Video Game Piracy is not a problem, its a Symptom of a Problem (LONG)

[Oh Snap]

I refer you to:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/page-20705_9_80.html

I don't feel like reposting everything, but I think it was made pretty clear in that thread (as it should be), that piracy, although you may disagree with it on some level, is NOT the same thing as stealing. Disagree with piracy, RobWright, and continue to make your arguments against it, but at least do so with some respect to logic and reasoning.

Here we go:

Do you seriously not understand the difference between COPYING and TAKING? Here's an example:

You have two objects in your possession: a ball and a piece of paper with the numbers "010101" written on it. I take your ball, and I also have my own piece of paper where I copy your string of numbers "010101" on it. Now, you're left without a ball, but you still have your piece of paper with numbers on it. Do you honestly not see the difference? Is it really that difficult to understand? Now, I go outside and let 1000 people copy the phrase "010101" onto their own pieces of paper. No doubt you spent a lot of time writing down that string of numbers in the first place, and you also run a service where you sell your own pieces of paper with it pre-written on them. In your eyes, I've STOLEN from you? No. It's presumptuous (and quite a hilarious indication of how a lot of game companies think so highly of their own products) that you would assume that EVERY SINGLE ONE of those people who copied that string of numbers would have purchased one of your own printed pieces of paper had it not been available. Even if this was so, your argument holds no water, no matter how large you make the tank. You're stating that the distribution of copyrighted material is stealing because it's going to a LOT of people, but you still don't understand the difference between a single person STEALING property and DUPLICATING it.

You also don't seem to understand the difference between a failing investment and stolen revenue. If I start my own business and invest a large amount of my own money, and then I don't have enough customers to make back enough to cover my initial investment, I don't get to claim that someone STOLE that initial investment. They chose not to support it, and I took a risk and lost. If a company invests $2,000,000 in a game and only makes $1,500,000 back because no one bought their game (because they simply chose not to buy it, or decided to play a pirated version), it doesn't mean that they STOLE that initial investment. The company put it forward, it didn't turn out how they wanted, and they lost.

Your analogy is also poor because you still don't understand the difference between preventing someone from purchasing the game vs. allowing someone to copy the game. If I steal a game off the shelf, not only did I not pay for it, but I also have prevented someone from buying that same copy of the game. I care so much about the correct wording because I hate seeing the industry assume that they're somehow entitled to making back their investment. They're not. Every business takes chances, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but you can't just claim that someone STOLE your investment because they choose not to pay you for something.

However, you bring up the example of you posting articles on your site, and someone copying that article and posting it on their own. This isn't a great example, but essentially I could read the article on either site for "free". Say, however, that they DON'T have ads on their site and you DO. I've chosen to not deal with your ads in favor of reading the same article, ad free. However, I haven't STOLEN the article from you, I simply chose not to support your initial investment of time (spent writing the article, working on your site, getting advertisers) and money (paying for the server, designers, maintenance, etc.). If anything, by reading your copied article on ANOTHER website I've actually done you a service compared to say, using Adblock for Firefox (which I do use), because at least I'm not using your bandwidth. You're still in full possession of your own article which you worked on, and on your own website and server which you made an investment on. It didn't work out for you, tough break. However, say that person that copied your article is actually making money off of their own advertisements on their site. In that case, you are entitled to whatever they earn as a result of using your copyrighted material. That's all it means -- you're entitled to any earnings associated with your work. You aren't entitled to making back your initial investment from people who simply may not have ever considered paying for it in the first place.

Now if I went to, say, Blizzard HQ and physically copied over the game files AND THEN DELETED THEM from their system so they no longer had the game, that would be STEALING. The company paid their programmers for their work, they paid for the distribution and marking of the game to get it on the shelves, but in reality, they are still in full possession of everything they paid for, they just didn't make the profit they feel they're entitled to.

If I have a for sale sign on my car and some guy walks up to it, takes a look at it, pulls out a wand and *DING!* he's duplicated my car, gets in it and drives off, he COPIED it, he didn't STEAL it, regardless of how many hours or how much money I may have spent fixing the car up in order to sell it. When I steal something from you, I'm making something of yours mine and making it no longer yours. It's no longer in your possession. When I copy something, I'm making something of yours mine, but you still have yours too. Can you really even argue this any further? I'm simply amazed my initial point obviously didn't make it clear enough for you, especially for someone who's supposed to be so adept at reading comprehension.

And on another note, I find it quite funny that you're trying to defend the term "stealing" by justifying it with the idea of licenses. It's rather audacious to state you're selling the right to use a given product, and then turn around and say everyone using it without your permission is stealing. I'm selling the right to drive my used Ford Taurus, so that guy who used his magic wand to duplicate has surely stolen it! Wrong, he simply isn't paying me for something that didn't cost me any additional money beyond my original investment

I'm not arguing that the ability to pirate games isn't detrimental to the success of the PC gaming industry. Under their current business model and the huge investments they're making in order to produce these games, combined with how easily one can pirate a game, there's no doubt that a lot of the smaller companies are destined to fail, although the exact extent of the piracy's effect isn't known, it's only estimated. Companies have had it there way for a long time, and it's upsetting when things change and they're no longer in complete control of "licenses." Before, they could guarantee that the sale of said licenses would make up for their investments, and as time grew, so did the initial investments, assuming that the number of sales would also follow. Then, file-sharing came into the picture, and now in order to survive, they either have to fight file-sharing with more sophisticated copy prevention, or change their model in order to succeed in this new environment. What model is that? I really don't know, I'm not an expert, all I know is that the water's getting thicker so they're going to either have to swim a lot harder or find another way to keep afloat.

Here. Let me give you a new analogy, elaborating on the one I made in another one of my posts.

Let's say I decide I'm going to make and sell cars. I open my own business, start making cars, and begin selling them to people. For a while, my business is successful, until one day I notice people start showing up to my car lot with weird looking devices in their hands. They begin walking up to the cars I've made, move the shiny metal devices over them, and then a few feet away on the street, a carbon copy of my cars appear out of thin air. These people walk over to these newly created cars, get in them, and drive off.

Let's break this down:

First off, there's no guarantee that these people who came to my lot with these magical devices would have purchased a car in the first place. They may have just been there to simply duplicate my cars, and wouldn't have shown up otherwise. So even though I'm not making money from these people, they're not TAKING money or property AWAY from me.

Second, I still own everything I've paid for. I initially paid the factory workers to produce these cars, and as such, these cars are now mine. They belong to me. However, the duplicated cars, although exactly the same as my own cars, didn't require any additional time, effort, or money for me to create. As such, even though I created the idea and design for these cars, those physical cars didn't cost me anything to make/produce.

Finally, my business might be failing now thanks to these magical car duplication devices. However, that doesn't mean that these people are stealing my cars, they're duplicating them. Some people might be using the duplication devices instead of purchasing cars from me, while others might simply be using them because they exist, and if they didn't have them, they still wouldn't end up purchasing a car. There's no way to tell for sure who would do what if these devices didn't exist. However, my failing business is a direct result of my investment failing to make returns in a market where my "tried n' true" business model simply does not hold water any longer. I chose to continue to pay my factory workers to produce cars, and I still own the cars they've produced for me. I'm entitled to nothing further.

Is it right what they're doing? According to the law, no it's not. However, there's a new word for what they're doing, since they're using my intellectual rights without my permission. It's called copyright violation, and it's vastly different from stealing. Say those people went out and then sold their duplicated versions of my cars, then I would be entitled to that money because someone is making a profit from my own idea. That's how it works, but please, please, PLEASE can we stop calling pirating software "stealing"?

I really don't know how much more clear I can be on the subject, and quite frankly I'm disappointed if you still want to be ignorant and equate two very different things.

 

[SnareSpectre]

Okay so I joined the forum topic to try to have an intellectual debate (or discussion) about the issue because I think it's interesting, but now I find myself very irritated at what's been posted on here. For starters, Oh Snap, I feel like I can safely make the assumption that RobWright knows exactly what you meant, mean, and will mean by your long-winded blabbering. I think everyone else involved in this forum realizes what you mean, and we all understand that copyright infringement is not exactly the same thing as stealing, but you're arguing semantics of words, not the meaning of the forum. For your sake, you should replace all the verb forms of "stealing" in this forum with "infringing on the copyright of" and all the noun forms of "stealing" with "copyright infringement." Then the meaning will be exactly the same. It's like if we were all in a big, friendly political debate and someone referred to "illegal aliens" and a dissenting Oh Snap comes in and says "No, they're refugees escaping from a bad economic situation, stop being ignorant and get it right." In all reality, we're talking about the same people (i.e. "pirating" and "copyright infringement"). Ignorance only shows when someone doesn't understand that we're all actually talking about the same thing, and instead of advancing the discussion chooses to devote their posts to playground disagreements. If you want reconciliation for what you've said, I agree with you - "stealing" is not in its entirety the exact same thing as "copyright infringement," but you must also realize that several businesses, like game developers, sell information to make a profit. Say a firm is failing to turn a decent profit and they hire a consultant to help them sort out how to manage their supply chain, transport raw materials globally, etc. The consultant is paid for his/her knowledge in the field, not a physical product. It goes the same way here; "stealing" in this case does not merely refer to "the taking of a physical object."

I hope I've somewhat made it through to you, but I'm already pretty convinced that you understand all of this already and just write what you write to create a stink on a forum page and have people argue with you. Maybe if you display this reply up on all four of your gigantic monitors, you and your 8 GB RAM and your powerhouse processor can figure something out.

 

[robwright]

I'm not trying to create an uproar here on my own forum. Really, I'm not. I only wish to have a civil, intelligent discourse with an occasional dash of sarcasm. So yeah, I'm an anti-pirate. And as much as it pains me to read about SnareSpectre's pirating, I appreciate his honesty even if I disagree with his perspective on the matter. I think this helps to have a healthy, informative discussion.

What doesn't help -- and what I don't need to read -- is any more analogies about fake ray guns and duplicating cars and then be told that I'm the one being ignorant. These points have no bearing on the real world. If you pirate a game, you're taking something that doesn't belong to you that has significant value (if it was worthless, you wouldn't download it), so call it what you will. You're also depriving the people who made the game of their hard-earned revenue. Games are expensive to make, and the developers aren't doing this for charity. PC game development is a business, and quite frankly, it's not going to survive if we all subscribed to the thinking of a typical pirate. If your last refuge in this argument is to say, hey, I wouldn't have paid for these games anyway, as SnareSpectre stated, then I issue you all a very simple challenge:

Find a new hobby. Please.

If the games really have no value for you, then it should be easy to find something free to replace them, like a library card or maybe jogging. But by pirating with reckless abandon, you're making things worse for the rest of this. And I implore you to stop.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

OK, theres this managing editor, a guy comes up and waves a shiny metal oooozz nooozzz heheh Good thread nonetheless, and I believe until people actually have something similar happen to them, theyll never truly understand. When it does, dont come running to us, or in the words of Vin Diesel Are you with us?

 

[raptorxt]

you are right infornography42
i seem to be novice at deciphering sarcasm from realism

i am sorry ROB, and i agree with your anti-priacy

 

[SnareSpectre]

And as much as it pains me to read about SnareSpectre's pirating, I appreciate his honesty even if I disagree with his perspective on the matter. I think this helps to have a healthy, informative discussion.

This makes me curious - I know you disagree with the way I go about doing things, but if what I claim is really true, what is your opinion then? In other words, I claimed to buy the games that I truly think are worth it, and in a sense, like several other pirates out there, claim to "try out" games by downloading them. Now I truly believe that most people claim this to justify their piracy when they really would buy the game otherwise. However, I honestly feel that that is not my case; I've downloaded GRAW, GRAW 2, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Prey, Painkiller, The Sam and Max episodes, just to name a few...I mean I do it a LOT, but I have not finished any of those games because I got pretty bored with them. I even finished the Rainbow Six Vegas 2 campaign, but that was because it was so short that I didn't feel it justified the $50 price tag. Assassin's Creed was cool for about 2 missions and then bored me to tears because it is the same thing over and over again...a little bit of fun, but not worth the $50.

On the other hand, I do own plenty of my own legal copies of PC games (F.E.A.R., Warcraft 3, Doom 3, don't want to bore with lists), and most of them came from the local used games store. I'm pretty cheap, I'll admit - and I'm very willing to play that waiting game of "6-12 months" for the price to come down. Heck, I was drooling for God of War 2 the day it came out, and then bought it about 2-3 weeks ago finally when the price tag came down to $20. I could have tried my hand at pirating it, but I knew based on my experience with the first one that it would be well worth the money, so I didn't. Same goes for Starcraft 2 - I will buy the game for its $50-60 price tag sight unseen, because I know it will be good. I have never looked forward to a game more in my entire life.

Now, if everything I just claimed is true, and I believe it is (in other words, game developers do not lose money on me through my actions, and in fact could potentially gain money because of it), what is your opinion then? Don't worry, I'm not looking for some sort of justification for what I do, but since I know you feel very strongly about this, and have discussed it several times either on forums or in your videos, what is your opinion?

 

[infornography42]

MY opinion is that you have more time than money and that makes it easier to loosen your ethics a bit.

Rob on the other hand has more money than time and therefore can easily afford a more elitist stance which he sees as justified.

I'm somewhere in the middle. I don't think it is right to stick to the try before buy philosophy, but on the other hand I recognize that demos can be misleading and software is expensive. I also recognize the fact that you obviously can't afford to buy all the games you want new.

My advice would be to spend your money as you can, but also spend that spare time you have studying and working toward making more money so you can earn more money than you have time to fill. If at that point you still persist in pirating, then my opinion of you would be very dim indeed. If at that point you stop pirating and start buying a bit more freely, then I'm cool with it.

All said, I do think piracy is a bad thing for the industry, but by the same token it is how most gamers make it through the leaner times and come out as gamers at the end.

 

[Oh Snap]

You're also depriving the people who made the game of their hard-earned revenue.

Hey, know that GTA 4 game that just came out? I've deprived Rockstar of exactly the same amount of "hard-earned" revenue by not buying it or showing any interest in it as I would have if I pirated it.

As for SnareSpectre, I think it's an important point to make that there is a very clear difference between "stealing" and "copyright infringement" when we get to the heart of the argument against piracy. Everyone, for the most part, would be against stealing in the traditional sense for the very obvious reasons. I wouldn't want someone to take one of my monitors, so damn right I'm against stealing someone else's. It's using a word that's very black and white in terms of ethics and morality in a situation where it really is shades of gray. Mislabeling something in order to drive your point home is something that should be avoided when making any kind of a sound, logical argument, so forgive my frustration when I see a potentially intellectual debate degrade into "You're wrong because you're stealing!" My stance on piracy is this: As a web designer, I do both the graphics/layout front-end as well as all the programming involved for back-end stuff. I've written a couple extensive PHP classes that basically form a framework for most of the sites I do. Now, if I was out selling this framework for other designers to use for a small fee, and I found out someone was copying it and using it without my permission and without reimbursing me, I'd be fairly upset. It certainly wouldn't be the same as someone coming into my house and stealing my monitors or computer though, and if I found out that it was actually some 12 year old kid using my framework, I'd be even less upset knowing that he probably wouldn't have paid for it anyway.

Now if someone copied it, and then started to sell it as their own, I'd be mega pissed, and my stance on piracy is identical to this. Although the developers may not like it when people pirate their games, it's not necessarily hurting their revenue (although in some cases it can be, but it really comes down to who would have paid for it in the first place). However, if someone copies a game, movie, software, or whatever else and then proceeds to SELL the copies to other people, I find that behavior to be completely objectionable. Why? Because they're not only not paying the developers, but they're also making a profit from someone else's work.

I hope this analogy was more to your liking, Rob, as you seemed to find it so objectionable that I use something as outlandish as "ray guns" while talking about video game piracy, and this analogy holds bearing in the real world.

 

[robwright]

Now, if everything I just claimed is true, and I believe it is (in other words, game developers do not lose money on me through my actions, and in fact could potentially gain money because of it), what is your opinion then? Don't worry, I'm not looking for some sort of justification for what I do, but since I know you feel very strongly about this, and have discussed it several times either on forums or in your videos, what is your opinion?

Like I said at the end of my previous post: Find a new hobby. If you truly believe that you would never pay for these games to begin with because they hold little to no value for you, then stop playing them. It should be easy if you don't really think they're worth anything and are just playing them to pass the time. And if the issue is about money, then be a more selective consumer. Save your money and buy the good ones and leave the bad ones like Assassin's Creed (hopefully our reviews will be helpful in that regard). The thing that I worry about with you, SnareSpectre, is that you've gotten into a habit because you're a poor college kid but years from now when you're making more money, you may still be downloading the majority of the games you play while paying for that one special title.

MY opinion is that you have more time than money and that makes it easier to loosen your ethics a bit.

Rob on the other hand has more money than time and therefore can easily afford a more elitist stance which he sees as justified.

Well, I prefer to think of myself as "principaled" instead of elitist. Mama always said don't take things that don't belong to you without paying for them (again, call it what you will). A common misconception here is that Tom's is showered with free games from publishers, and that I'm rolling around on waterbed throwing discs around and "making it rain," so to speak. The fact is that until recently, we barely got any review code/copies from pubs and had to pay for the games out of pocket. The easy thing would have been to download a lot of these games. Hell, Take-Two sent use two copies of GTA 4 this week (sadly, we didn't get the "exclusive" treatment that IGN got) but it would have been easier to just download a pirated copy last week and then get our review up quicker (you'd be surprised how common this practice is, btw -- or maybe you wouldn't). However, that would make me a giant hypocrite. We have a code here and we do our best to stick by it even when it's terribly inconvenient to do so.

But Info makes an interesting point regarding piracy's benevolent effect -- i.e., spreading awareness of games to kids and poor college students who have no money, which will then create real, paying customers down the road. I'm not discounting this possibility at all. But my fear is that once you learn how easy and convenient it is to pirate these games when you're younger and penniless, how difficult does it become later on, even when you have disposable income, to do the right thing and pay for the game? I just think we can always find way to convince ourselves that a game isn't worth the $50-$60 price tag and that our money is better spent on something else, especially when it's so easy to take the games for free.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Just like anything given for free, youll end up having less regard for it. Trust me when I say youll appreciate games that youve paid for more than ones you get "free". Thats just the way it is, youve earned that game you bought, youll take more care of it. That in itself will help assure two things. Youll take more time to get your moneys worth, and youll appreciate the games more. Plus youll have the pride of being able say to yourself, Ive done this all , made some mistakes, learned from them, and am better for it. Someone who pays for their games will have a better knowledge of what they want.

 

[Oh Snap]

Just like anything given for free, youll end up having less regard for it. Trust me when I say youll appreciate games that youve paid for more than ones you get "free". Thats just the way it is, youve earned that game you bought, youll take more care of it. That in itself will help assure two things. Youll take more time to get your moneys worth, and youll appreciate the games more. Plus youll have the pride of being able say to yourself, Ive done this all , made some mistakes, learned from them, and am better for it. Someone who pays for their games will have a better knowledge of what they want.

So what do you folks have to say about someone like me who's been burned by other "no name" game companies before, and thus refuses to buy games from anyone but massive publishers like Blizzard? Say the only way I'd consider buying a game is if I could play a working copy first, but if I liked it and continued to play it, I bought it. If it sucked, I deleted it from my HD and never gave it another thought. Here's an example: Sins of a Solar Empire. It looks alright, maybe. I've never played any other games from Stardock. I don't feel like just throwing money at something because they have some neat looking graphics on a website. I have two options. A.) I pirate it, play it, and if it's worthwhile, I buy it. As of right now, the game is "worth" nothing to me beyond maybe 20 minutes of my time to check it out. If I play it and like it, I say it's "worth" more to me, and I purchase it. B.) I look at the site, go "hmm, neat, but I've never heard of them", and then go back to browsing the Tom's Hardware forums, and never have another thought about it.

Which one is okay? Is it seriously, in your eyes, wrong to say "hey, this is ONLY worth a few minutes of my time based on what I know and my level of trust for this company, but if it turns out it's good, I'll buy it"?

I mean, maybe this could backfire for some companies, which is why they don't want people doing it. I managed to play Age of Conan in open beta, and I can already tell you, the only way you're ever going to get me to even consider buying that game at this point is if I could play the full version for free to see if it still isn't garbage, because right now it's terrible.

 

[SnareSpectre]

Haha I appreciate your honest reply, RobWright, just like you said earlier about what I posted. I agree completely with jaydeejohn about the games you buy being much more fun to play - that's why I pick and choose which ones to purchase carefully. As far as the pirating goes, the actual pirating is my hobby probably more than playing some of the games is. It's a lot of fun for me to mess with the innards of a game...the registry files and the executables...than it is to play a lot of them. When I look at what games I've spent the most time on recently, it amounts to resource hogs like Brood War that put a large strain on my 8800 gtx. (And yes, I have the retail copy) I'm sure I'll love computer games for the rest of my life, but when I get out of college I can't say I'll be spending much of my time playing them at all, much less taking the time to pirate them. I plan to eventually have a family to take care of, a job to work, and other stuff like that. It'd be nice if that job was a position playing and reviewing games at Tom's Hardware or something like that, but that's not realistic. Sure, I'll spend some of my free time getting pwned by South Koreans with 4 billion APM in Starcraft 2 on Battle.net (if it's out in the next 5 years), but it's not what I'll be spending most of my time doing. And I look at it this way, too - right now, $50 costs more than the time it takes me to download and replace an executable file from mininova.org or thepiratebay.com...but once the real world hits, that $50 will be worth less than that time, so it's obvious that buying the game will be much more beneficial than cracking them. Besides, I draw the line on my "hobby" (which I actually only discovered about 7-8 months ago) when it actually does affect the company that produces the game - it's not like I have a lack of ethics, and like I stated earlier I see things from a business standpoint as well.

As far as my solution to the pirating problem, I believe companies should just go after the guys (or girls) who upload pirated copies of games to begin with. The guys I see all the time are Razor1911, RELOADED, dopeman, Skullptura...they're the reasons companies lose money, in my opinion. I love to pirate games, but I would love nothing more than to see a stop to pirating because I believe it would mean better production values for games from companies who complain about their products being pirated; again I completely respect what the Witcher guy said about pirating - they made a good game, and it has sold quite a bit, despite pirating. I've seen that game up on several different torrent sites, so I know for a fact it's out there and ripe for the taking...but it still sold a lot and he realizes that a lot of people who pirated the game would not have purchased it anyway. It may seem counter-intuitive for me to pirate but want it to stop, but I say this only because I know my actions don't affect things in the big picture - one person sitting in their dorm room downloading games doesn't really even mean anything...going after the guys who distribute copyrighted material does. I would gladly give up my ability to get games for free if it meant there would be a widespread stop to piracy, but until then I'm content with using my method of determining which games to buy by first trying them out.

 

[cafuddled]

Yeah that’s for sure, now that I’m doing this highflying job thing and have a girlfriend to take care of (who does not like me spending hours on the computer) I’m spending a lot less time playing games. But like a lot of people, when I was a kid I did indeed spend masses of time downloading games. In fact I believe I was one of the first to start downloading stuff. Back then you had to use other sources for getting things, it’s not always been this easy for download games and such. I mean about 10 or so years ago I was actually going out to buy some of the games because it was taking too long for them to download. But that’s where I got a load of games that later on collected dust.

Back then I had an excuse, I had £5 a week pocket money and then later on a pitiful college loan to live off. But now that I can afford to buy more than 10 new games a week and still live happy, I still don’t buy all my games. I’m still downloading most of the games that are released and only buying a hand full of the ones I like. I must say I agree with Rob that if you start doing something young you will keep on doing it. But I then again I don’t see what I am doing as hurting anyone either, it’s possible I never will.

I do agree that what I am doing is wrong however in the eyes of the law, I know it is. But then I would feel robbed if I went back to buying games and ended up throwing them in a cupboard because I did not like them again. I mean maybe this whole buying system is broken for games or is too old fashioned for the times. Maybe everything needs to change. But right now I’m still download say maybe 3 or 4 games a month and will buy say 1 or 2 games that I liked the look of before hand in that same month.

Since I have been downloading games my wasted money on them has almost disappeared. The last game I can remember wasting money on was the Half Life 2 mod SIN 2 (over Steam) that there was no demo of and I liked the look of it. I played the first level and never played it again. Now I would normally get angry with that but as it cost me only £7 for the game so I just let it slip. I don’t think I could be that careless with £40 games though, not just yet anyways.

I mean think about it, with movies you get to see them at the cinema, for £4 and later on you can rent them for £2.50. Yeah sure your only getting up to 3 hours worth of movie, but then we have to pay £40 for sometimes only 8 hours worth of game play. Yeah sure with console games you can rent them for £3 a night but with PC games you cant get them, or even in some cases have a taste of them unless you pay the full retail value of up to £40. And on top of that once you open a PC games wrapper almost all games shops wont take it back.

Is it really any wonder why the PC platform is the most pirated of them all? You cant expect to charge £40 per game £200 per Windows £320 per office instalment and not have anyone pirating your software. Something needs to happen things need to change and until it does PC software vender’s need to expect people to pirate. Or maybe they do and that’s why prices have not moved in any way but up on software for over 15 years (respectively speaking of course).

 

[crom]

But Info makes an interesting point regarding piracy's benevolent effect -- i.e., spreading awareness of games to kids and poor college students who have no money, which will then create real, paying customers down the road. I'm not discounting this possibility at all. But my fear is that once you learn how easy and convenient it is to pirate these games when you're younger and penniless, how difficult does it become later on, even when you have disposable income, to do the right thing and pay for the game? I just think we can always find way to convince ourselves that a game isn't worth the $50-$60 price tag and that our money is better spent on something else, especially when it's so easy to take the games for free.

I agree with you Rob, the "benevolent" effect is lacking at best. It goes down to human nature. The piracy market lowers the perceived value of a product to zero which reinforces future piracy behavior. The same is true for the music industry. Learning more about a game before you buy it is key. Hell, on the PC we all have an advantage, we get to download demos of most games before they're released to see if our computers can play them, or if the game is any good.

I don't think you're going to be able to wipe out piracy, but I think offering better incentives in games released is key. For example developers could adopt the Steam model. Digitally distributing your game, creating an environment that rewards the consumer with purchasing the game. If they use Steam and play the game legitimately they can get access to maps, mods, etc for a game. Or if it's a game with a heavy online play like Unreal Tournament 3 or COD4.

 

[Alex The PC Gamer]

FYI: If you wanted to setup a internet account in Canada with any ISP, you'll now be imposed a bandwidth limit. There was no need to implement a government bill as both major ISP have come to an agreement in Download/Upload limits. Given that other ISP use the networks of the 2 major ISP providers, they will also have to impose such a limit. The limit also includes uploading which mean that you can expect Canadian residents to barely share any data on peer-to-peer networks. In fact, I think all ISPs should at least impose a set limit for uploads which is really where you can help solve E-piracy.

Read my previous post on this thread if you're not quite following this.

Nota: If you're not happy with this, please don't send me an email (like some of you did). I'm not a complaint department. You can contact your ISP, the CRTC, or your member of parliament.

 

[infornography42]

And that bandwidth limit forces small businesses and hobby hosts to pay primo prices for their corporate class lines.

Anyone wanting to host their own webcomic for example, if that comic got any notable popularity at all, would quickly hit those limits.

Also anyone who starts a small business out of their home would run into problems hosting their company website off of any home internet connection.

Then there are companies who use bit torrent as a legitimate distribution method. Just look at WoW for example. Their patches are distributed in a bit torrent system and that would quickly eat away at that person's bandwidth limits, not to mention the game itself.

No, I don't think limiting bandwidth is the answer. It is a convenient excuse for the ISPs to not have to update their infrastructure for increasing demand. The best solution is, and will continue to be, to make purchasing the product more attractive than pirating it. Serial code registration being required to obtain patches and patches that include content updates are the best answer I have seen so far for that.

 

[Alex The PC Gamer]

And that bandwidth limit forces small businesses and hobby hosts to pay primo prices for their corporate class lines.

Anyone wanting to host their own webcomic for example, if that comic got any notable popularity at all, would quickly hit those limits.

Also anyone who starts a small business out of their home would run into problems hosting their company website off of any home internet connection.

Then there are companies who use bit torrent as a legitimate distribution method. Just look at WoW for example. Their patches are distributed in a bit torrent system and that would quickly eat away at that person's bandwidth limits, not to mention the game itself.

No, I don't think limiting bandwidth is the answer. It is a convenient excuse for the ISPs to not have to update their infrastructure for increasing demand. The best solution is, and will continue to be, to make purchasing the product more attractive than pirating it. Serial code registration being required to obtain patches and patches that include content updates are the best answer I have seen so far for that.

The bandwidth limit applies to residential accounts. These ISP obviously offer commercial accounts with more flexibility on webhostings and the like.

 

[infornography42]

The bandwidth limit applies to residential accounts. These ISP obviously offer commercial accounts with more flexibility on webhostings and the like.

Obviously. And they charge an arm and a leg for it I am sure.

Generally the cheapest business class lines you can get in the states run a minimum of $150 a month and that is for far less bandwidth than can easily be had for $45 a month in residential class connections. For someone just starting a small business or hosting a webcomic that generates little to no profit, that is a LOT OF MONEY for a bunch of services and such that they don't need. A residential class DSL connection would probably be sufficient in most cases.

These limits just serve as a way of forcing those people into paying more for their service.

 

[robwright]

@ Cafuddled, I appreciate the honesty, even though I disagree with your opinion that your pirating isn't hurting anyone. Crytek would also respectfully disagree with you. Check this out:

http://www.pcplay.hr/modules.php?r=23

Again, this goes back to my point that even good games get ripped off. And if you get used to paying nothing for something, you're still going to do it even when you have money. I know Caffudled's experience is only one anectdotal example, but I have the urge to write "I rest my case." Which I just did.

 

[cafuddled]

Serial code registration being required to obtain patches and patches that include content updates are the best answer I have seen so far for that.

Yeah that one does work, just means magazines are not going to be able to put patches on there discs and that 3rd party hosts are not able to offer patches… But I guess that would not be the end of the world.

It’s just an extension from not being able to play pirated games online, that’s something that works very well. I mean that’s one of the reasons I went out and paid for Crysis.

 

[infornography42]

@ Cafuddled, I appreciate the honesty, even though I disagree with your opinion that your pirating isn't hurting anyone. Crytek would also respectfully disagree with you. Check this out:

http://www.pcplay.hr/modules.php?r=23

Again, this goes back to my point that even good games get ripped off. And if you get used to paying nothing for something, you're still going to do it even when you have money. I know Caffudled's experience is only one anectdotal example, but I have the urge to write "I rest my case." Which I just did.

Debating this stuff is as always, difficult due to the complete lack of concrete numbers to work with, however I have plenty of anecdotal evidence of my own to support that a beefy percentage of ex pirates will purchase all, or nearly all of their software once they have good jobs.

Perhaps a good move would be for the software publishers, instead of paying for DRM, would be to pay for ads and articles in gaming mags and such that bring awareness of the piracy problem. Perhaps a lot of pirates just never really thought about the fact that their piracy is pushing developers to publish on consoles instead of PCs. Make it a matter of personal interest without just coming out and saying all pirates are evil self serving soandsos who are destroying the industry. Be more informative than combatant and maybe we will see some change.

I do honestly believe however, that DRM is driving piracy every bit as much, if not more than piracy is driving DRM. It is a self destructive cycle that needs to end and quite frankly, only the publishers and developers have the power to end it.

 

[Alex The PC Gamer]

@infornogra phy42: You're in Texas. This doesn't apply to you...yet.

Commercial Accounts for small companies are about 80-100$ in Canada. Obviously, there are other types of webhosting services at higher fees but a start-up business wouldn't require such a service.

 

[robwright]

I just think it's a sad day when a respected developer who made a game that epitomizing PC gaming comes out publicly and in no uncertain terms declares that PC gaming piracy is so bad it's destroying the platform and thus leading the developer to abandon PC game exclusives. And yes, I will take Yerli and Crytek at their word that piracy had a huge effect on Crysis. Quite frankly, I'm much more inclined to believe the developers and publishers than the people online who are breaking the law. But hey, that's just me.

Sure, I'd love to see research and actual numbers from Crytek that support its assertion about piracy. But let's be honest here: even if they did have numbers, a large number of folks are still going to engage in widespread denial and call Yerli and Crytek a bunch of liars that are blaming PC piracy for their woes.

Info, you make a good point about DRM. I actually think stuff like SecuROM and BioShock are creating a new generation of people who will download rather than buy. But here's the issue: if you ditch DRM completely, then you've left yourself defenseless and will lose a significant portion of your revenue to pirates. If you stick with DRM, then you likely will piss off your audience and even cause them to start pirating. So what do you do? Well, I guess you do what Crytek did and say "Hello Consoles!" I mean, does anyone think that Crytek is wrong here? Do we really blame them for ceasing to be a PC-only developer?

 

[razor512]

😀

Hold on now Rob, is your objection to piracy really about "hurting" the game companies?
Plus, I should point out that your analogy is flawed. Welfare checks and food stamps cost taxpayers money, the only cost associated with my example would be the pennies worth of bandwidth.

As others have pointed out, I was joking about the foodstamps bit. But yes, my objection is that piracy hurts the game companies. And I don't put much stock into argument that most pirates would never pay for the games anyway so the devs/pubs aren't losing any money. Pirates say they would never pay for these games because they DON'T have to pay for them -- they've found a very convenient way to get around that and have therefore convinced themselves that they're not really stealing. Plus, people can always convince themselves that a particular game isn't worth their money -- they'll play through 60 hours of Mass Effect and then turn around and say, oh that sucked. Really? Well...why did you play it for 60 freakin' hours? Isn't that worth something? And furthermore, should piracy only be allowed for cheap people who claim they'd never pay for game anyway? What about people with money who would pay for GTA 4?

- Copyright infringement != Stealing
- A digital copy of a game costs the developers nothing and if the user of the copy had never intended to buy the game from the developer, it deprives the developer of no more money than if the digital copy didn't exist.
- Most games are pretty crappy
- You can't return PC games in almost all circumstances
- People don't like to get burned by companies that release said **** games.
- Some people just prefer to not to pay $50 for 5 hours worth of entertainment

- Piracy = stealing
- Many pirates convince themselves that all games suck and aren't worth the money even though they pirate tons of games and play them for hours.
- Many games are crappy, but even great games get pirated (hellow Call of Duty 4)
- Some people like to try "demos" before they buy a PC game, or perhaps rent a console game. Or -- and this is totally radical thought -- wait 6-12 months for a price drop and pickup up for $20.
- Some developers/pubs don't like to get burned by watching half their audience steal their work, hence they go with DRM and copy protection measures.
- Some people who think that games are crappy and over-priced simply decide NOT TO PLAY THE FREAKIN' GAMES if they're so bad and such a waste of time.

how can you tell if the game sucks if you don't play it first?

(reviews ?, FEAR expansion got crappy reviews by most places but i really enjoyed the game, it was extremely good)

GTA SA got great reviews but to me the game sucked because it got boring fast


some game demos make crappy games look good,

like penumbra black plague, the demo was cool but the actual game was one of the worst games i ever played



console games are pirated hundreds of times more than pc games are, the reason why they make so much from console games are that everyone who has the console can run the game.

with a pc game, at most probably 2% of the pc owners can actually run the game so theres a much smaller group of potential sales

and if you look at some torrent sites you will see that a pc game will have like 10 thousand torrent downloads but only around 500 target file downloads, most torrent downloads never get completed. and most pirates are people who have no interest in playing the game. it is like those people who pirated crysis so they could try running it on a 400MHz pc with a good/ok agp card

 

[SnareSpectre]

Am I the only one who doesn't really care if games are multi-platform? I'd like to see games be on both PC and consoles, so long as the PC version doesn't get the short end of the stick, a la R6 Vegas (which ran like crap on a PC) or Resident Evil 4 (self-explanatory). I'm a big fan of everybody being able to play every game; I just choose the PC as my platform because I like the controls and games, when optimized well like COD4, look much better and run more smoothly and at higher resolutions. Sure, it's cool that Crysis was a PC-exclusive and I can wave my finger in console players' faces, but aside from the graphics looking amazing when set on "very high" (regardless of it being a slide show at those settings), there's nothing innovative or truly exciting about the game. Sure, the nanosuit is cool and the action is good...but there's nothing groundbreaking about the game. I like it, and it is very well-made, but it's overrated in the gaming community in my opinion. I just hate seeing games go to ONLY console, meaning I can't play them on my PC...like Halo 3 (which wouldn't be so gay if one could play it online via mouse and keyboard without the awful auto-aim), MGS 4, and so forth.

I'm getting off-topic so I'll throw in my two cents on the direction the piracy discussion is going - people would be dumb to think that piracy does not have at least a little negative effect on gaming companies. However, I also think people would be dumb to believe that game developers don't exaggerate its effects; it's all too easy to blame companies' lack of sales on piracy. Having this mindset of putting the blame on external things keeps companies from fixing the problems they have internally. To try to better illustrate what I just said, I think of it as an analogy; Crysis is to a game like Starcraft 2, as the PS3 is to the Nintendo Wii. Crysis has the best graphics out there bar none, and Crytek should be proud of their engine...but the system requirements printed on the back of the package scare people more than the Loch Ness Monster. Starcraft is marketed towards people will all types of computers, because Blizzard wants people who aren't Bill Gates to be able to enjoy their game fully. Similarly, the PS3 is graphically superior to the Wii, but it costs an arm, a leg, and a nasal passage more - and the Wii is geared toward "group fun." I think Yerli might be exaggerating these piracy assumptions; I don't believe for a second that Crysis would sell much better without any piracy at all, simply because it is designed for a much smaller target market than a Blizzard game.

On a final note - RobWright, what kind of education do you have? I'm intrigued that you correctly use words like "anecdotal" and "implore" in a forum where most people don't even bother to punctuate or capitalize their comments properly.