At this point, for the record, I’d like to state that I don’t pirate games, not because of some moral issue (although that does matter to me) but because it is easier for me, a regular joe, to just buy a game. I like getting all the extras that seem to come with a proper copy (interesting patch updates, a pretty box, useful manual etc). My time is precious and I want to spend it playing the game, not trying to get round the rules.

And comparing piracy to murder was a little melodramatic even as a self confessed exaggerated metaphor don’t you think???

People need to be able to protect their products. That’s capitalism, and that’s what DRM is supposed to (and will hopefully one day) do. If you don’t like a game’s DRM then crack it, don’t just pirate it. I’m all for DRM that keeps you from installing the game on more than one computer if it actually worked and wasn’t cracked so quickly. But alas that day is far off.

“Deal with it” – what does that mean? DRM, like Steam, is how we deal with it. Being a pain in the butt is a small price to pay for curbing software theft. In an ideal future there will be perfectly functioning DRM that you won’t even know is there, and I hope one day we reach that point. Until then however, we’re stuck with somewhat annoying anti-theft.

Let me get one thing across: Pirates will not buy a DRM’d game if the DRM is removed. They are only interested in one thing, and that’s getting a game for free. To them, they can either pay $60 for a game or pay $0 for a game, so they pick the latter. They aren’t fighting The Man, they’re not standing up for freedom, they’re just getting free stuff. Those on Cliff Harris’s blog who said that the game was too much, the DRM was in the way, etc. were simply trying to justify their theft. They don’t need a reason to steal, but now they have the guise of “DRM is so restrictive” to do it. They are simply not as direct as the people who admitted that they want free stuff and won’t get caught.

I won’t put DRM in my games. Why? Because I lack the cryptographical expertise to make it in any way effective. At best maybe I could run a simple hash of a CD key and a name to make sure it matches a pattern, but there would probably be something wrong with the hash function, or matching the pattern, or the entire thing could be completely skipped with a debugger and a well placed JMP. However, if I one day became an excellent programmer, I would most certainly add DRM to my game in a way where the tradeoff between annoyingness and effectiveness is minimal.

The entire thing comes down to money. Do not be fooled by the people who claim to steal for a cause. They would not buy the game.

I prefer to talk about marketing rather tthan advertising with reference to indie games – most indies need to market their games properly, and some think paid advertising is the way to do that. It usuallyl isn’t, although grabbing the adwords to your game isn’t a bad idea.

Introversion’s Tom Arundel told me a story about how they fluffed some early marketing attempts. After the success of Uplink, they spent some of their new found cash on things like underground station advertising. It wasn’t a great success! They got it right in the end though, and then some :)

I am looking to host some of my games online, any suggestion as to where and how to advertise it?