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From: cg@myrias.UUCP (Chris Gray)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Copy protection: boycott it!
Message-ID: <516@myrias.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 10-Jul-87 13:56:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: myrias.516
Posted: Fri Jul 10 13:56:23 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 12-Jul-87 14:29:06 EDT
References: <4826@sgi.SGI.COM> <4238@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: Myrias Research, Edmonton
Lines: 54
Keywords: software terrorism, copy protection, South Africa

Just finished reading Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer's long posting
regarding copy protection. A major claim that he seems to make is that
copy protection makes a program unusable. He mentions having 2 games and
1 utility (DPaint I), all copy protected, and all having failed after some
small number of uses. Perhaps Mike has faulty disk drives? I've got a dozen
or more games, and both DPaint I and DPaint II. The only one that has ever
failed is "MindShadow" which insists on writing to the master disk. I agree
that that scheme can quickly make a program unusable - it did to mine. A
friend and I have spent MANY hours playing one game in particular (Bard's
Tale) and the disk still boots fine. Throughout the games, the main complaints
we have had have been about the games themselves or sometimes their
implementations.

I get upset about programs which won't run under 1.2 (most do now), or that
don't work with fast ram (becoming fewer, thankfully). I would be happy if
I could get updates to overcome these problems (if the game is any good, I'm
willing to pay, say, $10.00 for the update; if the game isn't any good, I
wouldn't bother to get the update even if it were free). I'm planning on a
getting a hard disk, and I would like to be able to put all of the games and
tools onto it. For that purpose I would probably get a copy-protection
breaking program, but I will NOT give away copies to others (I have already
refused to both give and accept pirated copies). I am fairly happy with
this compromise that has evolved in the industry, but am greatly concerned
about the continuing viability of the Amiga software market (since I might
want to get into it myself. Programmers MUST make reasonable money at it
or they will stop doing it.

Another question is that of whether copy protection is useful to the game
producer. I would be VERY interested in seeing some real numbers from
someone in the game industry, but I'm willing to make some estimates (note
that I'm talking about the Amiga here, not Apples or MSDOS machines):

    approximate number of machines - 150,000
    approximate percentage of owners that could be expected to
        buy a given game           -       1%    (probably over generous)
    approximate sales of game      -    1500

    approximate cost of producing the game - $50,000  (probably low)

    therefore, required PROFIT per game - $50,000 / 1500 = $33.33

    therefore, reasonable cost per game - $50.00

which is pretty close to what they are.

Now, if the game is not copy protected, my personal guess is that sales
would go down, perhaps by as much as a factor of 3. Suddenly, it is no
longer possible to survive in the market - your price has just doubled.

Mike would probably argue that removing the copy protection would increase
the sales. I just don't believe this would happen in the Amiga market.
-- 
Chris Gray		Myrias Research, Edmonton	+1 403 432 1616
	{seismo!mnetor,ubc-vision,watmath,vax135}!alberta!myrias!cg