Rock, Paper, Shotgun

12/02/2011 at 11:15 jalf says:

Let’s dissect some of your woolly thinking here, Urael

A genuine complaint. I’ve suffered this in the past, but it’s not a valid excuse for piracy. Sensible people WAIT. Word of mouth does wonders. If the game is patched back to health, so much the better.

Two problems here. First, why is that “sensible”? Legal, sure, but from the consumers point of view, is it more sensible to not play a game at all until your friends tell you it runs ok (how do they know? Are they less sensible, considering they must have bought the game in order to know this), than it is to pirate the game in order to find out if it runs on your system?

You’re conflating “sensibility” with “refusing to violate copyright”.

Secondly, no matter how long you wait, you can never know for sure that the game will run on *your* system until you’ve tried it. PC’s are different. Just because a game runs on someone else’s computer doesn’t guarantee it’ll work on yours.

You’re right, it’s not a “valid excuse” for piracy (can *any* excuse for piracy be “valid”? It’s still infringing copyright, which is illegal)

“as gamers we don’t enjoy the same consumer rights that come with almost every other sort of product. So we couldn’t return Crysis 2 to Steam if it didn’t work out”

Again, another very valid complaint. But, again, not an excuse for piracy. Particularly as the act of piracy does nothing to solve this problem. On the contrary, I suspect priacy would only make this issue harder to solve, as retailers and publishers draw their lines in the sand.

Again, a strange logic. What does “solving the problem” have to do with it? When I buy a game, it’s usually because I want to play that game, not because I want to fundamentally change how the PC games industry works. I’m busy enough without having to save the world from bad business practices. Piracy may or may not make the issue harder to solve (I don’t see why, exactly: lower sales are always a strong impetus for change. I suspect that what you mean is “publishers irrational reaction to piracy makes the problem harder to solve”, which is true. (disclaimer, I’m not saying publishers should accept piracy, but that they can’t “solve” it with the usual DRM-kneejerk reactions. Here we have a very simple change they could make in their business model that would make piracy less attractive, and they’d never even consider doing it)), but fundamentally, if you pirate a game for these reasons, it is not to solve the problem for the entire world, but just for you. If you pirate *this* game, then *you* know if it will run on *your* computer. Which is all that you were interested in.

I find this argument particularly specious. With the graphical ‘freeze’ enact by the console dominance, if you have even a reasonably robust machine bought within the last year or two you can play 99.9% of everything out there

Not quite. There’s still a lot of variability, with different OS’es, laptops which can’t get updated drivers, wonky motherboards and whatnot. Don’t talk about “specious arguments”, and then make up statistics like “99.9%”. And, of course, most people *don’t* have a machine bought within the last year or two.

. And again, waiting for word of mouth on performance takes, what, less than 24 hours after release?

Performance? We’re talking about playability in general. “Will the game be playable on my system” isn’t just a question of performance, but of compatibility as well. And of general bugginess as well (technical and gameplay bugs)

Crying about a lack of demo is still no excuse for piracy. Yes, it hurts not to have them any more – I’m a long time gamer and grew up with a constant supply of them – but we don’t solve that by stealing the full software.

Sure we do. If I pirate a game, then I have, for me, solved the problem that a demo was meant to solve. I now know whether or not I like the game, and I know whether or not it works on my system. We don’t cure the industry’s underlying problems, no, but as a consumer, that’s hardly my responsibility, is it? Strange, strange logic.

“The PC is an unstable thing where one’s ability to play a game will change from game to game”

That USED to be true. It’s a lot less valid nowadays.

So it’s still true. The odds that it will run are just better than they used to be, but we’re still far from 100%.

“Look at the CODBLOPS clusterfuck over the bugs in the PS3 and PC versions”

So bugs are the same things as performance? You’re confusing your terms

He never said that he was talking about performance exclusively. Sounds like you’re the one getting confused.

Wulf, and your arguments. Oh, and kudos for picking one of the best-selling titles of the year to prove your point.

How exactly does that invalidate his point?

As a mechanism for road-testing incomplete and/or sub-standard code a demo IS the best way to defend against that but the lack of such is still no reason to turn to piracy.

No, the *best* way to test those things will always be to run the *complete* game, not a small demo which may or may not be based on the same version of the code. And yes, not having another way to know if your game will work is absolutely a reason to turn to piracy. It might not be a reason you like, it might not be a *good* reason, but it is *a* reason.

The only reason people pirate is because they CAN

Absolutely. And the only reason birds fly is because they CAN. The only reason I’m writing this is because I CAN.

“Here’s an example of a pragmatic use for piracy: One downloads a pirated game that has no demo and finds that it’s a horrible port where they’re only getting 6-10~ FPS. They simply delete the game and don’t bother to buy it.
”
…OR, they leave it on their machine and hope someone fixes it enough to make it playable. You’re relying on that person being 100% honest, which, let’s face it, they wouldn’t be if they’ve just torrented a copy of a game illegally.

…OR they win the lottery the next day, and buy 100,000 copies of the game. Wulf was describing a specific scenario where he feels piracy is justified. Saying “yes but what if something else happened instead” doesn’t invalidate his argument. You are no longer talking about the scenario that he set out to justify.

And you’re getting your definitions mixed up *again*. A person who is 100% honest can still break the law. It just requires you to be, well, honest about it. Torrenting a game says nothing about your honesty, or for that matter, about your personal integrity. It obviously tells us that the person isn’t exactly an anti-piracy hardliner, but they can still adhere consistently to their own moral beliefs.

That doesn’t justify anything, of course, I’m just saying that your conclusion that “if you pirate a game, you can’t be an honest person, and you can not be relied upon for anything” is flawed.

“Here’s another example of a pragmatic use for piracy: One downloads a game that has no demo and finds that it’s actually a great port where they’re getting 50-60~ FPS. They decide to buy the game whereas otherwise they would’ve overlooked it.”

Fine, that’s great, but again that relies an awful lot on that particular person being honest enough to stump up the cash for another copy of the thing he has sitting right there on his machine. and it doesn’t ignore the fact that he’s still acquired it illegally.

Of course it does. Pretty much every transaction, every promise and every decision we make rely on us being honest. Wulf just pointed out that *when* you can rely on that person being honest and buying the game afterwards, it seems like a pretty reasonable case of piracy.

And you’re right, it doesn’t change the fact that it was acquired illegally. But is that really interesting?
I personally am against piracy if and when it hurts developers. I’m not against it because it, according to a law written 200 years ago, is illegal. Laws are supposed to be written to benefit society, and if the law doesn’t do that, then the law is wrong. If I have the choice between supporting something that benefits the games industry ,versus supporting something that obeys the letter of the law, then I’d rather support the former. You, apparently, would choose otherwise.

“What does piracy do, then? In the advent of a lack of demos, it helps us find out which developers are truly deserving of our money. It allows people to learn which games will work for them and which won’t, and then they can allot their funds accordingly. I used to do this, even, quite a lot. Not any more because I’m becoming less interested in games outside of MMOs, but I used to. And really, I think it’s a valid use for piracy.”

So, by ignoring the negative aspects of piracy, you’ve constructed an argument which justifies your own beliefs in piracy as a positive force for good. I see.

True. Or you could say that by not himself *exploiting* the negative aspects of piracy, he has shown that *his own* priacy is a positive force for good. We can’t deny that there are a lot of people using piracy as a simple way to get games for free. Wulf pointed out that *some* people might pirate games for other reasons, some, but not all, of which actually *benefit* the industry.

It’s an interesting hypothesis, but one that’s impossible to measure, surely?

Yup. But so is the other one. So why is the hypothesis that “by default, a pirated copy is a lost sale” more valid?

Of course this is fundamentally impossible to measure. But that doesn’t make it any less relevant, or any less important to the future of the games industry.

Oh, and because I just know you’re going to get the wrong idea, I wrote this post not because I object to your criticism of piracy, not because I want to pirate games and feel warm and fuzzy about it, but because I object to your horrendous broken logic.

If we only look at the immediate term, then I believe piracy hurts the industry more than it benefits. But I don’t think it’s anywhere near as bad as certain parties would have us believe. I know for a fact that there are a lot of what you might call “honest pirates” out there, who buy games after they pirated them. And I know that a lot of the games people pirate are ones they couldn’t have afforded anyway, resulting in no lost revenue. But overall, yes, it probably hurts the industry in the immediate term. But that’s no excuse for ridiculous hyperbole and flawed reasoning.

On the longer term, it becomes impossible to say. Consider how many people are gamers today, and buy games today, because they were able to pirate them as children. I got into gaming because my friend had a Commodore 128 with 2000 pirated game. Another friend had an Amiga 500 with maybe 100 pirated games. Those of us who had PCs were always sharing games too.

And today, those of us who still play games generally *buy* them. But if we hadnt been able to play pirated games as kids, we wouldn’t have played games at all. And then we probably wouldn’t have played games today either. So I have to wonder, would the games industry be anywhere near as big as it is, if it wasn’t for piracy? Would it still be some niche thing for a few geeks hiding in their bedrooms or basements? I don’t know. I really don’t have the faintest clue. But that’s why I don’t have an opinion on whether piracy hurts *in the long term*. It is possible that piracy is the sole reason we have a games industry.

12/02/2011 at 11:32 jalf says:

Just because you CAN doesn’t mean you should.

Where did I say otherwise?

I just pointed out that “people only pirate games because they can” is a completely trivial and unhelpful observation. I never said that people *should* do it.

Society operates around rules of acceptable behaviour, and theft (the act of taking from another that to which you have no entitlement) is such a rule. Were the shoe on the other foot I suspect you’d be bemoaning your losses and demanding recompense.

Perhaps you should re-read my post without jumping to conclusions. I wasn’t defending piracy (or the leak), and I thought I said so pretty clearly.

I just belong to the minority who feel that flawed arguments don’t magically become true just because they happen to support the correct conclusion Saying “the sky us blue because someone spilled paint all over it” is wrong, even though the sky currently *is* blue.

And likewise, even if piracy is wrong, the post I commented on was *still* chock full of flawed logic.

Oh, and lay off the “theft” thing, please, it’s silly.
Can’t we agree on piracy being wrong without calling it something that it technically speaking isn’t?
Piracy is wrong, and it is illegal, but it is no more theft than it is rape or genocide.
Let’s stick to the facts here. Piracy is copyright infringement, which is wrong (and which is one of the rules of acceptable behavior you mention — that which I make is mine, until I give it away), but legally speaking, it is not *theft*.

12/02/2011 at 12:53 jalf says:

Theft is a good shorthand for ‘Infringement of copyright’

Not really.

Stealing your car is quite different from “listening to the music you made”. In the first case, you suffer a material loss (that’s theft), in the latter you don’t.

That’s a pretty important distinction. (It certainly matters to the person who had his car stolen. What matters to him isn’t so much that people are using it without his permission, but that *he can’t use it himself*.

“Laws are supposed to be written to benefit society, and if the law doesn’t do that, then the law is wrong.”

Really? Who decides what is right and wrong? I mean are you implying that copyright law is somehow wrong on some level? That artists and creators should have no claim to their works in terms of entitlement and recompense?

First, society decides what is right and wrong, obviously.

Second, there’s a big difference between copyright law and copyright.
Yes, copyright law is wrong, because it wasn’t written to take today’s technology or economy into account. It needs to be updated to better cope with the problems it faces today. A law that was written to deal with people who copied books by hand isn’t easily applicable to people who are able to download a mp3 illegally at the click on the mouse.

But copyright is not wrong. Like I said, the principle that “I control that which I made” is pretty fundamental, and, most would say, very fair. But the way in which it is protected in law needs to be adjusted.

Please don’t assume that I’m some idiot with three brain cells who can only see things as black/white. ;)
It is perfectly possible to be critical of current copyright law, without being a proponent of total anarchy, and without being against the concepts of copyright or, for that matter, personal property.

After all given statistically a frighteningly large number of gamers never even finish titles, What’s the incentive for a gamer who pirates a single player game to buy it later on?

I don’t see the relevance. Whether or not you finish the game, if you pirated it, you don’t *need* to buy it. If you want to finish it, you can finish the pirated version. So if you pirate a game, and then buy it, then it is not to get “more”, but simply some form of reward or payback. “They made something I enjoyed, I want to give them the money they ask for”. If you play halfway through a game, but enjoy that half of it, then you might still buy the game. If your intention always was to buy the game, then you’ll probably still do so. (Take this leak as an example: suppose you’ve been looking forward to the game for the last year, and you’ve already preordered it. if you play the leak now, would that change anything? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. :)

Also what’s the likelihood that they’ll do it whilst the game is available at full price Vs waiting for a price drop?

Again, no clue.

So we agree, whichever hypothesis you prefer, we have no way to actually find out if either one is correct. Which is a shame, because it’s a pretty important subject for the games industry.

As I said, I mainly suspect that it’s just a lot more complex than publisher like to think. removing piracy wouldn’t just force people to buy games, it would fundamentally change every aspect of the industry. Fewer people would become gamers, the number of games people play would change, their satisfaction with the games they play would change, and so on. I have no clue how it would turn out, but I’m not at all convinced the big publishers would like all the changes that would happen as a consequence.

But they, like us, don’t actually know. So they choose to ignore that, and focus on the short-term, where piracy means some lost revenue.

One rule of thumb I’ve found interesting to use is that people are on limited budgets. Say the piracy rate is around 90%, a publisher like EA or Activision might choose to interpret this as “we could make 10 times as much money if we eliminated piracy”. Of course, that assumes that people can afford to spend 10 times as much on games. They obviously can’t. Without piracy, a lot of people would just play/try far fewer games.