SifouNaS (1309) on 3/11/2007 2:48 AM · Permalink · Report

The answer lies in your question really; If the version is regarded as an illegitimate alpha or beta, then it is illegal and therefore wrong to download it and even worse to distribute it without the consent of the issuing company.

The strong fact with piracy is, that it can destroy a whole gaming scene. Look what happened to the Amiga games. Eventually they stopped producing games for the Amiga because they got pirated and distributed all over the world (via conventional mail back then) the very day the games got released! And as the software died, the machine died with it too. Sad but true. I've been an Amiga gamer and I was really bitter watching house after house abandoning the Amiga.

Dongles, smartcoding etc etc... they all get cracked after a little while, there's too much brain out there that needs a good challenge to prove themselves nowadays, cause at the end of the day that's what it is.

In my opinion the way that would eliminate a huge amount of piracy is to bring the software prices down! Let's face it, software prices are ridiculously high nowadays, they always been, but back then the games were more original than nowadays. I mean, what is the reason to pay a huge amount of cash on a game that will last only a weekend on your system?

Very recently I bought NFS Carbon, I've paid 40 euros for it. I have played it and completed it over a weekend and boy! the game was so crap that I really felt so bad, like they have stolen those 40 euros from me! And it's not the only game that got me ripped off, it's the most recent I can think of now.

Bringing the prices down creates an issue with all the packaging and stuff, but with the high speeds on the web those days they could have downloadable full versions of the games and manuals for a fraction of the full package price. Yet without so much paper and plastic being wasted on packaging this might be good for the environment as well!

Still, I doubt that piracy will ever cease to exist, as I said, it is more like a challenge to the brain rather than anything else, but with low prices on games, more gamers will be attracted in buying the full version rather than a stupid crack.

Daniel Saner (3503) on 3/12/2007 11:14 PM · Permalink · Report

I don't think that leaking pre-release versions have a significant impact on the sales of the finished product. You either just look at something like that as something interesting, seeing a half-finished product, or even getting more interested in the game, but I doubt that anyone would have a lower opinion of a game because of an unfinished, illegally obtained version.

But distributing these things is something that you just don't do, because the developers don't want you to. I find it very interesting to look at early versions of games, like 3DRealms' "LameDuke" concept of Duke Nukem 3D, or stuff from other companies who decide to show their fans such material, but if they don't, they have their reasons. Their sourcecode is what pays their bills, and having other people (competitors) peeking at your work is never a good thing.

But there are other issues involved, too. For example, technology today has become so complex that many (most?) developers rely on external libraries and modules to do specific tasks (i.e. not having to reinvent the wheel). I remember hearing about that when some alpha of Half-Life 2 leaked. They were using the licensed "Havoc" physics system, and they were mostly worried about Havoc code having leaked together with the rest of the game. I don't know how that turned out, but it would have gotten Valve into big legal trouble.

HandofShadow (49) on 3/13/2007 5:57 AM · Permalink · Report

I'll keep my response concise; I fail to see the problem in downloading the alpha or beta version of a game.

When one downloads either one of these builds, they are downloading an unpolished, unfinished, disjointed, and bug-ridden tripe...not the final version of the game as the developers intended. Even then, many games don't ever seem to make it out this stage these days, and it takes patch after bleedin' patch to actually receive the "final version" I already paid for two years previous (hence the reason I don't purchase any game nowadays until at least two patches have been released). Downloading the alpha/beta builds isn't an issue of morality to me, so much as it is wasting my time and bandwidth on an unfinished mess.

So yes, I do think that downloading the alpha/beta is quite different than the final version.

TheBS (22) on 3/26/2007 12:28 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

[Q --start Ronald Diemicke wrote--] Quake Wars : Enemy Territory has been leaked, but they're not sure how. [/Q --end Ronald Diemicke wrote--] Simple, most network security implementations are woefully inadequate today. So few implement "defense in depth" with multiple layers, host/network IDS (let alone IDS logs that actually get checked), etc... Every user wants to do everything from 1 system, not deal with multiple security levels, different privileges, etc...

Virtually all compromises are initiated a user on a corporate network themselves. Most of them come through non-technical users. It's beyond just phishing and other things, but well-known (among black/gray hat) holes in the automation of MS IE and Outlook -- things Microsoft can't (and won't) close because it would destroy the automation built into Windows. Things many security experts have been warning Microsoft about in the inherit design of the NT/Windows executive as well common Win32 libraries (especially all the DLLs now at the core of NT/Widnows thanx to MS IE, which wasn't designed for NT, but DOS-based Win9x) since the mid-'90s.

It's how Valve was hacked, not through a developer, but an executive.

And it was not merely that Valve was hacked, but they were hacked for months, and didn't know it. There is no greater liability than to be hacked and not know it, yet this is how companies have been compromised again and again for the last half-decade. Major financial and defense institutions are no exception -- and where I've professional made most of my consulting dollars over the last half-decade.

All it takes is but 1 remote access account and you're typically into 99% of most companies. Because they have users and -- worse yet -- executives who don't want to deal with multiple privilege levels and security processes. They want total control over their system, which means anyone who compromises their access has the same. So it doesn't surprise me. Much like the Valve hack didn't either -- especially when it was detailed that they had been compromised through an executive's system months earlier and didn't know it.