GROUPAMA (a large French insurer) was caught in a $200m PIRACY case where it used “bank secrecy” to ask Police not to investigate its computers…

The fun part of the story is that the (Paris) General Prosecuter found no infraction in this (illegal) agreement!

See the whole story on:

http://remoteanything.com/archives/groupama.pdf

I whole-heartedly agree with you. Until a relatively cheap method is found to make DRM completely bulletproof, there’s no point in spending millions on anti-piracy software.

[…] time ago I wrote about Amy Builder and how it’s product remains uncrackable years after the release mostly due to the fact that […]

@Mart: LOL, you are right. Fortunately all these things are just optional extras, and they are mostly targeted at the console market. The industry can’t stand the fact that there is a big second hand sale, and rental market there and they don’t see a penny from it.

It’s actually quite ironic – they keep dumbing down PC games so they make good console ports. Then they try to move console games to a PC like model where you can’t do rentals or re-sell the game. It’s not surprising they got that whole racket with bonus weapons, quests and cars going. Now they are porting that to the PC.

It seems that they are trying to find some convergence point at which games will have all the worst features from both world, and none of the good ones. :P

@Luke Maciak: LOL..

Eh but wait, haven’t single player games already started to move in that direction? What with all these micro-transactions and all. How long before we have to pay for extra weapons in FPSes, extra cars in racing games, extra teams in sports games, extra quests in RPGs? If I’m not wrong, the first and second are already happening. Lucky me, there’s still kick-ass indie titles out there. And GOG.com.

@Mart: No, you misunderstood him. He is just saying he would love to release single player games that require monthly subscription. You know – they would be like MMO’s but without any of the expenses related to running an MMO – like bandwidth, server upkeep, in world moderation and etc… :P

@Luke Maciak: Yup, MMOs is about the experience, not the fact that you have to pay to play, or login to some server. Thus, MMOs bring more value to a player if you pay to play it on official channels, rather than play it on private servers.

Somehow, EA boss John Riccitiello doesn’t seem to get that. Monthly charges == DRM? :P

“There are different ways to do DRM; the most successful is what WoW does. They just charge you by the month,” he said. “We’re going to see an evolution of these things. I wish we didn’t live in a world where we had to do these types of things. I want it to be seamless and easy – but I also don’t want to have a bonfire of money.”

@Square: My attempts to convince my friends to buy a game can attest to your first 3 points. :D

@Morghan: Yeah, all the games that did LAN based multiplayer used to have spawned copies thing. What happened to it? I guess they figured out that no one ever wants to do multiplayer this way and everyone just plays online.

@Mart: Actually, it’s completely unrelated. I knew the trial was going on, but I didn’t know it was wrapping up.

Anyways, I hope the TPB guys win and get cleared of all the charges. I’m rooting for them all the way. :)

As for Army Builder, the torrents you saw were for the old release. The 2.x version was widely pirated, and readily available via torrents. The newest version is 3.1c and it introduced many changes – including the new file format. As far as I can tell it has not been cracked yet.

I know about the private WoW servers – there are actually even public-private servers out there – here is some page that ranks them. Still, if you want the genuine WoW experience you need to pay Blizzard.

How interesting that your rant against piracy seems to be around the same time as TPB’s trial is ending! :D

Even MMOs are pirated. There are a number of private servers around for popular ones. It’s actually quite easy to run a private WoW server. I’ve tried it before, and it’s actually quite funny to play it as a single player game, with the occasional busybody younger brother wanting to join me. However, a private server does not guarantee continuity and a sense of attachment to your characters that MMOs bring to the player. Thus, only the truly hardcore-emotionless gamer will play MMOs off private servers.

As for Army Builder, I’m guessing that it was cracked at one point, but no on bothered to seed. Googling for its torrent, there seemed to be a few, but with no seeders. Like you said, the niche genre really helped.

Ignoring the piracy issue seemed to be in line with what Stardock is doing. Sure, you could download a copy of GalCiv 2 or Sins, but to get any updates or join in the community forums, a serial key is needed. Pirates effectively get ignored. And with a DRM-free line of game products, they’re successful enough to open a second studio and hire more people. Which seems to be the opposite of what other big name publishers are going through.

Oh, and I love this analogy of yours: DRM == interns shredding money.