Am I correct in understanding that GOG has aided and abetted Australians who were trying to circumvent their own government's game rating / censorship laws? If so, are you similarly really annoyed by that action?

On this point, if it were illegal GOG would not have been able to do it, they exploited a loop hole and did not break any laws im aware off.


The way I see it is you do not buy a game at steam then turn round to D2D and say "well i bought it at steam, im entitled to use your files too"

Where have you been living? Who planted that DRM promoting mindset into your head? ;)

It is a fact well known, that pirates (or freeloaders, as the pirates are the ones providing the booty) have the least problems with their games. Because cracks don't stuff up exes, but actually lighten their load by removing the piece of software you didn't really intended to buy in the first place, let alone have it wreak havoc on your computer (yes, you guessed right, I indeed purchased TW2 on GoG, because I would not have bought a SecuROM infested game). That made me laugh so hard, because... I had those crashes every five minutes - until I disabled all DOF effects. Which I would've liked to use. Well, maybe that is one of the things they implemented for pirates, like they proudly annouonced, to spoil their fun with the game.

Just kidding. But that is a thing I've read on several game forums now: devs made "traps" for pirates. And when legit players are crippled by weird errors, they get branded as pirates, because everybody knows, only illegal copies behave weirdly...
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OP: What is more annoying, having your game crippled because you bought a box, or watching affected gamers find a workaround and applying it (a Red even said it's ok)?

You know its really quite easy to fish out pirated or stolen games,for example,you can just adjust a few lines of code that look totally innocent,but in fact alter a tiny part of a games structure so for instance [from experience] a tiny tweak made a gun not fit and be unmountable,so everytime i saw a post on a forum about that gun not mounting,i knew for a fact they were using a bent version of the game.

and this practice is indeed widespread,just watch for support requests that are ignored,9/10 times its an intended error.

As for pirated games running better thats just wrong,there are a miriad of posts out there of screaming pirates begging for "cracks" that work.

remember the mafia game,or was it godfather,where you either couldnt get in a car or out ?,that was a developer trap,there have been many.

no offence intended and not berating,just informing ;)


ps..I too think securom is outdated and useless and just affects genuine buyers,as any DRM is supposed to protect a game for the first months sales only,and securom is failing badly at this one fact.
I think developer "sneak tweaks" are the future,that way they can be renewed at every patch or activation,imagine witcher 2 where you couldnt swing your sword or suchlike.. ;)

Yeah, but that is the whole point. This happens to legit owners of the game. Like the sword swinging. Or the crashes I mentioned earlier. They just don't aim right with their tweaks or whatever. Putting "evil" code in the game is just like what they did with cd's back when they tried to have it still be a CDA, despite of the implemetation of that "protection" that protected the cd's from being played. They had to give that up, now they've moved on to games with a different legal background. If that's not downright illegal, it's at least shady.

I'd rather they concentrate their manpower on IMPROVING the game, instead of bugging it up. Like that horrible input lag, I'd not be surprised if that was a side effect of shady tweaking.

Also, they should be a little consistent with their statements. One day they say they want to counteract piracy by giving the gamers something worth buying (honey and flies?) and the next day they announce that they will spend our money to actively hunt down pirates and dedicate their time to think up annoyance tweaks. And then out comes a game with the second worst DRM there is and it prevents customers from activating it, playing it, craps up performance. That is madness.

I am SO glad that I bought the DRM free version. But when I heard about SecuROM, only the fact that I had decided and pre-ordered already made me not boycott the game - like I did all the other SR games of the last years (I like playing good old games just fine *g*). And all the difficulties we experience now only confirm that this was a BAD decision. Remember the times when we bought a single player game on cd, installed it and played?

Yup i still remember lenslok,which was successful until someone decided to start hacking the games exe`s ;(

sad thing is if we want to be playing games for the foreseeable future we will have to live with DRM in all its forms.
because as soon as it becomes unprofitable we just wont see anymoregamesother than the thievery goingon with the huge companys.

another sad truth is the genius of software developers is marred by the fact the best are the worst of us,who get a bigger kick cracking than creating,

so we have a choice...we the gamers start to think of the future,or watch it all go down the toilet.
I`m 48 and seen every stage,my names in a few manual credits,so believe me its already circling the pan.

I can't live with that. And I won't support it by buying the customer punishment software. I rather hope that they someday recognize that DRM as the scam it is, because the only party that EVER earns a penny from it, are the companies providing the "service" *coughsonycough*. Just the same untrue statement as with the music industry, which in the end suffers from bad quality, not from piracy (copied casette tapes were there since there were records and it wasn't even illegal).

You would have to close down the internet, to prevent most of the piracy. And still, sales wouldn't go up because of a number of reasons (which i won't repeat here, because it's been said enough times).

Aside from the fact, that DRM is in big part used to prevent second hand sales or rental. Because in theory you are still allowed to sell a thing you own. In practice, you don't own your game anymore.

I believe that in the end, the way they treat their customers, will hurt them the most. I believe that the sales they don't get from people who don't support being treated like criminals are worse than the sales they might've never gotten even if they couldn't download.

I want to support a company like CDPR and then they slap me in the face with SecuROM? Really? That's how you treat your devoted fans? And the casual customers, who didn't pay as much attention before they got their package from Amazon to realize they have been screwed over, because you never even get the info, before you unwittingly install the malware. There really should be a law to clearly indicate obligatory third party software before purchase and on the box. That there isn't a law for that, is telling me a lot about who has the power and the gain from this whole thing and it's not the pirates.

That is a thing that annoys me to no end. But I really should butt out now, because it's really not good for my health. ;)

No point in "closing the internet". Filesharing does not impact sales and if they do, is to bring potential new customers to purchase the game when they can and if they liked the game. Otherwise it would not be a sale to begin with.

And since Console games are as much or even more pirated than PC games, also because they cost more, this discussion is always always fruitless.

What really hurts developers and copyright owners are illegal physical copies, of whichever product, that are actually sold for money, cheaper than the original, and lots of stupid people actually pay for them. Be it games, movies, tb series season box, purses, watches, t-shirts, sneakers, apparel... that's the forgery that hurts because some crooks are making money that were supposed to go to the legitimate developers.

PC games will never stop being d/l'ed, not more than console games, movies, music, tv shows, softwares. Deal with it. But when you see fake or illegal copies being SOLD somewhere, call the cops!