Civilization 5 Steamworks questions/concerns for inclusion in the FAQ

[ori]

1) please provide a source for such claims
2) Steam/Valve is located in the US and while it may do cross boarder business elsewhere they specifically state in their subscriber agreement and privacy policy that their data is transferred to US based servers - so US law is going to to be relevant to them.

 

[jaythewise]

You should better ask, how establishing Ubi-DRM could have even happened, and you'll see, that Steam has been a step to it.

In a few years the people will then tell me: Do you really want XY style DRM? This is unacceptable, Ubi-DRM is compared to it quite excellent.

Sorry, I do not see how steam has pushed Ubi into the drm crazyness they went with for settlers 7...

If anything the backlash and lack of sales they received for what I thought was a pretty good game might lead them into going with steam. But hey this is just a theory with no basis in proof like your statement right?

 

[The_J]

Edit: Answered without seeing the post above.
Steam hasn't pushed them to their own, i guess they've just seen the current development and decided to do the next step.
But really the answer to the "why" nobody can give you here.

Which is why we should support Steam. Its good enough for most customers and good enough for most publishers that they aren't tempted to go for the more extreme DRMs available.

I think the opinion of the publishers might change in the future.
Like we know, Steam can be cracked, and so after some time they will not feel anymore that it's good enough.
And then we have the same situation like for the disc check:
There's a system, which is not anymore acceptable for the publisher, and they'll move to a more draconian system.
That's my guess for the future .

 

[evrett37]

1) please provide a source for such claims
2) Steam/Valve is located in the US and while it may do cross boarder business elsewhere they specifically state in their subscriber agreement and privacy policy that their data is transferred to US based servers - so US law is going to to be relevant to them.

I did post a link to this information in the thread you moved but another mod cut out the link. Regardless I'd rather have a straight answer from FAQ.

 

[ori]

well following that story there is an unsubstantiated rumor that a law that is enacted in Korea might have something to do with Blizzard's new forum policy and you now want some sort of confirmation by Take2 whether Steam is affected by this? There is not way to answer that even in the best of cases since its just an internet rumor so far with no confirmation beyond a blog post posting a hunch about Blizzard.
Further even that unsubstantiated rumor doesn't actually state what you did up there - it says that the Real Name needs to be used to sign forum posts on sites with more than 100 000 users per day - this might *potentially* apply to Steam forum users - but not for Steam users in general. And even that is stretching it.

link to story

 

[Greybriar]

Which is why we should support Steam. Its good enough for most customers and good enough for most publishers that they aren't tempted to go for the more extreme DRMs available.

How much money do you get paid by Steam / Valve for representing them on this forum?

 

[Senethro]

How much money do you get paid by Steam / Valve for representing them on this forum?

Watch this, I'm about to do something clever.

*ahem*

How much money do you get paid by rivals/competitors of Steam/Valve for campaigning against Steam distribution deals on multiple forums?


Edit for those with a twitchy infract button: I am not making a serious accusation, I am attempting to show Greybriar how pointless and hollow this line of questioning is.

Also tinfoil.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Also tinfoil.

You know, I'm NOT normally a tinfoil hat type. But something offends me. In the DRM escalation, the publishers have obviously decided that they can't trust or respect US.

Why should we trust or respect them?

Why do they deserve for me to believe whatever they say, just go along with it; when in fact they've predetermined that I'm a big fat liar and a thief?

 

[Donkeyman]

You know, I'm NOT normally a tinfoil hat type. But something offends me. In the DRM escalation, the publishers have obviously decided that they can't trust or respect US.

Why should we trust or respect them?

Why do they deserve for me to believe whatever they say, just go along with it; when in fact they've predetermined that I'm a big fat liar and a thief?

It's nothing personal, but data suggests that the average PC gamer will pirate a game if given the opportunity, so there really is no reason to trust the average PC gamer to do the right thing because they aren't, on average, likely to do the right thing.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

It's nothing personal, but data suggests that the average PC gamer will pirate a game if given the opportunity, so there really is no reason to trust the average PC gamer to do the right thing because they aren't, on average, likely to do the right thing.

Oh, yeah, I agree with that and understand. I work in fraud prevention, and at least on the credit card end of things I know that you have to be vigilant and creative in stopping the bad guys. On the other hand, though, it's important to understand that the paying customers aren't the enemy, and to do what you need to do while causing as little inconvenience and annoyance as possible. In my work, I could employ even more demanding methods than I do, but as a trade-off I'd lose many customers that just wouldn't want to deal with the extra hassle.

 

[Donkeyman]

Oh, yeah, I agree with that and understand. I work in fraud prevention, and at least on the credit card end of things I know that you have to be vigilant and creative in stopping the bad guys. On the other hand, though, it's important to understand that the paying customers aren't the enemy, and to do what you need to do while causing as little inconvenience and annoyance as possible. In my work, I could employ even more demanding methods than I do, but as a trade-off I'd lose many customers that just wouldn't want to deal with the extra hassle.

This is true, which is why I'll never buy another Ubisoft PC game- their DRM system is simply unnecessarily intrusive. I respect Firaxis for respecting me and using a client like Steam that requires only a single online verification if I should so choose, instead of anything that could actually either annoy me and reduce my ability to play my game(Ubisoft) or actually damage my computer (Starforce and SecuROM).

 

[evrett37]

well following that story there is an unsubstantiated rumor that a law that is enacted in Korea might have something to do with Blizzard's new forum policy and you now want some sort of confirmation by Take2 whether Steam is affected by this? There is not way to answer that even in the best of cases since its just an internet rumor so far with no confirmation beyond a blog post posting a hunch about Blizzard.
Further even that unsubstantiated rumor doesn't actually state what you did up there - it says that the Real Name needs to be used to sign forum posts on sites with more than 100 000 users per day - this might *potentially* apply to Steam forum users - but not for Steam users in general. And even that is stretching it.

link to story

Look Ori..you really cant expect a lowly forum troll like myself to produce a oxford quality research paper in every post. I think the points all align. The Korea law isnt the part that is a rumor and this story is just a one peice of argument against these sunshine steam people you let run around and claim we can trust valve with our personal info. Its one situation that -could- happen and from many peoples perspective an unwanted, uninvited risk. The RealID situation show that even if a company is deserving of your trust like Blizzard has been in the past, things can go down hill really fast. Trust in corporations is misplaced whether it be coal and oil, banking or entertainment. Blizzard hasnt been blizzard since it merged into Activision and Firaxis maybe walking that same road..especially with the recent layoffs.

If it can -potentially- happen then we should be discussing it and deciding how to react to it as a united community so something productive comes of the effort. Before time and apathy rob us of our chance to make a difference.

 

[isndl]

It's nothing personal, but data suggests that the average PC gamer will pirate a game if given the opportunity, so there really is no reason to trust the average PC gamer to do the right thing because they aren't, on average, likely to do the right thing.

I would like to see this data you are referring to. The PC gaming player base is far too large to make such generalizations without some sort of evidence (anecdotal evidence such as the article about World of Goo suffering 90% piracy is insufficient).

 

[bjbrains]

How much money do you get paid by Steam / Valve for representing them on this forum?

Senethro is obviously Gabe Newell in disguise.

Back on topic, piracy is and will be a major concern for the entertainment industry. Even if 90% isn't accurate, this should throw some light on the topic http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Saving-a-penny----pirating-the-Humble-Indie-Bundle .
Even though the bundle could be bought using any number of payment methods for essentially free (1 cent), they estimated about 25% of their downloads (not illegal copies in general, but unauthorized downloads from their server) were pirated. Even if you take in the mitigating factors mentioned in the post, that's still a HUGE deal for a damned *CHARITY*.

 

[Donkeyman]

I would like to see this data you are referring to. The PC gaming player base is far too large to make such generalizations without some sort of evidence (anecdotal evidence such as the article about World of Goo suffering 90% piracy is insufficient).

I keep hearing about the World of Goo data being flawed somehow, but I haven't seen any data at all to prove piracy rates are lower than that. They very well may be, but they are without a doubt high enough to cause significant financial harm to PC game developers until some data is presented that shows otherwise.

 

[isndl]

I keep hearing about the World of Goo data being flawed somehow, but I haven't seen any data at all to prove piracy rates are lower than that. They very well may be, but they are without a doubt high enough to cause significant financial harm to PC game developers until some data is presented that shows otherwise.

It's "flawed" in that it's a single data point in the grand scheme of things. There's not enough data there to be able to draw any significant conclusions that would apply across the majority of the PC gaming spectrum, especially when you consider the variance in genres, marketing, and complexity. There are outliers in any statistical sample, and World of Goo may be one of them - until we have more data, we cannot be sure.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I keep hearing about the World of Goo data being flawed somehow, but I haven't seen any data at all to prove piracy rates are lower than that. They very well may be, but they are without a doubt high enough to cause significant financial harm to PC game developers until some data is presented that shows otherwise.

If you refer to the original article about the piracy in World of Goo, you will see the comments left by visitors alone indicate a lot of the reasons the analysis can be considered flawed. In the end, the author conceded that yes there were some assumptions that could greatly affect the result but he hoped that some of the assumptions countered each other making the estimate accurate. That simply is not a very statistically valid way to treat uncertainty. The main reason the data is flawed from my point of view is that he counts unique IPs but many ISPs or routers provide their users with many more than one IP at different times. It is likely that World of Good was pirated quite a lot, but the alarmist figure of 90% I don't accept easily. The fact it gets thrown around regularly now in debates about piracy is just annoying. As others have noted, there are so many other factors that could influence how much a game gets pirated, that the World of Goo example is just one piece of data (or should I say one datum - who uses that word anyway?) and one of questionable accuracy to be sure.

For your convenience, here is the original source:
http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/

EDIT2... Here's one example of a comment that was left by a visitor:

Don’t forget many pirates download the ’scene’ release just because they can. They try it out once, maybe twice, then never play it again for whatever reason (probably because their next download just finished). Technically still a pirate, sure, but it’s wrong to think about these players as potential buyers (as already pointed out).

What would be the percentage of score submissions coming from pirates over the total number of score submissions?

Impossible to measure? Yes.

A much lower number? Probably.

A better way to measure piracy? Definitely. Measure actual time spent playing without paying.

A comment like that raises an interesting question, IMO.
e.g. Is it more wrong to pirate a game that you intend to play a lot than one you will play for 10 minutes? If 9 players pirate and play the game for 1 hour each, where another player (maybe a fanatic ) pays for the game and plays for 9 hours, would you record that as a 90% piracy rate or a 50% piracy rate? Of course, it's obvious which number someone in the industry would choose.

 

[nerd]

If you refer to the original article about the piracy in World of Goo, you will see the comments left by visitors alone indicate a lot of the reasons the analysis can be considered flawed. In the end, the author conceded that yes there were some assumptions that could greatly affect the result but he hoped that some of the assumptions countered each other making the estimate accurate. That simply is not a very statistically valid way to treat uncertainty. The main reason the data is flawed from my point of view is that he counts unique IPs but many ISPs or routers provide their users with many more than one IP at different times. It is likely that World of Good was pirated quite a lot, but the alarmist figure of 90% I don't accept easily. The fact it gets thrown around regularly now in debates about piracy is just annoying. As others have noted, there are so many other factors that could influence how much a game gets pirated, that the World of Goo example is just one piece of data (or should I say one datum - who uses that word anyway?) and one of questionable accuracy to be sure.

For your convenience, here is the original source:
http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/

EDIT2... Here's one example of a comment that was left by a visitor:

A comment like that raises an interesting question, IMO.
e.g. Is it more wrong to pirate a game that you intend to play a lot than one you will play for 10 minutes? If 9 players pirate and play the game for 1 hour each, where another player (maybe a fanatic ) pays for the game and plays for 9 hours, would you record that as a 90% piracy rate or a 50% piracy rate? Of course, it's obvious which number someone in the industry would choose.

I recently bought GOO in a bargain bin for $5, and it has no DRM at all. There is no way that I can see that anyone could possibly even make a wild guess as to piracy when there is no way to identify whether the game is purchased or not to begin with.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I recently bought GOO in a bargain bin for $5, and it has no DRM at all. There is no way that I can see that anyone could possibly even make a wild guess as to piracy when there is no way to identify whether the game is purchased or not to begin with.

Wouldn't the store record it as a sale? They must know how much stock they have and how much they eventually don't have, right?

 

[Commander Bello]

A comment like that raises an interesting question, IMO.
e.g. Is it more wrong to pirate a game that you intend to play a lot than one you will play for 10 minutes?

The answer is quite easy: there isn't any difference.
Piracy is piracy is piracy.

I agree though to the assumption that although piracy is a fact and that although it indeed does hurt sales figures, it won't be doing as much damage as the industry claims.

I remember back in the early 80ies, when it was not clear if the German equivalent to copyright (Urheberschutz) would cover digital "goods" too, we shared software like no good - just because it was possible, and because one game X maybe could be used later on to get another game Z.
Would we have bought game X? Very unlikely.

Yet, we did hurt sales figures since game A was the one which was constantly played.

Wouldn't the store record it as a sale? They must know how much stock they have and how much they eventually don't have, right?

The only figure which counts is the sales figure of the publisher.
If they sell 1,000,000 copies (or licences or whatever), then these are 1,000,000 sold games - whether they may stay somewhere at the last shelf, will never be downloaded or whatever.

That the industry has a big interest in raising numbers of allegedly pirated games is very obvioius since it serves the justification of whatever they may be doing although the customers won't like it.
One could go as far as to say: "If piracy wouldn't be a fact, they would have to invent it."

Nevertheless, at the bottom line piracy is:
a) bad
b) bad
c) bad
d) unjustified
e) period.