How can Companies Fight Piracy? (Discussion)

[iGGY-101]

Discussion on how video gaming (and other media) companies can fight piracy? Mainly on PC - Hence majority of pirating in gaming is PC.

I was thinking of a few points:

- Remove DRM
I and many others find it annoying having 2 different DRM services running in order to play a game, having to always be online to play a single player game and needing an always on internet connection to actually sync with online servers. What if servers go down? What if you don't have reliable internet connection? I think it should be a more friendly customer service, instead of trying to fight people who pirate the game with DRM protection, which someone hacks and makes it useless in the end anyway. Video game industries put their (PC) customers through hell, and it isn't even effective to stopping piracy.

- Cheaper Prices [Not counting Steam Sales]
The reason most people pirate is simply because they cannot afford to go out and buy $100 dollar games every time a new game comes out and a game that they only play for like 6 hours on single palyer *Call of Duty Cough Cough* The money all adds up. Although PC games are cheaper than consoles, the games are still pricey for that little game play you get out of it. This isn't the case with all games, just the really over priced mainstream ones, and I give no hate, I enjoy every game even if it is the same as the last one (Call of duty, Assassins Creed etc) They are all unique in some way and are still fun to play (Different stories, maps, weapons blah blah blah) Although it is so much easier to just download a game rather than go out and spend money, if the games cost less then maybe people will actually consider buying rather than stealing?

- Better Product
Instead of releasing buggy games that the lazy developers simply port from console to PC, they need to spend more time on perfecting their product and making it worth the money. No one wants to buy an expensive half crippled product right? With good quality the games will actually be somewhat worth the money.

- Better Support
Although this point will not be valid if the product is released half decent in the first place: Patches, Updates, Driver Support etc. needs to be ahead of the game. Again, if they spend more time working on it rather than chucking the game out there half crippled and un-polished there won't be a need for intense patching. The companies need to support their clients and give a little better service to satisfy the customer. Bad support, people don't trust the developers as much and when trust is gone, they get lazy and once lazy about buying games they turn to piracy to not waste money.

- United Client
Steam..... Yes, this is probably one of the friendliest DRMs we all know. You can talk to friends, shop online, screen shot, the list goes on and on. But steam isn't the only one. Having to have several clients on your computer like Origin, Uplay? and what not, begins to annoy people. Having to run different software to play a game. Sometimes people decide to simply download all their games already cracked and with out any annoying clients that need to be launched in order to play? If all games were to just be with Steam for example and steam only, then people would have that 1 less hassle before playing. And before people start hating on steam: It does your updates and gives you access to so many games at such a good reasonable price that you shouldn't complain.

It makes me laugh when video game companies don't support PC gaming due to piracy, because... it is your fault you &*@#&%! **** HEADS!. Respect us and we will respect, support and love you.
Now, I am pissed off that Grand Theft Auto 5 apparently won't be coming out on PC, it was a PC game from the start and has always been there. I don't want to get it for my Xbox 360 because when I get games for PC, I have more control over them (Mods, Controller/Keyboard & Mouse Option, Graphics Options and few more other features) And 20 years down the track, I will still be able to boot it up on a computer and play it because of the complexity of having control over your platform. The console version will probably just have to get chucked out as soon as it is not supported by future Xbox (They will stop them in 20 years time... lol) but on computer someone will be able to write software to emulate Windows 7 for example and run the game. I will have the game forever in a way.

I don't hate on console, I love them as well as computer, but PC is better and it needs to be treated better. It is the king and will always be there.

Has anyone else got anything to add to this rant? hahaha. I probably missed a few points and probably am wrong on some?

 

[renz496]

many said pirate stuff are running rampant on the PC but from my personal experience the same can be said for console such as 360. i haven't seen pirate disk for PS3 blu ray but i think some people buy the game digitally and then upload the game to the web so people can download it for free. i don't how they make such a thing possible though 😀

 

[sscultima]

PS3 is getting worse for pirating since people can just throw on a custom firmware and just download the games to the hard drive, they dont need to even burn it to a disc, or play it off an external drive. same with xbox i used to do mods for them and people were all over it for many years.

there will always be pirates in the digital space but i think the way these companies see it is that you see like over black friday thousands of consoles sold and im sure you can guess on how many computers were sold around the same time that were bought specifically for gaming is much lower. companies just say it is because of pirates as an excuse to throw all their money into a better return percentage, and I can respect that from a business point of view, but you have to keep all your customers happy and not favor the others.

i personally like how blizzard has their services set up with everything tied in online just need one simple login for everything and it prevents people from stealing the game as a full working copy because it takes hackers longer to get around the encryption to even make a login server to be able to trick the game in to thinking you are allowed to play the full game. however that system is tough to get everyone on board because A) not everyone has internet and B)what if i want to play SC2 but i just moved and im waiting for my internet to be hooked back up, well guess im out of luck.

i would be happy even if games came out for consoles first if they would at least follow up with PC versions as well, a lot of games dont because they flop but heck if that is the case then it would not have been worth the time to play it anyway.

im lucky enough to own all current consoles (excluding the Wii U) and a gaming PC to pick and choose but not everyone is so lucky to have that choice.

 

[cats_Paw]

Piracy will go onto the consoles now since its a bigger market. Unfortunatelly, on PCs, people have also other sensitive data so there is a reason to infect the PCs with viruses.

Not so much on consoles, unless you are targeting something very specific.
We will ses i guess.

 

[Ceee9]

Well iggy, i personally didnt read all those, just the main title on each paragraph, but im absolutely agree with u, its a hardway o fight piracy,

Diablo 3 make that users must be online even playing solo, its a big failure, many people hate that, but then, piracy has able to breake that and sell and share it on the net.

But then i think in the near future, most game try to include multiplayer coop campaign in their game. I think this is a very good idea as it forces buying to buy original copy of the game. But then only if the game is worth it.

60$ for a triple a game is quite expensive i agree. But in my country some shop vendors sell diablo 3 for 120$... And 75-100$ on orginal copy of the game.

I live in malaysia and around here, japan singapore korean china etc, most people dont play fps and console game much like in the uk and us,
People here prefer a free to play title like dota, blackshot and much more, so u can see a reason on why piracy is a lot around here.

I personally really like how pes work, if u buy the original copy of the game it will only include a plain jersey for most team and the first patch will only update their jersey, but then, there a lot third party file to update it for pirated game,

If this can be apply on bigger title such as crysis gta, assassin creed etc on a more advance way, maybe it can decrease this problems a little more

 

[KardasDragon1321]

Even the most ingeniuos systems like the Serious Sam 3 DRM, or Steam DRMs will be bypassed by expirienced crackers. My suggestion is if during the first 5minutes of the game internet is required and the player will recieve some sort of code straight from the publisher/developer which one then enters and can play without internet for the rest of the game.

 

[AnUnusedUsername]

Trying to "fight" piracy just isn't going to work. As long as you're still trying to sell nothing for something, people are going to undercut you. True, it does take people a day or two to crack most games. But after that, it costs nothing to produce copies of the games (or music, or software, etc.).

Really the only solution is to stop charging for copies and instead charge people for development. Something like Kickstarter is interesting in theory, but it would only work if that was the ONLY way for a game to be financed. Collect donations to fund the project, maybe offering bonuses to everyone who donates, and then release the product for free to everyone once it's done.

Of course, you'd have people that never donate to anything, which is the problem we already have. When you buy something that has a digital form, you're really making a donation. The copy you "paid" for cost next to nothing to make.

The obvious solution is to impose it as a tax rather than as a donation, maybe you have to "donate" a set amount to developers (or musicians, or artists, etc.) of your choice every month. Even then, people would game the system by financing bogus developers and funneling the money back to themselves or any number of other silly things. Doing something like that on a global scale is simply impossible anyway, and even if it wasn't, companies make far too much profit by selling nothing for something.

The root cause of piracy is the free-rider problem, and that is also the biggest reason there isn't a solution. Copies cost nothing to produce, and R&D is expensive. Therefore, whatever system we use, SOMEONE is going to make copies without paying for R&D.

Really, digital media is unique in that regard. I can't think of anything else that has a substantially high development cost but that can be distributed to everyone in the world for next to nothing once development is complete.