2018-01-15 22:49:20 (edited by jack 2018-01-15 22:50:34)

Jason, your idea is near perfect, reminds me of iilok cloud in a way, but if universal it could make things a hell of a lot easier for developers. And if you wanted to future proof it, this release would only need to consist of the necessary scripts needed so that people could put this on their own server, rather than rely on the existence of an external server. That does bring into question the one account to rule them all approach, but that shouldn't be too hard to deal with, each game could have their own username and password, or rather, each company could have their own login system, with the a h c style flags set on the server end, i.e licensed = true, as it were. Say, didn't the initial danger city beta build have email verification built-in in order to run? I feel like maybe now that we're on the subject of ease of use, it's as good a time as any for a template of sorts.

2018-01-15 22:53:40 (edited by Jason SW 2018-01-15 22:57:14)

Exactly, Jack. Rather than just having a flag that sets whether a game is licensed, though, I'd set mine up to allow for multiple licenses, so if you wanted to, you could buy two copies, one for a desktop and one for a laptop, for example. I could also implement a license gifting system, where you buy a license, and then either transfer it from your account to someone else's account, or have a link or code sent that will add a license for that game to their account.

2018-01-15 22:54:12

I am not a fan of arbitrary DRM, nor of price models which charge an arm and a leg because the owners/creators know they've got their clientele over a barrel. Really, really not in favour of that.

But audiobooks? Music? Movies? Games? None of these, bar -maybe certain audio books, are necessary. They're virtually all forms of entertainment. You don't -need any of them. You want them.
They are, in almost all cases, works of art that someone has probably put hundreds of hours into. By deciding that you aren't going to pay for them, you're basically saying, "Hey, let me nebulously say I got a copy of your book/song/movie/game/whatever, but I don't want to compensate you. Entertain me for free.". Stephen King, Metallica and George Lucas aren't going to miss your dollars, but wrong is still wrong. Just as long as we're clear on this. Do whatever it is you're going to do, but don't kid yourself about what you're doing. It's piracy. It's technically deciding that you, as the customer, get to take for free what you are supposed to pay for. That is stealing. If you snuck into a store and stole a pack of gum off a rack of one hundred packs of gum, the store still has gum but so do you. Is that somehow not a crime? Seriously, that's a busted argument. Stealing isn't only stealing if you remove property from someone else so they no longer have it. If that were the case, then your crime would be virtually erased once they had new stuff to replace the stuff you stole.
Virtual stealing is still stealing, in other words. Maybe there is an understandable reason to do it - in the case of country restrictions on software, prohibitive pricing for required documents and the like - but entertainment...I'm sorry, but it really doesn't qualify. Please don't dress up what you're doing as noble or justified or good.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2018-01-15 22:58:37

Weather Watcher Live had a good system for devs who wanted to set a license limit. Rather than limiting the license and screwing you over if you reach it *cough* code factory, if a license key is entered on a 6th computer *the limit is 5* the license server will detect that and simply deactivate the first computer that was licensed, i.e the one that wasn't recently licensed.

2018-01-15 23:05:30

Six registered computers is a little extreme, I think, but I could set it up to allow a license to be used on two computers at a time, so you could run the game on a desktop and laptop without having to buy another license, for example. The licenses could have two or more "slots" that could be allocated to different machines.

2018-01-15 23:09:56

@enes

I guess something to ask is if the ones who pirate software would also shoplift if they could do so without being caught. If the answer is no, then why not? While it's true that cracking an audiogame or some other software isn't technically the same as going into a store and shoplifting a physical item as the product isn't being lost, it's still taking compensation away from a developer who put time and possibly money into the product. Time and money are also commodities. So ethically, why is pirating things any different?

2018-01-15 23:10:02

5 machines was Weather Watcher Live's license limitation, and I'll agree it's a bit too kind. If a registered user passed their key around, they would technically be able to run it on a 3rd party's machine and the server wouldn't know. But with the deactivation of the oldest registered machine, you could have a 2license limit and people wouldn't mind.

2018-01-15 23:16:15

That's how GMA's account system works now, except I think it connects to that registration server every time you open the programs. I don't know for sure though.

2018-01-15 23:21:15

hi,
Jayde, the argument you propose is fallacious. Taking a pack out of 100 from a store, is still stealing, as you took that pack away from them. That is identical to the previous argument. Copying or sharing an audiobook is not stealing, as  you didn't take anything from anyone,  all parties involved still have access to all their files. The notion of downloading free content as stealing is copyright industry propaganda. Even in courts, copyright infringement  and stealing are not classified as the same. Take the following US court dicision for instance, (Dowling v. US),  in which the judge clearly stated the differences between stealing, and the infringement of copyright.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case? … 4610715556
Also, I would argue that audiobooks are also a necesary part of a person's life, as they facilitate enlargement of knowledge, and culture. This of course doesn't extend to all audiobooks.

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

2018-01-15 23:23:21 (edited by Ghost 2018-01-15 23:24:32)

hi drack,
See above post. You still view a cracker as a possible customer. Remember that many crackers would not buy the program, if access to a crack was not available. And, additionally, these people do not steal the time that goes into a product. The product is still there,   irrespective of the choices of any few cases. This is the case with comertial mainstream software.

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

2018-01-15 23:28:51

also this article, which has links to several other court dicisions.
https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-infr … ce-110827/

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

2018-01-16 00:05:32

All things considered, legality is a small portion of the argument for audiogames. Money lost to an audio game developer could mean money they can no longer spend, on things they must buy that are not cheap.

2018-01-16 00:34:57

It is stealing in the sense that you are providing a service or product for a fee, only to have someone obtain access to that service or product without compensating you. If you snuck into a five-dollar Friday swim at the pool for free, or slipped your way into the theater without paying, that'd count.
Put the shoe on the other foot, Enes. Let's say you had a large pool and were charging people a dollar to swim in it for an hour on Fridays. Now let's say you caught someone who hadn't paid their dollar swimming in their pool. No, they did not steal a physical item from you, but they are obtaining for free what you have explicitly asked them to pay for. If you own that pool and have the legal right to restrict access to it, then surely this would be a problem?
The person who makes a game, a song, a book, whatever, is a copyright owner. They have the right to distribute their goods as they wish, within reason. If an author wants to give you a review copy of his book for free, or if an artist (Pearl Jam is famous for this) encourages people to download their music? Then fine. Go nuts. Hats off to ya. But if that has not been expressly established, then you are infringing on copyright, which is a form of intellectual theft. You are taking for yourself a copy of something which does not belong to you legally.

And when you do it, or try to justify it, in the audio games community, you're hurting a very, very small market, a market which may depend on its sales in order to flourish. Stephen King might not care if I grab an audiobook for free. Even if he knew, the few dollars he'd see from my purchase will not really impact his life. The guy's a multi-millionaire.
Have we got any multi-millionaire game devs floating around?
Well? Anyone?
Buler?
Nah, didn't think so.
But hey. The moment a developer encourages you to crack and/or distribute their games as you see fit, feel free to do it in only those cases. Otherwise, don't do it. Don't encourage others to do it. Don't justify it to yourself or to others. Whether or not you consider it stealing, it is tantamount to possessing a thing to which you have not been entitled.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2018-01-16 01:26:34

Hmph.
As a former pirate that would drive me back.
Cd activation is just a bad idea seriously.
Firstly its easy to crack in a lot of cases, and no one uses disks.
Dongles it would depend on the nature of the dongle.
If it was just a dongle, I'd be using a port to play the games, I'd want to crack that right off so I didn't have to bother with that immediately.
What about if I lost the dongle.
Now I have to buy the entire thing again, maybe the games again, oh dear, its unlike I would legally buy the games in fact I may flame the company with the dongle instead because I had the games and lost the dongle.
Now if the dongle were a say portable drive that while I could say run the game on my system could allow me to play on other systems and do it in a portable fashion without installing even if I had a couple licences registered allready, and allowed to take my stuff with me as well as back my settings up online then maybe.
Maybe special dongles could give me some advantages that a standard licence wouldn't otherwise give me and you'd have me really hocked like a fish I may buy all the dongles properly labeled ofcause just so I could decide what I played as or if I ran with normal.
As for the removing licences, I'd like a way especially if I owned the games to buy extra seats if I wanted for maybe 5 bucks or so for use or something like that.
Or be told to reassign my licences to another box if I had enough or not enough as the case may be.
Giving me the player an advantage to being online is good to.
Its unlikely I would share my username and password round either.
As for cracking =shoplifting, maybe some of us would do this but most of us at least my circle were fighting the system not going about taking our lives down while doing it.
It was a laugh, the chance to get something for free but if we got close to trouble then we would have to way it up.
For me, for what I did and could continue to do it wasn't worth it so I stopped.

2018-01-16 01:53:22

Sean, good points regarding the dongles. Well part of that problem was solved by Armadillo since, again you didn't actually buy the dongle. You just use whatever flash drive you had lying around. And no, it didn't even have to be formatted. It could be an already existing flash drive you have. The problem, though, is that that flash drive is not an ilok. Or it may be, I'm not sure, but either way the product id is based off the flash drive's hardware fingerprint, and off hand I can't remember if there were options as to whether to make the id generation use only the hardware fingerprint, that combined with computer-specific details, or both. If just the hardware fingerprint, then you may have to reregister the game if you carry it with you to use on another machine, but it would be as portable as it gets. The thing, though, is that you must have the drive inserted in order to play, like the old version of pipe that never required a registration code, instead relying on a cd. However when compared to the ilok, neither approach has the upper hand as far as that's concerned. That said, I do think the server approach is a better idea if managed well. Account-based registration is actually as portable as you can get.

2018-01-16 10:14:57

hi,
I notice that the same examples keep coming up over and over again in this topic. I have said all that can be said about this topic, and will not post further. Suffice to say that  I don't have even the smallest of smallest regrets to my actions. If god rewound time 100000 times, I would do what I always did 100000 times with absolutely no moral regrets. And shaun, cracking is not that dangerous in developing countries. If your country allows movie and record labels police the internet, get a paid vpn, which doesn't keep logs, and torrent away. Vpns that do not log, aford complete anonymity. For instance, in Turkey, the russian ambassador,  Andrea Carlov, was shot dead by a member of a terrorist organization. It was later revealed that someone connected to his Icloud account during the assassination, and deleted his e-mails. As that person used a vpn that does not log, noone has any idea on who deleted these e-mails.  I don't advocate helping or otherwise aiding assassins, but this example should serve to how much anonymity a vpn can aford.
Another thing, dongles don't protect apps from bieng cracked at all. I had a jaws 9.0 crack once, that emulated a dongle, and cracked jaws.

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

2018-01-16 15:21:36

That's because the protection of the dongle was probably crappy at best. Not much you can do to emulate a flash drive with a unique serial number.

2018-01-25 16:30:06

I was listening to the latest Blind Bargains podcast last night and Joe Steincamp got on his soapbox and sounded off about a number of people he's seen asking for cracked versions of A Hero's Call, in his tirade, which I completely agreed with, he said that if any of those people were listening, that they should stop listening because he had absolutely no use for them, and didn't want to hear from them, or have anything at all to do with them. He was obviously pretty steamed and pissed off about it, and I can't say I blame him.

2018-01-25 17:57:05

Rather than limiting one's self to a destructive bunch of criticism one should try to be productive and constructively coming up with ways around this kind of thing.  Just because something is true, doesn't necessarily mean we need to voice our oppinions in such a disrespectful manner, especially if you have a chance at broadcasting it to the entirety of the world.  That is why we put together a contest to try and get the game into as many hands as possible and as many as we can honestly aford.  We can sit here and argue about whether or not it is ethical to ask for cracks, but two wrongs never, ever make a right, particularly when you wish to take an authoritative stance and position.  It's just as despicable as far as I'm concerned to condescend to people because you disagree with their brand of malice when you dont' have to pay attention to them at all, as it doesn't require any efort to speak out of anger.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2018-01-25 19:03:54

Regarding the idea of just deactivating the oldest licensed machine once an account hits a cap—here's the problem with that. Say I buy a game, then hand my account out to four of my dearest friends, thereby robbing Out of Money Games of $80 in potential profit (yes, potential profit, not actual profit—see below, btw, for my thoughts on the whole copyright infringement/stealing nuance). Now, we've activated on five machines. Then I take another $20 of potential profit away from OOMG and give my account to friend #6. He activates, and poof, my account, as the oldest one, is reauthorized. Well...next time I want to play, I just authorize my account, and poof, friend #2's account is reauthorized. So he authorized next time he wants to play, and so on. So I suppose this method could work—but only if the machine is permanently de-authorized. In that case, yeah, it seems like a reasonable system though there may still be some weaknesses.

Regarding the distinction between using something you do not have the right to (i.e. public performance of a copyrighted song without a license, enjoyment of a digital download without a license, etc.) This may be distinguished from theft in a legal sense (thank you so much for providing such detailed resources for understanding the issue, by the way—that's really fascinating). But I would contend that it is still theft on a conceptual level. The only difference is that what I am stealing is the right to perform or use the product. Other people are paying money—what are they purchasing? They are purchasing the right to perform or use the product. So if I do so without purchasing said right, I am stealing said right. At least that's the way I see it, in concept.

And for what it's worth, I wouldn't have much of an issue with the idea of account sharing if it wasn't depriving a dev of potential profit. If there is literally no possibility that user X's desire to play a game would ever be responsible for the developer earning money (even inadvertently) then sure, sharing an account with User X is not robbing any potential profit. But the reality is that there is *ALWAYS* the potential that user X could generate profit for the developer. User X could generate profit by asking someone to buy the game, and them agreeing. User X could generate profit by benefiting form a giveaway. User X could generate profit by waiting until their situation changes and they come to a position of being able to purchase the game. The idea of a user who does not represent the potential for profit seems to be an idea that doesn't exist in the real world. And so imagine you're having a discussion with your development team and are saying, "We want to do this—we want to make high-quality games and continue to provide entertainment for blind gamers, and continue to close the gap between games for the blind and games for everyone. But we can't keep doing it if we aren't working toward making a living on it, so we have to figure out how we can actually support ourselves on this." These are the sorts of discussions that indie developers have, and even more so developers with as small of a market as audio game developers. Now imagine you're looking at your profits and realizing that there's no way your current profits can sustain you. Now imagine that there is two, three, five times as much potential profit that you have lost because of accounts being shared with people who may or may not have ever resulted in actual profit. The fact that there's no guarantee that potential would ever have been actualized is no comfort—because while there was no guarantee that potential would have been actualized, now there is a guarantee that it will never be actualized, and you've forever lost the possibility of capitalizing on that portion of your very small audience. This is the reality for developers trying to take this space to the next level, and this is why this is such a personal, touchy subject for those in the development space.

Which is part of why I'm happy to see such lively and, for the most part, civil discussion about the matter. It's complex, and it's important. Keep it up!

2018-01-25 19:19:00

for my part, I'm glad my wife and I purchased AHC; it helped us see what all the talk was about and, thanks to our having enjoyed the parts we've had the time to play through along with this topic, we've managed to come up with a contest that, I believe, will benefit many in the end.  the number of giveaways, I am pleased to say, has grown since our original plans came to fluition, and continues to grow as I write this.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2018-01-25 20:27:20

Well so this is open again.
First the tamer side of the post.
I am unsure but I'd like to think that if you say had a program that was shared by family that one would be able to buy a family licence or at least pay for a pack, if you had to buy well ahc is 20 bucks.
Once you got over 50 bucks though it starts getting a bit expensive to have 1 1 1 1 1.
Sadly microsoft and others do this and its just another thing we have to get round to the point we just have to be on our guard though its something they change with office, I'd like that to be with windows as well.
Now to the first part, I have never listened to the podcast but here is the thing.
You are welcome to your rant thats fine, but you won't get any nagotiation.
Now before I do respond to that, let me state clearly that as a former pirate I abhor anyone that makes cash from piracy, who does it for a job or does it just because they can even if they have the cash, it makes me sick to my core!.
With that out the way, the responce you would get from pirates me is screw you, we could care less.
We may just take your server down and ransomware attack all your friends if we are mad enough.
This aint the way, sadly its what most of the system to a point has done, if we are talked to nicely you may get insites but the big corperations never talk at all.
Sue, sue, sue, lets put him in jail, lets not talk.
WHat do they expect, us survivers to not buy their overpriced but required programs, now and suddenly it becomes an attack, well we can do this to.
And now look at the net, all those breaches, all those hackings, all the malware no one is a saint but.
If I was angry enough I may concideer taking you personally down, your server, your isp, maybe yourcountry.
Ranting like this solves nothing, it makes it worse.
Sadly it seems only the small companies talk.
If companies respect users, and that includes book publishers which that seems to be happening now to some extent and music,/movie music is happening to a point, movie who knows to be honest, but point is software isn't moving forward competiton is tough I get that but talking can help.
It may depend on situation, ie the sellers of dectalk only have to send a small amount back to phonix and din't care, but still they were man enough to pop up on a list I was on and state a lot of people are pirating our stuff, why.
Now we said why, their responce was to talk and flesh something out.
And the reason they talked to us is why we honor forcefully if needed the deal they gave us because we see it as important to keep the peace.
Now I do realise there are those dammaged by the net wars and they may never talk, I also know there are those that make cash from it and I don't care for it.
The reason I even stopped was the needs mainly, and the fact that it wasn't worth continuing now if my stakes were higher it may be worth it to a point.
Saying that once you are caught, you are basically done, time to do something else if you can.
The trick is to know when to pull out, because getting caught means the end of basically everything being barred from all sorts of things is not cool.

2018-01-25 20:29:19

I totally agree that a dongle is a bad idea. If it's your own flash drive, that could work, but what if you lose that one flash drive? You're screwed. And there are a ton of ways to lose something that don't involve you doing anything wrong. It gets stolen. It gets destroyed in a fire or other natural disaster. Those are but a few.

But as for a custom dongle which the developer, and only the developer, can supply, it has the same problem of loss, but so many more. For one thing, dongles don't grow on trees. Someone has to make them, and making physical objects costs money for the raw materials and time used. That money also doesn't grow on trees. The developer has to pay money to get those dongles made, which probably means he's going to pass those costs on to you by charging more for the software product. And that doesn't even touch on the biggy, if you have to wait for a dongle to be mailed to you, you can't enjoy the software you purchased immediately, unless there's some type of temporary registration key issued, which expires after a reasonable amount of time.

2018-01-25 21:17:44

@Nocturnus, I've said it once and I'll say it again: what you're helping to do is inspiring, and humbling, and awesome, and you should be commended for it. That is all.

2018-01-26 16:57:02 (edited by mata 2018-01-26 17:06:22)

In response to the original question of this topic: of many reasons people already said, I'm going to add something that's pretty much my personal situation here.
I'm 21, not a kid, right?
I don't have bank account, and my parents keep most, if not all, of my money saved in a bank account I haven't yet had access (because they don't let me, not yet at least). The reason why they do all this is related to two things:
1. Even though they know how savory I am when it comes to money, they don't want me to waste any bit of mine until the time is right, which is when I'm done with university and stuff and ready to get an actual job (other than occasional writing and being a lead flutist which I've been doing for almost 12 years). So right now, as a 21, I know only a little of how to work with banking and stuff, since all of what I have on me is cash.
2. Being in a family-oriented society, it's highly common that parents think of grown ups as kids even if they know for an obvious fact that their 21 year old ones aren't. My parents view me somewhat like that. To add to one of the reasons given by the above posts, they also don't think spending money on games is going to be worth anything unless you really really have a lot to spend without care. I've never got games or game consoles bought. The only thing I got was being driven to a local computer store and had someone there install a few games for me, usually the old, ripped ones at least 2 years after their original release dates. And that was it, nothing else. Even though they don't mind me playing games as they know I still keep up with classes fine enough, they still don't feel like investing hard earned money into buying something like games.

And if anyone wonder where I'm from to have this kind of thing to face, I'm from Thailand.

Now when Shotgunshell asked if asking people to buy it for you is better than cracking, I'd say it's as uncomfortable. Here is why:
Think of this in two ways; when you crack, you crush the game developers. When you ask someone to buy for you, you either beg or burden them with something they may deserve to spend of their livings. I always see it this way, and this honestly makes me extremely reluctant to ask, feel very down everytime whenever I mention something about not being able to pay on the forum and ending up having someone I don't even know buy it for me. As much as I appreciate their generosity, I never feel any good to know that much money they spent to help me could actually be for something else more worthy. I'm just ashame to not being able to buy what I want, but at least I never die of not being able to play, when that amount of money spent for my sake could in fact save the payers' lives, and even the others around them who need more than me.

I admit I use cracked stuff sometimes, but never crack anything myself. However, I promise to myself to try to hand back what I've ripped as much as possible when I have a chance, which I don't really know When.

Why do ghost hunters have to hunt ghosts? Well, there's a fear of being ghosted out there. They may need therapy as well as their ghost hunting kit.