Comments on: The Yarr-ts: Piracy Snapshot 5.3.2008

By: a-scale

a-scale — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 05:30:14 +0000

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.

By: Jim Rossignol

Jim Rossignol — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 13:34:13 +0000

Oops, I just randomly deleted someone’s comment. Sorry!

By: mazza

mazza — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 15:58:41 +0000

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

By: SuperNashwan

SuperNashwan — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 09:27:32 +0000

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.

By: malkav11

malkav11 — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:07:12 +0000

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.

By: Dinger

Dinger — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:27:10 +0000

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.

By: Johnny Go-Time

Johnny Go-Time — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:02:32 +0000

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.

By: bayani

bayani — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 18:54:54 +0000

@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

By: Dinger

Dinger — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:49:11 +0000

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.

By: Larinson

Larinson — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 07:57:34 +0000

Clearly the message is – make more RPGs and strategies! Now that is something I can subscribe to. Certainly an interesting article, though.

By: Stromko

Stromko — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:30:38 +0000

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.

By: malkav11

malkav11 — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:17:45 +0000

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.