PA release and DRM

I am happy merely with the fact the game will be taken off Early Access and I'll have more people to play against instead of waiting in the lobby for 5 to 15 minutes every time. They could have released the current version for all I care -- it would still have smoked all other RTSes ever. The only issue here is a business issue -- which is to say, determining exactly which features would maximise the game's adoption at launch vs. the opportunity cost in delaying the release further and the lost sales due to piracy -- but the Uber business people know more about this than we do, so I have absolutely nothing to complain for, and a whole lot to hope for at this point.

And my advice would be to retract the DRM-free promise and make the pirates pay for the game or not play it at all. My stance is that all games should be online all the time, until laws come into being which hunt down pirates and hand them heavy prison sentences. Do you want to be able to play games offline? Then lobby your government to put every single last software pirate behind bars. Until this happens I support DRM policies, no matter how draconian, and no matter how negative the impact they have on the games even from a pure functionality standpoint.

Piracy is a silly reason to have DRM. I want offline so I can actually play the game, you need to think of people with broadband limits/crappy Internet in general.

I can play at night, but what if I want to play during the day? Not to mention the game will run better when offline...

That's what I mean by a "functionality standpoint". I believe the gains from preventing piracy will offset the losses of people who lack internet connections, or have crappy internet etc.

Piracy will continue forever if we don't fight it, but your internet will be upgraded at some point.

Honestly I think it's much more benificial to allow players to play offline than to avoid piracy. Pirates will ALWAYS find a way around it, no matter what, might as well let people play offline and avoid all the trouble.

i dont know why do you like to play offline :/

Because most of the time I don't have the Internet to play online. :/

The thing is, with offline comes LAN.
LAN is a huge part of basically ANY multiplayer game.
Also offline practice with bots is always a good way of familiarizing oneself with the controls/ui/units

This isn't the 90s any more.

Can pirates play the game right now?

I think that the "pirates will always find a way" line of reasoning is defeatist. Even if you can't completely eliminate piracy, you can certainly reduce it.

offline play means uber will lose money to pirates, uber doesn't want to lose money.

Pirates got through Simcity did they not? I'm not defeated, it's a legitimate argument. I think it'd be more beneficial for sales if Uber allowed no DRM. Just think about it... Nobody likes DRM, so no one would want to buy the game, and Uber loses money. Does Uber lose more money from people pirating the game, or from people just not buying the game at all?

Uber also loses money if there's DRM as nobody will want to buy it. Don't forget that.

Worse yet, more people will be inclined to pirate it when DRM is removed (see Simcity for proof of this)

Yes, because DRM-heavy games sell no copies.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/473251/diablo-3-sales-top-20-million-globally/

People are still pirating games? I thought in the days of steam and gog there was no need to pirate anything anymore.
Some people I know who used to pirate every freaking game they ever played all completely stopped doing so and are now buying their games on steam.
I don't know anybody in person still pirating games...

Edit:

Yeah and that is absolutely not an exception because the game was monster-hyped or anything

Definitely. I wouldn't have backed it if it had. DRM means that we won't be able to play the game a few years down the line because the official servers will have been taken down.

offline play or being required to be always on? and pirates will be pirates anyway so screw them .. any other propper player can and will wait ...

reasons to pirate a game:
no money/desposable income
product still too expensive or way too expensive in some regions
simply not available in some regions (regionlock)
for testing but no available demo

and of course
greed ...

I mean I am not stupid, I understand that heavy piracy can in some cases HELP the game, by exposing it to many more players than otherwise, being a sort of indirect "free2play" model, and if this could be the case for PA, I have neither the data nor the business knowledge to predict or anticipate it. In this case Uber would make up for the loss of direct sales by the increased income from "competitive" avenues, whatever these would be.

Still, I would rather the decision to go "free2play" were made by the developers, instead of by the pirates, which is why I stand behind any DRM policy that can help reduce piracy.

Pirates couldn't play online either, so that's a pretty big part of the game gone for pirates.

(Other than through virtual LAN I suppose)

F' off about all piracy discussions.
I apologize for the harsh remark, but such shall be the case when piracy is an eminently objectionable topic where little if nothing can be proven and all one can do is quibble and quabble over abstract data.

My opinion on this begins and ends with the following: If a game doesn't sell well, too bad. Better luck next time.