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

[Oh Snap]

[quotemsg=1658262,54,175297]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.[/quotemsg]
He has a PhD in Jerkology.

 

[Oh Snap]

^ I'm going to eat your face

 

[robwright]

[quotemsg=1658262,54,175297]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.[/quotemsg]

Four years of college, double major in English and journalism.

As for my forum prose, well, I used to engage in the same sort of thoughtless, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, profanity-laced, and insult-lade musings that a lot of people fling around on forums (including this particular thread). But then I grew up and got a job. So I have that going for me, which is nice.

 

[Oh Snap]

^ :/ <was sarcastic>

sarcastic face = eaten

 

[cafuddled]

Rob you say that you disagree with my pirating and say it is hurting someone. But then personally I buy games that I like, I have well over 200 PC games collecting dust at my parents house and about 40 or so that I keep at my flat. I do own Crysis as well as 2 copies of Farcry (don’t ask).

Every situation is different, you can’t say everyone that downloads games are the same and I don’t think I’m personally hurting any good games developers. Over the last 15 years or so I have probably pumped in 10’s of thousands of pounds in to the gaming industry. Not to mention the PC industry on all my PC upgrades. I do agree however someone that downloads a game to simply play it and never bothers buying anything and ends up playing the game online with hacked servers and such is indeed killing the industry.

But then is my tacking advantage of this system to circle the games I like to then buy them hurting anyone? Yes it is I guess, it’s hurting games and the developers that I don’t like/aren’t any good and in turn preventing them from hurting my cash flow. But I do realise people like me are in the minority, and the mass majority of those numbers you see on torrent sites are people who will never buy the game.

So what should I do, stop my acts on a moral ground and hurt my cash flow while giving money to developers who I feel don’t deserve it. Or do I take advantage of this avenue that I can travel down and save my self some money and direct the money I do spend on my games to the developers that make the games I like. But again this goes on to what I was saying before about the way games are sold is not working and needs to be changed.

Maybe pirates really are a side effect of a broken system that games retail on. Maybe PC game developers should wise up and change the system and this problem would not be so much of, well a problem.

 

[cafuddled]

Get one of these http://www.ebuyer.com/product/132439

 

[cafuddled]

You could try rubbing 2 sticks together and you might get an Internet connection. Hey why don't you just connect your mobile phone and activate it using that for the Internet. Hell I would not expect it to use more than 256k bandwidth for the activation, that's about one penny or something if not free. I mean nowadays there is 101 ways to connect to the Internet with even the least amount of effort.

 

[Alex The PC Gamer]

[quotemsg=1658279,65,51677]You could try rubbing 2 sticks together and you might get an Internet connection. Hey why don’t you just connect your mobile phone and activate it using that for the
Internet. Hell I would not expect it to use more than 256k bandwidth for the activation, that’s about one penny or something if not free. I mean nowadays there is 101 ways to connect to the Internet with even the least amount of effort.[/quotemsg]

I'll second that.

 

[crom]

DRM is terrible. There's no question about it. It doesn't work. I'll buy my games, but I'll also grab the no-CD cracks so I don't have to keep fishing for discs to play various games. As it stands now it only makes the task of playing a game on the PC much more difficult than playing one on the console. Again, I think Steam has it right with a digital login to access your games. How many people who play modern PC games don't have an internet connection?

However if you need offline access, set the system up so that you can grab offline 'tokens' from the online system allowing you to access a game if, for example, you're traveling without a net connection and want to play Half Life 2 on your laptop.

 

[physx7]

I though that cd's were necessary because they fed data off the disk that the game needed to play...

 

[prodigy83]

[quotemsg=1658073,40,169699]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.[/quotemsg]

There are also review sites where you can go and check out what other people think about the game. If the review is good, you might buy it.
Other than that I totally agree with you.
1. Pirating is not stealing.
2. If you won't ever buy the game and pirate it, is the same as if you don't buy the game and not pirate it (to the revenues of the company) It actually might be good for them if you pirate, as it raises awareness, or if the game is good, when you can afford it you might buy its sequels or products from that company.
3. I would buy games if they were cheaper (in Romania where I live I make about $700 a month, mind you that that is a pretty good wage. My parents make about 800 put together and they are over 50 years old. Taking into account that I make $700, I pay rent (share an apartment with 3 guys), I pay food, I pay transportation, internet, and everyday conveniences I am left with 250 to 300 $ A MONTH. Do you think I would pay $50 which adding taxes from my country would be $80 (more that 10% than I make in a month and almost 30% than what I am left with after I pay my bills) on a game. I will pirate it and never feel sorry.
However if it was $15 I would buy it no questions asked. Or if I earned more.
CEO's need to study economics.
Selling to 5 000 000 people for $ 50 is way less profitable than selling to 50 000 000 for 15 $

 

[robwright]

[quotemsg=1658271,61,51677]So what should I do, stop my acts on a moral ground and hurt my cash flow while giving money to developers who I feel don’t deserve it. Or do I take advantage of this avenue that I can travel down and save my self some money and direct the money I do spend on my games to the developers that make the games I like.[/quotemsg]

Well, since you asked, Cafuddled, I suggest you try this: stop pirating because it's unethical and illegal and instead be more selective about how you spend your money. In other words, don't buy any PC games unless you're nearly certain that it will be a good investment. Talk to your friends, read reviews that you trust, play demos, etc. Save your money for StarCraft 2 or whatever title you think we'll be worth it. And then screw the rest. That way, you're sticking it to the so-called bad developers that you feel are trying to rip you off and still maintaining a ethical stance while staying on the right side of the law. Use you're power as a consumer the right way.

But then is my tacking advantage of this system to circle the games I like to then buy them hurting anyone? Yes it is I guess, it’s hurting games and the developers that I don’t like/aren’t any good and in turn preventing them from hurting my cash flow.

I appreciate your honesty here, Cafuddled. But I'm troubled. These developers aren't forcing you to buy their products. You have control over your cash flow. You alone have the power to invest the money the way you see fit. You can prevent them from hurting your cash flow by being a more selective consumer. I know it's hard work, especially with all of the hype and less-than-trustworthy information sources. But by pirating a game, I just think you're being greedy. You want to have your cake and eat it too.

 

[infornography42]

I personally, prefer when a game is multiplatform. There is no downside except for when they cut too many corners on the port, which honestly had not been a significant problem for several years.

Also if Crytek had made Crysis multiplatform from the getgo, it would have had more reasonable system requirements at launch and probably had more PC sales as a result.

In other news... EA pulls a stupid and drags Bioware and Maxis down with it.

AMDfangirl already provided one link on this, but here is the official forum link that started the firestorm.

http://masseffect.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=628724&forum=125&sp=0

Pages and pages of canceled preorders and vows to boycott. Think the message will get across this time?

 

[robwright]

I'm writing an article on the Mass Effect/SecuROM matter now. Truly disappointing. I hope to have a response from BioWare soon.

 

[jalek]

For 25 years piracy's been a "crisis" that was about to end all computer software development as a business. There were rental stores in every little town and warez bbs's running 300 baud for fast retrieval of the latest gamez.

It seems the panic wasn't altogether warranted, maybe it was the copy protection that was common even then that saved them? I doubt it, I probably still have a 5.25" disk somewhere with Renegade and other sector copying utilities.

I'd moved away from all that in the military, then found Microsoft supporting BBS's giving games away to spur interest in their Windows product in the very early 90's. What sort of insanity is that? People should still be angry, all those starving programmers.

I find it more than ironic that someone who acknowledges being part of Fairlight, a pretty common name in the "scene" of the 80's, is now a GOP chairman in San Diego. Orrin Hatch should be outraged, that's his political dead horse.

But really, keep at it. Nobody actually cares, unless they have a financial stake or a political score to make. Kids will continue to acquire games in whatever method they can, older people who grew up in that world will continue to purchase most things. Some will never mature and find intrinsic value in legitimacy, and for those, maybe copy protections will discourage them sometimes if they don't care to figure out how to bypass the new methods.

No, really, this is an all new debate.

 

[clay12340]

It seems to me that the answer to piracy is very simple.

As technology increases in complexity developing a new intellectual property, visually stunning graphics, and/or interesting and unique game play will become more expensive. As expense increases risk increases.

In order to reduce risk groups band together and combine resources. The same combining that reduces risk stifles creativity. A group dedicated to reducing risk will favor titles/products with the least risk.

The titles/products with the least risk will come from an established formula. This formula has worked in the past and there is little incentive to change it if it means a loss of millions of dollars for a questionable gain. Brand name becomes more important than content.

When risks, including piracy, are spread across a more resilient group they no longer become a problem. It is mainly a talking point at this level, much like theft to any large retail organization. You deal with it as best as you can, and you account for it in your expectations. At best it becomes potential source of increased income if it can be successfully thwarted.

I would also argue that price point has nothing to do with it. $50 and $10 are nearly the same when it comes to luxury spending. Next to books video games are still by far the cheapest entertainment medium out there. Even averaging every crappy game I've bought into the equation I've easily gotten 50+ hours on average out of a game. Even not including the less than $50 games I've purchased that is costing me < $1/hr which is far and away my cheapest hobby. I can barely walk out the damn door without spending more than that.

On a side note all this crap about Crysis is really annoying to me. It is a crappy game that looks great and has ridiculous requirements. It's greatest value is as a benchmarking tool. Crysis' sales weren't disappointing due to anything aside from lack of product quality and an obvious lack of market research.

 

[jalek]

Ok, maybe there is a point to dragging this up occasionally. I was moving boxes of old boxes of software, wondering why I kept them, then remembering, most of these boxes I paid $40-50 for even if the programs within never worked.

Software licensing hasn't changed in 20 years or so either, with piracy being the excuse for not being able to return flawed programs and games. Without some sort of consumer protection, small development companies will always have this issue. There've been too many fly-by-night companies selling garbage-in-a-box that consumers are stuck with once the packaging's opened.

My experiences were more with DOS software, where programmers had to create their own interfaces, but the lessons learned still remain.

Allowing returns may or may not be of benefit overall, but it would at least keep me from feeling like I'd have to be an idiot to impulse buy a software title without spending hours researching it first.

 

[infornography42]

[quotemsg=1658317,72,47884]I'm writing an article on the Mass Effect/SecuROM matter now. Truly disappointing. I hope to have a response from BioWare soon.[/quotemsg]

Thank you. I think awareness is the only way we will ever see change and if every gaming related website does an article on this, then that is about as much awareness as I can reasonably hope to see.

 

[infornography42]

Sadly, I doubt that Bioware are the ones needing convincing. More likely this is the first sign that EA's control of Bioware will not be as seamless as they made it sound.

 

[inglburt]

[quotemsg=1658010,27,169699]Do I have to explain this to you again? Do you seriously not see a difference between physically TAKING a game off the shelf versus making a copy of a game on a hard drive? Stealing a game from a shelf 1) Gives you said game for free and most importantly 2) PREVENTS THE COMPANY FROM SELLING THAT SAME COPY TO SOMEONE ELSE, something that they will have to pay for to replace. Copying a game gives you the game for free, BUT you didn't just steal something from the developer.

If you use a raygun that duplicates matter on my TV set, and now you have your own TV just like mine, I'm not out a **** TV set. Holy ****, we had a whole thread about this before and you're still spewing the same ignorant equivocations as you were before.[/quotemsg]

Apparently you don't understand... Just because you don't have to physically walk into a store and steal it does not mean that when you download it for free it's not theft. That's the big problem with piracy, it allows spineless weasels to steal with such little risk that they can justify it in their narrow little minds. That is one big downfall of the anonymity of the internet. It allows all these little people to inflate their ego's and personalities beyond what they would be in the real world all because they are not actually facing reality and people that could kick their a$$es in the real world. And how do you think that someone downlaoding a game is not taking any money form the company? What kind of fraking idiot thinks that taking something for free instead of buying a physical copy does not take money from the company? Sure the dvd is still in the store, but now someone is playing the game for free. And that dvd that he would have bought is still in the store. Is any of this getting through to you? Nah, probably not I suppose. Even if it is, you strike me as the type that would spend a week arguing something that you don't even believe yourself just to try to be right.
The biggest thing that pi$$es me off about piracy it the fact that it is hurting all of the honest people that pay for the games. The devs are already spending less time and effort on pc games because too many copies are getting ripped off. So the more people say that games are just crappy console ports or whatever. It's only going to get worse people. It's happening more and more every day.
"Earlier this month Crytek, makers of Far Cry and Crysis, revealed the studio would no longer support PC exclusives. Cevat Yerli, Crytek President, pointed his finger towards piracy and claimed the company was “suffering” from the huge piracy stemming from its recent Crysis release. EA Sports president Peter Moore also revealed recently that Madden NFL 2009 would not be slated for the PC platform. The decision marks the first time Madden will not be available for the PC since the inception of the title. "
So I guess that a good reason to steal more, cause the the games are getting crappier I shouldn't have to buy them. So I will steal them, so the games will get crappier...
And I hear people whining about GTAV not coming to the pc soon enough or whatever. Why would they want to keep porting popular games to the PC just some more people can steal it? And most of you people that say, I will try before I buy are full of crap. I know a few people first hand that say this all the time, and I hear "Yeah, I played it through but it wasn't that great so I decided not to buy it." So you got to play it for 10 or 20 hours or whatever for free. And the dev didn't get the money they would have. And then you complain because the next game is halfassed.
Whatever, you guys suck. And that is one thing that won't change...
Whatever, you guys suck.

 

[Oh Snap]

It's digital vs. physical. Apples and oranges. If you get a hold of a framework I've written in PHP and make a copy for yourself, I still have my code. If I put my code onto cd's, put each CD into a box I paid for and put each box on the shelf and I have say... 10 boxes containing CDs with my code for sale, and you walk into the store and steal one of them, how many boxes do I have?

Situation one (you just copied my code):
I have 1 (one) .zip file full of code. After you work your magic, I still have 1 (one) .zip file full of code.
1 - X = 1. What's X?

Situation two (you just stole one of my beautiful printed boxes I paid for)
I have 10 (ten) awesome printed boxes with a CD in each one, and a little printed manual talking about how awesome my code is. After you make off with 1 of my boxes, I only have 9 products left on the shelves.
10 - X = 9. What's X?

Situation three (you don't set foot in my store, you don't copy anything, but you simply just don't buy any of my awesome products). I start with 10 products on the shelf, you don't buy or copy anything, so in the end I still have 10 products on the shelf.
10 - X = 10. What's X?

Compare X's.

Really, the first situation should be:
(1 * 2) - 1 = 1. You're taking my product and duplicating it. Multiplication followed by subtraction, as opposed to direction subtraction. You're multiplying the number of instances of the .zip file, and then taking all of the new ones you've just created. In the eyes of the law, every instance created of that .zip file should "belong to me" in the sense that you're only paying for a license to use it, and you MUST pay for a license. However, if some kid makes a copy of my code on their computer at home, I might never know about it, and he's not necessarily hurting me or my income, although he could be depending on the circumstances. On a fundamental level, situation 1 and situation 2, while still arguably unethical in their own way, are two completely different things.

 

[jalek]

Far Cry, Crysis and Madden, I've neither downloaded nor purchased any of those for the PC. I'm sure it's due to piracy and nothing more.

Meanwhile, I typically buy 2-3 titles a month, sometimes PC, sometimes console.

DRM nightmare stories don't encourage me any, I already have to call MS if I change my overclock settings and not all services start so Windows dumps my activation. You don't know how much I'd prefer to just have it cracked and be done with their "protection" scheme instead of having them offer to sell me another license.

 

[infornography42]

Actually, I hold out hope that Bioware will maintain artistic integrity. I don't doubt that they will work hard to make their games as good as they have been in the past. Just that they might be a bit more rushed, and they might be a bit more "safe" (as in more of the same genres and concepts) and a bit more DRMed... or maybe a lot more DRMed.

I would still be a loyal customer of theirs if it were not for the DRM. It makes me sad.

 

[cafuddled]

I’m taking in what your saying Rob, and I do to some extent agree with you. It’s not that I don’t feel bad about downloading games, but I somehow feel I need to, to protect my self. I have just been stung a few too many times by retail stores and it really has left a bad taste in my mouth. When you buy things like the Monkey island adventure pack and find out 2 out of the 3 games don’t work on your system and tech support are saying they can’t do anything. But when you go to take the game back to the retail store to get your money back they refuse to take back opened games, it kind of makes you a little bit pissed.

By law in the UK your consumer rights are that you’re allowed to take back any item for a full refund if your not happy within 7 days. But game stores are arguing that you have opened the packaging there for making the item unsuitable for resale so they refuse to give you your money back.

The question is I guess: Is it reasonable for a games publisher to expect people to have to spend hours dredging up info to see if the game seems to be up to the customers expectation on a non refundable very expensive games purchase. (I would bet people spend more time reading in to game purchases than most people do in to buying a new car and cars you can take back within 30 days if your not happy.) So basically I guess we are saying here is that spur of the moment buys should not be acceptable. You can return a TV if the colour of it does not match your wallpaper. But you can’t return a game if you don’t like it or it does not work on your PC, makes sense huh.

Rob do you really feel that the way the gaming industry works on the market is good or do you feel it needs to change? Also do you think that piracy is only ever caused by greed or do you think that some of it could be caused by how games publishers are distributing there content?

 

[Alex The PC Gamer]

However, if some kid makes a copy of my code on their computer at home, I might never know about it, and he's not necessarily hurting me or my income, although he could be depending on the circumstances

Oh Snap:

I won't give you my own formula of how it IS stealing but here's why people argue with you in a nut shell.

The full cost of publishers goes way beyond the packaging. There are programmers to pay, marketing fees, etc. In return what they are looking for is clearly and legally stated in their copyright; the product is not to be redistributed without a license or be involved in any form of piracy. This becomes a law once the publisher registers a copyright on software.

Now if I can try to paraphrase your argument: You're saying that because you are not physically stealing the game, then it is morally right to play the pirated copy. Which leads to saying that if you download the torrent, which allows you to play the full game for free, then it would not be stealing if you had no intention to purchase it in the first place, right?

Playing a videogame (even trying it for 20 minutes) is a privilege you get if you purchased a product (as stated in their copyright). Just like watching TV, you have to pay for your TV package and then you get X amount of channels. If you decided to hack your TV signal with a black box, and stop paying your television bill, then obviously you are not stealing a "box" in the store but you are stealing from your television service provider. Same applies to videogames. Playing the videogame (full retail version) for free is an infringement to the copyright laws and you are committing an illegal action by downloading that torrent and playing the game for free (even if the game sucks). That is why people keep arguing with you. You are violating an intellectual property act.

Now, if you want to debate on why your moral theories are above the law, then you’ll be arguing for a long long time.

Also do you think that piracy is only ever caused by greed or do you think that some of it could be caused by how games publishers are distributing there content?

Cafuddled:

Regarding piracy and the general argument is: Why would I pay for a game when I can download it for free and play it for free? Not sure if it's greed...maybe for some. I'd say it's just more appealing for most to be spending their money on some hardware or whatever rather than a game that can easily be played for free.

The distribution of content is key here and I have no idea why publishers are still distributing PC games the same way as they are distributing console games.

I know the question was ment for Rob but there's my 2 cents.