Game makers should take look at the FPS genre. They are the least pirated genre. why? Online Multiplayer. ( not to say piracy isn't running rampant on the FPS genre, but it's less so than games like Mass Effect 1/2, Sims 3, Spore, Batman, and any other "offline" game. And no, Having a massive online store that Sims 3 has doesn't count as "online". As I will touch on that in a minute. )
Instead of spending millions of dollars trying to create some "un-hackable" DRM, only to have it cracked within 1 day, Maybe they should spend those millions of dollars on multiplayer/Online aspects of the game.
Imagine if Mass Effect 2 had some form of Multiplayer, or Online Co-Op. ( Which we know they could have done it if they wanted. It's based off the Unreal 3 engine. It was designed with Multiplayer in mind. ) Piracy of ME2 would have been greatly reduced. Oh, there's still a large group of people that would still pirate the game, and ignore the multiplayer. But there's also a very large group of people that wouldn't have been able to pass it up, and would have bought the game.
Tons of DLC doesn't work. ME2's DLC has already been cracked. You can EASILY find a single torrent that has all the current DLC, with a crack. So that's 100% useless.
Sims 3 taught us that that a while back. A ton of people organized together, and bought the collectors edition because they each would receive a $10 Sims 3 store voucher, that would let them D/L the Sims 3 bonus content. They organized together, and each person bought different items in the store. They then had all the DLC content, and then they organized all the files into one place, Put them into a .RAR, and put it out on a torrent.
So even legit buys WILL help the piracy community...For the sake of the piracy community.
Companies need to quit trying to fight it, and instead, spend the money on improving their game, and adding some form of online content. That will get them many more sales than ANY DRM they could set in place.
I don't want this to turn into a piracy debate, or if the pirates would have bought the game if they didn't have the ability to get it for free, etc...etc..., I'm just talking about what developers could do, to help combat piracy.
Another thing they could ( and should ) do, is letting people sell their used PC games. Do it through the OFFICIAL website ( or have a site like steam or impulse do it, with the consent of each publisher ). Naturally the publish will want a portion of the trade, so they do the Gamestop method. Be a middle man. There are a ton of ways for this to work out, but it seriously needs to be done. If a person could sell back their used PC games, People wouldn't wait for the game to be put into the cheap bin at gamestop, and be less inclined to illegally download it. And if the publisher did it right, they could make a decent chunk of money by doing this.
It's not like there's a market for for used PC games anyways. Ever since Gamestop stopped buying/selling used PC games, there's a void in that market. And the Publishers need to jump on that quick, before someone else does. ( and gets popular. I know a few sites already do this, but they don't have the user base that Steam / Impulse does. Nor does the general public even know they exist. )
/end long-*** post
. Not arguing that a lot of paperweightware hasn't come out of their orifices, but let's not discount their proven potential to publish classics...
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