My reply was to write another article about him, here: http://www.bruceongames.com/2008/09/25/shawn-guse-software-thief/

The dumber part of this is probably how so many publishers always wants to blame the pirates for low sales, cause they cannot admit to fault themselfs.

A good example of this is how Crytek went on a pirate badger trip in the media. However Crysis would never have sold that much anyways because only 10% of the market could even play it.

I agree with peter more there are better ways to get around this. Although lately EA have gone down the drain too. Not learning from previous mistakes with DRM. How it alienates the consumers and promotes piracy.

Publishers have to stop thinking the solution is in punishment.

It’s like whats the best way to stop underage drinking? in most cases the best way to stop underage drinking is to lower the required age to drink alcohol. Yes it might sound absurd, but many countries that does this have a lot less problems with this.

This however is a bigger problem in europe than in the US so I am not sure you can relate.

I have had ideas about account based gaming earlier. Cause personally I wouldn’t mind, but other things that would minimize piracy is stuff like making the box matter. Make a fundemental part of the game missing without the box. Of course I understand neither of these will work in most cases. But I am just sitting here writing stuff that crosses my mind as I type. Don’t you think the huge publishers and their big think tanks should be able to come up with something better than punishment?

I dunno maybe I’m jaded anymore but, to me it feels like a game should last more then a couple of days with two or three hour sessions before its over.

Activision in my opinion is becoming one of the biggest nickle/dimers with upcoming games cod5 and quantum of solace having “day one for pay map packs,” even including them as a bonus for pre-ordering.

Your essentially being asked to pay more day one for a brand new game or forced out of the online map lists, so $10, $20, $30 extra later, I think pricing becomes a valid complaint.

I think gamers though should refuse to buy games from companies that do this and invest in companies that reward loyal consumers with free map packs or developers who invest in there communities with map editor/tools, so we can create our own.

Farcry 2 is about out now and will have an incredible map editor, so that’s where I’m putting my money. The community heavily supported farcry and they will do so with farcry 2. Vanilla games maker activision can’t compete with the creativity of thousands of gamers and freely shared maps.

Not saying your $US60 (our $AU120) is not a lot of money, it is, but prices on games have only risen slightly over the last decade or more and have hovered around the $90 – $100 mark for many years now.

It’s just than many younger gamers coming in see it as a lot of money, yet do not know that the prices have remained quite stable over the last 10 – 15 years. And in some case, actually gotten cheaper !!

I disagree with $60 for games an being forced to pay for extra content. Speak with your money, don’t buy there games or there dlc and don’t let piracy be an out for crummy developers who favor anti-consumer policies.