how stardock figths warez - Page 3

Mestro77 · April 9, 2003, 20:18

Geez Mark!

You deleted my post to Saurus!?
I was just gonna try to help him! If he has high bandwidth I could send him the game and then I could purchase the serial online for him with my credit card - and he could pay me using PayPal! In return he and a buddy of mine could share the serial - just like someone might share a VHS video tape or something.

And I even indicated he should email me directly to take the issue out of the group since it's not really relavent here.

Holy Smokes! I know you're the moderator, but you're being just a LITTLE heavy handed with your authority, don't you think? Man....I've read your other posts and you seemed like a friendly and reasonable person.....but this action sure stinks of overactive censorship.

Will you even allow THIS post to stand in your forum? I'm just trying to help someone - isn't that the point of the forum?

Saurus · April 9, 2003, 20:25

Quote:

Originally posted by unic
Saurus - and you don't know anybody with a credit card either? Relatives, friends, anybody?

I don't have a credit card either, and that's what I did... asked a friend to order it for me, and payed him in cash. (Though, of course, it would have been preferable if the game was distributed here in Europe...)

/unic

Your statement is logical but helps me very little.
All my family members are very wary about shopping
on the internet (they have, as they put it, seen too many documents on TV regarding missuse of creditcard numbers on internet) Thus they do not want to use their credit card for internet-shopping.

None of my close friend happen to have a credit card either. (actually they do, but they are all local and works only in certain stores and locations mostly in Finland only)

Your proposed solution probably works for most people, though.

Maybe this just is not my lucky life

-S

MarkG · April 9, 2003, 20:32

in a thread about warez you asked someone to mail you cause what you want to suggest was not appropriate for the forum. what did you expect i would think?

unic · April 9, 2003, 21:02

Saurus: I don't know if this will help you either... but there are ways besides having credit card to buy it directly from Stardock.

Look at http://www.stardock.com/sales_faq.html and http://www.stardock.com/order.txt and see if that helps.

Especially, quoting from the former:

"Q: I don’t have a credit card. How can I purchase Stardock software?

A: We also accept checks or money orders in US funds (no Eurocheques, please, as they are not certified funds). Please print and use the order form at http://www.stardock.com/order.txt (also found in the directories of Stardock’s shareware products) and mail with payment to:

Stardock Systems, Inc.
17292 Farmington Rd.
Livonia, MI 48152
USA

Visit http://cnnfn.cnn.com/markets/currencies/ for current information on exchange rates."

So, if you can get a suitable check or money order through your bank, that would be a workable way of ordering it too.

... if that is not a possibility for you either, I don't really have anything to suggest but waiting.

/unic

ravagon · April 9, 2003, 23:20

Quote:

Originally posted by Lemmy
ravagon, if you want to dl updates without having the game installed, you'll have to enter your email and serial in the dl page found on the site. But AFAIK only the big updates will be available to dl at the site.
If you want the smaller more frequent updates, you'll need to use stardock central, and then you must have the game installed to dl the updates.

Excellent. Just what I needed to know.

Ta very much.

darcy · April 10, 2003, 07:38

As far as I can tell, "deleting the galaxy class" does not refer to a file, it refers to a C++ object.

Furthermore, the complete protection has meanwhile been broken and a valid keygen is available. Apparently the generated serials are working in the online updater, too.

Kudos to Stardock anyway, their protection lasted longer than most commercial CD encryptions.

MarkG · April 10, 2003, 07:48

hmmm serial numbers are connected to a e-mail and a name in the stardock db.
i wonder what could be done with it....

MarkG · April 11, 2003, 14:41

Quote:

As they say, good things come to those who wait.

the thing is that it's good as it is now. in which case there are two options
a) spend money for six months on improving it according to what the dev.team thinks is good and then release it
b) release it and spend money for six months on improving it according to what THE PEOPLE (who are already enjoying a good game) and the dev.team thinks is good and then give the updates for free, extending players' value for their money

i like option b much much better

Mestro77 · April 11, 2003, 14:48

Folks,

May I make a suggestion? I don't wish to wade into this discussion about if it's good or bad that they're planning patches and a year of support. But I would like to suggest that if this particular topic is going to continue to be discussed, would the next poster please start a fresh thread specifically for such a discussion? And could make a final post in this thread giving the title of the new thread for follow ups.
THIS thread was initially begun as a discussion of Brad's interesting, inovative, and admirable approach to warez and piracy prevention. This topic interests me and I've set an email notification for this thread. But the last dozen or so posts have gone off on a complete tangent and I keep wasting time coming back here to find off-topic arguements and are degenerating into insults. I'm not trying to stifle anyone's input - but folks, please begin a fresh thread when the topic veers so significantly......
Thoughts?? Mark, perhaps you could stear the topic to a fresh thread please?

MarkG · April 11, 2003, 15:15

indeed mestro
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=83288

Solver · April 12, 2003, 17:03

Hillarious protection mechanism.

While I believe in buying any games you like, I'm also a supporter of trying them via warez before you buy those... however, I must admit, this one makes me feel like getting a pirate verison just to see what it looks like.

And while anything can be cracked... hey, it must be lots of fun cracking this one

.

Rasbelin · April 16, 2003, 06:16

Solver has a good opinion on this one.

I agree with him.

Rasbelin · April 16, 2003, 06:18

Quote:

Originally posted by Saurus

I cannot get a credit card since I only have a part-time job (witch is not enough to apply for a credit card here)

You don't need a credit card for GalCiv. I don't have a credit card either, but I still order from USA, UK and other European countries. How? Cheques, SWIFT cheques, bank transfer and wire transfer.

Al'Kimiya · April 16, 2003, 06:47

Quote:

Originally posted by Solver
While I believe in buying any games you like, I'm also a supporter of trying them via warez before you buy those... however, I must admit, this one makes me feel like getting a pirate verison just to see what it looks like.

I got it by warez and for the first time in like ten years I stuck with it for more than a few days and bought it. I love this game!

Lorteungen212 · April 16, 2003, 11:03

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I would think the best way to fight pirates is to make your game worth the $.

Very true. I don't know how well this copy protection works, I have a warez version and it seems to work. If the game is good I'll buy it but if it's crap I'll just delete it. I used to buy games before trying them out but I've wasted too much money on unfinished products to do that again. I foolishly bought MoO3, ignoring all the negative reviews because I'm a fan of the series; I've never been so dissapointed by a game in my life. I've only played one game of galciv so far and it was kinda boring to be honest, but I'll give it another chance before I decide to buy it or not. It seems to more like the old MoO games than MoO3 was.

Triphosphatase · April 16, 2003, 23:00

Look: The newest SecuROM has been using the same protection mechanism and crackers, although some major ones have faltered, have been able to dominate the protection. Note that SecuROM and the custom protections put in place by game developers are far more advanced than the amateurish effort in GC.

Reading through this thread made me ponder whether some people posting in this thread have suffered from brain injury recently. Why do you applaud Stardock for frequently releasing patches for bugs that shoudn't have existed in this simplistic game? Isn't it a given that developers are suppose to patch up their buggy mess that they shovel out?

A year of updates?
A year of frequent bug patches! Hooray! I am so happy that they managed to include so many bugs in such a simple game as this one so that it would take a full year for them to work the bugs out!

Stardock should have spent more time working on the actual game instead of giggling over how the warez people are going to be sitting like dumbbells dumbfounded by their idiotic protection system.

Pyrkaige · April 16, 2003, 23:25

Quote:

Originally posted by Triphosphatase
Look: The newest SecuROM has been using the same protection mechanism and crackers, although some major ones have faltered, have been able to dominate the protection. Note that SecuROM and the custom protections put in place by game developers are far more advanced than the amateurish effort in GC.

Reading through this thread made me ponder whether some people posting in this thread have suffered from brain injury recently. Why do you applaud Stardock for frequently releasing patches for bugs that shoudn't have existed in this simplistic game? Isn't it a given that developers are suppose to patch up their buggy mess that they shovel out?

A year of updates?
A year of frequent bug patches! Hooray! I am so happy that they managed to include so many bugs in such a simple game as this one so that it would take a full year for them to work the bugs out!

Stardock should have spent more time working on the actual game instead of giggling over how the warez people are going to be sitting like dumbbells dumbfounded by their idiotic protection system.

The trolls go marching one by one, hoorah, hoorah...

Look, if you can't understand the difference between bug fixes that are required to make the game playable (of which there have been few, since there were few bugs) and game additions based on requests by players to simply improve the game, then you won't grasp the concept of what Stardock is doing. Which is fine, there are plenty of people who can't grasp many simple concepts. But please stop posting this drivel, cause the rest of us who actually have a clue and are enjoying the game have to keep reading it while trying to discuss the game. If I wanted to read posts by people bitter about a game who might actually have a worthwhile point, I'd be looking at the MOO3 boards.

Frankly, this whole notion that the only reason that Stardock is releasing more patches is to stop pirating, comes from people taking a small bit of what Brad wrote out of context in order to try to make a really stupid point. Stardock has said from the get-go that they will release patches for at least a year after the game has come out, to add new features and of course fix any bugs that do show up. They have a nifty program that will make updating those patches relatively painless; if you don't care to use the program, you can wait a bit longer and get patches from their website like you have in a normal patching process. That's it: there's nothing mystical or nefarious going on, it's just a nicer way to get changes out a bit faster to people who actually bought the game.

If you don't like it (and have actually bought the game, which I doubt) you can blithely ignore the updater program and download the patches from the website every month or so as they're released in stand alone patches. If you aren't buying the game and just want to whine, please go mumble in your own hole. Some of us actually have, you know, games to discuss that we play.

Triphosphatase · April 17, 2003, 02:17

I see that you are still an amateur at flaming. Here's some advices:
Don't say the word 'troll'.
Include insults throughout your entire post, not just the beginning.

Other people enjoy complaining about a game, you know, that they haved downloaded.

And then, there are people that install the game, play for a few hours, uninstall, and then complain about the game even though they won't ever play the game under any circumstances.

But then, I am neither.

Rasbelin · April 17, 2003, 03:27

Quote:

Originally posted by Triphosphatase
I see that you are still an amateur at flaming. Here's some advices:
Don't say the word 'troll'.
Include insults throughout your entire post, not just the beginning.

Awesome...

Now, how is this used in GalCiv? Is there a flaming mode?

jmcgee · August 6, 2003, 22:15

There are a few things here that people haven't really applied enough attention to. First is, that there is nothing which is released into the public which is secure. All you can ever do is make it difficult for them, and discourage the lamers from trying. But that's all you can do. This world is full of people who are willing to do anything to get what they want, even if it's just the last penny in your pocket.
As for money, well, the game has to sell itself, and keep the honest people willing to pay out to play it. Unless you do like Bill Gates, and release a useless pile of code that forces people to have to pay out more money every few years just to be able to run their computer.
This game was pretty good, and yes, I SPENT THE MONEY TO BUY IT. Not because I make lots of money (I make more than most, and have more bills than most as well). And I manage to buy about 30 PS2 games for my kids each year, and give them the ones I buy for work to test and generate profiles on. And given that my oldest played galciv for about 3 weeks, I am impressed. Most games he wins and gets bored with in less than a week. (ADHD and I think that says it all)
I have also tested the security to every game we buy/test, and this one wasn't bad. Takes about a day of teasing with it to bypass it. Most are much easier. But understand that this is for us to determine a rating on the software, and after we discard all code and records to prevent it's misuse.