Will Tomas says:

I think Dark Messiah being on there now is surprising, but it’s exactly the sort of game I’d expect to be downloaded. I seem to remember you giving it a pretty good write up for Eurogamer, but it had a reputation of being buggy as hell and so naturally it’s the sort of game that people would want to try to play without having to make a cash committment.

In some cases I suspect that the downloaders are getting games that they’re not sure about, and so download rather than buy. Can’t say for sure though. Interesting chart.

March 5th, 2008 at 10:29 pm

heartless_ says:

I think it is a bit hard to discern anything from the torrent sites other than pirates seem to favor more hardcore, action-oriented games. Having dealt with pirates for some time and banning them from various forums and IRC chat rooms, I’ve often found that they have a distinct Pokemon attitude… “Gotta catch em all!”. Pirates download simply because they can.

March 5th, 2008 at 10:46 pm

cHeal says:

Well with Sins of a Solar Empire doing so well in the charts and not featuring on torrents may indicate that the Hype machine used by the big publishers is resulting in such huge anticipation that many pirate instead of buying and then just learn to pirate for convience. it’s hard say, it is a more complex issue than the publishers try to make out and isn’t just a case of pirates = teh Bad!

I do think that DRM should be scrapped, in the vast majority of cases it’s proven to be completely useless and only truly provides an inconvience to the legit consumer, yes, yes tired argument but still correct in my opinion. DRM is not in itself bad but I do wish there were new, less intrusive methods of doing it.

It’s a sad situation that the community seems to be in and I can’t see an easy way out. I think the first port of call has to be some kind of dialogue between develops/Publishers and the pirates to see if publishers can do something so people don’t feel they need to pirate their product anymore.

I’d also think it prudent that parents be better informed about the situation, as I would imagine a lot of pirates are young people who can’t afford these titles.

March 5th, 2008 at 10:53 pm

Nick says:

Beyond basic copy protection (to avoid simple disc copying) they could probably save a bit of money not having something like secuROM or whatever, which can cause problems with people trying to play it legitimately, thus saving them a bit of extra tech support too.

*shrug* It’s a shame that (partially thanks to the ease of music piracy in earlier years I’d think) downloading stuff has become almost instinctive to this generation.

March 5th, 2008 at 10:57 pm

Duoae says:

Can’t really comment on the pirating numbers as i agree with heartless_ above me in the sense that i don’t think you can really get any empirical data from torrent sites.

The one guy i knew who pirated didn’t have the pokemon attitude – though i can imagine that is the case with some people – but he did download a number of games that he simply never played or installed. Remember last year when there were all those big titles (yes titles) released on the market within a short time of each other and people were complaining that there wasn’t enough time to play them all? Well, imagine that but constantly…. and because the games are free, many are never bothered with because of the new ’shiny’ that would just be finished downloading….

March 5th, 2008 at 11:02 pm

Rook says:

What would be very interesting would be trying to harvest the ips to at least map them to landmasses. E.g. is Piracy larger in the eastern european countries or western european ones.

edit: there’s probably more PC gamers than ever before, similarly there’s more choice in quality titles than ever before and more ways of getting your content.

March 5th, 2008 at 11:04 pm

squerl says:

@restricted3

I’m not saying I agree with invasive/buggy/headache-inducing evil DRM. I’m saying that I believe companies have the right to try to limit the amount of piracy that takes place, and I hope that we can agree on that point. So far, it has worked out pretty horribly with buggy software that causes problems for consumers. DRM/copy protection is still relatively new (I don’t think CD keys count) and companies so far have thought of it last minute instead of fully testing it out, but if anything at all of what they’re saying (of course they’re exaggerating by a large amount) is true, I think in the future we’ll have better developed “product protection” schemes that won’t harm everybody.

“Battlefield Heroes, Steam or Instant Action are good models for the future. Traditional distribution, plus CD Checks?. No, thank you.”

Battlefield Heroes is free to play but ad and micro-transaction supported. They’re lucky with their business model that they don’t have to worry about copy protection. I don’t think you can expect a single player game to use that model.

Steam is great, I think a big reason for piracy is just convenience. Why do I want to either wait for a shipment or drive into town to pick up a game I could have in a few hours? I agree 100% that companies should move towards digital distribution.

March 5th, 2008 at 11:10 pm

Cigol says:

Especially when it conflicts with your drive and prevents you from playing a legally bought game unless you use a cracked .exe.

March 5th, 2008 at 11:14 pm

rabbitsoup says:

http://kotaku.com/361376/chris-taylor-+-secure-pc-gaming-is-the-future

this is a great point, secure PC gaming its the way forward, everyone has to pay for multiplayer. on another note last 2 games i downloaded were justifed as i lost the bloody disc (FFIX) and the fucking demo wont work i meet the specs tho (crysis) except im not paying for crysis now cause i got bored after the 1st level and dont see MP being worth the cash > was i in the wrong?

March 5th, 2008 at 11:20 pm

cHeal says:

Secure gaming is unlikely to be the way forward. I certainly wouldn’t endorse it. Neither did I endorse Bioshock ( I didn’t pirate it either). No pain no gain. I’d abandon the mainstream pc gaming market if it went with what he is proposing. For multiplayer, yes that’s fine as long as private server hosting is still possible but not for SP.

The great thing about the pc market is that anyone who has a pc can make a pc game, I think this will be the determining factor in the survival of the pc market, perhaps out surviving all other formats, who knows.

Out of interest how did CoH sell on release? that had no copy protection except a cd key. Seemed to sell well, what were the pirating figures like? I hugely appreciated the fact they did go with a very light DRM, appreciation which quickly died as soon as the expansion was released.

March 5th, 2008 at 11:37 pm

Caiman says:

I dunno, if all developers see this and think – like Kieron – that they should produce more games like Sins and less FPS games then – heh – I’d be happy!

But seriously… no wait, I think I was being serious.

March 5th, 2008 at 11:51 pm

mrkstphnsn says:

I have a freind who Pokomon’s games. And he used to work for Sega. He hardly ever plays any of them and all I can discern from his actions is that he has no quality control.

I nick music willy nilly and dl tv shows but my defense is this.

Modern Music is shithouse (No matter what Gillsie says about the latest waifish scottish indie twang music) and TV is TV. I make cups of tea during ad breaks anyway so the ad revenue thing doesn’t work for me.

If Record Companys do not keep their library in print they can go fuck themselves and I’ll go find it from someone else who loves it as much as I do on a p2p network.

Same logic applies for Games. The fact that you cannot find Fallout1/2 and Planscape to buy is a farce. In fact it’s frankly a farce that you have to jump to hoops to get those games to play on Xp anyway.

I’m sure through companies dissappearing and being eaten and crushed with the lamentation of their women echoing in their ears that there’s some reasonable reason for it but at the end of the day I have very little sympathy when people bleat about piracy.

Assassins Creed will forever be blighted by the farce over it’s online reviews and it may be the best game ever but I’ll never know because I’ll never play it.

When the games industry stops shoving the same old graphically enhanced crap out onto the market and realises that they could make a fortune with the back catalogue (enhanced and bought up to date and EXTREME) on something like Steam then I may have a bit of sympathy.

My name is Mark. I’m a gamer and I havn’t bought or stolen a game in a shop since Orange box was released. I’m your problem game industry, not the people downloading your FPS’s. Your products shite, it keeps you up all night.

This post was bought to you by the letters M, E, R, L, O, T.

March 6th, 2008 at 12:28 am

Joe says:

The numbers are interesting. But it’s hard to draw any real conclusions from them.

A thorough and unbiased survey of PC gamers’ piracy habits (and their given reasons for torrenting) is the prerequisite to a proper discussion. Without that, everyone – whether in the industry, on a blog or in a comment thread – is just speculating.

March 6th, 2008 at 12:32 am

mrkstphnsn says:

@Mo
Genuine question. How do they calculate that if I don’t have one of the special boxes attached to my tv?

March 6th, 2008 at 1:02 am

Will Tomas says:

Actually, the fact that Sins of a Solar Empire isn’t featuring surprises me – I’d've thought that there would be a fair few Europeans pirating it. FM2008 not being there too is interesting.

But more to the point – I’m surprised to see the Orange Box there, as I thought the whole point about Steam’s online verification was that you couldn’t get a pirated copy to work. I though it was why an internet connection is needed for HL2 even though the game isn’t online itself. Which really annoyed me when I hadn’t got an internet connection on my PC around the time it came out. Am I wrong about the Steam verification thing?

March 6th, 2008 at 1:26 am

Radiant says:

@Will Thomas
I thought the same about the Orange box/Steam but there were these vague magical instructions on how to emulate steam on your computer.

But then I looked at the Steam website and saw that Portal on its own was only a fiver to download which, well, I wish ALL games were priced like that…

March 6th, 2008 at 1:36 am

sigma83 says:

WoW is not on there because, quite simply, WoW’s copy protection is perfect.

March 6th, 2008 at 1:47 am

yutt says:

Eh. A whole lot of this is silly.

I’ve always considered myself primarily a PC gamer. There are a whole host of problems with PC gaming that have nothing to do with piracy. Until those are addressed, the whining and nitpicking over imagined lost sales is irrelevant.

If I buy a Xbox 360 game, I can loan it to my friend for as long as I want. He can play it until he is bored and never rent or purchase it.

Wait! That’s a lost sale! Surely this is the end of the Xbox! People sharing games!?

Now, say I buy Bioshock retail, or HL2:E2 from Steam. How do I share this with my friend? I can’t, because the publishers have created so many ridiculous restrictions. Why should I buy a PC game, when the console version is so much more convenient?

Valve could very easily allow you to “loan” games to a friend through Steam. You’d lose access until they “returned” it to you. Will this ever happen? Nope, because publishers are convinced that every time someone plays a game without buying it they lost an imaginary sale. Articles like this only perpetuate that short-sited myth.

They could even allow you to rent games. I don’t buy the vast majority of 360 games I’ve played, and I’ve yet to hear Microsoft whine about how Blockbuster is destroying the industry.

March 6th, 2008 at 2:21 am

lalahsghost says:

@Stromko
“These days I’m just way too lazy to pirate anything that I could instead simply purchase, and everything I was hyped about I was able to get online. I’ve had good experiences with Stardock and Steam…”

I agree. If the game is a DVD sized game, even with my cable modem, I can’t be dicked with having to burn the ISO and praying for it to work. I’ve attempted to download S.T.A.L.K.E.R. like three times now because I’m iffy on it. All three times, I’ve canceled my download after four or five hours because it has gone too slow, or I kinda felt bad and told myself I would buy the game. Have I bought the game? No. Have I played the game? No. Do I want to play the game? Still not sure.

My most favorite game of all time is Age of Empires II. I downloaded it in late 2007. It’s like my peggle for one-hour bouts of wall sieging. I found it at a local store brand new (GOLD EDITION) for Ten Bucks. And guess what? You’re damn right I bought that shizz! T’was a great game, and they deserved my cash.

March 6th, 2008 at 2:43 am

Ed says:

I’ll admit to downloading COD4 and really enjoying it. But I’m not sure it’s work the $69.95 Steam is charging for it. I mean thats more than I paid for The Orange Box which I’ve got much more out of. If the drop COD4 in Steam to $49.95 or so, I’ll happily buy it.

I really only buy games on Steam now.

March 6th, 2008 at 2:49 am

Frosty840 says:

Got to add that I’m still a not-a-fan of the whole “can’t lend games over Steam” business.
I’ve got a ton of games I could lend out to people to help promote sales of future games, or even of the games I lend out, should the borrowers really like the thing.
Also, no matter how many games I *have*, I can only *play* one at a time. Although I discovered the other day that I can actually *run* pretty much as many as my PC can take. Nice one, Valve…

A bit of an aside, here.
I played through CoD4 at my university because they’ve bought a PC lab full of gaming machines and lots of free games for us to play on, and at that point, not playing them just seems rude.
I have to say that, having done so, I absolutely would not purchase the thing, as I’m simply not a big fan of multiplayer gaming, and the length of the singleplayer game can’t possibly justify the purchase price.
If the singleplayer element were released for £15, it *might* be worth it, but of course nobody’s daft enough to try and take that suggestion to the marketing department.

I don’t think that really relates to the discussion, but I’ll leave it in. PQDbLoS an’ that.

March 6th, 2008 at 3:08 am

Ed says:

I’d happily donate £15 or so to Infinity Ward if they offered an option :)

March 6th, 2008 at 3:20 am

malkav11 says:

The numbers are vaguely interesting, but of course, that really is just one site, which cross-indexes a bunch of other sites. And it’s public, too, which means you’re getting the casual pirates with a few slummers. Private trackers are generally the way to go if you do very much pirating – they’re more secure, faster, and often have a much superior selection/quality for their preferred focus. For example, Oink (which got raided by the US government and is now defunct) was a music pirate’s heaven with tons of obscure stuff in high quality formats. Look for music on Mininova or the Pirate Bay or whatever and you’ll mostly get discographies with low bitrates and improper tagging. And no guarantees of that much.

March 6th, 2008 at 4:29 am

ShawnD says:

Ya know what, it doesn’t matter what we think, or what our buddies think, whether those are lost sales, what percentage of them would have bought it, what percentage did purchase the game, what percentage will buy the game….the business suits that work for publishers who forecast sales and make decisions for development for the PC platform don’t care, all they know is that people are playing the games without paying for them. That’s it. This has directly affected the way games are developed on the PC platform and why we barely have exclusives anymore, especially exclusive FPS’s.

The platform is indeed changing, Relic is already putting advertising in their Asian markets, since their patch server dishes out multiple times more patches than units sold. More and more developers are going to have to do business in a new way, BF Heroes for instance, which isn’t what I’m excited for. I want BF3 and Crysis 2. All I know is, the more attention this gets, the more we are going to see changes in the platform, for better or for worse.

March 6th, 2008 at 5:36 am

hoohoo says:

very interesting. i remember when quake 4 released there were over 4 million downloads. one thing i think pc proponents need to call to attention more, is that console games are pirited too. ps2 has a huge black market, and download problem, as does the og xbox. did a little research on the top ten games above from a console perspective. basically only 360/xbox for times sake. the 360 isnt even very hacked at this point either i dont think?

ass creed: 177
http://scrapetorrent.com/Search/index.php?search=xbox%20Assassin’s%20Creed&sort=seed&fz=&zs=&cat=

Frontlines: Fuel of War:1584/4461/4383 (#’s after slashes are from just searching “xbox”)
http://scrapetorrent.com/Search/index.php?search=xbox%20Frontlines:%20Fuel%20of%20War&sort=seed&fz=&zs=&cat=

http://scrapetorrent.com/Search/index.php?search=xbox%20360&sort=seed&fz=&zs=&cat=

Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat 800/12845

http://scrapetorrent.com/Search/index.php?search=xbox%20Call%20of%20Duty%204:%20Modern%20Combat&sort=seed&fz=&zs=&cat=

http://scrapetorrent.com/Search/index.php?search=xbox%20360&sort=seed&fz=&zs=&cat=

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic 447

http://scrapetorrent.com/Search/index.php?search=xbox%20Dark%20Messiah%20of%20Might%20and%20Magic&sort=seed&fz=&zs=&cat=

Lost: Via Domus 484

http://scrapetorrent.com/Search/index.php?search=xbox%20Lost:%20Via%20Domus&sort=seed&fz=&zs=&cat=

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty 868

http://scrapetorrent.com/Search/index.php?search=xbox%20Turning%20Point:%20Fall%20of%20Liberty&sort=seed&fz=&zs=&cat=

Sims 2 55

http://scrapetorrent.com/Search/index.php?search=xbox%20Sims%202&sort=seed&fz=&zs=&cat=

The Club 1441

http://scrapetorrent.com/Search/index.php?search=xbox%20The%20Club&sort=seed&fz=&zs=&cat=

Bioshock 543

http://scrapetorrent.com/Search/index.php?search=xbox%20Bioshock&sort=seed&fz=&zs=&cat=

PS2 piracy is still insane as well.
http://scrapetorrent.com/Search/index.php?search=ps2&sort=size&rd=&fz=&fp=

transformers 84383
transformers 84383

March 6th, 2008 at 6:59 am

RichPowers says:

The good news: lots of people play PC games!
The bad news: lots of people don’t pay for the games!

The question shouldn’t be “how do we stop piracy?” It should be “how do we motivate people to pay for PC games?”

I wish I had an answer to that. But I will say that most PC games simply aren’t worth $50. There’s no way in hell I’d ever pay more than $20 for some bug-riddled, DRM-ladden shooter like Frontlines. But will lower prices lower piracy? Who knows. But PC games really needs to justify the $50 pricetags, especially in light of the inherent obstacles of PC gaming…

(The last game I bought new was The Orange Box — everything else is from eBay for $10 shipped to my door.)

March 6th, 2008 at 7:37 am

sigma83 says:

Perceived value has a lot to do with it, yeah. Orange Box? Awesome value. CoD4? Not so much. It was a great single player experience but as much as I hear the multiplay was awesome I will refrain, partly because TF2 is so win.

March 6th, 2008 at 7:53 am

Theory says:

Maybe it’s down to this: people pirate because, for humans just as for many other animals, sharing information is a biological compulsion.

This is the crux of the matter. It’s an evolutionary behaviour that has only recently become harmful with the creation of digital objects. We can’t shake it off.

Somebody above said that casual copying isn’t a valid defence because everyone knows about torrents. Perhaps everyone knows about them, but in his ivory tower that commenter forgets that that doesn’t automatically translate into people using them. Even nearly one million downloaded copies of COD4 is nothing compared to the audience that was exposed to the game.

Steam, as ever, is the way forward. You can share your games if you like, but only if you give full control of your account to the third party. It’s non-intrusive and reliable. Zero-day is knocked out automatically, patches are piss-easy, and if you actually use the platform you can provide far more value than any cracked download can. The only problem is people without the internet – and speaking pragmatically, they aren’t the issue here are they?

March 6th, 2008 at 8:36 am

Turin Turambar says:

A few things (also, sorry for the possible engrish):

-I think thepiratebay is bigger than mininova.

-Those numbers are not per day, as indicated, but the total downloads for that .torrent file in Mininova. Of course, as there is a lot of .torrents for each game, you have to multiply it to have the total downloads of the game.

-Yes, people is hilariously stupid downlading the broken AC game.

-I think most people download whatever game with a famous, known game. For example, Frontlines: Fuel of War, kind of popular now thanks to the previews, reviews, and word of mouth in forums. The funny thing is a game focused in multiplayer, they need a cdkey to play the multi!.
Some games have pirate servers, but not every game, the numbers are usually pretty small, and is hard to search servers and people to play with. Not worth it if you really want to play multiplayer.

-Sins isn’t there because the most downloaded torrent are from the most popular, mainstream games. You should see the list when a Need for Speed is released!. But usually it means “AAA action games”. Or average actions games like Turning Point, if there isn’t another better game in the same genre. The mainstream gamer isn’t interested in Sins of a Solar Empire (i think Sins will drop in the NPD list in two weeks, sorry, i also like the game).

-Also, gamers interested in games like Sins are usually more… older (more income), mature, hardcore gamers. That means, people with a bigger % to buy the game instead of downloading a pirate copy.

-CoD4 has been downloaded so much because is uber-popular, more in the casual, mainstream action-focused circles. The same reason the game has sold 1.5 million units only in pc, and 7 millions counting all the platforms.

-The number of pc gamers has not decreased, even counting only the legal copies. The problem in the last years is that companies now need to sell more copies to make even, because games are more expensive now to produce. Before you could make even with 200.000 copies, now you need 600.000. Before you made a game with 10 guys, now you need 50. Etc.
The pc crowd is feeling a bit small for the AAA games (or more exactly, for their high budget). Also, it doesn’t help the DRM, high requisites, expensive graphic cards, easiness of use of consoles, HD and online multiplayer in the actual consoles, etc etc.

-It would be nice to have a list or console games, to compare. In the last months i am seeing in Mininova lots of console games in the first positions, from ps2, psp, ds, and sometimes 360.

Is piracy a problem? Yes.
How much? Not the 1:1 ratio that companies repeat again and again. If piracy would impossible, CoD4 wouldn’t sell 1 million more. Perhaps 125.000-200.000 more.
People who download games in masse are cheap, they would waste their free time watching tv, or going out, or listening music or reading magazines, instead of playing pirated games. They won’t go out and buy videogames like crazy.

March 6th, 2008 at 8:53 am

malkav11 says:

“(patches of copy-protected games only get cracked if the game is a hit)”

That really isn’t so. It can take a little while, but if a game’s cracked once, it’s usually cracked every time it’s patched as well. And even if it isn’t, a mini-image usually offers similar functionality irrespective of patch number.

March 6th, 2008 at 9:04 am

matt says:

Is anyone else surprised to see Age of Empire on the list ? I mean, as said before, you can find it pretty cheap in any sotre nowadays, and it’s been out for a while.. Or does the expansion thing mean that it’s got all the expansion packs when you download it “torrent-way” ?
Anyway, that kind of surprised me.

March 6th, 2008 at 9:11 am

James T says:

To all the people defending pirates here in one way or the other:

Such as?

March 6th, 2008 at 9:53 am

Piratesteve says:

I am a pirate, and i wont deny it.
The biggest reason for my downloading games and the reason i dont even own a console, is that most games released these days are NOT worth their pricetag. But hell if im paying over 100$ (i live in norway, most games cost arount 500Kroner, thats 96$ with todays rates) for a game i pick up, realize within few minutes sucks and uninstall it never to play again.
Something that summarises most of the PC market these days. There are ofcourse the rare exceptions that still make it worth being a PC gamer outside MMOGS, but again, these are rare.

PC gaming today is a fucking hassle. I hate having to sort through my hundreds of CD’d just to find the one i need to start the game, not to mention taking good care of all the game manuals or jewelcases so you dont loose your CD-Key, when its not even required for the game to run (strictly speaking)

This is where steam comes in.. The last 10 games i bought and payed for, were all on steam. Steam is horrendously cheaper than buying it in my local game franchise. I get none of the hassle of having to remember my CD-Key, or finding the right CD for a game. And i can preload the game so it unlocks on release day.

March 6th, 2008 at 10:11 am

Okami says:

The biggest reason for my downloading games and the reason i dont even own a console, is that most games released these days are NOT worth their pricetag.

Ummhh… Simple solution: If you think the games aren’t worth the money, DON’T PLAY THEM!

Of course, 100$ for a pc game is a bit much. Though it makes me wonder why games are so expensive in Norway..

March 6th, 2008 at 10:38 am

Dinger says:

Just a note: every time a piracy discussion happens, someone or some group will take the “Moral High Ground” and submit an argument that reduces to: “any discussion of why or how piracy exists amounts to an endorsement of it.”

Whatever your personal opinion on the matter, piracy of PC games exists, and is widespread. Developers will cite figures that they work up themselves, or that they commission someone to produce. KG’s investigation falls along the same lines.Most studies seek to express piracy in monetary terms. Usually, they’ll do calculations that aren’t much different than here: COD4 has one million pirated copies through Mininova’s aggregator; multiply that by 4 to cover other sources, multiply that times $12.50 developer royalty, and voila`: 60 million dollars in lost revenue. If you use ’street price’, you can complain to your local legislator about a quarter-billion dollars STOLEN in less than four months.

But nobody believes those figures, because that’s not how pirates behave.

How do pirates behave? What makes them target one game and not another? Do pirates also buy games? What makes them decide to buy a game rather than rip it off?

These are the questions that matter, because, as the recording industry has shown, we’re not going to stop piracy any time soon.

So the game industry has to do what it’s been doing since the early ’80s: figure out what people will buy, and how they’ll buy it, and sell that.

March 6th, 2008 at 10:50 am

malkav11 says:

It’s easy to say “if they’re not worth the money, don’t play them” and, in general, I’d agree. But if there’s no demo (and demos are never guaranteed and not necessarily timely if they hit), or if the demo isn’t sufficient to make a decision (I’ve encountered so many bad demos), how do you find out whether they’re worth your money? Reviews are helpful, but they constitute a guarantee only that that person liked or disliked the game. Unless you’re that person, you’re still taking a risk. In most countries, that’s not a recoupable risk. And while there are far spendier products out there, $40-100 is not an insignificant chunk of change for many people.

With consoles, there’s a solution (at least in the US) – online infinite duration rental services let you try out any game at minimal financial risk. They can sometimes be inconvenient, but that’s a comparatively minor issue. Unfortunately, outside of the limited selection of services like Gametap and Metaboli, there’s no such option with PC games.

My own solution much of the time has been to simply wait and go for those bargain bin releases and ultra-deals on used software and the like. Or major sales, like my purchase of the Orange Box brand new for $25 on Black Friday. But apparently that doesn’t do the developers any good.

March 6th, 2008 at 10:54 am

Nick says:

It’s all perspective. When I was a student, I played the odd pirate game here and there, although I still bought a large majority. Now that I’m a dev, I get apoplectic with rage at the thought of some jackass just casually ripping off years of my life’s work.

I’m rational enough to see the hypocrisy of that stance. I pirated when it suited me, and now that I make my living off software, I demand that others don’t. I recognise why people pirate, I don’t really blame them for it. It’s unproductive.

Developers, however, have the right to protect themselves. I happen to think the best way to do this is the aforementioned ’secure gaming’ involving either an online service (Steam) or some such. But it has to be seamless, it has to be as unobtrusive as possible, and it has to offer something to the player that they couldn’t get from a boxed copy.

I don’t think PC gaming is dead. I DO think that PC-only, AAA, retail-only development is pretty much dead and gone. It makes sense to port big games to PC if you’re developing for PS3 or 360, because the cost of porting the game will be recouped by the moderate PC sales, despite piracy. But you won’t see many blockbuster PC-only development from now on that isn’t an MMO or that isn’t secured online in some way.

IMO, of course.

March 6th, 2008 at 11:16 am

Thiefsie says:

You need to include console games in this to show that they are pirated a lot if not just as much as pc games, and would provide a somewhat nice view upon the whole consoles aren’t being pirated but pc are obliterated by piracy debate

March 6th, 2008 at 11:33 am

cliffski says:

I love the way people buy a £200,000 house after a 2 hour a demo, and a £10,000 car after a one hour demo, but somehow asking them to buy a £29.95 video game after a one hour demo IS TEH FUCKING EVIL.

Most games have demos, and there are also reviews, screenshots and videos. And at the end of the day the games cost about as much as a takeaway pizza, garlic bread and a 2 litre bottle of coke.
Anyone who can afford to buy a PC that runs a triple A game is deluding themselves if they think they are justified in pirating a gem.

March 6th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

cliffski says:

casual games are mainly pirated through sites like rapidshare. they defintiely have a major piracy problem.

March 6th, 2008 at 12:29 pm

Alex says:

I love the way people buy a £200,000 house after a 2 hour a demo, and a £10,000 car after a one hour demo

Really. Please show me the idiot who actually does this – the ‘2 hour demo’ of a house is only a small part of the buying process, same goes for a car.

March 6th, 2008 at 12:37 pm

Kieron Gillen says:

You’ll get a large pizza, garlic bread and coke for about 20 quid ($40) in the UK. That is, delivered. Cliffski was talking about luxury ordering rather than what you can live on. Generally speaking, Food is expensive in the UK compared to the US.

I don’t have much time for the expense argument either, especially from adults. When someone says they’ll wait until a game is twenty dollars, I just think that’s barely a round of drinks at a bar, y’know.

KG

March 6th, 2008 at 12:44 pm

Saul says:

Online distribution! Online distribution! My lazy cousin now buys his games because he can get them from Steam easier than pirating them. Compete with the hackers, and give cutomers easier access in a nice interface with reasonable prices and you’ll pull in a huge chunk of the downloaders. It’s not like these systems can’t be set up, the talent is out there! (try employing a few of the pirates to code for you).

March 6th, 2008 at 12:47 pm

eoy says:

I think Assassin’s Creed getting leaked like it did now is one of the best things that could happen to that game. The otherwise easily forgotten pc-version of an xbox game gets a lot of attention, just because of the simple fact that it can’t be played fully yet. You saw the exactly same thing happening for Bioshock, there was a non working release out a few days before the release, and thousands of frustrated pirates wanted to play it but couldn’t, so they ended up buying it instead.

I can tell you honestly that I both download and buy games. I simply can’t afford buying every game I want to try out, and most games gets played 2-3 hours before “shelved” (for example Crysis). If a game passes my 3hour trial, I’ll go to the store straight away and purchase the game in question. Recent games I’ve bought include Bioshock, Call of Duty4, The Orangebox and Audiosurf. I do however download close to every title that gets released on pc, without really feeling bad about it.

Maybe the game companies should start thinking in other lines of piracy protection and demos? What if games had a timer on them, if you play for more than 3 hours, you’re required to buy a code to unlock the game online, or something similar?

p.s And thx to the pirated copy of Assassin’s Creed, I’m definitely going to buy the game once it hits the stores.

March 6th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

Zeno, Internetographer says:

The only way to beat piracy is to make it less convenient than acquiring the game legally, which in almost all cases means making it free. Battlefield Heroes is beating it, by being ad-supported, which I think will likely become more popular if that game is successful. Hell, it’s worked for TV for as long as it’s been around.

March 6th, 2008 at 1:20 pm

nopiracyonconsoles says:

nice sheath troll. pc gaming is death. pc piracy is rampant, etc

BS

WHAT ABOUT 360?… GUESS THERE IS NO PIRACY THERE. WAIT WATS THAT. MILLIONS OF CONSOLE LSRS DOWNLOADING XBOX 360 GAMES. WANA PLAY DEAD RISING 4 FREE? BUY A 360 ! CAPCOM MUST BE REALLY HAPPY WITH THAT

March 6th, 2008 at 1:29 pm

AbyssUK says:

@Nick
Firstly iTunes is evil, but yeah its successful BUT even it had to change its ways. Its nothing like it used to be when it started. It used to be Mac only for a start.. it had to become more accessible and easier to use.. it had to relax some of its sign up agreements and now even looks like its going to have to go DRM free or lose out to the other players now on the market.

Secondly, the playstation became popular because it could be hacked and because you could easily play pirate games on it (compared to the N64)… its only a household name because hackers pulled it to pieces! (The dreamcast lost out due to aggresive marketting and a lot of money being thrown around by sony). Same later with the PS2 and the XBOX, piracy is worse on console systems in my opinion because it normally requires 3rd parties to modify machines peddle games which means people profit from it! Which I think everybody here can agree with, profiting from piracy is very very wrong.

As people become more PC savvy it won’t matter what you throw at them they will find a nice easy way around it. So why waste the effort in trying, why waste the cost invovled.. makes no buisness sense in my eyes. BF Heroes is hopefully more the way the future of pc gaming is heading.. and not “secure gaming” crap, because everybody knows the suits in the industry will make it crap. i.e. pay per play or stats tracking (marketing data) or pay for updates or pay for beta tests or pay for demos (you get the idea)

Also the point that this snapshot is numerically meaningless is also very valid. A properly conducted report is needed really before you can start to make any hypothesises. Like a “million” lost sales of CoD4.. please this isn’t the daily mail.

March 6th, 2008 at 1:55 pm

Alex says:

Although I do think the “analysis” in this piece is highly questionable, it is interesting to see how many comments it has gotten.

I’m not going to offer an analysis of the phenomenon, though.. ;)

March 6th, 2008 at 3:00 pm

Will Tomas says:

I actually think the cries of poverty argument is a little more than is being made out here. I don’t pirate games particularly, mostly because I don’t have time to do play excessive numbers of them so only play games I’m fairly sure I’ll like (reviews, ain’t they great?) – and so don’t mind stumping up cash for them.

But when people say “I pirate because I couldn’t afford it otherwise” I suspect that were piratical anvenues not open to them then they would simply not play it. The point is that pirating avenues are available and easy to use, with very, very, very little chance of any negative impact on the pirate. So then it becomes a case of “I can’t be arsed to buy the game, but it looked fairly entertaining” and the cost (of time) to the pirate is so negligible that the thinking becomes “I might as well see what it’s like then…”

I find it hard to decry that viewpoint, really, since it’s one I take towards music (bad person, I know) and it’s not denying the publisher a sale since the pirate wouldn’t buy the game anyway. Whether they should or shouldn’t be able to take advantage of the situation is a moot point, and you could argue that the entertainment they’re getting from the pirated game is morally wrong, since they didn’t stump up cash to get that fun. But I find it hard to be that critical. In a slightly idealistic way, you could argue that if someone pirates a game that they end up really loving, then they might be inspired to actually buy that developer’s next game, since they’ll know they’ll like it. It’s the do-libraries-hurt-authors? argument. Idealistic, I know. But it did work with me in a couple of cases with bands – downloaded one album, liked it, so bought the next (although didn’t buy the pirated album).

The answer seems to be Steam, although personally I like having a physical box on my shelf, combined with lower prices, which make people think “that’s not too much to pay for something mildly entertaining…”

March 6th, 2008 at 3:59 pm

Alexander says:

I skipped all comments, boo me

On the subject of piracy I tend to take a simple stance; I discovered four days ago the game Evil Genius due to comments in an article on RPS. Scoured the amazon (international shipping is big no), didn’t score with only national retailers, moved over to torrent network and had the game within two hours. They failed to sell.

I would have paid for the game; I also pay for games on the steam network, because of instant delivery and (sometimes fair) pricing (us dollars < euros = I win). What bugs me, is that I rarely find games worth my money to say the least. With so many factors weighing on this decision, the most important is pricing, interesting game <10$ = win. Good game <20$ = win. Exceptional game <40$ = win. Brand is a factor, Valve can count on instant purchase. The worst thing is, there is exactly one game I know surpasses any sense in my system, which is the Metal Gear Solid series; for which solely I am seriously considering buying a PS3.

Otherwise, when marketing sparks my interest, I want to experience and confirm my expectations; if it fails I never buy. If my experience is rewarding = win for developer. For example, Pyro studios will see me buying the commandos pack simply for collector value and appreciation, and so forth.

March 6th, 2008 at 4:17 pm

dhex says:

will – i feels ya on the music thing to some degree, but the big gap here is that there is no secondary markets for game makers. they don’t go on tour (outside of the more rockstar designers doing speaking gigs, i mean), or sell merchandise, or have other revenue streams to make up for rampant copying of their music.

But when people say “I pirate because I couldn’t afford it otherwise” I suspect that were piratical anvenues not open to them then they would simply not play it.

this is doubtlessly true in some cases, but i don’t think it can be extended to all cases by any means. i think it’s more like “i don’t want to pay for this” rather than “i can’t pay for this.”

edit:
If the baker is selling dogshit instead of bread, there’ll be very few takers and he’ll go out of business.

while the quality angle does play a part, there’s another aspect missing – the better comparison would be “if everyone could get bread for free (i.e. no immediate cost to themselves) would anyone pay for it?”

March 6th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

Muzman says:

i am interested in why games in sweden or australia are so expensive – is it due to tariffs and taxes? that would be my guess, but i’d like to know more.

Don’t know sweden, but Aus it’s pretty much economies of scale plain and simple. Taken over twenty years of cost of living compared to other developed countries the vague sense I have is it’s not too far out of whack though. We pay more for some things, less for others. It hurts more lately because other gadgets are starting to come in cheap and the dollar is way up.

Regarding the ‘intangibility of data’ argument; I can’t really dismiss it entirely, but there’s another aspect I always have to stress when things like that are said. For generations now we’ve gotten stuff for nothing. Radio and TV were free; movies, music and entertainments of all sorts came over the air and were as natural as the scenery. Sure there were economics behind it all but they were invisible. Hardly anyone worried about it and no one was encouraged to worry about it who didn’t have to (I’d go so far as to say it was and is actively hidden). The internet has become an extension of this and no one should be in the least surprised that it forms part of the same moral landscape in the minds of everyday users as it becomes part of the mainstream, even though it is technically and practically different. Ok so the ground for this problem was laid by a dilligent culture of hackers over the last few decades (and indeed they are in part the remnants and progeny of the very ideals and technology that gave us PCs and the internet in the first place). But taking the big stick to the kids for not being economically moral like their parents never had to be isn’t really going to help much, not without some sort of economic glasnost from the industry at least.

March 6th, 2008 at 5:33 pm

Stromko says:

I know when I was young I couldn’t command the money to actually buy games. I was fortunate that back then you could rent PC games, and that once rented it was pretty much a given that you could back things up and have it for as long as you wanted. That’s probably why you can no longer rent PC games. Oops.

I’m glad that today’s generation of kids can just steal games, because otherwise households that don’t value games (the parents being gamers), will not have PC gamer kids and the industry will shrink every year.

I think that’s really it right there. Parents buy a console for a few hundred bucks, and then the kids can rent a game for about ten bucks every once and awhile so they just shut about it. Non-gamer parents have way more time on their hands to pump out kids, so this is the main segment that has kids who get addicted to console games and so it goes.

Sure that household will have a PC, but they won’t budget a couple hundred bucks a month for PC games to feed the habit.

If everyone steals, everyone loses, therefore it is immoral to pirate. However, you have to get people hooked on the junk or they won’t come back to buy it.

Kids have no source of income anymore, paper routes are all done by college students with cars, and nobody wants your shitty lemonaide. I know for a fact that girl scout troops get about 6% of the proceeds from going out in the cold and rain and selling cookies, and I doubt the kids get one red cent of it. They must either beg their parents to rent a console game whenever they get to Blockbuster, or they pirate it.

I really see no other way that anyone under the age of 20 or without a job or social security, and without a gamer parent, could get their hands on a PC game. Then again that’s a lot of ‘ifs’, so I’m not saying it’ll die without piracy. Wouldn’t do that much better in my opinion.

When you consider how many games come out that people /might/ like, it’s kind of expecting too much for them to buy every one of them. That’s what, a thousand USD every month, at least? That’s kind of beyond the reach of most customers!

They’re going to choose a small portion of games they might otherwise buy to actually purchase. Whether or not they pirate the rest, does not matter. It doesn’t matter(edit: well, they may be providing bandwidth to a torrent, but hardcore pirates use different torrents anyway, supposedly). You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip as they say.

(edit: Okay, so WoW sold like 20 million copies, supposedly, but they’re actually cheaper in other countries where they couldn’t otherwise afford it! WoW is kind of impossible to pirate, you can’t connect to the official servers and interact with their huge huge population. I still didn’t buy it, and I never pirated it either. Making a game nigh-impossible to pirate doesn’t mean everyone with the hardware to run it will buy it. I think the starforce camp likes to believe so, and when someone’s poured 5 years of their life into developing a game I could see them deluding themselves into believing it)

March 6th, 2008 at 6:21 pm

Joe says:

Should I ever meet anyone who’s got a pirated version of one of the games I’ve worked on, I’ll beat the living crap out of them, no questions asked.

Seriously? Why? Frequently, one finds irrationally angry opinions from developers incensed that piracy even exists. Poor artists, shaking their fists at the philistine hordes. I don’t find it very credible.

Also -

I don’t really care about the ethics of piracy, and people’s reasons for doing it or damning it. The solution, as many previous comments have outlined, is to provide Paying Gamers with value beyond that which is available from torrents. A publisher can do this via creative use of the same global high-speed computer network that allows torrents to exist in the first place.

Publishers who provide this value will thrive, publishers who do not will fail. The sky will not fall because people copy games.

March 6th, 2008 at 8:15 pm

bayani says:

What seems to be missing from a lot of these rationaliztions of piracy is a little something we like to call “responsibilty” I don’t think anyone who pirates really gets it. even in the cases of old games.

Lets put this into a real world example. Lets say you work for company B, and you spend X amount of time making a product. could be an hour, could be 3 years, it honestly does not matter. you still expect to be compensated for it. You, for some crazy reason, want to be paid for your work. the nerve of some people!
Now along come customer C, he says “hey, here is a product i might like. i dunno. maybe. I’m going to take it! and i’m going to use it. and i’m not paying for the right to use it, or own it, or anything. if i dont llike it, i’m going to throw it away, no harm done. if i do like it, maybe i’ll pay for it, but only when it’s cheaper, or maybe not at all, because i have already used it.”
so, your company B does not make any money from that customer, and comes to you and says “we didnt get any/enough money from the product you made. we will not pay you for the X amount of time you already put into the product. but we still want you to make this product.”
would you be mad? you just spent time/effort making something that you will never get paid for

some people will say ‘then they should make the product worthwhile’ but you’re forgetting that you still used the product! you still got some amount of entertainment/use out of that persons work, but are not paying for it.

some have rationalized that there are good games out there no longer in print, and so that’s why they pirate. say you worked on fallout 2, which was an amazing game with 20-40 hours of play in it (if you took your time) would you think you deserved to be paid for it if people were still selling it 10 years after release? blizzard still gets paid for diablo and starcraft, why shouldn’t the Fallout devs?

how about if you lost your cd key? take another example, books. if you lose a book, or throw it away, what gives you the right to take a book from barnes and nobles, just so you can have the title in your collection again? you’d be arrested.

then there’s the thought that games shouldn’t be expensive to make, which is absolute crap. try and ask ubisoft how much assassin’s creed cost to make. or take 2 (irrational) how much Bioshock cost. both were well into the millions. we gamers are a very fickle crowd today. if bioshock did not have the U3 engine behind it (at least a million dollar investment) with all it’s pretty water effects and shadows and atmosphere, no one would have liked it. same with any AAA game today. the reason why we want to play these games is because someone somewhere spent a lot of time, money, and effort on them. so devs are spending more money to make bigger games because that’s what we as gamers are demanding. ‘bioshock, but better! CoD4, but bigger! assassins creed, but prettier’ and that’s why stardock can get away with not DRMs, cause the gamers they appeal to (as said earlier) don’t care about the latest greatest bestest graphics, and they recognize that they have a responsibility to pay for the entertainment that they receive.
but if you do care about the latest greatest graphics, why do you punish the devs by not paying for them? if you arent sure about a game, dont buy it till you play a demo. if you think the demo isnt good enough, show it to publishers and devs by not buying or playing the game.

it constantly boggles my mind to hear people are willing to pay 10.50 for 2 hours of mediocre to just plain awful cinema (that’s 5.25 an hour, for those who’re counting) but cant be bothered to pay 50$ for 15 hours of great interactive fun (that’s 3.33 an hour) and dont tell me that these people are downloading the newest movies as well, cause i dont know a single person who complains about a bad video game who is willing to watch a shaky cam capture of “i am legend” or “transformers” just to save 10$

responsibility guys. you gotta learn it sometime.

March 6th, 2008 at 8:51 pm

James T says:

You are thieves and sooner or later there will be a system that comes along that will stop you doing this completely.

“God himself could not sink this ship!!!”

Elsewhere…

how about if you lost your cd key? take another example, books. if you lose a book, or throw it away, what gives you the right to take a book from barnes and nobles, just so you can have the title in your collection again? you’d be arrested.

Ironically, you’ve zeroed in on probably the only scenario where ’stealing’ data is more acceptable than stealing a physical product. A person with a misplaced CD key or a damaged disc (an inevitability when one has to constantly cart the disc in and out of the drive thanks to disc-in-tray requirements) has paid for the game. They disadvantage and deprive no-one by bypassing the measures which prevent them from playing the game they own. The idea that they should have to pay 50-90 bucks all over again because they happened to be the collateral damage of a company’s anti-piracy measures is as predatory and morally unacceptable as the pirates’ view that they shouldn’t have to pay for someone’s hard work. That the former view is backed up by law while the latter isn’t, is neither here nor there (unless one’s moral code is derived from local laws, in which case one might want to see a psychiatrist…)

March 6th, 2008 at 9:18 pm

bayani says:

@James T
Good point, though I would point out that if you really enjoyed a game, why would you not take care to ensure the disc was protected while out of the drive, and make a copy of the cd key to avoid loss? i know accidents happen, but that isn’t the devs/publishers fault. i.e. if i were to accidentally drop my tv down the stairs, i would have to buy another one from where ever. Why is it so different with software? it’s a product just the same, and if i don’t take proper care of the product, what right do i have to get an illegal copy of it, just so i dont have to pay for my irresponsibility?
DRMs are another issue entirely, and i suspect the main problems lies with the fact that there are very few devs that test their DRMs while making the game.i may be mistaken, but i get the impression that most DRMs are tacked on when the game ships, so the devs dont have to deal with it while beta testing. if they did build the DRM with the game, there wouldn’t be as many problems. but i agree that DRMs should not prevent/disrupt/make difficult the game experience of legal users. (yay for steam!)

@Will Tomas
I am completely in agreement that libraries are a great thing, my Robert Jordan fix wouldn’t have happened otherwise 20 years ago (back when i had to walk 10 miles to school, in the snow, uphill, both ways! where’s my dentures…) however, as i saw in another forum thread about piracy, libraries do not have 100’s or 1000’s of copies to give out at the same instance. at most they’ll have 10 copies of 1 title, which means in any 2 week period only 10 people have access to that author’s lifework, not 100,000 a day. and when the 2 week period is done, whomever has loaned out the book has to give it back, whereas a dl’d game doesn’t get returned to it’s owner/lender. it’s still in the permanent collection of the downloader. that’s the tradeoff with libraries, yes you get to read it for free, but it can’t sit on your shelf for 10 years waiting for you to get around to reading it again.

@Tak
My question would be why, if you are transferring/archiving data, are you putting it into public domain as a torrent? that would be like leaving your garage door open, with keys in your car, and a big sign that says “free car!” and expecting no one to take it. just about every software EULA states that you and only you have purchased the right to use the software. not only does it not give you the right, but, and i may be mistaken, i suspect it specifically denies you the right to distribute it in any way. i doubt that most devs/publishers would care if you made a backup copy (DRM software issues aside) but i suspect that they may have something to say if you were to throw it onto mininova and then try to say “i was only putting it up there to archive it!” that’s what shelves and 300gb hard drives are for.
as for game borrowing, i dont know that that’s an issue either. if my friend is borrowing Fallout, i can’t play it while he has it, and i’m not going to let him keep it, cause that was a freaking awesome game. borrowing would probably increase sales in a lot of respects, as most modern games are putting a MP component in, and if i wanna play with my friends, i gotta get a copy too.

as i typed this i began to realize that i’m getting way too involved with this. I’m sorry if i come across as rabid about this. i do understand piracy is not going to stop, that there are good reasons for torrents, and that i sound very much like those despised blank-faced corporate suit whores, whose only purpose in life is to suck the fun out of everything. however, it rankles me to hear any argument that justifies taking some ones work without paying for it. no one would accept that if it happened to them, but people seem perfectly willing to rationalize it when they do it to others.

March 6th, 2008 at 11:16 pm

Joe says:

Comparing copying to theft is disingenuous.

March 6th, 2008 at 11:53 pm

bayani says:

@eoy
That’s the best part of torrents and piracy, you’re getting an exact copy of something else, so you’re not stealing anything but “cloning” it
you are stealing. you are. period. you cannot think that you arn’t, and you must get it through your head that you. are. stealing. . the fact is that you are using someone else’s work without paying them that is stealing. it makes it even worse that it is an exact copy actually. if it were an inferior copy, then at the very least you are not getting as good of a quality product as the paying customers are.

as for music and tv? i never said it was okay. that is stealing too. if you tape a song off the radio, fine. if you record your local tv broadcast, great. but dl’ing full albums, or the dvd series? just as bad. people put work into those, and you cant be bothered to pay them for it. that is stealing.

also, as for in game advertising, it looks like it is going that way. but how often do you want to see that toyota ad while waiting for the instance to load in WoW? or that unskippable 30 sec commercial for pepsi that pops up every 15 minutes you play? looking forward to that… yessir… ad supported gaming. gonna love that more than i love DRMs… /sarcasm

March 7th, 2008 at 12:18 am

Benjamin Barker says:

Heh, I appended my previous post with examples of when I would pirate (out-print-games; games I once owned but lost) without rationalizing it actually. bayani is right in the strictest sense, that to do this is not taking responsibility for one’s actions (actually I lent out my Fallout 2 CD and it would be a pain to try and get it back). It’s hypocritical too, I’ll add. I actually made no argument, just put it out there (and thanks for the response).

The way any given internet goon thinks about this as an abstract economic or moral problem may or may not have anything to do with their actual behavior. It’s a point I was making about the intractability of piracy (um… on purpose! really!). Again, not to justify it, but most people actually do avoid taking responsibility for their actions when it’s the easier alternative, and it’s so very easy in this case. (I do think about it and limit it, for what it’s worth.)

We can argue about morality and justifications all we want, but piracy’s out there and a fact of life. It was around before the internet, when I got cracked C64 games from school friends. I find it more interesting to consider the nature of it and what it’s going to do to the industry– Help kill PC gaming? Distort it for the worse? I’d like to see more study (even this little casual one was interesting, as well as the posts) so we can maybe find out, and maybe the industry can deal with it intelligently and minimize the damage.

March 7th, 2008 at 12:23 am

lungfish says:

in respose to the libraries thing, the libraries themselves pay for the books and incur extra charges, with presumably the same percentage of royalties to the author. the same with dvd rental, blockbuster and the like pay a lot more for their rental dvds than you would buying them retail.

EDIT – realised i hadn’t actually mentioned piracy. tried it once, it made me feel all icky and sordid, i buy my games, music and dvds, if i can’t afford them i just don’t buy the damn things.
this view of stuff is probably due to me not having a computer until a couple of years ago and not having the internet until midway through last year, i simply became used to actually having to own, rent or borrow to actually experience anything.

March 7th, 2008 at 1:39 am

Tak says:

to Bayani:
I disagree with your comparison. We (myself and the other people who bought the game) are the only ones licensed to use the material. It would be more like having a car that I share with someone else. We each have our own key and license. Bad people can come along and do bad things, yes, but only slightly more so than if one person had a car and the key. Even that doesn’t work though, because the ‘car’ in the case of torrents isn’t being shared, it’s being duplicated 100%.

I’m not trying to argue that pirating software is good, by any means. What I’m leaning more towards is are the torrents themselves very bad things(tm)? I don’t think they are. I DO think, however, that current DRM systems (securom and cd-keys) are too easily circumvented and too clunky for how ineffective they are. With a more secure system, anyone can still get access to the file they need, but people who grab it without the proper license will have no use for it (unless they really like filling hard disks). What is that more secure solution? That’s the million dollar question.

This is why Steam is great, IMO. If all else fails, the files that games use can be put out over a torrent. I can grab them and use them with Steam just as well as I could download them over the Steam servers. Of course, given that Steam is entirely digital, there really shouldn’t (hopefully) come a time when the files aren’t available from Valve themselves.

I take as much issue with the ‘making available = pirate’ argument (look up the RIAA legal campaign if you’re not familiar with it) as the ‘I didn’t want to pay for it = permission to pirate’ argument. By making the material available to your own use or the use of other licensed users, you are not, in my mind, doing a bad thing. A new thing? Yes. A thing that we may not be entirely technically able to keep secure at the moment? Yes. But it should evolve into something more secure as long as we don’t kill it now in the hopes of getting a few more sales.

And I too would like to see a more formal study done on the volume of pirating software, more so than the one put out on Gamasutra. For all we know, Christmas time could be responsible for those sales spikes. Correlation is not causation and all that. Good start, but it needs to go further. EDIT: (I may well go further, and they’re just not sharing, or I forgot the article :p been a while since I’ve read it)

March 7th, 2008 at 2:57 am

Stromko says:

Piracy is certainly immoral, simply because if everyone did it the impact would be highly undesirable for all of us. There’d be no games industry without people buying games and rewarding the devs for developing.

If people just can’t afford it though, I think they should be able to pirate it. Why deprive them? Just because I paid money for a game and somebody else didn’t, that doesn’t effect my enjoyment. Having a nice glossy box for my book case, a good manual, and pride in knowing I’m supporting more games I enjoy being produced, is quite enough.

Of course, some pirates can totally afford a game. They just don’t think it’s worth the money, either they don’t take games seriously or they don’t like whatever they’re pirating. This doesn’t hurt me either, I just think people like that suck. If there was an unbeatable DRM that only worked against pirates that /could/ afford the game, and didn’t hinder legal owners or the destitute, I’d be all for it, but that simply isn’t possible.

I think it’s better for society when a laid-off schlub can still ’steal’ a game even if he can’t pay rent, instead of having to keep himself occupied by rioting and overturning cars. (e) I agree with others here that providing more service to legal owners could help reduce piracy by rewarding those whom pay, Stardock and Steam are doing well on this front, but in addition I don’t think the problem is even that bad to begin with.

Time was, a venture could just fail because it wasn’t very good. Now, every time a game doesn’t sell a bojillion copies, it must be those damn pirates again! Piracy’s bad, mmkay, but there’s a lot of peddlers of outright crap out there. If the market can sustain twenty ‘Dynasty Warrior’ sequels, methinks it can survive a few bad eggs needlessly pirating things.

March 7th, 2008 at 4:30 am

Dinger says:

Just a point for the eristic posters out there:

The quickest way to lose a debate is to assert as fact what is neither true nor held by your opponent as true.

This is why “copying is stealing” is an idiotic argument, up there with “masturbation makes you go blind.”

When someone steals work I have under copyright, they pass off my work as their own, and replace the benefit I would get from the work with their own.
When someone infringes on my copyright, they use my work against my wishes, deprive me of some boon, but the work remains mine.

It’s the difference between stealing a car and being loaned one for a week with express instructions to ‘keep it in town,’ then taking it on a road trip to Rimini. The guy gets his car back, but it’s worth less than it was.

March 7th, 2008 at 9:49 am

Johnny Go-Time says:

I really liked somebody’s argument that you can’t prevent piracy; accept it as a cost of business and incent people to pay you anyway.

A great example of this is Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nails. He’s just released an album over his website. You can download 9 songs for free (similar to a game demo), and it’s only $5 to download the entire 36 song album as mp3s. For $10, you get the instant download but also he’ll send you a copy of the 2-CD album in April.

To incent people to buy, you get bonus content like photos from the recording session etc. After the download, there’s a message saying that it was all released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license, so you can legally share it with your friends!

Recognizing that there are varying degrees of fandom, there’s also a $75 and a (now sold-out) $300 edition as well. Neat business model.

March 7th, 2008 at 7:02 pm

malkav11 says:

There’s still a difference in category and consequences between stealing a physical product and making an unauthorized copy of a digital product. This is not hard to grasp, and it is important to keep the two straight, even though neither is desirable behavior.

March 8th, 2008 at 10:07 am

mazza says:

steam is a pos, and the real reason it has not been tackled properly by pirates is simply because in the grand scheme of things, at the moment, it’s less then 3% of the market. as soon as it starts intruding, keygens will be made. and that’s all they will need to kill steam for good and forever. i mean if i was to give out my unused orangebox serial right now, the 1st person to use it (register it) would get those games. now imagine i had 50,000 unused working serials. and so on… and yes steam could start banning those, only how would they know which is keygened or which was purchased for real ? (this is assuming a proper keygen was used that makes random keys, which in fact are real – ie: some would be sitting in store shelves) i can expand on this if need be. just holler.

so in conclusion, steam will be killed off as soon as it gets real. (and yes, 10-15 million accounts mean shit)

i live @ http://www.taxi583.com

March 9th, 2008 at 3:58 pm

a-scale says:

50 dollars for a game is simply ridiculous. Game companies are the ones who need to get in line with their consumers. If you offer a product for more than people are willing to pay, it won’t sell. This is simple supply and demand. Unfortunately it appears that game developers are too set in their ways to compete on price, with the exception of a few (usually terrible) budget titles. How much more would COD4 have sold at 20 dollars per copy? Activision only stands to make more money per copy sold, regardless of price. Their production costs drop to near zero once the game goes gold. If activision sold 1 million copies at 50 bucks a pop, they made 50000000. If they sold 5 million copies at 20 bucks a pop, they would make 100000000, twice as much.

Once game developers realize that selling games is a matter of consumers weighing guilt, love for the company, availability and fear of persecution against price, they will start making more money and selling more copies. What does 900,000 some odd stolen copies of COD4 tell us? That COD4 wasn’t worth 50 bucks to at least 900,000 people. Valve has it right here- rampant piracy is just evidence of unserved customers.

June 16th, 2008 at 6:30 am