I've been buying and playing PC games for a long time. I own all 3 current generation consoles as well. Though, I must say I like PC games better, in their type and play style. Consoles offer me a different play style (ie FF style RPGs, etc) that aren't often found on the PC or group play with some friends when they come over to hang out.
I've long used Images of my games as a matter of convinence and speed instead of the CDs/DVDs. Though I personally consider this a legit use, I'm sure with the craze over piracy, I could still be charged with a crime. Just look at the what many music industry companies believe... ripping a CD you own to use on your computer or music player is stealing. Speaking of which, I keep a music library of most all the music CDs I own too - it's nice to use random/shuffle and hear old favorites you wouldn't have decided to listen to otherwise on top of not having to physically swap CDs or use a mutli-disc changer, etc.
I fully agree that DRM for the greater part is just junk. Pirate groups break easily and thus people downloading those copies are unaffected - the individuals downloading the games do not need any level of education or technology knowledge beyond some basic reading (if that) to play the pirated version of the game. Thus, the DRM just hurts the legit users that pay for the game. They cause long load up times while you start the game to do CD-Checks (ie StarForce - I've onced had to wait 45 seconds just for StarForce), installation problems and sometimes even conflicts that cause BSOD rendering the game unplayable. Of course in this case you cannot return the game and I turn to the crack scene for a no-CD/DVD or whatever exe. Standard DRM simply does not work as intended. If the DRM actually prevented piracy, I would care a bit less about the problems it may cause me. However, that is far from the case. I play MMO's too, so I am 100% not opposed to paying to play a good game.
I also use Steam now days and Direct2Drive - I realize these have DRM in some form. However, I don't mind as long as it is transparent once I have installed the game and it does not cause any problems. They also provide me with some of the same reasons why I have previously made Images of game's I own (faster re-installs, faster load times without disc, no disc to hassle with). I personally like these models, but do not believe they solve piracy. I've read about and seen ways to break both.
My personal view of the largest issue and one the game industry is unwilling to accept is simply: make better games. It is not that there are not good, even great games being produced; but there is also I lot of crap - a lot of it being pushed to market. Sometimes the company has a realistic projecting of what the junk will make because they understand it's place in the market (often clone games with 100 titles of the exact same game with different 'skins' or movie related games). These often fail or would be considered a failure otherwise - I doubt these are being pirated much to begin with. There are times though, a developer believes in their title with great zeal, after all they have invested sometimes years in it and it may be there dream to produce the title. If it fails, they need / want to blame something and piracy is a easy one to blame especially with what I find to often be greatly misleading or falsified statistics. One such case would be that company that sued Epic over their Unreal Engine 3 lateness for basically all the profits that Gears of War made. I think I remember the title but I don't want to say in case I am incorrect. The history of the title in question basically set the game development at between 8-12 years depending on when you consider development started but it was the "dream" of the developer to make the game so I'm sure they've attempted it many times and stopped, then restarted. It's not that the title did not have any promise in itself, but all of it's potential promise also meant many difficulties in design and concept to reality. They needed to blame somebody when they were not paid by the publisher for being late, they chose Epic because they couldn't blame piracy when they had not released. Though their charges were true to a limited extent, it wasn't worth Gears of War, nor did the fact they did not use the terms of the contact they had with Epic in licensing UE3 to resolve the issue when it came up favorable, they only had a problem when they weren't paid and saw that Epic had made money. And they wanted it.
Why do I feel this way? Back in the days I was in a marketing course and learned a lot. It never really applied to gaming at the time because there were no advertisements on TV or anything outside of the few gaming mags out there like PC Gamer. There was a really hot title being released and I just downloaded the demo. I played it and then thought, "Wow, this is the worse game demo ever." The game was bad... it shouldn't have had a demo to demonstrate to people how bad it was. If not for the demo, I would have gladly paid $50 for the game before realizing it sucked. It's the same for say a movie trailer - it needs to make you want to go watch the movie, even if it is a bad movie, the trailer needs to be good. New and fresh ideas are hard to come by - I know this. But you do not need a new or fresh idea to make a good product - that comes from following thru on the FUNdamental elements first and foremost. The best graphics and effects do not ensure an enjoyable game and many in the industry have forgotten this.
I've ranted too much but I will close with this. There are about 4 main types of people as it concerns purchasing items or pirating/stealing them be it games, music, or cars and radios, even drugs and violence:
1) The legit person that will basically always buy their games, etc.
2) The person that will often buy their games but for various reasons also pirates some of their games.
3) The person that will basically never buy the games they play.
4) The person that downloads everything, regardless of intent to use or play the game. They like to do it because they can, or feel compelled to do so compulsively.
The industry officials assume only #1 and #2 really exist. They believe #3 and #4 are actually also #2, but that is not true. Until they acknowledge that #3 and #4 are out there they will never have a reasonable expectation of their market demographics.
Next is #5, the console gamer and #6 the multi-platform gamer and their sub parts. Being mainly a PC gamer but easily falling into the multi-platform gamer category as I own everything, I will state the obvious - if there is a game released to multiple platforms, I'm only buying it for one of them. If I favor the console version for some reason (in a 3D shooter, some of the reasons often pointed out are: better assurance of no cheaters, if PC and console can play together, they always give consoles auto-aim *which is a reason why I don't play these to start with*, you know it works). Also, a direct reason for PC vs Console sells differences is pricing of hardware. Consoles run between $400-800 real price of ownership and the cost continues to drop. $400-600 is like a high-end video card in the PC world and you need to keep up with the times to some degree. In the end, these cost mean less money to spend on PC games or at least a higher overall cost to play them. When the first XBox came out and some analysis said it was the beginning of the end of PC-gaming as we knew it, people laughed, but it's slowly becoming true.
I by no means intend to say I do not think piracy is a problem, however, I believe that it is greatly blown out of proportion by the industries involved for many reasons favorable to them as corporations. Instead of wasting their money on their zero-sum war against piracy that does not work they should be spending it on improving their games or straight up saving that money. It is sad to hear a game company go out of business, but blaming piracy is just their falsified reasoning. The ability to make such reasoning is often why they "fight" piracy though. Many great game developers and publishers have gone out of business well before the "mass" mainstream piracy we see today. An example is Interplay (a publisher) - but they held some of the great titles and developers that are continuing to lead the market (Fallout, Baldgar's Gate, BioWare, Shrouded Isles, etc). Why did they fail? They loss studios and started producing not so good games, and they faced strong competition from the era of larger companies like EA. Some companies/devs are failing for the same reason today but rather blame something else than themselves and their failure to adapt to the market.
When will the false battle against piracy end? When it makes them money. Why are online stores selling DRM-free music now when DRM was such a hot idea? #1, it's a great selling point to be DRM free given all of it's problem (ever lose your iTunes music and then realize you cannot download them again without charge?) #2, because it killed battery life so many media player companies pushed for it. Battery life is a strong selling point when with the exact same hardware you can suddenly claim 40-50% longer life. #3, it never really worked anyways, just like DRM with games but now that they had 2 great reasons and ways to make money from no-DRM they did it. #4, online stores became a strong enough force in the market that music labels were not suing them any longer but investing in them.
I've long used Images of my games as a matter of convinence and speed instead of the CDs/DVDs. Though I personally consider this a legit use, I'm sure with the craze over piracy, I could still be charged with a crime. Just look at the what many music industry companies believe... ripping a CD you own to use on your computer or music player is stealing. Speaking of which, I keep a music library of most all the music CDs I own too - it's nice to use random/shuffle and hear old favorites you wouldn't have decided to listen to otherwise on top of not having to physically swap CDs or use a mutli-disc changer, etc.
I fully agree that DRM for the greater part is just junk. Pirate groups break easily and thus people downloading those copies are unaffected - the individuals downloading the games do not need any level of education or technology knowledge beyond some basic reading (if that) to play the pirated version of the game. Thus, the DRM just hurts the legit users that pay for the game. They cause long load up times while you start the game to do CD-Checks (ie StarForce - I've onced had to wait 45 seconds just for StarForce), installation problems and sometimes even conflicts that cause BSOD rendering the game unplayable. Of course in this case you cannot return the game and I turn to the crack scene for a no-CD/DVD or whatever exe. Standard DRM simply does not work as intended. If the DRM actually prevented piracy, I would care a bit less about the problems it may cause me. However, that is far from the case. I play MMO's too, so I am 100% not opposed to paying to play a good game.
I also use Steam now days and Direct2Drive - I realize these have DRM in some form. However, I don't mind as long as it is transparent once I have installed the game and it does not cause any problems. They also provide me with some of the same reasons why I have previously made Images of game's I own (faster re-installs, faster load times without disc, no disc to hassle with). I personally like these models, but do not believe they solve piracy. I've read about and seen ways to break both.
My personal view of the largest issue and one the game industry is unwilling to accept is simply: make better games. It is not that there are not good, even great games being produced; but there is also I lot of crap - a lot of it being pushed to market. Sometimes the company has a realistic projecting of what the junk will make because they understand it's place in the market (often clone games with 100 titles of the exact same game with different 'skins' or movie related games). These often fail or would be considered a failure otherwise - I doubt these are being pirated much to begin with. There are times though, a developer believes in their title with great zeal, after all they have invested sometimes years in it and it may be there dream to produce the title. If it fails, they need / want to blame something and piracy is a easy one to blame especially with what I find to often be greatly misleading or falsified statistics. One such case would be that company that sued Epic over their Unreal Engine 3 lateness for basically all the profits that Gears of War made. I think I remember the title but I don't want to say in case I am incorrect. The history of the title in question basically set the game development at between 8-12 years depending on when you consider development started but it was the "dream" of the developer to make the game so I'm sure they've attempted it many times and stopped, then restarted. It's not that the title did not have any promise in itself, but all of it's potential promise also meant many difficulties in design and concept to reality. They needed to blame somebody when they were not paid by the publisher for being late, they chose Epic because they couldn't blame piracy when they had not released. Though their charges were true to a limited extent, it wasn't worth Gears of War, nor did the fact they did not use the terms of the contact they had with Epic in licensing UE3 to resolve the issue when it came up favorable, they only had a problem when they weren't paid and saw that Epic had made money. And they wanted it.
Why do I feel this way? Back in the days I was in a marketing course and learned a lot. It never really applied to gaming at the time because there were no advertisements on TV or anything outside of the few gaming mags out there like PC Gamer. There was a really hot title being released and I just downloaded the demo. I played it and then thought, "Wow, this is the worse game demo ever." The game was bad... it shouldn't have had a demo to demonstrate to people how bad it was. If not for the demo, I would have gladly paid $50 for the game before realizing it sucked. It's the same for say a movie trailer - it needs to make you want to go watch the movie, even if it is a bad movie, the trailer needs to be good. New and fresh ideas are hard to come by - I know this. But you do not need a new or fresh idea to make a good product - that comes from following thru on the FUNdamental elements first and foremost. The best graphics and effects do not ensure an enjoyable game and many in the industry have forgotten this.
I've ranted too much but I will close with this. There are about 4 main types of people as it concerns purchasing items or pirating/stealing them be it games, music, or cars and radios, even drugs and violence:
1) The legit person that will basically always buy their games, etc.
2) The person that will often buy their games but for various reasons also pirates some of their games.
3) The person that will basically never buy the games they play.
4) The person that downloads everything, regardless of intent to use or play the game. They like to do it because they can, or feel compelled to do so compulsively.
The industry officials assume only #1 and #2 really exist. They believe #3 and #4 are actually also #2, but that is not true. Until they acknowledge that #3 and #4 are out there they will never have a reasonable expectation of their market demographics.
Next is #5, the console gamer and #6 the multi-platform gamer and their sub parts. Being mainly a PC gamer but easily falling into the multi-platform gamer category as I own everything, I will state the obvious - if there is a game released to multiple platforms, I'm only buying it for one of them. If I favor the console version for some reason (in a 3D shooter, some of the reasons often pointed out are: better assurance of no cheaters, if PC and console can play together, they always give consoles auto-aim *which is a reason why I don't play these to start with*, you know it works). Also, a direct reason for PC vs Console sells differences is pricing of hardware. Consoles run between $400-800 real price of ownership and the cost continues to drop. $400-600 is like a high-end video card in the PC world and you need to keep up with the times to some degree. In the end, these cost mean less money to spend on PC games or at least a higher overall cost to play them. When the first XBox came out and some analysis said it was the beginning of the end of PC-gaming as we knew it, people laughed, but it's slowly becoming true.
I by no means intend to say I do not think piracy is a problem, however, I believe that it is greatly blown out of proportion by the industries involved for many reasons favorable to them as corporations. Instead of wasting their money on their zero-sum war against piracy that does not work they should be spending it on improving their games or straight up saving that money. It is sad to hear a game company go out of business, but blaming piracy is just their falsified reasoning. The ability to make such reasoning is often why they "fight" piracy though. Many great game developers and publishers have gone out of business well before the "mass" mainstream piracy we see today. An example is Interplay (a publisher) - but they held some of the great titles and developers that are continuing to lead the market (Fallout, Baldgar's Gate, BioWare, Shrouded Isles, etc). Why did they fail? They loss studios and started producing not so good games, and they faced strong competition from the era of larger companies like EA. Some companies/devs are failing for the same reason today but rather blame something else than themselves and their failure to adapt to the market.
When will the false battle against piracy end? When it makes them money. Why are online stores selling DRM-free music now when DRM was such a hot idea? #1, it's a great selling point to be DRM free given all of it's problem (ever lose your iTunes music and then realize you cannot download them again without charge?) #2, because it killed battery life so many media player companies pushed for it. Battery life is a strong selling point when with the exact same hardware you can suddenly claim 40-50% longer life. #3, it never really worked anyways, just like DRM with games but now that they had 2 great reasons and ways to make money from no-DRM they did it. #4, online stores became a strong enough force in the market that music labels were not suing them any longer but investing in them.
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