Allow non-owners to play with owner over lan

[Laremere]

Hey Devs,

For my multiplayer experience to be good, this is literally the most important feature. I'm really looking forward to dragging a whole bunch of people into a game and building an epic base together. There's one problem: Getting people to purchase a game at a lan party is hard. I've thrown a bunch of lan parties, and the only game which isn't free to play that I've seen a lot of people play is minecraft (because everyone already owned it.) There's always a few people who don't have the game, and aren't interested in buying it. My proposal is this: Follow in the footsteps of Starcraft, or Blockalnd and allow players to use the demo copy to connect to games hosted by someone who own the game. I imagine if I got people to try the game and play with me in a lan setting, many of them would eagerly go back and purchase the game to play on their own. The alternatives aren't so nice: The game frankly doesn't game played, and instead everyone plays TF2, League of Legends, and Minecraft. Or, I have to give everyone copies of my full version, and now they don't have much reason to not just play that instead of supporting the devs and buying the game.

[ssilk]

Some related stuff:
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ate#p12995
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ate#p14518

And (maybe someone can help me out, cause I didn't find the post) I remember some discussions exactly about sharing one copy to play it together.

TL;DR: no one will care, if you do so. The game runs without login. The devs know it and see that as some kind of advertising. But there is a clear border, when you actively begin to advertise for the pirated game.

[xnmo]

While the devs might be OK with this, that does not mean adding in this feature is not a good idea. In this scenario of a LAN it would offer a 'legitimate' solution that does not involve breaking the law. Even if there is a 0% chance of legal repercussions to this act, giving other people my own copy of something I paid for leaves a much different taste in my mouth than downloading a game that I am not sure I will like at all, and would almost certainly not buy it even if piracy were not an option.

[Turtle]

Would the demo version allow multiplayer play? I don't remember reading that it wouldn't be. If not, it should! This would give new players a chance to play with friends and see what the more advanced stuff is like while they play with players who have purchased it and hopefully make the purchase so they don't have to keep asking their friend to make something for them.

[SilverWarior]

My proposal is this: Follow in the footsteps of Starcraft, or Blockalnd and allow players to use the demo copy to connect to games hosted by someone who own the game.

This is not posible in Factorio since demo version does not contain all entity data that full version does.

Now adding multiplayer support to demo version would be quite iteresting but it I think the demo version should still have limted capabilites.
Of the posibility for those with demo version and those with boughgt game can play together on same multiplayer sesion all of them should be limited to demo capabilites.

Another option might be creating a special program which works more as a launcher which would alow other pepole on a LAN party to run the game from the computer of a person who owns the full game.
I belive this could be posible since the game loads all the graphics and entity definitions at the verry start so no subsequent reads from networked computer would be required. Sure it would take longer time for game to start up in sich way bit if done corectly no files would be actually copied to other computer.
In orfer for this to work the owner of a full game should start up a tiny server to which the other computer can connect and read the game data from.

@Developers
If you are interested in more indepth explanation of my last idea feel free to contact me.

[therapist]

I've personally been to 50+ lan parties and piracy is the norm, if not near mandatory. Getting a group of between 10-30 people to all buy any 1 game is nigh impossible, especially considering most lan parties I've been to are not 1 game affairs but instead a few hours of this game then that and then another. You can either set up a computer just for the purpose of sharing the game over the network or, you can pass an external hard drive or DVD around for everyone to use. I guess now-a-days you can just use a flash drive big enough to transfer the games.

It's great that you want to give credit to the devs, I respect anyone who can stick to a rigid self-disciplined policy of buying any game you plan to play rather than try. At some point when planning a LAN, you're just going to have to decide whether you want to go 100% legit, meaning you spend $50-$200 per person on video games OR the more realistic option of piracy. Many people see a huge moral and legal dilemma with piracy that we don't need to get into in this thread, but if you are one of those people you're going to just have to admit to yourself that although you and your friends love games and want to be huge fans of them and play every single game you can, you just simple cannot afford such a thing.

[n9103]

Site/Network licensing is a thing. (Small friends-only groups aren't addressed here.)
I would be quite surprised if someone with a legitimate business approached an indie development team and got shot down for a group license.
All these 50+ PC LAN parties have a professional organizer (assuming they're not a once-off) and they always have entrance and/or hourly fees. Same can be said of any LAN cafe or PC gaming center.
Part of the expense of running a LAN gaming venture is acquiring licenses.

As for the friends-only parties, odds are if you're planning on playing X game together at this party, most of you already own said game. And if not, they're probably open to a sales pitch/demonstration from those that do own it.

[therapist]

Never been to a "professionally organized" lan party, just weekly rented basements and the national guard armory would be the largest and even those were pirate fests that didn't charge attendants anything (except exorbitant pizza costs). Just curious, when you bring your own PC how does the organizer get the games on your PC and then off of it? Is it some kind of LAN only version of a game with special DRM installed like you have pre-installed on internet cafe computers? Or are you only referring to non LAN Party internet cafe centers like they have in large cities where you use their PC's and equipment?

I still say the OP has a choice to make, try to acquire a most likely expensive volume key license or game-cafe DRM version of a game which probably means charging people to attend your LAN, or visit the pirate bay. My goal has always been to get the casuals and the lower-middle class broke peeps in on the action at LAN parties, so I resorted to sharing.

It would be neat if the devs solved this problem like oldschool starcraft did, but the whole LAN only gameplay thru the demo thing is really really rare.

Protip: Bawls used to send out FREE (+shipping) boxes of their drinks with banners, stickers, shirts etc and all you would have to do is take photos of your LAN buddies underneath the banner drinking Bawls. Try to pretend your lan party is "professionally organized" if you try and email them.

[transportman]

I've personally been to 50+ lan parties and piracy is the norm, if not near mandatory. Getting a group of between 10-30 people to all buy any 1 game is nigh impossible, especially considering most lan parties I've been to are not 1 game affairs but instead a few hours of this game then that and then another. You can either set up a computer just for the purpose of sharing the game over the network or, you can pass an external hard drive or DVD around for everyone to use. I guess now-a-days you can just use a flash drive big enough to transfer the games.

And all people should have the same version. Nowadays that is less of an issue, especially if installs can be done beforehand and games can automatically update, but several years ago piracy was also big on LAN-parties because it was the only way to make absolutely sure everyone had the same version.

[therapist]

Piracy or legit, you should just update your games to the newest version, pirating rather than applying a patch would be kind of time consuming.

[SilverWarior]

I don't know how it is in other countries but here ins Slovenia LAN Parties are usually organized in a way that the list of games that will be played on the specific LAN party is anounced before the event even starts. Organizers usuelly don't even connect the LAN party network to the web so you don't have a chance to download nay content at that time. So it is all up to you to get desired games yourselves before the LAN party even starts. Also in most cases you need to sign a specific agreement in which you promise that you won't be resulting in piracy during the LAN event and that if you do the organizers can give all the information about your activities to autorities.
Now I myself have only been once on such LAN party becouse usually they only play games which I don't like to much.

As for non-proffesional LAN parties goes they are mostly done between friends. So we sometimes go and switch computers so that my friend can go and try playing a game that I have to see if he likes it. if he does then he might go and buy it himself. It is true that sometimes pepole revert to piracy especially when we are talking about expensive games which cost 50 EUR or more as this is rougly one thenth of a monthly earnings for many pepole here in Slovenia.

[therapist]

Dayem, Slovenia sounds rough. In the US in the area I live, it would be embarrassing to have a LAN party, especially one that charged people money, without an internet connection. We don't use the internet to pirate at LANs though, we just pass around the games people already have between different people. A LAN organizer will usually have a DVD or a network storage solution set up beforehand with all the games that will be played at the LAN.

I think 500+ people LAN parties like at Quakecon and things like that might force people to sign something but that is just to cover the organizer's own butts legally. Every Quakecon I've ever been to there is a competition who can pass around the most pirated "adult materials". People will trade their personally stashes of copyrighted "gentlemen's erotica" until 1 guy is crowned the king of self manipulation when he can prove he has several terabytes with no duplicates.

I don't have any experience with obtaining pirated copies of games at quakecon though, I always made sure that I was very very well prepared game wise before heading off to LAN's that big. It would be dangerous to trust people at an event that large not to spike their pirated software with malware. I am sure that it goes on because I myself pass my old external hard drive around for my friends or brand new friends I might meet to play games with me. The organizers watched me do this without any problems despite the paperwork I had signed.

[NeoForce]

no way, I think the game should have a way to test for piracy in other clients though

[Zequez]

I played the game with 2 friends who didn't own a legit copy of Factorio with Hamachi. I have no regrets. I have pirated games in the past, and I still do to some degree these days that are just too expensive for my third world pocket. I even brought games years after I played when I had the money. I completely understand the need of piracy and I don't judge people over that, purchase power is different for every person and every country.

For example, I played pirated Minecraft for years, and one day I decided to buy it because I actually could afford it. Also, I wanted to have a custom skin and automatic updates

Anyway there is always a way to get around with piracy, and nothing will stop willingly people.

Just my 2 cents.