Would you pay $10 extra for no DRM?

[TH0R]

Yes.

[KL-alfman]

Originally Posted by tater

You DO. Any software you buy without DRM has the associated losses to piracy built into the price. Nothing is free. Nothing. Someone pays, or it doesn't happen.

Open source? How on Earth to the devs feed their kids under that model? I'm serious, enlighten me. I'm not a shill for this OSP crap in case you haven't been reading my posts, BTW. I'm not buying because of the possible limitations to me playing (assuming there is ever a fleet boat version since I don't do u-boats).

be assured I know your posts and your point of view in this matter and my former post was not intended insulting you.
how open source can survive?
easy to say:
they deliver the SW with great manuals, you'll get tech-support if wished and paid, they even offer educational training to you and your employees if wished. this all is not for free. but the core-SW is. and this SW isn't built just by a close-knit dev-team, no! there are several thousend programmers the world over who work in the progress of this specific SW.

this is (in short) their business-models.
some examples of companies which are (partly) involved:
IBM, RedHat, Novell, Sun, etc .....
but there are (thousands of) smaller ones as well

edit: adding some of the applications
Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Apache, ....
and of course a lot of opering systems like: Solaris, Suse, Mandriva, ubuntu, etc

Originally Posted by tater

You DO. Any software you buy without DRM has the associated losses to piracy built into the price. Nothing is free. Nothing. Someone pays, or it doesn't happen.

i dont know if i would agree with that, i think its the investment in game developement or lack there of thats effected by piracy not the price.

game companies charge THE most they can force customers to pay them even if there was NO piracy but they definately would or might be able to spend those extra profits gained from not having piracy to make better games by hiring more devs and giving larger budgets to the builders.

[Sailor Steve]

Nein

[tater]

Originally Posted by Webster

i dont know if i would agree with that, i think its the investment in game developement or lack there of thats effected by piracy not the price.

game companies charge THE most they can force customers to pay them even if there was NO piracy but they definately would or might be able to spend those extra profits gained from not having piracy to make better games by hiring more devs and giving larger budgets to the builders.

If they charge less that it cost rto make, they go tits up.

They are a business, they can afford to lose some of the time, game dev and release is a gamble sort of like movies. Overall, however, they either make money or they tank.

They SHOULD charge what the market will bear, IMO. It's their duty to make the most money possible for their investors, andf the gravy for us is that it allows them to gamble on less popular titles---like submarines.

I'm always stunned by anyone who thinks these games, or even add-ons are some sort of money-grubbing rip off. Games have been pretty flat at ~$50 for ages. What a deal!

my point was you seamed to imply they would lower prices if piracy was stopped and im saying there is no way the would lower prices no matter what for the very reasons you just brought up.

but if they had more profits they might invest more into the games they produce

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by tater

You DO. Any software you buy without DRM has the associated losses to piracy built into the price. Nothing is free. Nothing. Someone pays, or it doesn't happen.

Open source? How on Earth to the devs feed their kids under that model? I'm serious, enlighten me. I'm not a shill for this OSP crap in case you haven't been reading my posts, BTW. I'm not buying because of the possible limitations to me playing (assuming there is ever a fleet boat version since I don't do u-boats).

Many people make a living by developing open source software. The point is that open source in commercial game development just doesn't work. So you will never see a Falcon 5 or SH 10 etc.... open source.
On the other hand, simulators developed in the free time by people that share a common passion can be viable. You just have to refocus your expectations. Now before you go on saying that open source games are "s h i t" , or cannot compete with commercial offerings you're wrong. And you're wrong because commercial offerings have to cater to the larger market (why do thing that SH 5 has all those "arcade" like settings in the first place ? ) whereas the community developed sims no.

Take for instance Orbiter, its a space simulator (way way better and more complex than the only other commerical sim Microsoft Space Simulator 1994/1995), it was developed by one man over the course of several years and he had the insight to make the core of the sim "closed source" but he gave to the community a great SDK and API with which to develop add-ons. The community is way way less numerous than that of subsim members, and yet if you look at the quality of several add-ons well they are commercial quality. And all of them are freeware and most are also open source. It works because the man found its audience. He develops in his free time, its a hobby of his (his main job is being a professor....) and the add-on developers do it in their free time too.
And with all this being a hobby, the quality and scope of the project is just mind boggling. I can tell you that if a commercial space sim should ever see the light of day they are going to have one hell of a time surpassing the hardcore Orbiter.

In the field of flight simulators, you have Flight Gear. This one is 100% open source. Everything from models, to textures etc... It has been in development for more than 10 years I think and its pretty good. Of course compared to FS 2004/ Fs X its way way back but can you play Fs X on linux ? No. Can you modify the inner working of the sim because you want to improve it ? No.

In the field of subsims, there is a WWII subsim called Danger of the Deep. Its open source and the graphics have nothing to envy to SH3/4. The pace of development is slow because there isn't a lot of manpower available. I can tell you this, if all the guys that focused on GWX 3 should focus on bringing and devloping content for Danger of the Deep, well in a 3-4 years we could have a real product competing with SH 3/4/5. And with nothing of the restrictions of DRM/modding and what else. The bonus thing is that you could run it everywhere, windows, mac, linux etc.... It wouldn't have a dynamic campaign but even so the game we could have an extremely complete mission editor and multiplayer and whatever else the communioty comes up with.

I'm always astounded how a small, very small community like that of Orbiter has achieved an outstanding simulator, and yet more mainstream simulators like WW 2 subsims with an enormous community and talented modders and/or developers just don't have the same kind of "passion" for developing or contributing to an open source WW2 subsim.

[Iron Budokan]

I shouldn't have to pay extra money just to protect myself from being punked by UBI.

That's like giving the neighborhood bully your lunch money. "Here's my milk money, just don't hurt me."

[TigerOmega]

I bought a new car.....Want bucket seats? Nope...Are you sure? Yep...What about DRM? Is it standard? Yep..Can I pay to have it not installed? Nope. Sorry I don't want it..Sorry NO SALE.

[Feuer Frei!]

Yup, i would......

errr, pay the extra money....