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The Hulk
Avenger, Defender
Joined: 19 Feb 2002
Posts: 728
Location: Southeast U.S.A. |
| Beyond Divinity setting a good example for other crpg's |
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A friend of mine recently told me that Beyond Divinity uses a copy protection scheme called Starforce which has drastically reduced the amount of people pirating the game. I think this is great news if what he said is true.  Sure, there are probably still some who managed to pirate it somehow, but I am really looking forward to pc sales going up again and developers coming back to pc instead of moving to console-only development due to reduction in piracy of pc games. I hope other game companies will follow the example here.
Anyone have some sales info comparing how many units the original Divine Divinity sold to how many units Beyond Divinity sold? I'd be curious to see a comparison. I know, many have said Divine Divinity was a better game than Beyond Divinity so that might be a factor in sales numbers. Others have argued that copy protection actually reduces sales due to customers getting angry or frustrated by it. (Edit: I did some searching and found some people who actually did say some bad things about the copy protection). Any thoughts, coments?
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"Mr. Magee, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."
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Sun Aug 22, 2004 8:32 pm |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
Starforce has gathered a lot of opposition - there are even semi-organised efforts to boycott Starforce games. The primary issuse is a reaction to the way Starforce installs a low-level driver (which will show up in Device Manager if you reveal the hidden items). Starforce games won't play while virtual drive softwares are active like Alcohol or CloneCD and there are claims it affects CD-writing speeds and even damages USB devices.
It's hard to separate those that hate Starforce because it stops them from pirating or easily using cracks and virtual drives so they don't have to swap CDs from genuine problems that Starforce has caused.
At this point, I don't have an opinion. I'd like to see proof of these claimed damages. Starforce has been on my system for some time with no negative effect - but then I don't use Alcohol etc.
As for sales...those numbers are hard to get. I would be surprised if BD sold better than DD, simply because the most attractive feature of DD -- the large, open game world -- was "watered down" in BD.
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Editor @ RPGDot |
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Sun Aug 22, 2004 11:04 pm |
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Michael C
Black Dragon
Joined: 09 Jul 2001
Posts: 1595
Location: Aarhus, Denmark |
quote:
Originally posted by Dhruin
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As for sales...those numbers are hard to get. I would be surprised if BD sold better than DD, simply because the most attractive feature of DD -- the large, open game world -- was "watered down" in BD.
I kind of agree, but another thing is bothering me with BD, the story/setting, I mean I do like fantasy, but I need much more roots to the real world. Daemons/Imps and other normally rare creatures come in 100's (talking about "watered down" fantasy). I start to don't care about the creatures my character meet anymore. I know the story "I start from an old farmhouse in a human town" is getting worn, but I rather have another start from that point of view, with better roots to the real world, than this far out fantasy, It's watered down and boring in the long run in my eyes. BD is solid enough regarding combat, character development, item-handling etc., but regarding story/settings it's just as (un)interesting as diablo 2
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Mon Aug 23, 2004 8:56 am |
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Dan_Grr
Village Dweller
Joined: 23 Aug 2004
Posts: 7
Location: Portugal |
| Questioning and Answering |
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Well ive got Beyond Divinity. Im not either favor or against piracy. This subject has its ups and downs so nevermind.
IT IS POSSIBLE to pirate the game. A friend of mine did it. And yes, it has to do with the drives. Im not getting you a recipe but the short story is that youll need a mini image, a program like Daemons Tools, and to physically disconnect all your CD/DVD drives. I saw somehere someone doing something like that, but over the LAN, but thats a longa way. Both ways will do. And thus, Starforce is bumped out of the way.
You know whats best - i mean for my friend ? It even works patched. He runs the game with the 1.45 latest patch. Grr.
Anyway i told in another topic some bad stuff about BD. It is rather good (well, reasonable).
Im curious though i never played Divine Divinity and i dont know how it is. Will anyone enlight me? |
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Tue Aug 24, 2004 1:15 am |
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The Hulk
Avenger, Defender
Joined: 19 Feb 2002
Posts: 728
Location: Southeast U.S.A. |
Divinie Divinity was an awesome game, I really enjoyed it. I haven't played BD yet, but from what I've heard, of those who played both DD and BD, they usually say they liked DD better.
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"Mr. Magee, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."
-Bruce Banner
=Member of the Non-Flamers Guild= |
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Tue Aug 24, 2004 2:46 am |
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Naked_Lunch
Village Leader
Joined: 22 Aug 2004
Posts: 86
Location: New york, tangiers, and interzone |
All i can say is this: BD was one of the best games i've ever played. Voice acting aside, it rocked harder than i could've imagined (just d-load the patch before playing )
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Wed Aug 25, 2004 2:06 am |
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the mighty stamar
High Emperor
Joined: 01 Feb 2003
Posts: 602
Location: arcata ca, humboldt county |
Im not sure that having copy protection that really works...... works.
Beyond divinity was the first game I know of with this sf3 protection ok. So they protected their sales of people who wanted the game enough to buy it but might be morally weak if they could copy it from a friend....
But I dont think most people who pirate games are actually in the market to buy them. Its a hard point to explain completely so Im just going to gloss it over. By eliminating these 'customers' they miss a lot of word of mouth advertising and hype.
Next you see doom 3. Obviously a much higher volume game. If they wanted SF3 on it, they would get it. So you have to think... why does doom 3 use a copy protection that can be broken, when it doesnt have to? Because it gets the game out there and makes it on everyones mind. Simple protection prevents little jimmy from copying little johnnys doom3, but lets the p2p people demo the game to as many people as possible. Then, some of those people will really like it and pay for the game to play online. Piracy is part of this games business model.
Anyhow, I would be interested in seeing all the sales figures of these sf3 games, there have been about 4. I suspect.... they are bad. Because if they were good, doom3 and halflife 2 would use it. This is just my deductive reasoning. |
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Fri Aug 27, 2004 8:10 am |
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