeed a very important one and has some good arguments going.
And sure the thread creator do mention "The only people who could possibly find a LameNoCD crack useful are people who don't own/have the original game CD, you know who you are! ".
But still, come on...

Anyway now when the discussion is up and running I can contribute with my little part to...
Sure warez ain't really good as they do hurts the creator of it and brings down the profit. But in some ways I can see usefullness in warez too.
If you are little unsure wether to buy that game or not. It is always on the web and you can try it out (I am no "go-warez thinking here, only realistic).
So when you've tried it a little you might think "this game kicks some serious *ss. So what do you do next? Well you buy it of course.
So in that way you can save your precious money (in case you don't have that much to spend on games) and not waste them on some crappy games.
Sure this will result in that the developer won't get as much cash, and may stop future development from them. But still, from a consumer perspective it is good as you can find out which games to support and not with your hard earned money.
Where the real problems is with those that downloads everything to simply play, brag, delete and never think of it again.
Those are the people that kills developers. Serious gamers owns the original and uses that. If they ever bought a crappy game it will be changed for something else anyway.

Live as I learn, no way!

[DABhand]

I know what your saying. But..

Wouldnt it be nicer to hire the game and try it that way?

Cause if you download it you are stealing it, cause when you buy a game your buying the right to play it, if you didnt buy you dont have the right to play it. If you follow me

[Joe Forster/STA]

Hi DABhand,

Your reply clearly shows that you haven't read enough documentation about the inherent problems of DRM - and, as part of it: copy protection - yet... It's quite hard to argue with someone who's not (yet) on your level of knowledge. However, as you're definitely an intelligent guy, I wanted to take this opportunity to make you see and understand...

Im afraid to say that you seem to be fixed on the pro-warez arguments there.

Read again what I wrote. I was talking about "warez factories" being a pain in the @ss and the average customer knowing nothing at all - in the beginning - about warez. This is not a pro-warez argument.

Who said warez isnt hurting people, offcourse it does, the less thats bought the less money goes back into developers, next time their games will be crap

Most of the money goes to the game publisher, not the game developer. Also, a _true_ game developer will stay up through the night, not eat, not drink, just to be able to release his game - it's not about money, it's about fame. Yes, it has limits so there definitely are tons of unfortunate games that have never been released but that's the minority (I hope!).

The reason for crap games is the lack of ideas or enthusiasm, or downright bad programmers/graphicians/musicians or idiotic management. _Not_ the lack of money! See freely downloadable nice small games (e.g. retro-style remakes of old games) or serious ones - Live for Speed demos were free - as an example of free but good games!

Copy Protections wouldnt be so severe if everyone werent greedy gits, thats a fact.

What you fail to understand is that the "greedy gits" are those "warez factories", not the average users. Yes, there are plenty of people who like getting games for low prices or for free - otherwise there would be no need for these "warez factories" - but, and I'd like to stress this again, it is the "warez factories" that actually MAKE MONEY with warez, not the average users, whether they A) buy original games, B) buy pirated games or C) download pirated games for free. And this is the biggest problem: game publishers are so short-sighted that they use copy protection, not understanding that this WILL give problems to the average users - part of which do buy original games! - but it WILL NOT give problems to "warez factories". Do you understand it now?

a guy (I wont name him) had a small time software house, he worked hard on a game he was working on and was looking at a projected $250k sales, the game an RTS was only $5 he made $30kish he couldnt pay for other things as he had to borrow money from a bank to start his venture.

Yes, this is unfortunate. This is why (small) game developers ask for the financial support of (large) game publishers. However, this means that the game publisher will raise the price of the game significantly, and a very large percent of the profit will remain at the game publisher. But this is how loans, banks and life in general works. If you don't have enough money in the first place, you're f*cked, no matter what you do: others, who give you a loan, will take back much more afterwards.

At the end of the day, im not gonna buy a new TV so ill steal yours, that would be exceptable yes?

Oh, please, spare me this bullsh*t! You and I both know that software is way different, by its nature, than a "physical object"...

Joe

[DABhand]

Difference in physical yes, but ideals are the same im sure you will agree.


And in terms of crap games, its true. Say your making a game, hypothetically, and it gets warezed heavily, are you going to have the same enthusiasm as the last game?

This is the case for many developers who now make ports of console games not taking time to give good PC support or good PC quality testing. Dare I say Enter the Matrix or Tomb Raider 6.


Its obvious we have different views, neither is bad or good, but its been an interesting debate all the same. Thats until some smart ass comes in and ruins it :P (lets hope not)

[noscript]

Dont talk **** guys! it IS the price!!! Nothing else. Why downloading 3-4gigs when I can get the game for 10-20€/$,

I buy low budged games, and never some starforce games coz they **** me up with scratching the cd for more then 5mins only to say me that I have an original cd. In fact at low budget many of the comercial Protections are removed and I do NOT need a cd in drive and I dont have to swap cds for games which read 100% of their game data from HDD.

Developers are building their own grave.

BTW: Movie and music industry flourish... They get more and more millions every year....

[Joe Forster/STA]

Hi DABhand,

Difference in physical yes, but ideals are the same im sure you will agree.

IT IS EXACTLY THE IDEAS IN WHICH PHYSICAL OBJECTS AND SOFTWARE DIFFER FROM EACH OTHER! This is exactly why many organizations are against e.g. software patents: you shouldn't be able to copyright an algorithm, just like an idea that someone else can also come up with, without "stealing" it from you. It would be very sad if scientists couldn't base their ideas on the ideas of other scientists - the development of technology would slow down a lot! Similarly, software patents are against the development of technology and mankind in general.

You can own a physical object, you can take it into your hand. But you cannot own a piece of software, as you cannot take it into your hand. Although I definitely wonder what's going to happen when they do create the technology of Star Trek's replicator which would be able to copy physical objects _exactly_ - then will copyright holders be really f*cked!

Say your making a game, hypothetically, and it gets warezed heavily, are you going to have the same enthusiasm as the last game?

In many cases, the game publisher pays a FIXED AMOUNT of money to the game developer. Which means, the game developer doesn't care about how many copies of the game have actually been sold. The game publisher invested money into the development of the game; now they want to get that money back plus as much profit as it is possible.

As it has already been pointed out, the fact that a game gets warezed may also mean that people are interested in it and like it - in short, it is a good game! If you are the enthusiastic type of game developer, you could even say, "hey, they [they, the publishers; not we, the developers!] sold a hundred thousand copies and there's an estimation of another few million warezed copies, MAN, DOES OUR GAME RULE!" Okay, that's a bit unrealistic... [Edit] Still, you could wonder why Valve took the distribution of Half-Life 2 into its own hands, by letting pre-purchasing customers download the encrypted game files, instead of the usual way of releasing it via the publisher...!

Joe