mkjhartmann

Join Date 03/2006

Love the Business Model

What an idea,

treat the customers like customers, not thieves. Thank you. Brad and the gang obviously are not salaried suits, but equity owners who understand their market. I despise all the CP BS if I want to install the game on my machine and the kids. No I will not pay 49.95 to EA twice, I will rather find a cr..., which if you have a brain is not hard to do. And then you are tempted to do it with the initial purchase......

This model, is great. Treat me like I treat my clients, if I like it I will use you forever, but first I have to prove myself. This confidence means you believe in your product, code, customer support, in other words all the stuff EA has forgotten over the years.

Thanks so much, and I just purchased and haven't even played yet, so it could suck, but with this model I know it won't!

Mike

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2415

Thanks!

It's all about demographics. The people who play PC turn based strategy games tend to more likely to buy and more concerned with convenience.

Copy protection and such inconvenience people and don't stop piracy very effectively IMO.

I wrote our position on copy protection in this article if you're interested. It's about 3 years old but it's what we follow:

[CD copy protection doesn't stop piracy]

https://www.galciv2.com/Journals.aspx?AID=209

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[CD copy protection doesn't stop piracy]

On this matter, I would have to disagree (though this depends on what you mean by "CD copy protection"). It stops casual piracy. People who don't know how to make CD images and mount them on drives, or how to burn an image onto a disc or other such things won't be able to pirate the game.

Now, if you're talking about malware copyprotection, that installs some damnable code on your system, or the kind of CD copy protection that stops you from mounting an image as a drive (purely performance for games that touch the CD often), then I would say that such "cures" are far worse than the disease.

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I love the business model where the head of the company praises himself, but can't be bothered to help a customer (ie, me) actually find the patch to the game.

Great model, providing incentives for people to pirate the game and get the patch from pirates, while making it impossible for paying customers like me to get it, without using that malware Stardock Central...

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Jeremy:

Er... have you tried going to the Downloads section of the site? There's a nice big section at the top of that page with a place to download the latest patch.

Here's a direct link, if you like: https://www.galciv2.com/collectorsedition/

Stardock Central not required.

However, Stardock Central is a program that lets you download and update all the Stardock-related games and software you've bought and offers some optional Stardock-related IRC, browsing, and newsgroup stuff if you want it. And... that's it. I fail to see how this qualifies as "malware".

Maybe you ought to try actually reading around the website before you go around being rude.

Peace & Luv, Liz

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2415

How is Stardock Central Malware? It's a front end to a secure HTTP server that allows you to download the entire game. Or you could click on the button on the left marked DOWNLOADS and get the latest update...

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Wow Jeremy, nice attitude. You must be a real barrel of joy at the pub.

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Not very smart eh, Jeremy? Big DOWNLOADS button at the left side of the site...

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Whoever said trolls were bright.

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It's all about demographics. The people who play PC turn based strategy games tend to more likely to buy and more concerned with convenience.

[Qutoe]convenience[/Qutoe]
convenience?
convenience??
(Qutoe from another forum)

But, it’s like software companies are TRYING to make computers a clustered mess! I’m serious. During installations it’ll install other stuff without asking you where to install it, except for the main program. So, if I can, I try to find the installer for the thing installed off the internet so I say where to install it. But, that doesn’t happen as much. The next thing that really grinds by buttons is the fact that game companies are now throwing game files in my fricken my documents folder. WHY. THE. ****. DO. I. ****ING. WANT. GAME/TOOLS. FILES. IN. MY. DOCUMENTS. GOD ****ING DAMN! THAT’S WHAT THE ****ING PROGRAM FILES FOLDER IS ****ING FOR. And any time you try move that folder and/or delete it, of course, the game doesn’t work. They should at least have an option asking you where you want those files to be. And I have thought why they would want to do that, to store user-specific info on the game. But, they could just as easily make separate folders in the game’s program files folder to each user!

I HATE the word convenience on computers. To software companies, they *think* they know what the word means, but they don't. The fact of the matter is, they try to make things *easier* for the general user, but, have you ever thought of the non general users? The people who actually know how to work things on computers who try really hard to keep things from becoming a hopeless mess? Not by the looks of it. The My Documents folder is for things... like, MY DOCUMENTS. Personal files like pictures, movies, music, and other stuff like that. The LAST THING I want in there are files to games and programs.
Now, I'm not dissing all software companies, some are good. (I wouldn't know too much about stardock, this is probably the first that I’ve got stuff from them) One company who thinks they are doing a super expellant job of *convenience* is AOL, now, they throw in too much *convenience * that it turns into anti convenience, and a jumble of garbage.
Maybe I went a little overboard with this post, but it's just starting to go overboard, Gal Civ 2 is yet another game that throws junk into My Documents. Now, don't get me wrong, I love Gal Civ 2, I've been playing it alot lately, but like I said, it's getting out of hand.

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Getting this train back on the tracks it started on . . .

I must say that I purchased this game specifically because it didn't have any copy protection. I hadn't played a single turn of it. It looked good, my buddy told me about it, and after reading a couple of things on the homepage and forums, I decided that I would buy it because I respect a company that puts it right out there for people. I admire the intelligence behind this decision and support it wholeheartedly. I have downloaded a LOT of games, played them, and deleted them specifically because you can't take it back to the store if it's crap. I refuse to give up my money without some sort of guarantee that I can get my money back if I don't like it, or I can't run it, or any number of things. At any rate, the whole point of this is that I think you're doing a great job, Stardock. I'm enjoying your game. I could have just as easily played it without ever giving you a penny, but I honestly feel like you're doing the gaming community a service by opening their stupid eyes to an alternative method to keeping games fun and treating your customers the way they want to be treated.

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I love this business model
Bean Books are the book industry's version of stardock They give you FREE, COMPLETE books

see http://www.baen.com/library/ for their version of [CD copy protection doesn't stop piracy]

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I love this business model
Bean Books are the book industry's version of stardock They give you FREE, COMPLETE books

see [url/] Link[/url] for their version of [CD copy protection doesn't stop piracy]

Nice! I especially like his whole explanation about enforcing extreme regulations: "Any cure which relies on tighter regulation of the market — especially the kind of extreme measures being advocated by some people — is far worse than the disease. As a widespread phenomenon rather than a nuisance, piracy occurs when artificial restrictions in the market jack up prices beyond what people think are reasonable. The "regulation-enforcement-more regulation" strategy is a bottomless pit which continually recreates (on a larger scale) the problem it supposedly solves. And that commercial effect is often compounded by the more general damage done to social and political freedom".

So right, so true. Piracy won't go away. Try to enforce regulations, and they'll find another way. And the more you enforce those regulations, the more the pirates are tempted to gain that "forbidden fruit", so to speak. And if you can't beat them, join them. They'll give up, eventually.

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Citizen Cold_illusion : it is quite common for software applications to create a designated folder in your 'My Documents'.
If you don't like the idea of this appearing there, then right click on the 'My Games' folder in your 'My Documents' and select 'Send to desktop - create shortcut'.
Right click on the 'My Games' folder in your 'My Documents' folder and choose 'Properties' then check the 'Hidden' check box at the bottom. Hey Presto - the folder has vanished and you have the offending folder out of your 'My Documents' folder.

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Unless you display even hidden files!

(which I do.) (not that I care, I have a bunch of games that tossed stuff in there.)

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Just wanted to chime in on what Cold_Illusion stated:

Personally, my machine has multiple hard disks. I keep the content on them seperate and organized, effectively partitioned to minimize my data loss issues. Like most users, I set up C:\ as my system drive, where my OS, utility programs and files go. But I've rerouted My Documents to D:\, which is where I store my personal files, music, photos, documents, etc, and E:\ is where my gaming goes. It's a practical set up for me, because it means if a program I install trashes my hard drive, or I accidentally screw something up, I know that at least 2/3s of my stored data is safe. As such, I resent it when a game I've installed in E:\ decides to throw its save files over in D:\, eating up space there I've allotted for other things, as tiny as it is. If My Documents still pointed to my C:\ disk, I'd be even more pissed.

It's simply about control. I want to manage my machine however I want. It's presumptuous for a program to start putting its files nilly-willy anywhere it wants without taking into account how it messes up my setup. (Though you can probably hack the registry to relocate everything.)

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Yup, many games created named folders in "My Documents" it wise to think about when installing your OS, my SIms2 folder is a shade over 2Gb I think, so planning is required for heavily modable games. As for stardock central, there is this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardock_Central page at wikipedia. I also googled for it and nothing bad came up, so I'm presuming I'm safe. I'm still not going to use it, but it seems harmless enough.

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[qutoe](Though you can probably hack the registry to relocate everything.)
Lol, I've looked through there before, came up with nothing...

But yeah, see how all your stuff is so complicated? Now, try slapping ANOTHER version of windows (64 bit) on that, and see what you come up with! Then the software companies say "Well, nice rig you got here! I hope you don't mind but I'm going to slap a few files here, no worries!!!"
Then, with the hidden thing, yeah it works, but some games slap their screenshots in there, and then you gotta un-hide the folders, then get what you want, then re-hide everything. Making things harder than they really need to be.

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I have to reafirm the opinion on the business model, imo cd protection doesn't really stop priacy and when you are trying to target the audience for pc strat games, it's not like they aren't tech savvy in the first place...

I mean I would argue that at a university level many people have experience first hand acquiring media/lincensed material in a less than legimate reason. The main reason why I purchases this game is that I was able to participate in the Beta and that it actually listens and treats it's customers like customers. Instead of treating them like 12 year olds who geek out in their parent's basements.

And the only thing that's going to stop those 12 year olds from not pirating them selve is to provide them with a option like customer wide beta/update instead of trying to put starforce 6.0 on their game cds....

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The intent of keeping parts of Gal Civ in the 'my documents' folder is a good one, especially on a machine with more than one user account. Everybody's game saves are kept individually, likewise, game options, preferences, etc. Stardock isn't the only game company doing it, and IMHO it works pretty well. Like anything MickeySoft releases, it has a ways to go - but the theory is a good one.

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Microsoft actually recommends placing some game files in My Documents in their recommended practices.

Checking my My Documents, I have Age of Empires 3, Rise of Nations, Sid Meier's Pirates, Halo, Civ 4 and Gal Civ all with folders in a My Games Folder in My Documents. Several of those are Microsoft games. They were all placed there by their respective programs, not myself.

In stand alone folders in My Documents I have Battlefield 2, Flight Simulator, Empire Earth II, Nascar Sim Racing, Quicken, and The Movies. Again, I did not place any of them there intentionally.

Tony

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(Moderated)

Moderator's note: Be civil please.

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Well, if you're referring to me, I'm used to looking like an idiot.

That said, I re-read the whole thread again and don't see how I look any more stupid than usual.

Even if I do look like an idiot for reasons that I am too stupid to comprehend, why the insults and foul language?

Tony

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The reason why anything is stored in My Documents at all is because of the way XP's infrastructure is designed. Remember that XP and pretty much any Windows-family product since... well, I suppose since after ME... is account-based, regardless of whether or not you want it to be. Even if all you ever use is the built-in admin account, the account still needs to retain its own profile for security purposes. Natch, since nobody knows how you're going to set-up your computer, the only way that XP knows for sure to secure an account's profile including docs and whatever potentially personal information you may have is to create a My Documents folder for each user.

If you make use of those accounts, you'll find that you can only access your own docs folder and not anyone else's (without futzing around with permissions or using the admin account). So really, it's just good practice to save anything you have in a place like that (though you can easily create your own secure area using NTFS permissions), and My Docs just happens to be common for EVERY user. I don't even know if this is avoidable. The price of using a Windows product I'm sure you all legitimately paid for anyway

In any case, I love the way StarDock runs things. It/they have one thing that very few companies have - soul. Are they trying to make money? Of course. But do they think they ought to step on you to do it? No. That's what makes 'em special. To me, I just find it's more important to have that kinda soul than to cave in to any GROWN UP throwing a hissy fit.

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I like the fact that I will be able to keep playing this game far into the future, without having to worry where I left the damned CD. . . I've had a lot of games which I can't play any more because their CDs have gone wandering in the number of moves I've had.

If we were all communist there'd be no need to worry about copy protection. Maybe we should do that

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After reading this thread, I wouldn't be surprised to see an option to switch the location of the saves and config files in v1.1
That's what Stardock does. They listen, and if you have an idea that doesn't suck, and you don't act like a retard when you present that idea, they tend to implement it.

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