Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news From: Alex Herbert Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.problems.pc Subject: Re: Playing Backups Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 16:41:08 +0000 Organization: PlayStation Net Yaroze (SCEE) Lines: 44 Message-ID: <35B4B694.99EE6AC2@ndirect.co.uk> References: <01bdb1c7$c88353a0$453363c3@default> <01bdb2ab$6d93dac0$f2e832a2@gbain.wav.scee.sony.co.uk> Reply-To: aherbert@ndirect.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Host: dialin0-35.ndirect.co.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) George Bain wrote: > Hi there, > > The Net Yaroze can't play "backup's" ( illegal copies of games). > Besides there is no need to backup a CD since it can't be erased. > If the disc was to get damaged, you can contact the company that is > listed in the manual for another legit copy of the game that you purchased. > They would probably charge a very small fee since you already bought > the game. > > P.S. I have zero tolerance when it comes to piracy. > > Regards, > > George@SCEE I have slightly more than zero tolerance when it comes to piracy, although I shouldn't have. Time for a story... It was about 10 years ago. I had spent about 8 months developing a shoot'em-up on the Atari ST before showing it as a preview at a show at Olympia. There was not much left to do, just loading screens, music, copy protection and a few levels. Unfortunately, one of the demo disks was stolen. Imagine how I felt when 2 months later my game showed up in the public domain with credits and copyright notice changed. It was on nearly every PD list and was being distributed freely, less than a month before the game's official release. In the end I only made £4000 (@15% of gross sales) from the game, and it got very good press. I have no idea how much I would have received (or how much I lost) had this piracy not happened. So, piracy sucks. It really does hurt the programmer, and everyone here should know better. Herbs P.S. The Bitmap Brothers released their first game Xenon in the same week as my game, and was a superior shoot'em-up. Maybe this was the main reason for having such minor success.