PA is now being pirated

First Shadow of Mordor torrent was on TPB like 9 days ago...

Who said what now?

I won't lie, any game I have ever tried, I played specifically to see what it is like and then uninstalled if not bought, or I bought.

Any game I didn't have ability to watch played anyway.

For instance:
-Kerbal Space Program: Borrowed copy from friend, initially didn't like, deleted. Watched played, new version came out, increased quality dramatically when I played on friend's computer, purchased on my steam.
-Prison Architect: Sim-builder games are hit or miss with me. Could not fluently figure out the game, nonetheless played a single infinite-cash mode to see if I could at least make a fun execution house. Bodies from the dead don't dispose, that was interesting, deleted. As of now, they do dispose of bodies so if nothing else than for sandbox, I should purchase IF I find it on sale.
-Gary's Mod: This is a wierd case. I got a copy, to play multiplayer with a friend, and ended up buying even though I never ever ever ever play it. Should play some horror maps this halloween in that case.
-Slenderman's Shadow, Slender the Arrival, and Slender 8 Pages, I initially got a copy to play once of all these. Rarely won any but Arrival, ultimately bought all my copies.
-GTA4: I have a legit copy but mostly use a cracked copy anyway because it is easier to mod and use community hosted games. The actual game's support literally blows for this game, you are better off using community backdoors.
-Minecraft: Tested it long ago, purchased it on many platforms since, still use a cracked version occasionally for easier version specific usage (some mods were discontinued so an archive of old copies I can run at will is desireable)
-Terraria: Almost didn't get and deleted, but I actually didn't delete my borrowed copy at first, got bored, looked up what you do after "copper to gold and chulhu", and after figuring out the "non-collect-metal" tiers the adventure aspect led me to buy a PC copy and my nephew a XBox copy. Interestingly enough, I use console-locked download of his copy to play on my Xbox offline, while he uses same download account-locked to play his online, NOT PIRATING TECHNICALLY NOT BREAKING RULES TECHNICALLY ALLOWED BY MICROSOFT...

Thing is, they literally just need a copy of the game now and share the folder. No cracking required. I expected this.

Any game can be cracked these days, barring online only ones.

Games really really should have demos.

Exactly this. Pirages cannot be stopped and Uver was well aware that PA will be pirated as soon as offline releases. The best thing to do now is to hope that the people who pirate the game find it appealing enough that they buy it.

But don't worry. PA is a multiplayer game so by pirating you really aren't getting the full experience. Additionally as PAs development is ongoing you really aren't going to get any new features or fixes beyond this point unless the hacker team keeps cracking it every time an update releases. And they probably won't do that.

I wonder if Uber has had time to seed any 'special' versions of PA? Like those guys at Game Dev Tycoon did.

Something amusing like trying to fire the Annihilaser causes the metal planet to self-destruct and nuke launchers always just fire the nuke up in the air and then it does a 180 and lands back on the nuke launcher.

That dates back to Red Alert 2, it was possible to get the game to install but not have a valid serial, if you didn't have a valid serial or had identical serials to one in use, every player-controlled-unit would die all at once 8 seconds in the game (enough to get a powerplant just about).

I had this occur once. Had to look up where the bug may be, had to go into registry and clear serial, then start game, then replace serial with apparently the same one, the working one on the box I had used originally anyway, and THEN for some reason it worked.

So again, was victim of a form of DRM, which punished me, the paying user, and probably not the pirate :/

Oh, and wasn't there a Minecraft mod, forestry was it? It's creator didn't like how a mod pack was using it without citing the creator, so he made special hidden code to agressive kill the player with undefeatable NPCS if mounted in the mod pack.

All units become hostile to everyone after 15 minutes.

This was to be expected

And make it worth to be legal owner. So ladder, great lobby, etc. all good things that you can get only when you logged in with valid username. Forcing people to not pirating never worked, only baiting them to the legal side has any chance.

Also this. After few games in row that i bough at full price that were total crap compared to what bribed game journalists said. I decided to never buy a game without testing it (and PA was exception). And its not always about quality, for eg newest aliens is great game, but i am not sure if i want to be so much scared, cannot decide yet if its pleasure or pain to play that game. Nowadays I do not believe in reviews, i rather get my demo version from TPB, then if i like it i will buy 2-3 weeks later, or when i have time to play.

Carrot vs. stick

Wow, that sucks.

On the other hand, PA has not an outstanding single player mode (Galactic War) and its plus is still online playing. Therefore, if players want to play online, I assume they need a valid serial-key to log in into Uber's servers.

And that is what worries me a bit, pirates may decide that game is crap based on GW only.

No, wasting time on those gimmicks is just as stupid as pirating games. The obsession with piracy, while other people would actually deserve attention, is a real plague in the games industry. DRM did more damage than piracy could ever dream of.

And frankly, if someone actually uses a cracked version as a demo, why would you want to piss them off? Especially a game like PA actually needs a demo, because atm it's in a very nebulous state of 'released, but still in development'. It's close to impossible to find out the state from the outside, or how your own PC will handle the game.

I've no idea how long it would take to do something like that. I could imagine that it could be something a simple as a bool check on performing one of those actions but then again I know nothing.

And honestly? I don't buy the whole 'let me pirate this to see how it plays' in this day and age. Pretty much every single game in existence has a myriad of YouTube videos and often Twitch streams these days too. That's an excuse made to defend what is essentially theft.

Don't get me wrong, I used to pirate games when I was younger, had no money of my own, parents that disapproved of games and wouldn't buy me any. As was mentioned by the developer of Game Dev Tycoon in that link, there's not much that can be done here; people in that sort of demographic wouldn't be buying your games anyway.

There's a fairly large difference between seeing a game being played and playing it yourself.

This is why demos need to be a thing again.

The other thing to bear in mind is what you'd count as piracy.

Hosting a lan party using only *1 paid for copy* would be counted as such by many studios, yet @neutrino made the point himself that this was a key benefit of the offline capability for PA. Uber aren't against things like that in principal. Then you move onto other grey areas- what if I lend my copy of PA to a friend to try out? As it's DRM free they can play single player without buying, though if they want to be able to play *with me* they'd need to purchase (which they probably would- it's a good game ) so it's a double edged sword imo.

Edit: This is also where the whole DRM thing got controversial in the first place. Being able to share games with friends was something I always did when younger- you'd just borrow a disk. The trend now is to lock a licence to 1 machine and 1 user and I think that's a poor choice. With multi-player games becoming the norm, being able to try a game may actually *encourage* people to buy it. I don't think it's unreasonable to be able to lend something to someone that you own- and I'm very pleased Uber have decided to go this route with PA.

Starcraft used to be pirated too. Maybe it is free publicity? (back in the day all the kids got it from their friends) When they got older they remembered it and bought the whole game.

But seriously anyone who trust torrents for executable files is just asking for it. LOL

And people wonder how they got viruses on their computer.

That's one way of looking at it. Arguably a little too optimistic.