Denpasoft download limit

[Dergonu]

So I bought the new game Atom Grrrl!! from denpasoft today, and I noticed something a little interesting. They have added a download limit to their games. It has not been a thing previously, as all my other games like Grisaia, Zodiac, sunrider etc doesn't have it. It could just be for this particular game, though it might also be a permanent thing for their new releases.

My guess would be that this too is a response to some of the fraudulent activity VN publishers has seen recently, possibly wanting to reduce piracy / illegal sharing of their game.

It's still DRM free, so it's not like it will have a huge impact on anything, but it is still interesting to see.

EDIT: Word from DavidB on the download limit:

4 hours ago, DavidB said:

First off, thank you for supporting the release, OP, much appreciated. And the same to anyone else who has supported Atom GRRRL!! or any of our other releases...be it on Denpasoft or Steam.

To address some of your questions/concerns: The primary function of this download limit is to prevent account sharing. Yes, the game is still DRM-free, but we hope that people will want to support the blossoming western VN community/industry by acquiring the titles legitimately: i.e. purchasing them directly from their publisher or development circle or from trusted third party services like Steam. We also understand that internet access and bandwidth issues can be finicky and downright troublesome at times, so if a registered user has an issue(s) downloading a title they have purchased that can be easily remedied by contacting Denpasoft support.

 

[Arcadeotic]

If it truly is a means of fighting back the fradulent buyers, it can be good for the company

Anyways, good to know

[Abyssal Monkey]

Another silly stupid move from people who don't understand what piracy is.  All I can see this doing is forcing people who have legitimately bought the game to torrent it after they use up their download limits. As it is already DRM free, it would be faster to pirate it via torrent than go through their servers already.

[VirginSmasher]

No matter what any company does, there will always be piracy of their games. Pirates always find a way around these sorts of things. It's a good thing to include because of these buyers, but I feel this won't be a long lasting solution on Denpasoft's part.

[Down]

That's all speculation. For all we know this could be for other reasons then piracy, such as preventing security issues or w/e. I don't know shit about back-end web design but who knows.

[Dergonu]

Just now, Down said:

That's all speculation. For all we know this could be for other reasons then piracy, such as preventing security issues or w/e. I don't know shit about back-end web design but who knows.

Yeah it's just my guess based off recent events.

Personally I'm quite indifferent about it. It's DRM free so I can just put it on my external hardrive and move it around between my PC's.

If it does help their security in some way then hey, I guess it's a good thing. (On the note of piracy, the game is already on a certain site, so it seems it wasn't exactly super effective if stopping that was their intention.)

[VirginSmasher]

5 minutes ago, Dergonu said:

Yeah it's just my guess based off recent events.

Personally I'm quite indifferent about it. It's DRM free so I can just put it on my external hardrive and move it around between my PC's.

If it does help their security in some way then hey, I guess it's a good thing. (On the note of piracy, the game is already on a certain site, so it seems it wasn't exactly super effective if stopping that was their intention.)

If it was to stop piracy, they sure did a really bad job with that. 

[Dergonu]

Just now, VirginSmasher said:

If it was to stop piracy, they sure did a really bad job with that. 

Well we can't really tell for certain since they have made no posts about it at all.

I doubt its a spur of the moment thing, as its just a little too random. They probably have their reason for it.

 

If it really was to stop piracy ... Well then yes, it was a fairly bad solution ...  

[EdwardWongHPTIV]

Ehh, I can't really see this as a anti-fraud thing. I mean the problem with steam keys was they were purchased with stolen cards. The keys were sold off and redeemed by others. Later the transactions are disputed and denpa is left hanging with an unpaid steam version.

This is probably a means of capping their bandwidth costs. Though it might bite them in the arse a bit since I don't think anyone else is doing so.

[Dergonu]

3 minutes ago, EdwardWongHPTIV said:

Ehh, I can't really see this as a anti-fraud thing. I mean the problem with steam keys was they were purchased with stolen cards. The keys were sold off and redeemed by others. Later the transactions are disputed and denpa is left hanging with an unpaid steam version.

This is probably a means of capping their bandwidth costs. Though it might bite them in the arse a bit since I don't think anyone else is doing so.

I know mangagamer used to do this, though I haven't seen it on their recent releases.

Before, you used to have 5 downloads each game. It seems like they have either stopped it, or that they only do it for certain games.

[Zenophilious]

Spore had a similar system in place where you could only install the game 5 times and then the CD was basically useless.  People started pirating the game out of sheer spite in response to EA doing that.  I can't imagine that it'll actually do anything about piracy, all you need to enable pirates is one copy of a game and an internet connection, and it just makes legitimate customers angry when they can't use something they paid money for.  It's gotta be for a different reason than stopping piracy.

Just now, Dergonu said:

I know mangagamer used to do this, though I haven't seen it on their recent releases.

Before, you used to have 5 downloads each game. It seems like they have either stopped it, or that they only do it for certain games.

That's activation keys.  I think you can download an infinite number of game copies, it's just that you can only use, like, 5 of them.  I think they stopped doing that because it was useless.

[Dergonu]

Just now, Zenophilious said:

That's activation keys.  I think you can download an infinite number of game copies, it's just that you can only use, like, 5 of them.  I think they stopped doing that because it was useless.

Ah yes, that was it. They had that system where you had to activate the game once with a unique key before you could open it.

Haven't seen that in a while now.

[kingdomcome]

As some of you have mentioned.. Pirates will pirate it regardless, all this does it makes it difficult for those that do purchase it.

[sanahtlig]

1 hour ago, Dergonu said:

I know mangagamer used to do this, though I haven't seen it on their recent releases.

Before, you used to have 5 downloads activations each game. It seems like they have either stopped it, or that they only do it for certain games.

I heavily criticized that system.  Did they actually do something about it?  They showed no sign of budging when I whined about it last year on their forums.  It's one of several reasons I gave up on MangaGamer completely.

I wonder if Denpasoft discovered that some users were downloading a single game many, many times and decided to put a stop to it.

[Dergonu]

26 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

I heavily criticized that system.  Did they actually do something about it?  They showed no sign of budging when I whined about it last year on their forums.  It's one of several reasons I gave up on MangaGamer completely.

I wonder if Denpasoft discovered that some users were downloading a single game many, many times and decided to put a stop to it.

It seems to me that mangagamer has removed that, yes. At least none of my newest purchases on their site has it, including new releases like beat blades haruka.

[DarkZedge]

Like many suspect it probably does have to do with fighting against piracy, although it's shitty since they're screwing up their loyal customers aswell and even if it's not against piracy i don't understand the reasoning behind controlling their customers purchases..once they paid you they own that copy and should be free to download it if needed..no reason to restrict them

[VirginSmasher]

6 minutes ago, DarkZedge said:

Like many suspect it probably does have to do with fighting against piracy, although it's shitty since they're screwing up their loyal customers aswell and even if it's not against piracy i don't understand the reasoning behind controlling their customers purchases..once they paid you they own that copy and should be free to download it if needed..no reason to restrict them

Exactly. There's no way to solve it. If they keep the download limit, the pirate can just buy a copy and upload it onto some torrenting site. This patch only limits loyal customers and doesn't do shit to stop piracy.

[sanahtlig]

What is the download limit exactly?  If it's like 10 then just keep the compressed archive on a hard drive somewhere and forget about it.  If it's 3 then there might be an issue.

[ChaosRaven]

While MangaGamer originally had download limits too, they also said that if someone would really need more downloads, then he could just contact them for more.

But it still left a bad after taste somehow so I'm glad they got rid of it.

[Down]

Guys, I know you probably think everyone at Sekai Project is stupid but it seems pretty obvious to me that they do know how piracy works.

If you find yourselves in the very unlikely case that you've reached the download limit, just send them a mail explaining your situation. That's what Mangagamer does already used to do. Those companies are small and reactive enough that you're not likely to ever be bothered by this.

[Abyssal Monkey]

12 minutes ago, Down said:

Guys, I know you probably think everyone at Sekai Project is stupid but it seems pretty obvious to me that they do know how piracy works.

If you find yourselves in the very unlikely case that you've reached the download limit, just send them a mail explaining your situation. That's what Mangagamer does already used to do. Those companies are small and reactive enough that you're not likely to ever be bothered by this.

I would be inclined to agree with you if they didn't do something that literally hurts only people who pay for a copy.  As I pointed out in the third post, the game is already DRM free, so adding this purchasing layer of DRM does absolutely nothing to curb actual piracy. The only things this accomplishes is to stop people from downloading from official sources and reduce their server costs.

Sure, Sekai Project/Denpa Soft may know what piracy is, but they clearly lack understanding of what it is, and why DRM is used.  Think about if steam limited you to 3 downloads, I can guaruntee you the platform would have crumbled and not taken off. Steam realizes this is the utmost of consumer unfriendly ideas and is actually pro-piracy because people can't get what they want from official sources.  What do you get when you don't download something from official sources? Piracy.

 

You know what, I take everything back, Sekai Project knows what piracy is and is clearly embracing the idea of it. /sarcasm

[Down]

17 minutes ago, Abyssal Monkey said:

I would be inclined to agree with you if they didn't do something that literally hurts only people who pay for a copy.  As I pointed out in the third post, the game is already DRM free, so adding this purchasing layer of DRM does absolutely nothing to curb actual piracy. The only things this accomplishes is to stop people from downloading from official sources and reduce their server costs.

Sure, Sekai Project/Denpa Soft may know what piracy is, but they clearly lack understanding of what it is, and why DRM is used.  Think about if steam limited you to 3 downloads, I can guaruntee you the platform would have crumbled and not taken off. Steam realizes this is the utmost of consumer unfriendly ideas and is actually pro-piracy because people can't get what they want from official sources.  What do you get when you don't download something from official sources? Piracy.

I think you missed my point.

SP knows how piracy works because they're not literal retards, therefore if there's a reason for why they've put a limit on the number of downloads, either it has to do with piracy in a way that is more sophisticated than the platitudes that we evoked so far in this thread, or it doesn't have to do with piracy period.

[EdwardWongHPTIV]

1 hour ago, sanahtlig said:

I heavily criticized that system.  Did they actually do something about it?  They showed no sign of budging when I whined about it last year on their forums.  It's one of several reasons I gave up on MangaGamer completely.

I wonder if Denpasoft discovered that some users were downloading a single game many, many times and decided to put a stop to it.

Afaik there are still titles that say require activation and the last time I looked the FAQ mentioned the whole 5 activation attempts.

I too refuse to by a game with DRM and this OP is a prime example of why. If a Denpa, Mangagamer, or JAST limits downloads or worse yet goes out of business you have no game. Whom ever picked up the companies assets would probably claim that your license ended with the company but F that noise.

38 minutes ago, DarkZedge said:

Like many suspect it probably does have to do with fighting against piracy, although it's shitty since they're screwing up their loyal customers aswell and even if it's not against piracy i don't understand the reasoning behind controlling their customers purchases..once they paid you they own that copy and should be free to download it if needed..no reason to restrict them

I frankly don't understand why everyone is jumping to the conclusion that it's an antipiracy measure. As everyone has pointed out it does nothing to stop it. Those bits cost money and if someone is abusing their servers just for the fun of it I guess they might think this is a solution. That is until they hack their site, steal their probably unsalted/unhashed password database, and proceed to exceed the download count on every title on every account. Maybe it already happened? Iirc denpa "relaunched" their site around the holidays. Maybe they had a intrusion they didn't announce?

[Deep Blue]

limiting downloads only hurt the customers, once you have the copy you can upload it and share it via torrent or a file hosting while the owner is still cripple by this nonsense, any person with a bit of common sense can understand this so I don't think they did it for a drm reason. 

It's probably a way to manage their bandwidth which is really expensive.

[Abyssal Monkey]

2 minutes ago, Deep Blue said:

limiting downloads only hurt the customers, once you have the copy you can upload it and share it via torrent or a file hosting while the owner is still cripple by this nonsense, any person with a bit of common sense can understand this so I don't think they did it for a drm reason. 

It's probably a way to manage their bandwidth which is really expensive.

The reason I refuse to believe it is bandwidth costs is that if they are doing digital distribution then this is the FIRST thing they should have sorted out.  If they can't even deliver things properly to the consumer then they shouldn't be selling them in the first place.  And if they wanted to limit bandwidth costs, there would be much better ways of doing so, such as a refractory period where you can't download the game again if you downloaded it recently.  In fact, this is a better solution if you also consider the idea of selling copies of the game via selling accounts that someone brought up earlier, no consumer would download the game 5 times in a week, but say over a year? That's entirely plausible.

That's the reason why I say this has to be a piracy measure.  The only other reasonable alternative, bandwidth costs, would be sending far worse messages about the state of their internal finances, and would personally make me far more wary about the stability of the company that any piracy measure would be.