Comments on: Five Advantages of Being a PAL Gamer

By: Gerry Dufficy

Gerry Dufficy — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:29:42 +0000

Paul,

Regarding a licensing strategy, consider third-party licensing technologies that allow the balance between copy protection and casual sharing to promote word-of-mouth marketing. Piracy is a huge problem worldwide for publishers and device-based software authentication is currently the best approach as it locks the user’s machine to the authorization to confirm identity.

Complement this with the ability to audit piracy on a global basis using technology from a company such Uniloc which pushes a product called SoftAnchor. Uniloc also allows you to use the piracy data, graphically defined by region (country, continent, etc.) and throttle the licensing parameters to adjust for areas of aggressive piracy. This also allows the loosening of licensing restrictions in areas of lower piracy to promote viral product marketing and greater sales.

There are a few good solutions with SoftAnchor that strike that balance between polite copy protection and viral awareness. It has global piracy auditing, license auditing and device-based authentication and is one of the solutions to put on the short list – we use it here. I would also recommend a solution that makes it possible to implement and maintain secure, embedded product activation in-house. You definitely want embedded seamless security that provides unlimited tripwires and validation checkpoints.

Hope that helps,

Gerry Dufficy

By: Paul Harris

Paul Harris — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 06:33:38 +0000

Finding the right software licensing strategy

I am a gaming developer seeking input from other developers on effective PC-game licensing strategies that promote viral adoption, but limit excessive piracy.

Any thoughts on solutions or strategies in this area?

Paul Harris
Gaming Developer

By: Keira

Keira — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:11:43 +0000

A Commodore 64, in fact. *nostalgic tear*

By: World of Warcraft games » Blog Archive » Five Advantages of Being a PAL Gamer

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:26:33 +0000

[...] Sean Hollister wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptOn the rare occasion though us PAL gamers might be treated to something that trumps our American and Japanese friends. These special treats are rare cases indeed, thinking up even a measly five perks has been a formidable challenge. … [...]

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:32:34 +0000

The advantages definetly don’t outweigh the disadvantages. I think that I should write up another articles dedicated to the disadvantages. It would honestly take a lot of time to write though as it is really bad down here.

Keira, I’m gussing that you would be from the UK, right? So you had either a BBC Micro, Commodore 64, Amiga or something from the rest of the gang?

By: Keira

Keira — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:20:10 +0000

Great post! Being in a PAL country myself, I did grow up without a Nintendo - something a lot of hardcore (American) gamers find strange.

Box art is a definite plus though, and getting slightly more polished releases.

By: racketboy

racketboy — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:41:58 +0000

Nice writeup! But do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?

Seems like translations typically hold up a lot of your major releases….

however, as a retro gamer, I don’t actually care too much about that as I don’t usually buy many games as soon as they come out.