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The Internet Entertainment Games

Piracy Helping Larger Game Developers? 112

Posted by simoniker from the jolly-roger dept.
Carlos Camacho writes "Piracy has been in the news recently within the game developer, and game player communities. You've seen all arguments against piracy in the past... Or have you? GBA and Mac game developer Aaron Fothergill of Strange Flavour Software wrote iDevGames a guest-editorial that will hopefully lead more users who copy games to re-think exactly it is that they are hurting. 'One of tenets of the software thief, is that "software is too expensive." They will then usually go on to bemoan how the 'giants' of the industry treat users unfairly and how stealing their software is their way of getting at 'the man.' Unfortunately, little do they realise, that the opposite is happening! Instead, rampant software theft benefits the 100 stone gorillas at the expense of new products that would otherwise be able to compete on price and features, resulting in only the big monopolistic companies keeping their products in the market and being able to control it'."
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Piracy Helping Larger Game Developers? More

Piracy Helping Larger Game Developers?

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  • Thank you, Captain Obvious! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by orkysoft ( 93727 ) <orkysoft@myMONET ... om minus painter> on Saturday March 20, 2004 @02:35PM (#8621771) Journal
    I guess it still had to be said for the clue-impaired.

    How do you think Microsoft got so big? People used to copy DOS and Windows, and when their companies were getting computers, guess what software their employees were familiar with, and which was thus bought?

    Same thing with Photoshop. It's really expensive, and gets pirated a lot. Instead, people could have bought Paint Shop Pro or downloaded The Gimp.

    Software piracy makes you serve as free advertising for the "victim" company, and when it feels like it, it can sue you for megabucks. Do the math, people (preferably not using a pirated copy of Mathematica. Get GNU Octave instead)!

    • Not So Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MiceHead ( 723398 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @03:40PM (#8622188) Homepage
      How do you think Microsoft got so big? People used to copy DOS and Windows, and when their companies were getting computers, guess what software their employees were familiar with, and which was thus bought?

      This seems more anecdotal than anything else; CP/M and DR-DOS were pirated, but that didn't do much for them in the long run. You could argue that MS-DOS was pirated more, and therefore became more popular. I think the more "obvious" explanation is that MS-DOS was popular, and therefore more widely pirated.

      As a profitable third-party games developer, I don't think that piracy has hurt us in terms of pricing versus first-party developers; people assign some value to software based on price, and if anything, The big-name, $50-$60 games are pushing our prices higher rather than lower. Most people, upon seeing a $9.95 game, think, "crappy puzzle game."

      Software piracy makes you serve as free advertising for the "victim" company

      Dollar-for-dollar, I'd prefer to have the money, and put it towards development or media.

      • Re:Not So Obvious (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Goldberg's Pants ( 139800 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @04:58PM (#8622647) Journal
        The entire software industry is based on theft, if only of ideas.

        Piracy is a problem for smaller companies and that sucks, but when you get scumbags like Electronic Arts releasing games like the recent MVP Baseball that only works with "approved" gamepads, leading you to spend two hours hacking around in your system registry to bypass it, I don't care if I get modded as a troll, but those fuckers deserve it.

        There is no excuse for pulling this shit, and a lot of people have been screwed over by EA on this, as playing the game with the keyboard is virtually impossible, and after shelling out $50 for a new game, you shouldn't then have to go out and buy a new controller just because EA are money grabbing bastards. (For the record, my "not approved" Gravis Xterminator from about 5 years ago works just fine in the game once I hacked the registry to make the system believe it's a Logitech Dual Action Gamepad.)

        I hate to advocate piracy, but companies that mislead and deceive, like Electronic Arts, really do deserve to be punished. Whether that be through pirating rather than buying, or just flat out not bothering at all, whatever the case, making it so they lose a sale is no more than they deserve.

        Piracy can help smaller companies though. For a great example of how piracy helps the smaller companies, Id Software would never be as prominent as they are now without Doom and Quake being widely pirated. I also remember a few years ago there was a rather persistent rumour that Lucasarts were deliberately leaking their games onto the net to build buzz for them. Seemed to work too.

        I'm glad to support the smaller developers. My pre-order for Out of the Park Baseball 6 is already in:) This is an unpopular opinion, but piracy is not without it's benefits. One pirated game does not equal one lost sale. Piracy has also driven computer sales. The Commodore Amiga, by Commodore's own admission, was as popular as it was due to the rampant software piracy.

        I've pirated stuff in the past, and ultimately wound up buying a game I pirated because I liked it. I would never have bought it had I not pirated it.

        For all these doomsayers about piracy, the fact is, while there are many negatives, the positives are largely ignored.

        I fully expect to -1, troll now, but ah well. Someone has to post the unpopular opinion:)

        • Re:Not So Obvious (Score:3, Interesting)

          by orkysoft ( 93727 )
          If they pull stunts like that, it's best to not bother with the game at all, and not pirate it either. Tell all your friends about it, so everyone knows not to bother. Pirating the game doesn't equal punishing the company: they still get the exposure, and other people you invite in, who try the game, might actually buy it. If you don't have it, you can't promote it that way.

          Weren't early iD games released as shareware? That seems like a good distribution method, which combines legality with low distributio
          • MVP Baseball: None of my friends like baseball, so sadly I won't stop any sales, because there weren't any in the first place:) But hopefully someone read my post here and changed their mind about buying the game...

            Id: Yes, Doom was shareware. I don't recall if Quake was. I know you get the first episode for free, but have no idea if it was shareware or regular channels you got it through.
            • Quake was definitely shareware - I remember picking up a copy of the first episode on CDROM by the cash register at a computer store (MicroCenter) and racing home to play it. I'm sure I still have that disk somewhere.
        • I too have pirated games that I went on to buy, the most prominent of these games was WarCraft II. Had I not pirated some archaic alpha version (you had to mine ore as well as wood, gold and oil) and been slightly interested in the game I *NEVER* would have bought the game in the store once it was finally released. Furthermore, I liked Warcraft II so much that I decided to buy every game Blizzard has ever released since then (expansions, treasurer chests, battle.net editions etc etc). So ultimately Blizz

    • Re:Thank you, Captain Obvious! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <pluvius3NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday March 20, 2004 @04:22PM (#8622457) Journal
      Same thing with Photoshop. It's really expensive, and gets pirated a lot. Instead, people could have bought Paint Shop Pro or downloaded The Gimp.

      That's the way it works with applications (though I don't agree with your DOS/Windows example). Games are slightly different, because they don't directly compete with each other (except in scattered cases, like HL2 versus Doom 3). In this case, we assume that people pirate games from both small publishers and large ones (not exactly a stretch). The large ones can take the hit in profits, but the small ones can't, so they go out of business.

      As far as the argument itself goes, it's something I haven't heard before, but it still seems to rely on the idea that all piracy translates into lost profits (which is almost certainly not true). I do agree that if you're going to pirate, you're better off pirating the big games and buying the small ones (assuming that the small ones are worth buying, obviously).

      Rob (There's also the fact that just because pirates allow publishers to charge $50 a game doesn't mean that the publishers have to)
      • Yes, I agree that with games it is different than with other applications or operating systems, except for games that resemble eachother very much, like those FPS games.

        Of course I know that not every instance of piracy equals a lost sale. I also think $50 for one game is ridiculous. Prices have been like that since at least 1990, and it seems like people have just gotten used to that, and find it normal nowadays.

        But since software has such a low per-unit cost (all the costs go into development), they cou

      • Re:Thank you, Captain Obvious! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by robson ( 60067 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @07:42PM (#8623523)
        There's also the fact that just because pirates allow publishers to charge $50 a game doesn't mean that the publishers have to

        You know, this diverges from your main point, but I'd like to point out that games have a fundamental economic problem moving forward: The cost to make games is rising, but the price of games isn't.

        Atari 2600 cartridges, the first mass-market home video games, cost about $30 each. Fast forward 25 years. Last week I bought "The Suffering" for the PS2 for $45.

        Now, I don't have precise numbers for the cost of development of 2600 games, but I know most were created by a single person who did all the programming, art, music, etc. Compare that with development today, which involves massive teams with dedicated departments for engineering, design, art, animation, and music. However, because of market forces, developers/publishers can't charge more for games today. The effect is that only the big, big hits make their money back. There's massive risk involved in simply developing and publishing a video game.

        Thus, you see publishers trying to reduce risk wherever possible, and what could be more risky than innovation? If you complain about clone after clone, look carefully at your own buying habits. (Obviously, I'm not talking to you, Pluvius -- I'm just speaking generally.)
        • The only problem with this line of argument is that after development, games only cost maybe $5 per unit to make. It's possible that if prices were lowered, the lower profit per unit would be made up in volume. Of course, it's really hard to tell if game prices are on the wrong side of the cost-sales curve or not, especially since different games can have different curves.

          Rob
        • Also consider that games today are selling way, way more copies than they ever did back in the Atari 2600 days. Really makes it a bit easier to earn back revenues.
        • Explain the movie industry, then ;)

          Asides from you indicating (at least) a 50% increase in price, there is the economies of scale to consider. That Atari 2600 cartidge you refer to did not have 100 million+ potential customers. Further, the available technology was far more expensive at the time those older games were made. The marginal cost of game production has likely gone DOWN since those early years, even though overall budgets are staggeringly higher.

          The potential payoffs today are far higher than i
          • Asides from you indicating (at least) a 50% increase in price

            Have you ever heard about something called "inflation"?

            Guess what $30 in 1980 is in today's dollars.
        • I don't think it's a problem. Free market is good at one thing - finding equilibrium. Since 1970s the market for videogames increased, development costs increased too. This allowed developers to keep the price pretty constant at the cost of reducing profit margins. But we have nothing to worry about. There are some factors driving development costs down too, like better modelling, animation, programming and other tools, ready-made game engines, etc. The price for the games is what people are willing to pay
        • I'd like to add that a lot of C64 games retailed at 1.99 - 4.99, with "big name" games retailing at 14.99-16.99. Amiga games usually retailed at 24.99-29.99. Of course, usually none of them were cartridges.
        • I'd like to point out that games have a fundamental economic problem moving forward: The cost to make games is rising, but the price of games isn't.

          It only loks like a problem if you leave out a fundamental part of the equation, which is more units being sold. If you sell more games at the same prices you've always charged, you can afford the higher cost of making games.
      • Games are slightly different, because they don't directly compete with each other (except in scattered cases, like HL2 versus Doom 3).
        I disagree with this. Every game out there is in direct competition with every other game, no matter what the genre. If I spend $50 on a game. That's $50 that's not going to be spent on any other game.
        • Every game out there is in direct competition with every other game, no matter what the genre. If I spend $50 on a game. That's $50 that's not going to be spent on any other game.

          That's not direct competition; that's indirect competition. Direct competition is when two or more applications do basically the same thing (e.g. Photoshop and GIMP, or IE and Mozilla). This doesn't really fit with games, as you rarely see two games that do the same thing. If you buy Photoshop, you have no reason to use GIMP,

          • This doesn't really fit with games, as you rarely see two games that do the same thing.

            I see tons of games that do the same thing. While I agree that there are more people who want lots of similar games than there are who want lots of similar software of other kinds (like your photoshop example), there are still lots of us for whom similar games are directly competing for our money. For example, if I were to buy one football game, I would probably not choose another football game as my next purchase since

            • Ah yes, I forgot about sports games. But anyone who says that they wouldn't buy more than one FPS or RPG because "they're similar" obviously isn't a big fan of FPSes or RPGs. Most FPSes or RPGs (or games of most other genres) are sufficiently different from each other to justify buying more than one of them.

              Rob
    • -----quote-----
      Same thing with Photoshop. It's really expensive, and gets pirated a lot. Instead, people could have bought Paint Shop Pro or downloaded The Gimp.
      -----end quote-----

      True, they indeed could have gotten PSP or The Gimp, but something tells me they wanted to actually be able to get some work done doing image processing, retouching, etc, etc.

      Unless this is one of those "Gimp is as good as Photoshop" things. (I love those. They're so CUTE... Wrong, but cute.)
      • I don't know whether Gimp is as good as Photoshop. I can't afford Photoshop, so I use Gimp, and even then I only very occasionally need to do something to an image. I'm not qualified to troll about whether it's good enough.
      • "Gimp is as good as Photoshop" isn't true. "The Gimp is good enough for most people' is true.
      • True, they indeed could have gotten PSP or The Gimp, but something tells me they wanted to actually be able to get some work done doing image processing, retouching, etc, etc.

        All of them? There is no one pirating photoshop whose needs couldn't be met by psp or the gimp? I'm sure there are plently of pirates who legitimately need the functionality that photoshop provides above psp and the gimp, but there are also plenty who don't, so I think the parent's point is valid.

    • I guess it still had to be said for the clue-impaired.

      How do you think Microsoft got so big? People used to copy DOS and Windows, and when their companies were getting computers, guess what software their employees were familiar with, and which was thus bought?

      Well, I must count *you* as the clue impaired. When companies started getting computers, what was virtually the only OS available? Thaaaat's right! DOS and/or Windows.

      As far as software goes, I guess you weren't around in the early days when the

    • Except PSP or the Gimp simply cannot touch Photoshop for even moderately demanding users. Photoshop is CHEAP as professional-grade software.
      • If it's so cheap, go ahead and buy it. I never said I was a demanding user, so I'll just stick with The Gimp.

        Funny, how so many people consider themselves demanding users, yet find Photoshop too expensive to buy...
    • Guess what, I'd rather use a pirated version of Photoshop or PhotoImpact and live with the fact that I am not stimulating competition, than part with a few hundred dollars. I happily buy pirated games, simply because I don't care that much about the market. Let the big market players, or small players, or medium-sized players win, I don't care. And I don't care if game players lose. I personally win.

      You need to realise that the consumers can be divided into two groups - those who pay for software and those
      • That's ridiculous. Buying a product doesn't only serve to "vote" for it, it also serves to fund it. I don't see how you can ignore that. If half as many people voted in an election, but the votes were distributed in the same way, there would be the same outcome. If half as many people paid for the products in a given market, the results would be very different because the companies make them would each get half as much revenue (or the consumers who paid would pay more, or some combination of these).
    • How do you think Microsoft got so big? People used to copy DOS and Windows, and when their companies were getting computers, guess what software their employees were familiar with, and which was thus bought?

      I thought Microsoft got so big because you paid for DOS/Windows on your new PC whether it was installed or not. So if you bought your PC with no OS and then went out and bought a copy you were actually buying it twice. Or maybe I'm not remembering correctly.
    • Hopefully the article would be pretty obvious to Linux users. If you've already made the choice to go with an alternative rather than just copy the 'standard' then you've probably already worked it out for yourself ;) To put the article in context btw. It resulted after observing a big row on iDevGames forums and chat about software theft and whether it's morally correct or not when it's a Microsoft game, brought about by the release of Halo for the Mac (pretty much the same argument on several Mac sites,

  • That's an interesting argument. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 00420 ( 706558 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @02:36PM (#8621780)
    I've never thought of it that way before.

    Personally the reason I don't have any pirated software is I've found everything I need on packages.gentoo.org, and freshmeat.net. (With the exception of a few games, which I was glad to pay for).

    I do understand why people pirate some software, like Photoshop, Autocad, etc... They're industry standard and too damn expensive. And, I can see how this could potentially block out smaller competitors.

    However, due to the continuing growth in popluarity of OSS, the software industry is destined to change. Piracy isn't any concern for OSS.

    • Re:That's an interesting argument. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by leviramsey ( 248057 ) * on Saturday March 20, 2004 @02:50PM (#8621872) Journal

      However, OSS won't become dominant unless and until piracy is eradicated. Freedom doesn't matter to most users (for all the pontificating about the draconian EULAs that you read on Slashdot, Microsoft et al are smart enough to know not to be too draconian on the common man). The only valid arguments for OSS that remain are quality and price (which are combined into value).

      The quality argument is difficult to assess, and it varies from program to program. GIMP is still fairly far from Photoshop. OSS GUIs are playing leapfrog with Windows (KDE/GNOME have the lead on XP at the moment, but the next revision of Windows will likely see Windows retake the lead in that competition) and are probably somewhat behind OS X. And even quality won't necessarily beat an entrenched base, due to market inertia.

      That leaves price. If OSS costs nothing, but so does pirated software, then it's a push, so the value judgement is deferred to quality, with inertia playing a role.

      Now, if all of a sudden, everybody was forced to buy Office at full-price, OpenOffice would gain so much traction in the marketplace, it would likely be at parity with Office in a year and have hegemony in the market thereafter.

    • ..and what comes to games most of them are not worth buying, as in people who are copying them could easily live without them as well(and would choose to put their money into something else were it up to that).

      then there's games that wouldn't deserve(yes in my narrow scope of view that's my opinion) to be selling are raking in big bucks(the newer wrestling games for one).

      however the current state of things doesn't much differ from 10 or 15 years past. only thing that has changed that computer games are mo

  • How will DRM change this? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by polyp2000 ( 444682 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @02:43PM (#8621816) Homepage Journal
    DRM ... Is supposed change this,making piracy so difficult though, but will this have the opposite effect? I doubt it, The fat cats are just going to get fatter and the skinny kittens are just going to get skinnier.

    The article seems to be an anti-piracy article in some sort of disguise.

    In the end the consumer will decide and with the advent the choice will be a lot clearer. Let the Fat-Cats extort your money because you wont be able to use illegal software you obtained for free; or Take up on Open Source and discover that quality software is available free, and best of all its legal.

    • Of course DRM will entrench the fat cats, possibly to a greater degree than they are entrenched now.

      However, ending piracy voluntarily would end the advantage that the fat cats get over the skinny kittens from piracy.

      DRM will not be that draconian. Everybody but the mental midgets at the RIAA realizes that pissing off the customers enough for them to decide to go elsewhere. As long as the DRM allows a certain amount of leeway, consumers will continue to lap it up.

  • The main person piracy helps is me. It's effect on the developers was never really a factor for me - if anything, their insistance on the validity of intellectual property made me actively unsympathetic to their desires in the whole process.
  • It was mentioned earlier about applications like Photoshop, or the Windows OS, have drastically increased in price due to piracy. That's probably true. However, how has the gaming arena changed? Not very much.

    As a matter of fact, it's more easy to argue the relatively small price increase of games reflects inflation and the steady increase of standard pay for programmers in the 90's. Quite frankly piracy doesn't do jack to the gaming industry, other than to cause game developers to whine and moan. Had
    • Quite frankly piracy doesn't do jack to the gaming industry, other than to cause game developers to whine and moan. Had the concept/practice not come about, we'd still be in the same situation.

      That is an amazingly ignorant statement. Piracy has had a huge effect on the industry. It raises the barrier to entry quite high. The "big" developers can survive it, but the small companies and the startups who already have enough problems can easily be taken down by piracy. Piracy helps keep the big guys big, an
    • The only possible benefit that would come from the lack of piracy is the possible improvement in game quality since companies spend a lot of time and money on trying to keep their games from being pirated (which always fails, I've yet to see a game that hasn't been cracked except for the online aspect of Neverwinter Nights).

      Developers do not spend much time or money on anti-priacy. It is a pretty small amount of time overall and does not really take away from real development efforts.

      Even when develo
      • More often than not someone tries a burned copy of a game, can't get it to work, and then goes out and buys the cd. More often than not someone just downloads the cracked copy from their favorite P2P network and bypasses the whole mess. That's what I started to do when I got one too many game with a completely broken CD-check. Pay less money, get a non-broken product. Practically all games have some limited copy protection these days (or at least that seems to be the case to me judging from the trouble
        • so if casual piracy like the type you describe were truly the source of the problem, there wouldn't be a problem, would there?

          No, you are mistaken. The trivial piracy that common anti-piracy methods prevent is a different and larger problem that is largely addressed. The remaining problem with non-trivial piracy still exists and for smaller developers can be catastrophic.

          To give you an idea of how bad things could get without the simplest copy protection I'll mention some chemistry software required
          • Well, fine, there's two types of piracy, social network and computer network. Software required for a Chemistry class is a bad example, because a very small user base is concentrated into a very small area--a single classroom. Social network piracy is easy--just trade a disk among your classmates. Computer network piracy is very hard--who the heck is going to bother releasing a crack for such a limited audience? How much luck are you going to have finding it on warez sites?

            Computer network piracy is d

            • Software required for a Chemistry class is a bad example, because a very small user base is concentrated into a very small area--a single classroom. Social network piracy is easy--just trade a disk among your classmates. Computer network piracy is very hard--who the heck is going to bother releasing a crack for such a limited audience? How much luck are you going to have finding it on warez sites? Computer network piracy is difficult for obscure software (which sort of nullifies the "piracy attacks smaller
              • You are mistaken. The chem software has cracks available for it. A simple google finds many sites offering it.

                Look, I steal a lot of software, so while I may be mistaken in this specific case (although since you haven't named the program, there really isn't a specific case to be mistaken about) I'm not mistaken about the general case. Even if the crack available, it's still vastly easier to exchange software by trading cds around IN A CLASSROOM--i.e. your example still is not generally applicable.

                One p

                • we're talking about obscure software, then the probability of a pirate turning a legit customer to the dark side is low, because the number of intersections between your legit and pirate set of people are smaller.

                  I disagree. People frequently have friends with similar interests to themselves, which means that those pirating "obscure" software will likely know other people with an interest in the software. You are trying to treat the users of obscure software as being distributed uniformly at random throug

                  • You are trying to treat the users of obscure software as being distributed uniformly at random throughout society, which isn't true. The reality is much closer to the chem class example than you seem to be willing to acknowledge.

                    If we're talking about obscure games, then I would indeed believe it's distributed in sufficiently uniform manner. If I manage to steal some obscure simulation game, chances are I'm only going to be able to find one or two friends who would also want to play it, and probably none

        • "More often than not someone just downloads the cracked copy from their favorite P2P network and bypasses the whole mess. That's what I started to do when I got one too many game with a completely broken CD-check. Pay less money, get a non-broken product."

          If saying that makes you sleep better at night then good luck with that. You are still ripping people off.

          If your are having problems with CD-check then 1) call tech support, 2) return the product (don't take no for an answer, they will take it back if y

          • I don't see why that's a much better idea. If I buy a game and REALLY want to play it, and the copy protection makes me unable to do so, I'm not going to fight with the store/publisher for a refund. I'm going to crack it and play the game. I'm not going to be denied a chance to use something I bought because of futile attempts to keep others from playing without paying.

            Remember also that those who pirate games outright will likely cost the company MORE money than someone who buys the game, then forces a re
  • I think the article is a bit wrong: You do not pirate the big games, you pirate the good games! And most good games are big. Also, most good games are from big companies, that's true most of the time, and even if you are a small company that makes a good game, you will get a crapload of money off the sales and eventually become a big company, just look at Valve.

    Valve doesn't even sell games anymore, they sell CD-keys :D
    • Valve isn't a good example - they were founded by a bunch of rich guys, so of course they were able to maintain enough control, etc. to be profitable. Most new developer groups don't have that kind of luxury.

    • Re:Small developers... bad games. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You do not pirate the big games, you pirate the good games!
      Wrong, people pirate the games they consider good. The average person determines this by reading reviews (sometime big companies affect the rating in popular magazines through their ads), seeing an ad (the larger the company, the more often you see it), or chosing games from publisher you know have produced a good game (the larger the company, the more games, the more likely this happens.)

  • Not a good argument.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CashCarSTAR ( 548853 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @03:11PM (#8622010)
    Although this does make a lot of sense when it comes to business software, and it's very true. Copied software creates more educated users of that product, making business take-up that much easier.

    But when it comes to games? Frankly, it's barking up the wrong tree. I don't see how piracy would help the big guy over the small guy. I mean, it's not like there's not millions of keygens floating around for all those small download games..right?

    In any case, I don't think it's piracy that hurts creative industries at all. I really don't. People who tend to do that obsessivly (meaning they don't buy anything..there are quite a few like that), wouldn't have a preference over one thing or the other. You're not going to get them to buy anyway.

    Not so much for the PC market, but especially for the console market, what is really hurting them is the presence of the used/pre-owned game. The same thing that is really hurting the movie industry. This creates a new sub-market for such goods that the producers don't see a penny out of. Every person that buys, for example, Metroid Prime for $20..

    #1. Doesn't have that $20 to spend on another shrinkwrapped budget game..you know, one someone actually gets paid for?

    #2. Considering that the shrinkwrapped price is near 20, it actually denies the producers rewards for their production. This is exactly the argument they make against piracy. But they can't do anything about this because it's above the law.

    So I think complaining about piracy frankly, is half-assed until they start cracking down on used/pre-owned copies. Of course, legally, they're not on firm ground here. However, a widespread advertising campaign and pickiting campaign may convince people that going into that used-media shop is ethically wrong.

    • So I guess it was just as ethically wrong the last time I bought books at the local Salvation Aarmy? That kind of used-goods market just takes money out of the hands of the publishers who made the books to start with? By holding a yard sale, would I be subverting the capitalist system as we know it? ...my god, what about all the pawn shops? Gun and jewelry manufactures could be bringing in thousands of additional dollars if we just forced everyone to buy their products retail.

      The fact is that, while game m
      • Sorry, I apologize. Ethically wrong was the wrong term to use. I shouldn't presume to judge, especially since I personally don't think there's a clear answer one way or the other.

        The real term to use is ethically equivilant.

        And yeah. When you buy used books it's akin to piracy, at least from the perspective of the producer. The producer receives no additional benefit for your enjoyment of the work. Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong, but there's absolutly no difference from the perspective of the producer
        • Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong, but there's absolutly no difference from the perspective of the producer between downloading a PDF or a book and getting it at the library.

          Absolutly no difference.

          Wrong! Actually so wrong it hurts.

          Piracy of theft of property, intellectual, physical, whatever.

          Used games/books/whatever are the second sale of property. After something has been bought at retail it becomes property and whatever a person chooses to do with his own property is his business within the
          • Who cares about the legal definition of piracy or the "bounds of the law"

            I'm talking about ethical matters.

            As far as I know, copyright and IP law exists to make sure the producers get rewarded for their work, in order to encourage more to be produced. At least that's the commonly acknowledged reason...it's a good reason too.

            If 500 people copy a game off a friend's CD, doesn't that cost the producer 500 sales?

            If 500 people read a book through the library, doesn't that cost the author 500 sales?

            What's th
            • If 500 people copy a game off a friend's CD, doesn't that cost the producer 500 sales?

              No. I might have decided that the game is crap so why bother paying for it? Or my computer wasn't powerful enough. Or I didn't have enough money.

              Here's a serious example of not enough money. One russian user on a game company's website admitted that she pirated the $30 or so game. The developer flamed her for that of course.

              Now, from the US this is all clear. But think of this: In Russia, at that time, my aunt's wage wa
              • Basically, for you, you want to try before you buy, no matter how far you want to go.

                That's fine. That's a personal choice. What my posts are more about are talking about why nobody talks about the used market in the same light as they do about piracy. It's something that mystifies me, and makes me think that the anti-piracy forces just arn't serious about what they say they are, rewarding the producers, and instead they're just being pricks.

                • I think the difference in opinion is that people, myself included, don't consider there to be a moral or ethical dilemma in selling or purchasing used goods.

                  I work in retail, and have done so for over 6 years. I cannot begin to count the number of pieces of product I have been forced to see destroyed because of lack of sales. You might be inclined to say that is because of piracy, because of secondhand sales, or some other causitive reason.

                  Regardless of the reason, the bottom line is that the producer
                  • You're talking about it fromt he PoV of the retailer.

                    I'm talking about it from the PoV of the producer.

                    There is a clear line legally..what I'm saying is that if the goal of copyright law is the reward the producers, then there shouldn't be that clear line. Because like it or not, when you buy a used game rather than a new one, the producer really is losing a sale. It's not even just a potential sale, a hypothetical one as you see with normal copying.

                    In a way, if I was a producer, I'd be crying bloody mur
                    • Perhaps I wasn't clear in my response. I was discussing it from the PoV of the producer. You're just not seeing the discussion.

                      Explain to me how a producer is losing a sale when a used copy is purchased. Again, the physical copies of the software sitting on every shelf were already purchased by the retailers from the producers. Whether or not you purchase the new shrinkwrapped copy or not, that piece of software on the shelf was already paid for. Now, if you try to claim a causality chain, such that if I
                    • Usually what happens is that the retailer marks it up. However, the producer/distribitor specifically has authorized for them to carry the product. When you buy directly, usually they are just cutting out the middle man and giving you what the stores would take as profit/operating costs.

                      Regarding the first point, you are aware that the exact same argument can be made for piracy, right? That the $0 price tag is just another price level to be competed with.

                      School textbooks? Frankly, I think companies should
        • What can the game companies do?

          If they felt it was that much of a problem, they could simply quit selling to ED, Babbages Inc (Gamestop), FYE (which I think it Transworld Media...), Blockbuster, etc. I don't think game companies are worried about used sales in the least. By the time people are buying used copies of the game (at least in my experience working at a Gamestop), customers who were interested in paying retail have already got the game. Most used game sales are made up of games that are months or
    • Not so much for the PC market, but especially for the console market, what is really hurting them is the presence of the used/pre-owned game.

      I don't think you're correct here from an economic standpoint-- which makes the ethical question irrelevant.

      I've studied a lot of pricing theory, and one of the tenets is that resale value is factored into the value the consumer is willing to pay for a new product. Say you intend to buy a car and get $10,000 value out of it over 5 years. Say the car will have a re
  • Unfortunately, little do they realise, that the opposite is happening! Instead, rampant software theft benefits the 100 stone gorillas at the expense of new products that would otherwise be able to compete on price and features,

    And if it wasn't unlicensed copying, it would be loss leaders and differential pricing from the big guys. The big guys just have more money to absorb costs and losses, to price their product aggressively, and to get their product out there. Either way, the small players have an e
    • One thing is certain: whining about piracy isn't going to help; small players need to figure out how to survive in the market as it is.

      Another thing is certain: Piracy makes the small developer's already tough job that much harder and can easily turn an otherwise survivable situation into failure.
      • Yes, and as I was saying: deal with it. There just isn't a good alternative: whining isn't going to change things, and lobbying for stronger copyright enforcement is likely going to backfire.

        Small companies need to figure out how to market and sell their products so as to avoid piracy. It's hard. Life sucks sometimes.
  • There are software pirates who pirate software to resell it and make money and there are software pirates who pirate software because free is a better price than $49.95. The majority of software pirates are of the latter variety.

    I've known many people who pirated software and none of them did it to hurt The Man or because they didn't like the developer. They did it because they wanted software and they didn't want to pay for it. That's all. If anyone ever said they were fighting The Man by pirating softw

    • I agree, the author is barking up the wrong tree in terms of the pirates' motivation. Most people will naturally try to justify their decisions with some sort of argument, and in the case of piracy it's do deflect the blame onto something else. In this case, the obvious target is the big, bad publishers who are already raking in more money than they know what to do with (until they go bust, of course).

      I doubt anyone REALLY pirates applications for any other reason than to avoid paying. Anything else is
      • Very true, the background behind the article though is from a long set of arguments on iDevGames' (and pretty much every other Mac games site) forums and chatrooms about software theft in the light of Halo's eventual release on the Mac. Several (usually younger) posters claimed they were on the moral high ground when downloading Halo, because it was owned by Microsoft, so it's ok to steal it. Its relevance is more towards apps than games, although not totally. Its aim was to try and provoke discussion, whic
  • I think that anybody who thinks that the eradication of piracy would lead to the big companies lowering their prices is very sadly mistaken.

    • Re:Meh (Score:5, Interesting)

      by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @06:21PM (#8623135) Journal
      I think you're missing the point. Right now, the situation is:

      BigAwesomeSuperGame2004 costs $49.95. Joe wants to play a game and knows BASG2k4 is hot right now, but doesn't want to pay $49.95 for it, so he pirates it. Joe completely ignores PrettyCoolAlternativeGame from Small Software Co for $24.95.

      If there were no option to pirate the game, it might work like so:

      Joe doesn't want to pay $49.95, but knows that's the only way to play BASG2k4. Instead, he wanders up and down the software rack and finds PCAG for $24.95 and buys that instead.

      Piracy is hurting the small game developers, not just because their software is getting pirated, but because people won't even consider it if they can pirate the big name games instead. Maybe if the big companies actually felt some pressure from sales lost to smaller companies with less expensive games, they might change their pricing.
      • Except if Joe doesn't want to pay at all, he won't pay for any of both games. So nohing would prevent him from getting both!

        Besides, if the cheaper game is not a basic clone of the other, there's no reason why having one will prevent playing the other.

      • Re:Meh (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MMaestro ( 585010 )
        That is unless Joe is an average gamer who doesn't know squat about gaming news, doesn't read reviews, and doesn't even bother to ask the sales associate for his opinion on the game (assuming the sales associate plays video games). It'd be like walking into a candy shop and deciding on what to buy.

        Do you reach for the classic tried-and-true Hershey chocolate bar at $1, or do you go for the no-name store made brand which no one seems to buy at $0.25? In cases like these, most people are willing to reach for

  • Having spent a bit of time in the amateur game dev arena myself, I have to agree; a large corporation can easily absorb the losses from piracy, but a small bedroom coder affair needs every single sale it can get. It's extremely frustrating to see cracked shareware games... it seems like a much more personal thing, precisely because fewer people would typically be interested - in me, it would lead to thoughts of "whoever cracked this must have it in for me."

  • My "justification" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @05:41PM (#8622852) Journal
    I got tons of legal software. Well not tons. A stack of about 30 centimeters of legit cd's (granted about half of that is phantasmorgia) , an even greater stack of floppies and I am fed up.

    Why did I pay big money for games that often are broken and were never repaired? If they were normal physical products each and every game company would be in court getting its ass chewed out by consumer watchdog agencies.

    And it just doesn't look like it is getting any better. Hell with "copy-protection" schemes it even gotten worse. Buy the legal product and you end up with something you can't copy to preserve the orginal CD, wich is a legal right in holland, and no way to get new cd's (only often send to american residents).

    Where as if you download the game you can archive it as much as you want, you have no bloody keys to keep, and because they rip out the cd checking code the game frequently even runs faster. I lost 1 cd to my legally own "the longest journey", got the box if you don't believe me, I downloaded the game and notice how playing it from virtual cd's is a lot faster. No waiting for the CD to spin up to play a movie.

    So game companies should get their act together. I was a paying customer who bought all his games except doom, no credit card. I now got even more money then when I was a kid and you lost me. Spend some time figuring that out. I tended to buy at least 1 game every single month and frequently more.

    Have I just become a thief or am I rebelling against being ripped off by selling me broken products?

  • Problem with the "I Pirate Quality!" argument (Score:3, Insightful)

    by inkless1 ( 1269 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @06:37PM (#8623227) Homepage
    People have to understand how voting from the wallet works (and you should after reading this article).

    The problem with the "I only pirate good games" argument is that you're missing the core point of the article. If you didn't pirate anything you would have to weigh the merits of software in terms of their real cost.

    Most small dev shops may not be capable of the quality of the big ones, but their stuff usually doesn't cost as much either. So Paint Shop Pro might not be as powerful as PhotoShop, but it also costs 1/10.

    When pirate software, that fact just becomes irrelevant. Worse, you aggravate the situation by widening the gap between the developers - in effect degrading the quality of small software devs by siphening their revenue.

    This is doubly painful for games - where smaller shops might need to try something innovative or different, which is harder to market when people are more like to try and pirate UT2004.

    You can justify it any way you want - but the reality is: piracy sticks it to nobody but the little guy. So when every year games become more and more mainstream, less innovative and EA buys another license - just look to you hard drive and you might know why.

  • Blah (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't pirate games to "FUCK WITH THE MAN," I pirate games because I can't return them. It's simple, I download a game. If I like the game and want to continue playing it after a few hours, I go purchase it. If I find out that the game is a piece of crap, I delete it.

    I downloaded two games recently. Secret Weapons Over Normandy and Battlefield: Vietnam. I purchased SWON after only an hour or so playing around with the warez. It was a fun game and I wanted to support the developer, and let the publis
  • There's a number of serious logical difficulties in this article. Foremost, the article only makes sense if you think that piracy somehow magically takes money out of the pockets of developers. Like, I download a copy of your game, and your bank account balance automatically decreases $20.00. Obviously, this is crap. If I choose to buy your game, then you get $20.00. If I choose to pirate your game, then from your perspective as a seller, it's like I never existed at all.

    The thing is, the total number

    • A: Too much piracy
      B: Lack of sales

      A->B
      not B

      Therefore, not A.
    • Foremost, the article only makes sense if you think that piracy somehow magically takes money out of the pockets of developers.

      No, piracy takes money out of the pockets of developers through thoroughly non-magical means. Inserting the word "magically" into an assertion doesn't automatically make it dumb.

      Like, I download a copy of your game, and your bank account balance automatically decreases $20.00. Obviously, this is crap.

      Yes, it is. Giving a ridiculous example based on your twisted interpretation

      • No, piracy takes money out of the pockets of developers through thoroughly non-magical means. Inserting the word "magically" into an assertion doesn't automatically make it dumb. You're right, it's pretty fucking retarded all by itself with no insertion of words necessary. Software sales generally come from people who meet both of the following criteria: "want the software," and "don't already have the software." If you pirated a game, you obviously met the first criterion, but you've removed yourself fro
      • Jesus, when am I going to learn to preview before submit?

        Inserting the word "magically" into an assertion doesn't automatically make it dumb.

        You're right, it's pretty fucking retarded all by itself with no insertion of words necessary.

        Software sales generally come from people who meet both of the following criteria: "want the software," and "don't already have the software." If you pirated a game, you obviously met the first criterion, but you've removed yourself from the second one. That's one poten

        • The rule as I've heard it goes: 10% of the people will steal anything that isn't nailed down. 10% of the people won't steal anything, ever. Forget both of those groups and concentrate on the other 80%.

          If some strange holocaust killed all software pirates, it wouldn't change the revenue of software companies at all.

          A much more interesting question is, what would happen if some strange holocause killed IRC, Usenet, DC, and all the other "sharing" tools. How many people that would have pirated the game w

          • A much more interesting question is, what would happen if some strange holocause killed IRC, Usenet, DC, and all the other "sharing" tools.

            It is the wrong question. It is still the case that pirates have no effect on your business-it is like they do not exist. It is well known that there are more legitimate users that there were in the past, therefore things should be better than they used to be for developers--whether there are more pirates than before does not enter into this equation.

            Your question

  • Monopoly-sharing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Deraj DeZine ( 726641 )

    Why isn't this a main page topic? This is most certainly an important topic for anyone involved in the business side of software.

    But the real point of my comment is to introduce a name for this side-effect of piracy, and it is monopoly-sharing [washington.edu]. I chose this name since piracy usually occurs on file-sharing networks, but the sharers are actually perpetuating monpolies. The link is to my blog post about the topic.

  • My game group (we're all engineers of one stripe or another) often runs into the situation where three-out-of-five like a game enough to buy it and play it on the days when we don't meet. The other two might play if everyone's playing together, but won't consider it important enough to go out and buy.

    What ends up happening is either 1) we pass a cd around to bootstrap those people who don't have a copy (only works if the game doesn't cd-check during play), 2) find a hacked .exe that doesn't do the CD chec

  • Piracy prevention methods only punish legitimate users. I'm referring specifically here to cd "in the drive" copy protection. Pirates make short work of that sort of copy protection, but legit users often go through the hassle of putting the disk in the drive, either because they don't know about the crack, or don't want to run it for fear of viruses and the like.

    I doubt this style of copy protection has ever caused a single sale. It's just annoying to those of us who actually buy the game (like me).

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