
Is it just a game mod, or is it “facilitating piracy”? - pavornyoh
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/08/is-it-just-a-game-mod-or-is-it-facilitating-piracy/
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DanBC
> Patankar did concede that FiveM does get around the "GTA V launcher," which
> usually gates the game's content behind some digital rights management.
> Despite this, he insisted that the mod doesn't help users get unpaid access
> to either the single player (SP) game or the traditional Grand Theft Auto:
> Online mode. "[Running] FiveM with whatever copy you have doesn't act as a
> gateway towards the SP or GTA:O portions," he said. "Even with a legit copy,
> I can't open FiveM and end up in GTA:O or SP."

Compare this to Minecraft where there are 3rd party launchers _which ask you
for your Minecraft username and password login details_.

These are used because adding mods is a bit tricky and launchers let you
easily experiment with them.

~~~
Joona
Or compare it with the Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod, which requires you to own
the game on Steam, and acts like a DLC.

[http://store.steampowered.com/app/259080/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/259080/)

Edit: Before they got on Steam, they required you to log in on their site and
the mod with Steam's OpenID system, which they could use to check if you owned
the game or not.

~~~
voltagex_
And Avalanche welcomed them, instead of sending goons to their houses.

~~~
Joona
I think that's why they got on Steam.

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antihero
They've made over _2 billion dollars_. Is a few hackers wandering around a
crappy alternative online really something they need to care about? It cost
them a mere 265 million to make, too.

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bitJericho
This is too bad since giving pirates and hackers their own space would be
vastly better than them being on GTA Online!

~~~
Frenchgeek
More importantly, it could give them a metric on piracy for their game.

~~~
anon4
90%. You can expect that about 90% of people who play your game have pirated
it. This figure has kept constant since the day Doom 1 was new. There are
exceptions of course - when the game is tied to hardware copy protection, the
number can go down to 0%, but for a PC game with purely software copy
protection that is already cracked, the figure is 90%.

~~~
dijit
anon4 will be chastised for not providing citations, but I work in the games
industry and I can confirm this level of piracy. Only on PC though.

Publishers realise though that Playstation and Xbox exclusives get cracked
significantly less often. It helps when there is no PC version to "unlock"
secrets on either.

So.. it's a hard sell to management: the least selling platform which also
weakens the copy protection of the other platforms _(often resulting in lower
sales)_ , which additionally; releases to the most vocal and entitled group
with an ever increasing amount of issues because of hardware incompatibility
or unrelated uncontrollable problems.

I understand the frustrations of consumers, but realistically, if you were the
publisher- you probably wouldn't be so generous in releasing PC editions of
certain games. :\

~~~
anc84
How do you confirm that? How do you count the number of pirate players?

~~~
dijit
They're not very good a nulling callbacks, once most crackers get the game to
run they call it a day.

Also, there are many things like in game news feeds which are required for the
game to work, which send back a unique user agent. (and crackers don't want to
slow down their releases because the event feed has to time out before the
game will continue).

Also, it's not like we, as a publisher will punish players for pirating the
game, we'd rather stop the people who crack it.

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ases
I think the article has missed something about what Rockstar could consider
piracy here: the revenue they get from selling GTA:O microtransactions. If
people are opting out of the GTA:O experience for a different online one, that
is users Rockstar no longer have to potentially sell microtransactions to.

If Rockstar's plan is to focus on GTA:O as a revenue source, then it makes
sense to shut down any potential competition, especially if that competition
is in their own game.

Of course, one could argue that Rockstar may sell more copies of the game for
the sake of playing alternative online modes, but I think that this won't be
true. If the potential gains from new 'boxed' copies of the game were greater
than the potential gains from microtransactions, I think we'd see Rockstar
focusing on bringing out more content similar to the two expansions they
released for GTA4, rather than the online content they are focusing on now.

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ossreality
I guarantee they've lost more potential revenue doing this than they would
have ever lost from anything that could be construed as piracy, though that
claim still just flatly doesn't make sense to me.

Stuff like this makes me wonder how the dev team feels. Somehow I think they
and Rockstar lawyers might have vastly different opinions. What a good way to
alienate users, and kill off excitement on the dev team. If someone took my
game and made it even more sandboxy and hackable and people invested hours and
hours into goofy and fun gameplay? I'd be so happy and proud.

I don't get it Rockstar, I don't get it.

~~~
elthran
I don't think singling out Rockstar here is fair - I'm sure devs at all the
AAA publishers are hate how what they create ends up due to corporate
requirements. Here's looking at you Ubisoft, EA, Activision, Konami...

~~~
anon4
> Konami

They aren't a game dev any more. EA seem a bit less awful than their heyday,
too... I agree 100% on the rest.

~~~
elthran
I know - I really didn't realise making Pachinko machines was a viable
business, but I feel after all the business with Silent Hills and Kojima, that
they still need their fair share of disapproval.

As for EA - Yeah, "a bit less awful", but I think SimCity showed that they
really haven't changed too much, especially now we've seen what Colossal Order
have done with Cities:Skylines

