The Galactic Civilization 2 forums has a thread where someone mentioned that a large number of torrent sites has pirates asking people not to download the Galactic Civilization 2 torrent to download the full game, in order to send a message to Starforce.
I dont want to post any linkage, but a lot of the popular torrent sites that still host galciv2 are being flooded on the forums and comments by pleas from other pirates to NOT d/l this game, this is pretty much unprecedented afaik. Looks like starforce just opened a big ugly can of worms. Who would think that people would not take something for free just to annoy a company!
Stardock, the developers of Galactic Civilization 2, uses no copy protection in their game, and instead relies on the fact that you need a valid serial number to download updates to the game. It’s certainly an interesting way to go, and according to Stardock, it has proven to be a big success for them.
I am a bad person.
I routinely download games to play from the internet, for free.
However, my one silver lining to the cloud of ‘pirate/hacker/thief’ cries that companies like Starforce would fling my way is this:
If I enjoy the game, I buy a copy of it, provided that it does not use Starforce protection. I have retail copies of the HalfLife series, Dawn of War, all the Starcraft/Warcraft product line, F.E.A.R, … if I listed everything I have, we’d be here for a while.
If I don’t enjoy the game, I delete it and move on. The only industry members this behavior hurts, are the ones that make *BAD* games. This actually helps the people that make *good* games, because before I’d have to rely on word of mouth about bugs, bad voice acting, and general poor game play. My volume of games tested has increased quite a lot, as has my volume of game purchases.
Day Of Defeat: Source? Until they had their ‘play free for a weekend’ event, I wasn’t going to buy it. I tried it, found value in it, and bought it.
More game makers need to take a page from that book- I am not ’stealing’ your work to profit from it, I am ’stealing’ it, to protect *myself* from the practice of occasionally releasing a steaming pile of turd in the guise of a ‘really good game’.
Even the game with no copy protection, Galactic Civilizations II- I have tried it. I like it quite a lot. I’ll be heading to the store tomorrow to buy it, much to my wife’s chagrin, to support a game maker who has turned out a quality turn based strategy.
If they had used Starforce, it is entirely true that I *might* not have downloaded it, but it is also true that I absolutely, 100% assured would *NEVER* have bought it.
Starforce costs them money, hopefully soon enough it will be ‘too much’ money to justify using that Malware product.
XStarforceX on 03 24th, 2006