I was planning on working this into the Sunday Papers, but because I got distracted by staring forlornly at Romanian girls and didn’t do it, I think it’s worth getting out there to stand alone. Brad Wardell, Stardock CEO, has posted a short essay about Piracy and the PC which comes at it from a completely different angle. I interviewed Stardock CEO Brad Wardell for a forthcoming issue of Gamer, where he talks about some of the issues he repeats here, but I’m glad to see him put it in a single document. To paraphrase brutally, Piracy doesn’t matter. Only sales matter.
Here’s a typical quote:
“PC game developers seem to focus more on the “cool” factor. What game can they make that will get them glory with the game magazines and gaming websites and hard core gamers? These days, it seems like game developers want to be like rock stars more than businessmen. I’ve never considered myself a real game developer. I’m a gamer who happens to know how to code and also happens to be reasonably good at business.
So when I make a game, I focus on making games that I think will be the most profitable. As a gamer, I like most games. I love Bioshock. I think the Orange Box is one of the best gaming deals ever. I love Company of Heroes and Oblivion was captivating. My two favorite games of all time are Civilization (I, II, III, and IV) and Total Annihilation. And I won’t even get into the hours lost in WoW. Heck, I even like The Sims.
So when it comes time to make a game, I don’t have a hard time thinking of a game I’d like to play. The hard part is coming up with a game that we can actually make that will be profitable. And that means looking at the market as a business not about trying to be “cool”.”
By following this, he reaches Stardock’s position of trying to be as convenient to those who’ll buy their games by avoiding DRM and similar approaches rather than trying to stop the people who pirate the game. Because the Pirates don’t count. They have no direct financial impact. There’s a second side of this too, however.
It’s the “cool” factor he describes. That is, what gets hardcore gamers and journalists excited, and they give coverage to. With magazines and websites, I don’t think it’s actually anything to do with “cool” – it’s about what’s perceived as cool by the people who read them. As in, what will make them read. Regarding websites, there’s a nasty truth which no-one really has spoke aloud: Pirate’s clicks are as good as anyone else’s. Websites earn money from people who have no interest in paying for the game. If there’s several million pirate-only FPS fans, they’ll swell the page-impression count too. If there’s four million people who want to read about Call of Duty 4, even if only 400,000 want to pay for it, a website will earn more money by writing about it, rather than trying to do something for the 400,000 people who actually want to read about Sins of the Solar Empire, even if every single one of them buy the game. Until web advertising becomes less about pure number of page impressions, this is going to be an issue.
(That’s putting aside the equivalent of piracy for websites, of course: the sizeable proportion of people who run ad-blocking software. Which makes us a little sad on a place like RPS which doesn’t do the pop-up hell thing, but we’re all living in the shadow of the intrusiveness of some of the major sites so we can see why people feel driven to it. Still: Makes us a bit sad, especially when we see journalists do it. We’ll work out a way to encourage people to turn ‘em off for us eventually, I’m sure.)
Anyway – Brad’s position is correct. You’re better off making games for people who actually buy games. You earn no money by making a game everyone plays but no-one buys. It’s a business. To be sustainable, it has to be a business. As Brad says about Stardock’s desktop software…
“One of the jokes I’ve seen in the desktop enhancement market is how “ugly” WindowBlinds skins are (though there are plenty of awesome ones too). But the thing is, the people who buy WindowBlinds tend to like a different style of skin than the people who would never buy it in the first place. Natural selection, so to speak, over many years has created a number of styles that seem to be unique to people who actually buy WindowBlinds. That’s the problem with piracy. What gets made targets people who buy it, not the people who would never buy it in the first place. When someone complains about “fat borders” on some popular WindowBlinds skin my question is always “Would you buy WindowBlinds even if there was a perfect skin for you?” and the answer is inevitably “Probably not”. That’s how it works in every market — the people who buy stuff call the shots. Only in the PC game market are the people who pirate stuff still getting the overwhelming percentage of development resources and editorial support.”
As much that’s sensible in Brad’s position, I also suspect it’s a future than many RPS readers would be a little nervous of. Do you just want the equivalent of “ugly” WindowBlinds, forever? Until someone gets some more alternative business models working – and I’m looking at you, Battlefield Heroes – it’s a future which seems all too credible.
Brad Wardell’s debating the issues of his post over on Qt3. Interesting to see him go head to head with Charles, who’s part of the Assassin’s Creed team.
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Nick
I’ll confess to being no lawyer, but copyright infringement is when I take someone else’s IP and pass it as my own. Installing a copy of a game to which I have not purchased the right to do so is theft.
Rodafowa
Sorry, I hadn’t realised that using copies of games rather than retail originals doesn’t deprive anybody – what does the store do with the unsold copy for which they have paid?
The ananlogy sought to illustrate that the end doesn’t justify the means – just because the poster buys now, doesn’t excuse past actions.
Steve:
You’re assuming that if I don’t pirate a game, that I buy it. That’s simply not true.
Id’s profit on Quake if I didn’t pirate it: 15 bazillion dollars. Id’s profit on Quake if I pirated it: 15 bazillion dollars.
But: Id’s lifetime profit if I didn’t pirate Quake: 100 bazillion dollars. Id’s lifetime profit if I pirated Quake: 100 bazillion and 50 dollars.
You can talk about right and wrong if you want, but they’re ultimately irrelevant to the financing of games, and there’s no solid ground to allow us a meaningful discussion of the differences in our moral judgments. To you, copying a bunch of information that somebody worked hard to create is capital-w Wrong. To me, walking by a homeless guy digging in the trash without giving him a couple bucks for a sandwich is Wrong.
We’ll just have to wait to hear what St. Peter says.
Nate
Tesco made £2.55bn profit in 2007 – if I wan’t going to buy a particular game anyway (and assuming the disc was actually in the display case), is it OK to take it off their shelf?
Steve, this is getting too long, but I’m long-winded, so what the hell.
I think you’re focusing on the actual amounts of money, and they’re ancillary to the argument I’ve been advancing. It has nothing to do with who’s rich and who’s poor (except that poor people are less likely to spend their money on video games). Id could have lost money on Quake, and I could be using windex and thousand dollar bills to clean the windshield of my private jet, but it doesn’t change the fact that my illegal play of a game I would not have otherwise bought costs Id nothing.
If you shoplift a disc, one that you never would have bought, Tesco is out nothing, Walmart (or whoever) is out maybe twenty bucks, and you are up one game. You’re gaining at the expense of Walmart. There is a clear loser here, but it’s not Tesco.
If you download a game off of the internet, one that you never would have bought, Tesco is out nothing, Walmart is out nothing, and you’re up one game. There is no loser, assuming that you’re not just fooling yourself into thinking that you never would have bought the game.
Excuse me, I didn’t know who Tesco was. Tesco is a retailer. So please excuse the obvious error. Obviously, if you shoplift from Tesco, Tesco is out some money. Obviously, if you download something illegally, Tesco loses no money.
“I’ll confess to being no lawyer”
Downloading a game is a civil offence, not a criminal one. It is copyright infrigement. The example you gave is plagarism.
There are several types of copyright, they cover the right to reproduce (make copies), create derivatives , perform (in the case of music) and so forth. It gets quite convoluted.
As I said, it is still illegal, but theft carries criminal rather than civil charges.
There are cases where it is a criminal act, but they are usually to do with mass reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material, or knowingly selling copyrighted stuff.
Nate
Excuse me, I should have noted you were using dollars in your post – yes, Tesco is the UK equivalent of Wal-MArt.
I think one of the difficulties in the debate is the tangibility of the product: a disc on a shelf has a physical manifestation whereas a download manifests itself in no way other than pixels on screen and sound via speaker cones – do you actually, physically, posses something?
I suspect the excuse “I wouldn’t have bought it” is a spurious one at best – there are plenty of games that I wouldn’t buy and so, not only have I not bought them, neither have I downloaded them – I just don’t want them. I think you subscribe to that point with your statement about fooling oneself.
If one downloads a game, clearly, it is “wanted” so the retailer has lost a sale.
Nick
The “Computer Misuse Act 1990″ and the “Police and Justice Act 2006″ do criminalise “Unauthorised access to computer material” – though I know of no case where an individual has been prosecuted as Police resources dictate that they must go after large, organised groups.
I wasn’t describing plagiarism. If one is not the downloader but buys a game from a “mate” in the local pub, for example, the mate isn’t a plagiarist he is a criminal and so, by association, is oneself – receiving stolen goods.
“I wasn’t describing plagiarism”
You were when you said “Taking someones work and passing it off as your own”.
Also ASDA is the UK version of Wal-Mart, if we are being pedantic (they are owned by the same “family”).
Nick
Uh, you’re right, I was describing plagiarism but it also copyright infringement, as per my original post.
Tesco is the equivalent of Wal-Mart in that they both dominate their local markets; that ASDA is owned by Wal-Mart is irrelevant in this instance.
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