Please Sid - NO DLC

[Yakk]

In any case, modability does more than just benefit the people who download mods.

Modability makes it easier to build scenarios. Everyone who purchased BTS got a bunch of them.

Player modability let people write things like the Ffh scenario in BTS, which shipped to players.

Player modability lets Firaxis let us find and fix bugs, and then take our code (as specified in the license we use when we modify the code!) and give it to everyone else in the form of patches.

 

[kivanc]

That's the 2nd or 3rd time in this thread that you've insinuated that 80% of people pirate the game. I find that offensive.

offensive? i don't offense anything. i just highlight a simple truth that such laws aren't applied in most countries. piracy is so easy.

yes %80 might be wrong. perhaps it could be even more

 

[Yakk]

Laws against game piracy are not practically enforced in any country.

Some countries have a habit of paying for what they use, others have a habit of stealing what they want.

The lack of enforcement is pretty much uniformly true.

Despite that, 80% piracy rates of players are not generally supported when people actually do stats on games, last I checked. And what more, what pirates want in a game shouldn't matter to the manufacturers of games -- if they like or don't like some feature, why care?

 

[deanej]

Why care? Because most publishers are under the misguided impression that if piracy were made impossible, all the pirates would magically buy the game

 

[EdCase]

When Sims 3 came out with DLC it was quickly prirated and available all over the net. I think DLC content should be available, but only to those people who pay for the actual game. i.e. some kind of Licence Key check where the content is bound to the install key when you download it and it must match the install key

Why ? Your just making it more convoluted for the the legitimate owners.

There are those who buy.
There are those who don't.
There are those who convince themselves they'll "try" and buy if its good.
Piracy exists, it will always exist, don't buy into the manufacturers spin.
They use piracy as a convenient excuse to push their agenda for killing third party sales(trading in games if you prefer).

No I don't condone piracy, but I am realistic in how I view its role in the publishers plans.

 

[Chalks]

offensive? i don't offense anything. i just highlight a simple truth that such laws aren't applied in most countries. piracy is so easy.

yes %80 might be wrong. perhaps it could be even more

You're just making things up.

Random numbers plucked from the air.

If 80% of people pirate a game, the games company goes bust because they don't make any money.

I think we would have probably noticed if that had happened.

Stop making things up.

 

[Duuk]

Anyway, to get back on topic:

I support mini-pack DLC. I'd like to see "Civ of the Week" $3 downloads. "Oh, this week is Poland? Here's my $3. Oh. Next week is Hawaii? Yeah, I'll pass."

I'd bet Firaxis could keep a few full time employees for a year or more just doing stuff like that.

 

[deanej]

And what if it would be helpful for a mod to have Poland? Guess what, can't have Poland, at least not the Firaxis one.

 

[zulu9812]

The makers of Alien vs Predator have just released a DLC for that game that retails at £5 and consists of... 4 maps.

I do hope ciV's publishers (Take-Two?) don't pull this kind of crap.

 

[frekk]

I've got no problem with free DLC that is only available to people with a cd-key, if it allows civ to be released with less frustrating copy protection. However, it shouldn't be anything really crucial to the game, because I don't want to purchase anything that forces me to go online and download stuff to play it properly. I probably will anyway, if the content is any good - I just don't like being forced and I have this notion that I should be able to buy, install, and play a game without any Internet access at all. It's just a principle.

I don't think there will be much point for them to try to charge money for DLC, because it will be competing with mods which are likely to serve up much more selection and probably quite a bit of superior content.

 

[Thormodr]

You're just making things up.

Random numbers plucked from the air.

If 80% of people pirate a game, the games company goes bust because they don't make any money.

I think we would have probably noticed if that had happened.

Stop making things up.

It really depends where you are. I believe China is "only" at 80% (down for 90%)

It works out to about 60% worldwide overall.

SOURCE
Fifth Annual BSA and IDC Global Software Piracy Study
DEFINITION
The piracy rate is the total number of units of pirated software deployed in 2007 divided by the total units of software installed.
Crime Statistics > Software piracy rate (most recent) by country
VIEW DATA: Totals
Definition Source Printable version
Bar Graph Map

Showing latest available data.
Rank Countries Amount
# 1 Armenia: 93%
= 2 Moldova: 92%
= 2 Azerbaijan: 92%
= 2 Bangladesh: 92%
# 5 Zimbabwe: 91%
# 6 Sri Lanka: 90%
# 7 Yemen: 89%
# 8 Libya: 88%
# 9 Venezuela: 87%
= 10 Iraq: 85%
= 10 Vietnam: 85%
= 12 Algeria: 84%
= 12 Cameroon: 84%
= 12 Pakistan: 84%
= 12 Indonesia: 84%
# 16 Ukraine: 83%
= 17 China: 82%
= 17 Botswana: 82%
= 17 Zambia: 82%
= 17 Nigeria: 82%
= 17 Bolivia: 82%
= 17 Paraguay: 82%
= 23 El Salvador: 81%
= 23 Côte d'Ivoire: 81%
= 23 Kenya: 81%
= 26 Guatemala: 80%
= 26 Senegal: 80%
= 26 Nicaragua: 80%
= 29 Dominican Republic: 79%
= 29 Kazakhstan: 79%
= 31 Albania: 78%
= 31 Thailand: 78%
= 33 Tunisia: 76%
= 33 Serbia and Montenegro: 76%
= 35 Panama: 74%
= 35 Honduras: 74%
= 35 Argentina: 74%
= 38 Lebanon: 73%
= 38 Russia: 73%
# 40 Peru: 71%
= 41 Uruguay: 69%
= 41 Philippines: 69%
= 41 India: 69%
= 44 Bulgaria: 68%
= 44 Macedonia, Republic of: 68%
= 44 Romania: 68%
= 44 Bosnia and Herzegovina: 68%
# 48 Morocco: 67%
= 49 Ecuador: 66%
= 49 Chile: 66%
# 51 Turkey: 65%
# 52 Kuwait: 62%
= 53 Costa Rica: 61%
= 53 Mexico: 61%
= 53 Oman: 61%
= 56 Jordan: 60%
= 56 Egypt: 60%
= 58 Malaysia: 59%
= 58 Brazil: 59%
= 60 Colombia: 58%
= 60 Greece: 58%
= 62 Bahrain: 57%
= 62 Mauritius: 57%
= 62 Poland: 57%
= 65 Latvia: 56%
= 65 Lithuania: 56%
= 67 Croatia: 54%
= 67 Qatar: 54%
= 69 Hong Kong: 51%
= 69 Saudi Arabia: 51%
= 69 Estonia: 51%
# 72 Cyprus: 50%
# 73 Italy: 49%
= 74 Slovenia: 48%
= 74 Iceland: 48%
# 76 Malta: 46%
# 77 Slovakia: 45%
# 78 Puerto Rico: 44%
= 79 Korea, South: 43%
= 79 Portugal: 43%
= 79 Spain: 43%
= 82 Hungary: 42%
= 82 France: 42%
= 84 Taiwan: 40%
= 84 Réunion: 40%
# 86 Czech Republic: 39%
# 87 Singapore: 37%
# 88 United Arab Emirates: 35%
= 89 Ireland: 34%
= 89 South Africa: 34%
# 91 Canada: 33%
# 92 Israel: 32%
# 93 Norway: 29%
= 94 Netherlands: 28%
= 94 Australia: 28%
# 96 Germany: 27%
# 97 United Kingdom: 26%
= 98 Switzerland: 25%
= 98 Austria: 25%
= 98 Denmark: 25%
= 98 Belgium: 25%
= 98 Sweden: 25%
= 98 Finland: 25%
# 104 Japan: 23%
# 105 New Zealand: 22%
# 106 Luxembourg: 21%
# 107 United States: 20%
Weighted average: 59.9%

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_sof_pir_rat-crime-software-piracy-rate

 

[frekk]

It works out to about 60% worldwide overall.

Alot of that can be accounted for by the incredibly high rates in places like Armenia, Zimbabwe, Libya etc ... where retail availability is probably poor or nonexistant, and digital downloads are often restricted (see here, for example). The rates in the developed world are far lower. On the order of 20-30% for places like the US, England, and Canada.

I don't know that there are too many Zimbabwean and Libyan civvers around here, it's pretty safe to presume that the majority of people on Civfanatics are from North America or Western Europe or places like Israel and Japan. So rather than 80% of people around here having pirated the game, it's quite the opposite; 80% probably have legitimate copies.

Maybe more.

That list is inclusive of all games, not just civ. Civ enjoys a bit of an older, more established demographic; who are well-known to be more inclined to purchase games than younger demographics. Plus, this site is probably the core of diehard civ fans, so we can expect that the number of people with legitimate copies is probably slightly higher than the general figure for all people with a copy of civ. All told, the number of legitimate owners on the site may well be in the 90% or higher range.

 

[Chalks]

It is also worth pointing out that software piracy is not the same as game piracy. It is pretty safe to assume that in many of the countries where piracy rates are extremely high, nobody is going to play an English language game.

 

[kivanc]

chalks asked me not to make things up so i just cut it then but now it seems the topic is back.

i was not making things up. i just said what i face here. the 80% ratio was just a guess, and i see that i am roughly right.
also, statistics are always more optimistic than the actuality. so 20% rate in usa might be 25-30% actually and 65% of Turkey might be 75%.

however, in the next 10years, we can see the ratios fall dramatically. if the ratio is found 65%in turkey now, i am sure 10years ago it should be 85-90%. many low enforcements are applied in Turkey and that effected. Before those, you could see a college student selling copied cd's every corner
later, not only corner-side sellers but also many shops have been "visited" by the police and fined for huge amounts like 30k $. so most guys just gave up.


i don't know how many of you have played fifa manager 09. it has a strong system against policy. if that is widespread in many games, then most guys will have to buy it. 10 year later the case will be different. so also DLC may be more widespread in many games 10-15 years later.

It is also worth pointing out that software piracy is not the same as game piracy. It is pretty safe to assume that in many of the countries where piracy rates are extremely high, nobody is going to play an English language game.

i saw a pirate version of a popular game, translated into turkish
pirates are not just a few vagabond guys. there is a strong mafia behind them. also, file sharing sites are still not illegal in many countries.

 

[Chalks]

i saw a pirate version of a popular game, translated into turkish
pirates are not just a few vagabond guys. there is a strong mafia behind them. also, file sharing sites are still not illegal in many countries.

Doesn't matter that they exist, they are still not going to be a significant proportion of pirated materials in that country.

 

[frekk]

i don't know how many of you have played fifa manager 09. it has a strong system against policy. if that is widespread in many games, then most guys will have to buy it.

And yet, a quick search of some torrent sites shows that it has been cracked and is being distributed by hundreds of users right now, meaning many many thousands of copies have been downloaded. Fifa manager 10 is even more widely distributed.

There is only one thing that determines how much a game gets pirated, and it has zip to do with copy protection; it has only to do with the popularity of the game. Games that do poorly in the market also do poorly in pirate downloads; not all of them are bad games, some are just obscure.

 

[kivanc]

Doesn't matter that they exist, they are still not going to be a significant proportion of pirated materials in that country.

u think so. in our university years, when a guy downloaded a game and he made a copy to all his friends. i have never seen a guy paying for a game at that period. most guys were deciding together and dividing between eachother about who would download which game/album. besides, it was not easy to find every game in the stores, game import was not much.

sim has released many EPs, and spread great dislike. all versions were available in the engineering faculty. i even faced an event, a guy just started going-out with a girl. their first dialogue on the cafe table was about the sims. boy gave the girl the downloaded copy

 

[Pangur Bán]

Sid has nothing to do with it. You might as well ask George Washington to stop the war in Afghanistan ...

 

[Chalks]

u think so. in our university years, when a guy downloaded a game and he made a copy to all his friends. i have never seen a guy paying for a game at that period.

Do you understand the concept of an anecdote?