PA is now being pirated

You just invented DRM.

Sounds like the demos aren't fine-tuned enough.

You know what game had an amazing demo? Just Cause 2. You got 10 minutes(ish) and one little section of the map. "Go nuts" they said. It completely and utterly sold me on JC2s premise. I bought it for PS3 and PC (steam has it for $2.80 when it's at its cheapest, everyone go get it) and enjoyed every second.

There are always exceptions to the rule, but that doesn't mean the rule doesn't exist.


We are marketed to by the same people who do burger king marketing.

They are corporate as hell.

You guys are all missing the main point. And the main point, which Jon Mavor has clearly stated on a number of occasions, is that THE MAJORITY OF RTS PLAYERS NEVER TOUCH ANYTHING BEYOND SINGLE-PLAYER MODE.

Mavor has been adamant about this, and he has decades of experience to back it up. And you can see it for yourself by considering that the game has been bought by 100,000-plus people, but only a few thousand of them seem to have ever bothered with the MP lobby.

All those are of course casual players. And all they want to do is fire up Galactic War or an AI skirmish, play the game for a few days, and then move on. And now they can do it without paying anything. And all that crap about constant updates that you are talking about doesn't matter to them. Not being able to log into Uber's servers and play against you doesn't matter to them.

So Uber is now basically losing a lot of the casual players' money -- WHICH MONEY FUNDED THE GAME IN THE FIRST PLACE. It is the CASUALS who funded PA, because their numbers DWARF THOSE OF THE HARDCORE PLAYERS. And it is the casuals who gave the game bad reviews, BECAUSE THEY ARE CASUAL AND CANNOT APPRECIATE A HARDCORE GAME.

Thems the facts, dudes. Will a few of the casual pirates end up loving the game, and therefore buying it later and coming online to play with us?

Undoubtedly. But if I had to take a guess, I would say their numbers will pale in comparison to those who will dislike the game and be glad they weren't forced to pay for it in order to try it.

Maybe the overall effect in the LONG RUN will be that the competitive community will grow because of the PA-loving pirates who will move on to competitive MP, and then maybe the growing MP scene will convince the casuals that PA is indeed a good game regardless of what the reviewers are saying, and they'll flock back to the game -- but in the SHORT RUN Uber will lose out on some cash for sure. Will this cash be enough to make the difference between the company continuing to survive and improving the game, and failing to be able to support the game adequately and ultimately being forced to abandon it?

We won't have to wait long to find out.

Real question is, is hacking/modding in DLC commanders piracy?

Hint: yes it is.

PA really wouldn't work as a demo. In order to appreciate what the game can offer, you pretty much have to have the full version as the depth PA offers is in the vast permutations of battlefield conditions and tactical options, but to hamstring those choices for a demo would not be a good representation of the final product. And the reason most devs avoid demos is that in many ways forking your code which can be costly to maintain.

Instead, they should do a free Steam weekend. I'm sure Steamworks would offer this sort of feature, and it's much more re-usable and more representative for the final product.