So I must put again the Steelbeasts case on the frontline :) Two years ago the develloper organised a meeting for the best crackers and offered a huge amount of money if someone cracked the dongle. Result is the develloper keep the price money in his pocket :) And sofar no one was able to crack it ...

The Steelbeast case only prove one thing: that the software is not popular enough to attract the crackers that know how to crack a dongle. Which is also the result of having been forced to raise the price so much in order to ship it with a good enough dongle. Had the product been sold at half price without a dongle, it would have sold probably much more (even with some piracy) than it has now, with a too high price and zero piracy.And, this business model, while it *might* work somewhat with a single, stand-alone sim, with not much competition, will never work for flight sim addons, because no customer will ever be prepared to pay so much more for a flight sim addon, when the increase in price is mostly due to the protection itself.And, there's no way all addons developers will ever agree on using the same dongle, because they would had to agree on a price, that might be ok for a product but not for another one, everybody should be able to add support for the dongle in their products (which, in case of sceneries or xml-only gauges might be *very* difficult), and everybody should be able to carry a stock of dongles, for user that don't have it yet, and offer also just the license, for user that already have it because they purchased it from somewhere else. Selling just the keys, and requiring the user to buy the dongle separately, will never work as well, because when you have users that are not even able to read a simple manual to reinstall a product, it would be a support nightmare when users start complaining they bought the wrong version of the dongle, etc.Sorry, but this will never work so, please, let's just forget about hardware dongles for flight sim addons, becasue they might be effective for protection, but will just not work in this market.

Hello,

The Steelbeast case only prove one thing: that the software is not popular enough to attract the crackers that know how to crack a dongle.

That's plain not true.I suggest you to contact your collegue (the Steelbeasts develloper) for know much about .. the dongle .. the contest .. who was there .. etc...On the other hand it's true it's not easy adaptable for the FS devellopers community .. but my point was about a good protection (I mean effective in the long term) against piracy .. as this so many complains from devellopers about it.As I write before .. you can't have the butter and the benefit of the butter.BTW .. it's no populars FS addon's who are cracked :)Popularity of a addon had nothing to do with the ego of a cracker .. it's just the challenge to be the first to crack the soft.Note:Hope you will find a good (and cheap) protection by yourself and share it with all the FS devellopers .. like the pirates share their job.Regards.Gus.

That's plain not true :)I suggest you to contact your collegue (the Steelbeasts develloper) for know much about .. the dongle .. the contest .. who was there .. etc...

That's entirely irrrelevant. We can even assume they have zero piracy, so what ? The greath lenghts they had to do to reach this objective, resulted in a software which has a price that doesn't make much sense, because it's too expensive for a game, while is too cheap for a professional product. At that point, they might raised the price and positioned it as a training program only, which in part they do. And this is mainly because of the cost of the dongle.So, even we can say they have zero piracy (which is NOT saying that the software is "uncrackable", it's just naive believing such thing exists, there are software emulation for hardware dongles, they are just VERY difficult to do), the sales losts because of the price increase, which is in a great part due to the dongle itself, might not be worth the effort.The whole thing is finding a good compromise, we also have our own protection which is quite strong, although not THAT strong, but we don't have to ship anything and we don't have to increase the price of the product because of this! This cleary outweight the *small* piracy we have to endure.Another thing: having a dongle will kill the chance to make promotional sales and discounts, perhaps after a couple of years the product has been released. We can offer any discount we want at any time we want, they can't, because they can't lower the price too much, because of the cost of the dongle that needs to be purchased from a 3rd party, which is also tricky because the price might change based on quantities purchased, so they also have a stock management problem.

]BTW .. it's no populars FS addon's who are cracked :)Popularity of a addon had nothing to do with the ego of a cracker .. it's just the challenge to be the first to crack the soft.

I wasn't obvisouly refering to FS addons, these are still relatively "unpopular" products. I've said that, if that dongle was used on something like Cubase, 3DS Max, Maya, etc, it would have more chances to be cracked. And no, ego doesn't have anything to do with this: those who are able to crack these kind of products are doing for the money, there's a whole industry in Asia with professionaly replicated pirated software, and this guys don't have problems paying money to crackers.

Hope you will find a good protection by yourself and share it with all the FS devellopers .. like the pirates share their job.

We already done that, a long time ago, and we are already offering it to other developers.

Hello,

This cleary outweight the *small* piracy we have to endure

Ah .. ok then ...I was misleading there .. thinkink the piracy was a big problem ... hence this thread.Regards.Gus.

I was misleading there .. thinkink the piracy was a big problem ... hence this thread.

Piracy IS a big problem. However, as I've said several times already in this thread, we ( "WE" as FsDreamTeam, not "WE" as flightsim developers) think to be less affected by it, but we didn't had to resort to such extreme measures that totally change the product perception ( would you buy a 125$ airport scenery ??? ), like an hardware dongle.To put it in very simple words: it's better to have 20% piracy (and NOT on the release date, this is VERY important!!!!) and being able to sell a product for 30$, than having Zero piracy, and having to sell it for 100$ or more, because tripling the price will result in sales at least 10 times less, and the price increase will never be able to recover for the losts sales due to the price increase itself...

there is NOTHING about FS that ANY PERSON 'must have'. it is a GAME! no one will die if they don't play FS or install an addon. FS isn't food, medical care or shelter.greed only fits when looking at items that are must have for life -greed is the USA housing market and high risk loans.greed are 49 million USA citizens without medical insurance & caregreed is business CEOs making 500-times that of the average employee.greed is ENRON, worldcom, etc.NOTHING about FS is greed.--

Fact is that there is a lot of greed going on in the FS world: if an addon is released (by Warbirdsim for instance) that costs allmost as much as the full sim, then that is greed.Another fact tis that pirates wouldn't have bought the addon in the first place.Yet another fact is that piracy is not theft, mainly due to the fact that the original is still in the hands (on the server) of the original owner, piracy is copying and not theft.In short: greed is free enterprise and globalization. Moreover piracy is being misused by devs to make the addons more expensive for the legit buyer: THAT IS THEFT!I'll get off me soapbox now...Jakke

I wasn't obvisouly refering to FS addons, these are still relatively "unpopular" products. I've said that, if that dongle was used on something like Cubase, 3DS Max, Maya, etc, it would have more chances to be cracked. And no, ego doesn't have anything to do with this: those who are able to crack these kind of products are doing for the money, there's a whole industry in Asia with professionaly replicated pirated software, and this guys don't have problems paying money to crackers.

That is a blatant lie. None of the crackers for FS stuff actually sell the stuff, they only make it available on the warez sites.For all I know, well known crackers like Wildmans, Komunitta and so forth don't charge a thing for their warez. The only people going after the money in our pockets in the FS world are the payware devs.I should stop, because I'm probably getting myself in trouble here...

Fact is that there is a lot of greed going on in the FS world: if an addon is released (by Warbirdsim for instance) that costs allmost as much as the full sim, then that is greed.Another fact tis that pirates wouldn't have bought the addon in the first place.Yet another fact is that piracy is not theft, mainly due to the fact that the original is still in the hands (on the server) of the original owner, piracy is copying and not theft.In short: greed is free enterprise and globalization. Moreover piracy is being misused by devs to make the addons more expensive for the legit buyer: THAT IS THEFT!I'll get off me soapbox now...

Fact: Many addons are far more complex than the base FS product itself. Consider that FSX has around 1 million lines of code... an addon aircraft with gauges that have over 100 thousand lines of code is 10% of the entire sim's code. That's worth less? Clearly you don't write software and have absolutely no knowledge about it. I spent 3years on the latest project. If you don't want to spend the money I feel I deserve... that's fine... but that doesn't give you the right to steal it.Fact: All addons that are offered only via the Flight1 wrapper must be purchased to gain access to the files. That means someone was willing to shell out the money just so it could be pirated.Fact: Piracy IS theft. Since absolutely no one is granted ownership of the software... freely distributing it to anyone and everyone is in fact theft and treated as such by the law.

That is a blatant lie. None of the crackers for FS stuff actually sell the stuff, they only make it available on the warez sites.For all I know, well known crackers like Wildmans, Komunitta and so forth don't charge a thing for their warez. The only people going after the money in our pockets in the FS world are the payware devs.I should stop, because I'm probably getting myself in trouble here...

You're wrong. As example: Komu's only release-point requires a purchase of a subscription to gain access to the 'warez'.You think we, the developers, don't keep right on top of all the thieves? Pirates aren't really that smart... developers have been in their midsts for many years watching and adjusting protection systems. You can't really hide.Notice that Jakke literally joined the AVSIM forums just for this discussion. Today.

There is much more we could have said or say now but we will not for obvious reasons...At the end of the day, these discussions will not stop or even severely limit the practice of FS Software theft.What will be effective are new paradigms implimented by FS Developers that stop or severely limit the useability of a hacked product.As already mentioned, there is no legal or moral imperative for FS Developers to deliver a usable product for thieves to redistribute... :(

I don't think we need to pay too much attention to Jakke the Socialist. Jakke, software is copywrited. It is against the law to copy such things.Bob

Fact is that there is a lot of greed going on in the FS world: if an addon is released (by Warbirdsim for instance) that costs allmost as much as the full sim, then that is greed.Another fact tis that pirates wouldn't have bought the addon in the first place.Yet another fact is that piracy is not theft, mainly due to the fact that the original is still in the hands (on the server) of the original owner, piracy is copying and not theft.In short: greed is free enterprise and globalization. Moreover piracy is being misused by devs to make the addons more expensive for the legit buyer: THAT IS THEFT!I'll get off me soapbox now...Jakke

Jakke-Thank you for joining and posting this. Your post is the most dramatic proof of why, us the legitimate users, have to suffer these copy protection hurdles, and why the developers must continue to search for new ways of protection.Thanks for cementing the point so strongly. If there are any that had doubts, I think they may not now.

Fact: Many addons are far more complex than the base FS product itself. Consider that FSX has around 1 million lines of code... an addon aircraft with gauges that have over 100 thousand lines of code is 10% of the entire sim's code. That's worth less? Clearly you don't write software and have absolutely no knowledge about it. I spent 3years on the latest project. If you don't want to spend the money I feel I deserve... that's fine... but that doesn't give you the right to steal it.Fact: All addons that are offered only via the Flight1 wrapper must be purchased to gain access to the files. That means someone was willing to shell out the money just so it could be pirated.Fact: Piracy IS theft. Since absolutely no one is granted ownership of the software... freely distributing it to anyone and everyone is in fact theft and treated as such by the law.You're wrong. As example: Komu's only release-point requires a purchase of a subscription to gain access to the 'warez'.You think we, the developers, don't keep right on top of all the thieves? Pirates aren't really that smart... developers have been in their midsts for many years watching and adjusting protection systems. You can't really hide.Notice that Jakke literally joined the AVSIM forums just for this discussion. Today.

You are wrong my friend. Komu's and Wildman's cracks are available all over the net. Free of charge. And yes I do indeed think that all the efforts by the developpers are puny and irrelevant. Everything can be cracked, it just takes a while longer to do so.Warez sites are popping up all over the internet, you simply cannot keep track of all of them. And another fact is that most, if not all of the crackers on the net are people who are employed in the IT industry. For them, it is just a hobby, like flightsimming is ours.And yes, I joined today because this discussion seemed interesting and I wanted to participate. Nothing wrong with that, or is there?

That is a blatant lie. None of the crackers for FS stuff actually sell the stuff, they only make it available on the warez sites. For all I know, well known crackers like Wildmans, Komunitta and so forth don't charge a thing for their warez.

First, this IS a blatant lie because, the original source of those crack, were those guys release, it's a web site whose acess is possible only after paying for a subscription. In fact, they usually gets ###### off, when their users share the cracks on popular sites like The Pirate bay. So, you are dead wrong even in this matter. However, that wasn't what I've said, and I'm really wondering if you are able to understand such a simple sentence, let's try it again, this is what you wrongly quoted as being "blatant lie", let's see:

I wasn't obvisouly refering to FS addons, these are still relatively "unpopular" products. I've said that, if that dongle was used on something like Cubase, 3DS Max, Maya, etc, it would have more chances to be cracked. And no, ego doesn't have anything to do with this: those who are able to crack these kind of products are doing for the money, there's a whole industry in Asia with professionaly replicated pirated software, and this guys don't have problems paying money to crackers.

It was pretty obvious that I wasn't referring to FS Addons in this sentence, yet you wrongly quoted the same. However, you were also wrong about the fact that FS crackers distribute their work for free, which is wrong as well.

You are wrong my friend. Komu's and Wildman's cracks are available all over the net. Free of charge

Wrong again. The fact you can downloaded them for free from Piratebay or elsewhere, doesn't mean THEY are distributing it for free, just that someone else has "pirated" their work, and shared the crack outside their pay for access sites, which is why they are usually quite ###### when this happens, since it screws up their "business".

Serious question and I expect I will be told to mind my own business but you guys at Eaglesoft - do you all have full time jobs and do this as a hobby and for pocket money or is being a payware developer your full time job and only source of income?I'm genuinely curious to know and have no hidden agenda in asking.

Jakke-Thank you for joining and posting this. Your post is the most dramatic proof of why, us the legitimate users, have to suffer these copy protection hurdles, and why the developers must continue to search for new ways of protection.Thanks for cementing the point so strongly. If there are any that had doubts, I think they may not now.

Are you implying that I am not a legitimate user? FYI I am the legitimate owner of both FS9 and FSX/Acceleration, both of which I bought in a shop.There is also not a single cracked addon on my HDD.You were implying that I am a thief without even a shred of evidence.