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Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk
BUT....who are the valuable customers here?  |
The valuable customers are the ones who buy the game. The members of SUBSIM are valuable customers. You can see that having paid for the game, we don't suffer fools who would talk about stealing software. Have you ever seen a thief treated in a friendly way here?
The crackers don't pay for the game, they steal it. Illegal downloaders don't pay for the game, they steal it too. And their stolen copy does not include SecuROM. SecuROM only punishes good customers who paid for the game.
It's like my neighborhood. There hadn't been a fatal accident in over 20 years until two years ago. Then a drunk with no license and violating parole, hit and killed a kid on a perfectly straight road with a mile visibility both directions. The response: 100 stop signs indiscriminately placed in a 3 square mile area. Would any number of stop signs stop the perp? NO! He had no respect for the law. But the stop signs have punished every honest, law-abiding resident of my neighborhood multiple times per day for two years. Next time we get a similar slimeball in the neighborhood he will kill somebody the same as the first, unencumbered by the 100 stop signs we obey every day.
Punish the innocent. It's easy! It's fast! It makes you feel good! But it's a losing proposition. Customer loyalty takes years to build. Customer hostility can be produced overnight. People who buy a game will not pirate it. People who steal a game are unhindered by any copy protection. SecuROM and all the other commercial "protection" rackets were cracked years ago. SH4UBM went into illegal distribution without SecuROM minutes after it was released, unless it was stolen before then.
If players value their freedom to operate their computer lawfully without unreasonable interference, they must refuse to cooperate with companies that view them with disdain. A company who thinks its paying customers steal more software than they buy is on the road to being another Sony. You can't let the slimeballs lull you into assuming that everybody is a slimeball. Then the slimeballs win.
The right way is to protect your product in an open, honest manner. Let potential customers know what kind of copy protection you use and whether it enforces personal vendettas against consumer warriors who caught the company which sells the copy protection committing worse offenses than the thieves. Let informed paying customers decide whether they wish to be treated like that. Or come up with a protection system that respects your customers and rewards them for their honesty.
Ironically, as things stand now, the only rewards go to the pirates and illegal downloaders, who get to use the games without restrictions. We're honest because we're honest people, not because of any reward. But being appreciated would be nice. And we're the ONLY source of income Ubi has. Trust is a two way street. Why not try building some? Trust flows from the top down before it flows from the bottom up. Some people just are not trustworthy, but it is foolish to treat the rest of us as if we were paying money to steal the product. Any fool can see that makes about as much sense as a screen door in a submarine!