Game Piracy Runs Rampant Online

[bandersnatch]

This article from the Hollywood Reporter (http://www.thehollywoodreporter.com/thr/columns/video_games_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001054517) discusses the topic of video game piracy at length. The article primarily covers the effect it has on the industry and how special interest groups representing the industry (namely the ESA) are planning to combat it.

"We just don't have a good sense as to how much additional money online piracy (represents). I've seen estimates as low as $1 billion annually and as high as $3 billion," says Ric Hirsch, the ESA's senior vp for intellectual property enforcement. "The problem is that measuring activity on the Internet -- legitimate or otherwise -- is much more difficult than measuring the loss due to hard-goods piracy. When a hacker cracks a game's protection code and puts the game on the Web, it's impossible to determine how many downloads will result."

Until last year, Mark Litvack was the vp and director of legal affairs worldwide anti-piracy for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Today, he is a partner with LA-based Mitchell Silberberg and Knupp LLP, a law firm that focuses on intellectual property matters and piracy, among other things, in the video game, film, and recording industries. Litvack half-jokes that "the only way to totally secure and make something pirate-proof is to never distribute it."

"In this country Internet bandwidth will continue to expand and access to it will become cheaper, making it simpler and more cost-effective for the video games industry to distribute content online," predicts Litvack. "It's so much less expensive than pressing a disk, replicating it, packaging it and driving it to the store, especially with today's gas prices. But, as my former boss [at MPAA], Jack Valenti, once said: 'Bandwidth is an ever-shrinking mode of protection.' "
So what can we expect to see? Well, straight from the horse's mouth:

To crack down on piracy, Litvack maintains that there needs to be parallel efforts that he likens to "five legs of a multi-leg stool."

"To achieve a balanced effort, all five legs -- legislation, litigation, education, public relations and technology -- must progress together," he says.
In other words, more restrictive laws and digital rights copy protection which will most likely hamper fair use opposed to business models which strike a happy medium between customers and developers/publishers.

The question I put forward to all of you -- if you were the head of EA or any large publisher which stood to lose a great deal of money from piracy -- what would be your approach to keep your customers happy yet protect your IP assets?

Found via GameInsider (http://www.gameinsider.com/comments.php?id=1059&catid=1).

[thecrazyd]

Thats just the thing. Content protection doesn't work. And it never will. Might as well save some money and let it fly.

[MasterEvilAce]

:rollseyes @ piracy protection:

[Hizawky]

I just hate the assholes who wont release a game for free when you can no longer buy said game from a retailer. Or the publisher.


Edit: Why does it say invalid email? And when was I banned?

[Undertakr]

Good grief. The longer I'm in this industry, the more I am secure in knowing that people are idiots.

First of all, you can't copy protect programs EVER. Not without a dongle. It's not going to happen and it's a huge waste of money to try. Every game ever has been pirated and 99.999% of them before they were even in stores. Quit driving prices of games up by spending millions on something that will be defeated in a day.

Secondly, the people who know where to go to get pirated software USUALLY wouldn't have purchased the game anyway.

Thirdly, the games that don't suck still sell craploads and they are THE MOST PIRATED GAMES. Halflife, Quake, Doom, Warcraft, etc...etc...etc...all sold a boatload of copies and were all massively pirated.

Fourthly, it's too difficult to demo games. You have to plunk down $50 to TRY a game to see if you like it (or now adays rent them, which is also driving down sales, but they're too clueless to realize that), and you can't return opened software. So, if you're a sucker who bought Dungeon Lords, you threw away $50. Especially people who don't have broadband to download a rediculous 300+ meg demo for most games. Demos should be compiled and given out for free or $5 at the local stores.

Fifthly, I'm sorry to say, but most games suck. Go to the local software store and go through the gaming aisle. I'd say 80% of the boxes are crap. 20% are good and guess what, those games sell like hotcakes.

Sixthly, most games are geared at a teenager. Teenagers don't really have $50 to be dropping on games every month. Games are too expensive for a kid. When I was a kid I couldn't be buying every game that came out, nowhere close. 2k6 and Guild Wars have the right idea. Give a ton of value for an affordable price and sell more units to make up the profit. Disney Interactive killed itself by making $40 games for freakin' 4-7 year olds and releasing 10 a year. What 4-7 year old has $400 to spend on video games?

Sure, many people pirate a game and finish it and never pay for it, that won't end no matter what you do. However, I have ended up spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on games that I had downloaded or friends had downloaded, and completed and felt it was a damn good game and they deserved my money. High Heat, Full Throttle, Max Payne, all games I never would have purchased that I got to play due to either a friend having a copy or someone bringing a pirated copy to work or whatever, that were so good I went and bought them.

I have games I've beaten that I went and bought and the packaging is still shrink wrapped.

In any event, it's not a 1 for 1 ratio like these morons think it is. If 1 million copies of something are pirated it doesn't mean you lost out on 1 million sales. Not even close. The problem comes down to greed and retarded people running software companies (my apologies, that's unfair to the retarded. They are way smarter than the average video game company CEO.) Lower the production costs. Quit spending $10 million on graphics when your gameplay sucks rocks. Make a game first, then add graphics onto it. Lower the prices of games to $20-30 and if you have a fun game with gameplay, people will buy it in droves. Then, create addons that sell for $15-20 that cost 1/4th of what it costs to make a full product and rake in the dough (see EverQuest, Sims, etc...)

It's not rocket science people, but give up on stopping piracy because it's not going to happen in any of our lifetimes, and frankly, if it wasn't for piracy ID and Blizzard and EA wouldn't be the companies they are today.

- Takr

[evilpenguin9000]

There is no cure to piracy. The best option is to follow the itunes example and give people a reasonably priced, dependable and legal option to piracy. It's working pretty good for them I hear.

[rubek]

There is no cure to piracy. The best option is to follow the itunes example and give people a reasonably priced, dependable and legal option to piracy. It's working pretty good for them I hear.

Agreed, as soon as the product, or the aquisition of said product becomes too restrictive on the consumer, sales and percieved quality will dwindle.

On the other hand, if I was the head of a large IP factory, I'm sure my shareholder's, VP's etc would want me to at least look like I am tackling the problem. I would be more than happy to leave things the way they are. I don't have any real knowledge of how much piracy is affecting the bottom line of Dev houses, but most seem to be doing alright. This probably wouldn't roll too well with aforementioned share-holders and the like, and their ever-increasing chase for MORE $$$

[H.Bogard]

i agree with evilpenguin, the prices are far too fucking much ! i would NEVER pay $49 for brothers in arms : earned in blood or that piece of shit point-and-click adventure you just finished. Want me to buy your games? take a hint : MAKE GOOD GAMES AT REASONABLE PRICES!!

they should price them after replay value or something :D

[Frostburn]

Best thing a game company can do is make a great game, keep the price fair and don't overpromise and underdeliver. A great game is going to be a target of piracy but more people are willing to buy the "Hits" like Halo 2. Piracy will always be an option unless they take away our rights as consumers, there has been piracy since before computers and the internet although technology amplifies it.

Reality though? That won't happen, not even close; game prices will go up, we'll see more in game adds and even more restrictions on how we can play the games.

Alot of people hate Vavle's Steam but I think thats about as good as we're going to get as far as having a good system to help curb piracy. Yes you have to connect to play but when everyone has broadband its not much of an issue. I paid my $50 for Half-Life 2 and CS: Source, I can't remember the last time I haven't been able to play one of those two games because Steam or my ISP was messing up. I don't have to bother with CDs or patches, they can add and update content fast, I can log-in from any computer that has Steam and play my games and I've gotten more gameplay per dollar playing Source then any other game I've ever owned period.

[Eric_T_Cheng]

Codewheels! Remember those, you old timers?

[thecrazyd]

I remember when piracy protection meant you had to flip through the goddamned manual and match certain icons. You want to beat Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Well, you better have the manual, or you will not be able to pick the right grail. And people complain about Steam.

[Undertakr]

Or the ever popular: "What's the 3rd word on the 6th page of the manual?"

[Chagrinful]

I agree with Undertakr's long post in this thread.

How to fight piracy? Make a god damned good orgasmic game. Look at HL2 figures and well BF2 is a bit of exception because of how flawed it is, BUT if you make it extremely FUN we will buy it today. OR make some crap for nubs that don't know about piracy or are too scared to get into it ie. Sims 2. heh.

[Deadend]

I think Steam may be moving a bit closer to making piracy weaker. Not the copy proctection, but they downloading a game part.

Just price games cheaply so they become easier to download, and using a online distro may net devs more money per copy.

Game packs also work great, pack a couple games together, sell at retail for $50, you get the game you want and another, or just 2 games that are preety good.

The question is not "How do we stop online piracy" it's "How can we make money off it?"

[Acidpoptart]

Undertakr made an excellent post above that hit all the points I was going to make, and then some. Well done.

Piracy is NOT killing the industry. Companies like EA are. Hey, if the industry is going to just be rediculous, I wont risk my cash.

If I ever pirate a game and like it alot, I buy it. If i dont like it, I dont play it. Its basically just a way of demoing a game.

[Rirath]

Seems to me online play and several content updates are the best copy protection. Sure, some online games are cracked, but if you want the best experience out of the box, it's usually best to get the box. Helps a heck of a lot of you don't pin down the user with 100 layers of poor quality, buggy, copy "protection". STEAM gave me a vastly inferior first impression of my retail HL2, over my retail Doom 3.

[Bushido]

Back when I was growing up, Piracy meant sailing around on ships and burying treasure tell that to kids and they wont believe you.

[rickmus]

How many pirated versions of WoW do you know of? Granted it is a great game, but do you think they would have 4 million subscribers if you couldn't pirate it?

[Wonka]

I agree with UnderTakrs post. Especially the part about the importance of Demos and the high investment cost needed to play these games. I would also suggest the following ideas:

1) Make a console game (involves hardware to pirate), or even better make an Xbox game that uses LIVE! If the LIVE! experience is really good, people will be forced to buy your game to fully enjoy it. MS polices modded boxes, so you can't copy the game to the HDD and play it on LIVE!. This shifts the burden of catching criminals to MS instead of trying to do it yourself.

2) Make episodic content and then don't charge so damned much for it. Use Steam, or a related system to feed people the games in small affordable installments.

UnderTakr hit the nail on the head when he said that games cost too much. They DO indeed cost too much. $50 places the stakes way too high for impulse purchases. People need an easy/affordable way to TRY games because for as long as $50 is the point of entry it's far too big of a risk. Without a way for people to try out your game, you are limited to only selling the extremely familiar licensed BS. Publishers have figured out that the licensed BS sells, but they don't seem to understand WHY it works.

[Varsity]

How to fight piracy? Make a god damned good orgasmic game. Look at HL2 figures and well BF2 is a bit of exception because of how flawed it is, BUT if you make it extremely FUN we will buy it today. OR make some crap for nubs that don't know about piracy or are too scared to get into it ie. Sims 2. heh.
Yeah, that's a really good solution. Make a smash hit game. Hey, guess what? If you've got bigger muscles than me I won't mug you!

How many pirated versions of WoW do you know of? Granted it is a great game, but do you think they would have 4 million subscribers if you couldn't pirate it?This is where I think piracy should be going. Let them pirate it, but make sure the pirated version sucks balls. This is mostly achieved by keeping them off the real servers and in the gutter. Crashes and warez-only bugs are also good, if you can pull them off.

[bjornbarspingvinen]

some people copy games and buy a few others. Most of these pirates are cheap assholes who don´t buy anything, they wont buy cds, they don´t buy games and they don´t buy movies. As long as they have free diskspace and it´s cheaper to buy writeable DVDs than the games or movies themselfs, they will continue to do so. Damn I hate cheap bastards....

The old "I would buy if it were cheaper" is mostly an escape comment, they wouldn´t buy a game or CD when they can get it free. Mostly I think it´s because they have no respect or idea of the work behind a game. It´s peoples jobs we talk about here.

[codswallop]

Read: http://www.zest.co.th/www/company_profile.html

Zest (http://www.zest.co.th) has survived, and is flourishing in a country with a 97% piracy rate by providing games at low prices. I'm not prepared to pay AU$90 on a game if I'm not 100% sure it's excellent. At around AU$30 I am prepared to plonk down my money on a game that may or may not be good.

[Eon]

You won't buy games more if they are cheaper. Because we can't compete with a pricepoint of FREE.
You won't get BETTER games for LESS money - do the maths. Next Gen games are going to be MORE expensive, not less - those sparkly graphics you want cost ARTIST TIME and ARTIST TIME costs MONEY.
If you don't think its worth the money then just don't buy it!
EA was created by you guys - you're such a hard market to reach that they're now selling to someone else. Congratulations, don't blame anyone else.
This industry - like all others - is MARKET driven. You get more of what you buy. Support niche gaming companies if you want more of their stuff.

[Varsity]

Read: http://www.zest.co.th/www/company_profile.html

Zest (http://www.zest.co.th) has survived, and is flourishing in a country with a 97% piracy rate by providing games at low prices. I'm not prepared to pay AU$90 on a game if I'm not 100% sure it's excellent. At around AU$30 I am prepared to plonk down my money on a game that may or may not be good.
They are up against counterfiet goods bought from street traders, not entirely free downloads from the internet.

[Rafer]

The thing I don't get, if piracy is so bad, why are there so many more xbox games sold than gamecube games? The gamecube has near zero piracy but I from what I've read the xbox has sold more games per unit.

[kinggoosey]

All you have to do is nuke China, they're responsible for 60% of the world's piracy. While we're at it, we should take out Germany too, as much as I love those sausages and sauerkraut they seem to be the ones making a bunch of the cracks. Now that I think of it, so does Russia, let's take them out. Oh! and Mexico is like the world's second largest contributer to piracy, I'll add them to my list.....

[bean19]

Are there really that many games pirated?

I know that as a kid I got the ROM for some Final Fantasy games that were not released in the United States, but I later bought the game for the Playstation when it actually could be bought.

Other than that, I am completely piracy free. I don't think I know anyone who knows how to pirate software either, and with the number of clans and guilds I've been in, that is significant.

Isn't most of video game piracy existent in other countries?

[Lutheran]

The best way to stop piracy is to do what Nintendo did with the Gamecube and use media that is not easily duplicated , sure the games can still be pirated but its a bit more work then just copying and cracking a pc game or downloading and burning the XBOX and PS2 games. I am sure the percentage of pirating of Nintendo games against the other 3 is like 100 to 1 or more. I mean the casual pirate will never go through the trouble if they have to do something other then add a mod chip and copy a disc and or apply a crack..the hardcore guys you just wont stop as a big part of the playing to them is beating the system.

[Lutheran]

And Bean yes pirating is huge and not just in other countries , in any country its huge , any game that is in the stores can be gotten in 1 minute on the net , and the pc and X-Box and PS2 are easily modded or the games are easily cracked etc. Maybe your thinking about people selling copies which is probably bigger in other countries but you can also buy copies of any game from internet stores for like 5 bucks a piece. Me personally I love to have the manual when i play , i love to open that box , smell the whole thing..i dunno maybe im an idiot but when i get things for free i lose interest in them and they end up sitting on a shelf. I like the whole experience of gaming , if i can get any game i want for nothing I would probably become a collector and not a game player anymore.Thats just me though.

[H.Bogard]

I think Steam may be moving a bit closer to making piracy weaker. Not the copy proctection, but they downloading a game part.


You are wrong buddy, there are already hacks for steam out there that let you download all the games for free off of steam.

[Morratut]

Me personally I love to have the manual when i play , i love to open that box , smell the whole thing..i dunno maybe im an idiot but when i get things for free i lose interest in them and they end up sitting on a shelf. I like the whole experience of gaming , if i can get any game i want for nothing I would probably become a collector and not a game player anymore.Thats just me though.

I'm exactly the same. I love anticipating the game for months,buying the game either in shops or the excitement of the game popping through the letterbox.Popping the disc in first time and wow i finally have it :D

It's a great experience.

[Varsity]

You are wrong buddy, there are already hacks for steam out there that let you download all the games for free off of steam.
There's been no way to play on legit servers since the start of the year, and I think downloading stuff (you could do it, even if you couldn't play the games online) was fixed the other week. Feel free to bring me up to date. ;)

I'm exactly the same. I love anticipating the game for months,buying the game either in shops or the excitement of the game popping through the letterbox.Popping the disc in first time and wow i finally have it :D

It's a great experience.
Personally I found the experience of a mass countdown during an IRC HL2 launch party far more exciting. God know how many million people doing the exact same thing as I was doing at the exact same moment. :D

[nonchalance]

Here's the thing.

Casual piracy sells systems, and it sells software.

The relative difficulty of pirating GC games is a major element in the fact the platform languishes.
The ease of pirating MS Word has led to it's domination of the word processor market, and Photoshop has done the same thing in image manipulation.

Adobe has an unwritten policy of not going after individual pirates, and only going after corporates.
Why?
Imagine.
You're a student graphic designer. You can't afford the software, even at educational prices.
If PS is easily piratable, you'll use it - because it's what they teach at school, it leads the market. If it's not, you'll look for alternatives, and find the Gimp.
When you find a job as some corporate's design monkey, they'll ask you what software you need, and you'll say Photoshop, because you've been using it through school and at home.
And the corporate will buy PS, and upgrade it every year, and put the next few design monkeys on it as well.


Games are more complicated, but I still believe that for most casual pirates, it's a case of either pirating the game or not playing.
The hardcore I know all buy our games - it's only the people who aren't really that interested that pirate them.


My final point in my totally disjointed argument against copy protection:
What's the single best form of marketing?
Word of mouth. More people playing and enjoying = more people telling their friends about the game = more sales.

[Murmillo]

I think the 3 biggest thing causing Piracy are:

1) Demos. Most people pirate games because there are no good demos to judge the game off. No demo, steal the game - if they like the game, they might buy it, but they already have the game so what incentive do they have now?
2) Price. $50-$60. I understand games are expensive to make, but half the the market that your aiming for doesn't have $50 on every game you want them to buy. There will always be the ones who won't pay no matter what, but most pirate because you keep on releasing games they want to play but out of prices they can't always afford.
3) Amount of crap games. The same reasons movies/theater $$$ is going down is the same reasons games are being pirated. Nobody wants to waste thier money [time] on something that sucks. Instead of saying "NO, this game is crap why waste money making it", the industry is going, "put out more crap that people will be fooled into buying". Dropping $50 on something that sucks is alot of money. Dropping $25 on something that sucks does't hurt that much - but still sucks.

Dropping $50 on a game I thought was going to be cool,. but wasn't, and I couldn't know was going to suck because there was no demo = I'm going to pirate your next game out of spite.

Solution: make less games and bring back quality, drop the price that is more user friendly and make sure demos are made to sell the game.

[Zeal]

piracy 4 lyfe

[Rirath]

A few more things on the price of PC games... the prices are too dang unsteady and chaotic. Sometimes I'll wait for months for a game I'm half interested in to drop to a reasonable price, but it just plain won't. Or they'll release a new "Deluxe!" edition, and bam, another 6 months of the same price. Good luck finding a used PC game (legit, and working key), and if you're going to get a non-legit copy, why pay? Good luck selling your old games, too.

I can often pick up good used Xbox / PS2 games for $5 or less. There's a whole section for that down at Gamestop. With PC games, it's a flimsy stack of now $10 titles, maybe two or three good ones, which rarely change, in the whole bunch.

Then on the other hand comes the games that seem to screw anyone who bought them on day one. Doom 3 came out at full price, $50-$55, and I stayed away because of my PC. After I got my upgrade just a few months later, I picked it up for just $25 or so.

[Azrikam]

Undertakr hit most of the good points.

As I see it, copy protection does three things:
1) It costs money and cranks up the cost of the game development.
2) It dissuades casual infringers by making it slightly inconvenient to get an illegal copy. (I honestly think this is a very small group)
3) It adds a major hassle to anyone who legitimately buys a game.

Of the three, I think #3 has the biggest impact on gaming as we know it. I regularly install cracked EXEs for legitimately purchased games for performance reasons. (and I don't like to swap CDs) I've also been forced to install cracks for bought games because they didn't like my system or my CD-drive. The more invasive copy protection becomes, the more attractive the free alternative becomes. Hence, copy protection does exactly the opposite of what it intends to do.

It's common sense, really. A trait which seems severely lacking these days.

[Rirath]

The word of mouth point is certainly interesting.

The question I put forward to all of you -- if you were the head of EA or any large publisher which stood to lose a great deal of money from piracy -- what would be your approach to keep your customers happy yet protect your IP assets?

How many (working) copies of Guild Wars have you guys seen? None? Correct me if I'm wrong here. While this obviously wouldn't work for every game, I'm sticking with good online content being the main way to 1) prevent piracy, and 2) encourage sales. :)

[Varsity]

It doesn't have to be good online content, just online. People would pirate GW if they knew how.

[bapenguin]

There's a fine line between price point, value and piratability (is that a word?).

Anything I could say here has been said already.

[StGeorge]

If these companies had their way, they would define second-hand and used purchases as piracy as well because, guess what, they make the same profit from those as they do from a pirated version. The loss from piracy is probably offset by unexpected sales anyway (people who pirated a game in a series and then buy the next one, whereas they wouldn't have bought either if they never played it). Or go the World of Warcraft route, but do what Sony does with their $20 a month for 5 games, or charge $5 a month with a $10 upfront cost (to avoid idiots in pickup trucks cleaning out stock). WoW would have 30 million+ worldwide subscribers with a pricing structure like that.

[slink-jadranko]

Make better games, you'll make more money...
As people are saying, you can't wipe piracy out.

[Roc Ingersol]

So hollywood should take heart, that games are just like films will be: Massively pirated, and still massively profitable.

Suck it up. It's a cost of doing business.

[BigJonno]

1. Accept that you are never going to stop piracy.

2. Realise that there are two kinds of people who use pirated software, those who wouldn't ever pay for legitimate copies and those who pirate due to high prices, unavailability etc.

3. Realise that every copy-protection method ever, from codebooks to having to keep the CD in the drive does nothing but annoy your paying customers.

4. Figure out how to stop Type B pirates from doing it. Using electronic distribution to lower prices without reducing profits is probably the best bet.

[Kelegacy]

One of these days it will be illegal to sell used games. If that's the case, used book stores should go out of business, too. All ready Half-Life 2 keys need to be reactivated if you sell the game, correct? Isnt there a fee for reactivation. That's utter bullshit.

If piracy was so terrible (as someone else already mentioned) we'd see games like Halo 2, GTA, Metal Gear, Half Life 2, etc. sell like absolute ass. There ARE people pirating those games, but obviously a much larger portion of people are buying them.

[PIPBoy3000]

My guess is that the perception of losing money from piracy is going to push developers towards games with a strong online component. WoW is the obvious example, though there's also things like Battlefield 2. These require key validation, usernames and passwords, or other hard to defeat security mechanisms. Single player games will be de-emphasized, since they are more easily copied. To me, that seems a shame as I love single-player games.

The worst part is when the copy protection breaks down. Neverwinter Nights stopped working for me after a particular patch. I had to install a "no cd" hack just to play the game. I also spent many painful hours trying to get the Windows Activation process to work after trojans wiped out my server. These things leave strong memories and negative feelings towards developers and publishers.

[ChunderMan]

Secondly, the people who know where to go to get pirated software USUALLY wouldn't have purchased the game anyway.
Here, here! I've been saying that for years but nobody's been listening. The industry isn't losing much money because most pirates wouldn't have bought the game.

You can't have money stolen that you never would've had...

[Averic]

The best way for games to be distributed without being pirated is through Steam.

[Eon]

Actually the two classifications of Pirates are:

1. People who are stealing the game for themselves.

2. People who are stealing the game and then selling it for money by setting up rings peddling counterfeit software.


Category 1 deserves a slap on the wrists. Category 2 deserves prosecution.

[AbeLincoln]

I as well would like to associate myself with Undertakr's comments. Hits all the highlights. Price really is a killer I would go halfsies with my parents back in the day for Commander Keen or TIE Fighter but that stopped a long time ago. How often do we talk about magic price points for hardware? I think they exist for games too, I've looked at a game and said if it were price X (usually five or ten dollars cheaper) it would be an instant purchase but since it isn't I'll wait and buy something else I think I'll have more fun with.
Anyway, yeah, copy protection will never work, if they build a bigger shield pirates build a bigger sword only difference is the game company spent a wad of cash and the pirate just spent some time.

[Undertakr]

I think the big thing that is being over looked is the currently free piracy that is rampant across the United States that is legal and is taking massive amounts of sales away. This legal piracy occurs every single day and no one bats an eye. It's called game rentals.

Go into any blockbuster and see the amount of games that are rented. These people all got the game for $5 or whatever blockbuster charges, and that money goes to blockbuster. So, essentially, blockbuster buys 1 copy of a game and hundreds of people play that game, finish it and return it and software companies encourage this. It's piracy in a hugely broad sense. It's people getting the game without purchasing it.

Has the ability to go to blockbuster and pay $5 for Halo 2 lowered the sales of Halo 2? I don't really think so and it comes back to my original arguements.

People pirate (or rent) because games are too expensive, because there are no good EASY TO GET demos and because most games suck. I don't know how many times I've rented a game and went, "Damn, $5 was too much for that. Glad I didn't pay $50."

I had to pick on THQ, but they had a WWE game a few years ago and to progress you had to beat a 2 on 1 match or you couldn't continue. I couldn't beat it, try as I might and thus after about 30 minutes of playing, my game was done because I couldn't pass it. $50 wasted. How many people physically can't beat games that they buy and have a $50 coaster on their hands? My friend is stuck in HL2, what did he do? Throw it in the closet never to be played again. That's his current HL2 gaming experience.

The way EA and all these companies lower piracy is very simple and it doesn't need an online component at all. Stopping piracy would HURT sales. There's this program called Windows that was pirated up the ying yang and look at it now....anywayz, back to what to do:

1) Get off of the 'graphics is a good game' mentality and lower the graphics in everything. It raises the cost of games exponentially by putting in 50 bazillion polys when they aren't really needed. Seriously, was HL2 a great game because of graphics or because of story/gameplay? If HL2 was made in the HL1 graphics, would it still be a good game? Yes.

2) Create your gameplay with 20 poly graphics and if it's fun to play, add better graphics.

3) Allow the user to insert their own graphics into the games. People will create graphics packs and you won't have to pay for the artists.

4) Lower the price point to $25-30 a game and your sales will go way up.

5) Create an industry 'Demo DVD' that is released once a month. The cost of the demo DVD is like $5 and it holds all of the demos for the games that come out the following month. Sell this for $5 at the stores or make it a FREE rental at blockbuster. Watch the sales go up for the best games on the demo disk.

6) Create your games to be expandable through upgrades. I can't stress enough that if you spend $10 million to create a game, it better be able to get fresh content for a fraction of that cost. If you spend $10 million on the game and sell it for $30 and can create bonus content for $1 million and sell it for $15-20. You do the math. Profit is in addons. Hell, GIVE the game away and sell addons. If 50 million copies of your game are out there because you gave it away, think of how many people would buy the upgrades/addon packs.

7) Quit selling games that suck. NHL 2004 sucked, NHL 2005 sucked, I'm done buying EA hockey games because of it after buying all of them since the first one. That's $100 I wasted on crap. There is no ownership by software companies when it comes to selling shitty games to the unsuspecting public and that sucks.

8) Make every game beatable by anyone. No one does this, but everyone should. Track how many times a specific saved game is loaded. Track where a person dies in the game. If they die more than 5 times in a specific place, make it dynamically easier without the user seeing. Or, let them see a way to bypass what is difficult and let them choose to keep trying or go another route, but allow them the opportunity to succeed at your game. A lot of these hoppy hoppy platform craps some kids can't do and guess what? They game experience ends right there because they can't pass it and that sucks.

9) Remove the copy protection from games. Yep, I said it. It really, REALLY pisses me off to go play a game I bought and have to find the damn CD or find the manual to look up some word or find my code disc. Screw that. I bought the game, let me play it. Imagine if you had to enter some code into the CD player in your car every time you put in your new David Hasselhoff CD. You'd throw that puppy out the window and quit buying CDs. That's where video games are headed with them arbitrarily not allowing paying customers to play the games they purchased and rightfully own.

Bottom line, if it wasn't for piracy game sales would go DOWN greatly because that word of mouth would disappear and people don't have $2000 a year to spend on games. So, instead of telling their friends about 10-20 great games and their friends going out and buying them, they'd be telling their friends about 1 or 2 games and half the time they'd be saying, "Geeze, I spent my $50 on Dungeon Lords and it sucked ass. Now I have no games to play and I'm out $50 and I can't afford to buy a good game. Don't waste your money!" Until the greedy bastards at these companies pull their heads out of their asses and look at this in a big picture sort of way, rather than in a GIMME GIMME sort of way, they will continue to lose money due to their ignorance, not piracy.

Oh, by the way, Space Empires, a shareware game with absolute ass graphics that is highly pirated but has awesome gameplay sold a million copies, if I'm not mistaken, without ever being in a store. It is highly customizable by it's players and has a jazillion graphics packs created by users to upgrade the look of the game. Oh, and it's a $20 game to boot. Not to mention one of my friends pirated it, we played it, loved it and generated 10 sales because of a pirated copy. That's 10 sales they never would have gotten because we wouldn't have played it.

- Takr the grumpy.

[IagoTheHunted]

Not much I can say that hasn't been said, but I'll throw in my 2c anyway.

First off, as far as I'm concerned, there's good piracy and bad. And I'm in the industry, so it's money out of MY pocket, and I still believe this firmly.
Bad Piracy: Rampent in Russia and Hong Kong and lots of other places I'm sure. Where hard copys of copyrighted games are sold by the thousands with little or no difference to legitimate copys of the game. IE, for someone who DOES want to BUY the game, their money is going to professional pirates who are selling hacked copies for little more than the price of the CD, and law enforcment is either unable or unwilling to combat these unfair and illegal buisness practices. This doesn't happen in the US or Japan or most other coutries that look after their economy.
Good piracy: Desperate fans of the product breaking the rules to play games they otherwise wouldn't have access to because they're broke. I know EA would love to think that every pirated game is money out of their pocket but it just isn't. Pirating is a huge pain in the ass, it takes research and time and effort the way any illegal activity does, and everyone involved knows it's a risk. People with lots of disposable income aren't going to bother, they'll just buy the game because it's easier and cleaner and you get a nice box and hardcopy etc. etc. As long as REASONABLE measures are taken to prevent piracy, piracy will remain a pain in the ass and be limited to the hardcore types who, incidently, make for a very strong marketing voice in favor of the games they like. We'll never know exactly how many pirated copys, if prevented, would have otherwise turned into actual sales, but my guess is that number is very low, or even negative when balanced against the buzz those underground copys make for good games.

Lastly some of the ideas being put forth for copyright protection, like remote updating of antipiracy code, it's absolutely frightening bullshit. I'm hugely annoying with the trend twards selling a service instead of selling a product, I dearly hope EA and all the others will shut up and realise that their in a thriving industry which has always existed alongside piracy and spend their money on development where it belongs instead of these contracted vendettas to get more money they think is there that isn't.

[AversionFX]

I think the big thing that is being over looked is the currently free piracy that is rampant across the United States that is legal and is taking massive amounts of sales away. This legal piracy occurs every single day and no one bats an eye. It's called game rentals.

Go into any blockbuster and see the amount of games that are rented. These people all got the game for $5 or whatever blockbuster charges, and that money goes to blockbuster. So, essentially, blockbuster buys 1 copy of a game and hundreds of people play that game, finish it and return it and software companies encourage this. It's piracy in a hugely broad sense. It's people getting the game without purchasing it.

Has the ability to go to blockbuster and pay $5 for Halo 2 lowered the sales of Halo 2? I don't really think so and it comes back to my original arguements.

People pirate (or rent) because games are too expensive, because there are no good EASY TO GET demos and because most games suck. I don't know how many times I've rented a game and went, "Damn, $5 was too much for that. Glad I didn't pay $50."

I had to pick on THQ, but they had a WWE game a few years ago and to progress you had to beat a 2 on 1 match or you couldn't continue. I couldn't beat it, try as I might and thus after about 30 minutes of playing, my game was done because I couldn't pass it. $50 wasted. How many people physically can't beat games that they buy and have a $50 coaster on their hands? My friend is stuck in HL2, what did he do? Throw it in the closet never to be played again. That's his current HL2 gaming experience.

The way EA and all these companies lower piracy is very simple and it doesn't need an online component at all. Stopping piracy would HURT sales. There's this program called Windows that was pirated up the ying yang and look at it now....anywayz, back to what to do:

1) Get off of the 'graphics is a good game' mentality and lower the graphics in everything. It raises the cost of games exponentially by putting in 50 bazillion polys when they aren't really needed. Seriously, was HL2 a great game because of graphics or because of story/gameplay? If HL2 was made in the HL1 graphics, would it still be a good game? Yes.

2) Create your gameplay with 20 poly graphics and if it's fun to play, add better graphics.

3) Allow the user to insert their own graphics into the games. People will create graphics packs and you won't have to pay for the artists.

4) Lower the price point to $25-30 a game and your sales will go way up.

5) Create an industry 'Demo DVD' that is released once a month. The cost of the demo DVD is like $5 and it holds all of the demos for the games that come out the following month. Sell this for $5 at the stores or make it a FREE rental at blockbuster. Watch the sales go up for the best games on the demo disk.

6) Create your games to be expandable through upgrades. I can't stress enough that if you spend $10 million to create a game, it better be able to get fresh content for a fraction of that cost. If you spend $10 million on the game and sell it for $30 and can create bonus content for $1 million and sell it for $15-20. You do the math. Profit is in addons. Hell, GIVE the game away and sell addons. If 50 million copies of your game are out there because you gave it away, think of how many people would buy the upgrades/addon packs.

7) Quit selling games that suck. NHL 2004 sucked, NHL 2005 sucked, I'm done buying EA hockey games because of it after buying all of them since the first one. That's $100 I wasted on crap. There is no ownership by software companies when it comes to selling shitty games to the unsuspecting public and that sucks.

8) Make every game beatable by anyone. No one does this, but everyone should. Track how many times a specific saved game is loaded. Track where a person dies in the game. If they die more than 5 times in a specific place, make it dynamically easier without the user seeing. Or, let them see a way to bypass what is difficult and let them choose to keep trying or go another route, but allow them the opportunity to succeed at your game. A lot of these hoppy hoppy platform craps some kids can't do and guess what? They game experience ends right there because they can't pass it and that sucks.

9) Remove the copy protection from games. Yep, I said it. It really, REALLY pisses me off to go play a game I bought and have to find the damn CD or find the manual to look up some word or find my code disc. Screw that. I bought the game, let me play it. Imagine if you had to enter some code into the CD player in your car every time you put in your new David Hasselhoff CD. You'd throw that puppy out the window and quit buying CDs. That's where video games are headed with them arbitrarily not allowing paying customers to play the games they purchased and rightfully own.

Bottom line, if it wasn't for piracy game sales would go DOWN greatly because that word of mouth would disappear and people don't have $2000 a year to spend on games. So, instead of telling their friends about 10-20 great games and their friends going out and buying them, they'd be telling their friends about 1 or 2 games and half the time they'd be saying, "Geeze, I spent my $50 on Dungeon Lords and it sucked ass. Now I have no games to play and I'm out $50 and I can't afford to buy a good game. Don't waste your money!" Until the greedy bastards at these companies pull their heads out of their asses and look at this in a big picture sort of way, rather than in a GIMME GIMME sort of way, they will continue to lose money due to their ignorance, not piracy.

Oh, by the way, Space Empires, a shareware game with absolute ass graphics that is highly pirated but has awesome gameplay sold a million copies, if I'm not mistaken, without ever being in a store. It is highly customizable by it's players and has a jazillion graphics packs created by users to upgrade the look of the game. Oh, and it's a $20 game to boot. Not to mention one of my friends pirated it, we played it, loved it and generated 10 sales because of a pirated copy. That's 10 sales they never would have gotten because we wouldn't have played it.

- Takr the grumpy.

Somebody please e-mail this to every goddamn developer/publisher there is, plzkthx.

I love piracy. Why? Because I don't (like many people have already said) have a couple hundred dollars to drop a month only to find out that a game sucks total ass. Sigma Star Saga? Yeah, that bitch? I had been waiting for a long time to get my hands on it. I downloaded it, played it for thirty minutes and deleted it. Without the internet, I would've been out however much they charge for it. Piracy, used responsibly (yeah, I know what you're thinking, but bear with me) can be really good. I mean, shareware! I have the full and complete game without paying.

Does the game suck? Yeah man, it sucks worse than a hole in the head. That's 20-55$ I don't have to spend on it, then.

Was it good? Oh, wow, you've gotta check this game out. Is it worth it? I'd say so.

I like knowing whether or not a game is any good BEFORE I give them my money with no hope of being able to get it back, should I be unhappy with said product.

[H.Bogard]

There's been no way to play on legit servers since the start of the year, and I think downloading stuff (you could do it, even if you couldn't play the games online) was fixed the other week. Feel free to bring me up to date.

Sure :

i cant mention the programs` names because i dont wanna get banned but trust me there are online enabled steam hacks as well (but ofcourse they cant play on legit servers, instead they use their own...which is just as good since legit guys can join in)

[TrackZero]

The question I put forward to all of you -- if you were the head of EA or any large publisher which stood to lose a great deal of money from piracy -- what would be your approach to keep your customers happy yet protect your IP assets?

Well that there is the misunderstanding. They DON'T loose money to piracy. They MAKE money because of it. The simple fact, in my experience and everyone else I know is that you only download games you never would have paid for in the first place to try them out. If the game is really that kickass, you end up going and buying it, that simple.

As for the younger kids who, again would never have had the money to buy the game in the first place, this just gets them into being a "gamer" and once they have a job and start making money, they end up buying far more titles than any normal person.

So in all honesty, I'm not sure if the game publishers understand this or not, but regardless they are in the wrong frame of mind about "piracy" and need to wake up and stop attacking their core market which ends up buying far more games than anyone else.

[Tennistoad]

Add to the list of pet peeves:

1) games that really don't run at the minimum specs..heck most don't run well at the recomended specs.

2) Biased reviews from gaming media.

3) Refund policies.

These 3 items alone make it as much a gamble to plunk $50 down on a pc game as it is to bet on the horses. Piracy on the pc front will never be stopped but If it was less risky for people who didn't know that much about their pcs to actually buy a game that wasn't based on hoyle, then even ea probably would be happy.

imagine how many copies of d3,bf2...etc.., are siting unused and their buyers are not happy because their pcs can't play em and they couldn't return em...etc.. and this has been going on for years. I know people who refuse outright to buy pc games because they have been burned on them in the past.

[nein89]

8) Make every game beatable by anyone. No one does this, but everyone should. Track how many times a specific saved game is loaded. Track where a person dies in the game. If they die more than 5 times in a specific place, make it dynamically easier without the user seeing. Or, let them see a way to bypass what is difficult and let them choose to keep trying or go another route, but allow them the opportunity to succeed at your game. A lot of these hoppy hoppy platform craps some kids can't do and guess what? They game experience ends right there because they can't pass it and that sucks.

I think you've got a lot of good points, but this bit grates on me. I mean, it's your opinion and that's great; you're welcome to it. It just seems terribly out of place to be complaining about a subjective design issue when the rest of your post was generally about business, and much more in keeping with the topic.

I'll admit it right upfront; I'm a small niche, and my reaction to this point is more on account of my personal desires than anything else, but I would suggest that the same is true of your having tossed it out in the first place. I am simply not interested in doing something that anyone can do. I want to be challenged.

Certainly, you could argue that developers might see greater success if they remember to include an easy difficulty; but they need to include hard, as well. You lose sales if you leave either end out. So, suggesting that games should track where and how you lose, and make themselves easier until you get past it; that's a terrible idea. That would drive me out of the hobby entirely, if, as you suggested, everyone did it. More choices, not fewer. Options are good.

Topic, then: stupid. Piracy involves boats. You cannot stop copyright infringement. I get really, really pissed off when I buy a game and it runs shoddily or not at all on account of your asinine copy protection. There is a steadily growing list of publishers and developers who will never see another penny from me. Does this mean I'm going to pass on games they release, if I happen to want to play one of them? No. It means I'm going to download a copy that will actually work, instead of paying for it. You fuck with me as a paying customer, I'm not going to miss out on what I want to play. But you are going to miss out on my money.

[Worldcrafter]

I have to chime in and second Undertakr's posts.

I was reading through this thread hoping I wasn't the only one who thinks all this piracy is made such a big deal because the publishers are sinking so much money on graphics. If you've spent years making a game, spent millions on developing it and advertising it, and it doesn't sell, then sure, you're going to be pissed if someone isn't paying for their copy. If you can't stop piracy, and you can't, even with a dongle (see 3D Studio Max), then what is the solution? Sue your market base if they step out of line? Charge more for games to recover the costs? Not good ideas, but I think Undertakr hit the nail on the head; stop making games that cost so much goddamned money.

I learned recently that the developers who see the biggest returns aren't the ones that develop huge, fancy games, but the ones who develop those little shareware games that everyone plays while waiting for their 700MB demo to finish downloading. The biggest market is card games, followed by puzzle games. Now, I hate card games, and puzzle games are good to a point (how many times can you manipulated tiles before you want to pound your head on the desk?), so what I'm suggesting isn't for developers to start flooding the market with more card and puzzle games, but cool off on "super eye bleed crazy graphics 3000" if your company doesn't have the money to produce it. Instead of competing with graphics, compete with gameplay. It will take less time and money to develop, so you can charge less, and earn more of a profit. If you have the funds to produce something with fancy pants graphics, then go for it, but don't come crying to your market when no one wants to buy it because it wasn't any fun to play.

Recently, one of the most fun games I have played is a game called "Cave Story" (http://agtp.romhack.net/doukutsu.html). I do recommend using the English patch and a game pad if you play, but it is a simple looking 2D platformer/shooter with fun gameplay. On the more expensive end of things, I've really been enjoying Psychonauts (as has my old psych professor and the rest of her family). This is an example of a game I pirated because the demo didn't do it for me, but everyone seemed to like the game. Once I got a chance to play the first few levels, I rushed out to the store to buy a new copy. I suppose what I'm trying to get at is, if you build it, and it's fun to play, they will come. But the compressed sales time at retailers (games go from new to bargin bin in a matter of weeks) means your game has to sell instantly, or it loses money. Selling online (via a website, or something like Steam) gives your game a longer "shelf life" so you can keep earning money from it years later. Look at the old Apogee games, they're ancient, but you can still buy them, and I'm sure every now and then someone does.

There is piracy among shareware games, I'm sure just as much as commercial games, but the main difference is the shareware games cost less to make, cost less to buy, and often are better supported, longer by their developers. The games start out as a project, earn some fans, word spreads, features are requested, features are implemented, word spreads, more fans, and so on.

Not every game can sell millions of copies, or even 1 million or 100,000 copies. Why then, keep making crap games that end up loosing money? Wouldn't it be better to make a simple game with a great idea, see how that returns, and once you have money and a fan base, develop a full blown version of the game? As readers of "The Escapist" know, I've been drawing heavily from the ideas in the last two issues, but as an aspiring game designer myself, the logic rings true. I would rather spend time making simple looking games that are fun to play, then get sucked into today's malestrom of a game development industry, and end up spending all my waking hours developing a game no one wants to play.

There is a place for small developers, and a place for large developers, and piracy will happen to all people involved. The big developers are taking a bigger risk time/money wise, so they're the ones most up in arms about piracy. Maybe they should take a look at their spending practices and figure out why the issue of piracy is so dire for them, and what they can do to fix that for themselves, because they sure aren't going to be stopping piracy any time soon.

[PacerDawn]

This legal piracy occurs every single day and no one bats an eye. It's called game rentals.

Go into any blockbuster and see the amount of games that are rented. These people all got the game for $5 or whatever blockbuster charges, and that money goes to blockbuster. So, essentially, blockbuster buys 1 copy of a game and hundreds of people play that game, finish it and return it and software companies encourage this. It's piracy in a hugely broad sense. It's people getting the game without purchasing it.
I have to disagree, that is not piracy. Piracy is duplicating and distributing games without a license, not multiple people playing the same copy of a game. Otherwise, having Little Billy from next door come over to play your PS2 would warrant a few days in the slammer.

In actuality, the purchases made by Blockbuster (et al) for these rentals are one of the biggest chunks of revenue that game makers get. If Blockbuster is going to rent 1000 copies of a game at a time, they are going to purchase 1000 copies. However, pirates typically only get that 1 copy you mention and duplicate it 1000+ times. That's a HUGE difference. Especially since the Pirates probably never even paid for the game to begin with.

People pirate (or rent) because games are too expensive, because there are no good EASY TO GET demos and because most games suck. I don't know how many times I've rented a game and went, "Damn, $5 was too much for that. Glad I didn't pay $50."
Again, I respectfully disagree. Demos are plentiful and very easy to get these days. Just log on to one of the many file networks and grab a copy. Game sites like EA here are great because they alert members when new demos of the hottest games come out and provide multiple sources. Anyone who can download a game can download a demo. Or, for consoles, there is always renting the game which again is not that difficult.

The other argument is that people don't want to download some 300meg demo. Yet these same people will download the 6+ CD full version of the game just to "demo" it? *boggle*

I will agree, however, that software needs a better return policy. For example, when I picked up UT2k4, it would not work at all. The copy protection Atari used simply did not work with my CD player. Even the official message board was filled with people complaining about it. I got it from Circuit City, the king of return stores because they take anything back for any reason. However, they don't accept open software returns except for exchanges for the same product, which didn't do me any good since it was the product itself that was the problem. All the guy had to say to me was "sorry man". Thank goodness for sites that provide copy protection cracks because I would have been out $50 due to that. I have had to do that with no less than *3* Atari games I bought (thankfully, that company is going down last I heard).

[Butters66]

Wow.

Excellent thread. Going much better than I expected. I was thinking it would be full of a bunch of holier than thou people saying how evil pirates are. Instead, there is some realistic discussion going on.

I won't rehash what others have posted. I will add a bit about Guild Wars maybe people haven't thought of:

People don't pirate it, or waste time attempting to crack it because of the constant downloads to your system. Your character data etc are stored online. You also don't have to worry about paying for a subscription. I bought the game because I loved the free concept of the guild and the evolving story with the promise of more cool content down the road. I also can play it at my pace, and don't feel like I have to get my $15 dollars a month in. This was the same reason I was into DII back in the day.

Anyway, I'm not trying to be a Guild Wars commercial, but I think this model highlights respect for the gamer. They have faith in their product so they provide this stuff for free. They aren't trying to be EA and sell us a game that they know is crap.

My other point is to look at other industries. Piracy has in fact been stopped in some cases. Directv was hacked for years and years. Eventually about a year and half ago DTV developed an encryption system that has not been hacked. Suddenly they had what they wanted - no hackers.

They should now be rolling in new revenues right? That's part of why they signed a huge deal for the rights to NFL Sunday ticket. (Remind you of any game companies?)

Not quite. Look at their numbers. They have had a slight increase, but nothing dramatic. What happened? Where did the lost revenue go?

I'll tell you - it never existed. People who were getting their free porn went to the internet or other sources. Others who had to have free TV went to hacking the dish network. They are other outlets as well not worth getting into for this. The point is that Directv spent millions and millions of dollars to stop piracy, but got nothing. In fact they are in worse shape now than before for two main reasons.

1. Comcast is now a viable option, if you aren't getting anything for free, why not go back to cable? They have better HDTV, etc.

2. They have huge costs going to the NFL. They must figure out how to recoup that revenue. Wonder why the NFL Sunday ticket High Def pack is $100 this year and was free last year?

Let what happened to Directv be an example to game industry. The same will happen if they squeeze to hard. People will just not buy the games. They will go elsewhere for their entertainment. It is not a coincidence that EA was featured so much in this article. They are in a similar boat as Directv with their NFL contract.

[a_the_est]

Here's what I think is a valid beef:

Recently, I visited my local mall - which is equipped with a Best Buy, an EB Games, and a few other electronics retailers - ready and willing to plop down $50CND for either Psychonauts, or Trackmania Sunrise, based on the reviews and the strength of the demos. Did I find either game on the shelf? Er.. no. I live in Toronto. A reasonably large city. Maybe Canada sucks hind teat when is comes to video game distribution.

But, a visit to the Canadian Best Buy site (http://www.bestbuy.ca) reveals that, to this day, neither game is on shelves.

And I hate having stuff shipped. It's an inconvience, and it adds upwards of $10 or $15 to the price, after you pay duty and all that other crap (and *no one* ships for free outside the US).

You want to stop piracy? A good policy may be to ensure people can actually purchase your game. I'm sure there are a few people in Canada who are interested.

I felt particularily bad for the developers of Psychonauts, 'cause that game kicked ass...

[Rirath]

I remember a keynote speech of sorts from around E3 where some devs came out strongly in favor of piracy, made the rounds quite a bit. An audience member / dev I believe started on this stuff of "renting is piracy; Blockbuster is stealing from me!", and was very quickly shot down. No offense, but if you ask me it's a ridiculous notion.

Rentals are a large part of the movie and game industry, selling thousands of copies per title, and all very legit and licensed. Many people rent who would otherwise be attracted to piracy, and it's almost a shame the PC market has no similar system. And demos? Demos are easy to get. If you can down a multi-gigabyte game, you can download a 300~ meg demo, especially thanks to BT. (Games which do not provide demos, or do so long after the fact, are another matter.)

Ideally a portion of my rental fee would go directly to the pocket of the developers, but this is hardly an ideal industry.

[Undertakr]

I remember a keynote speech of sorts from around E3 where some devs came out strongly in favor of piracy, made the rounds quite a bit. An audience member / dev I believe started on this stuff of "renting is piracy; Blockbuster is stealing from me!", and was very quickly shot down. No offense, but if you ask me it's a ridiculous notion.

This isn't a rediculous notion, it's the point that instead of all of those renters buying the game, they're getting it for 'free' (IE: the developer isn't getting money.) Believe me, the number of copies that a Blockbuster or a Gamefly purchases is extremely small compared to the number of people who rent the game and complete it and never purchase it. On top of that, blockbuster then sells through the used rented games to get back a good portion of their original output to get the games. It's also a good probability that Blockbuster is purchasing the games not at street price, but at a discounted price and the developer is only getting a percentage of what they would get had people purchased the game. It's not piracy, obviously, however if the arguement is that the devs are losing money due to people downloading and playing the game for free, that is the exact definition of game rentals.

Rentals actually can cost developers money because every customer support call/email generated by a player who rented a game is money directly removed from the developer with no income to offset it.

And demos? Demos are easy to get. If you can down a multi-gigabyte game, you can download a 300~ meg demo, especially thanks to BT.

You just stated the problem perfectly. A person can use BT to download a 300MB demo or use the same BT to download a 600MB game. The size of the demos are so large that you might as well download the entire game! Why would someone download half or more the size of a game to play one level that's gimped? They won't. If a demo was 20MB-50MB they would probably leech the demo first.

Overall though, a TON of people don't have broadband yet who can't download demos. How do they get them? Over a million people use AOL dial-up or Earthlink dialup. Where do those people get their demos? They can't, so they get pirated CDs from friends to 'check it out' because their friends downloaded the extra 200MB to get a full game instead of a bloated demo.

If I had the choice between paying $20 for NHL2k6 or downloading a 300MB demo, I'd go buy the damn thing. $20 is a great price point. If the choice was $50-60 or download a 300MB demo, I personally wouldn't do either and I think a lot of people wouldn't either, even with broadband.

You need to remember, the problem isn't the 'power-gamers' so much as the huge general masses. The 'elite' is going to pirate no matter what you do and they tell their friends a game was great and the friends buy it. Free advertising. What the software industry needs to do is quit targeting the fans they already have and make it easier for the masses to come to the software industry. Like someone said, when movies were $70 a pop, no one bought them, bring it down to $20 and they sell like hotcakes. Look at Target and see how many DVDs are sold and realize that movies are getting pirated as much as video games, if not more right now. Piracy isn't stopping sales, it's $50-70 games that is.

- Takr

[Chris_D]

1. Accept that you are never going to stop piracy.

2. Realise that there are two kinds of people who use pirated software, those who wouldn't ever pay for legitimate copies and those who pirate due to high prices, unavailability etc.

3. Realise that every copy-protection method ever, from codebooks to having to keep the CD in the drive does nothing but annoy your paying customers.


This is pretty much spot on. Hard core pirates (which is the majority from what I can tell) wouldn't care if the the original cost $5 or $50, they'd steal the game, and get their kicks from doing it. So I always roll my eyes at quotes from companies etc. along the lines of "100,000 copies of our game were pirated so therefore we lost 5 million in revenue". Complete BS.

I consider myself in the second group. Back in the bad ol' days my gaming far outstripped my disposable income so I'd supplement my habit with copied games from friends. Of course that ended as soon as I was working p/t. Now I have more games than I can poke a stick at and I actually refuse attempts of friends to (legitimately) lend me games. Somehow paying $50 for a game gets me more enjoyment out of it (weird).

Of course we still find it handy to be able to drop in a dodge version of a game at LANs for the inevitable 1-2 who don't have the game that we want to play. Likely by the next LAN they will have purchased said game anyway.

[Chris_D]

Maybe Canada sucks hind teat when is comes to video game distribution.


You should try dvdboxoffice.com, I find them fairly good for getting newer releases. Shipping is free too.

[Shifteh]

The idea that you have to 'crack down' on piracy is garbage. Games like Starcraft are pirated constantly, and it seems to be doing fine.

The other, actually ironic part, is that the more sophisticated the "anti-piracy" systems get, the more I download cracked .exe's. Why? Because half the time the anti-piracy systems don't like my CD player, or simply bog my system down. I also, like many others, don't like chaning CD's every half-hour to play different games.

If you want people to stop pirating your games, make it so they are so affordable that people don't need to put down half their goddamn disposable income to do so.

When I see games for $80, I wonder what the fuck companies are thinking. While the 18-30 market is the biggest for games, you completely alienate the younger/poor market with these exorbitant prices. I don't have $60 for a game.

I am proud that I own every game I currently have, but I will always check out a pirated copy before buying a game. You wan't my money? Stop making crap, and stop putting games out of my price range.

[Eon]

Well, it was only a matter of time before the "The Industry is to blame for piracy" argument came out to play...

1. Piracy is THEFT. It is a crime. Of course it should be cracked down on, because people are taking someone's hard work without paying for it. You can't arbitarily decide that crimes you enjoy comitting shouldn't be prosecuted!

2. The idea that lowering prices would eliminate piracy is bollocks. If all games were slashed to $5 tomorrow, people would STILL steal them. Because Pirated games would STILL be $5 cheaper per unit, and you would STILL be trotting out this same line of garbage. So long as there are more games released per month that you want then you can afford to buy, and you feel you can get away with pirating them, then you will continue to do so.

3. You don't like the price of games? Don't buy the motherfuckers. Buy budget games. Take up a different hobby - I don't really give a shit which. But stop thinking that it gives you some sort of moral fucking highground, when you're nothing more than a thief.

The buying public has voted with its wallet - they want higher production costs and better graphics. Developers are going to target audiences that actually pay for their product, and publishers are going to push that demographic down developers throats.

[nonchalance]

This is what pisses me off with this argument.

Piracy is theft, and criminal. The fight about whether or not it's immoral is pointless, neverending, and old. Personally, I don't think casual piracy is a major problem for publishers and developers, but who gives a fuck?
It's been done, people. Let's move on.

So the question becomes what the best way of stopping piracy is?
SafeDisc, Securom and their ilk don't stop anyone who knows what they're doing, and seriously inconvenience the legitimate consumer.

Lowering prices may (or may not) help with casual piracy, will it stop the professional pirates? No, because their only cost is manufacture, while legitimate copies pay salaries on top. The pirate copies will always be cheaper.

Stop making crap is a pointless thing to say. Every single industry in the world churns out at least half crap, and creative industries increase that percentage to around 75%.

What else we got?