Copy protection, a necessary evil?

[Jorge]

Nowadays, almost every game comes out with copy protection, claiming its essential in order to secure sales, and avoid pirates. But, in all honesty, is it really that necessary? On February 21st, 2006 Stardock Entertainment released Galactic Civilizations II – the follow-up to their successful game of 2003. What's more, its sales figures are up beyond all expectations. A new game selling well might not seem like news, until you realise that it ships with ZERO copy protection. You don't even need to authenticate a serial to play it. At a time when everyone blames the potential of downloaders for a multitude of sins, sales flops and marketing disasters, Stardock has made a product that they've not protected, or even advertised, and its flying off the shelves. Yes, flying off the shelves. To quote Brad Wardell, one of the games developers n an announcement on the games frontpage says, “We just got our report on the first week of sales of Galactic Civilizations II. Despite some availability problems, we're told that we're presently the best selling software title at Walmart. Let me be clear: Not just #1 PC game, but overall software. Best Buy, EB, and Gamestop have put in additional orders that actually exceed their initial sell-in orders.” Story here

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[Signa]

whats worse is that so many games these days are using protections that fully disable the game because you have some other software on your PC. i had to crack doom 3 when i BOUGHT it despite the fact that i was being 100% legit. its gotten worse too, as i cant even play some of the games i download to try-before-i-buy.... guess what guys, if the free copy didnt play why would i go spend $50 on the game just so that it wont work again?

[MrEricSir]

Makes sense. Generally when you pirate a game, you get a version of the game where the copy protection has already been disabled.

In other words, copy protection only affects people who paid.

[black_magiic]

Good on them.

[Nogoodpunk42]

it's so funny that Galatic Civilizations is flying off the shelf. Maybe it's because there's a game out there that people are actually willing to buy. Don't get me wrong there's a lot of good games out there but, there's also a lot of games people have downloaded in the past; played for 2 days and then uninstalled. I don't know about the rest of the world but, if I paid 50 bucks on a game and stopped playing it 2 days later I'd be pretty pissed. Not to mention would be returning it. It's kinda like the RIAA stating that cd sales are failing because of illegal downloads. Maybe it's because the 10,000 Britney Spears and P. Diddy clones aren't writing good material. Or because no one wants to pay $15 for 2 good songs.By the way has anyone played this game? Is it any good? I think if there's someone out there that has this game they should write a review on it on ZP. So us FILE-SHARERS can go out and buy a good game for a change.