Interesting news from GalCivII Devs

[DEATH eVADER]

I thought that they made a good comment abot Piracy being a way of life

http://www.galciv2.com/

Naturally, some peple have taken the conclusion that because we don't have copy protection on our game, that we invite piracy. That is not the case, we simply think there are other ways to stop piracy than CD checks, strict DRM, etc.

What we do is provide a serial # that users can choose to enter when they install and use that unique serial # to download free and frequent updates.
Our license allows you to install the game onto as many machines that you own that you want as long as only one copy is being used at once. How many sales are lost because people want to have a game on their laptop and desktop and don't want to drag CDs around so choose not to buy the game?
Our company also makes utility software. We've been around a long time -- 14 years now. Our software gets pirated. We don't like it but piracy is a fact of life. The question isn't about eliminating it, it's about reducing it and trying to make sure that people who would buy your product buy it instead of steal it.
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.

A disturbing fact

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.

Some positive news

http://images.stardock.com/ss/shotstore/19/The Universe/battle2.jpgThe second manufacturing run of Galactic Civilizations II has sold out. We've now shipped more units of GalCiv II in the first 10 days than the total retail sales of the first GalCiv in its entire history.
We're working getting a third manufacturing run out as fast as possible, however because of the time it takes to manufacture the manuals and boxes there may be some problems getting it at retail soon.
At present, most stores should still have some copies left, however. But availability will lkely start to dwindle as there's no units to replace what gets sold for the next week or so.
Thank you all so much for your support and we hope you're enjoying the game!
This weekend we'll try to put up a sneak preview of what we plan to put into Galactic Civilizations 1.1. Lots of cool new features based on your feedback!
I can say that the 1.1 version will being including a Mirror Universe scenario -- cuddly Drengin and blood thirsty Altarians! Stay tuned!

 

[Apollo 13]

This will on make game DEVs make buggy games and tell us to update.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

I'm sure the devs aren't going to say "Hey, let's make a buggy game, and then only paying people will get updates"!

They are adding units and additional content! Of course there will be bug-fixes, but it's more like getting more units, missions, etc etc

I'm glad a dev is finally understanding that piracy can't be stopped, and they shouldn't harass the customer, or install software on the computer.

 

[Asuka]

Interesting. I dont mind software installing on my pc as long as it doesnt effect my computer or games, im fine with it.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

I leant my copy of GalCivII to a friend of mine. It wasn't until the other day I found out I could play without the disk

 

[Xune]

This will on make game DEVs make buggy games and tell us to update.

Er, reality check. Almost every game released last year was in a buggy state, requiring patches to run properly.

It's the norm for games to be released in these conditions, however you'll find that most of the time the decision was made by the publisher and not the developer.

With more developers having a more hands on approach to the publishing of their games we can expect games to have a higher quality on release or at the very least patch support that isn't hampered by tight fisted publishers.

As for Starforce making links to Galactic Civ torrents available on their forum, I think it's disgusting. I bet they'd pitch one hell of a fit if I went and posted workarounds for their malware on their forums. Whatever you think about their software, this is no way for a company to act simply because the developers chose not to use copy protection.

 

[Fishlore]

All I can say is that I was more than happy to give my money to this company. Gal Civ 2 is a great game in my opinion. It was great before I updated it and it is great after I updated it. The community at galciv2.com is a great one as well. Developers actually interact daily with people on the forums. They fix problems very quickly and even provide code snippets from the game to prove or disprove things are bugs or not.

 

[Gargantou]

I read the StarForce forum.
Luckily another guy, higher up than the guy who posted the link did a written apology.

"In the end, on behalf of the whole StarForce I would like to tender our apologies to all people, who have been working on creation of the game Galactic Civilizations II. We have to officially claim that what has happened is just a mistake of our employee that was boosted into “our planned PR action” by the people, who hate StarForce. Using this link, he just wanted to show that every non-protected game can be cracked (in case of some own simple protection) or just put onto the internet resource for public use, sooner or later. I think he guessed that finding the first link to a recent non-protected game would be the best proof. We have to accept that he chose the wrong way for that, but he is just a human and mistakes are human’s nature.

This employee has been responsible for the branch “General questions” during this week, that’s why nobody else had seen this topic and couldn’t remove the links till we heard negative references from different sources.

We have to claim that this has been the first and the last time we allowed posting a link to a resource with illegal content on our forum by our staff. And we will strengthen the administration of the forum to keep it clear from similar links posted by forum members and others.

In further we will necessarily improve our Forum, especially its rules and policy.

Please, once again accept our deepest apologies for inconveniences caused by this issue."

That's good that one of'em can atleast realize their fault.

 

[Apollo 13]

Er, reality check. Almost every game released last year was in a buggy state, requiring patches to run properly.

It's the norm for games to be released in these conditions, however you'll find that most of the time the decision was made by the publisher and not the developer.

With more developers having a more hands on approach to the publishing of their games we can expect games to have a higher quality on release or at the very least patch support that isn't hampered by tight fisted publishers.

As for Starforce making links to Galactic Civ torrents available on their forum, I think it's disgusting. I bet they'd pitch one hell of a fit if I went and posted workarounds for their malware on their forums. Whatever you think about their software, this is no way for a company to act simply because the developers chose not to use copy protection.

im talking about buggy that it's non playable, so take your reality check someplace else...damn e-net tough man.

 

[Xune]

Uh oh, someone expressed an opinion contrary to yours, quick run and get your mummy!