Stardock vs. Starfoce: My Inaugural Cheap Hack of the Week Award
Update: Stardock posted a well-written statement on this issue here. If only every company behaved as responsibly at the people at Stardock…
There’s an interesting article at Ars Technica today on copy-protection. Stardock Software, the makers of GalCiv II (looks great, but I can’t break free from CivIV), have taken a rather unique path in implementing copy-protection for their game: There isn’t any. None whatsoever. Seems they didn’t want to get in the way of their legit customers actually being able to play their games unhindered (all signs indicate this tact is doing quite well for them too).
And for this “crime” of putting their gamers ahead of software piracy hysteria, the developers of Starforce, the makers of multiple copy-protection schemes for games, have responded as any rational, well-meaning and responsible company would: They posted a link to a BitTorrent download of GalCiv2. Bravo boys. Well-played indeed. This from a company whose code has caused any number of legitimate users significant headaches in that it jacked up users’ PCs in one form or another. Congrats to the men and women of Starforce. You’ve earned my inagural Cheap Hacks of the Week Award. Tell me, you monosyllabic band of walking cliches, do you all wear black hats and have mustaches that you’re fond of twirling? Schmucks.
CivIV aside the only reason I haven’t purchased GalCiv2 yet (I enjoyed the first one) is that my gaming budget is going to be short for a couple more weeks, and despite the fact that it could be obtained illegally for free, the thought of doing so has never even entered my mind. Nevertheless, Starforce’s cheap tactics make me want to make an exception to my strict budget and go buy the game anyway. A company like Stardock deserves to get my money. If you’re into 4x turn-based strategy, GalCiv 2 is well worth a look.
EDIT: The original link Starforce posted to the BitTorrent location has been pulled. (No surprise there. It’s just step 1 in the PR spin control handbook.)
March 14th, 2006 at 10:00 am
Just wait til Stardock loses money because of piracy bleedoff. Other games have had no copy protection before — see: Civilization II, for starters. That changes.
March 14th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
Surely you’re not trying to insinuate that Civ2 lost money? If so, then I either missed a memo while the game dominated sales charts or your point is sheer lunacy. Regardless, while the list of games with no copy-protection on them is a mile and a half long, the list of *recent* games with no copy-protection is not. Also, even though I lack a link, I’m positive I’ve read in the past week that Stardock has already recouped their development expenses on this game and that it’s already outsold GalCiv I. Stardock will make a tidy profit off this game and they deserve to. The fact that they appear to be a class-act group behind the scense too, well that’s just icing on the cake.
But at the risk of overreacting, none of that is really the point of my post.
The notion that someone who represents Starforce in the community, through sheer force of sour grapes, would post BitTorrent links to illegal downloads of GalCiv2 and claim that Stardock’s lack of copy protection is to blame or that Stardock is somehow not a responsible corporate entity for choosing not to treat the bulk of their consumers as thieving pirates is shameful. That’s the point. (I am glad, however, that at least someone Starforce was sensible enough to remove the BitTorrent link and issue an apology to Stardock.)
I could go on for ten pages about my feeling on this issue, but this recent post at Stardock says it better than I probably can - http://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=161&AID=107193. If you don’t agree, well, that’s obviously your perogative.
March 14th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
To be fair, according to Gametop, while the BitTorrent link was posted on the offical StarForce forums it was a “moderator” who posted the link (which, again, was taken down). That doesn’t make StarForce any more competent or responsible than they were 24 hours ago, but fair is fair and the actual source of the offending post should be understood.
March 14th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
Surely you’re not trying to insinuate that Civ2 lost money?
It may have been in the black, but a significant chunk of their profits disappeared in the form of $1 copies in China and other places.
Why else did Civ III and IV require protection?
March 14th, 2006 at 9:39 pm
Jonah, virtually *every* game ends up on Warez sites and BitTorrents whether they’re copy-protected or not so the basis for your argument is specious. DRM designs like StarForce having nothing whatsoever to do with stopping the rampant piracy in places like China. They are designed for the paying customer base in countries like the United States to stop so-called “casual copying” and they fail miserably at that because it takes mere weeks, often days for some kid in his basement to find a way to crack that protection and distribute the crack on the net.
I’m not saying companies shouldn’t take reasonable measures to protect themselves, but schemes based on making sure you have a CD in your optical drive are junk. It’s not just Stardock that has proved that. As Brad Wardell points out in his Gamespot interview there’s virtually no widely-used productivity app that requires a CD-based copy-protection scheme. Windows doesn’t require the CD. MS Office doesn’t. Adobe Photoshop and Premiere don’t. Musicmatch Jukebox doesn’t. I could go on forever, but I’m already beyond just belaboring the point. Game publishers (developers excepted), however, suffer from the same Achilles Heel as does the RIAA and MPAA: They’re rabid control freaks that think they have the right to absolute control of how consumers use software they legally purchased. Or did I imagine the entire Sony Rootkit fiasco? (Different genre, but it’s the same kind of wrong-headed thinking.)
The reason Stardock is worthy of praise on this issue is that they’re looking for better ways to incent their customers not to steal rather than treating them like potential thieves by default. Will some people abuse that? Yeah. But like I said, the dedicated thief will get his whether a game is copy-protected or not. Certainly Stardock’s methodology is not worthy of ridicule from some hypocrit StarForce forum moderator who is working on behalf of a company that would be crippled if games quit using CD-based copy-protection.
Anyway, I’m done. Time for some 2k College Hoops.