By John Walker on October 2nd, 2008 at 4:26 pm.
I know this probably sounds like paranoia, but sometimes I wonder if there’s some people predisposed to dislike the forthcoming Fallout 3. Yes, I realise what you’re thinking: But this is from Bethesda, who make those incredibly popular Elder Scrolls games, and the Fallout series is excellent and deserves a new game from a stand-out development team. But despite all this, my gut just tells me that there’s a dissenting voice, quiet as it might be, out there. While I’m here, another prediction: I think DRM will soon become a hot-button issue amongst PC gamers. Time will prove this. I laugh to think what would happen if you combined the two topics, were my instincts to prove correct.
Wait, what’s this?
Fallout 3 will have minimum DRM. Possibly just a disc-check. And no install limits. As with Oblivion, Bethesda don’t intend to impose any mad restrictions on their legitimate customers. That’s rather lovely. But they’re still concerned by the subject. Talking to Shack, Pete Hines explained,
“[It's] pretty similar to what we did for Oblivion, which was – we basically don’t do any – we do the mildest form possible… We try to be really non-invasive when it comes to that stuff. And it is a pain in the ass – it is a pain in the ass that we have to do it at all in the first place. But when you spend tens of millions of dollars, we don’t think it’s right to just put something out there and let everybody do whatever they want and pass it around.”
I like this response. It’s not, “RAH RAH IMPRISON THEM ALL!”, but more a reluctant, “Oh, I wish they wouldn’t.” He continues,
“But no, we’re pretty mild about how we do it, and we try to do it in a way that prevents folks from exploiting and distributing our games that we worked very hard on, and that we feel we have a right to try and sell and not have distributed free without our okay. It’s very important for us not to ruin the experience for the person who did buy a copy, so we try to be very careful.”
It’s then confirmed that there will be no install limit on the game either. Hurrah! It’s worth reading the whole, interesting interview. (And of course to read our own with the man). There’s more discussion of piracy, which we all love to talk about so much. And they go on to discuss the nature of developing for the PC, and all that sort of thingamy.
02/10/2008 at 16:35 Lorc says:
That’s pretty reasonable of them.
02/10/2008 at 16:37 Alec Meer says:
COPYRIGHT IS THEF… Oh. Okay.
02/10/2008 at 16:37 Colthor says:
So it is like the first two games in at least one way, then ¬_¬
Seriously: Huzzah! The only thing that’ll stop me buying this will be Clear Sky-style “horrible disappointment” reviews. And I hope it doesn’t get those.
02/10/2008 at 16:37 dhex says:
that’s a damn reasonable response.
edit: and he hints at it possibly being on steam, too.
02/10/2008 at 16:38 Him says:
I think I’ll hold onto my shinies until NMA get their hands on a copy and release their dissection results. I’m expecting offal and horror, but will purchase should one of my two expectations be proven wrong.
02/10/2008 at 16:44 YogSo says:
“we try to do it in a way that prevents folks from exploiting and distributing our games (…) free without our okay”
But why? Why bother in the first place? Whatever they do, pirates will have a working crack sooner than later, and in the end those who want to buy the game will buy it, and those who don’t will torrent it… So, why bother? He even says that it’s a pain in the ass to implement, so why don’t they realize that it’s a worse solution to upset* your buying customers trying to stop something that you-just-can-NOT-stop…?
* Of course, it seems that’s not the case here, I’m talking about the other recent examples we’ve had…
Pre-emptive edit: If the reason is to stop the so-called ‘casual piracy’ as in “I’m decided to buy the game, but then my friends will borrow and play it for free”… Well, do you really believe that if there’s some DRM stuff that prevents doing this they are going to be “Oh, noes! I can’t pirate it! I will have to RUN to the shop to buy it!…”? The thruth is they are going to say: ” Oh, wait, pirate bay, search… Fallout 3… 3000 seeds… hmm, hummmm…”
02/10/2008 at 16:45 Maximum Fish says:
Now there’s only the Games for Windows Live! bit to be worried about. Not that i’m not going to buy Fallout 3 on the day of release or anything, just saying. GFWL in my opinion is far worse than DRM.
In principle DRM sucks worse, but in practice i don’t upgrade my computer 3 times generally before the asinine install restrictions are broadened are totally removed (don’t have that sort of money unfortunately) and have been lucky enough not to run into the cd read errors.
But GFWL is a slap in the face to PC gamers, an akward, cumbersome and time consuming log on process, a crappy an insecure save system (where are they? Or more troublesome still, were did they all go?), hit Y button xbox controls nonsense, etc..
In Kane and Lynch, the game would hitch along like a spastic with parkinsons, come to find out it’s because GFWL is polling my HID’s for a freaking Xbox 360 controller every damn second. No, i don’t have one. They’re retarded. This is why i play PC games. Whatever.
I really hope Bethesda’s likely-to-be-classic isn’t unduly burdened with Microsoft’s total incompetence in the PC games market.
02/10/2008 at 16:48 Urael says:
I liked Morrowind and Oblivion very much. I like Bethesda. I don’t want to hate them for any reason, and I’ve never been a huge fan of Fallout (not having played the games) so won’t even have a go at them for corrupting the spirit of a ‘treasured franchise’ with their new-fangled 3D gubbins.
But I want this game. I’ve only recently decided to buy it and am looking forward to it based on the previews – it looks great. However, if some kind of savage, EA-like DRM appears on the disc in any form, I will not purchase it. It’s that simple. Even the DVD-check will stick in my craw a bit but at least a crack for that will appear in short order, allowing me the same, non-dvd-in-tray ease of use as the pirated version will undoubtedly provide.
02/10/2008 at 16:50 Maximum Fish says:
@YogSo (…thoth??)
I can understand their frustration, i mean if i dedicated several years to something i was very proud of (and planned on selling), i’d resent the tools who just jumped in and stole it. Even though you’re right, and it doesn’t actually work anyways (or at least it never seems too), it has to be irritating.
EDIT – also, and not trying to start a tangent discussion or anything, but I think Clear Sky is pretty awesome myself, and was a huge fan of the original. I didn’t however even start playing it until version 1.505, but with this version i would recommend it to the more technical-quirk-tolerant (okay, outright bugs in some places) players.
02/10/2008 at 16:52 arqueturus says:
I really don’t care about DRM. Sorry.
02/10/2008 at 16:53 Iain says:
@John: “I think DRM will soon become a hot-button issue amongst PC gamers”
I think my sarcasm-o-meter just exploded.
02/10/2008 at 16:55 Theoban says:
@Him
You do know that NMA will tell you this is the worst game ever, regardless of how good it is? Have you EVER seen anything that’s not frothing at the mouth from that site about Fallout 3? Instead of treating the Fallout series like ‘games’ they’re treating it like they’re a religion, which scares and horrifies me.
Try posting on there saying you think you’ll wait and see if it’s any good. They’ll be calling you every name under the sun within minutes because you’re not joining in on the mass frenzy.
02/10/2008 at 17:00 YogSo says:
@Maximum Fish: I too completely understand their frustration, but they have to find a better solution, one that works against pirates and not against the people that have bought their game in the first place. I think that’s a pretty sensible thing to ask for… don’t you?
@Theoban: Of course, we (here) are better than they (NMA). We can perfectly come to terms with a critic from the RPS-mind saying how Stalker:CS is somewhat worse than it’s predecessor without “joining in the mass frenzy”… ;)
02/10/2008 at 17:02 Ginger Yellow says:
“Fallout 3 will have minimum DRM. Possibly just a disc-check. And no install limits.”
I realise I’m in the minority on this, but disk checks are the worst kind of DRM as far as I’m concerned. I’d rather have an online check every single time you play than a disk check. I don’t want to search through five different bookcases and crates to find a disc to play a game I haven’t touched for a while.
02/10/2008 at 17:06 futage says:
@Maximum Fish
If I’d dedicated several years to something I was quite proud of, I’d want as many people as possible to experience my work.
I see the currently unauthorised means of distribution as being to games what public libraries are to books (and CDs and DVDs). And given that I also see games as being as important as books, I think those distribution channels deserve the support and legitimisation that public libraries enjoy.
Surely the actual producers of artistic works do and indeed should primarily want to reach the widest audience possible? It’s the publishers who are (rightly) worried. And it’s the publishers who always want to milk it for the last drop
This is old news so I’m sure you’ve seen it before. But that sort of attitude makes me happy. That’s what it should be about: http://torrentfreak.com/producer-thanks-pirates-for-stealing-his-film-071113/
02/10/2008 at 17:07 Diogo Ribeiro says:
While I’m here, another prediction: I think DRM will soon become a hot-button issue amongst PC gamers.
This is why I love RPS – always ahead of their time in predicting major trends :lol:
Non-intrusive copy protections. Okay. I can get into that, if only because there’s a genuine effort to both protect their properties and not findmuck costumers. Still, that they believe it will amount to any degree of solid protection really shows how messed up the industry is on a number of issues.
02/10/2008 at 17:07 Gap Gen says:
YOU WOULDN’T COPYRIGHT VIOLATE A HANDBAG doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
There’s also this: http://www.angryflower.com/supergo.html
02/10/2008 at 17:08 Colthor says:
@YogSo
I think they know they won’t stop the “hardcore” pirates, or anyone who can download a torrent, but they probably want to make it awkward to use one copy between loads of different people, or simple click-”copy DVD” piracy.
There are possibly even more people who’d do that than torrent it (‘cos it’s easier), and it doesn’t feel as wrong (“My friend bought it, I’m just borrowing it to install…”), and downloading some significant number of gigabytes can be a disincentive if you’re on a slow/capped service.
And it doesn’t stop you reselling it, lending it to friends when you’ve finished with it, playing it every time you upgrade/reinstall, etc., so it’s fair enough in my opinion.
02/10/2008 at 17:08 teo says:
I’m predisposed not to like it
Lots of people are predisposed to like it
What’s the difference?
Lots of people didn’t like Oblivion even if most critics did.
Also, could you guys make the picture in the post link to the full post? It’s much easier to click the picture than “Read the rest of this entry”
02/10/2008 at 17:11 koliban says:
That stuff about pirates calling the support line is insane. It really shows up how stupid the idea of a general pirate being ‘savvy’ is, if they’re dumb enough to spend time (and presumably money) trying to get free-game-X working when they could just torrent free-game-Y and play that.
02/10/2008 at 17:11 Noc says:
Screw this! Considering that this is nothing more than Bethesda taking a long, wet, splattery defecation over one of the greatest RPGs of all time, I’m appalled that they’re even considering charging us for it!
I can’t believe how they can talk about “Oh, we put money into this, so we feel like we should get something back for it.” They don’t deserve ANYTHING for this, and the only responsible action on Bethesda’s part would be to give the game away for free.
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. [/king of siam]
02/10/2008 at 17:32 Maximum Fish says:
@YogSo
Yes I do.
@Futage
Libraries are rentals, piracy is ownership. And besides, no one having to pay for entertainment and ‘sticking it to the publishers’ all sounds swell and rebellious, but without the developers AND publishers getting paid (and moreover getting paid handsomely enough that they can’t make more money with their skill sets doing something else), there’d be no entertainment to pirate.
If i spent years on something as a hobby that i planned on giving away, because i had alternate sources of income, (sort of like modders), than yes, i’d want it to have the broadest distribution possible by whatever means. This is not the case here.
Let me put it another way. If you spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building a restaraunt from the ground up out of your passion for cooking, would you be okay with people eating and running without paying their bills, happy i guess in the knowledge that they enjoyed your food? I doubt it.
02/10/2008 at 17:43 Fumarole says:
I’d be happy with Fallout 3 showing up on Steam.
02/10/2008 at 17:46 Bhazor says:
Right! No one is allowed to dismiss or review this game unless you’ve actually played it for at least six hours. They have already said their getting rid of everything you miserable sods hated about Oblivion.
No slanging matches unless both parties have played the game for six hours. Agreed?
02/10/2008 at 17:47 Shadowmancer says:
We wont know if fallout 3 will have drm until it is released, the publishers might just stick it on.
02/10/2008 at 17:47 Maximum Fish says:
I would, but Steam won’t let me buy anything. It takes issue with my debit card for whatever reason. Of course, this card expires this month, so i may be getting it via steam afterall…
02/10/2008 at 17:47 James G says:
Oh dear, we know things have got bad when we end up praising a publisher for only mildly inconveniencing us. Still, I suppose it is better than the alternative. That said, Steam has made me love not needing a CD, but No CD cracks are easy to find. (Which again raises the question, why bother; I figure its like a comfort blanket.)
On the subject of the game itself, I’m withholding judgement. I wasn’t much of a fan of Oblivion, and have only recently started playing the original Fallout games. I found the first to be a bit meh, although I think this was partly as I only really ‘got’ it towards the end. As a result, I’m enjoying Fallout 2 a lot more. Its also made me realise some of the other aspects of the Fallout games that people fear this sequel will not encompass. (I find the whole game feels quite free-form and progress in the main plot line expects you to integrate with the world, rather than just running from point to point.)
02/10/2008 at 17:54 Diogo Ribeiro says:
@James G:
Precisely why I enjoy Fallout ;)
Also, while many people prefer Fallout 2 because of a better interface and more content, I feel Fallout 1 is the superior game thanks to its more down to earth storyline and pace, along with the urgency of solving the Water Chip and Master storylines or watching the onslaught caused by the Mutant Army.
02/10/2008 at 18:00 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
Reasonable is nice. So that means Bethesda’s being nice. Nice.
02/10/2008 at 18:01 futage says:
@Maximum Fish
I didn’t say anywhere that producers of media should not be able to make a living from producing their media. I may be wrong, but I was under the impression they were doing so despite piracy.
I disagree that libraries are rentals (no rental fee is paid by the person renting at the point of rental) and that piracy is ownership. I’m not really sure what constitutes ownership with digital media and to a lesser extent even with books.
Your restaurant analogy is invalid. If people steal my food then I have less food, I have lost something. If people download my game, film, song or book I do not have less game, film, song or book. I have not lost anything. You might respond that I have lost a ‘sale’. I may have done, in some small number of cases. Public Libraries work on the basis that disseminating this media has more value than those few lost sales – something I agree with.
I happily borrow books from friends. I happily borrow books from libraries. Why should I not happily borrow a book from the 300 people who happen to be seeding it?
Again, I’m not saying anyone should be able to take anything that they want whenever they want. I’m saying that the old ways of looking at this don’t really work any more. The ability to replicate media digitally is a far more profound shift than the printing press was for books and requires a more profound reassessment of how we think about this shit.
It’s also about (without wanting to sound all godfather) respect – I think that’s something which shines through in that link I posted. If a viewer of media is thought of as that – as an active part of the process rather than just a ‘consumer’ then they will respond accordingly. If, however, they are overcharged for media laden with DRM, restrictive licensing and so on they will not feel respected and will see no reason to act respectfully in return.
02/10/2008 at 18:01 Horatius says:
Game hopes aside, does anyone else find this to be of strange news-worthiness? Bethesda is saying they are doing pretty much what game companies have been doing since the compact disc saw widespread use. Are we supposed to give them a thumbs up?
Maybe I’m getting bitter… I still hope it’s a fun game.
02/10/2008 at 18:02 cliffski says:
“Surely the actual producers of artistic works do and indeed should primarily want to reach the widest audience possible?”
No, we need to pay rent and buy food too. Anything artistic comes behind food and shelter. sorry.
02/10/2008 at 18:05 Walsh says:
Here’s the best thing ever:
1. You create a game (lets call it S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky)
2. You release it via a digital distribution platform with its own form of DRM that I’m not offended in the least by (lets call it STEAM)
3. You add your own 3rd party DRM on top (lets call it TAGES) with a 5 limit activation
4. You don’t release any patches for said game via said digital distribution system because rumors abound the TAGES DRM in the STEAM release is making it difficult to patch it
5. Don’t profit because I will never buy a GSC game again
<3 Bethsoft
Although I purchased a bunch of their DLC way back when and now I can’t download it again because the link is gone… there was probably some caveat when I purchased it that I need to back up the installs. That is mildly irritating to say the least.
02/10/2008 at 18:10 Okami says:
Disc Check?
ZOMG BETHESDA ARE TEH NAZIS!!!!
02/10/2008 at 18:28 Funky Badger says:
futage: libraries pay the creators for their work.
02/10/2008 at 18:35 Dreamhacker says:
Bethesda has messed up so much of Fallout that I’m kinda surprised they’re not messing the DRM up. Wow!
02/10/2008 at 18:37 futage says:
@FunkyBadger
I know. But they do not pay them the retail cost of the book multiplied by how many times it’s borrowed.
02/10/2008 at 18:40 Heliocentric says:
Much love. I’ll buy fo3 when a no cd shows up. Although i won’t be buying the dogmeat armor drm! Oblivion with guns indeed.
02/10/2008 at 18:40 Greg Wild says:
Anyone else find it funny how it’s only taken a matter of months – weeks even – for low-DRM restricted titles to become some kind of maverick exception?
02/10/2008 at 18:42 EyeMessiah says:
The reason a disk check seems so inoffensive is because its so trivial to get around. No-cd cracks and mini-images grown on trees.
I’m kinda pre-disposed not to like F3 not because I have some crazy reverence for the originals (still haven’t got around to playing them), but because I’m still feeling the “meh” from Oblivion, and a lot of the promo material for F3 gives me the same feeling.
I’ll still give it a go though.
Do we think that this might be part of shift going on in the industry where they are finally realising there isn’t much they can do to stop people pirating expensive, probably mediocre (I don’t mean F3 in particular of course), hardware intensive AAA titles?#
For these sorts of games I doubt there is any way to reduce piracy on the Windows PC, as it currently exists, except by making them easier to download than to torrent, and selling them at a low price point (ala steam).
As I have said before, if you want people to legitimately purchase a game you have to make that the path of least resistance. IMHO a lot of DRM schemes have no effect at best, and at worst have the reverse effect. I.e. they don’t discourage piracy, but do make it harder for the legitimate owner to play.
02/10/2008 at 18:45 TooNu says:
Oh this is going to be the most obvious game to buy ever. Lets make a checklist of why:
Bethseda – CHECK
Fallout – CHECK
Huge map to explore – CHECK
Similar features to Oblivion/Elder Scrolls – CHECK
Non-linear Non-boring storyline – CHECK
Much better than average voice acting – CHECK
Futristic apocalyptic wasteland set in the future – CHECK
Dogmeat – CHECK
Ok so who would not buy this game? Go on raise your hand then out of the door, line on the left, one cross each.
02/10/2008 at 18:48 Mathias says:
That’s a reasonable approach, it prevents casual copying. Doing anything more has no other effect than to annoy legitimit customers. And the money on licensing some overcomplicated protection is better spend on the game.
I don’t know why publishers do not get that. Probably it’s their stockholders that don’t get it.
02/10/2008 at 18:49 Heliocentric says:
Dlc… I meant dlc. The edit button isn’t quite working with my mobile browser. What happened the the non overlay edit?
02/10/2008 at 18:54 Maximum Fish says:
@futage
The “old ways” not working anymore is not entirely accurate, as the “new ways” aren’t all that new. It’s a public good, as i explained in the comments of the “CliffyB is a toolshed” article, meaning the consumption of one unit of the good does not exclude others from consuming it, and it’s been a problem dealt with for hundreds of years.
But the other aspect of a public good that you are neglecting to consider is that with piracy, or “free-riding”, reaching too high of a degree the good will cease to be created to begin with. It’s why you pay taxes, why your highways are not decrepit and collapsing, why you have state and national parks to go to and ‘funds for the arts’, etc. etc..
In Star-Trek-Land, once we’ve “evolved beyond money” or whatever, your theory would be appropriate. In reality, it isn’t. The, “they’re still making money anyways” argument doesn’t hold water, in much the same way as the “it’s just one coke bottle” defense of littering doesn’t. The library and book lending analogies sound like the sorts of excuses and justifications you’d find on a torrent site’s forums.
And there may be quantitative difference between one asshole and two thousand assholes, but if you pirate games you’re still an asshole. It’s everybody who still pays for them that support the industry you leech off of (not “you”, by the way, just going along with the whole people-who-pirate thing).
02/10/2008 at 19:02 Dreamhacker says:
TooNu:
Bethseda – CHECK
Fallout – CHECK
Huge map to explore – CHECK
Similar features to Oblivion/Elder Scrolls – CHECK
Non-linear Non-boring storyline – CHECK
Much better than average voice acting – CHECK
Futristic apocalyptic wasteland set in the future – CHECK
Dogmeat – CHECK
Does not adhere to Fallout artstyle – CHECK
Does not adhere to Fallout canon – CHECK
Ridicules Fallout organizations – CHECK
Has mind-blowingly crude DLC – CHECK
Leaves out editor and tools to prevent superior free DLC- CHECK
Basically everything your list lists is the kind of stuff that makes original Fallout fans cringe. But will I buy the game? Yes. Will I love it as much as the originals? No way.
02/10/2008 at 19:05 cyrenic says:
@Greg
I was just thinking that this morning reading the Fallout 3 DRM post at Kotaku. Perhaps it’s because Spore is still fresh in everyone’s minds.
@Heliocentric
I like your post better with DRM instead of DLC :P
02/10/2008 at 19:06 Maximum Fish says:
“It’s also about (without wanting to sound all godfather) respect – I think that’s something which shines through in that link I posted. If a viewer of media is thought of as that – as an active part of the process rather than just a ‘consumer’ then they will respond accordingly. If, however, they are overcharged for media laden with DRM, restrictive licensing and so on they will not feel respected and will see no reason to act respectfully in return.”
I agree entirely with this part. And seeing as DRM and other means of technological restriction don’t work anyways, developers and publishers need to rely on brand loyalty and “respect” to keep doing what they’re doing.
However, this does not excuse taking something you didn’t pay for but were supposed to. This mentality derives from the belief that you somehow are ‘owed’ this media, or have right to it. Which we don’t. It’s an exchange, not a free-for-all.
And besides, “those developers are just assholes anyways” is so easy of an excuse to abuse in order to justify unethical and illegal behavior.
02/10/2008 at 19:09 Sam says:
@Maximum Fish:
Indeed. And, I’m totally behind some concept of “paying people who you like the work of money to make more cool stuff”, in order to support a proper approach to a Public Good.
I’d gladly, for example, pay Introversion (or Bethseda, or several other games companies) some nominal monthly or yearly fee to just Keep On Making Cool Stuff, as long as I had the right to stop paying them if they stopped making Cool Stuff. It’s like the old idea of Patronage, but all Democratic, like.
02/10/2008 at 19:14 Colthor says:
The problems with the library analogy are:
1. The library buys a copy of the book in the first place.
2. Only one person can take out that copy of the book at a time, and they have a limited period to return it (usually they’re fined if they don’t). Once they do so they no longer have the benefit of the book.
Apparently some libraries actually do do computer games, but I’ve never seen it myself (rarely visiting libraries).
02/10/2008 at 19:17 TooNu says:
@Dreamhacker. Though many agree I say please change the record., the whole internet knows this Fallout is “just not the same” as the previous games in the series. I think it would be easier to accept it if, as a gamer, people relise this is an exciting game with great combat systems and what looks like to be large replayablitiy. Like Oblivion, only with guns. I can’t see what is wrong with that?
02/10/2008 at 19:30 Pidesco says:
Bethesda is a “stand-out development team” in the same way that Linkin’ Park are a stand out rock band. Which is to say, not at all.
02/10/2008 at 19:32 manintheshack says:
@TooNu. I think it’s the ‘Like Oblivion’ bit that worries people.
02/10/2008 at 19:33 Smurfy says:
Meh, a quick Google will be sure to find a no CD patch anyways, especially since the game will already have been out in the US for three days by the time I get it.
02/10/2008 at 19:45 Kadayi says:
@futage
Your library analogy is just plain wrong. A library in gaming terms is a akin to a DD system like Metaboli, where in as a member you pay a regular fee (with public Libraries your taxes are paying this, simply because your not personally handing over $$$ does not mean it’s not actually costing you) and have access to their catalogue while you are a member and the money they generate from membership is distributed to the authors, not as straight sales but as a regular stipend based upon popularity. To propose that piracy which benefits no one in the equation, save the pirates is a positive thing is downright ludicrous. Game piracy is a zero-end sum, and denying it has a real impact on the future of development is to be in denial.
If someone pirates a TV show, film or a music album there still exists the vague opportunity/possibility that, the person might redress the balance by buying a DVD or boxed set, or go to a concert by the band, or any number of other alternative revenue streams. With a pirated game, once they’ve played it there’s little incentive for a person to alternatively finance the developers in some other way.
02/10/2008 at 19:47 Diogo Ribeiro says:
Pidesco wins :lol:
02/10/2008 at 19:50 Pags says:
“We don’t have any specific data on it, but we can look across platforms, and when these two platforms are like this [gestures with a hand] and this platform is like this [raises a second hand much higher] and these two platforms you can’t pirate games, and this one you can, you can start to draw some inferences as to what the cause for that gigantic chasm might be.”
couldn’t possibly be to do with the fact that developing for PC means you’re gonna run across people with a million variations as to what they’re playing the game on, rather than just pirates, Mr. Hines?
otherwise though, seems reasonable enough.
02/10/2008 at 20:11 Shawn says:
this is excellent fucking news, excellent
02/10/2008 at 20:17 flat space says:
Kadayi – “With a pirated game, once they’ve played it there’s little incentive for a person to alternatively finance the developers in some other way.”
I buy the sequels to all the games I pirated when I was 14 and penniless.
02/10/2008 at 20:26 TooNu says:
@manintheshack, Oh, being like Oblivion is a bad thing? what a strange opinion. Anyway, I think a short time after FO3 comes out we are going to have many smiling faces and Fallout fanbois swallowing some words.
Can Dogmeat carry stuff for you in this game? I hope so, If I had the option to make him into a pack”dog” of sorts I would rather that than have him walk ahead, blocking doors and generally walking too slow in combat like he does in the first Fallout.
02/10/2008 at 20:29 cyrenic says:
@TooNu
Not everyone liked Oblivion. For those that liked Fallout but didn’t like Oblivion, it’s kind of a bummer.
02/10/2008 at 20:39 Erlam says:
“And it doesn’t stop you reselling it, lending it to friends when you’ve finished with it, playing it every time you upgrade/reinstall, etc., so it’s fair enough in my opinion.”
And why should it? What law says I can’t buy a car, then sell it to a friend? Why are games so special in this regard.
As far as these piracy issues go, does anyone remember when tapes were ‘ruining the music industry,’ because ‘no-one was buying music, they [were] all just stealing it!’ Then, you know, we all sat down and realised it was because music being made sucked, and no-one wanted to pay money for it?
Seeing a bit of a parallel here.
When was the last time you saw Blizzard scream about how PC video game piracy was ‘ruining the industry,’ or Valve? People in the industry with brains are doing fine. Sorry, Epic. (Had to, I apologize).
02/10/2008 at 20:40 Maximum Fish says:
I liked Fallout and Oblivion, although the two formulas i couldn’t see working together. On the other hand, it does seem the Bethesda has addressed most of the issues i thought i was going to have with the game (eg cardboard characters, level-matching enemies, less [disturbingly] gratifying gore, dumbed down interface with “go here” arrows, fast travel anywhere, and finally not living up to Black Isle standards of writing, which we’ll still have to see about i suppose).
The lengthy ‘walkthrough’ videos convinced me 100%. Games for Windows Live! unconvinced me down to a less substantial 89%, though still within my ‘Buy’ threshold.
02/10/2008 at 20:46 Maximum Fish says:
@Erlam
WoW and other MMO’s (unless i’m full of shit here, which is possible) seem like they’d be a lot harder to pirate, and if you recall, Half-Life 2 had some pretty substantial copy-protection on it. I waited 3 hours for their servers to “validate” my store bought copy.
On the other hand, just as “the games are crappy anyways” or “the developers are money-grubbing assholes” are convenient and lame excuses to pirate games, conversely and as you say “It’s all piracy’s fault” is a convenient excuse for developers who make crappy games.
02/10/2008 at 20:49 Erlam says:
I didn’t actually have a problem with Half-Life 2, but (and I can see where I should have been less vague) I was referring to Blizzards older games, such as Starcraft, probably the most pirated game in the world. If they can sell, and have as many pirated copies floating around, that game and make money, that’s proof people need to stop using piracy as some sort of excuse. Your games suck – face it. If you make a good game people like, it will sell well* (I know certain games should have sold MORE, such as Psychonauts or Deus Ex, but a lot of the people complaining about piracy sold like, 150k. Which is.. sad.)
I’m just tired of various organisations pointing the finger at anyone other than themselves.
02/10/2008 at 20:53 futage says:
@Maximum Fish
Depends how you look at things – yes, public goods have existed forever but never before on this scale for real tangible goods, which is something you go on to say, really. More importantly, the old ways weren’t really that old – ideas about authorship and ownership are pretty young, really.
I’m glad you agree with the second part. And I agree with you that no, that doesn’t justify piracy. Though I’m not sure I agree that piracy is necessarily unethical. Nor do I agree that it necessarily derives from the idea that anyone is ‘owed’ anything. If someone can afford to recompense the producers of a game (or any other media) then I think they have a moral obligation to do so. If they can’t afford to, then I (and I would hope that a developer who really cares about games/their medium would agree) would rather they pirate it than not play it/read it/see it. i.e. I ‘support’ piracy where it does not represent a lost sale. It’s not a perfect system but I think it’s a perfectly adequate stop-gap until something fairer arises (and I’m sure it will).
As to whether the current situation harms gaming – I’m not sure. The big publishers are clearly moving over to consoles but the vacuum they’re leaving is being filled by more indie developers (who are, I think, generally more ‘respectful’ of their audience). And I’m sure consoles will catch up in levels of piracy before very long anyway.
All in all, I think it’s a healthy thing.
@Kadayi
Your analogy is wrong. Firstly because the person paying pays for what they buy – it’s just a standing fee rather than discrete payments. Everyone pays for the library system (via tax) as you said – even people who do not make use of it. I would like to see ‘piracy’ financed similarly rather than (as it stands now) it being financed by higher prices for legal gamers (although I’m not sure I accept that piracy pushes prices up, probably quite the opposite).
The analogy was supposed to be centred around the idea of sharing though. Sharing being central to cultural development and libraries being founded (to much protest) partly in recognition of that.
02/10/2008 at 20:56 Maximum Fish says:
@Erlam
Which happens a lot. See CliffyB for an example. Or Crytek to a lesser degree. I do feel a bit bad laying a dis on one of the stalwart few PC exclusive developers out there, but Crysis sold under expectations because it required 4 quantum charno supercomputers interlinked across four continents to get running correctly, and most people can’t afford that.
I mean, i’m sure piracy played a part, but obviously Crytek learned the hardware/optimization angle played a bigger part, as their marketing and development pushes for Warhead were targeted at combating this issue, as was the controversial “$600 Crysis computer”.
02/10/2008 at 21:06 Erlam says:
Exactly, Fish. Look at Unreal Tournament 3. That game sold awful because it wasn’t good. It wasn’t an awful game, but there was better stuff out there. Kind of like.. Gears of War on the PC. It sold well on consoles because it had almost nothing to compete with. But on PC, with a rather massive catalogue, it got fucking annihilated because it was up against STALKER, Team-Fortress 2, etc.
02/10/2008 at 21:16 Maximum Fish says:
@Erlam
And a game like UTIII getting annihilated by the likes of STALKER and Team Fortress 2 is a victory on so many levels (at least in my opinion).
02/10/2008 at 21:18 EyeMessiah says:
@Erlam QFT
(Except I didn’t actually quote but you know what I mean!)
UT3GOW are the sort of games I meant when I said “expensive, probably mediocre, hardware intensive AAA titles”. If PC-based piracy is a fact, and it seems to be, then maybe there just isn’t much space in the PC market for games like UT3 & GOW to be successful.
As someone who owns UT3, I’m not too worried about developers taking these titles away from PC!
The fact that UT3 was pirated at all is a sign that it was sub-par. Multiplayer games are generally much, much harder to fully enjoy without paying for them – the majority of people don’t have a 16 PC lan, or the technical savvy required to get into “private” servers. The only situation you would pirate a game pitched as being 99% about the multiplay is if its so meh that you have no desire to ever play it properly (because you are never going to get to with the pirated copy).
And another thing: the PC market is smaller than the console market because the PC market is smaller than the console market.
Even if you could force all the people that would have bought it, had it not been easier to get it for free, I don’t think this would tip the scales much.
02/10/2008 at 21:20 SofS says:
You know, this library analogy has me thinking that I wouldn’t mind at all having some of my taxes going into widespread artistic grants for developers, provided that they meet some of the standards of other forms. There could be a deal where difficult or experimental games are subsidized and released for free. It wouldn’t be much different from the way that public art galleries and the like function now except that you could get a full copy of the art right there on your home machine. The developers get their pay, piracy is a non-issue, and the form hopefully moves ahead due to there being no need for profitability in games potentially much larger and more “professional” than lone experimentalists are usually able to acheive. Imagine assembling a small team with full expectation of pay with the only guideline being that you must do things no one has done before. Just a thought.
Pipe dreams aside, I think that loss of sales through piracy would be less of an issue if developers would cut back a little. Some of these budgets are enormous, approaching the overblown excesses of blockbuster movies, and it doesn’t necessarily seem to make the games much better. Knock $10 million off of your $200 million production, a mere 20th of the total cost, and you’ll have covered a fair bit of what you expect to lose through piracy. Unless there is a correlation betwen that unspent $10 million and $10 million worth of lost sales, you’re probably going to come out ahead. The less you spend to make a good product, the more you make in the end, and many teams have proven that games with fractional budgets can take on all comers.
02/10/2008 at 21:23 Funky Badger says:
Erlan:
“I’m just tired of various organisations pointing the finger at anyone other than themselves.”
These are insightful words, applicable to more than one organisation or grouping of people with similar interests.
02/10/2008 at 21:37 Maximum Fish says:
@futage
It’s not a “real tangible good”, which is precisely the point. It’s intelectual property, labor and investment being traded around like it never cost anyone anything. And I don’t agree that ideas about ownership are young. Property rights have been around since the ancient sumerians, and before. It’s actually one of the oldest surviving concepts in the world today.
The idea that only people who can afford things should be made to pay for them, while sounding equitable, in real terms renders money valueless. What’s the point of it then?
Money is simply an IOU, a proxy for the exchange of labor; i do something for you, you do something for me, and a proxy which allows for many levels of disassociation between parties, which in turn allows the market to function at a much more sophisticated level that a simple barter-based economy (where goods stand in directly for the labor which produced them).
And differentiating between piracy that does/does not impact sales (the “i wasn’t going to buy it anyway” argument) sounds good on paper, but is completely unpracticeable. Who knows how many people honestly were going to buy it?
And besides, who has a gaming computer and cable internet but is too poor to by a $50 game?
02/10/2008 at 21:40 Leeks! says:
Man, combining Fallout 3 and DRM has turned this into the Internet-thread equivalent of the end of Miike’s Dead or Alive. Which is to say: rad.
02/10/2008 at 21:43 grumpy says:
Considering that Oblivion forgot to include the damn game, yes, it is. Oblivion was a single-player MMO. Same sparsity of content, with every NPC being identical, every dungeon being identical, and nearly every quest being identical. It was exactly as interesting as your typical MMO world if you remove all the other players who make it worthwhile.
And of course, there were the glaring gameplay screwups that just made it unplayable without half a dozen mods.
Yes, being like Oblivion is a bad thing. Especially when you’re trying to make a Fallout game (Not because Fallout is “holy” and must not be “tainted”, but simply because what made Fallout stand out is the exact opposite of what Oblivion did.
I’ll still buy it of course, but I certainly don’t consider “it’s like Oblivion” to be a plus, and the simple fact that Bethesda are developing it worries me.
02/10/2008 at 21:54 Duoae says:
I’ve not played FO 1 or 2 but after hearing this news i’ll be picking up FO3 partially because i enjoyed Oblivion and Morrowind and partially because i want to support this sort of action instead of stricter DRM. I don’t care about having to keep the CD/DVD in the drive… it’s a minor inconvenience that i can live with.
02/10/2008 at 21:57 Fumarole says:
“Man, combining Fallout 3 and DRM has turned this into the Internet-thread equivalent of the end of Miike’s Dead or Alive. Which is to say: rad.”
Rad? Hmm, not the first word that comes to mind when thinking of that movie, but I definitely see where you’re coming from.
02/10/2008 at 22:01 Him says:
@ Theoban
Yes, I’m confident that a fair amount of NMA’s horde will dislike Fallout 3 simply because it’s not being made by Black Isle. That of itself isn’t enough to sway me into the ‘not purchase’ camp.
If I’m going to buy Fallout 3, I want to buy a Fallout title. I want a post-apocalyptic world burdened with grime, subtle societal comentaries, a retro 50′s chic, smart writing, and memorable characters. I don’t want Oblivion with guns. Or Morrowind with guns. Maybe Arena with guns would be acceptable.
If I’m going to buy Fallout 3, I want to be immersed in the game, not insulted by it pandering to the lowest common game buying denominator.
02/10/2008 at 22:02 Maximum Fish says:
When i think Miike, i think of nipple torture and vomit-eating. So not rad so much. But i haven’t seen Dead or Alive, so i don’t really even know what I’m talking about.
02/10/2008 at 22:03 Mark says:
Just as long as it doesn’t wreck my computer, like some DRM will try to.
02/10/2008 at 22:04 cliffski says:
to everyone who wants games funded like libraries, who gets to sit on the approvals board to look at game design docs and decide what gets funded?
You?
Gamespy?
CliffyB?
George Bush?
We have a system for arranging for funding to get transferred from people who enjoy games to people who makes good ones.
It’s called buying them.
If Games became free and ‘publicly funded’ I’d change careers tomorrow. I don’t want to seek approval before deciding what games to make.
02/10/2008 at 22:08 Maximum Fish says:
“We have a system for arranging for funding to get transferred from people who enjoy games to people who makes good ones.
It’s called buying them.”
Concise. Succinct. Well played.
02/10/2008 at 22:14 TooNu says:
Oblivion selling in the region of 2 million units in its first year, being voted by many to be the best game of 2006, winning numerous awards and seen as a damn great game by almost every review written for it.
Is quite an achivement. Now years later with the obvious string of improvements to engines and what not, we should be in for another incredible game. I think some of you are maybe not entirely right in the head or hate fun.
02/10/2008 at 22:16 SofS says:
(comment eaten, apologies if I see a double of this post)
Grants don’t preclude other types of work. Anyone who wants to make and sell their art, books, movies, etc. on the open market is free to do so despite the existence of grants for that purpose. Someone who doesn’t want to deal with bureaucracy when making their game would be no worse off than before when doing his or her own thing. It’s just another avenue for funding.
02/10/2008 at 22:24 Maximum Fish says:
@SofS
Fat chance getting legislators to believe that videogames are art. Half of the industry doesn’t even believe it. And further fat chance trying to get Joe Everyman taxpayer to feel non-enraged about paying money so that some kids can “train obsessively on murder simulators” or play “bi-racial orgy simulations” or whatever the hell.
02/10/2008 at 22:29 Bhazor says:
For those saying CD checks are pointless I have a little tale. In high school I would often lend out games to friends, who frankly had awful taste in games so I thought I should educate them. Games which had a CD check would be returned after maybe three weeks and the person would either buy their own copy or would simply dismiss the game and not buy it. Games which had no CD check would be returned the day after. No one I lent a non CD check game ever bought a copy for themselves because why should they? They either uninstalled it or kept playing until they got a new computer and borrowed the disc again.
Non CD Check games I lent: MDK2, Urban Chaos, Zeus Master of Olympus and Sacrifice.
CD Check game I lent: Theme Hospital, Warhammer Dark Omen and Alpha Centuri.
CD checks work.
02/10/2008 at 22:44 Sam says:
@cliffski:
So, instead, you just have to hope that people will like what you’ve written after you’ve written it, instead?
I’m still not sure what’s wrong with a model where people pay a developer “to make cool stuff”, on the basis that they’ve produced cool stuff before, or have a demo that they’re interested in.
02/10/2008 at 22:58 Pidesco says:
@toonu: Yes, public perception of Oblivion was quite an achievement in marketing.
If you’re going to argue that Oblivion’s commercial success is a reflection of its quality, then you’ll have to argue that Britney Spears sings some quality tunes, that The Da Vinci Code is a fantastic book, and that Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead man’s Chest is an excellent movie.
02/10/2008 at 23:01 Bhazor says:
Reply to Pidesco
OR you can realise people might have different tastes to yourself.
My sister loves the Da Vinci Code for example.
02/10/2008 at 23:01 Kadayi says:
“Your analogy is wrong. Firstly because the person paying pays for what they buy – it’s just a standing fee rather than discrete payments. Everyone pays for the library system (via tax) as you said – even people who do not make use of it. I would like to see ‘piracy’ financed similarly rather than (as it stands now) it being financed by higher prices for legal gamers (although I’m not sure I accept that piracy pushes prices up, probably quite the opposite).”
I think you’ve strayed into defending yourself rather than your position tbh. Firstly not all libraries are public, so it’s not always a case of everyone is paying for what only a few use. Also I’m unsure where anyone has said or implied that developers/publishers increase game prices in order to combat piracy. If anything game prices have come down over the last 15 years in order to make them more enticing and competitive as consumer purchases. Doom (the original) cost me £50 back in 1994. Doom 3 cost me about £34 in 2004. By rights and with inflation game prices should of gone up, not down over 11 years. Games are being sold cheaper and cheaper than ever before. We are already witnessing some initial retail releases that come out at around the £25 mark upon occasion (The Witcher last year springs to mind). It’s only really the must have triple AAA titles that are maintaining the £30+ retail price tags. Plus of course online retail and DD are reducing the consumer cost even more.
“The analogy was supposed to be centred around the idea of sharing though. Sharing being central to cultural development and libraries being founded (to much protest) partly in recognition of that.”
Sharing implies a contribution to the pot. What does a pirate share exactly?
@flat space
All well and good apart from the fact that the guys and girls who wrote the game you pirated might not be working for said developer any more, or that it’s not even the same developer whose making the game. Pirated Deus Ex, but plan on buying Deus Ex 3? Warren Spector doesn’t see a penny I’m afraid.
02/10/2008 at 23:09 Pidesco says:
@Bhazor:
As long as your sister doesn’t argue that The Da Vinci Code is a good book on account of its sales, I’m fine with that.
02/10/2008 at 23:47 flat space says:
True enough, but Carmack, Cliffy, Newell and Blizzard have all made a lot more money from me now than that teenager ever had to spend. It’s better than nothing (which is what you were claiming). Also, by that logic, abandonware is fair game.
Is there seriously an activation limit on Clear Sky btw?
One more thing – Britney Spears makes excellent pop records (I hate pop, but she’s great at it) and the Da Vinci Code is an absolute masterpiece of convincing people that they can read a real grown-up story when they can’t. I truly wish I could write so simply and directly to the lowest common denominator whilst keeping them interested, and not just so I could live in a mansion made of Ferraris.
02/10/2008 at 23:49 EyeMessiah says:
@Bhazor: “CD Checks work”
I don’t have any friends that don’t know how to google “no-cd crack”, so I’m not entirely confident that your anecdote is enough justify cd-checks. I love to see some data though! Does anyone know of any publicly available studies?
Also, re. the probability of having a computer & cable and not being able to afford a $50 game. This isn’t really that unlikely. Take a child with access to the family computer & internet for instance. Hell, take me right now, I can afford to pay my share of the inet (I split with flatmates), and my computer was paid for on credit, but after all the bills my disposable income is damn near negligable.
The reason I haven’t played spore yet is because I can’t afford it. Its not a justification for piracy, but its not as unlikely as the previous poster suggested.
02/10/2008 at 23:53 Putter says:
I would love it if FO3 was hated by NMA and people who enjoyed Oblivion. As a casual FO fan (I’ve played each game exactly once), and someone who was extremely disappointed with Oblivions lack of RPG depth, I think somewhere in the middle would satisfy me immensely.
DRM hasn’t mattered much to me in the past, but this is still good news, I suppose.
03/10/2008 at 00:16 Thiefsie says:
If this reviews generally better than 80% I will purchase it. Less DRM = they have me as a potential buyer again, even though I agree with most of the Beth hate for F3, I’m still willing to try it on its own terms
03/10/2008 at 00:31 TooNu says:
I did not just mention sales, the point I thought I had made was that with great reviews from trusted sources comes sales. if a company can produce a series of great games such as the Elder Scrolls titles, I am more than confident that Fallout 3 will be a great game BASED on the facts that this game has been heralded as Oblivion with guns, in the future.
Ok I am through with this topic.
03/10/2008 at 01:17 manintheshack says:
Nuts. Nuts. Nuts. Well, we’ll soon find out whether it’s any good or not. My money is on not, as it is with most recent PC games, then I’ll be presently surprised and possibly buy a kitten and call it Fallout 3 and love it forever. At least then I can finally put that beautiful but souless mutt I named Oblivion out of it’s misery…
The lack of DRM is good news though and Bethesda deserve credit for that.
03/10/2008 at 01:21 dhex says:
Is there seriously an activation limit on Clear Sky btw?
yes, it’s 5 activations. this is now on the steam site; it wasn’t when i pre-ordered, i believe.
03/10/2008 at 01:26 Vault 88 says:
@EyeMessiah:
There’s a difference between not knowing and simply not doing so. It’s been mentioned previously in the comments, I believe, but these CD-checks are to dissuade the “casual” pirates. The ones who are usually vaguely willing to buy a game to begin with.
For example, I consider myself rather computer-savvy, enough so to know how to look for torrents and no-CD cracks with ease, at least. However, just because I know how doesn’t necessarily mean I will. Mind, very often I do, but I still like to buy copies of games that really catch my eye.
03/10/2008 at 02:03 Saflo says:
So if you run out of installs of the Steam edition of Clear Sky, it just sits on your games list forever, unusable, mocking you?
03/10/2008 at 02:56 Velleity says:
I know this probably sounds like paranoia, but sometimes I wonder if there’s some people predisposed to dislike the forthcoming Fallout 3.
*raises hand* I dislike the sort of writing Bethesda usually spews out, and for me it was the NPC’s dialogue that really made Fallout and its sequel enjoyable. After seeing the demo videos I’ve gone from cautiously optimistic to cynical, and it’s damned unlikely I’ll buy the game. Still, that’s just my opinion and I have weird taste in games anyway.
03/10/2008 at 03:43 futage says:
@Maximum Fish
It is a tangible good. A game is a discrete blob of code which runs and does a particular thing. A book is a collection of specific words in a certain order, etc.. They’re not tangible in the sense that you can touch them, they’re not physical (though they are partly appreciated physically (via the senses)), but they are tangible in that we can understand them as meaningfully separate from the rest of existence. They are not pure ideas like earlier public goods such as a particular religious/cultural practise or belief, for instance.
Property rights have been about since the Sumerians, aye. But there have been huge gaps. And even if it was a continuous tradition, that only represents about 10% of our existence. And I meant specifically in relation to authorship, which you skipped over. And which is a very new idea.
“The idea that only people who can afford things should be made to pay for them, …”
I didn’t say they should be made to. I said I see them as having a moral obligation (under certain circumstances).
I didn’t suggest that any agent should go out and collate this stuff. Of course that would be impracticable.
“And besides, who has a gaming computer and cable internet but is too poor to by a $50 game?”
I didn’t say too poor, although to answer that: many children. Many families/households who have a computer+net for work/their childrens’ homework etc. but don’t have the disposable income for games. There are places where some games are just not sold.
Back to the money thing. You suggest money is just a proxy for the exchange of labour… do you really think that? What’s the relative value of the labour of a videogame programmer compared to, say, a baker? Once enough games have been paid for to cover the coder’s labour should subsequent copies be given away for free? Or should a cabinet maker be compensated for the fact that the fruits of her labour are not infinitely replicable for very little cost?
The point running through all this is that we’ve never had goods that can be considered tangible/discrete, with authorship and ownership assertions attached to them and which can be replicated and disseminated (electronically) potentially infinitely for no cost.
When we last had such cultural units, authorship was not asserted or even really thought of much if at all.
I think we’re coming at this with opposing values and we’ll have to agree to disagree on some of these details. But it’s nice that we agree to an extent and share certain hopes/views.
03/10/2008 at 04:40 TheDeadlyShoe says:
Regarding Games for Windows Live, the criticisms about it in earlier games are well deserved. But Microsoft has scaled back their ambitions for GFWL; it shouldn’t be above the level of ‘fancy matchmaker’ for the newer games with it like FO3 and DOW2.
03/10/2008 at 06:46 perilisk says:
Copyright is a legal monopoly (albeit a very narrowly tailored one), not a property right. The primary justification, aside from rent-seeking by interested parties, is that it allows people to profit from creative works who might otherwise be unable to do so, which increases the number of creative works available, which benefits society. However, since society doesn’t really benefit if the monopoly power prices the works out of reach of many of society’s members, the monopoly privilege eventually expires (unlike an actual property right).
Not only is copyright not a basic right, left unchecked it is a threat to more politically critical rights. Copyright fundamentally functions by imposing a restriction on the right to free expression/freedom of the press (and any other mass media). Many “fair use” exclusions to copyright are intended to mitigate this aspect and limit copyright to its function as an economic incentive — by preventing copyright holders from abusing this privilege to quash political discussion of a work or unfavorable reviews of a book, for example. More to the point, if copyright is pushed to its logical extremes (say, charging people statutory infringement penalties for singing along with the radio or littering their internet posts with pop culture quotes), it becomes ludicrous, and the vast majority of people would be better off with no copyright and fewer works that were at least accessible.
Some degree of copyright law is a positive-sum market intervention; anything beyond that purpose (say, retroactive copyright extensions) is just welfare, except that most of the benefit accrues not to starving artists, but to wealthy content industry executives and investors.
03/10/2008 at 07:00 Maximum Fish says:
This may be way off topic by now, but this is a pretty awesome discussion, so…
You have more than a ‘moral obligation’ to pay for something, regardless of whether or not you are able. You have a legal obligation too, whether you believe this is justified or not.
And besides, morality is just glorified social conditioning anyways, just another tool used to get people doing what you (or society rather) need them to be doing. Just like law. The only difference in fact is one acts on the instinct for self preservation, the other on a classically-conditioned guilt response. Either obligation serve the same end.
There is a reason that both of these prohibit theft, or use of a public good without paying, and it isn’t ‘old-fashioned’ notions of justice or fairness, that’s putting the chicken before the egg (i think i used that right?), these are just rationalizations for what is a functional system. For the system to work, people need to pay for things, to exchange rather than to take, regardless of what the can do.
And yes, i do believe that money is simply a proxy for labor. I think just about every economic thinker, across the spectrum- from Marx to Friedman, would -and has- agreed. Think of it this way (I’ll try to keep this from balooning too bad…): In the most basic anarchistic state, a human being having the desire to survive has a few basic needs. He/she needs food, water, shelter, etc.. Shelter must be built -labor, food must either be hunted or foraged -labor. Once procured these things have value to this person, and that value can be seen as roughly equivalent to the effort required to produce them, no more and no less (if they were less valuable, they wouldn’t have done it).
To take this (back) into the piracy argument, think of the vegetarian alternative: so rather than hunting, you’re eating a bunch of fruit and vegetables and shit. But you don’t know what out there will sustain you and what will kill you, or at least make you sick. This knowledge then has value as well.
And the person down the way who knows this, only does because he’s eaten the good and the bad, gotten shit-sick before and probably almost died. This information then also takes the value of the labor that produced it (modified by the risks), and yet standard price theory would call it valueless, as it has -once procured- an infinite supply.
But why go to this effort, why risk you life for something that has no value? Especially when you can simply wait for someone else to do it, and “buy” it from them for nothing. This is called “social loafing” (among other things), and is the same thing that explains why people can be murdered in public without anyone intervening. The end result is that nobody does anything.
You won’t produce something via effort when it can be (conceivably) attained without effort, even if it would be worthwhile for you to do it alone. It’s basic game theory, every other player is in the same situation as you, and everyone knows this, and so the game gridlocks.
But this is obviously not the case, as this information does have value to someone. Every form of monetizing (what i do for a living actually…), be it tort litigation or economic modeling, operates on the theory that an object, service or piece of information assumes whatever value people would be willing to pay for it.
If it has value to someone, it has value. The point is that just because you can take something without paying and not exclude anyone else for that something, does not invalidate the need for payments to begin with. And it doesn’t work as half-in/half-out thing. It all comes down to the idea of the “tragedy of the commons”, that when the benefits for an action go solely to the person taking the action, and the negative consequences are shared among all participants, the system is not stable.
In the example, both farmers let more and more of their cows graze on shared land until it is overgrazed and useless to both. The game theory optimal strategy for both sides becomes the untenable and self-destructive one. Anyways, I apologize for meandering like this…
03/10/2008 at 07:12 Maximum Fish says:
@perilisk
It’s not just creative works in a arts/culture sense though, it’s industry innovation, etc., the same principle behind drug patents and sole sourcing contracts (like for ISPs). In a competitive world marketplace, the value of this becomes greater. I guess that’s probably what you meant anyways though…
But yeah, copyrights should only be necessary long enough to allow companies a window to recoupe investment plus a return in excess of opportunity costs. But people can never be expected to do something from which the stand nothing to gain (again in excess of opportunity costs), which is why legitimized piracy would stop the creation of games entirely (the big ones at least).
03/10/2008 at 08:51 Voidman says:
I find it hilarious how any mention of the F game is the the equivalent of kicking an anthill.
I don’t think that any first person shooter has been equally controversial.
03/10/2008 at 15:29 Jin says:
Loved Fallout 1 & 2… and Morrowind. So much so that I upgraded my pc and got Oblivion as soon as it came out, much to my gf’s dismay at the time.
It’s still sitting on my bookshelf, cd/dvd and all. I couldn’t quite finish the game half way.
So…as far as marketing is concerned, Bethesda got my money from Oblivion.
Did I get my money’s worth? I don’t think so.
Will I purchase another game from Bethesda? Not likely.
Then comes Fallout 3. It’s tricky, because I loved Fallout 1 and 2…but it’s from a company that lost my respect. And it’s advertising that Fallout 3 is much more of the same as Oblivion. Big ouch for me.
I think I will wait and check out the review before shelling out my money. May be a month or so, to give enough time for all parties.
If review isn’t stellar, I think I will spend that money on DeathSpank instead. Probably cheaper too.
03/10/2008 at 16:53 terry says:
Bethsoft : Human after all
Not interesting or particularly pertinent but I reinstalled Oblivion lately after an enormous HD crash and sagely decided to use the no-CD patch after install to avoid ramjet noises from my CD drive.
Then I realised I had to install my DLC bits and pieces. But I was not allowed, because of my no-CD :(
I don’t know what this all means, but deep down I am at peace.
03/10/2008 at 18:04 Simon Jones says:
I’ll be waiting for reviews/general feedback before buying this, mainly to find out if Bethesda bothered hiring proper writers this time round.
03/10/2008 at 20:22 EyeMessiah says:
@Vault 88
I’d be really interested in finding out what proportion of torrentors (torrenters?) fall into the “would have purchased if they couldn’t pirate” camp. I suspect the numbers might be lower than expected. I’ve known lots of people that torrent games and don’t even bother to install them. I think torrent downloads are much, much higher than real market demand (meaning desire to buy and ability to purchase ofc) for PC games – but this is just based on my personal experience with pirates.
As for the “could pirate, but just plain don’t” camp, I don’t think this is a very large group. Maybe if you expand it to “could pirate, but don’t always” you’d take in a bigger proportion of the PC gaming crowd, but imho claims about total piracy abstention are fairly rare (except among commentators in piracy comments threads of course!).
04/10/2008 at 00:15 perilisk says:
“And yes, i do believe that money is simply a proxy for labor. I think just about every economic thinker, across the spectrum- from Marx to Friedman, would -and has- agreed.”
Marx, maybe. Free market types aren’t about the labor theory of value, and think money is a proxy for utility (which, being dependent on individual circumstance and taste, is highly variable for certain types of goods). Ideally, we would perform labor that is valuable, but people aren’t omniscient. Once our way of life is based around self-organizing networks of reciprocity (i.e. trade), we have to guess at what other people will find valuable, and nowhere is this less certain than with creative works. You can expend just as much effort making a shitty game as making a great one.
“As for the “could pirate, but just plain don’t” camp, I don’t think this is a very large group.”
Count me in it. When I was a kid, my parents hated gaming as a hobby, and thus I was limited to whatever I could borrow from friends and sneak onto the family PC (consoles were mostly out of the question). I definitely know how to pirate, and I’ve occasionally grabbed abandonware since, if that even counts.
However, since becoming an adult and getting a job, my situation flipped from “lots of time for games, no financial resources to acquire them legally” to “limited time for games, sufficient resources to purchase enough games to expend that time enjoyably”. Any game that isn’t worth paying for surely isn’t worth spending my time on.
There are people are strongly dedicated to piracy, there are people that are resolutely resistant to its siren call (or that don’t know how to pirate), but I think for a lot of people the formula works like this: there is a certain amount of money they will spend on games, based on their overall income. There are certain number of games they will play, based on their free time. If the number of games they will play substantially exceeds the amount their income will buy, they are likely to become pirates. Of course, if this theory was true, then you could correlate increases in piracy to decreases in the length of games. Interesting avenue of research, for people who give a crap.
04/10/2008 at 04:39 groglvr says:
will buy. will crack. no prob.
i do this for all my games. all because of one time long ago when i lost my halflife key and they would not let me get a new one. there i learned how to get keygens, play on cracked servers, etc etc.
benefits are no cd scratches, no keys to find, and no clutter around my desktop.
04/10/2008 at 14:08 EyeMessiah says:
@perilisk
I think your formula is probably right! The interesting thing is that if you assume that people have already spent all their disposable income, and are unlikely to get second jobs so they can earn more (thereby decreasing time available for playing games, and consequently decreasing demand), its hard to argue that this piracy kind of piracy does the market any real harm.
If people have already spent some money on the games they wanted the most, and don’t have any left, and can’t or won’t earn more, and *then* pirate some games on top of that – well you can argue that they are playing stuff they aren’t entitled too, or that the market is distorted because if they really wanted to play more games they should have spent less money on food or sold some of their belongs, or something like that but from the individuals point of view all these things are very abstract, and piracy comes very close to being a victimless crime.
04/10/2008 at 14:24 EyeMessiah says:
@Above, where I say “its hard to argue that this piracy kind of piracy does the market any real harm”, I probably mean harder, rather than hard.
04/10/2008 at 22:27 Maximum Fish says:
@perilisk
Yeah, good point. I probably should have said “a proxy for labor, among other things”, rather than “simply a proxy for labor”, which isn’t true. Utility sets the value of something (labor, ownership, whatever) and money is only indirectly a proxy for them, subject to the market’s demand for them.
My point was just that if you expect the value of your labor to be $0 (or even less than the value of an alternative use for you labor and resources), you won’t do it. Thus people need to pay for games for their to be games to pay for.
06/10/2008 at 15:16 Jin says:
Just wondering, will there be a demo I can download and play?
06/10/2008 at 22:14 Maximum Fish says:
@Jin
I hope so, but i don’t think Oblivion had one (?) so i’m not counting on it.
06/10/2008 at 22:21 Jin says:
@Maximum Fish
Yeah, I am hoping I can get the feel of the game before I plunge my hard earned time/money…it’s getting more difficult to convince my wife $60 is a ‘norm’ for these kinda games…
07/10/2008 at 10:27 ShaunCG says:
To all the folks getting precious about Bethesda making a sequel to the BI Fallout games: when I was in my teens, I really loved a game called Star Control 2. Then Accolade published Star Control 3.
So seriously, STFU about Fallout 3 already.
07/10/2008 at 14:50 Jin says:
@ShaunCG: So.. did Accolade mess up SC3 or…? I don’t get your point.
@rest: Sorry for feeding the troll. Anyway…anyone know where I can get wasteland?
29/10/2008 at 22:02 WrongWay says:
Bethesda LIED. securerom is installed as part of this game.
02/12/2008 at 05:35 Ulgrath says:
to be honest in a way I think piracy helps produce better games. allot of people I see on torrent sites buy the game if it is any good. I myself will try a game out through a torrent such as fallout 3 and if I like it will go purchase it. (loved it and bought 2 copies to one for pc one for xbox360). but too many games now are sub par at best you go out and spend 70$ on a game and a day latter you feel like you wasted your money. drm is completely worthless pirates will figure out how to crack it in no time even steam games are cracked now and mmo’s are also cracked. so why frustrate the people paying for the game and why spend the money its a futile effort just make a danm good game and people will buy it
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