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Games Entertainment

Videogame Piracy - Is a Stricter Approach Necessary? 205

Posted by simoniker from the shop-em-now dept.
Thanks to GamerDad for its editorial focusing on recent attitudes to videogame piracy, in which a change in approach is argued for: "The [ESA] should be less focused on the ratings system... and more focused on educating consumers that downloading games is theft, plain and simple.... Consumers only understand one thing, the game is available freely on the Internet with a minimum of work and that means they don't have to pay for it." The writer continues: "I can't bring myself to download games, even the things at a place like The Underdogs which specializes in supposedly 'out of print' games to download. Out of print used to mean something was rare and worth something. In the digital media world it apparently now means 'Ok to steal.'" He concludes by suggesting ways to make games more attractive again: "One great way to do that is including good stuff in the box. Give me a color manual or include a poster. Maybe a CD with all the music from the game? How about liner notes with each game describing some part of development?"
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Videogame Piracy - Is a Stricter Approach Necessary? More

Videogame Piracy - Is a Stricter Approach Necessary?

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  • theft (Score:5, Informative)

    by Paradise Pete ( 33184 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:17AM (#9809861) Journal
    downloading games is theft, plain and simple

    It may be wrong, it may be illegal, but It's not theft. Plain, simple, or otherwise. It's copyright infringement.

    • Re:theft (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bconway ( 63464 ) * on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:34AM (#9809959) Homepage
      You are 100% correct. Copyright infringement != stealing. I'm amazed that people still can't figure this out, especially on a prominent site like GamerDad.
      • GamerDad is a prominent site? I had never heard of it in my life. It doesn't look overly professional (or perhabs commercial), either - not that that is necessarily a bad thing. Or for a more "empirical" approach: According to Google 161 pages link to http://www.gamerdad.com/ - and most of those links seem to stem from the site itself. In contrast, www.gamespot.com is linked to more than 300,000 times.
        • Or better still, the site has an Rating [alexa.com] of 116,103. You aren't really "on the map" till you break under 10,000.
          • I don't see an Alexa rating of over 1000 as meaningful -- one site I visit boosted its ranking from >500,000 to around 5000 simply by encouraging visitors to use the toolbar for a few days. The ratings are just too easy to game outside the top.
      • Yup, there are much, MUCH, *MUCH* worse penalties for copyright infringement. It's a really good thing that it isn't theft...

    • Yes, but does a message like that resonate with people? I mean, I know that a century begins when we hit '01, that bats aren't blind, and that Eagles fans threw snowballs at Santa Claus at Franklin Field and not Veterans Stadium, but so what? You're absolutely right, but so what? It's just more of an effort to call it copyright infringement and then explain the difference between that and theft than to call it theft and be done with it.

      • Yes. That message resonates with people. Absolutely.

        And the message it sends is "Copyright is an artificial method of promoting science and culture that people are beginning to question."

        How many people pirated Tetris? And how many versions of Tetris and Tetris clones are there? Seems to be a lot of both - perhaps the current Copyright system isn't so broken? And perhaps the companies owning these IPs don't really need any more money - just for the sake of being granted a Copyright.
        • More importantly the companies should re-evalute the economic climate that has created this black market. Much like the RIAA and CD's, the price of video games has been artifically fixed at a higher than market value price. When this happens a black market is created, plain and simple. Instead of focusing on enforcement the game publishers should instead look at why it is that people are unwilling to pay $50+ for a new game. Let the market decide the optimum price and the warez black market will all but di
          • People are unwilling to pay $50 because they can pirate it for $0. I don't think the developers can sell games for less than $0.
            • Yes but you hit a point where the time spent pirating isn't worth the smaller amount of money spent on the game. I have a friend who burns DVD's like made. He has told me if they cost less it wouldn't be worth his time to burn them and he would buy legit copies. The same goes for software. If the cost is sufficiently low enough people will simply buy it because it isn't worth their time to pirate it. Unless of course the pirated version is sitting on the store shelf ala Hong Kong but in the USA where I
            • People are unwilling to pay $50 because they can pirate it for $0. I don't think the developers can sell games for less than $0.

              The problem is that people do pay $50 and end up with a steaming pile crap game that is worthless. You can only get burned so many times. I have d/l'd games simply to check them out because $50 is a steep price to simply find out if a game is playable or not. I'll always buy the game if it holds my interest for more than an hour, otherwise I delete it and move on. Not only do
          • ..dont' forget the best part: it's taking more and more developers to make a "GOOD" game. More coding, art, sound, CONTENT.. This gradual increase of developers has assuredly thinned out their pay and enforces the prodcut to stay the same. It's amazing they're still basically the same price after all these years, one would expect them to be higher.

            Still, bosses starve & slave their developers giving you reasons to hate them. :)
    • downloading games is theft, plain and simple
      It may be wrong, it may be illegal, but It's not theft.

      You are correct, because if downloading a game is theft then so is buying secondhand.

      • downloading games is theft, plain and simple

        It may be wrong, it may be illegal, but It's not theft.

        You are correct, because if downloading a game is theft then so is buying secondhand.

        According to the RIAA, it should be. [google.com]

      • There's a specific reason that buying something secondhand isn't theft. With physical objects, the doctrine of first sale applies.
        http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/scc/tutorial/ba s ics2a.html

        Theft is generall the taking of property with the intent of depriving the owner of that property. With Intellectual Property, the law changes a bit. The argument the IP holders make is that the distribution of this software is theft because the legal definition of theft can include the loss of "potential profit." Proving that i
    • Yep. Theft removes or restricts access to property/objects/works from the rightful owner/user, without the rightful owner/user's permission.

      Laws that retroactively cause works previously in the public domain to become copyrighted are theft.

      Anticopying measures that prevent rightful use of legal copies are close to theft.

      Laws that extend copyright duration are close to theft too - works that would otherwise become public domain are kept under private monopoly. Same goes for laws that extend copyright cove
    • Theft means taking something away from someone, so that the rightful owner no longer has posession of it. That doesn't quite apply to Intellectual Property, because the owner still has the original.

      Piracy means taking property from others using violent force. This definitely doesn't apply to 99.999% of those who mis-appropriate Intellectual Property.

  • If it's worth playing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by foidulus ( 743482 ) * on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:21AM (#9809880)
    it's worth supporting. However, if you cannot support it, then should you not be able to play it? I don't think so. To the publisher of an out of print game, it is the same whether I download it or pay an inflated price for it to some dude on ebay.

    • If it's worth playing, it's worth supporting.

      Unfortunately, with the relative absence of demos for obscure games, pirating is usually the easiest way to see if it's actually worth playing. Furthermore, it's sometimes (as mentioned in the article) the only way to get a game to play on your system. And, for me, I wanna know if the product I buy will run at all. 85% of the time, the answer is no.

      Pirating isn't all evil and theft... a lot of it is test driving. Just not officially sanctioned test driv

      • Speaking of driving, for some reason the need for speed underground web-enabled (-disabled is more like it) update system failed to update my system. I ended up having to download a "warez" patch in order to patch my legitimate copy of the game which I went down and bought at gamestop. How pathetic.

        In any case, I resist the idea of calling it a "test drive" - after all, if you do a test drive without permission, that is stealing, and this is just copyright infringement.

    • I have bought stack and stacks of games over the years, still got a huge stack of CD's but the floppy stack is sadly gone (note to self do not hang wet wash over box of floppies.)

      So I figure I got a moral right to download x-wing as I once paid for it. If you never bought it then you have no right to it. Buy a compilation CD and if that is not available then that doesn't give you any moral let alone legal right to download it.

      Then again it would be trivial for game companies to make available their old ga

  • Easy? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Snowmit ( 704081 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:24AM (#9809892) Homepage
    Games (especially 0-day warez) are only easy to download if you're in the know. You need to know what site to go to, or a friend with an FTP server or you need to have a very reliable USENET hook up or something along those lines. Otherwise, pirating games online is a nightmare minefield of porn pop ups, links to other sites with more porn pop ups, viruses and mislabelled 600 MB downloads.

    The 'consumer' does not find this easy or fun. The 'consumer' probably doesn't even know that they could be trying to do this. People who are downloading complete games illegally are fairly sophisticated users. I would guess that they all know full well that they're doing something illegal. I just think that they don't care.

    • Re:Easy? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Kuad ( 529006 )
      It used to be somewhat more difficult to download things. BitTorrent has sort of killed that, though. All you need to be able to do is point your browser at Suprnova these days.

    • A Simple Recipe (Score:3, Informative)

      by Thedalek ( 473015 )
      Take one part Usenetserver [usenetserver.com] account ($3.00 a day for a 3 day trial, or $15.00 a month), and mix liberally with one part NewzBin [newzbin.com] usenet archiving service. Add your favorite y-enc enabled newsreader [newsbin.com] to flavor to taste. Serves an entire campus, until your OIT decides to block port 119.

  • How about offering a game download? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by elrond1999 ( 88166 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:24AM (#9809893)
    What annoys me is that its often easier to get a download a pirated game than buying it in a shop.

    Pirate game:
    1. Game was released today!
    2. Download for an hour
    3. Play :)

    Instant gratification.

    Legit game:
    1. Find online shop with game.
    2. Wait for shop to have it in stock.
    3. Agonize that other people are playing this cool game while ytou wait.
    4. Wait for the package
    5. Open package, rip CD, toss rest of crappy cardboard away.
    6. Play!

    Now what if the developer had a Steam like download avaliable? Preferably before the game was in the store? Then it would be as easyer to download a legit game than downloading a pirate game...
    • What annoys me is that its often easier to get a download a pirated game than buying it in a shop.

      And what about easier to get it running? Crappy cd 'protection' like securom and starforce annoys a lot of user: they buy a game in the shop, but the copy protection doesn't function properly on their hardware. You buy a game and have to find a crack to get it to work.
      • An RTS came out came out a few years ago, it was a Star Craft ripoff, but it had multiple maps connected by warp points and you had to keep you units supplied.

        I downloaded a bootleg and loved it. After a few days I decided to throw some cash their way, so I bought a CD. Never could get the legit copy to run.

    • I dont think there is anything wrong when you download a game when you got it pre-ordered somewhere. Do you ?

      As you mentioned, Steam is quite a nice improvement on that, and the pre-loading of games (if you're about to buy it) is quite a cool thing, imo.
      Then again, I will buy my copy of HL2 in a store , as i rather have something i can touch when i buy it (same goes for me buying CD's instead of using Itunes).

    • " What annoys me is that its often easier to get a download a pirated game than buying it in a shop."

      I contacted Cenaga about having a dodgy CD2 for UFO:Enemy Unknown. They concluded that my CDROM drive was at fault, to which I asked the question, 'both of them and my DVD rom drive?'.

      At that point the conversation stopped and I was never offered the chance to return the media, even after saying that I'd be happy to pay a small charge for new media. Bear in mind that I'd already bought it, it's just t
    • What amazes me is that publishers don't have more games available for purchase & download online. They could price it lower, and since they cut out the retail stores and package they'd make the same amount. They could even provide a connection faster than most P2P networks.

  • -1 Troll (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dr. GeneMachine ( 720233 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:25AM (#9809898)
    Out of print used to mean something was rare and worth something. In the digital media world it apparently now means 'Ok to steal.

    There should be a way to mark a whole article "-1 Troll"...

    • Re:-1 Troll (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Scrameustache ( 459504 )
      Out of print used to mean something was rare and worth something. In the digital media world it apparently now means 'Ok to steal.

      Or in other words:
      "Oh no, poor us! We can no longer artificially inflate our products value by purposefully underproducing it! Woe is our industry!"

      So not just troll, but overrated too!

  • Invalid comparrison. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Domini ( 103836 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:25AM (#9809900) Journal
    Those "out of print" games are not supposed to dwindle away into obscurity and only be owned by those elise few who had the money to buy them at the time.

    This is copyright protection, after the authors don't exist anymore (companies died) the copyright is not protecting anyone anymore... kinda like artists' right to make money on their creations?

    Perhaps read something Orson Scott Card wrote on this subject once and you would change your mind.

    A collector will still strive to own the game... but I'm more interested in the art of it, than in it's physical manifestation.

    I'm still interested in buying it if I can... but not on e-bay or in a way that will not benifit the original authors.

    The author is just plain silly... :P

    Then again... this is from someone who has 3 legal copies of NWN and Quake 3....
    -grin-

  • Shipping games with stuff in the box (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dave-tx ( 684169 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {todhsals+80891fd}> on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:31AM (#9809950)
    The coolest thing about Infocom games (other than the games themselves, which were not only fun but taught me how to type) was the trinkets that they shipped with.

    Anyone remember the "evidence" that came with Deadline, including two "pills" that were actually Smarties candy (yeah, I ate 'em)? Maps, booklets, and other details like that really helped set the stage for those text adventures.

    I personally won't download games from "warez" sites, but I'd bet that if more care went in to the final product, people might value them more.

    • I agree with this : Most of the times, as soon as the game is going gold, they seem to be rushing manuals/boxarts etc : instead of focusing on those allready a long time before.
    • "I personally won't download games from "warez" sites, but I'd bet that if more care went in to the final product, people might value them more."

      The rot goes a bit further and was thrown into sharp relief by the recent 'Driv3r' astro-turfing debacle...there used to be a day when you could by a gaming magazine (Remember Zzap!64?) and get a fairly honest review by someone who had a slight shred of integrity. Now you get six months hype, a bit of viral marketing and review that frequently and suspiciously a
    • Don't forget the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (also by Infocom). It came with a "Don't Panic!" button, some pocket fluff, Peril-sensitive glasses (solid black cardboard glasses), and a "microscopic space fleet" (empty plastic bag).

  • New Ideas, Same old problem. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NashCarey ( 765512 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:33AM (#9809956) Homepage Journal
    This is a problem that has been and always will be. I remember being thirteen and playing Leisure Suit Larry. Did my parents but it for me? No. I had it copied from a friends computer. At the time the game came on 2 3.5 floppys.
    Here is the problem, it is the way the games and programs are marketed for the most part. Who do most of the games market to in the PC world? Males age 14-28. This group is heavily marketed since they are about to turn the corner to being males 29-36 and are known as the most economically secure in America.
    Meaning, we need a way to just make games cheaper or free and put more marketing in them to lead the soon to be older audience. You can't stop them, so market them.
    I know what the thought to that is... Then game quality sucks. Or ends up looking like a NasCar add.
    Whole movie production have been paid for with product placements. We even got to see Hallie Berry's chacha's for seeing a product for 25 seconds in movie.
    Now I wouldn't product place to sell the product to the people playing the game today, but product place for the people who will be stronger consumers tomorrow.
    Mc Donalds did this in the early years and still does it today. They lose money on the playground, happy meals, and birthday parties, but make customers for life.
    For these reasons we need to see a paradigm shift and let the entertainment be free, and the quality can be the same.
    • 3.5" floppys? In my day we had nothin' but 5.25" and no hard disk!

      Okay, enough of that I guess. The difference today is the number of dollars at stake and the scale of the illegal market.

      Making games cheaper may help to an extent, but there is an element that will never pay for games. Product placement might be a good way to offset some development costs, but it could backfire if it hurts the enjoyability of the game (e.g. some games overdo cutscenes already, so adding more for product placement could un

  • Out of Print Games (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fuzzybunny ( 112938 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @08:38AM (#9809990) Homepage Journal
    Fine and good, but I wouldn't make such a black & white blanket statement regarding "out of print" games. There are games around which will be covered by copyright until hell freezes over, but which are not for sale, no longer available in arcades, which have no support or patches, and which make the owning company no money at all.

    I know that the real answer here is to convince the copyright holders to release their old games into the public domain--it's good for the gamers, and good PR for the producer, or at least to address the underlying legal structure (release things into the public domain on which maintenance/profit have lapsed, or some similar solution.) But until that occurs, I don't mind downloading, say, a MAME ROM for such a game.

    The other aspect which makes, say, games a bit unique is that of "what if it sucks"? I don't really feel the need to justify my behavior here, but I like grabbing a game and trying it out a bit before I buy. A lot of good games do decent CD key checking online, so you almost have to go out and buy it--plus, if I really like it, I want the booklet, the case, whatnot.
    I really do not have an issue with downloading a cracked version and giving it a spin before buying, whether there is a demo version available or not.

    For me, this goes in the same direction as being able to get your money back in a lot of movie theaters (at least in the US) if a film is so crappy that you have to walk out of it. I recently downloaded Ubi Soft's IL-2, Call of Duty, and Vietcong; I love CoD, and am going to buy a copy. Jury's still out on the other two.

    The argument's been made for people like me that if I don't buy a game, the creators will go out of business. Fine. I don't pay for games that suck; it's called "survival of the fittest". I realize that not everyone can be relied on to adhere to this sort of principle, and that if stricter copy protection becomes standard, we'll have no choice but to buy a game before playing it. But when that occurs, I'll probably go back to Angband or having a life.
    • Games are expensive. I pay for a review site (gamespot) to help me weed out what games are going to suck. Usually i read the reviews with a grain of salt, then look at the movies and screenshots to get the final verdict. I've played enough games that reading the features and watching a video of it in action will tell me if I want to play the game or not.

      That said, I can't afford to play everything that I want. I have to pick and choose which games I want to buy. This means waiting for the best of the best,

  • Fact is (Score:2, Insightful)

    by fozzmeister ( 160968 )
    Most games are utter crap. I'll buy Doom3, I've bought all id's games. I bought Rainbow Six and I would have bought Riddick for the XBox if I didn't complete it so quick and it had replay value. Oh and Yes I am a dirty immoral pirate, because most of the time you can't judge a game in less than 3-5 hours of play.

    If I had bought Driv3r i would be seriously pissed off, and I probably would have too because for the first 2 hours it seems like it will be a really amazing game, but to be honest, It's not even w
  • Sadly, piracy is here to stay. When people want something, little issues like morals have a way of going away. So any smart business in such an environment has to factor this into the cost of things and how they do business. This I think in one reason that new CDs in Japan can cost $30 or $40 USD. But at the same time, they seem to be taking the added value approach with boxed limited editions, videos, and other extras included (plus some not too difficult to defeat copy protection). So at least you get mor

  • Online Gaming (Score:2, Insightful)

    by BigNumber ( 457893 )
    With the shift towards online gaming, this becomes less and less of an issue. With registration servers checking up on each person playing the game, using a downloaded game with a fake serial becomes more difficult. With the popularity of MMORPGs, the entire gaming model might change. We may see games that are free to download but pay-to-play.

    No matter what, game companies are going to have to come to the realization that people will always pirate games, copy protection doesn't work, and pissing off the

    • Re:Online Gaming (Score:3, Insightful)

      by 88NoSoup4U88 ( 721233 )
      " With the shift towards online gaming, this becomes less and less of an issue."

      Yet I have seen a new development in this stage going : UT2k4 that has cracked exe's, so they can play on servers with those same patches applied.

      When more games will be going towards online only, or focused on online play : The more of these patches, besides cd-cracks, are going to be created.

  • Simple steps to reducing piracy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @09:00AM (#9810182)
    In my opinion, there's no great secret or mystery to reducing piracy. Rather, it could be achieved quite simply through a few steps (and no, these don't include "make games cheaper").

    1) Get rid of region encoding. This also applies, to an even greater extent, to DVDs. Restricting products to certain markets alienates customers who can't buy them and encourages a "if they don't want to sell it to me, just take it" mentality. I'm not sympathetic to piracy in the slightest, but if there was perhaps one argument which would convince me to soften my attitude towards it, it would be this one.

    2) If your game is online, use CD-keys. They work. Seriously. Admittedly, this doesn't help much with offline games.

    3) Get rid of this cheapo DVD-style packaging for games. In the old days, when you bought a game, you'd usually get a hefty and well-produced manual, which would frequently do a lot more than just tell you how to navigate the menus and play the game. Anybody remember the manuals that came with Lucasarts classics like Their Finest Hour and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe?
    • I'm no tree-hugging hippie, but I have to admit that those big boxes were a huge waste. When CDs first came out, they came in jewel cases these huge boxes about 2.5x the size of a cd. What did you do with the box? It was useless. You threw it out.

      Same with PC games. They came in these huge boxes that usually had 4 discs (or 1 floppy), a manual and that's it. If you shook a box, you could hear all the empty space inside. Did we need that? No. I applaud the shift to the smaller boxes. Those can ea

    • I'm not so sure when it comes to the packaging.

      Large boxes are good when they're used properly. I remember games like the old infocom adventures and others that used to stuff their boxes with all kinds of booklets, help sheets, maps, posters, cards - things that would actually add to the game, not just fill space, and would encourage you to buy the game. Trouble is, many publishers just ended up in a race to see who had the biggest box, and therefore the biggest presence on the store shelf, even though the
      • The advantage of the old style boxes, though, is that once you have the game and want to store the CD somewhere the original case is a lot larger than it previously was. A DVD box takes up about three times the space of a jewel case so you either have to supply cases yourself or put up with much larger stacks wherever you store your CDs. I mean, you don't stuff the jewel cases back into the original packaging, do you?
        • I mean, you don't stuff the jewel cases back into the original packaging, do you?

          Well... hrmm... (shuffles uncomfortably)... you know... yes!

          How strange am I?
    • dvd style cases for pc games? i only have three of those (both max payne games and the dvd edition of unreal tournament 2k4) and frankly, i think its a LOT more classy than a game coming in a cardboard box and paper disc envelopes that i seem to end up with so often these days. now THAT just screams shoddy.. and the dvd cases even give a spot to keep the manual! thats another advantage consoles have in this current generation: smaller storage for the games, and less crap to keep track of.
      as for "hefty manu

  • my thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Datasage ( 214357 ) <Datasage AT theworldisgrey DOT com> on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @09:14AM (#9810321) Homepage Journal
    This is a complex issue thats not going to change over night.

    I go to lan parties and find that most of the people there expect games to be pirated. Sure some people buy a legit copy, but its ussualy one person, and by the end of the party everyone has a copy. Most games come from downloaded cd images.

    As far as im concerned, CD protection means nothing, All types of protection can be cracked in some way or another, its just a matter of time. But would removing copy protection spur more people to purchase the game? Nope. The issue is more complex than that.

    I think most people would be willing to purchase a game for the right price. $50 for a game you might only end up play for just a few hours is ALOT. It better be a damn good few hours. Saddly most games can only offer a mediocre few hours.

    I would be willing to purchase much more games myslef if the publishers stop taking me as stupid. I would love to be purchase and download games. But not for the same price as a retail box, Im not stupid, its alot cheaper for a publisher to distribute a download version. Why dont they pass on some of the savings. Instead of expecting us to pay the full price. Stuff like Condition Zero can be purchased via steam for $40, but you can probably find it in the bargin bin or for less than $20.

    There will still be some people who will absolutly refuse to pay for any game, but still be wanting to play them. Those people should burn in hell.
    • "Why dont they pass on some of the savings. Instead of expecting us to pay the full price. Stuff like Condition Zero can be purchased via steam for $40, but you can probably find it in the bargin bin or for less than $20."

      [sarcastic comment about marketing ploy of VALVe]
      but.. but... If you buy CS:CZ , you can play the beta of CS:Source!
      [/sarcastic comment about marketing ploy of VALVe]

    • I think most people would be willing to purchase a game for the right price. $50 for a game you might only end up play for just a few hours is ALOT. It better be a damn good few hours. Saddly most games can only offer a mediocre few hours.
      In the same price vein, I'm not going to be buying Doom 3 any time soon. I pre-ordered UT2k4 that came with a collector's edition tin with a special features DVD and a Logitech headset/microphone for $40. This game has, what, 7 multiplayer modes out of the box? I couldn't
    • Seriously. When you have a lan party with 7 people, that's 7x50 dollars it will cost you to play together. I don't understand why they don't make spawn installs like warcraft 2 had. This way, everyone can play at a lan party without much hastle. Most consol games allow 4 people to play at the same time with only one game, why is it pc games only allow one player?
    • Had a Lan Party a while ago with 3 of my friends, i feel zero guilt for each of us chiping in $12 and getting the half life platinum collection. I can pay $5 and rent a game at blockbuster for my xbox and 4 people can play, but to have four people play CS and TFC like we did it woulda cost $200? Insanity.

  • Abandonware -- Sell it or Lose It Copyright (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jepler ( 6801 ) <jepler@unpythonic.net> on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @09:17AM (#9810363) Homepage
    I honestly don't know exactly how it would work, but I believe that all or nearly all copyrighted material (books, music, software) should be "sell it or lose it": if the copyright owner doesn't care to sell copies of it, for instance because it is not deemed profitable, the copyright lapses.

    Clearly, if it's not worth selling, the copyright holder doesn't lose much if the copyright lapses early, 5Nth anniversary precious metal editions notwithstanding. Of course, companies who are in the business of selling the same pile of tripe every few years with a different name would suffer. (Quicken 2005? No thanks, I like Quicken 2000 just fine and don't want to learn anything new. What, you mean I can't buy Quicken 2000? I think some music labels and book publishers would find themselves in the same bind)

    This belief is what makes me feel not at all bad when downloading abandonware games to play on my Commodore 64 emulator, for instance.

    Failing "Sell It or Lose It Copyright", I'd love to see a non-profit corporation in the business of buying the copyright to abandoned software, particularly games, and releasing it to the public domain. In my mind this would involve finding out what copyrighted items people were most interested in, reaching a deal with the owner, and then raising the money online. I have no idea whether it would work, but I'd love to see it tried. I'd put up a few bucks to see EA's 8-bit software collection enter the public domain, and surely a lot of geeks would do the same. Would it add up to the piles of cash Electronic Arts would demand? Well, I don't know.
    • Nah, just shorten copyright periods to below 20 years. 7-10 years seems about fine to me.

      If you can't make money from a work within 7 years, then that work sucks or you suck.

      If a software maker cannot make a new program sufficiently better than 7 year old programs, so that they will make enough money out of it, then perhaps we'd see real innovation rather than stupid bloat or lock-in.

      There's lots of wasted resources going to "slightly better" or "no longer supported by vendor - but vendor owns copyright

  • "Out of print used to mean something was..." (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Laxitive ( 10360 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @09:18AM (#9810379) Journal

    With video games, "out of print" doesn't mean the game data is rare and valuable. It means just what it says. "Out of print".

    Umm, article poster needs a clue. He sounds like quite the conscientious idiot to me.

    Original game "paraphanelia" for out of print would be quite valuable yes. Even if there are newer versions of the game out. An unopened retail box of an original "tetris" for the NES would, I'm guessing, be worth a lot to some people.

    The game DATA is not that valuable. It's a string of bits. Anyone can make perfect infinite duplicates of it. That tends to decrease the "rareness" aspect of it.

    Look, original article poster guy, good for you that you don't download games. I don't download games either - for another reason entirely - I tend not to play them. And your suggestions for what game publishers can do are nice.

    But your apparent doe-eyed naivety about copyright infringement, and the attitude... makes me wonder.

    -Laxitive
  • The last years we only seen a decline in good box-art/manuals.

    With most fps's they don't even bother anymore to print a manual ; yet, with those printing costs gone, i don't see a lower price for me as consumer.

    "One great way to do that is including good stuff in the box. Give me a color manual or include a poster. Maybe a CD with all the music from the game? How about liner notes with each game describing some part of development?""

    Seriously, they throw the game on the Net within 15 minutes of release (

  • When will people start thinking before they write?
    Some food for thought:
    - Downloading a cracked copy of a game is not theft. It's not even copyright violation in itself (you may own a legit copy and be needing a backup).
    - I believe I have the right to evaluate a game for a few hours before I buy it. If I like it and I'm going to use it, I'll buy it (as I have always done). If I don't, then I'll delete it (or keep a copy if someone wants to try it). I do not buy games without trying them first, and by tryin
  • There is no doubt that piracy of games for computers is at an all-time high.

    Given the huge decline in PC sales, PC development, and rise in console usage (and piracy), then, yeah, I would be EXTREMELY surprised to find out more PC games were being pirated now than before. (This is very different from more bandwidth being used by PC games--the games are bigger now than they used to be.)

    Oh that line about out of print is completely insane--whether or not you agree that information should be free, I thin

  • Suprise, the excerpt is misleading (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dragoon412 ( 648209 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @09:50AM (#9810706)
    There is no doubt that piracy of games for computers is at an all-time high. It's simply too easy for someone to find and download entire CD images of computer games.


    The mindset that's so pervasive with the RIAA is the same one that's causing PC game publishers to treat their buyers like they're criminals first, and customers second. Piracy probably is at an all-time high, but so are the number of PC users.

    I remember back in the days of Hero Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, no one had legitmate software. Everything was on a floppy that was copied from the friend of a friend of a friend who downloaded it off the BBS of this guy who knew from 2 states away, because the only place to buy the game was from some specialty store a two hour drive away, staffed by irritating, condescending Alpha Nerds, full of overpriced hardware, and reeking of french fries.

    Now, PC games have become infinitely more accessible. Even Target carries current titles. Best Buy, Future Shop, Fry's, CompUSA, Circuit City and their ilk have large portions of their stores devoted to hawking practically any big-name software made in the last 5 years.

    So, is there more priacy now? Undoubtedly. But PC games (and PC software as a whole) has matured from a tiny, largely enthusiast-driven niche market to a full-blown industry. Relative to the number of users, I'd bet 'piracy' is down from years ago.

    But, the idiots publishing the games aren't gamers any more than the idiots at the RIAA are musicians. They're old, out-of-touch, and disinterested. They're not technically savvy, and think they can prevent piracy; it's like a 5 year-old thinking he can prevent all crime in the world by becoming a policeman.

    They can't stop piracy. The developers know it. The consumers know it. Yet, the publishers refuse to learn. Either that, or they're genuinely stupid enough to believe it's worth pissing off thousands of legitimate, paying customers in the name of futily attempting someone from getting the game off some 0-day warez site and playing it relatively unhindered.

    Atari's an instance of such a company... I had to get cracks for Neverwinter Nights, UT2k3, and Temple of Elemental Evil to get them working, despite having bouhgt retail copies of the 3 games. They'll never be seeing another penny of my money.
    • Do me and the gaming world a favor and write them a dirty letter. Forward it to all the relevant "departments" on their "Contact Us" pages, including the Corporate Communication person, Susan whatever.

      I wrote them a very critical letter, explaining that I was no longer purchasing games from them, and it was a very difficult decision because they have a contract with one of my favorite developers: Bioware. I spelled out the idiocy, referenced articles, and explained in clear language why they are utterly

  • Out of Print (Score:5, Insightful)

    by superultra ( 670002 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @09:58AM (#9810783) Homepage
    Dave writes "in the digital media world it apparently now means 'Ok to steal.' Sorry, I can't agree with that." Yet, he inadvertantly highlights a major problem with the ownership of intellectual property that has yet to be solved.

    If we're concerned about morality here, than ultimately we want the appropriate people who worked on the game to be compensated. But that doesn't happen with "out of print" games. The person getting the money when Dave buys that still in shrink wrap copy of Starflight for the Amiga isn't Greg Johnson, Binary Systems, or even EA. 100% of however much Dave spends on the game goes to the collector. No one is getting compensated with out of print games that really deserves it. So how does Dave justify this? If Dave really wants to be do the "right thing", he ought to download the game from Underdogs and then send the game creators a check. Buying the physical product off of ebay does nothing at all.

    And secondly, he's tying games to books with the out of print comment. There's a big difference between out of print books and out of print games. Books are so cheap, and so easily distributed that rare books are specific editions, and not the actual book itself, what we would consider, say, one intellectual property unit. What is rare is a first edition (I assume) of Catcher in the Rye. But just because it's rare doesn't mean I will never be able to read Catcher in the Rye. With games, there are no editions. A game that is out of print really is unfindable, save perhaps paying a collector who had nothing to do with the game's creation. What's more is that the public - in the form of libraries - has maintained books for public use. So who's doing this for games? Perhaps because games are still viewed at as pure entertainment and not as a vehicle of communication we have yet to see gaming's Carnegie. That will change, but it will take some time.

    The creator of Underdogs is, in my opinion, a far more moral person than Dave. Underdogs is more concerned about the money reaching the actual source rather than a collector. If I were Dave, I would be doing some serious reevaluation of a morality system that allows the rewarding of collectors for scouring garage sales and reselling them at a vastly inflated price, instead of compensating game creators for making a game worth finding 10 years later.

  • A Catch 22 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Slyght ( 784581 )
    The whole piracy issue is sort of a Catch 22: People say that they pirate games to try them out before they buy them as not to waste their money on a bad game/cd/movie that they can't return, and most stores won't let users return opened games/cds/movies because of piracy.
    Somebody brought up a point that many movie theatres will offer refunds to people that walk out of a movie early because they don't like it. Of course, they won't refund you if you sit through the whole movie, I believe they only will
  • I can't bring myself to actually buy a video game these days since the last 6-7 offline games I've played have sucked horribly. Either yet another FPS copy, a bad perversion on a previous game that was good (i.e. MOO3), or a game that was not at all what it pretended to be on the box.

    The best I can come to is trying them out first and buying if it's worth teh money. But most games aren't even worth the download time lately...
  • Considering that electronic copies are esentially free, there is no such thing as rarity, and the idea of a "rare" digital copy being "scarce" is farcical. THAT YOU ARE NOT SELLING IT IS AN ADMISSION THAT IT IS NOT WORTH MUCH TO YOU. If it was really worth something throw up a quick site and charge a cheap price so people can download the old game. I really have little sympathy for the argument "well, we're not actually doing anything with this but sitting on it and preventing others from having it but WA
    • Money, while you possess it, is still technically the property of the Government - just like while you may "own" the plot of land your house is built on, it still is technically the territory of the country you live in, and if you die leaving no heirs, and the house is fully paid off, then the government will reclaim its right on that land.

      Now, the government has an interest in keeping printing costs down. And they have an interest in seeing that a proper supply of money is available at all times, so as to
      • Yes I know. More concisely it can be said that there is no private property except for the grace of government who protects you from maurauding bandits and pillagers. So it is not purely a god-given right, but a contract with the rest of society. As such, there are reasons why society would not allow you to 1) destroy property that might otherwise be useful to society (e.g. currency) 2) allow you to "horde" property which you yourself are making no legitimate use of. The same thing could be said about B

  • OOP (Score:2)

    by Lu Xun ( 615093 )
    His comments regarding the concept of 'out of print' being expensive and exclusive are just not applicable for games that can be copied any number of times for very little money. If anything, making these games availible on websites like underdogs.org is re-printing them, thereby adding value to it. If he wants to have the exclusivity of out of print, he should collect old game systems or something more physical. I suppose he objects to the Gutenburg project too?!?

  • How about... No (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wan-fu ( 746576 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @11:28AM (#9811986)

    I can't bring myself to download games, even the things at a place like The Underdogs which specializes in supposedly 'out of print' games to download. Out of print used to mean something was rare and worth something.

    Out of print also means a variety of other things. In this case, it's just as likely that no one cares about the game except for the few thousand who will download it from The Underdogs.

    One great way to do that is including good stuff in the box. Give me a color manual or include a poster. Maybe a CD with all the music from the game? How about liner notes with each game describing some part of development?

    Or how about just lowering the damn price tag on these games?! $50 is just too much for a game, even Doom3 (though I'll probably still buy it at this price). Sure, putting some "good stuff" into the box might entice me more to buy it, but generally, one man's good stuff is most people's trash. Do I really want a color poster that will no doubt clash with the rest of my room? The CD with music will be pirated just like the game, so that's not anything. Color manuals get scanned, etc. You need to include physical things that are not easily digitized, e.g. action figures, 3D glasses (whatever, kids games), etc. But ultimately, I don't think many people care so much about these games. It's all about the bottom line. If the price is right, people will buy these games instead of pirating them.

    Prime example: this past weekend, I saw an ad on TV for ESPN NFL2k5 (coincidence that it just got a /. story) and saw that it was advertised for only $19.99. I checked the IGN review, and a couple hours later, I came home from the mall with a new copy of NFL2k5. I barely even gave a thought to looking for a torrent or checking FTPs or whatever. Why waste my time when it's only twenty bucks.

    If publishers and developers drop the prices of their games, they will capture all of the people that would have bought it anyways, but pirated it instead because the price was too high and it was more convenient to pirate it. Once the prices drop lower, then it's not that much more convenient to pirate the game and the only people pirating the game are those who wouldn't have bought it in the first place.

  • Hypocrisy? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cluke ( 30394 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @12:03PM (#9812474)
    Funny this article coming up now, just an hour ago I was reading this article [excellentcontent.com] by UK games journalist Stuart Campbell, saying that the whole industry's holier-than-thou approach to piracy doesn't stand close scrutiny since historically such a large part of it is basically based on ripping off other people's ideas.
    Stuart Campbell writes a lot of thought-provoking stuff on piracy... his main gist is that if games were cheaper and the industry didn't treat us with such contempt then they might sell more copies.
  • Stop him quick... ...but seriously, it works. Just look at Infocom.

    God forbid someone actually give the customer some value for what their buying.
  • It's funny about the piracy thing. I'll buy a game from the store, take it home and load it onto my pc. Only to find that it runs slow, has to verify the cd 10 times before the actual playable portion begins to load and then craps out because it somehow got the idea it wasn't a legit game.

    Then after about an hour of fiddling with it with no results, I'll go to some warez site with all the latest hacks and whatnot. I'll download the hacked version of my game with all the piracy checking removed. Load it
  • ... mildly annoyed by this article? For those that didn't RTFA, here's the summary:

    Look at me, I'm so great, I don't download games, I (and "gamers like me") am the greatest because of that!

    When the whole article is written in this tone, it automatically makes me want to run to IRC and download all the latest games, just to spite the author.
  • It's not like many people on /. would agree with a moralising pro-ESA, pro-Christian, right-wing parent gaming website. And it's not like they have anything interesting to say (if I am mistaken, give a link to at least one article there that is not retarded in some way).
  • I agree with this guy for the most part, but not downloading abandonware? If i'm sudently reminded of some game i played on my old 486, like castle of the winds, and i wanna play it, i would gladly pay $5 for it. But i cant. Where else am i going to get that game besides a place like the underdogs. Sim Ant, Paperboy 2, Castle of the Winds, all kickass games that i'd be willing to shell out around $5 for, but thats not an option, i'm not going to complain that they're free.
    • If i'm sudently reminded of some game i played on my old 486, like castle of the winds, and i wanna play it, i would gladly pay $5 for it. But i cant.

      Seems like whoever is providing out of print games (e.g. The Underdogs) could come to an agreement with the copyright holder. Buy the rights, pay small royalty, or just plain ask for the rights to distribute the game at no charge. The provider would not need to absorb the added cost on their own, since users could contribute to the provider on a voluntary or

  • If more anti-piracy... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @02:12PM (#9813890)
    ...means more games that I have to uninstall my CD-R software to play, I have some choice words for them as to where they can stick it.

    The most recent game purchase I made was Thief 3. One of my friends can play his pirated version just fine, but with my legit copy I have to uninstall the two CD-R utilities I have, and manually delete any reference of them from the registry before the game will load. Otherwise it pops up a dialog that says "Conflict with emulation software detected".

    I can't return the game because it's open, and the tech support responce was to reinstall windows if I continued to have problems.

    Gah! Is this really the way they encourage more people to be paying customers?
  • "He concludes by suggesting ways to make games more attractive again" Some things that would make games "more attractive again" to me are - 1) REASONABLE prices at release, not two or three years later in the bargain bins. (Where the game might not even be, and thus forcing us to go hunting in the OOP sites...) 2) Games that actually WORK as advestised on installation, not waiting 6 or 7 months later for multiple patchs & Bug fixes to do so. (If you can't hire somebody to fix your cr*p, don't complain
  • I, like most Slashdot readers got very upset when reading the blurb. However, when I clicked the link to go to the website to hunt for an email address to respond to the writer with concerning his blatant lack of knowledge of what stealing really is, I actually read the article.

    Guess what, the whole beginning of it goes into detail about how tighter copy protection on video games is a BAD idea because it only hurts those who follow the law. He then goes on to make the argument that the companies need to i

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