Can/Will developers prevent the use of VPNs

Atlas23

Atlas23

Atlas23

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Hello all, the use of VPNs to get games (with staggered launch windows in different countries) 'early' seems to be fairly common practice now.

It got me wondering; do you think developers will (if it is possible) start trying to prevent people using VPNs to unlock games early in their country?

Is it considered a serious breach of TOA/law etc by using a VPN to play a game you have paid for early?

e: seems this could fit equally in GD as well as PC games
 
I'm not sure there is a mechanism for detecting that an IP is actually a VPN endpoint?
Unless they want to ban everything that resolves as "L33T VPN Haxoers R US"
 
They don't care they want sales but have legal obligations therefore use the minimum of checking before selling.
Same with Apple they know you aren't where you say you are but so long as you have the voucher they'll let you buy and rent from their US store.
 
I work in the gambling industry online, and with the american market just opening up some of the rules are crazy. The main one is that people must be "in state" in order to play, so we've got to be super vigilant with geo-mapping.

As long as their incoming IP is from within state, we don't care if they are using a VPN/proxy. And if we don't care when it's a legal matter and very thin ice, then you can bet that games companies won't give two hoots about it. :)
 
Yeh I figured it would be nigh on impossible to stop, but maybe that it is becoming much more widespread now, developers (or is it up to publishers?) would actually think about having a single release date, instead of delaying it by a few days for certain countries.

I can understand it for games that require translating, but when it is only a couple days apart, what is the point?

Maybe they don't want to overload their servers with everyone downloading the inevitable massive day one update/dlc? :p
 
The only feasible way to stop this is what they did in the movie domain to try and stop people pirating movies from America before they were available elsewhere... release everywhere at the same time.
 
Dj_Jestar said:
The only feasible way to stop this is what they did in the movie domain to try and stop people pirating movies from America before they were available elsewhere... release everywhere at the same time.
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I just don't see why in this day and age global releases for games are not common practise. It is promoting piracy, and it's also punishing people who legitimately buy games. Why buy games when you could pirate it for free, and play it sooner? That's the rationale behind people who will do it. It must cost them so much money.

The worst offenders are any story driven games, solely because soon after release in America the internet is filled with spoilers and it's a task in itself to avoid them, but they're basically over every gaming site, which is unfair to those who don't want the story spoilt.

So long as people are paying, I think companies are crazy to want to ban people from unlocking a game early, I think there will be no cases where a company would prefer that a person pirate a game, rather than unlock it early via VPN if they've bought it.


Speaking of VPNs, Titanfall via Korean VPN today :D


Edit:
The above being said, I think developers may crack down on people buying games via VPN, because it's costing them a lot of money, for example the Mexican origin VPN, where people can get Titanfall for over £10 cheaper than on the UK site.
 
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No they won't because they can't do it without collateral.


Never been bothered to use a VPN to get a game a few days early.. I'm patient :p

Bit annoying that they most publishers don't have a global release date though, fully agree with what Aedus has posted.
 
Aedus said:
The above being said, I think developers may crack down on people buying games via VPN, because it's costing them a lot of money, for example the Mexican origin VPN, where people can get Titanfall for over £10 cheaper than on the UK site.
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Yeh I didn't really think about that.

I'd imagine devs would see that as a bigger 'issue' as people pre-loading a few days early using a VPN have already paid for the game.
 
Well at least release dates aren't as bad as they used to be.

However I believe that adopting Tuesday as a new release day for the UK would make a lot of sense.

Unfortunately the Etailers wouldn't support it based on some of the comments about the Call of Duty release in 2013. But for a consumer it's much better. You're less annoyed with the game turning up a day later on Wednesday, or even Thursday, than you are not receiving the item on Friday and therefore missing out the whole weekend on a new game or hardware. Also gives you more chance to pick up the game during the week from the shops and more importantly synchronises with the US daily release day of Tuesday.

Avoiding this malarky that's happening with Titanfall.
 
Longbow said:
Thursday or Friday release date makes more sense since most people have the weekend off.
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I believe his point was that having it release on a Tuesday gives more time before the weekend for the game to arrive (if it is late), download (if you have poor internet like me) and also so there is no delay between here and the US.
 
Longbow said:
Thursday or Friday release date makes more sense since most people have the weekend off.
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Completely disagree, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. There was a really well written article about it here: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-11-23-why-are-we-stuck-with-games-being-released-on-a-friday

It's better for UK retailers and etailers to release on a Friday, but doesn't make sense for the consumer. Films and Music release at the start of the week, so why can't games?

The other thing is that the US is never going to change releasing games at the start of the week so we'll continue to get some games a few days late where the developer doesn't choose to align the European release with the US release (a la Titanfall).

There's no benefit to releasing games on a Friday for the European/UK consumer. Already some games like Call of Duty have forced retailers to adopt Tuesday as a release date and they don't like it.
 
www.tesco.com can be a bit funny when my VPN is on. Depends on which server/country I pick.

For me though, VPN is all about circumventing Virgin's traffic shaping. I don't go over the fair usage policy, but I'm fed up of being told how often I can use Youtube! Country selection is also useful if a Youtube video isn't available in the UK. Oddly enough however, the VPN frequently has a side effect on my line speed that's meant to be only 20 megabit :-) Still getting 1 megabit upload though.

speedtest31_zps8d37e02d.png
 
I thought one of the reasons for different release dates was to avoid online servers getting hammered, like when Diablo 3 was released and battlenet pretty much died. (I may be talking out of my behind however)
 
Puppetmaster said:
I thought one of the reasons for different release dates was to avoid online servers getting hammered, like when Diablo 3 was released and battlenet pretty much died. (I may be talking out of my behind however)
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For digital purchases, that can be partly circumvented by letting people pre-load the game. It is also one of the issues with developers releasing unfinished games and then having to patch them to death. As well as day one DLC because they are capitalist monsters :p
 
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