Copy protection is never a solution, it's merely a deterrent. Especially in niche games like flight sims, where the fan base is usually dedicated to a larger extent than in other games, piracy is not so much of a problem. In games where it is a big problem, the publishers are usually big software houses that can absorb the piracy hit, plus they never manage to keep it under control anyway. The sole purpose of copy protection is to make sure the game won't be freely available during the first weeks of release, because that's where most of the sales occur and the biggest potential for financial damage resides.
Almost everyone has illegaly downloaded games and the reason is simple. There are too many games that don't justify a full price, there's not a demo or people are not sure if they are going to like it enough. The real distinction between a pirate and a customer is the receipt. A person who buys is not a pirate, plain and simple. He may not like the copy protection and used a cracked version of the game, or he may have played a few hours with an illegal copy before deciding to go out and buy it, but anyone with a legally obtained disc and a receipt in hand is a customer, plain and simple.
A friend of mine downloade Empire Total War, he tested it for a week, decided he likes it and then went ahead and bought it. He's not a pirate, he's a customer.
That game is an interesting example for another reason as well. It's a game that requires online verification, much like RoF but a bit more hassle free. It's based on Steam and that platform gives you the option to run your game in offline mode, because as a primarily online platform they know that networks are so multi-layered that there's too many random things that can go wrong and deprive you your enjoyment of the title if they tie it to an online connection at all times.
Guess what happened, the cracked version was out within a week of release, packed with a custom installer and working offline. My friend did buy the game in the end, but a lot of people didn't. And the copy protection was inadequate to deal with it as well. Similar examples are Spore and The Sims 3, supposedly online activated yet freely circulating the internet in illegal copies. Even the addon content for the Sims 3 is available in pirated copies. If EA can't put a stop to that, what makes people think that Neoqb will? The only reason RoF hasn't suffered a similar fate is not because their DRM is good, it's because flight sims are unpopular with the masses. You can be sure that if it grows in popularity everyone and their dog will be able to obtain an illegal copy of the base game, possibly even the add-on planes. So in the long run, the only thing the DRM does is p*ss off the few people that were actually willing to make a legitimate purchase.
Now where is the line drawn between games like these and flight sims? Simple, flight sims have fanatical audiences who realise that in order for them to have something to fly, the developers have to make money. Flight sims are also usually the products of small studios, making the above even more pronounced. Someone might not feel as guilty ripping off a multi billion dollar franchise, but if they are flight sim fans it won't really sit well with them doing the same to a small developer.
Last but not least, in fact it's the most important factor, flight sims are complex enough to not appeal to a massive audience, and hence unpopular for cracking and illegal distribution.
All the above leads me to believe one very simple thing. The vast majority of people who would pirate a flight sim title are not lost sales, but people who would never buy it anyway.
They are not lost sales, they were never sales to begin with because they don't care enough to learn a complex game. They will spend two days downloading an illegal copy, go through a couple of missions, uninstall and delete.
Imposing the hassle of such a DRM method on a legitimate customer when your game is hardly as attractive to the pirate audience as the latest first person shooter is unecessary, a simple disc check would suffice and the counter-piracy effect of any method would be the same anyway. It's also simply shooting oneself in the foot and the reason for that is very simple. The people who would pirate it if they could would never buy it anyway, plus you lose a good chunk of potential customers who would make a purchase but are turned off by the DRM implementation.
This is not entirely my own line of reason mind you. It's the model a very succesful and small developer house is using to calculate their business growth and potential. They released some niche games and the only protection was a CD-key during installation. Was it pirated? You bet. Was it pirated more than more popular games? Not by a long shot.
In fact, the company stayed focused on delivering content to the people that they knew would buy their games, instead of wasting time embarking on a wild goose chase against the people who will never buy anything anyway and they did very good as a result. If anyone is interested to read about it, google up Stardock games (the company) and Sins of a Solar Empire (one of their games).
A few quotes from Wikipedia:
Quote:
Stardock was one of the first companies to distribute its software via a free digital distribution program. The first one was called Component Manager. This was later replaced by Stardock Central. In 2008, Stardock released a third-generation digital distribution platform called Impulse, which allows streamlined patching and the ability to download purchased games to another computer owned by the user for free. Stardock Central is in the process of being phased out, and new patches are now only available through Impulse. Stardock has agreed to publish some games containing certain less intrusive versions of SecuROM on Impulse, although Stardock has a principle of releasing all of its own games with no DRM.
Game publishing
In 2006, following the commercial success of their first self-published game, Galactic Civilizations II, Stardock began publishing games developed by third-parties.
The first third-party game Stardock published was Sins of a Solar Empire. The publishing arrangement worked out between Stardock and Ironclad Games was unusual in that the two companies integrated their teams at every level.The game has an average score of 88 on Metacritic and is a top seller at retail.
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Yup, a game with no protection whatsoever is a top seller at retail, because those guys are simply focused on providing quality entertainment for their target audience. On his SimHQ interview, even Oleg Maddox said he would prefer not to have DRM. He's also spot on about the correct way to use an online authentication system. Instead of being online all the time, recurring activations at set time intervals would both reduce piracy a bit and they wouldn't leave you high and dry in the case of network troubles. Here's the page in question from the interview:
http://www.simhq.com/_air11/air_341d.html