This whole copy protection thing is kind of rediculous, if you ask me.

I´m with Brad Wardell on the issue. I have taken the liberty to cut and past
a part of an interview he gave to Gamasutra.


<Start of quote>

GS: Speaking of single player, how do you feel about copy protection?
BW: I've always been pro copy protection in the general sense, but I don't
like the way game companies approach it. It's like the game industry has
lived in this cocoon that the rest of the software industry has already
broken out of. I don't like having to keep a CD in my drive or having
something installing spyware on my computer to tell me what I should be
doing. When I want to run Photoshop or Word I don't have to put a CD in the
drive. Microsoft and Adobe aren't installing drivers on my machine to
monitor what I'm doing. "Oh look, you have a CD burner on your machine, I
won't work." That's the sort of thing I really object to. I think so many
game publishers are behind the time. The software industry went through this
as well. Remember dongles?

GS: Oh yeah. I used a lot of 3D Studio back in the day.

BW: There were all kind of goofy things on all kinds of software, but they
grew out of that. They realized that the goal of copy protection isn't to
stop people from pirating but to increase sales. That's an important
distinction. I don't like people pirating my game.

GS: Naturally.

BW: I find it annoying on principle. The question is "would they have bought
the game anyway?" If they wouldn't have bought the game, then why should I
be concentrating on them? I should be concentrating on maximizing my overall
sales. Don't inconvenience legitimate users but inconvenience illegitimate
users. Some percentage of them will buy the game.

GS: You don't waste that time and money stopping someone who won't buy your
product anyway.

BW: Right. Did you hear that twenty eight percent of gamers won't even buy a
game? This was a study put out by one of the copy protection companies as
proof of why copy protection isn't negative. This study says that ONLY
twenty eight percent of gamers won't buy a game with copy protection. I was
thinking "HOLY COW, that's a disaster!"

<End of quote>



The industry screaming all over the place is much like the music business
crying about people stealing their songs. Yes, there is a lot of trading
going on, yes, if those people had all bought the music legaly, they would
have earned a *huge* amount of money.

Hello!

Many of those trading songs back and forth wouldn´t have bought the music
anyway, ´cause they simply don´t have the money (does anybody think 12 year
old kids would spend 100 bucks a month for music, if there weren´t any
trading portals around?).

So whatever you do, you won´t earn that kind of mony. Investing in copy
protection, that doesn´t prevent illegal copies, won´t increase sales, and
****es off a substatial part of your customers is a big NO-NO, businiss
wise. Perhaps the suits will somewhen get to understand this. In the
meantime, the customers have the right to choose what they buy. If you don´t
like the copy protection, don´t buy the game *and* let guys in the shop you
regularly buy your games *know* why you don´t buy it. If there is enough
complaint, maybe they will react.

I, for example, am playing pc-games for at least 15 years and have bought
some 300+ games over that time. Lets assume a game, on the average, costs
30?, then I have spent 9000? on games. Would you, as a business person, want
to throw that kind of money away, because, well "we have to use a more
agressive copy protection. I know it won´t keep our game from being cracked,
and yes, it won´t help our sales, but hey, everyone does it"