time@tbomb.ice.com (Tim Endres) (01/13/91)
In article <18906@shlump.nac.dec.com>, long@mcntsh.enet.dec.com (Rich Long) writes: > What are people's thought on this? Do you mind code wheels/disk-based copy > protection schemes? Do you think Starlight's higher price is due to "assumed > piracy" or to perhaps more time required for development? At ICE Engineering, we have removed all copy protection schemes as a matter of policy. I personally dislike *any* form of protection. For the people who purchase our products, it is simply not fair to require them to jump through hoops to use their software (they will unfortunately go through enough of them as they work with system and hardware changes!). For the people who attempt to pirate the software, copy protection is usually nothing more than a weekend challenge (something usually looked forward to). If the copy protection does work, we believe that only 10-30% of the pirating individuals will ever purchase the software. Thus, there is very little "psychological" reason to protect software. Further, I suspect that if one were to compare the potential revenues from pirators that were convinced to purchase, against the potential losses from 1) people being turned off by protection & 2) the inability for users to "borrow" software to try it out, one would find that the case for copy protection loses on a financial basis as well! On the other hand, unfortunately, the paying customers will carry the burden of the lost revenues due to pirating. Since a company must establish its pricing on *projected* sales, and these projections are based upon "paying customers", the price will carry the "cost" of the lost sales to pirators. This is unavoidable if a company is to succeed (let alone profit). However, there are a *large* number of factors that determine a product's price. tim. ------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Endres | time@ice.com ICE Engineering | uupsi!ice.com!time 8840 Main Street | Whitmore Lake MI. 48189 | (313) 449 8288
long@mcntsh.enet.dec.com (Rich Long) (01/14/91)
I recently bought two games: Mission Starlight and Pipe Dream. Mission Starlight ($29) was not copy-protected in any fashion, and I installed it on my hard disk. Pipe Dream ($17) was not copy-protected on disk, and I installed it on my hard disk. However, Pipe Dream provides a code wheel, from which one must enter a code to start a game. (To be fair, there is a DA version that does not require a code, but it is somewhat less impressive). Now, arguably, Mission Starlight is the better game. Why then was Pipe Dream protected? I'm going to send it back, as I loathe all forms of copy protection, including cutesy code wheels. What are people's thought on this? Do you mind code wheels/disk-based copy protection schemes? Do you think Starlight's higher price is due to "assumed piracy" or to perhaps more time required for development? One other thought: I have some older games that I bought for my SE. Now that I have a ci, I find they cannot be made to run, as the disks are copy-protected, and I can't upgrade their systems! Richard C. Long * long@mcntsh.enet.dec.com * ...!decwrl!mcntsh.enet.dec.com!long * long%mcntsh.dec@decwrl.enet.dec.com
hp48sx@wuarchive.wustl.edu (HP48SX Archive Maintainer) (01/15/91)
Personally I always remove any sort of protection on software that I buy. I really dislikes the protection, except one sort. I think it is OK to require the master disk to install software to another disk / a harddisk. It is also OK to put some information about the current disk into the application, such that it will not run if it gets stolen. I think that much of the piracy is done by people who finds a copy on as public machine on the university, and just gets a copy from there. I would really like to see this sort of copying stopped. If two people who can't afford some software decides to share a copy that they pay for, then this is better for the company, as they sell 1 copy compared to none. All opinions are strictly personal. -- ******************************************************* Povl H. Pedersen hp48sx@wuarchive.wustl.edu HP48sx archive maintainer