Tag: content theft

PC Gaming and Piracy

A good article on PC game piracy: Anyone who keeps track of how many PCs the “Gamer PC” vendors sell each year could tell you that it’s insane to develop a game explicitly for hard core gamers. Insane. I think people would be shocked to find out how few hard core gamers there really are … Continue reading “PC Gaming and Piracy”

A good article on PC game piracy:

Anyone who keeps track of how many PCs the “Gamer PC” vendors sell each year could tell you that it’s insane to develop a game explicitly for hard core gamers. Insane. I think people would be shocked to find out how few hard core gamers there really are out there. This data is available. The number of high end graphics cards sold each year isn’t a trade secret (in some cases you may have to get an NDA but if you’re a partner you can find out). So why are companies making games that require them to sell to 15% of a given market to be profitable? In what other market do companies do that? In other software markets, getting 1% of the target market is considered good.

This tells me:

  1. Copy protection is worthless and every minute you spend making the most complex anti-copy mechanism possible is a minute you’re not filling your game with awesomeness.
  2. Total user base is irrelevant and you need to think only of the people, in that userbase, who will buy.
  3. I really should consider trying out Sins of a Solar Empire using CrossOver Games

Related posts:

  1. Kirkisms: Funding by Numbers part 2
  2. The Games Market is about to have a significant and violent rebalancing. Look out.
  3. The Gaming Market: time to break in?
  4. Piracy dooms Mac Game Devs.

Content Theft, alive and well. (One for the Cocoa fans)

Cool, I didn’t know you could just grab entire articles from the IntarWeb and publish them wholesale without even giving an attribution link! That’s what Rixstep has done? Scott Anguish, one of the nicest guys on the Intarweb is more than a little upset because Rixstep has repeatedly refused to remove his content which has … Continue reading “Content Theft, alive and well. (One for the Cocoa fans)”

Cool, I didn’t know you could just grab entire articles from the IntarWeb and publish them wholesale without even giving an attribution link!

That’s what Rixstep has done?

Scott Anguish, one of the nicest guys on the Intarweb is more than a little upset because Rixstep has repeatedly refused to remove his content which has been ripped of wholesale. What’s worse…

Scott writes

My copyright has been violated by his reproduction. Yes, the DMCA would allow me to get it taken down, and I am exploring that route. But given his track record, I see no way to stop him from doing this. He’s published incorrect and horrible stuff about me, Aaron Hillegass, and others, before.

It is imperative (and the reason I temporarily pulled things down) that long-time readers of Stepwise know RIX stole this.. I do not approve of his doing so. His use does not fall under fair-use, or commentary. He’s simple theft.

I’ve worked 13+ years on supporting developers by maintaining Stepwise (which truly is a labor of love) and I don’t want this theft and misrepresentation to damage that effort.

Rixstep gets traffic by stealing content, misrepresenting the opinions of the authors and doing the whole “keeping it real” thing in the face of millions of new Apple converts.

I must say it’s an interesting marketing step, calling Apple’s customers idiot fanboys while trying to flog them a replacement file manager. It really motivates me to buy it.

Scott Anguish is a pillar of the NeXTStep community. Anything that offends him and, in his own words “makes him sick” should motivate everyone interested in the Mac and especially Cocoa.

Related posts:

  1. Actually, this is quite annoying
  2. Cocoa Days
  3. Why I have trouble collaborating sometimes…
  4. IPad Theft in Lisburn update