Dear @all,
i am very disapointed and angry regarding this new policy of distributing patches ONLY via impulse!! In the future we need one installation per vendor in order to protect our privacy any more. Users with small internet uplinks are not in the focus of this Stardock anymore?
An angry customer.
I am just wondering why people start complaining now? I mean, a) this was clear for months, keen observes could have told you that at the game's release even. has this not been the publisher's policy for previous games too? I think that gal civ 2 updates required stardock central, which was impulse's predecessor.
I wouldn not say I am an adamant impulse fan, but it does have its advantages and I also grant the company to implement something of this kind to avoid pirated copies access to a patch of this magnitude. which was free after all, and mostly improved a game, which was not severely broken before. in sum, I judge it as acceptable and don't care much about it.
besides, ushering out drm complaints about a company which does not feature any kind of drm or software protection for the boxed version is fairly audacious imo.
I believe that's the fast startup option, which has now been disabled by default.
Actually, they are quite correct. You've never had to have a CD in the drive, because of the way SD does it's product control -- which is Impulse.
I'm pleased with the new content delivery system honestly. It's quick, it's painless and I can configure it to autoupdate like steam. This makes me a happy customer. More studios need to follow Stardock's lead.
BTW, I appreciate your activity in this thread Frogboy. Its nice to see the CEO taking an interest in his game's community.
When it comes down to it, Stardock has to do something to protect it's IP. They are a business after all. If it isn't something like Impulse, it's going to be some kind of DRM. They have no choice. The good old days of yore when companies operated on a policy based on the honor system. Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes even more, developing a title. They have to be able to see some kind of return on thier investment or they would cease to exist. Games aren't written by two or three guys at home, in thier garage anymore. It takes a whole staff of people to create a title, not to mention what it takes to get the title from the harddrives on the devs workstations on to store shelves.
We, as consumers, have to be willing to give in a little. If we don't, the only recourse developers have is to lock down thier titles with DRM (formerly known as copy protection). I'm not thrilled with that concept. The approach Stardock has taken is the least intrusive. I don't have to keep up with a piece of medium, or even a registration code. I don't have to worry about having some rootkit installed, or any other kind of "hidden" app that could interfere with my machines performance. All I have to do is install a client that only needs to run when I want to run it, and create an account. That's it! How is that so bad? It's a LOT better than the other alternatives that are out there right now.
We'll NEVER see the freedom of access that once existed. It's just not possible anymore. There are far too many users out there now that have no trouble with not ever paying for thier software. It's sad, but it's here to stay. These companies aren't implementing these controls to punish us, the honest, paying customer, they are implementing these controls out of self defense. How long could you survive if you only got payed for a fraction of your time on the clock??? Wouldn't you want to do something to make sure you got payed for all of your time? I know I would.....
I completely understand that companies need to generate revenue to stay in business and need to collect sales money from their products to do so. What seems rather odd about Impulse is that it doesn't "protect" SoaSE from pirates at all. It in no way affects the contents of the retail box version of the software. What Impulse does do is present a means of controlling patches from here on out, which affect all users legal or not. Stardock's public comments state that they are not going to treat their customers like criminals, yet then they require their customers to install this content management software (Impulse) for patches and leave no other alternative for their customers ("not criminals") to get them. Impulse is not anti-piracy software. It's a type of service Stardock has decided to provide - one which I personally do not like (given the removal of all other options), which is my perogative as a Stardock customer.
I agree that Impulse isn't that horrible to have to use as far as this type of software goes, but that doesn't mean that I have to like the fact that I am forced to use it anyways - assuming I would like any patches after 1.05 at least.
-dolynick
Actually, it does control pirates -- they don't get patches, so they get an inferior version.
You cannot prevent pirates from cracking any known form of DRM -- fact. Even the strongest DRM will be broken.
So, instead, just keep them from the patches -- with a company like SD, patches vastly improve the product, leading to a situation that successfully scr... er, fu... ah, messes with the pirates.
How then does that mesh with their public comments regarding the Gamer's Bill of Rights? You know, the part about gamer's having the right not to be treated like criminals and all that.
If the point of Impulse and forcing patches this way is to prevent piracy then how is it any different than any other DRM control scheme (however benign or not it may be) that they say they are opposed to? Impulse affects every single user who would like to patch, legal or not - essentially it treats the legal customers just the same as the pirates.
I still understand the need to collect sales, stay in business and hopefully turn some sort of profit, but Stardock can't say one thing and then try to have it both ways. In that regard, and if that is Impulse's purpose, it's hypocritical after the grand hoopla of the whole "Gamer's Rights" thing.
Very interesting discussion i must say.
All that pirate vs. game-making-company thing is old as world , but here we see it coming to a new level
At one side we have Stardock - the company which i respect greatly (especially after that "hope you wont be our customer u lame warez kiddie" by Frogboy, +1 karma ).
At another side - THE PEOPLE (who want things made as easy as possible for em).
As a torrent user (yes, i always d/l games and check em before buying em, sue me ) i must say that Stardck policy was effective, to say the least. I d/l'ed Sins, played em and bought em (demo's are crap, dont even start talking about em, please). Same happened with GalCiv2. that was Part 1.
Part 2. I dont have a CD-drive. Really. I have local server at my home network at which i store all my data(including CD images). And i really HATE when i have to plug the CD drive in to play something new. Really, makes me mad. There are other things , that make me mad.
And we come to part 3. The broken disks and lost cd-keys. Happened to everyone i bet? Atm in my list of lost software... 3(three!) copies of War3 + FT, NWN2 + MotB, Sacred 2. Thats how much worth of software? You count, i dont wanna get upset.
What Impulse gave me: storage for cd-keys, storage for my games, fast updates and ability to buy game in 2 clicks. Yes Impulse has issues(seen few due to "optimized windows").
So thanks, Stardock. You made my life a bit easier.
Edit: typos.
This game is not that good offline imo anyway, it is better as a multiplayer online game. Anyone getting it just for offline use is shortchanging themselves.
tough you do have those people, and saying sins is multiplayer anyways so u dont need the patch sounds plain mean and dumb
care to say that sentence to him personally? just cuase ure in a forum u still have no right to keep people out just becuase theyve got no internet,
Dear All,
a very good discussion .
My personal opinion is, impulse wont avoid piracy. There are a lot of tools out there in order make system diffs before and after you install software. It doesnt matters what kind of changes are done to the os. They track them down and create replyable repositories - One way of Enterprise software distribution (MS SMS, Netinstall, etc.).
For my own, i ll play 95% online. You need a valid key to play, therfore i dont understand the strict policy enforcement not. You´ve needed a valid key to download and register - accepted.
Personaly i didnt know anything regarding the upcoming change to impulse. Usally i buy a game, install and play it. I would still play 1.05 if i could play online with this version.
So far, my hope is that beside this discoussions Stardock get in touch with their customers re-thinks his policy.
Br
Well, I hope they don't. It's FAR easier to use Impulse than the old way. I'm loving it, and hope it just keeps getting better and better. I love that I can buy games, ptach games, and get to chat (with the devs in most cases no less) about the games all in one client. Very cool....
The most valuable thing to me...I don't have to keep track of product keys and cds. So if my house burns today, I won't lose any of the games I've bought rights to play. Now that's cool in anybodies book. I just wish they had more business software. Id set up an account for work in a heartbeat if there was anything avaiable that would fit our needs.
Impulse is a buisness venture for stardock. I am pretty sure they are trying to get other developers to relsease games on it too. If your advacationg a new product don't you think it would seem weird to not use it yourself?
Stardock's customers aren't being treated like criminals. I'll Break it down.
Customers purchas Sins from the store or impusle, at some point they download impulse for updates and patches, there game runs and is up to date.
Pirates Download sins from somewhere, don't instal impulse and don't get updates, there game is not running and up to date.
The customers aren't being treated like pirates, they are being asked to do a simple thing to prove that they are not infact pirates. once you use impulse you have proven that your not a pirate and everything is grand in the world. Where as games like spore limits the amount of times the game can be instaled for everyone, real customers can't get rid of that and thus are treated like pirates.
It's true that for a very small amount of time you are treated in the same way as a pirate, until you prove that you are not by using impulse. Once you prove that your not a pirate you are no longer treated the same way.
Futhermore, what would be a easier alternative? Maybe they could just ask. When you go to download the patch it says "Are you a Pirate?" and if you click yes you wont be able to download the game. Actualy in that situation you would have been treated as a pirate up until you hit NO so i bet someone would complain about that too.
LOL, that sounds a lot like something I thew out when we were working a problem with our campus portal. We were trying to work out how to get a user's initial password to them in such a way that we wouldn't have to use snail mail or e-mail, but that would be secure. A heated discussion broke out as we had on one side those that wanted to make it as easy and convenient as possible and on the other side those that wanted to make sure it was secure. I was in with the later. It got to a point where I just threw up my hands and said, why don't we just have a list of new users pop up on the login screen and we can say, Click here if you are John Doe, Click here if you are Jane Doe, etc.
Click here if you are a pirate...LOL!!! Hey, you could make it even more secure. Have it say, click here if you have a legal copy of our software, then have it pop up a window that says, "Are you sure? Yes-No? That would make it bullet proof!!! No pirate is getting past that....
You contradict yourself in your own counterargument. You say we aren't being treated a certain way and then admit that, in fact, we are (if only for a short period). The duration of such treatment doesn't matter. Logically, it's a simple true or false statement. Any DRM scheme works the same way. You are considered a possible pirate until you pass some sort of authentication or validation check.
Now, I will say it once again just to be clear... I do understand a company's desire to protect their investement and product and to want to maximus sales. It's not like virtually every other game software company out there doesn't do the same thing in one form or another. My point was that if Impulse's intent is to act in some measure to counteract piracy then it is some form of DRM. All DRM automatically treats the user as "unauthorized/illegal" by default until proven otherwise. Stardock has gone on record as saying they do not believe DRM is the answer and do not want to treat their customers in such a manner. Yet, here we are being denied access to patches unless we prove that we are legal customers - exactly the point of DRM. What, in some regards, makes it worse is the fact that this is being added after the fact and all the statements about how they didn't support such behavior; a "gotcha" tactic after a good faith statement. At least with on obvious DRM scheme it's there from the start.
This, coupled with the useability/functional aspects of Impulse I noted in my first post, are the reasons I do not particularly like Impulse or it's idea. I have no choice but to use it to get new patches anyways now, so this discussion is really moot aside from a consumer feedback perspective. Which is really why I replied to the thread in the first place. It's clear that my preferences are not the same as some of the others who have responded to the thread as well but this is a discussion forum and different opinions are to be expected.
As for a better alternative, I don't have one to suggest. At least not one that hasn't already been tried and found wanting. But then, that's the crux of the whole DRM vs consumer rights debate. As a consumer, I do not want anyone to tell me how, when and where I get to use the product I paid for (presumably with the understanding that I am not to reproduce or redistribute it), and that means that the company has no control after I have the software in hand. As a company, you know that there are people out there who will redistribute and otherwise try to "steal" your product so you can't or may not want to trust the consumer to uphold his end of the bargain. Sure there are some acceptable (to me) happy mediums but nothing really stops the enterprising pirates in the end so what I consider to be acceptable isn't enough to satisfy the company. Hence the entire debate and controversy over DRM.
Guilty before proven innocent? I wish that's the way it worked for our court system also.
If Stardock says Impulse isn't a DRM thing, that's fine by me. But I am frustrated about the way people talk about pirates in here.
Wall of text warning: if you don't want to read my thoughts about piracy, skip right into the end.
(edit: In the following text, piracy = sharing copyrighted material, a pirate = a person who thinks the mentioned action should be legal)
Well, I am a pirate. I am also Stardock's customer. Now when you think pirates just DL stuff from somewhere without never ever paying for anything, where do you get this idea from? Can I see some statistical data that clearly confirms your assesment, please? Well, no, I can't, because there is none. Just the standard assumptions propaganda lies that are made up by RIAA, IFPI and the record industry, etc... I agree that piracy affects the video game industry differently, but... Today, if a game isn't pirated, it isn't sold either. I don't buy all games, but I do buy all the games that I like, and Sins is one of these games. I do not buy these games because it is the "right thing to do", but because it is the logical thing to do. If I see a game that I like, I want to support it to encourage companies to make more of these games. If i bought games without trying them out first I would probably end up in a situation where I'd be supporting the development of games that I do not like.
See this. And this. 2D Boy estimates that their game's piracy rate is about 90%. That means 1 game sold for every 9 downloads. But... does this actually have an impact on sales?
Let's assume that Games X and Y are pretty much the same. The difference is that Game X is uncopyable, while Game Y isn't. Assume that both games sell 10 000 copies.
Now, Game Y gets distributed on a torrent site right away when it gets released (or possibly even before that). It gets downloaded 90 000 times, thus giving it the estimated 90% piracy rate while the total player amount is 100 000. Now this is a huuuge setback for the ones who made the game, isn't it? Yes, if you interpret that it shows the amount of lost sales, but it doesn't. The vast majority of the people in that 90% wouldn't have bought the game anyway. If game Y was also uncopyable, 2D boy estimates that for every 1000 "extra" downloads they would sell one (1) copy. This means that Game Y would have sold 10 000 + (90 000 / 1000) = 10 090 copies and have 89 910 less players. I'm well aware that these figures are only rough estimates - but who wins and who loses in this situation? More people = more clans = a richer community = better experience.
(just for a curiosity, by this math if piracy rate was 99% (10k sold, 990k pirated), the devs of Game Y would sell 10 000 + (990 000 / 1000) = 10990 copies, which is less than a 10% increase.)
By the way, online games seem to be pretty much immune to piracy due to the need of a legit CD-key.
FYI piracy is not stealing. Even if 10- to 15-year-olds think that it is "cool" and "criminal" to be a pirate and go and warez everything they can - this doesn't make piracy stealing. Piracy is not even a crime. It's a growing political movement consisting of people who think that spreading and sharing culture is a good thing. This group of people includes the beforementioned "criminals". Sure. It also includes artists, writers, coders, highly educated IT professionals, professors and others. Piracy will never be stopped either. The deal with all the criminalization is just that the copyright lobby pretty much gets to make the laws pretty much everywhere, so... you can guess the outcome. Bottom line is - even if you think piracy is bad, trying fanatically to stop it just because someone told you it's bad would/will lead to a far, far worse situation for human kind.
_____________________
Anyways, I still think it's pretty stupid for Stardock not to make a stand-alone patch file. This would 1) solve ALL the problems with patching Sins that arise from troubles in getting Impulse to work, 2) not affect your piracy rate (DRM never does) 3) keep your customers happy. The argument that Impulse is faster and reduces DL times is a pretty hollow one since some (many) people clearly don't want to use it for patching and some can't even get it to work.
My question to Stardock is: If Impulse isn't your idea of a DRM system in any way, then why don't you make a stand-alone patch file available? If Impulse is better than the alternative, then people will start to use it and you will have nothing to "fear". Otherwise they will just hate it.
My feelings on copy protection and DRM are well known so I won't go into that.
Impulse's primary purpose has nothing to do with stopping piracy. Individual games and applications are expected to provide their own systems and Impulse Reactor (the Impulse backend) has features that allow developers to easily protect their stuff but Impulse the CLIENT is simply a download manager.
Impulse provides a massive advantage to being able to get updates out quickly, reducing bandwidth, and increasing download speeds.
That said, we WILL provide an alternative way for people to get updates for people who can't get Impulse to work but it won't have any of the advantages of Impulse and it will end up having some sort of security on it so that we can make sure that the people downloading it are actually legitimate users. But let's be clear: Someone downloading from this alternative route is going to end up downloading a huge file because it's going to be all the cumulative updates combined. Impulse creates updates for you on the fly that are specifically for you.
Because it is too expensive for us to create stand alone patches for the 300+ programs we develop/publish/update every time we do an update.
But we are open to creating stand-alone updates on a case by case basis in the event that it's a popular enough program (like Sins). But that stand-alone update won't have any of the advantages of Impulse. And those users will have to go through additonal security steps to verify who they are.
I ask you though, is there a stand-alone update for Left4Dead or Halflife 2? The reality is, as games get more complex the days of downloading some .zip file are numbered.
impulse really wont avoid piracy, but i cant fit anything else for its use either, im confused about what stardock wants spending extra time on this impulse, so far it's bene nothing but a heavy load to me, had to search numerous programs to what was causing impulse to suck
guess what, its impulse, reinstall my computer then run impulse was a solution that was offered me, do you get the irony of that?? i dont... thank god Renee knows a thing or to about this type of software, bang this here, change something there, .... but still the fact that i had to change stuff in order to get impulse to work unacceptable, standalone patches here wouldve saved me alot of time and a meeting with renee, (tough i didnt bother the meeting)
Ok. Sorry, if I'm frustrating you!
By the way you say it, I figure there's no such patch for those games, I haven't played them though. But from what I understand, you need Steam to play HL2 anyway, so... And even if filesizes grow, connection speeds tend to go up also, possibly even at a faster rate. I can't deny that you have a point, though.
But why? This will have absolutely no effect against piracy and it doesn't make any sense. If someone doesn't get a cracked pirate version of the patch going soon / at some time, then this would only mean that no one cares enough.
There's also the fact that the most of the updates don't affect single player that much (aside from the graphics update). Considering that non-legit copies of the game can't even get online (as I understand), I really don't get your logic on this one.
I go to the store, I buy groceries. I have cameras watching me because shoplifters steal things and stores can be held liable for altercations that happen on their premises. There are security devices in certain items that set off alarms when passed through detectors at entry points. There are locked cases where various high end or small but valuable items are stored such as consoles, guns and jewelry.
Once I leave the store with my groceries, no one is watching me, the security devices are all disabled, there are no locks or monitors on any of my goods. I am not treated like a criminal at any point, they simply recognize that there are criminals and are protecting against them by controlling access.
Impulse is the store. If you so choose to, you can play your game while still running it, but you don't have to. You can shut it down any time you want to. Yes, they make you sign in to get your patch off their servers, and they don't release it to anyone else. Costco has membership cards, is Costco treating their customers like criminals because they have to show membership to shop there? They control access to their own property, nothing else.
Steam requires that it be run when you play, it authenticates every time you use your software, instead of just verifying your access to it. Steam is a store that sends someone home with you and installs those cameras in your house to make sure you're using their product in a manner they agree with.
I consider Steam a wash, just enough benefit to put up with the shit they give me. There is logic in claiming Valve treats their customers like criminals and monitors their use. To be claiming the same in regards to Stardock, you also have to feel the same way about the grocery store with security cameras, or you are simply ranting.
The bugs... meh. All software has bugs unfortunately. Impulse is still in beta too, yes it's a pain in the ass some times. I'd prefer they had them all worked out before exclusively releasing patches through it, but the world isn't perfect so I'm not exactly surprised. In fairness to them, most of the problems are indeed not their fault. People are idiots, computer users are no exception. I've not even worked tech support professionally and I still have too many cases to count where someone is a fucking retard that shouldn't be allowed near their keyboard. Several of them are relatives. Many people haven't upgraded .Net Framework because they turned off automatic updating and don't actually look through the list of updates regularly. Even more are just flat lazy about their drivers, running two and three year old versions that have functioned by pure dumb luck on the software they've purchased in the balance. Then there are the idiots with firewalls, antivirus, spyware detectors... That and no clue how to use them. Talk about treating people like criminals, the average computer user has enough security to protect against an invading nation for a good while and not the foggiest idea what to do with it.
I would guess the odds are greatly in favor of your problems being your problems. Even if your problem is just that you have a retarded ISP that's blocking secured connections. Yeah, Hughesnet did that to me once, argued with me for a week before they figured it out and turned off the firewall they swore didn't exist despite being listed on the configuration page.
So you think that the developer of a game should just put out the full game as a big .zip file and rely on the honor system?
Perhaps you should start a company and try that. Good luck with that.
Maybe what we should do is just have Sins out there as a big ZIP file with a PayPal donate link next to it.
Come on, let's have a little common sense here. There is a huge gulf between having some sort of honor system and requiring a rectal exam to get access to a file update. There's a happy medium.
Heck, why have passwords on your email accounts? If someone really wants to, they can probably find a way to crack it (as Sarah Palin learned).
Any system we have is going to have the user type in their CD key and their email address at some point so that we can identify them as someone who has purchased the software. It's not asking much of the user.
I have never stated that I'm against copy protection. I have stated I'm against unreasonable inconconvenient of legitimate users. Asking users to type in some data to identify who they are is no different than requiring user to type in your user ID and password before posting on this forum.
I'll say what I said before - at a certain point, we just don't want the business of Internet cranks. Getting rid of zealots is a bonus as far as I'm concerned.
psychoak, I wouldn't feel being treated like a criminal, since I don't think piracy is even a crime.
Piracy. Is. Not. Stealing. It is copying. It is a "crime" because the current copyright law (derived from the 1700's btw, from a time when no one even knew anything about the internet) is being heavily lobbied to governments, getting tighter and tighter. And piracy will not end. If torrents or even P2P goes down some day, something better will take it's place anyway... unless we're then living in some kind of an orwellian world.
To my experience devs usually give out patches to everyone without any DRM. It's the norm. People are used to this. Going back from the norm is usually treated as a negative approach.
Frogboy, I'm not trying to tell you what to do. Don't put words into my mouth. I never said anything about a "honor system", although that is a very common argument ("That's what's going on, isn't it? If someone wants to download your software, then he can just type www.generictorrentsite.com and get on with it."). Although... there's still the factual lack of statistical data showing how piracy affects sales negatively, as is also usually claimed.
A recent study among finnish pre-highschool youth proved that 69% of them practice piracy, and 27% do this on a daily basis. Considering the nature of the internet, I have no reason to believe that these numbers are much different in other countries. Are you ready to label them all as criminals?
A happy medium considering piracy in software is all right as far as I'm concerned. Especially since piracy affects software a lot differently than other digital media. However, RIAA, MPAA, IFPI, etc etc etc are not happy with a happy medium. They want all pirates to be hanged publicly and after that preferably left naked in a cage to rot for a few weeks for downloading a few songs just to show everyone how bad piracy is.
My message was that instead of fighting piracy, copyright owners need to learn to cope with it. It won't go away, and if it will, then we're much more screwed than in the opposite situation. I recently got Impulse to work and I think that Stardock is going into the right direction here. There's much to do, but the direction you have taken seems right to me. I thank you for that.
I don't have anything personal against DRM either, as long as it works. But the truth is that most of it only affects the buyers, not those who don't pay. I think CD-keys are possibly the best kind of a copy protection there is for online games. Considering Sins is mainly an online game, what else is really needed?
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