Starforce backstabs Gal. Civ. 2

Refreshing take on Piracy from a Development House.... (thanx for links 'n news armitage)

Extract below taken from
http://forums.galciv2.com/index.aspx?forumid=161&aid=106741&c=1

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Digg is reporting that a website is implying that we want Galactic Civilizations II to be pirated. Absolutely not! Of course we DO NOT want our game to be pirated. We're a small company, every lost sale hurts us.

This got started because sales reports on Galactic Civilizations II have been much higher than anticipated. We've now outsold the first Galactic Civilizations in North America in the first 10 days. Last week we were apparently the #1 PC game at Walmart.

Naturally, some peple have taken the conclusion that because we don't have copy protection on our game, that we invite piracy. That is not the case, we simply think there are other ways to stop piracy than CD checks, strict DRM, etc.

What we do is provide a serial # that users can choose to enter when they install and use that unique serial # to download free and frequent updates.

Our license allows you to install the game onto as many machines that you own that you want as long as only one copy is being used at once. How many sales are lost because people want to have a game on their laptop and desktop and don't want to drag CDs around so choose not to buy the game?

Our company also makes utility software. We've been around a long time -- 14 years now. Our software gets pirated. We don't like it but piracy is a fact of life. The question isn't about eliminating it, it's about reducing it and trying to make sure that people who would buy your product buy it instead of steal it.

Our primary weapon to fight piracy is through rewarding customers through convenient, frequent, free updates.

If you make it easy for users to buy and make full use of your product or service legitimately then we believe that you'll gain more users from that convenience than you'll lose from piracy.

We realize that some people or companies might feel threatened at any evidence that implies that draconian DRM schemes or CD copy protection may not make that big of a difference in sales.

For example, we were quite disturbed to discover that the company that makes Starforce provided a working URL to a list of pirated GalCiv II torrents. I'm not sure whether what they did was illegal or not, but it's troubling nevertheless and was totally unnecessary.

All software is pirated, there's no way around it. We've been making software for over 10 years. We don't like our software being pirated. Like I said, every lost sales has an impact on us. But there are other ways to reduce it than through draconian copy protection systems.

Incidentally, the site that Starforce's forum admin linked to "prove" how much our software was being pirated we visited, followed the instructions on the site to get our game removed and the links were removed within a couple of hours. We'll continue to follow-up with them.
 
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Galactiv Civ is nothing like X3 though. I enjoyed Galactic Civ I , it is actually the "Master of Orion 3" that should've been. I'd rather compare it to Civilisation 4 than X3 ....Galactic Civ is very strategic and had quite an interesting AI system.
 
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Well, I think starforce is a piece of junk (I actually wanted to use a stronger word). I started playing X3 and enjoyed it very much, but I started having stability problems with my PC and trying to use my ISO mounter caused an instant BSOD. After uninstalling starforce with that special tool (note, starforce remains behind if one just uninstalls the game), all my problems went away.

I am now sad that I cannot finish X3, but I am not willing to pay the price starforce imposes.
 
Well I lubbed x2. But unfortunately i can't afford at mo to fork out 15k to get a new pc. I got to the stage on president's end where it gets blown up in the storyline. Then i started doing my own empire run.


Imagine a line of boron dolphins 5 systems long continiously doing trade runs. :)
Was beautiful. Though SETA ruined the game for me. I would in the end put the game on seta. Come back next morning. rebuy the dolphins lost an then go on putting it on seta. come back after work and rinse& repeat.


Though I do njoy games like master of orion,gc1, hegemonia more cause im more a typical rts fan than a fps space lover.
 
I finished the story in X2 and made enough money to buy practically anything in the game. I was hoping to do the same in X3, but I guess it will never happen now.
 
Did i miss something with X3? I was going to get it...why can't you finish it?
 
I basically had to uninstall it to get my PC back. The starforce copy protection was causing problems and without starforce the game would not run. So I uninstalled it with the first couple of missions done and with six space stations to generate money. They game itself is pretty nice, if not much extra beyond X2.
 
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