GalCiv 2 & Copy Protection

[Gwendo]

Usually pirate groups don't worry too much about updates. Those releases don't contribute to raise their status/points. Unless it's a main stream game and that update needs cracking.

 

[kingcomrade]

I just did a little bit of searching and found the lastest patch in the first Google hit for "Galactic Civilizations 2 Update Torrent." They weren't even torrents, they were URLs.

 

[bryce777]

Wardell & Co had more to say on this today:

"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."
http://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=161&AID=106741

Starforce is a class act all the way.

That begs the question of whether they are actually involved in the piracy...it really makes you wonder.

Seriously, a straight up url to dl the whole game? Seems unliely and rather fishy. That could cost some serious bandwidth....

 

[Abernathy]

[Seriously, a straight up url to dl the whole game? Seems unliely and rather fishy. That could cost some serious bandwidth....

Stardock emailed the site in question and the game was removed from the torrent almost immediately - much to the dismay of at least one punter on the Starforce forums

 

[obediah]

That begs the question of whether they are actually involved in the piracy...it really makes you wonder.

Seriously, a straight up url to dl the whole game? Seems unliely and rather fishy. That could cost some serious bandwidth....

Are you for real? Grabbing any moderately popular PC game is as easy as hell with bittorrent - isohunt, piratebay, torrentreactor, ... I wish pirating shit was this easy back when I was a poor student and couldn't afford the games I wanted.

I'm not sure who you mean by 'they'. Starforce isn't involved in the piracy at all, they're just taking a mafioso stance in trying to combat the bad (for them) PR of a game with no copy protection selling much better than expected.

There's no need to sponsore piracy. Anyone with a broadband connection or some patience can participate.

 

[kingcomrade]

You talking to me? They were URLs to the patch files.

 

[bryce777]

That begs the question of whether they are actually involved in the piracy...it really makes you wonder.

Seriously, a straight up url to dl the whole game? Seems unliely and rather fishy. That could cost some serious bandwidth....

Are you for real? Grabbing any moderately popular PC game is as easy as hell with bittorrent - isohunt, piratebay, torrentreactor, ... I wish pirating shit was this easy back when I was a poor student and couldn't afford the games I wanted.

I'm not sure who you mean by 'they'. Starforce isn't involved in the piracy at all, they're just taking a mafioso stance in trying to combat the bad (for them) PR of a game with no copy protection selling much better than expected.

There's no need to sponsore piracy. Anyone with a broadband connection or some patience can participate.

He said a link directly to a download, not to a torrent. Either way, it is pretty fucked up of the starforce people to pull shit like that.

 

[obediah]

He said a link directly to a download, not to a torrent.

Not in the text you quoted, or any other I've found.

Either way, it is pretty fucked up of the starforce people to pull shit like that.

Agreed 100%.