52% is probably a bit too high, but not by much. Through a variety of forums and IRC channels, I see a very large number of people admitting to having pirated games, on almost a daily basis. It does have a noticable effect on sales, not that it matters. It’s either wrong for everyone or it’s wrong for no one. It is amusing to see people try to legitimize software theft though.
Personally I’d like to see a number of companies (EA for example) put some people on P2P, IRC, and Newsgroups, to punish some of these clowns. Doesn’t really seem like they’re doing anything at this point. SafeDisc doesn’t work, it only hurts the legitimate customer.
You’ll note that the precise quote is “52 percent admitted to having obtained cracked software” which isn’t necessarily the same thing as “52% have pirated games”.
Remember, the first suggestion many tech support lines at game developers is to find and download the No-CD crack to fix problems that are related to copyright protection software intentionally degrading game performace when it incorrectly thinks you’re pirating thanks to hardware incompatibilities.
If someone had access to the same people and asked them how many who had used cracked software did so in the form of No-CD cracks for software they legally purchased, I would suspect the number would be very interesting to those looking to convince publishers they’re wasting their time with poorly written code like SafeDisc.
I have fond memories of emailing tech support at Eidos to get Thief 2 to work and being instructed by them to download and use some tool to strip the protection from the game executable.
As far as I am concerned this gives me a blanket right to remove the protection from their games as long as I own a copy.
Heh. Copy Protection delays juarez releases by weeks?
Yeah, right. In 95% of cases, the ISO + Crack is widely available before the game is being shipped to retailers. Who do these clowns think they’re kidding?
He is talking about BEYOND Divinity, not Divine Divinity.
The english release of BD has not been cracked, the disks have been released in clone cd format but cannot be played until someone actually cracks it. This is going to happen more as more games start using the latest Starforce protection effectively - they still get cracked eventually but now it takes weeks instead of being done the day the game comes out (even True Crime and Beyond Good and Evil which are fairly big name games took a few weeks to be cracked), and in cases of less popular games like Beyond Divinity its just not worth the time and effort required for the groups to do it.
Kill.switch and Toca Race Driver 2 are two other Starforce protected games that also have not been cracked yet after more than two months.
Beyond Divinity was cracked some time ago. Maybe not by a big group, but there was an English ISO release and it HAS been cracked. How do I know this? Just for giggles, I fired up eMule (GAH!), logged on to a big server, and ran a check. I saw 197 sources for “BEYOND DIVINITY - ENLISH CD1” and about 188 for “BEYOND DIVINITY - ENLISH CD2” along with about 2 billion sources for various cracks, serials, and “HOW-TO RUN” guides. The only thing that surprised me was that 197 pirates actually wanted to play a game that’s been soundly criticized as a pile of garbage.
On a tangent, you don’t even need to follow juarez closely to see what’s being released and what isn’t. My interest factor in BD is absolutely 0 (I didn’t think DD was all that, and BD is by all accounts not as good). Yet, all of five seconds taking a very casual look through cyberspace let me know that A: there is a warez release, and B: It’s not that hard to get.
Pirates (and Legitimate Customers FUCKED by Lame-Ass Copy Protection): 409309837
Macrovision: 0
EDIT:
What the hell, downloaded some of these HOW-TOs. Here we go:
After installing the game the only way to make the game
run is to <CENSORED> … It seems part of the StarForce copy protection prevents you from <CENSORED> … but you can bypass this by <CENSORED>
So at the very least, there’s a fairly simple way for pirates to bypass Starforce altogether. In a stroke of pure comedy, this method doesn’t work for paying customers with problems unless they rip their own ISOs (or download them). COMEDY GOLD.
Anyone want to start downloading the cracks and see which ones are virii? I have to head off to a meeting shortly. Damn. :)
REVISED SCORE:
Pirates vs Macrovision: 40983097839867309830983-0
Macrovision vs Paying Customers: 1-0
52% is probably a bit too high, but not by much. Through a variety of forums and IRC channels, I see a very large number of people admitting to having pirated games, on almost a daily basis. It does have a noticable effect on sales, not that it matters. It’s either wrong for everyone or it’s wrong for no one. It is amusing to see people try to legitimize software theft though.
Meh, it wouldn’t phase the profits of the product too much if the product is good.
If what they say is true, EA, ID, and VALVE would be in the dumps by now. Last time I checked, companies that made good and popular games are still filthy rich.
Yes, I heard rumblings that in v1.00 you could get unauthorized copies to run by physically disconnecting all IDE cd-roms from your system. This was fixed in the first patch, which was available day of release.
BD is unplayable without the patches. No, I mean really unplayable, not just buggy.
That’s interesting. It never showed up on Suprnova AFAIK, which is the universal warez resource for lazy people. There’s no .exe crack for it either - you have to d/l the ISO and then fanny around, so it’s not as if legitimate owners of the game have the relief that sweet, sweet GCW provides.
I did buy the original of this one, and it does stink, so that perhaps explains the fact that nobody really wants a crack for the game.
Beyond Divinity was cracked some time ago. Maybe not by a big group, but there was an English ISO release and it HAS been cracked.
Wrong, it has NOT been cracked. Every one of those cracks you see on emule is a fake (most of them porn diallers). Emule is far from a reliable source of information.
As for the method in the doc file you quoted (which is the same as the method in all the other BD text files on emule and is not a crack) to circumvent the protection… If you had spent more then “five seconds taking a very casual look through cyberspace” then you’d know that while that worked in the past, the version used by BD has fixed this flaw and it wont work (a few people claim that the original unpatched version of the game works for them via this method - but most have been unable to get it to work even with that).
I don’t understand your point. That’s just a tool to remove the Starforce files from your PC, which are required to run the game. I assume Codemasters have provided it so that people can fully uninstall a Starforce protected game once they’re done with it.
He is talking about BEYOND Divinity, not Divine Divinity.
The english release of BD has not been cracked, the disks have been released in clone cd format but cannot be played until someone actually cracks it. This is going to happen more as more games start using the latest Starforce protection effectively - they still get cracked eventually but now it takes weeks instead of being done the day the game comes out (even True Crime and Beyond Good and Evil which are fairly big name games took a few weeks to be cracked), and in cases of less popular games like Beyond Divinity its just not worth the time and effort required for the groups to do it.
Kill.switch and Toca Race Driver 2 are two other Starforce protected games that also have not been cracked yet after more than two months.[/quote]
Ouch. I did link to the wrong game, sorry.
Too bad the people above me were better at proving you “BD hasn’t been cracked” people wrong than I am.
Really? So who’s going to be the ultimate winner in this pissing contest? Those of us who didn’t buy the game, or those of you who did?
I foresee real ultimate power and perhaps Super Saiyan Seven powers being bestowed upon my camp soon. That is, unless -Lord Ebenstone- chimes in and says he thinks Beyond Divinity sucks. At which point I’m going to do the more sane thing and kill him, then kill my self for referencing Dragon Ball Z.
So what exactly is your point? “If it’s true” then that’s about 15-35% of people pirating games, a significant amount. I don’t think EA, id, and Valve would be “in the dumps” just yet, due to the number of games they legitimately sell. However there are a great number of smaller developers that don’t sell nearly as many, even though their games are just as good, if not better than the ones put out by the large companies.
But as I stated before, it’s irrelevent. Either it’s wrong for everybody to pirate games, or it’s wrong for no one. There is no grey area, and no amount of reasoning can legitimize it.
