Something I’ve recently taken to doing is keeping one eye on the big torrent sites, just to see what’s topping their download lists. I do so because it’s illuminating to compare what people are willing to take differs from what people are willing to pay for. However, I thought it’ll be an interesting exercise to be a little more rigorous than that. So, hitting the Mininova, I totaled all the separate torrents for each popular game and worked out a chart. This is a snapshot of PC gaming piracy, on a single torrent site, on a single day.
Top 10’s here. The rest of the chart, plus analysis and my methodology beneath the cut.
1) Assassin’s Creed – 25734
2) Frontlines: Fuel of War – 12688
3) Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat – 8792
4) Dark Messiah of Might and Magic – 8402
5) Lost: Via Domus – 5883
6) Turning Point: Fall of Liberty – 5183
7) Sims 2 – 4026
8 ) The Club – 3672
9) Bioshock – 3489
10) The Witcher – 3121
11) Need for Speed ProStreet – 3061
12) Crysis – 2847
13) Conflict: Denied Ops – 2085
14) Neverwinter Nights 2 – 1893
15) Hellgate: London – 1750
16) World in Conflict – 1531
17) Stranglehold – 1459
18) The Orange Box – 1341
19) Age of Empires – 1099
20) Flat Out 2 – 1074
Methodology first. The numbers are total leechers. That is, number of people who are downloading from a torrent right now. Many of these – and the ones with the highest scores – have multiple torrents, which means it’s possible that trying multiples at once to see which one gives the game first. However, since I’ve only added up the torrents from the PC games sections first page – smaller torrents on the second page with less than 293 leechers have been omitted. Also, these are only torrents on Mininova. It’s the largest torrent site, but there’s many, many more. Finally, I’ve counted bundled packs – where the Add ons are added to a torrent – as a single game for simplicity.
Before we start, you may want to compare and contrast with the current PC charts in the UK and the US.
Okay – what to make from this? Well, Ubisoft are having a bad time. We mentioned that some code of Assassin’s Creed has been leaked before, but it’s worth stressing this is only a preview build. The game crashes upon reaching Jerusalem, which has lead to some hilarious hacker whining, immortalised here. Even when this is known, it hasn’t stopped people downloading the bloody thing. Lost making an appearance is expected, but Dark Messiah showing up is a genuine surprise – in terms of most leechers on a single client, it’s highest. Presumably this is because of the attention gained by the recent release of a somewhat lacklustre console version.
Secondly: The torrent kids will go wild for shooting stuff. In fact, any kind of shooting stuff. They don’t even care if it’s any good, as the sixth-position for the poorly-reviewed Turning Point demonstrates. While there’s more strategic games there, what’s also worth noting that the current big game – Sins of A Solar Empire – is absent, despite sitting #2 in the US retail charts. Which you may say is a cute demographic snapshot – though, I’ll note, that while relatively few people are downloading it, despite the fact it has no copy protection, it’s the second-most seeded torrent – even if no-one’s taking, people seem determined to try and distribute it for some reason.
Thirdly, let’s try a little really rough – if conservative – maths. Call of Duty 4 has been on sale for 113 days, assuming day zero piracy. A seven gig torrent, assuming a 100k download speed, takes just under a day to download. Assuming that the rate of downloads now is constant across those whole three and a bit months – which is incredibly conservative, of course, as it’d have been much higher upon release – that means 993496 copies will have been illegally downloaded via Mininova alone. Which is the sort of number that makes Infinity Ward sad.
A friend of mine said something that struck me recently: There probably are just as many “traditional” PC gamers as ever; it’s just that they’re not paying for it. Part of me suspects that eventually they’ll end up paying for it in another way. If I were considering making a PC game, looking at the list, there’s not a chance in hell I’ll make an FPS.
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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.
@Alexander
Was about to say you could get Evil Genius on directtodrive, but it’s not there anymore. Damn industry, why don’t you want us buying your games?!
Though direct-to-drive is pretty dodgy, from what I can understand of their fine print there’s numerous ways in which I could lose my “privilege” to a game purchased on it.
—-
There is really no one solution that will stamp anything out, just like real life. When you’re talking about millions and millions of people, there will always be a degree of corruption. There’ll be individuals who’ll say, “Yes, that is worth the price they are asking, and I’m not paying”.
It’s like the old argument of whether it’s okay to steal bread or not to feed your starving family. On the one hand, the baker and the farmer apparently have enough excess food to be selling grain and bread so it’s okay. But why would they bother if /everyone/ (even the rich) stole? The whole thing would collapse and there would be a horrible food shortage, if everyone took what they wanted without paying.
The way it turns out, not everybody steals bread and the world keeps on turning. Okay, some people are starving, so it’s maybe not the best but… There’s enough wealth going around that enough people are able to buy the product, the producers and distibutors are thusly rewarded, and we see packed store-shelves giving us wonderful options to please the palate. There’s so much plenty it gives us diabetes! Yay!
If everyone stole games, then there wouldn’t be this big industry making shiny new games. Therefore, piracy is immoral. Piracy also isn’t going to kill the industry, unless the industry deserves to die. If the baker is selling dogshit instead of bread, there’ll be very few takers and he’ll go out of business.
So long as there are good games, there will be people who pay for them. Piracy is still a bad thing to do, people are being rewarded that much less for their hard work. If you want to encourage games you enjoy being made, you must buy them.
It’s really all the same argument. A moral person will pay for something if they can afford it, because they want that something to always be there. If you really like cinnamon rolls it makes no sense to shoot the baker, because you’d have to make your own damn cinnamon rolls.
I’ve bought all but one game I played in the past 12 months at least. The exception was a title that was never released in the U.S. and I couldn’t find on any import sites. I’ve since deleted it because I didn’t want to spare a DVD or the hard-drive space on it.
That said, if I didn’t have the income to get these things, I would’ve pirated. Yes, that’s wrong, but that’s how it is. I wouldn’t mug someone, or burglarize someone, or otherwise deprive them of the item I’m taking, but if I can’t afford something and I want it enough that’s what I would do and I’d be lying (also immoral) to say otherwise.
Everybody has that line. You might steal a drug if it would save your life. Then again some people rape because they want that badly enough. Moral subjectivity is shit, and it’s also kind of how the world works.
(edit) There is actually no way to stop theft is the key issue, at least, not in a world we’d want to live in. If we were all being monitored via webcam, I don’t mean just when playing I mean 24/7, then the second we played a game we didn’t buy (or fapped to pirated porn) we’d go to jail. It’s not enough to just shut down torrenting, that would only create an industry of pirate disc-burners passing games to people in folded-up newspapers on the street.
Keeping corruption down is essential to an industry. By and large people won’t make something if they never get rewarded for it. It’ll never, ever be stamped out completely in a society that’s even remotely free, however.
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?”
There, sir, is the grey area… You have purchased the game (more specifically, the right to play it and a key-code – the disc is merely a distribution method).
However, when you think about it, its the dealer/user drug analogy – By downloading the game to replace some damaged media you are just the ‘user’.
Consider, however, that in theory you could be sharing a portion with someone else, as very few, if any, torrent clients let you lock off the upload (100% leeching). This person might just be in it for the piracy and never intends to pay a bean. You have now become the ‘dealer’ in the equation, thus you are in the wrong.
The whole concept of ’sharing’ means that one person is always giving it to someone else…
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.
One angle that always seems unduly neglected in the piracy analysis I’ve noticed is the demographic breakdown of who is doing it– I’m thinking by age (though I’m sure such numbers are hard to come up with).
I’d guess that teenagers (and younger) and college students are much if not most of it. “Cries of poverty” are probably pretty true for those not financially independent, but also in this age group there’d generally be insufficient maturity to refrain on principle. Just speculation on my part, but with the combination of those two factors you’ve got a problem that’s pretty much never going away.
I used to pirate but nowadays I can’t help but think if I do it I’m helping in the decline of industry willingness to make games for the PC market as opposed to consoles. Oh, stealing is wrong too I guess, but honestly this is the thought that directs me. I’m well past the age group I brought up– would a typical 16- or 18-year-old care about any of that? (Whippersnappers!)
I will do it for older games if I can’t find them anywhere (Alpha Centauri, original Sam & Max and other LucasArts are some I’ve done. I’m going to have to do it for Fallout 2 sometime because I lost my CD).
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)
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17744
…why I love these guys.
I used to download games more like an addiction to keep my connection ‘occupied’ until steam came to surface, and of course valve’s games.
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.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350
Reflexive’s director of marketing Russell Carroll
“Casual Games and Piracy: The Truth [Just how rampant is piracy in PC casual gaming? In a startling instalment of his regular Gamasutra column, Reflexive's director of marketing Russell Carroll (Wik, Ricochet) reveals the 92% piracy rate for one of his company's games, and what worked (and didn't work) when they tried to fix it.]
Quote:
Fixing The Holes – The Results
Below are the results of Reflexive.com sales and downloads immediately following each update:
Fix 1 – Existing Exploits & Keygens made obsolete – Sales up 70%, Downloads down 33%
Fix 2 – Existing Keygens made obsolete – Sales down slightly, Downloads flat
Fix 3 – Existing Cracks made obsolete – Sales flat, Downloads flat
Fix 4 – Keygens made game-specific – Sales up 13%, Downloads down 16% (note: fix made after the release of Ricochet Infinity)
From the results above, it seems clear that eliminating piracy through a stronger DRM can result in significantly increased sales – but sometimes it can have no benefit at all. So what does that mean for the question about whether a pirated copy means a lost sale? The decreases in downloads may provide a clue to that
As we believe that we are decreasing the number of pirates downloading the game with our DRM fixes, combining the increased sales number together with the decreased downloads, we find 1 additional sale for every 1,000 less pirated downloads. Put another way, for every 1,000 pirated copies we eliminated, we created 1 additional sale.
Though many of the pirates may be simply shifting to another source of games for their illegal activities, the number is nonetheless striking and poignant. The sales to download ratio found on Reflexive implies that a pirated copy is more similar to the loss of a download (a poorly converting one!) than the loss of a sale.
Though that doesn’t make a 92% piracy rate of one of our banner products any less distressing, knowing that eliminating 50,000 pirated copies might only produce 50 additional legal copies does help put things in perspective.”
“
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.
I know this doesn’t answer bayani’s point exactly, and it isn’t intended to, but as an abstract aside I just thought I’d throw this in:
You’re an author who spends ten years of your life writing your novel, your masterwork, the greatest achievement of your life, and then thousands of people get to enjoy it without paying you a thing. They went to libraries.
Are libraries a good thing? Yes, obviously. Should authors get paid? Yes, obviously. Somehow the circle gets squared.
“God himself could not sink this ship!!!”
Elsewhere…
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…)
@ general peeps
The profit-margin stuff doesn’t count for AAA titles. Halo 3, for instance, cost (depending on where you look) anywhere from 30-60 million. The high end of that includes marketing and everything else. The game pulled in over 100 million more than that on the first day of sales alone. Granted, that’s not all profit, but that’s more than enough to recover production costs with some profit, and subsequent sales provide almost pure profit. Bioshock I can’t find stats for (at work, anyway), but I’d wager it too brought in more than it cost.
I’m not disagreeing with your sentiment, just the chosen argument.
@Optimaximal
I hadn’t considered that side of the argument, interesting.
For the sake of this question, I wish to assume two things. Feel free to call them out if you don’t agree.
1) The torrent creator is *only* distributing the game assets, not CDKeys, cracks, etc. Just the data from the discs.
2) The torrent was put out for archival/transfer from one location to the other/other legitimate purpose. The intention is to make the assets available (but not the component required to use them).
To your argument, now that the torrent is out, a devious cur gets his hands on it and decides to leech with the intent of doing bad things. This wasn’t the idea of the torrent creator, of course, but since the data was no longer under his direct control, someone saw an opening to do something bad, and did it.
The torrent originator and myself are using it for back-up purposes (arr nerds). Our physical media is still intact, but corrupted/decayed/no longer in print and we want to use the digital copy. What is the difference between me getting a copy of the game from the internet and borrowing a friend’s disc, if the disc is only the distribution method? Vulnerabilities in the chain of custody exist in either situation, but people don’t decry game-borrowing as a revenue killer and bane of all things gamey.
ARR I have to go, hate to cut this short, be back at it in a bit.
@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.
@Will Tomas
Great points! What makes it okey to get books (that some person have devoted many years of his life for) from the library while it’s not okey to get games from the greatest library of them all: the internet? The local libraries in my city even rent out some older games, but the selection is very limited.
@bayani
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. In my country you can also extend your rental using an online service, until someone else actually is in need of your book / movie / cd / game. The thing with libraries is just that they are becoming more and more useless, because everything you could want from them can be found much easier and more conveniently on the internet.
I also find it silly how there’s this double morale going on where it’s okey to download music and tv-series, but not okey to download games. I doubt there are many persons browsing RPS that haven’t downloaded a single pirated song in their lives. Hell, where I come from it’s even illegal to convert your legally bought CD’s to mp3’s and put them on your mp3-player. We are basically criminalizing most of our country while trying to fight piracy, that should and could be turned into something positive.
Is the simple answer to piracy going to be advertising? With enough advertisements in games, the advertisers and the companies could probably actually gain from piracy.
Comparing copying to theft is disingenuous.
Intellectual property is still property, and pretending that no harm is done because you’re merely cloning the data is also disingenuous.
@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
I don’t think you can entirely blame the pirating on the consumers themselves. I am tired of problems in the newer games nowadays. Just today I come home from getting Army of Two (brand new), only to find out it doesn’t even support system link at all. xbox.com claims it does and everywhere else on the internet claims it does, yet EA themselves told me over the phone that both people have to have xbl accounts and be online to play *offline* system link.
There is no excuse for this type of crap happening in games and with false advertising today. I blame the devs for not giving us MORE and instead rehashing the same boring ideas and LEAVING OPTIONS out of games that were in OLDER generations of the games.
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.
Geez these arguments frustrate. All they do is go round and round in circles, preventing any solution from actually being found. The digital revolution is not unlike the industrial revolution, the latter brought new economic models, and so does the digital one. Stop fighting to maintain the old one and lets find and support new ones that work for the consumer AND for the developer. Piracy is a reality and mostly I feel that the anti-consumer attitude of industry contributes largely to the problem. Yes people need to take personal responsibility, but playing some morally-just blame game doesn’t freaking help. Casting pirates as bank robbers doesn’t freaking help either.
Note to developers – stop HATING your customers and start BUILDING a relationship that serves you both rather than just your greed. A little greed is necessary, you need to feed your families and pay for nice things like staff, but don’t go after the golden egg in spite of your most valuable resource, your fans!
EDIT: As an aside. The spirit of any creative endeavour is in fact harmed by the need to commercialise it. A game is made to be played, Music is meant to be listened to, Movies and TV are meant to be watched. ANYTHING that hinders those purposes (i.e. cost, regional restrictions, etc.) is actually a bad thing. I realise that people need to get paid for their work, but what’s the point of making something that doesn’t get used for what it was made for. Surely a game developer desires people to play their game, and with that desire in mind, piracy is awesome! If you can somehow detach your economic model from your content (i.e. services based) then piracy can be the best thing since sliced bread. Since piracy works better and more efficiently as distribution model the more popular something is. Just a thought.
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.
@grindking
Oh, i understand devs pulling crap. the system link fiasco with army of two is a good example. however, i am forced to point out that just because the game isnt exactly what you expected isnt an excuse to pirate. the argument that ‘i didnt like it, therefore i shouldnt have to pay for it’ is a bit of a fallacy in this context. it’s like going into a supermarket, picking up a candy bar and taking a big bite out of it, swallowing, then saying ‘i dont like how this tastes, i’m not paying for it.’ you’ve used a ‘consumable’ product, you need to pay for it. the entertainment in a game is usually limited to the end of a game. if you used (consumed) any portion that is beyond what the devs have given out for free (demos etc) you should be required to pay for it.
in the case of army for two, it may be a bit different, as i cannot find a pic of the box requirements, but i suspect that if you look at it (again, not sure, so correct me if i’m wrong) you’ll find in very small print that xbl gold accounts are req’d for system link play, otherwise i’d say they are open to a class action lawsuit for misadvertising.
ultimately though, i have to disagree with the initial statement. Piracy is the consumers fault. Just because the dev didn’t put X,Y, or Z feature in “my fav game evar” doesn’t mean i have the automatic right to spread it around to whomever i want, nor does it mean i dont have to pay for it. it’s our right as consumers to refuse to purchase a product. devs dont force us to buy them. it’s our choice to pirate something. devs dont put it out there themselves. someone somewhere has to make the active choice to throw it out there, and others have to make the active choice to dl it. If you want a game that has all the features you want, you’ll need to make it yourself, as very few devs can or even want to please everyone.
@Benjamin Barker
I would love to see an actual report, done properly (scientific method or whatnot) on the effects of piracy on the game industry. i hope it didn’t sound like i was attacking you or any one specifically. the rationalizations are what bug me, that and the naysayers who believe that it is “victim-less”. No one would ever think of saying that they shouldn’t get paid for a product they produce, that others really want to buy. rational people wouldn’t run off with a dvd player without paying, nor do they steal a car just off the factory line. they understand that someone worked on it, and are willing to pay for that work. but somehow people get the idea that just because a game is not physically in their hands, they don’t have to pay for it.
wow… i’m a regular essayist now. sorry for the long winded posts. i am enjoying the debate, though, for what that’s worth.
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)
On the piracy of old games: I absolutely agree that just because a game came out ten years ago doesn’t mean that the developer doesn’t deserve to be paid for it. But the thing is, it has to be in print and available for purchase new or by legal download for that to happen. And there are literally thousands of games that’s no longer true for. I want to pay for System Shock 2. Care to find me a direct sale copy where the developer will actually receive a portion of the proceeds? How about Star Saga (a late 1980s space exploration game that used a board and booklets for most of the gameplay, with a computer program adjudicating action outcome)? I can’t even find that for sale on eBay! How about Microprose’s Darklands, or Sid Meier’s Covert Action? The Ishar trilogy. Emperor of the Fading Suns. The Dungeon Keeper expansion. You’re not going to be able to pay the developer for any of those. It’s simply not possible.
And I wish it were otherwise. In particular, I wish that ESA members who’re so aggressive about takedowns of their games would provide their own source, because it’s not that I want to play these games for free (though it doesn’t hurt), it’s that I want to play them at all.
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.
Clearly the message is – make more RPGs and strategies! Now that is something I can subscribe to. Certainly an interesting article, though.
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.
@Tak
I can see what your saying now. if you have a license to use a game, and your friend has a license, why cant you just throw it up on the net for you both to use? that way it’s available for those who’ve the right to use it. I don’t see a problem with that if it were the dev or publisher doing it, or on a private server accessible by those with license. Steam is built around it, and it’s a fantastic model. i love the ability to dl HL2 or portal to whichever pc I’m at. The problem i see with throwing it up on a torrent site is that people will get the idea they can get the game without paying for it. it makes it much more accessible to them and (perhaps a stretch, but I’ll go for it anyway) easier to rationalize theft. I completely agree that current DRM needs to be overhauled. The torrents themselves aren’t bad, and if the software could only be used by the licensees, then even public access wouldn’t be a problem, however there are no current systems (that I’m aware of) that can do that, so public access just makes piracy that much easier (IMO).
@Stromko
How very generous of you. “I can afford a car, but if someone else can’t afford a car, I don’t see why they can’t just steal one. It won’t hurt me (as long as they dont take my car)”
The problem isn’t that you are affected by software piracy. the problem is that publishers and devs are hurt by piracy.
@Dinger
Thank you for the advice. I was not, however, referring to copyright infringement or plagiarism, which is the kind of theft you are talking about. i was referring to the theft of a product. games are, for all intents and purposes, consumable products. once I’m done playing crysis, I’m never going to play it again. i can keep playing TF2 or CoD4, because they were designed to be ‘consumed’ over a longer period of time, but in 5 months or 1 year or 5 years, i will no longer be playing those games, as i will have moved on. i will have ‘consumed’ them. i don’t think any pirate is going to say ‘hey, i *made* CoD4′ (copyright infringement) rather, they will say ‘i’m going to play (consume) CoD4 (a product) without paying it’s creators’ they have taken a product without paying for it. i was under the assumption that the definition of ’stealing’ was a constant. to take the property of others without permission or right. games are products, the property of the publishers and devs, hence i said that copying a game(product) without paying it’s publishers and devs (owners), is theft.
it’s the difference between taking a car without paying for it, and taking a car and paying for it.
and finally:
@GlennB
you’re right, arguing about it isn’t going to change the situation. a solution needs to be found, unfortunately part of the solution is personal responsibility. i know that sounds stupid and like i’m all high and mighty, but it’s true. the only reason why devs and publishers are using DRM is because people are not taking responsibility for their actions of stealing software. instead they cry about how ‘the devs need to offer more’, then they ‘might be willing to pay’. commerce is a two way street. devs provide a product, we provide them money for it. if a dev provides a product and sees that product being stolen by people who should have been their customers, why should a dev ’stop hating’ on them? no one has an unalienable right to play games. we pay for that privilege, and when devs see that privilege abused, they try to find ways to stop it (DRM) which inevitably leads to cries from gamers saying ‘you hate us cause your not giving us what we want for the price we want’ children do the same thing when they don’t get what they want. if we want devs to stop treating us badly, we need to stop treating them badly, ie – reward them for the good work they do (pay for the games we like), and punish them (don’t buy or play games we don’t like) when they do bad work.
edit to the aside. any creative endeavor is harmed by commercialization to a certain degree, yes, but saying that ‘ANYTHING that hinders those purposes (i.e. cost, regional restrictions, etc.) is actually a bad thing’ is kinda a stretch. i’m sure that shakespeare loved writing, but i doubt he would have done as much or as great a work if he didn’t get paid for it. studio artists can get away with that thought of “i just need my art to be seen !!” but they also charge an arm and a leg for their paintings, because they too need to do those pesky things like eat and live in a house…
i’m not suggesting that publishers and devs rip us off. what i am suggesting is that they receive fair compensation for their hard work. as for separating the economic model from content? well, 90% of games is content. artistic content, design content, story content. even the services that Steam or stardock offer are content. it is therefore (IMO) very difficult, if not impossible, to separate content and the economic model. as gamers, we demand content . we pay for content. good art, good story, good design. all those merge into replay-abilty, which give us the impression of a worthwhile purchase. if the content of the game (graphics, story, game play) was not that good, i wouldn’t play. i suspect it’s the same with everyone. Content is king. it’s the reason why we play games. it is the service we are provided, and asked to pay for.
good heavens! i should just leave this post alone! the more i read the more i respond, and the more i respond, the more involved i get! how about this? i invoke Godwins law! copying is stealing! the nazi’s stole stuff! if you copy games you’re a nazi!
does this mean i just lost the argument? :D
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.
bayani: the theft you refer to does not exist. No criminal court on the planet will recognize it as theft, although some have other criminal laws against it. Yes, you lose.
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.
I don’t understand that if publishers/developers really believed in the figures they pull out of the air about how piracy translates to lost sales, why haven’t they introduced hardware dongle protection like the audio software industry? h2o took over a year to crack Synchrosoft and said they’d never do it again, now h2o are retired no one else on the audio warez scene seems even capable of cracking the updated Synchrosoft protection. ilok protected products are only sporadically cracked and again only by one very “talented” group. It’s not that I want to see it happen (I too didn’t buy the CoH expansion because of the DRM) but what’s to stop someone with EA’s clout approaching nvidia and ATI and paying them to include hardware copy protection on graphics cards? The costs should be trivial if the industry is losing as much money as it claims.
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
Oops, I just randomly deleted someone’s comment. Sorry!
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.