By Jim Rossignol on January 25th, 2008 at 9:30 am.
Ars Technica have posted a piece on the BSA’s recent piracy study, the conclusion of which is that digital file-stealing is actually stunting economies around the world to a significant degree.
If the amount of software piracy in the US were to be reduced by 10 percentage points over the next four years, IDC believes the end result would be $41 billion in economic growth, $7 billion in additional tax revenues, and the creation of over 32,000 new jobs. In countries with higher rates of piracy, the impact would be even greater.
And it’s at this point that my understand of economics fails, because aren’t those people who aren’t spending money on pirated good actually spending the money they would have spent on something else? And if there’s no money to be spent on the games in the first place, necessitating piracy, where would all this extra cash come from? Hmm.
25/01/2008 at 09:57 Steve says:
Not entirely. In short, a pound in one market can go further than a pound in another. There’s a whole world of difference in buying £20 of game and £20 of beer.
Also, come on, we all know most piracy isn’t done out of destitution.
25/01/2008 at 10:04 Grandma Pod says:
32,000 new jobs?
Persumably because the pirates all new to get jobs at McDonalds in order to actually buy games?
25/01/2008 at 10:19 Lightbulb says:
Well it works on the assumption that if people spent money on games instead of pirating them there would be a growth in sales. This is obvious.
However i have borrowed games from my friends before – thus ‘losing a sale’ – but i never would have bought the game at all under any circumstances therefore me NOT borrowing it has NO effect on sales.
25/01/2008 at 10:30 Meat Circus says:
I don’t believe in imaginary property and neither should you.
The BSA are corrupty, filthy, lying, deceitful greedy scumbags and every piece of bullshit propaganda that comes out of their subhuman mouths should be treated with the contempt it so thoroughly deserves.
Your portrayal of them as stupid is dangerous. They know full well that their lies make no sense, and understand the real economics. But their contemptuous attitude to mankind is that since our dim-witted governments and legislatures in Westminster, Brussels and DC have a limited grasp of economics, such unreconstructed crap is perfectly okay to spout as a means to an end to extort ever more draconian and imbecilic Imaginary Property laws.
The spanner in the works of their little plan is, organizations like the BSA keep hoping the proles are just as corrupt and gullible as our elected representatives, yet time and time again, they’re not.
YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A CAR
YOU WOULDN’T ABUSE A BABY
SO WHY DOWNLOAD SOFTWARE?
PIRATING SOFTWARE IS AS BAD AS FIDDLING WITH AN ENTIRE KINDERGARTEN.
Kill the BSA with painful tumours please Lord Xenu.
25/01/2008 at 10:30 Joonas says:
These studies always fall apart when they try to gauge the allegedly lost sales. The heavy pirates I’ve known have been more collectors than gamers, not really playing the games. Obviously piracy has an effect on sales and day-one cracks do make a dent on overall sales, but I just don’t buy the idea that you can just multiply the number of pirated games with the RRP.
When I didn’t have enough money for new games, I only bought my games used or from sales. Those are all “lost sales”, too. Instead of focusing on piracy, I feel the publishers should think more about how they could add value for the prospective customer. Most people happily pay monthly fees for online games they love, for instance.
25/01/2008 at 10:37 Philip says:
And it’s at this point that my understand of economics fails, because aren’t those people who aren’t spending money on pirated good actually spending the money they would have spent on something else?
It’s a good point, as all these studies seem to suggest that stopping piracy will magically conjure up millions of dollars of money that people are going to spend that they weren’t spending on something else. It’s like a person pirating a game says to themselves “I don’t want to spend £30 on Crysis, so I’ll find a crack and put that £30 into a savings account…”.
25/01/2008 at 10:39 Leelad says:
If all developers released demo’s like the Crysis one, piracy would vanish overnight.
25/01/2008 at 10:48 marilena says:
I can’t be bothered to go through the study, but it seems a bit ridiculous. They think the state would get more money from taxes? The only way I can imagine this would happen is if they would tax games more than other goods.
25/01/2008 at 10:56 David says:
Leelad, you say that but Crysis has both a high rate of piracy and low sales so I’m not sure that holds much water. (It was a great demo though)
25/01/2008 at 11:04 DigitalSignalX says:
I can say with certainty that I would *never* have purchased dozens and dozens of games over the years had I not already established a positive experience with either the franchise or an unknown publisher’s credibility via dubious means we won’t speak of.
It’s a double edge sword though, clearly developers of AAA titles lose money, but sort of like music sharing, piracy is a superb shot in the arm for the “little guy” who would never have had their work hit the mainstream without it.
25/01/2008 at 11:07 Pwnzerfaust says:
As far as I can tell, a good deal of people only pirate games when they feel that it isn’t worth their money to buy them.
Clearly the solution is to not make bad games.
25/01/2008 at 11:10 ed says:
“aren’t those people who aren’t spending money on pirated good actually spending the money they would have spent on something else?”
…and who says that the consumers would choose to buy the real things if they couldn’t get the free, pirated copies.
25/01/2008 at 11:20 po says:
I wouldn’t. Thing have a value as well as a price. There are too many games that have been overhyped, that turned out to be rubbish, so it’s no wonder people DL to see if the demo is really the only good bit of the game.
Valve has the right idea. Give a damn about the games you make, and cut out the publishers that are shafting the games industry (and bitching about piracy more than anyone else, while being the biggest cause of it).
25/01/2008 at 11:23 Meat Circus says:
…and who says that the consumers would choose to buy the real things if they couldn’t get the free, pirated copies.
Well, the BSA does. But they know it’s not true, and they know that we know. I wonder why they bother, and then I remember it’s because they’re demon spawn.
25/01/2008 at 11:30 Nick says:
I notice the PC crowd is always the big bad pirate crew, but as we all know there are plenty of pirated PS and Xbox games. There may not be as many pirates in the console crowd BUT they have one thing the PC doesn’t: a massive second had market. Pre-owned games surely lose just as many sales for the consoles as pirating does for the PC – especially if you factor in pirating on top of that? The preowned market is HUGE and games can go through multiple owners with only the original actually being sold properly. No one ever mentions this and PCs remain the bugbear, dropped as a platform by whiney developers/publishers infavour of perfect console land.
Meanwhile those of us who actually by games are fucked over by everyone.
25/01/2008 at 11:31 Phil says:
“And it’s at this point that my understand of economics fails, because aren’t those people who aren’t spending money on pirated good actually spending the money they would have spent on something else?”
The short answers is no, in the terms BSA’s study defines it, it would be beyond the scope of what is being analysed, which is why economics frequently descends into an ontological pissing contest.
25/01/2008 at 11:33 Muzman says:
from the article
In the past, the IDC has derived its software piracy rates by comparing the estimated amount of software installed on the average computer in a country with the amount of software actually sold. Figure out the number of PCs in the country, do a little multiplication, and you’ve got a figure that supposedly represents the amount of money lost to pirated software.
Man, when is someone going to get some decent information on this stuff. There are more in depth studies into organised crime and illegal prostitution than there are some thing as fairly straightforward as piracy (perhaps for obvious reasons).
The other thing besides (or a corollary to) the zero sum game aspect is that piracy doesn’t harm hardware sales in the least and in the perfect scenario it’s doubtful hardware could have advanced as fast as it has with everyone spending every cent on software instead (admittedly, they’re only talking in gentler terms of ten percent drops and hardware advancing slower might actually have been a good thing in some respects)
25/01/2008 at 11:37 Ben says:
The position that every pirated copy of a game substitutes for a copy that would have been bought if piracy was impossible is obviously wrong. But they’re not saying that – they’re saying that if 10% of pirated copies were replaced by legit copies, then more people would be in jobs. That’s clearly true, because there ARE people who pirate games they really want because it’s easy, but could have paid or saved up for it. And that would keep more smaller PC developers in work, force those people to do part time jobs instead of just sitting in their bedrooms wanking, etc. You can’t assume they are all spending their money on something else because a lot of them may be playing games instead of doing something that costs money.
Stupid though some of the more extreme anti-piracy positions are, it’s also pretty stupid to say that “I don’t believe in imaginary property”. If everyone agreed and started pirating games, there would be no high-end games development at all. And bedroom coders like Introversion would spend most of their time in day jobs coding banking systems.
25/01/2008 at 11:41 ed says:
“a massive second had market. Pre-owned games surely lose just as many sales for the consoles as pirating”
and isn’t it–ironicaly–the industry’s fault that there’s a huge, retailer supported, pre-owned market? at least in the us, according to this article:
http://www.costik.com/weblog/2007/02/are-retailers-actually-screwed.html
25/01/2008 at 11:46 Rayme says:
I think the darling people doing the actual pirating are the “biggest cause of it”.
And who downloads a 6-gig ISO to “just check it out”? Do you honestly that would be a majority of the people?
Look, I would never subscribe to the ignorant “each pirated copy is a lost sale!” rhetoric, but there’s more than a grain of truth to it. For illustration… y’see, there are thousands of people playing CoD4 on crack servers RIGHT NOW.
See here? (link)
..and the numbers are consistently high, every evening (these just being the obvious servers listed on this service). I suggest that means a large number of them are playing consistently, every night. If they don’t want to buy it, then WHY ARE THEY PLAYING IT ALL THE DAMN TIME? It sure seems to have some value to them.
25/01/2008 at 12:30 Turin Turambar says:
If piracy were impossible software sales would increase.
A 20% of the lost sales or something like that. Not the 100% as the BSA and other studies indicate.
Most people who pirate games wouldn’t buy more games, but turn on the tv, or read some magazine, or go out more with friends, etc etc. But they wouldn’t buy the same amount of games that they downloand and copy right now.
25/01/2008 at 12:34 AbyssUK says:
Hey the industry had its chance to jump into the digital distribution area and stop a lot of piracy. What did they do.. released box games and downloadable games at either the same price or with a saving of like £2.50 for the downloadable and may us pay for updates!. Then crippled us with spyware and stupid activation systems, destroyed LAN gaming by making you require 1 cd per game or everybody requiring a unique key.
The pirates are the gamers response to the idiots in the game industry trying harder and harder to screw us over. Look at the new batch of games requiring games for windows LIVE gold accounts for multiplayer… we won’t stand for it we can hack and we will carry on hacking until the idiots in the games/it industry get a grip and stop forcing shit on us.
25/01/2008 at 12:54 sigma83 says:
As a person who lives in a city where the minimum wage is ~40 cents an hour, I can see why piracy is huge here. Games (And DVDs, and albums) simply cost too much for the average joe to afford dropping cash on on a regular basis.
The only upside is that hardware here is near factory price.
All the points I see above for and against piracy (and DEFINITELY against the BSA) are valid to a degree. I believe there is no true single ‘reason’ and it’s simply an amalgamation of factors, but I believe the biggest one is ‘value’, where I simply feel that with most games I am simply not getting my money’s worth from full price, so I simply don’t buy them.
25/01/2008 at 12:59 Steve Cooper says:
Pirates want something for nothing, let’s not get carried away with anything as “noble” as taking on the evil MegaCorp Inc.
Back when the Spectrum and C64 were the gaming kings and those young upstarts the Amiga and ST were making their debuts, I owned a high street shop that sold, among other things, games software. I was losing sales to the pirates who were copying 99p cassette tapes – what injustices from which companies were they railing against then?
25/01/2008 at 13:23 AbyssUK says:
Oh oh don’t get me wrong I hate people who sell pirated goods! The scum at computer markets selling bad divx’s and games across the globe do my head in big time. Thats a different story in my book.
25/01/2008 at 13:46 Mr Pink says:
One of the biggest issues imho is that often it is easier to pirate a game than it is to go out and buy it. Digital distribution of games leaves a lot to be desired at the moment. Also, as someone has mentioned above, the prices are often ludicrous. By downloading a game I would say we should be saving 30-50% compared to the boxed copy.
25/01/2008 at 13:48 The Sombrero Kid says:
i am a game developer and i don’t believe i own any of my code the fact is i need a revenue stream for the work i do and the goverment a while back decided the best model that fitted was the ownership model the fact is it isn’t true.
In my opinion my work as well as the work of any write once read many entertainer should be paid for by the government and all the IP’s should belong to them/everyone, copywrite law is unenforcable and almost constitutes a thought crime especially when programming is concerned i.e. i’m not allowed to arive at the same conclusion for a solution to a problem that has been solved before and copywrighted, without paying the person money or if they’ve given the idea to someone else i have to pay them, for doing didly squat.
25/01/2008 at 14:17 cliffski says:
wow I hope that post is a joke, because the idea of me having to go to the government and have them approve my design document before I’m allowed to make a game is just fucking silly.
The free market consistently gives people the best entertainment, unless you somehow think that North Korea and Soviet Russia were hotbeds of creative freedom?
Anyone pretending ‘its all teh evil companies fault’ is just talking crap. Games are luxury items, its not food. if you cant afford them, or you don’t like the terms (DRM etc) on which they are sold, just do without them. If you can afford a PC that will play crysis, you can flipping well afford the game.
as to the economics, if people get all their entertainment for free, they are not motivated to work more (better job/overtime/get a job) etc, which is where the explanation lies for the lost potential boost to the economy.
25/01/2008 at 14:21 Hobbes says:
Ah, this is probably the funniest thing I’ve read all day.
25/01/2008 at 14:21 AndrewA says:
The Sombrero Kid, That is a nonsense though and you must know it. The only way to judge what the product is worth is to sell it. In that system you would have to have some flat rate value on all IP. Then you would get nothing but vast amount of low quality work and no quality based valuation could ever be placed upon it.
Also your conclusion about copywright seems to be incorrect. Software Patents are tough to get and harder to enforce. 2 People can arrive at the same answer to a problem but you cannot simply copy someone elses answer. See word processors, I could write one and sell it and not have to pay anyone anything, I cannot copy OpenOffice and release it as my own work.
The whole argument is like 2 Iraqii Information Ministers facing off. “Piracy is great and actually improves Developers sales!!! And it cures Cancer” …”Piracy is destorying civialisation as we know it!! and it gives you herpes”
25/01/2008 at 14:26 Lou says:
Too much of a minefield for me for a Friday afternoon.
Don’t think anyone can deny that piracy hurts the industry, to which extent can be argued about. Of course not everyone who pirates something would buy it, but a significant enough percentage would.
Generally, I am of the opinion that copyright infirngement is just as bad as theft of an object. If you steal a game in a shop, the material value you steal (the box and the data carrier) is negligible. The value is the IP on the disc. Not much difference to downloading it.
25/01/2008 at 14:42 Okami says:
Want to know what’s really funny?
Ever since I’ve had enough money, I allways bought my games (even if that meant beeing ridiculed by my friends), since I’ve allways dreamt about beeing a game developer myself some day and piratin games just felt wrong to me. I’ve paid good money for some really awfull games in my time.
Now that I work in game development, I have less qualms about pirating games. Why? Because I’ve had jobs as a call center agent that paid better than most studios I’ve worked for and I just can’t afford to buy 4 to 6 games a month anymore..
Sweet irony!
25/01/2008 at 14:57 Hobbes says:
Hmm, Whatever you think about copyright infringement on software, I Think we *can* all agree that the BSA is highly unlikely to gather, analyse or present data on the phenomenon (non non) in an unbiased and dispassionate manner.
I’d be interested in seeing a good, objective study into this, but unless an academic does a paper off their own back, we’re unlikely to see on whilst the main funding source for such studies remains the industry itself.
25/01/2008 at 14:59 AndrewA says:
Thats why I work in financial system development. It’s all down to economics again, so many people want to be games developers that they dont really need to pay them because there will always be people wanting to do it. Fewer people want to work for investment banks as devs so they pay big money to secure the best talent.
Good old supply and demand.
25/01/2008 at 15:04 Anonononomous says:
Jim, did you really say that something “necessitates” piracy?
Nothing necessitates piracy. People who try to justify their piracy are pathetic.
25/01/2008 at 15:04 Meat Circus says:
@Andrew A:
As somebody who works as a developer in the City, to say that more people want to be games developers than work in the city seems to me not to be completely true.
But then again, the fact that I’m earning four times what I would be in the games industry swayed my mind a long time ago, so perhaps I’m just a whore and completely biased?
The thing is, the games industry treats its devs like shit, whereas The City treats its devs as a goldmine, with associated compensation. I know which I prefer.
25/01/2008 at 15:27 ishkamiel says:
Surely the bad thing in either downloading/stealing isn’t someone getting something for free, but rather it hurting someone else? Downloading will cause loss of potential sales, whereas stealing will cause the loss of something the store has had to acctually pay for. (I admit I don’t know how stores/insurances/whoever handle losses due to theft, so I might be wrong, and it really is just the material value being lost)
Not that I agree with the imaginary property sentiment as any justification for piracy, it’s like instead believing in imaginary developers, that’d keep making games without getting paid. And how is it that when it comes to piracy, disagreeing about price means you just get to have it for free?
I do believe though that DRM hurts more than it helps, and that copyright laws and BSA studies aren’t quite what they should. Just for the record.
25/01/2008 at 15:46 Okami says:
Nothing necessitates piracy.
Wrong! Imagine the mafia kidnapping your girlfriend. And they’ll kill her, unless you can manage to beat.. ohh… let’s say.. Doom3!! And you don’t have the game and you don’t have money and no time to go and buy the game!
So you have to download a pirated version of Doom3 to rescue….
I’ll stop now…
25/01/2008 at 16:14 Meat Circus says:
@Anon: Getting games for free necessitates piracy. Unless you can think of a better way?
It’s odd that using the Internet to move some bits of data from one place to another is considered ‘pathetic’ in the mind of the more brainwashed corporate shills like Anononononymous.
25/01/2008 at 16:22 Alec Meer says:
Opinions not insults please, folks. Further flaming will see The Delete Beast sent in.
25/01/2008 at 16:25 Gwyn says:
Cuba pays its artists to produce art. Its culture wouldn’t be nearly as rich and interesting (and authentic) if it followed economics. That’s not an argument for or against communism, it’s just proof of concept.
Besides which – it’s really not beyond anyone to download a 6 gig ISO to check it out. Where have you been living for the last 3 years?
25/01/2008 at 16:28 cliffski says:
Am I a brainwashed corporate shill? I’m an indie develoepr, I’ve worked for lionhead and been a gamer since pong. I think you can actually realise that piracy is morally wrong AND killing off the industry without being ‘a corporate shill’ or ‘an agent of teh mafiaaaaa’.
I make more games per year now I can do it full time. If my game sales didn’t pay my rent I’d have to go get a job doing something else, and I’d make no more games. It really is that simple. if everyone had pirated uplink, there would have been no defcon. If everyone pirates mulitwinia, there will be no more introversion games.
Game developers are just as entitled to be paid for their work as plumbers, doctors, lawyers or builders.
25/01/2008 at 16:35 Dot says:
Meh, maybe what they said really did sound somewhat…weird, the fact that pirating games harms the PC gaming industry is still there. Just don’t pirate stuff.
25/01/2008 at 16:49 Lou says:
“It’s odd that using the Internet to move some bits of data from one place to another is considered ‘pathetic’ in the mind of the more brainwashed corporate shills like Anononononymous.”
What’s the problem with moving a few sheets of paper with numbers printed on them from the next bank to my house?
You’re confusing the ease of piracy with the act itself. Your attitude is exactly the problem. People think everything on the internet is free, and because it’s so easy to get, it can’t do any harm. Don’t really mind if people who also buy stuff downlaod the odd thing, but I can’t stand unreflected justifications.
25/01/2008 at 16:53 Meat Circus says:
Calling piracy a “moral wrong” is already evidence of how far [your feelings on the matter differ to mine] I’m afraid. So yes.
Copyright is supposed to be a limited-term compromise between the rights of the public and the desire to encourage creativity.
The escalation via propaganda of such imaginary property into a moral right is of manifest harm to the public good, and is nothing more than corporate welfare whining. The Universe does not owe you a living. The day you start imagining you have a moral right to such is the day you become a corporate shill.
My plumber does not have a right to a payment every time I take a shit; Nor should a game developer imagine they have a ‘right’ to get paid every time somebody moves certain numbers through some wires.
It pays to be aware of the origins and reasoning behind imaginary property like copyrights. Once you start thinking of them as ‘moral’ you have already lost.
They are inherently amoral; They are a utilitarian concept at core. To abuse them into thinking your ‘right’ to get paid tramples all of mankinds access to our shared cultural heritage is [not something I approve of]. The thriving of fair use and the wellbeing of the creative commons is more important than your bank balance. Sorry.
25/01/2008 at 17:03 AndrewA says:
@Meat Circus
Surely you believe it is right for everyone to be paid for the work they do in some respect? If your employer decided simply not to pay you because he didn’t feel like it you would be outraged. Do you not think it is your employers moral obligation to pay you for the work he has hired you to do.
Intellectual property is much the same in my view. If I just take it for free all i’m saying is I dont think your worth paying for the job your doing. Yes i’m going to use your work and possibly enjoy it, but I dont think I should pay for it.
I dont think it’s being a corporate shill to think that, it just seems correct, in a moral sense.
25/01/2008 at 17:09 Meat Circus says:
@AndrewA:
An individual developer has the right to withdraw his labour if he doesn’t get paid. That’s not what we’re talking about here.
We’re talking about licenses and copyrights. The ‘right’ of a corporation to get money every time some bits are moved over a wire, or every time a small plastic disc moves from one place to another.
It’s precisely as ludicrous as my plumber getting a royalty every time I take a dump. Only, plumbers haven’t spent decades brainwashing people and corrupting parliamentarians with draconian legislation to convince them that this absurdity is a ‘right’.
Don’t confuse the individual worker’s right to withdraw his labour for lack of compensation with the enormities of modern copyright laws. They are unrelated, and you have made a huge category error in conflating unrelated concepts.
25/01/2008 at 17:11 Phil says:
Much as I enjoy watching an ethnical argument degenerate into bitter personal attacks, I think we might be missing the point by focusing on morality of the piracy.
I don’t think piracy, on the whole, hurts the industry. Instead it’s the thing that lets it grow so spectacularly. The model seems to be that kids (of all eras) pirate, fall in love with the medium, grow up, get jobs, realise they can afford the cash to avoid messing around with .iso files for hours on end and start buying games. If my Amiga and Playstation hadn’t allowed me to pirate games I would likely got interested in something else, like voluntary work in an animal shelter – so piracy could be blamed dogs going unwalked if nothing else.
25/01/2008 at 17:11 Okami says:
Meat Circus: Look buddy. I’m as left wing and bleeding heart liberal as the next guy passing out in drug induced coma next to me, wearing an Anti-Capitalista shirt.
As I’ve said, I’m a developer and I do sometimes pirate games, especially if they’re hard to get (hello obscure japanes ds title!) or if I’m flat out broke. Which hasn’t happened in quite a few years, thank you very much.
I’ve pirated mp3s and movies, etc…
And I’m sure, most of the people here (especially if, like me, they grew up during the golden age of home computers) have done likewise.
But at least I’m not claiming some morale high ground here!
People work their asses off (for low wages) to create these things. They deserve credit and recognition for that. In the form of money, if you please, because warm feelings don’t pay rent!
Pirating a game every now and then… Well, it won’t hurt anyone. But please spare us your [arguably wrong-headed argument] about copyright being inherently amoral, thus justifying pirating.
When I create a PayPal account (eventhough I hate digital transactions, credit cards and all that other nonsense) just so I can pay for Darwinia, when I give a friend of mine some cash so that he will use his credit card to buy me Armageddon Empire, I’m not supporting some evil capitalist corporations. I’m showing people who put their heart’s blood into something some respect!
And that’s what it all boils down to. If you pirate a game, you disrespect all the hard work the people who made it have put into. You disrespect people who routinely hurt their health during crunch time, who jeopardize their relationships and do all of that for wages that other people wouldn’t even leave their house for.
No amount of spinning on your side will change that simple fact.
25/01/2008 at 17:23 Anonononomous says:
Yes, I must be a corporate shill because I believe that the people who contribute to making my life fun deserve compensation. [I feel your argument is weaker than mine]. First you say that you have no rights to anything. But by pirating you’re assuming that you have a right to games created by others and that they don’t deserve anything in return.
Then you go and tell us that piracy is perfectly moral. I would love to see the justification for that because, frankly, I can look at piracy in threeof the most highly held ethical systems, utilitarianism, virtue ethics and Kant’s moral imperative, and clearly piracy comes out as wrong. It doesn’t help the greater good in the long run, it isn’t just and if everyone did it, then nobody would make big games. The only way that you can justify it [believing you] deserve to get stuff for free (even though you previously said that the universe owes you nothing).
25/01/2008 at 17:24 James says:
Just like every other concept in life, what is most important in the issue of piracy is balance. It constantly astounds me that the minute piracy is mentioned, so much of the internet seems to forget the nature of anything but black/white morality. There are more was of examining a situation than reaching for the BFG debating tools of ‘*Topic* is bringing about doomsday!’ versus ‘*Topic* is an incarnation of pure good!’
I, personally, buy my games 90% of the time. It seems like the right thing to do for me, but it also makes me comfortable with grabbing the odd ISO for a test run or some such. I feel like I’m doing my part to support the industry, even though I often feel like my contribution is a little superfluous amongst the Scrooge McDuck pile of money it generates.
Aside from that, though, I have to ask, Meat Circus, not out of anything other than curiosity, but if video games are important to the wellbeing of creative commons (And I believe they are.), does having smaller developers siphoned off until they collapse under their own weight – and thus losing the ability to communicate its own creative ideas – serve culture any better? To me, it’s just to ways of hamstringing creative thought from either end of the moral spectrum.
I fully acknowledge that there are often cases where piracy is a ok to an extent, and denying such is pretty ridiculous, but it seems like you want the games industry to keep providing games for you while you shrug as though not a single person on the team did a thing to earn money seems equally silly.
25/01/2008 at 17:48 Monkfish says:
Meat Circus said:
Neither does the universe owe you the opportunity to gain entertainment for free when someone has placed a value upon it. There’s the moral issue.
The plumber analogy is nonsense. Of course you don’t have a pay-per-dump arrangement – you pay the plumber to gain the use of your toilet should it break. You pay a one-off fee for a service.
The way I see it, the same is true when you buy a game. You’re paying a developer a one-off fee to gain entertainment from the game. The transport mechanism involved is irrelevant, as is the fact that they have provided the labour involved in the “service” of entertaining you up-front.
25/01/2008 at 17:49 Chis says:
You all must be talking about buying illegal copies, then. Oh, you aren’t? Well…
Downloading isn’t piracy, it’s copyright infringement. No, I’m not saying whether it’s “right” or “wrong”, merely that ignorant chuffing idiots are misusing our beloved language. But no, the BSA want big headlines, so I’m sure they include downloading cracked games in their “figures”.
25/01/2008 at 17:59 cliffski says:
how the hell does moaning that plumbers don’t get ongoing royalties make ANY sense to anyone?
Plumbers get paid by the hour. that’s the business model they choose. I (and other game devs) choose a different business model, where we work for years 12 hours a day for sod all, on the off chance that the end product is good enough that the ongoing royalties from it make up for the hours we spent making it.
Game developers earn very little, and work long hours, but somehow in some people minds the fact that we get pauid by royalties rather than an hourly wage means we are evil, and its all unfair.
What laughable bullshit.
If you aren’t prepared to support the idea of copyright, you basically have 2 morally justifiable choices:
1) do not purchase copyrighted material, do not pirate it, opt out of the whole system
2)go live in a country where they agree with you, such as North korea.
if you want the very best entertainment that copyright laws can encourage the production of, but somehow want to pretend that you shouldn’t pay for it because you don’t agree with it, that’s just leeching, freeloading and generally behaving in an antisocial way.
It’s like being the one guy on the street who refuses to pay his taxes, but still wants a police force and a fire brigade. You are leeching off the honesty of everyone else. The fact that the rest of us bought COD 4 means you are able to pirate it. In effect, all pirates are leechers and freeloaders, the very thing they whine about when it comes to badly seeded torrents. Oh the irony.
25/01/2008 at 18:25 dhex says:
Neither does the universe owe you the opportunity to gain entertainment for free when someone has placed a value upon it.
that seems to be the real issue here. there’s a cultural shift underway that means huge changes for musicians or developers or anyone whose work can be digitized and consumed (and that there’s a demand for that format.) the idea that music is “less real” than my shoes is at the heart of what’s going on, though i think in many cases it’s a convoluted way of justifying “i wanted it and i took it.”
for whatever reason “i don’t want to pay for it so i won’t get it” is not a huge selling point. why not do without? because there’s very little cost to pirating material xyz.
well there’s no cost for the person doing it – to indie musicians, for whom digital distribution has been a mixed bag of highs and lows, there is an obvious cost which may or may not be offset in the future.
25/01/2008 at 18:33 dhex says:
and for what it’s worth, i think the “you wouldn’t steal a bicycle” approach is not the correct way to reframe the issue. it doesn’t work, and is obviously met with severe antipathy from pirates and non-pirates alike. there is no cost in stealing from a developer or artist beyond a potential riaa letter (and the time and electricity spent downloading material xyz)
of course, imposing a cost on pirates is not only ineffective and easily bypassed, but pisses off legitimate users. as to how better reframe that, beyond an effort by more “sympathetic” developers and artists (i.e. those who can’t be dismissed as “big business” or “corporate fat cats” etc) to put a human face on what is otherwise a faceless package….i don’t really see any future changes in this attitude.
25/01/2008 at 18:49 John Walker says:
I think the problem here is that people aren’t address the issues of the other side.
Meat Circus, I know you’ve given this subject more thought than most, and have spent years studying and forming your arguments on the matter. So can you outline how you think game developers *should* be making money, and what systems you think can be put in place that do not rely on the copyright system you cannot tolerate.
Cliff. Obviously this subject matters a great deal to you because your income relies on people’s willingness to pay for software. But I don’t think you are addressing the issues that are present with the corruption of copyright’s original intentions. While Meat Circus is a provocative twit, if you ignore his needling, can you address the points he makes?
And both of you do it without swearing at each other or calling each other names.
25/01/2008 at 19:31 heartless_ says:
The argument that digital copies of a game should be cheaper is nonsense. The price of a boxed game does not fluctuate at all with shipping or packaging costs. The market price for a game is set by the market, not by the related costs to the company. If that market price doesn’t cover costs, then the company won’t produce. Really simple economics, but most people don’t have a clue how the price got to $50-$60 currently and assume if companies don’t have to spend a few bucks on packaging that they can give it as a discount on a digital copy. Completely ignorant argument.
Could digital distribution add some incentives? Sure, but only until it becomes the norm and doesn’t have a need to try draw in customers.
25/01/2008 at 19:37 heartless_ says:
And another economic argument for everyone that thinks pirates are just the cats balls and they are the voice of gamers everywhere getting cheated by DRM, etc.
If pirating remains constant the way it currently is, it is only a matter of time before they reduce the market value of games to zero. At the market value of zero no one is going to produce. It is the same argument against free health care. If health care is free, the actual production of health care is going to be tiny.
Luckily, pirating won’t stay constant as companies do things like move games online completely, require Live GOLD accounts, or start to just give their games away and make a buck through micro-transactions.
It is just a question of how ugly the transition is and we’re seeing how ugly it can be with the RIAA and the music industry.
25/01/2008 at 20:11 Pace says:
I think there’s a saying somewhere about not discussing politics or religion in polite company. I think amongst gamers this topic could substitute. (and I hate to say it Mr. Walker, but unless I entirely miss the meaning of the word, I don’t think calling someone a twit is entirely consistent with your message.)
25/01/2008 at 20:46 John Walker says:
heartless_ : I really cannot follow your logic regarding digital distribution being no cheaper. Are you under the impression that the box price for a game goes straight to the developer? A large amount of the box price goes to the store selling the box. Remove the significant amount going to the store, and then the costs of packaging, printing manuals, CD manufacture, artwork, copy-writing shipping, and distribution, and it doesn’t seem unrealistic that the costs might go down, oh, a little bit? And that’s not even considering the cost of publishers.
If a company directly distributes their game digitally, and charged the same amount, they’d be making literally 1000s of percent more. If publishers do the same, they are still saving vast amounts. How do you think the store share, packaging and shipping are not a factor in your “really simple economics”?
Also, can you provide any evidence for your claim that, “If pirating remains constant the way it currently is, it is only a matter of time before they reduce the market value of games to zero”?
That’s not even getting into the reality of how the “market price of games” has been artificially maintained for years.
Also, you’re writing on a website based in a country where healthcare is free, and we seem to still have hospitals.
25/01/2008 at 20:48 John Walker says:
Pace – I am very good friends with Meat Circus, and he was being a twit. Cliff was being obstinate, if that helps.
25/01/2008 at 20:58 Anonononomous says:
Socialized medicine isn’t free. It’s paid for by taxes. Video games are not paid for by taxes. Comparing the two is just silly.
25/01/2008 at 21:07 3 Stacked Midgets says:
All of this arguing is stupid. Either the developers are going to move to a service model, develop effective DRM (FAT CHANCE) or die.
I don’t believe in copyright because it requires coercion to be perpetuated (look up Stephen Kinsella’s articles on this), but even if you believe copyright is the BEST THING EVER you must acknowledge the futility of the current course of action being pursued by corporations and the state.
25/01/2008 at 21:11 Garth says:
This comes around every year, I swear to God. Ok guys, here’s what you’re saying:
“Mr. X is stealing games, because he downloaded a game without paying for it.”
Here’s the reality:
“Mr. X is downloading games because he doesn’t have the 80 bucks to drop on something that might be total shit.”
25/01/2008 at 21:18 Grandma Pod says:
When I saw the title of this I thought Edge Hill were offering a new degree.
25/01/2008 at 21:22 Anonononomous says:
I think the whole “I steal games because they’re shitty and not worth my money” argument is BS, too.
If the games are shitty, why download them anyway? Obviously, you think that the game is worth your time and will increase the amount of happiness in your life, so why doesn’t the developer deserve compensation?
And claiming that because you can’t afford the game you therefore have the right to get it without paying is crap, too. Would you make these same claims about anything else? School, healthcare and whatnot?
25/01/2008 at 22:32 Lou says:
MeatCircus: Corporate shills? You seem to think the only ones who profit from copyright are big corporations, record companies, whatever. That’s not the case at all now, nor is it historically true.
25/01/2008 at 22:48 dhex says:
Could digital distribution add some incentives? Sure, but only until it becomes the norm and doesn’t have a need to try draw in customers.
steam has gotten me once or twice with their weekend sales, etc, even though it’s just a few percentage points off from whatever the normal price may have been.
however, in terms of actual incentives, the only thing that comes readily to mind is allowing prepaid downloaders to break street date (i.e. get the game a few days early) and that seems unlikely and not really worth the buy in. (not to mention it’s just asking for shit to be cracked earlier than it already is.)
“Mr. X is downloading games because he doesn’t have the 80 bucks to drop on something that might be total shit.”
the proper version of this would be:
“Mr. X is downloading games because he doesn’t wish to put out xx bucks on a title.”
though the idea of piracy being a punishment for mediocrity – which pops up in a lot of places – is very interesting.
26/01/2008 at 02:46 Novack says:
I will be unfair by no reading all the 69 previous comments, but I wanna say this:
Here in Argentina, the piracy is the only way of actually be on the times. Without that, would be just impossible for the people of this country to access to any kind of mass software. The open source is not really an option if we take in count the need for extra technical formation for the proper use of open source software.
Here we have an 3.2xusd1 monetary exchange. Than means that the cost per license here is from the first step more than three times more expensive. Also, in U$S the licences are more expensive than in USA (Idont know why). And add to that the obviously much lower rent per capita… and you will get an initial picture.
The other path to follow is the useless and humillating options that corps as MS offer to *the third world*, as the “Starter Edition” line of Windows, which among other ultra limitations has the imposibility to open more than 3 windows (any kind). The funny part is that a licence for a Starter Edition is also very expensive…
26/01/2008 at 03:59 Will Tomas says:
Just a quick point about digital distribution – hopefully it should push the costs down, but the publishers (EA etc) will continue to try and keep it close enough that they can add more profit in for them whilst cutting the shop out.
The music industry still takes cuts out of artists royalties for “packaging costs” on iTunes sales. Something equivalent to that.
So, yes, we should expect digital distribution costs to be lower. But that doesn’t mean they will be as much as they should be.
26/01/2008 at 07:09 Anthony Damiani says:
The problem is in assuming that piracy is a consumptive act, rather than a productive one. Every act of piracy creates a digital copy, by definition. It creates a real good that would not have existed otherwise.
Now, obviously, this severs the manufacturing of the the end-product (the imprint of the game) from the actual design of the software– we need ways to incentivize that, and I’m not really sure we have any better mechanism than copyright at the moment to do that. However, when you analyze the economic impact of piracy, you need to take into account its nature in actually creating a desired good.
26/01/2008 at 07:15 Anthony Damiani says:
[i]The free market consistently gives people the best entertainment, unless you somehow think that North Korea and Soviet Russia were hotbeds of creative freedom?[/i]
Of course– but why do you conflate restrictions on what people can make or say or do with being the “free market”? Copyright is a system of government subsidy, after all.
26/01/2008 at 10:07 Nick says:
“And claiming that because you can’t afford the game you therefore have the right to get it without paying is crap, too. Would you make these same claims about anything else? School, healthcare and whatnot?”
Is that part about school and healthcare a joke? Please say it is.
26/01/2008 at 16:31 Super-Tuesday says:
Why doesn’t anyone do a study on how much ‘piracy’ has boosted hardware sales, ISP and internet infrastructure profits? What about the jobs gained there – and the extra taxes earned?
I am afraid we can’t go backwards people. Is this going forwards (with digital distribution aka ‘piracy’) actually costing society as a whole or not? I really suspect it is not in the long run.
Software developers are also going to be facing pressures from open-source and modders, as well as new distribution models using advertising for revenue. Even EA are trying it with the new Battlefield game to be released ‘free’!
Many people thought using the printing press was evil in the beginning too…
26/01/2008 at 17:51 Okami says:
Super-Tuesday makes a good point here. I think one of the PSOne’s secrets of success was that it was very easy to run pirated games on it. Friend of mine once claimed, that Sony made it easy for pirates on purpose, to boost hardware sales..
26/01/2008 at 20:10 DigitalSignalX says:
I suspect most of us would agree that piracy, aka: reselling copies for profit, is wrong. What is more gray, is the extent to which copyright infringement truly removes money from the pockets of developers and distributors. My perspective is fairly straightforward, the majority of copyrighted material I’ve acquired is content that I would have otherwise not purchased, be it software, films, or music.
By and large, this seems true of most downloaders, depending on their economic situations. However, because value is placed on content by the seller, not the consumer, it is easy to quantify losses and makes great sensational statistics about property theft.
That argument though also looses sight of the consumer value of property exposure, which is far more difficult to calculate the returns on. Exposure in my simple little mind is quantified in the following paths:
A) “That was awesome, I’m going to rush out and buy that right now even if I don’t eat for a week and tell all my friends it is wizard.”
B) “That was (degree of positive) I would buy if it I could afford it, but will probably buy the next thing they put out, and tell all my friends to as well.”
C) “That sucked balls, I’m glad I didn’t pay for it, in fact, I’ll tell my friends how sucky it was too.”
A generated income for the developer immediately. B has the *potential* for income where it did not exist before. C actually has the potential to harm income via word of mouth.
Which sort of leads me to the whole point: A quality product makes money, regardless. All the rest of the debate appears to be over the value of mediocrity and crappy to both the consumer and the developer.
26/01/2008 at 21:33 malkav11 says:
…of course Mr. X is not intentionally downloading games he knows to be crap he wouldn’t want to play. But it’s one way to determine whether the game is in fact crap *before* spending one’s non-refundable cash on it. Demos are another, potentially. But not every game receives a demo, and many demos are nearly the size of the game without possessing enough of the game’s content to make an informed buying decision.
Though I make no claims as to how many people actually follow through and buy the game if they like it.
27/01/2008 at 00:49 Champagne O'Leary says:
I went to buy a new game at the weekend but there was nothing in the shop worth my money. Instead, I went to the cinema tonight and spent the same amount. That money’s gone into the ‘entertainment’ industry. If I also decided to pirate a game this weekend, twenty pounds will not disappear from anyone’s pocket.
It’s not a support of piracy, but the figures people give are simply meaningless. Piracy generates plenty of jobs now, and a lot of tax on blank media too.
27/01/2008 at 02:45 matte_k says:
Introversion Software have an interesting take on piracy- read here:
http://www.introversion.co.uk/blog/index.php
under the heading “Copy Protection DRM”
this is responding to an RPS post, so linking this back I may have inadvertently caused a paradox…
27/01/2008 at 03:34 dhex says:
how does one measure how many jobs piracy creates?
27/01/2008 at 06:34 Pesh says:
Aren’t systems like Steam going to bring an abrupt halt to pirating, anyway? I know there are hacks to get around Steam, but it’s a hell of a lot harder than copying a cracked .exe to the game directory, isn’t it?
I’ve pirated dozens of games, but not brand new games. I buy all my Valve games and games worth playing on the internets.
27/01/2008 at 09:16 malkav11 says:
I have no idea how hard it is for the pirates to get around Steam, but when they bother the end result can simply be unrared.
27/01/2008 at 10:04 Champagne O'Leary says:
Also, I’d like to see how much buying second hand games costs the industry, as a new customer is getting the full experience of the product without the producer seeing a penny. Because piracy can only be described as a theft of experience rather than theft of an object, surely when you buy a second hand copy of a game you’re committing the same evil, except the seller is also making a profit so it’s a double evil.
If I bought nothing but second hand games, surely I’m harming the industry as much as a pirate.
27/01/2008 at 11:43 roBurky says:
Champagne: this is the the thing that troubled me.
I illegally downloaded The Sims 2 when it came out, as I was unsure if it would run on my machine. It did, and I played it for a few days, until I started to feel guilty. So I went out and bought a second hand copy.
I never needed to open the second hand box, as I already had the game installed, and with a cd crack. The developers never got any money from my purchase. The only one who benefited was the shop that sold it to me. So I was just left feeling very confused about the whole thing, and wondering why I bothered.
27/01/2008 at 18:03 dhex says:
If I bought nothing but second hand games, surely I’m harming the industry as much as a pirate.
not at all.
in situation one, a copy has been bought. that physical copy is then transferred to a second party. one purchase has been made.
in situation two, a copy has been made. nothing has been bought. zero purchases have been made.
27/01/2008 at 18:35 Champagne O'Leary says:
in situation one, a copy has been bought. that physical copy is then transferred to a second party. one purchase has been made.
in situation two, a copy has been made. nothing has been bought. zero purchases have been made.But in either scenario, none of my money has gone towards the maker of the game. I do understand your point, but second hand games in stores are a never-ending flow.
The reason we all disapprove of piracy, as I understand it, is the fact that the people who produced the game are not getting their fair share for my experience of their product. I never buy anything on release anymore, so I could quite comfortably buy everything second hand for the foreseeable future. I’m a hardcore gamer, and yet the makers of the games will never see a penny of my money.
Should I feel guilty that I haven’t bought Darwinia yet? Or that I got Uplink free with Defcon? If I never buy Darwinia, they can’t really complain as I haven’t played their game so they’ve got none of my money. I could go on eBay or Amazon and buy a second hand disc right now. That would satisfy you, and the law. But what of Introversion?
27/01/2008 at 18:46 dhex says:
but in your example, introversion already made their sale. it may seem like a small, niggling detail but i do think it makes all the difference.
no doubt game publishers – and the music industry, and the movie industry, and no doubt book publishers too – would love to have the government use their force to get them in on the used market. hell, car manufacturers would no doubt be delighted if they could continue to get a slice years after the initial profits for a given model year have been taken.
but that’s a 24oz bottle of crazysauce, and hopefully it will never come to be.
as to why i think this issue is important:
i don’t care for radiohead, but i do feel badly that so many of their fans thought so little of their work. people like getting something for nothing, and if it can be digitized people will take it. this attitude no doubt correlates strongly with youth. the entire concept, as i’ve mentioned before, of “doing without” (if you wish to not pay for a given copy of xyz) makes as much sense to many people as yelling latin at a dog does for poor old rover.
this doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of good criticisms of copyright, to say the least – life of author plus 75 years is a great way to enrich james joyce’s great grandson (or whomever the twat who holds the rights is), but does little to help spur the advancement of the useful arts and sciences.
27/01/2008 at 19:57 Champagne O'Leary says:
People often make fun of the “Piracy funds terrorism” statements in adverts but it’s not entirely untrue. Being from Northern Ireland, just about any pirate video stall at a market was going straight into the pocket of you-know who…
The truth is, I care less and less for current entertainment, and am less interested in spending my time and money on it. When I see anti-piracy warnings at the cinema, I can’t help but read between the lines and see the result “You’d better not think about spending less money on us…”
I think purchasing second-hand goods is a form of peaceful protest about constant piracy fingerwagging. Okay, I say, I’ll live by the letter of the law. Just don’t expect any more profit from me.
27/01/2008 at 23:04 Nick says:
“Being from Northern Ireland, just about any pirate video stall at a market was going straight into the pocket of you-know who…”
Yeah, but I hardly think that’s how they got most of the money for their massive supply of weapons.
I’m looking at you, United States.
27/01/2008 at 23:45 dhex says:
Okay, I say, I’ll live by the letter of the law. Just don’t expect any more profit from me.
i think that’s a perfectly reasonable stance.
28/01/2008 at 06:03 DigitalSignalX says:
Just a quick wack at the corpse of the horse while comparing the relative evil of resellers to online duplication:
The games available on P2P/IRC/etc (with exception of leaked alphas/betas and cracked trials etc) stem from a legit purchased copy that was then manipulated for distribution. Clearly they impact more installations without revenue then a secondhand store who may see the same box come through half a dozen times, but it does tie into who exactly piracy may be losing money for the most, the developer or the resellers.
28/01/2008 at 06:30 malkav11 says:
The most commonly illegally downloaded software is also the software that’s least easily obtained used (to wit, PC software). And one legitimately purchased copy turns into, at a conservative estimate, tens of thousands of illegal copies via P2P et al.
28/01/2008 at 07:00 Zeno, Internetographer says:
If I were I pirate, which I am not, I might say this:
I generally only pirate those things which I wouldn’t or couldn’t go out and buy. So, either I get it free or don’t get it at all. The man hasn’t lost a sale, because I wouldn’t have bought it if piracy weren’t an option.
Not to mention the fact that the kind of games my laptop will even run aren’t even in production anymore. Hell, half of the games I’ve pirated are made by companies that no longer exist.
That’s what I’d say if I were a pirate. Which I am not.
28/01/2008 at 19:57 Upset_Nerd says:
I’ve also found it hard to find any major difference between pirating a game and buying a second hand copy. I guess you can argue that the existance of a second hand market makes people more likely to accept higher priced new games since they now have a resale value; but I highly doubt that fact fully compensates for the lost sale of the person who bought the used game.
More generally on the subject of copywright infringement; I think it is a problem but I don’t think it’s anywhere near as morally clear cut as some make it out to be. Comparing it to theft of physical property is especially inaccurate since the main problem with theft of physical propery isn’t that someone got something for free, or that the person whose property was stolen was denied compensation. The problem is that the person actually lost something and is now worse of then he would have been if the theft hadn’t occured. That isn’t the case with copywright infringement, and if it were, say if downloading a game on P2P resulted in you actually stealing another persons copy of the game, I don’t think illegal downloading would be anywhere near as common as it is.
To make an analogy where the morality of copywright infringement doesn’t seem so clear cut, imagine an artist, who’s house is pretty remotely located, erecting a statue in his backyard and inviting people to come and view it for a fee. The problem is that the statue is visible from a public road nearby and word of mouth have led to people gathering there and getting a view of the statue without paying. Does the artist have a moral right to demand payment from these people? As far as I can see there’s no fundamental difference between this scenario and copywright infringement in general.
28/01/2008 at 20:03 Kieron Gillen says:
I does make the people outside the yard cunts though.
KG