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2005-04-12 10:15

Slartibartfast
Account closed

Registered: Jul 2002
Posts: 230

** Link removed by CSDb staff due to copyright. Please do not provide download links to this **

Well, there has been a few of these notices today, on certain Protovision releases that have been cracked and released by some people on CSDb.

Cracking has always been a large part of the scene, arguably the biggest and also what has ultimately ensured the scene to exist today.

If it weren't for cracking, piracy if you will, many games simply wouldn't be available on the web today. The C64dtv wouldn't have much of a lineup, all the games on it were cracks from the scene.

Now this issue has come to CSDb again, over old releases of Protovision games. Download links removed, to files which are definitely a part of the scene.

I can understand the policy on this, it's a way to protect CSDb against legal action. Other sites, for instance GB64, have tackled this by not hosting the files and just providing links to them.

But CSDb won't allow even that, if someone has an issue with their copyrighted work being available, the links will be removed. Even links provided by the user in their comment to the entry, will be censored and removed.

There is nothing regarding this policy in the CSDb FAQ, yet there is this disclaimer:

"Who's responsible for this?
We cannot take responsibility for the content of this database as all information is submitted by users."

So, that says straight out that CSDb is not responsible for the content.

It can be said that this is a way to protect CSDb in future, but from whom exactly? Can anyone honestly see Chronosoft or Protovision sueing anyone? Or if this is a measure to protect CSDb, could it go further and remove all cracks from the site?

On the other hand, CSDb are just trying to protect themselves, from Protovision apparently. Should we take the old debate over piracy directly to Protovision? As sceners themselves, they should know better than to be taking on this issue against sceners. Don't we all know by now that the people who would download these cracks, are not the same people that would buy it? That some of the people that get the game for free may even consider buying it at a later point?

One of the Protovision founders was a cracker himself, other members have been crackers, swappers or undoubtedly recipients of pirated software themselves.

This seemed to start with Macgyver altering a release of a PTV game here yesterday. A member of Protovision and also a CSDb admin. He was a swapper in the past.

Is this censorship really necessary? Do Protovision really think they would lose sales of these games, does CSDb really think there is any threat of legalities from an admin of this site?

This is an issue that strikes deep with many in the scene, and this site is an essential part of the scene today.

Surely there must be a better way to deal with this.

So let's discuss it here rather than in comments on these censored releases ;)

... 209 posts hidden. Click here to view all posts....

2005-04-13 10:26

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11352

the difference would be

a) your credibility wouldnt have gone down the drain because someone reads non public votes and then goes and complains at the ppl who gave them.

b) your credibility wouldnt have gone down the drain because someone from a commercial game company is able to fuck around with a scene database

beeing admin is a really sensible position which normally isnt given to anyone who has a strong _personal_ interest in whatever related matters, unless those are in the main focus. and commercial games arent, the scene is the main focus here.

2005-04-13 10:33

The Blue Ninja
Account closed

Registered: Apr 2005
Posts: 4

Quote: Ok, seeing as this seems to have gone over certain people's heads, I'll restate it. As Twoflower pointed out, releasing commercial games should be about value adding.

It's an old old argument, people that download pirate copies of games are not the ones who are interested in the value of an original. These people are not directly in your market.

A game with nice packaging, something that makes it feel like you are getting value for your money, that will guarantee sales. If you cater for that, even crack releases become free publicity for your game, if it's good enough people from outside your initial market may want the value of the extras you add to your commercial release.

One old example I can think of is Ultima and it's map on a tea towel. I thought that was great at the time.

These days all it would take is some nice packaging...

The Blue Ninja said this:

"But releasing those few games without any (real) added value is no justification in my mind."

I put that straight back to Protovision like Twoflower did, is releasing commercial games in nothing other than a plastic bag adding any value whatsoever? Or with that level on inconsideration to your consumers make them feel that a pirate copy would be enough.

After all, at least a crack comes with a funky intro and a trainer, and possibly even bug fixes.

This should be seen as an opportunity to change the way you are doing business. Surely if Hockey Mania has only sold 35 copies since 2003, cracking is not a serious threat to it's sales. If you think about it clearly, this is another method of distribution that could create even more sales.

With so few sales, and such a small market, and the justification of wanting to make some money from all of your hard work (which is fair enough), wouldn't it be even better to distribute your games as shareware? Donationware? Beerware? Any other method has to be more profitable than making only 35 sales over that time.

But then Courage does point out that Protovision's aim is not to make money. What's the problem with crack releases of their games then?

Is Protovision planning to release Metal Dust on a few disks in a plastic bag? If so, I am sure that would be a great disappointment to many, and will do nothing for potential sales.

Protovision, take a step back, try to see past the good you have done for the community, and see how you might make a win/win situation for the scene with a little maturity and responsibility.

A good post IMO.

About cracking ethics:
---------------------------------------
Of course everyone has its own codex of ethics and morale.

In my own personal codex unauthorised copies nowadays are OK:
- if the user has the original, e.g. as a backup or easier
playing because of the trainers
- if the game is no more legally available
- if only a limited amount of copies are made for personal
friends (this excludes releases to the public)
- if it is used to improve the game far beyond its intended
capabilities (e.g. to make it work on other hardware) as
long as the other requirements are met

The law (at least here in germany) ist much more strict than that, as none of these things are allowed anymore. So you can see that I am not a "hardliner".

A lot of people think similar to this (except most of the crackers of course). At least most members of PTV do and some people of the scene I know.

In the case of the PTV games the criteria are not met which is the reasen why PTV tries its best to make steps against the release of cracks. No one of PTV really thinks it can be avoided, but at least we can try our best.

About PTVs business model:
------------------------------------------

PTV tries its best to keep the development of C64 games running. The intention is clear: Keep the C64 and its scene alive by providing new high quality games. Without financial compensation the motivation would be much lower to develop games that meet common quality criteria. There would be mostly simple TND-like games around then. Of course there are exceptions (like AEG's Turrican3), but generally speaking the games would be both fewer and poorer.
The other reason why PTV wants money is to compensate their running costs: Production, Shipping, Advertising, Shop, Homepage and last not least giving the developers some pocket money. As I know some of the figures I can say that most of the money goes to the developers which is an important appreciation for the work that made their games happen.
PTV also sees its mission to provide developers platform and services to market their products (soft- and hardware).
Besides that PTV always thought about ways to improve the situation, so they do the best they can to make the games attractive:
- low prices (compared to commercial games at former times
and the PC/Console market) especially if you take
inflation into account
- provide news about development status
- offer demo versions as a "try before you buy"-scheme
- quality control to prevent severe bugs and improve
playabilty
- different price tags depending on quality (free, low, mid, high)

With Metal Dust PTV tries a new way market their games, by providing a premium version which is indeed boxed.

The reason of PTV games usually being simply disks, plastic bag and manual is a matter of cost and time.

The point is:
Low quantities -> high costs

Printing a map on a tea towel costs large sums at these quantities.

And because of the low sales, PTV has to protect its products as good as it can. Every lost sale counts in large amounts. A few sales per month e.g. cover the costs of the site running.

About your idea of Shareware etc.
--------------------------------------------------

Of course this is an interesting model, but it certainly won't work, as the added value (again) is null. That's the reason why most shareware authors have to cripple their products to move the users to pay. I myself do use only few shareware applications.

A new IDEA
------------------

PTV should think about creating an opportunity to make donations though, as it would create a possibility for crack owners to have a "legal" version and support the developers.
It should be a little bit lower than the price for the shop product, as the production/shipping process is not needed for that.

2005-04-13 12:03

The Blue Ninja
Account closed

Registered: Apr 2005
Posts: 4

And while I am at it (after reading the rest of all those postings):

The scene is not easily definable. Of course all people inside want to keep it as small, exquisite and elitary as possible which might be the reason why the restrict it to the demo and cracking scene.
The scene is more than that and it is for more than one decade already.

What about the graphics artists? What about the composers? What about the fake-labels? What about the party-people? What about the tool-authors?

All of them are part of "the scene", so why should game developers and their products not be part of the scene, too?

Does the free availability of productions set a limit here? What about those people that in former times (or other platforms still toaday) SOLD their cracks to others? Isn't that commercial too? The only difference is that the first have the right to, the others don't.

What is your criteria that defines "the scene"?

For me the scene are the people that care about and use our beloved machine in a semiprofessional way.

2005-04-13 12:31

Jazzcat

Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1044

BlueNinja: we are not discussing the definition of the scene here or business models for the commercial enterprise known as Protovision.

This thread was created to discuss:

1) CSDB Disclaimer: "Who's responsible for this?
We cannot take responsibility for the content of this database as all information is submitted by users."
If this is the case, how come external links (FTP sites) cannot be included for our releases, ALL our releases (cracks, whatever).

2) Why MacGyver/Protovision (with admin access) is allowed to remove the SCS&TRC version of ICE GUYS yet the version by Singular (with download link) still remains?

3) Why MacGyver/Protovision is allowed to remove and take ownership of other locked entries such as Hockeymania and Bombmania? Both are legitimate scene releases (located on a "SCENE" database).

4) Why MacGyver/Protovision is allowed to view other people's anonymous votes and goes snooping around asking people questions like "why did you vote this?".

5) Why MacGyver/Protovision is also accessing other FTP sites like c64.rulez.org and removing certain "releases" from there when that site has no affiliation with him?

6) MacGyver found these links and in some way he has the right to remove them because of his relationship to Protovision. Should he then be banned as admin as he doesn't know which hat to wear? (CSDB hat or PTV hat).

Keep to the topic!

2005-04-13 12:45

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11352

just a quick offtopic one from my side (coz i think it DOES contribute to the discussion)

"Does the free availability of productions set a limit here? "

yes it does. its a key element infact.

"What about those people that in former times (or other platforms still toaday) SOLD their cracks to others? Isn't that commercial too? The only difference is that the first have the right to, the others don't."

those people are, and have always been considered "outsiders" by the real crackers and other sceners. nothing harms the scene as much as commercial piracy does, and most pirate groups agree to that even today and do NOT sell warez. usually those who sell teh hot warez have been, and still are, some third parties and not the cracking groups themselves.

2005-04-13 15:10

Burglar

Registered: Dec 2004
Posts: 1085

in case anyone wants to download it:

ftp://ftp.scs-trc.net/pub/c64/Scene/Old/i/Ice_Guys.Protovision+..

guaranteed better version then all the other ice guys version that ARE available for download on csdb.

anyway, hypocrits should not be allowed trusted status anywhere.

2005-04-13 15:16

Jazzcat

Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1044

The reason why the SCS&TRC version was removed from CSDB and the version by Singular allowed to stay is because:

<Mac_PTV> JC: Easy: Singular's version is an IDE64 fix. Protovision distributes and supports IDE64.

2005-04-13 16:10

Seven

Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 202

Here's a final quote for everyone to enjoy:

<Mac_PTV> PTV hat es gar nicht nötig, sich für das gelaufene zu rechtfertigen, im Gegensatz zu den Crackern. Punkt.

Roughly translates to:

<Mac_PTV> PTV has no need to apologize for what happened, the crackers do. Period

2005-04-13 17:34

Burglar

Registered: Dec 2004
Posts: 1085

Thought I'd check the hypocrisy of protovision some more, so on their webserver, they are hosting a site called http://tld-crew.de/games.htm which has a SHITLOAD of copyrighted games from all sorts of companies, freely available for download.

I mean, how can a 'commercial company' whine about copyrighted material when they are offering cracked games themselves?

HYPOCRITS!

2005-04-13 18:28

Count Zero

Registered: Jan 2003
Posts: 1922

Since many people repeat the same shit here over and over, I'd like to make this short:

What 90% of the people here apparently want is MacGyver's "trusted" status removed and to get informed whenever their contributions to the database are modified.

Also a more transparent user level view would be a matter in the long run I guess.

It is out of question that the admins and hosters of the project have the RIGHT to add and remove anything they want from the database and to keep the system running I'd do just the same - a note towards the contributor is a strict requirement here though.

All we want are clear statements to be able to handle the situation in a way the scene always used to handle things.

Simple as that.

Sidenote: MANY of the "arguments" here made me laugh indeed ... people *I* trust answer my questions e.g. :)

Btw, Metal Dust PREVIEW will be only available by P2P due to it's unbelievable long cracking intro.

Groups who want to participate on the FINAL release please pass their intro (INCL. all the samples, scrolltexts, credits and other specialties) as archive to the release team. Please do not exceed 15 megs per intro.

l8r

Count Zero/CyberpunX/SCS*TRC

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