What would happen if the legit password were shared among 3-4 others? Does WotC look on this as legit? Or would the account be cancelled soon thereafter? Is it only good on one computer?
If the players come to the DMs PC, and use his account there, I don't believe that it would be a problem. If, however, the DM shares the password with his players and allows them to use it at their home, then that is against the ToS of DDI.
Technically? No.
Practically? How would they know, unless you told people on these here forums or something?
Technically? No.
Practically? How would they know, unless you told people on these here forums or something?
Exactly, the only way they would even suspect is if you asked a question about it on these forums.
It all comes down to the sharing of the password. Keep it to yourself. Be the one to log onto your account when at home or at your friends.
I would even go as far as to say that the person who pays for the account, could login on at someone else's house, since part of going online was the ultimately portable aspect.
Thats not what you agree to when you sign up for DDI. You, and only you, on one specific machine which you sign up for, may use the software. Anything else and you're breaking your agreement with WotC and are a very bad bad person.
Also children under 13 aren't allowed to use the software at all, and people under 19 must have their parent sign up for them.
I would even go as far as to say that the person who pays for the account, could login on at someone else's house, since part of going online was the ultimately portable aspect.
Thats not what you agree to when you sign up for DDI. You, and only you, on one specific machine which you sign up for, may use the software. Anything else and you're breaking your agreement with WotC and are a very bad bad person.
Also children under 13 aren't allowed to use the software at all, and people under 19 must have their parent sign up for them.
DDi has changed since I signed up and one of the new features they have added was moving it online, so that it was portable, meaning you can log in anywhere, and use your DDi account. There is nothing saying I can't access my account from someone else's computer.
There is nothing saying I can't let someone else use my account after I logged in so long as I don't give them my password, and let them sign on anytime they want. Just like I can let someone come over and use Photoshop on my computer. Or play my video games. Heck I can even loan my xbox games to friends.
And I have no idea why you even brought in the subject of kids. A parent can certainly buy a DDi subscription for his child, regardless of the childs age. And a parent can certainly let their child use their software, regardless of age.
So again, you are perfectly fine signing into your DDi account on someone elses computer. That's part of the move to being online.
1. Eligibility. The Software is available only to individuals eighteen (18) years of age and older at the time of installation. If you are between the ages of thirteen (13) and eighteen (18), your parent or guardian must complete the registration process to create an account with Wizards through the Dungeons & Dragons website (“Account”) and take full responsibility for all obligations under this License. Certain components of the Software may be available only to current subscribers of D&D Insider, and will be subject to all terms associated therewith, located at www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/inside.... You may not transfer, sell or share your Account with anyone, unless you are a parent or guardian, in which case you may permit one child to use the Account instead of yourself. YOU ARE LIABLE FOR ALL ACTIVITIES CONDUCTED THROUGH THE ACCOUNT.
Sharing an account would be giving out the password. If I log in, let them sit down and create a character, and use it in my game, I am still within the EULA.
Because I am using the software for my game. It doesn't matter who is sitting infront of the computer working on the CB.
Is it likely you'll get caught? of course not. I've let friends try World of Warcraft countless times from home, logging into my account and letting them try it out a bit. Honestly, you probably won't get caught...but
The issue really comes up when your over a friends house and log them in under your account. If you leave and never log out, and then go home and attempt to use CB while they are in CB - that is when the red flag (in theory) would go up to alert them an account was being shared.
Now they see that the CB is active from two seperate IP addresses. How your friend was able to access the information under your account, they don't care about either: A.) someone hacked your account (but why?) or B.) you allowed someone to use your account - which is sharing.
And hence, against the EULA
Not that there will be any jack-booted WotC thugs kicking down your door for doing it.
While it makes perfect sense that you should be allowed to do that, and the unofficial stance in the past has been to allow groups to share an account, it's not what the EULA says.
Err, no. The stance, official or otherwise, has never been to allow groups to use one single subscription.
Which doesn't make it any more legal, but at least gives credence to the idea that the section of the EULA referring to sharing is there in case they need to crack down on widespread piracy, not so they can sue a DM for letting his players make characters.
Dane - normally I don't find myself disagreeing with you, but coming from a history of MMORPGs, but just the act of logging into an account and letting someone else use it is considered sharing and a violation of the EULA.
Is it likely you'll get caught? of course not. I've let friends try World of Warcraft countless times from home, logging into my account and letting them try it out a bit. Honestly, you probably won't get caught...but
The issue really comes up when your over a friends house and log them in under your account. If you leave and never log out, and then go home and attempt to use CB while they are in CB - that is when the red flag (in theory) would go up to alert them an account was being shared.
Now they see that the CB is active from two seperate IP addresses. How your friend was able to access the information under your account, they don't care about either: A.) someone hacked your account (but why?) or B.) you allowed someone to use your account - which is sharing.
And hence, against the EULA
However, the announced change in the intent of DDi, and the Character builder, means I am perfectly right to log into my account from any computer. So multiple IP address for one account isn't against the EULA.
It's part of why they switched to Silverlight and being online. It's portable. You can use it anywhere you have internet connection, on any computer. That's what was stated about it.
As of having it active from two different IPs at the same time, I'm not even sure that's possible, I've nevver tried it. But who's to say I don't have multiple computers, which in fact I do. It's well within my rights to log into my account for each and every computer in my house.
As it is now, only the DM in our group has a subscription, meaning that people are rolling up their characters and making mistakes, and many other things.
What would happen if the legit password were shared among 3-4 others? Does WotC look on this as legit? Or would the account be cancelled soon thereafter? Is it only good on one computer?
No.
Further, anyone encouraging you to do so is in violation of Section 4 of the Code of Conduct.
I think the point is if you want to be able to access and use DDI on your own, you're going to have to pay. If you simply, as a group, need someone to run characters through CB and print them out, then designate someone to do that. For instance I generally do this in my group, they tell me what they want, and I run it through CB and hand them the sheet. Some of them have DDI themselves or have had it at various times, so they can do it themselves too if they really want. I'm not going to share a password with them or share PDFs with them, etc, but that's obviously not allowed. Writing up the sheets for your group in CB? No problem.
As it stands a bunch of people sitting around the table with a computer available that one of the players is logged into in any practical sense is legitimate. Maybe technically only the guy that paid for the account can touch the keyboard? Meh. OK, you stand behind my shoulder and tell me what to click on...
I think the point is if you want to be able to access and use DDI on your own, you're going to have to pay. If you simply, as a group, need someone to run characters through CB and print them out, then designate someone to do that. For instance I generally do this in my group, they tell me what they want, and I run it through CB and hand them the sheet. Some of them have DDI themselves or have had it at various times, so they can do it themselves too if they really want. I'm not going to share a password with them or share PDFs with them, etc, but that's obviously not allowed. Writing up the sheets for your group in CB? No problem.
Exactly my point. My game, my account, I don't share my password, and I don't send the character files to my players, and I look at the character sheets when planning out my adventures.
But when my players level up, I let them sit down at my computer, and use the CB to go through their choices.
That's perfectly fine and legal. I'm using the software as intended.
It's never a good idea to share accounts, period.
I can just see all the complaints rolling in to CS. "I'm trying to log in, but it won't let me. It says I'm already logged in!' Well, yeah that will happen if you share your password.
Then there's the issue of them having access to your account. Do you really trust they won't change anything, or try to get your information? Or take over your account by changing the payment method/password? How about buying a year's subscription without your permission? You set it to NOT auto renew, and they turn that back on?
What if they do something that gets you banned? Is that worth the risk?
So, the long and short of it is No, you may not share accounts.
The downloaded Character Builder is portable. I had it on an SD memory card, and I may still have it on a thumb drive. I could plug it into any computer set up to support the medium, and run it. The only hassle was over character portraits, which are extremely optional.
And with a web-based subscription, there is absolutely no issue (unless the provider puts considerable effort into creating one) with accessing it from several computers. The issue is with accessing it from several computers simultaneously.
While it makes perfect sense that you should be allowed to do that, and the unofficial stance in the past has been to allow groups to share an account, it's not what the EULA says.
Err, no. The stance, official or otherwise, has never been to allow groups to use one single subscription.
I get a lot of grief in my gaming group about not sharing my ddi but I'm pretty adamant about not letting anyone else read subscriber content. I won't even let them view it. But, the thread starter person brought up a good question about ddi.
The downloaded Character Builder is portable. I had it on an SD memory card, and I may still have it on a thumb drive. I could plug it into any computer set up to support the medium, and run it.
Did you actually try it? It worked? No problems with missing registry notes or anything?
While it makes perfect sense that you should be allowed to do that, and the unofficial stance in the past has been to allow groups to share an account, it's not what the EULA says.
Err, no. The stance, official or otherwise, has never been to allow groups to use one single subscription.
Yeah, that's why all the WotC staff did the 'wink, wink' thing everytime they mentioned it right?
Do you really trust they won't change anything, or try to get your information?
When you play with friends-friends and not D&D-friends, this problem does not exist. I trust my friends 100% to not abuse the options on "my" account. Which isn't even mine (note the lack of a DDi insider icon
) in reality.Piracy is something you fight with your setup, not with tracking.. Its the golden rule of IT.
Aka if you want to prevent piracy you create measures against it, but fighting it by pooring over logs, running queries or having someone "catch people" has never been done by any company anywhere. Anyone that has ever been caught for breaking license agreements or piracy in general has gotten caught because of one of two reasons. A tip.. or he did it on a mass scale.
Post your account credentials online and in a week or two it will get shut down because it will be obvious to them. Post online that your doing it and they can look up your account and probobly conclude wether or not you have been doing it.
The reason its not done (looking for pirates and license agreement infractions) is not because its technically not possible, quite to the contrary its quite easy if you dedicate someone to it. The reason its not done is because you are going to catch A LOT of people. Things like sharing a DDI account is happening all over the place all the time, if they started canceling accounts for this infraction consistantly the result would be a severe reduction in membership. Obviously because all you can do is cancel the account of the one and only person who in the sharing is paying you. Its like refusing your pay check because they printed your name incorrectly on it.
Activly fighting piracy results in bigger lossess then just letting it exist. Its a fact of the IT world. The only good way to fight piracy is preventive measures.
Look at pirate bay. Millions spent, owners charged with crimes... pirate bay.. still up and running, no one ever got anything back and no one ever will.
Piracy is something you fight with your setup, not with tracking.. Its the golden rule of IT.
Aka if you want to prevent piracy you create measures against it, but fighting it by pooring over logs, running queries or having someone "catch people" has never been done by any company anywhere. Anyone that has ever been caught for breaking license agreements or piracy in general has gotten caught because of one of two reasons. A tip.. or he did it on a mass scale.
Post your account credentials online and in a week or two it will get shut down because it will be obvious to them. Post online that your doing it and they can look up your account and probobly conclude wether or not you have been doing it.
The reason its not done (looking for pirates and license agreement infractions) is not because its technically not possible, quite to the contrary its quite easy if you dedicate someone to it. The reason its not done is because you are going to catch A LOT of people. Things like sharing a DDI account is happening all over the place all the time, if they started canceling accounts for this infraction consistantly the result would be a severe reduction in membership. Obviously because all you can do is cancel the account of the one and only person who in the sharing is paying you. Its like refusing your pay check because they printed your name incorrectly on it.
Activly fighting piracy results in bigger lossess then just letting it exist. Its a fact of the IT world. The only good way to fight piracy is preventive measures.
Look at pirate bay. Millions spent, owners charged with crimes... pirate bay.. still up and running, no one ever got anything back and no one ever will.
There is no security you can put in place to effectively fight piracy. This is because piracy is a numbers game. Say you have 20 people working to stop piracy. If you have a popular product your going to have 100's of people working to crack your security. Its just not an effective technique.
The most effective technique is matching the price for the value. If this means lowering the price, then do it. If it means increasing the quality to match the price, then do it...
Piracy is something you fight with your setup, not with tracking.. Its the golden rule of IT.
Aka if you want to prevent piracy you create measures against it, but fighting it by pooring over logs, running queries or having someone "catch people" has never been done by any company anywhere. Anyone that has ever been caught for breaking license agreements or piracy in general has gotten caught because of one of two reasons. A tip.. or he did it on a mass scale.
Post your account credentials online and in a week or two it will get shut down because it will be obvious to them. Post online that your doing it and they can look up your account and probobly conclude wether or not you have been doing it.
The reason its not done (looking for pirates and license agreement infractions) is not because its technically not possible, quite to the contrary its quite easy if you dedicate someone to it. The reason its not done is because you are going to catch A LOT of people. Things like sharing a DDI account is happening all over the place all the time, if they started canceling accounts for this infraction consistantly the result would be a severe reduction in membership. Obviously because all you can do is cancel the account of the one and only person who in the sharing is paying you. Its like refusing your pay check because they printed your name incorrectly on it.
Activly fighting piracy results in bigger lossess then just letting it exist. Its a fact of the IT world. The only good way to fight piracy is preventive measures.
Look at pirate bay. Millions spent, owners charged with crimes... pirate bay.. still up and running, no one ever got anything back and no one ever will.
The problem is that most people think that fighting piracy equals stopping piracy. They aren't the same thing. Companies and publishers know you can't stop piracy. There is always going to be someone who works at it till it happens.
But you are right, doing nothing is actually worse. And that's the part I think people fail to understand. They think since you can't stop piracy, trying means nothing and is equal to doing nothing.
The most effective technique is matching the price for the value.
Doesn't work either. You can't match the price with the value, because to most people the value of your product is $0,00 as long as it can be pirated. (Most) People don't pirate because they think your product is too expensive, but because they can get it for free.
Fortunately there are ways to fight piracy. For example sharing an account for a multiplayer online game doesn't work too well, because you wouldn't be able to play with/against your friends. Limiting the number of storage space you have for the game also works, because that space needs to be shared with others, limiting your options. There's more ways like that to prevent piracy, but none of them really work for that the Compendium really is.
The most effective technique is matching the price for the value.
Doesn't work either. You can't match the price with the value, because to most people the value of your product is $0,00 as long as it can be pirated. (Most) People don't pirate because they think your product is too expensive, but because they can get it for free.
Fortunately there are ways to fight piracy. For example sharing an account for a multiplayer online game doesn't work too well, because you wouldn't be able to play with/against your friends. Limiting the number of storage space you have for the game also works, because that space needs to be shared with others, limiting your options. There's more ways like that to prevent piracy, but none of them really work for that the Compendium really is.
The ones that think the value is $0, you will never convert or get money from so they are not a factor. Its the people that see DDi and say I'd pay $5-$7 a month for what they're offering that are pirating it because they feel there is not enough value for the money that will be converted...
There were some studies done awhile back, they found that no amount of DRM converted the majority of pirates to customers. Very few were converted. Convenience and value for money were found to convert more... I'm sure a short google would turn up a number of these studies...
If you could remove all the pirates, then you could probably cut the cost of your hardware and maintenance in half, which in itself could be worth a lot.
For things that aren't online, that doesn't count and the only thing you can hope on is that these pirates spread some free advertising or decide to visit a concert because you can't really download the experience of actually being there.
Its not really about security, its about prevention methods and when I say that I don't mean some new security feature, I'm talking about creating alternative methods that motivate buyers and make piracy pointless.
For example.
Take DDI. What is the problem here? The issue is that they don't offer anything that requires anyone to have their own account. It simply suffices to have one member in the gaming group to purchase one and the rest can simply use it in conjuction with their games. Sure they have to coordinate a bit, but generally it works just fine I see it all the time.
However if DDI included some of the promised features like for example Online Play then suddenly sharing an account becomes inconvieniant enough and offers enough value to make the purchase worth while.
Other good examples is Magic the Gathering Online and Tactics, or PoxNora. These games are designed with a "ownership" feel to them... aka these are my cards or virtual miniatures. They are worth real money and if you get your account canceled you stand to actually loose something considerable. Furthermore if you want to try the game its FREE.. all you have to do is make an account so their is little motivation for sharing accounts to let your friends try it out.
MMO's are the same.. they have fashioned games that make piracy non existant as sharing an account with a friend you want to play with is ... pointless and if you want to try the game their are free trials available so again its preferable.
Most piracy takes place in digital media like Stand Alone PC games, Music and Movies. This happens because none of those forms of media are ready to embrace the change of online service and appropriate pricing. A DVD is simply not worth 20 bucks and any movie released will find its way to the 3 dollar bin over time regardless of how good it is. However no one wants to watch a shake cam of a guy who films the movie in russia from a crappy movie theater and its why going to the movies and paying 10 bucks to get in is still a good value.. you get a good chunk of entertainment for a buck.
Thats really the key to the whole piracy issue.. make it worth our money and we'll pay.. Piracy has a lot of drawbacks.. viruses, long download times... burning CD's and quality issues. Their is worked involved and generally if I could buy a movie for 3 bucks compared to spending 8 hours downloading a **** quality version its no contest.. but for 20 bucks.. well I look at my account and think.. ya .. its not worth it, just DL it.
I think Magic the Gathering Tactics is a fine example of how to motivate purchases. I mean here you can purchase campaigns for 5 bucks which easily cover an evening of entertainment (great value in itself if you like the game) and then you can do daily quests that earn you gold which you can buy more electronic cards with. That is a good example of a good value. But release the game for 40 bucks as a stand alone game and you can bet your ass I will be downloading that ****!
So the industry is wising up and Wizards I think is heading into the arena of understanding how the online world works... I will be the first one to cough up 10 bucks a month if they give me some real entertainment out of it, but right now... well lets just say that I use DDI all the time and as you can see.. Im not a member. Its an ok product right now but frankly It just doesn't entertain enough to be worth the purchase.
The most effective technique is matching the price for the value.
Doesn't work either. You can't match the price with the value, because to most people the value of your product is $0,00 as long as it can be pirated. (Most) People don't pirate because they think your product is too expensive, but because they can get it for free.
Correct. People that will download a pirated version, in most cases aren't doing so because they can't afford it, they do it because they have justified the act to themselves.
Because lets be honest, $7 to $10 dollars a month, is nothing. I don't even have to do any research to know that most people playing DnD probably spend more then that on useless stuff every single month. Food bought but never eaten, buying coffee at a cafe instead of making at home, eating lunch out more days then not. You name it.
I can understand why something like Photoshop and other high end design programs do get pirated. Even with student discounts, $600+ is a lot of money for some people.
I may get flamed over this, but if $7 a month for DDi is too much, and is going to cause finacial hardship for that person, they just might have other problems to deal with then the cost of DDi.
Thats really the key to the whole piracy issue.. make it worth our money and we'll pay.. Piracy has a lot of drawbacks.. viruses, long download times... burning CD's and quality issues. Their is worked involved and generally if I could buy a movie for 3 bucks compared to spending 8 hours downloading a **** quality version its no contest.. but for 20 bucks.. well I look at my account and think.. ya .. its not worth it, just DL it.
Plenty of people will never pay, regardless of how little they pay or how much what they get is worth, if they can get it for free. And the downsides to piracy are minimal, unless you want something really obscure. You can get high quality downloads of just about anything in no-time using just the Piratebay.
Unless you can offer something that cannot be gotten without being pirated, plenty of people will continue to pirate it, if only to save themselves the $3 they'd pay for that same item in the budget-bin.
While it makes perfect sense that you should be allowed to do that, and the unofficial stance in the past has been to allow groups to share an account, it's not what the EULA says.
Err, no. The stance, official or otherwise, has never been to allow groups to use one single subscription.
Yeah, that's why all the WotC staff did the 'wink, wink' thing everytime they mentioned it right?
Don't know whose posts you were reading, but if you were seeing "wink, wink", it definately wasn't posts by WotC staffers. They have always been very clear that the subscriptions weren't to be shared.
You may be conflating sharing amongst users with staffers saying that they designed the 5 updates per month expecting people to have it on their home computer, as well as a laptop or two.
Yes, the above tactics will prevent some percentage of the pirates from stealing your product, and indeed some percentage of those would-be pirates will actually end up buying your product legitimately. The problem is, the reduction in services, convenience, or quality will also drive away some percentage of your legitimate customers.
So it's a numbers game. Will you gain more customers than you lose with any given anti-piracy scheme? And will the net gain be worth the resources you put into it?
At WotC we've seen a drastic reduction of service and quality to combat piracy, and at great expense to the company, who abandoned a working suite of software for a totally new one. The move has actually seemed to increase piracy, based on the popularity of the Canadian Bacon Loader, and WotC customers who are dissatisfied are many, and a not-insignificant number of them have stopped paying altogether.
It's a textbook case of what not to do.
I may get flamed over this, but if $7 a month for DDi is too much, and is going to cause finacial hardship for that person, they just might have other problems to deal with then the cost of DDi.
Flames!!!
But in all honesty, spending ~$100 is a hefty chunk of change for many people. Consider a big budget video game. I complain when the price is 60$, wait for it used, and pick it up. 50 is my top tier, and even then I take some convincing. A good video game should last you at least a year. DDI is roughly the equivilent of a good video game, BUT it is the same video game all year long.
Thats more than many people are willing to spend on entertainment. Especially when that entertainment ammounts to "We will let you access specific portions of our website" which is basically what DDI has turned into. A video game, movie, ect I can take to record and tape traders, gamestop whatever and transfer some of that purchase into my next one. I can sell it to my friend. I can use it as a frisbee. Its mine. Paying 100 a year to access an online website is a little excessive, especially considering I can't resell it, loan it, give it, or keep it forever.
I may get flamed over this, but if $7 a month for DDi is too much, and is going to cause finacial hardship for that person, they just might have other problems to deal with then the cost of DDi.Flames!!!
But in all honesty, spending ~$100 is a hefty chunk of change for many people. Consider a big budget video game. I complain when the price is 60$, wait for it used, and pick it up. 50 is my top tier, and even then I take some convincing. A good video game should last you at least a year. DDI is roughly the equivilent of a good video game, BUT it is the same video game all year long.
Thats more than many people are willing to spend on entertainment. Especially when that entertainment ammounts to "We will let you access specific portions of our website" which is basically what DDI has turned into. A video game, movie, ect I can take to record and tape traders, gamestop whatever and transfer some of that purchase into my next one. I can sell it to my friend. I can use it as a frisbee. Its mine. Paying 100 a year to access an online website is a little excessive, especially considering I can't resell it, loan it, give it, or keep it forever.
I just can't get to worked up over someone complaining about the cost of a luxury service, like DDi, where you don't need it to play the game. You can be just as happy with the three books, a battlemat, markers and some form of tokens for players and monsters.
When I started playing, we just had dice and sheets. No maps or minis or tokens, and now that I can afford a big fancy set up, the amount of fun I have is the same, honestly, because I enjoy the game, not the artifacts that go with the game.
Well, I do enjoy my artifacts that go with the game. or should I say tools, because all the mini's all the tiles, all the set pieces I've made, the templates and more that I've shown, are because I'm a creative person, and I enjoy doing that kind of stuff. It's something that I apply to every aspect of my life.
I just can't get to worked up over someone complaining about the cost of a luxury service, like DDi, where you don't need it to play the game. You can be just as happy with the three books, a battlemat, markers and some form of tokens for players and
Yeah, I don't get being worked up over not being able to afford a luxury item at all. But I do disagree with the price of the item. I think it is too high for the value, and I think a lot of people agree to me. Being worked up, and simply saying "I think thats too much" are very different things.
I just can't get to worked up over someone complaining about the cost of a luxury service, like DDi, where you don't need it to play the game. You can be just as happy with the three books, a battlemat, markers and some form of tokens for players andYeah, I don't get being worked up over not being able to afford a luxury item at all. But I do disagree with the price of the item. I think it is too high for the value, and I think a lot of people agree to me. Being worked up, and simply saying "I think thats too much" are very different things.
I respect your view on the price to value. However I would say more people disagree with and think the value is worth it. At least, more agree it's worth it then not worth it.
The most effective technique is matching the price for the value.
Doesn't work either. You can't match the price with the value, because to most people the value of your product is $0,00 as long as it can be pirated. (Most) People don't pirate because they think your product is too expensive, but because they can get it for free.
I disagree. You can find music online for free but people buy music all the time. You can find pdfs online for free but people still buy the books (and did buy the pdfs when they were for sale despite them being vastly overpriced). You can get the character builder, adventure tools, and even the compendium online for free, and yet people pay for DDI accounts. Hell people go out to eat when they cook at home, they go to the car wash, people pay all the time for things they can get for free so long as they feel the price is worth it. There will still be some people pirating material of course, but they are likely the ones that wouldn't or couldn't have paid for it anyway.
The most effective technique is matching the price for the value.
Doesn't work either. You can't match the price with the value, because to most people the value of your product is $0,00 as long as it can be pirated. (Most) People don't pirate because they think your product is too expensive, but because they can get it for free.
I disagree. You can find music online for free but people buy music all the time. You can find pdfs online for free but people still buy the books (and did buy the pdfs when they were for sale despite them being vastly overpriced). You can get the character builder, adventure tools, and even the compendium online for free, and yet people pay for DDI accounts. Hell people go out to eat when they cook at home, they go to the car wash, people pay all the time for things they can get for free so long as they feel the price is worth it. There will still be some people pirating material of course, but they are likely the ones that wouldn't or couldn't have paid for it anyway.
Yup totaly agree. Convienciance and value are the best weapons against piracy, its not a perfect weapon and I also agree that some people will pirate stuff regardless of price or value... but I do think the common reason people that might not otherwise turn to piracy do so because of value issues.
One good example is my wife.. she is quite against piracy yet every once in a while she asks me to "aquire" something for her because is unsure about either the quality, the value or simply the ability to find it legaly.
I mean I remember when Civ V first came out. I went out of my way to drive to three different shops to buy it and it was sold out everywhere... I went online to buy it and I got their "coming in digital download soon"... I wanted it.. i wanted it now... was willing to pay but in the end I downloaded because I couldn't wait. After I got the download and started playing even when it became available it seemed silly to spend 500 crowns on something I already had and frankly by the time updates came out I had already had my fill and didn't really want to get a full version anymore.
Thats called missed oppertunity, poor marketing and lack of readiness to support the customer. This is one of many reasons why piracy exist and an example of how it could have been prevented.
I think in digital media their are many such examples and if you put them all together the result is that companies really can do quite a bit to prevent piracy and it has nothing to do with security measures or prevention....
As for people who download just because they can... that won't change but in the same token you can't look at those examples as lost sales as pure pirates like that usually won't buy something they can't get anyway so the fact that they are able to aquire it doesn't really affect the bottom line. You can't loose money you never had the oppertunity to make. Trying to prevent piracy as some principle is just plain silly and a waste of money for developers who would need to spend even more money to prevent people from getting access to their media who never had any intention of paying for it anyway.
The downloaded Character Builder is portable. I had it on an SD memory card, and I may still have it on a thumb drive. I could plug it into any computer set up to support the medium, and run it.
Did you actually try it? It worked? No problems with missing registry notes or anything?
It worked under WindowsXP. Windows7 doesn't support autorunning a program when a USB (or SD?) drive is plugged in, which is problematic (but a serious improvement of system security).
Also the version of CodySafe - which is what I used to essentially give the USB drive its own Start-menu-equivalent - that I had, apparently also is not compatible with Windows7 but there's a new version...
Install CodySafe first!
Copy the Character Builder from your C drive (path something like C:\Program Files (x86)\Wizards of the Coast\Character Builder - copy all files) to your thumb drive in directory \PortableApps\CharacterBuilder
Then tell CodySafe about it. And the command line to run it should be one of the following:
1) CharacterBuilderUpdater RealCharacterBuilderUpdater app.config
2) RealCharacterBuilderUpdater app.config
Do NOT include ANY path information in EITHER of those.
(The standard install creates shortcuts that use #1 with complete path. With CodySafe and a USB drive, )
Then when plugging the thumb drive into a new computer:
* With Windows7 (and perhaps with more recent patches to earlier versions of Windows) you'll need to open the Explorer window and start CodySafe. Then look in your system tray for the CodySafe icon to make its menu appear.
* CB doesn't know to look on the thumb drive for saved characters, you have to tell it where to find them. (Once it has found a character, CB on THAT COMPUTER will remember it.)
* If you load a saved character, it loses its character portrait and instead gets a default picture.
* If you create a new character, you must explicitly tell CB to save that character on the thumb drive
I disagree. You can find music online for free but people buy music all the time. You can find pdfs online for free but people still buy the books (and did buy the pdfs when they were for sale despite them being vastly overpriced).
There are people who will pay for things they can get for free, but at least in my area, they are a severe minority. Also, a book has many advantages over a PDF, so that's an unfair comparison. For buying PDF's, the same applies: some people will buy them, many people will pirate them, whether the price is fair or not.
You can get the character builder, adventure tools, and even the compendium online for free, and yet people pay for DDI accounts.
How can you get it for free? As far as I know, those things are DDI only?
Hell people go out to eat when they cook at home, they go to the car wash, people pay all the time for things they can get for free so long as they feel the price is worth it.
All of these are real things that have no free and easy equal. If people could get someone to cook good food for them for free, they wouldn't go to a restaurant. The alternative of "cooking for yourself" isn't comparable to piracy, because it involves a lot of work and lower quality, whereas pirating (assuming you're any good at it) is actually often less work then actually purchasing something and the exact same quality.
You can get the character builder, adventure tools, and even the compendium online for free, and yet people pay for DDI accounts.
How can you get it for free? As far as I know, those things are DDI only?
Through piracy.
Has anyone posting here ever seen a pirated PDF of a dnd book? 99% of the time they are scanned increadibly poorly. No bookmarks, no selectable text, the pages are slightly askew, you might have some text cut off, and every third page ends up fuzzy.
Seeing one next to a legit store bought PDF is no comparison. Even with it available to steal, I would but the legit one every time.
Problem being people stealingthe legit one, but the last big concern would be online security. You go to your pirate site (People known for their trustworthy nature) and god knows what else you downloaded, saying nothing of the insecurity of their website.
As long as I can do that, I won't need to either
As for PDF copies... I had a whole bunch of 3.5e PDFs, although many might be "official" copies. But even the book scans were quite workable for their required purpose (as a source for character generation, not a rules reference)
You can get the character builder, adventure tools, and even the compendium online for free, and yet people pay for DDI accounts.
How can you get it for free? As far as I know, those things are DDI only?
Through piracy.Has anyone posting here ever seen a pirated PDF of a dnd book? 99% of the time they are scanned increadibly poorly. No bookmarks, no selectable text, the pages are slightly askew, you might have some text cut off, and every third page ends up fuzzy.
Seeing one next to a legit store bought PDF is no comparison. Even with it available to steal, I would but the legit one every time.
Problem being people stealingthe legit one, but the last big concern would be online security. You go to your pirate site (People known for their trustworthy nature) and god knows what else you downloaded, saying nothing of the insecurity of their website.
THANK YOU! I've been trying to make this point for a long time. You have two options when scanning a book.
You can scan it as an image, Which means just what you say. Also the higher the resolution the easier it is to read, but the larger the file.
Doing an OCR scan introduces errors into the text, because things like formatting, background colors and fonts interfer even with the best OCR software and scanners. And I've worked on the high end scanners.
If you don't care about such things, there you go.
While it makes perfect sense that you should be allowed to do that, and the unofficial stance in the past has been to allow groups to share an account, it's not what the EULA says.
Err, no. The stance, official or otherwise, has never been to allow groups to use one single subscription.
Yeah, that's why all the WotC staff did the 'wink, wink' thing everytime they mentioned it right?
Woohoo! WotC staff said 'wink, wink'! We can share our DDI accounts!!
Wait, are you sure they didn't just have something stuck in their eye? I made a fool of myself once for not realizing the difference...
While it makes perfect sense that you should be allowed to do that, and the unofficial stance in the past has been to allow groups to share an account, it's not what the EULA says.
Err, no. The stance, official or otherwise, has never been to allow groups to use one single subscription.
Yeah, that's why all the WotC staff did the 'wink, wink' thing everytime they mentioned it right?
Woohoo! WotC staff said 'wink, wink'! We can share our DDI accounts!!
Wait, are you sure they didn't just have something stuck in their eye? I made a fool of myself once for not realizing the difference...
If I cared, I'd do a search, but I don't. Their quotes went something like this:
"Don't share access to DDi or the character builder *wink**wink*"
While I'm 100% against piracy in the more literal sense, the kind where people scan books and post online or where applications are jailbroken and posted, I'm a bit fuzzy on sharing an DDI account at the game table. In my current game of 3 players and a dm, 3 of us pay for DDI accounts and my son shares mine (legal, by my understanding of the EULA). The part I find insteresting was that for many years with 3.x, and still with 4e, we legally shared many books at the table that only one or two players purchased. Obviously many groups legally share whole D&D libraries.
My point is that there's piracy, and there's crossing the EULA restrictions. Although I understand they can be technically the same, I think this is where the notion of the "wink wink" came from partly. If my player asks me about a power for his character that he's having troubles finding, and I hand him my iPad for a quick scan of the compendium, is that breaking the EULA? Probably not, and certainly similar to handing him a book I own, but tricky in the digital legal sense.
So if you hand a friend your PHB3 so he can make a monk you're fine: copyright laws protect you and the book's owner. If you hand him access to your DDI account so he can make a monk you're violating the EULA and could (conceivably, but not likely) be prosecuted for violating your contractual agreement with WotC.
The difference between sharing books and sharing DDI accounts is that book sharing falls under copyright laws and is 100% legal. DDI sharing falls under the contract you sign when you agree to the EULA, and it's legality is completely defined by that contract.
So if you hand a friend your PHB3 so he can make a monk you're fine: copyright laws protect you and the book's owner. If you hand him access to your DDI account so he can make a monk you're violating the EULA and could (conceivably, but not likely) be prosecuted for violating your contractual agreement with WotC.
Thanks - I do understand the legal aspects, and the differences between books and digital material. My comment was more towards why products like DDI blur the lines. People may understand the technical aspects of the EULA, but still make minor infractions against it, due to the practical uses of the product, in this case at the game table. Another example would, of course, be sharing printed material from the compendium/magazines at the game table. I'm fairly certain we've seen posts here from Wizards indicating this is acceptable use, but in my opinion it's another fuzzy use case, legally. Saying "the law is the law", is like saying people don't drive over the speed limit because that's the law, when we all know the majority of drivers inch over that limit. There's the law, and there's the real world application of it. My post was more aimed at the interesting grey area between the two.
I'm not aware of any ways to pirate DDi other then surfing on another's subscription...
I was pretty positive I had heard of people essentially pulling all the data for the programs and running them offline. I don't know the exact methods, and I haven't seen it in person. So I don't know how real or accurate I am on this.
If I cared, I'd do a search, but I don't. Their quotes went something like this:
"Don't share access to DDi or the character builder *wink**wink*"
Let me repeat again for you.
WotC staff have never ever said or implied that it is permissable to share your account password with someone else.
The main problem is that Wizards decided to chain their Character Generator to this service, and unless the DM makes everyone's character for them, having the players use that tool is a given. No matter how much Wizards wants it to be singular subscribers for each account, the more likely use of this tool is for the players to make their characters with it, most likely using the DM's account to do so. Wizard's realizes this, and has insituted a character limit with the new online builder in hopes to curb this practice, a paltry 20 saves on the useless cloud. There is no way to save directly onto the local computer at all. This, in itself, is unforgivable.
I will say it again for the record, the Character Builder should have been a stand alone product, with updates given to DDi subscribers.
Oh, and Silverlight sucks.
I'm not aware of any ways to pirate DDi other then surfing on another's subscription...I was pretty positive I had heard of people essentially pulling all the data for the programs and running them offline. I don't know the exact methods, and I haven't seen it in person. So I don't know how real or accurate I am on this.
You are entirely accurate.
Yes, they stole it. This does not invalidate the claim though, its the why of pirating and the justification that comes with it...
Which is why I acknowledged that it was their reason for and (flimsy and insufficient) justification for doing so.
I wasn't trying to invalidate the claim that piracy happens. I was admonishing the poster for doing something that is illegal (and in my case, directly affects my industy).
Yes, they stole it. This does not invalidate the claim though, its the why of pirating and the justification that comes with it...
Which is why I acknowledged that it was their reason for and (flimsy and insufficient) justification for doing so.
I wasn't trying to invalidate the claim that piracy happens. I was admonishing the poster for doing something that is illegal (and in my case, directly affects my industy).
I'm saying look at this evidence and formulate a plan based on this kind of mindset. In other words, availability was the problem, if it was available it would probably have been bought.
In the case of DDi, the problem is more a value for price one. Lower the price or increase the value, either way you will get less pirates. Just yelling "OMG THE PIRATEZ ARE EVILZ" will do nothing to help the situation...
Well see this is the problem.. You actually believe that piracy is bad for the medium, its what THEY want you to believe.. and its simply not true.
Stealing is still stealing. Stealing is wrong. It is always bad. There are plenty of rationalizations made, but they all eventually break down because things have value, and a pirate is a thief who doesn't pay the value.
Piracy is nothing more then free marketing and of the best kind. In particualr as it applies to books downloading a crappy copy of something like the Dark Sun book so you can peruse it, if its good will lead to a sale.
No. Piracy is nothing more than outright theft, no matter the reasons for why the pirate is thieving something. One of the most common reasons is to "check out a product" to see if it is worth a purchase.
This would a strong indicator that business needs to adapt and provide a way to browse a product before buying it, while developing the motivation in the consumer to actually purchase the product. Having possession of this freely given preview would not be a crime.
Hell I personally bought the entire essentials line because of piracy, I had already decided not to buy it thanks to the bad press it has gotten but I decided to have a peek at it and downloaded the PDFS... The next day I spent over 100 dollars on the ENTIRE line...
Just say thank you and call it a day!
While I'm sure WotC is happy you bought the product, you could have also have not stolen it in the first place, read more reviews, or I dunno...entered a store a checked out the product. Or bought the product and returned it if it didn't appeal to you (like Amazon allows).
EDIT: I just want to add that its a bit presumptious to assume that because you download something your a bloody criminal, its a little offensive given that you can walk into a book store and peruse the book.
This is a natrual progression for a buyer of books... You go to the store.. you have a peek, if it looks interesting you buy it.
But you can't walk out of the bookstore without paying for it... unless you want to be criminal.
Their is zero benefit to having a crappy quality PDF of a book.. piracy as it applies to books is really a very minor problem, the large majority of gamers might be willing to download a PDF but ultimatly you want the book.. its the whole point... its a game of reading... PDF's at absolute best are a reference but generally piracy only affects books with a short page count which is exactly why modules aren't selling...which is exactly why its silly to try to sell something so light on page count and content.
Agreed. Many people who pirate might be willing consumers if companies provided a legitimate means to attain digital products.
But that still doesn't give you license to steal.
The natural evolution of Modules is to put them into box sets... you start putting out 3 part adventure box sets with tokens, maps etc... with linked adventures as part of a larger storyline and people will peruse and ultimatly buy those as well.
Yup. Also having products that are hard to pirate in the first place... like board games, tokens, tiles, and minis (ya know, things that are physical and not just ephemeral information).
Again, I find I repeat myself but if you want to prevent piracy, make quality products and put some thought on how you can make the purchase valuable to the customer and piracy will be limited to those few who simply can't afford the books... and those people where never potential customers and their "stolen" books are not lost sales.
Yes, agreed. And I'll say again that not having a valid option for digitally obtaining a product does not excuse or justify stealing it, under any circumstances, but especially when there are plenty of legal means to have it.
Like when you stole Civ V because you weren't willing to wait any longer.
You stole something. You are a pirate and a thief. I'm done with you.
This has been a message from you friendly local artist and VIDEO GAME DEVELOPER.
As a fellow VIDEO GAME DEVELOPER I would like to officially state that in Xguild's position, I would've done the same damn thing. Screw "keep looking", if you have something that's 100% digital and are dumb enough not to have it up for sale digitally during release, you can go suck it, I'll just get an illegal copy instead.
This has been a message from you friendly local artist and VIDEO GAME DEVELOPER.
As a fellow VIDEO GAME DEVELOPER I would like to officially state that in Xguild's position, I would've done the same damn thing. Screw "keep looking", if you have something that's 100% digital and are dumb enough not to have it up for sale digitally during release, you can go suck it, I'll just get an illegal copy instead.
This saddens me.
While the company might be dumb for not having digital distribution, it saddens me that people use this as an excuse to do something that is both morally and ethically wrong.
A videogames, PRG book/PDFs, movies, songs, etc are luxury items and not necessary for living, but all are means by which other people make a living. What is most saddening is that people would be unwilling to wait, even a couple of weeks, for something that is completely not necessary however desirable, and would resort to stealing in order to "have it now".
In other words, having it immediately is more important than paying for it.
Selfish and shameful.
It's certainly morally wrong (not going to deny that) and I usually do purchase a copy of the game once it becomes available (if the game was any good) but it's just bad business practice to not have the game stocked up and available for digital download so that people can actually get it.
Overhyping and then undersupplying to create more money saddens me, and I'm glad that pirates exist to deal with that issue where possible.
I don't think anyone is denying that things are being stolen. I, at least, am not. I'm just saying that if you don't want people to steal stuff, you can either try (and fail) to stop them through law, or get your **** together and motivate them not to steal, by adapting your business model.
Xguild is, you're not, and I agree.
You're dealing with the entire world, and large (very large) parts of it consider stealing digital content to be "not stealing" or "acceptible". You'll just have to accept that as a company and change your business plan, because you're not going to do anything about it.
Absolutely true, and that still in no way justifies the theft.
Your "culling the herd" justification could almost qualify, in that companies that fail to provide an adequate means of distribution deserve to fail, but that can be accomplished simply not buying the product. It doesn't take theft to make the point.
You (the generic you) don't have a right to experience something for free just because it wasn't sold to you in a way you prefer.
It's like saying that murder is unethical (I'd say it is... most people agree). Just because you shouldn't doesn't mean people won't and you'd be an idiot for thinking that it's not going to happen because it's unethical... the only thing you can do is adapt to it as best you can, and realise you can never stop it, and you can only go so far before you go too far.
Also it's not just about making a point. It's about the experience, as you say, and if the experience is good then people will want the experience. If the means of delivery suck, then that will not reduce the experience of the users, just the profits of the company. People don't generally care about companies that suck, so they're not going to be bothered.
On the other hand, if people do really care about the company, they'd be much more lenient and willing to pay for things. But that starts with the company genuinly showing it doesn't suck or not suck anymore.
Orc_Ertai
EDIT - since the post I was referring to is gone, this one had no context anymore, and was posted after the ORC warning.
Consider it deleted.
Or you could just delete it...
There is no way to save directly onto the local computer at all. This, in itself, is unforgivable.
It's also untrue. Import and Export have been around for a while now (~2 months if memory serves).
Import/export isn't the same as clicking on a "save" button and having it saved on your own computer, or opening the file direct from your local drive. Having to swap character in and out of a limited pool of slots is wasting time, effort and it should not be neccessary. It is a simple button, one that other Silverlight apps have had elsewhere, "Save on local drive" and "load from local drive." It ain't gonna happen, Wizards would rathor you swap files then open from the useless cloud.
Dude...now you are just lying. Ok, not about the fact that import/export isn't the same as clicking on a "save" button...yes...those are indeed two different things. But here is what I just did in under 2 minutes:
1) Made a quick character.
2) Clicked on Print, selected PDF, and the program saved my character sheet as a pdf on my hard drive...I can now view it whenever (even offline), email it, print it, edit it with a PDF editor, etc.
3) Exported the character to my hard drive. Yes, my harddrive, not the "cloud".
4) Deleted the character
5) Imported the character from my hard drive to the CB.
Done and done.
I understand some of you don't like the new stuff, but remaining willfully ignorant and blatantly spreading lies in an ill concieved attempt to demonstrate how bad it is isn't the right thing to do.
You can only have 20 characters saved in the Cloud at a time, but you can export and save unlimited to your computer (well, up to the storage capacity of your hard drive). So...don't save any in the cloud, and you have unlimited characters...import them when you need to edit or make changes.
I couldn't possibly point you to the original place I saw it, but I've seen cust serv responses posted that said otherwise. In any case though, it seems likely that the unofficial stance is to turn the other cheek, since there are undoubtedly hundreds of people out there doing it and 0 reported instances of WotC caring. Given the ease of mapping logins to IP addresses and detecting simultaneous logins, the only way they wouldn't know about it is if they didn't want to.
Which doesn't make it any more legal, but at least gives credence to the idea that the section of the EULA referring to sharing is there in case they need to crack down on widespread piracy, not so they can sue a DM for letting his players make characters.
The original stance (at least based on what WotC Staff said at conventions was essentially, "We have not problems with a family sharing a household account, or a player showing off their account to friends when they come over his house. We'd really like you to not share your info with others and let them freely use your account - if too many people abuse the system like that, management will probably start requiring changes that make no one happy."
Such as, perhaps, the push to an online format that is easier for them to limit access to.
The original stance (at least based on what WotC Staff said at conventions was essentially, "We have not problems with a family sharing a household account, or a player showing off their account to friends when they come over his house. We'd really like you to not share your info with others and let them freely use your account - if too many people abuse the system like that, management will probably start requiring changes that make no one happy."
Such as, perhaps, the push to an online format that is easier for them to limit access to.
Exactly. All you have to do is look to who the changes impact directly and immediately and you have your answer to why the changes were made.
The original stance (at least based on what WotC Staff said at conventions was essentially, "We have not problems with a family sharing a household account, or a player showing off their account to friends when they come over his house. We'd really like you to not share your info with others and let them freely use your account - if too many people abuse the system like that, management will probably start requiring changes that make no one happy."
Such as, perhaps, the push to an online format that is easier for them to limit access to.
Exactly. All you have to do is look to who the changes impact directly and immediately and you have your answer to why the changes were made.
I can't claim to know exactly why they made the change, but I can think of at least two reasons (both of which make financial sense):
1) Piracy. This has nothing to do with sharing accounts, and everything to do with the ability to go to a torrent website and download the full character builder, install it, and start playing. When you need an update, you go to the site again and download the new data files.
2) Testing and customer access. The old version was an executable that was intended to run on multiple operating systems. As such it required testing on multiple platforms. As a developer who has had to deal with those issues, I can guarantee that anything which decreases the number of entry points for the user will drastically decrease your costs and time to market. Now, with Silverlight, all of the cross-platform compatibility issues are handled by Microsoft's deep pockets.
Just while writing those I thought of a few others. Perhaps the original was poorly coded and a nightmare to maintain (my company is in that position right now). Perhaps Hasbro is moving to a Silverlight standard across all of their online products and wanted D&D to tow the line. Perhaps a well-dressed smooth-talking salesman bent the right ear and a New Vision of the Future (TM) was born.
The truth is there were probably several factors that went into the decision, and piracy was just one of them. "Rebuild from scratch" is a costly endeavor that inevitably alienates customers, so it's not something a company does lightly. At least not a company with a mind towards money like Hasbro.
The truth is there were probably several factors that went into the decision, and piracy was just one of them. "Rebuild from scratch" is a costly endeavor that inevitably alienates customers, so it's not something a company does lightly. At least not a company with a mind towards money like Hasbro.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that no one reason was behind the shift to the online CB. I think it was a combination of wanting to cut down on shared access, wanting to encourage ongoing subscriptions, concerns over piracy, a chance to rebuild their programs from the ground up, both so they could be more easily integrated, and to remove coding issues from the start, plus the opportunity to add Mac access... and probably several more that don't come to mind.
3) People who sub once/twice per year to get the CB and MB updates.
I get that they want to end that practice. What I don't get is that they thought "Hey we have an obvously very cheap base of our customers who are giving us some money. We want all that money" and instead of upping the value of the product, they decided to lower the value and say "You can't just give us a little money, all or nothing".
That customer base is obviously very cheap. I am curious how many of us decided "Nothing then".
3) People who sub once/twice per year to get the CB and MB updates.I get that they want to end that practice. What I don't get is that they thought "Hey we have an obvously very cheap base of our customers who are giving us some money. We want all that money" and instead of upping the value of the product, they decided to lower the value and say "You can't just give us a little money, all or nothing".
That customer base is obviously very cheap. I am curious how many of us decided "Nothing then".
I agree. Wizards is under-estimating the customer. What I see (the same as you, I believe) is a LOT of people willing to shell out their hard-earned money on product, but they just aren't getting the product they are clamoring for, so they look for ways to save money on inferiority (but all we have available).