An In-Depth Look At Game Piracy 504
TweakGuides is running a detailed examination of PC game piracy. The author begins with a look at the legal, moral, and monetary issues behind copyright infringement, and goes on to measure the scale of game piracy and how it affects developers and publishers. He also discusses some of the intended solutions to piracy. He provides examples of copy protection and DRM schemes that have perhaps done more harm than good, as well as less intrusive measures which are enjoying more success. The author criticizes the "culture of piracy" that has developed, saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century, and piracy has apparently somehow become a political struggle, a fight against greedy corporations and evil copy protection, and in some cases, I've even seen some people refer to the rise of piracy as a 'revolution.' What an absolute farce. ... Piracy is the result of human nature: when faced with the option of getting something for free or paying for it, and in the absence of any significant risks, you don't need complex economic studies to show you that most people will opt for the free route."
Morals (Score:5, Interesting)
Piracy is the result of human nature: when faced with the option of getting something for free or paying for it, and in the absence of any significant risks, you don't need complex economic studies to show you that most people will opt for the free route.
Right, there's also moral values in the balance. To some people piracy is all bad, to some people everything should be free, to some other people it's fine to pirate from big studios but not from small developers who try to make a living out of it. It's called moral values. It varies from people to people, with also varying degrees of importance in the role it plays in decision making.
What about quality of the product? (Score:4, Interesting)
The OP suggests that "most people will opt for the free route" simply because the product is free. I would argue that due to overly restrictive DRM, people prefer the free route because "hacked" or pirated products are better. I buy DVDs, but I wouldn't buy DRMed movies because it's effectively wasted money -- one day those movies will be unwatchable.
Also, in the field of ebooks, often it is possible to find an ebook that's been pirated when no legal copy exists for sale. In this case, the publishing companies are not servicing a demand that is clearly present. Sure, I could scan in my own paper copy of the book, but why go to the trouble when someone else has already done it?
Re:10 Page Article VERY LONG (Score:3, Interesting)
Would be nice to respect other people's work, as these people weren't obviously aiming at 10 cheap ad pages.
Something missing (Score:2, Interesting)
I know there are people like myself who purchase games, don't install them, but do install a downloaded copy that has the DRM restrictions removed. This may or may not be viable with Steam-related DRM, but I'm anti-social enough that online multiplayer doesn't really hold a whole lot of appeal for me. And if I did decide that I absolutely had to play something online, I setup an account just for that game so that I could resell my original copy (with the account info) when I was finished with it.
Instead of... (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead of debating whether or not piracy should be called piracy, how about we discuss that actual issue of how piracy affects games, and what effect DRM has on piracy.
Honestly, I think the solution is to provide benefits to paying for the game. You're not going to stop piracy through DRM. And DRM may chase off paying customers. So about instead of pushing people away, you attract customers with benefits?
For instance, online play that is only accessible to paying customers might convince pirates who downloaded your game to start paying for it.
Free Riders (Score:2, Interesting)
Culture does not require fighting piracy... (Score:3, Interesting)
What is needed for culture to evolve and flourish is hat the creatives make a decent living. That does mean enough people have to be willing to pay. For music, this is clearly the case, if you expect "normal" earnings and stipulate reasonable talent. Same for other areas.
For business however, piracy is a problem. Cultural business aims at dominating and creating a mainstream, were a relatively low-quality product is sold in high numbers. People realize the low quality level and are often pirating or not interested at all. Ftom the point of view of evolving culture, the business apporach is very harmful. should it fail permanently and go away, at least todays networked world with very low publishing cost can expetc culture to get richer and more interesting.
Of course the people that get rich on the talent of others will say everything, lie, cheat and steal in order to keep their revenue flowing.
So Pirates are bad, mkay, and DRM is good, mkay... (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead of taking a balanced close look at the causes of piracy the same old (pro-piracy) arguments are assembled into strawmen and then quickly ripped apart. When the focus turns to DRM there is a lot of handwaving and chanting "if I don't want it to be true it will not be".
A shame really.
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:4, Interesting)
In general, if something is priced right, I don't mind paying for it. What this means is that I'm a bit of a sucker for sales. The idea behind sales is - "sell to the general public at the retail price, then sell what's left at a sale price to maximize profits." It means that those who ae willing to pay a "premium" to have it right away buy it, and those who aren't in a rush can still become customers at the sale price.
So yes, I agree that high prices don't justify copyright infringement. Then again, how much is there out there that's even worth the cost of a blank dvd?
As to games or songs, I simply can't be bothered. I don't have time to play games (I'd rather read a book, and guess what - I buy them, I don't pirate them) and I got sick of listening to mp3s a long time ago. I want *QUIET*. That's why I prefer my laptop to my desktop - no fan noise.
Software? gnu/linux distros do everything I need it to do, both at work and at home.
As for the people who claim that all pirated game are lost sales, they are wrong. Many of those "lost sales" would never have been made, just as Microsoft can't count me as a lost sale since I use a different OS. I'm simply not their customer, just as many of those "lost sales" would never have taken place if piracy prevention were 100% effective. This is similar to their problem with people selling used games. People sell their used games mostly so that they can buy new games, so it's not like the money doesn't get to them anyway, and the used games "grow the market", same as selling a used car.
The industry is finally seeing the light in a few, rare, instances, and switching to different revenue models - in-game ads, online content, subscription models, etc. In other words, there are solutions that bypass the whole "piracy" problem, rather than treating the customer like a thief.
Bullshit on Titan's Quest (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sorry, but Titan's Quest had a lot of problems that were not piracy related. Even those with a legitimate copy had severe issues getting the game to play. Trying to cite that as an example for negative perception underscores the fact that the developers, or maybe even the producers, rushed the game out before it had proper QA testing.
Just my opinion... (Score:5, Interesting)
I got into piracy because as a child i wasn't terribly well off...
If i saved my weekly allowance, it would take me several months to be able to afford a legit game, and i may be able to get one or two at xmas or a birthday.
I started off buying games, quite a few in fact, and i found that a lot didn't live up to the hype, the demos/reviews were often very different from the actual game, like a demo that would include the first level which was quite good, and then the remaining levels were extremely poor and you couldn't save your progress, so you would do the first level, get to the second, die, and have to start again from scratch (the lion king is an example of a game like this)...
So for my stack of 15 or so games, i had 2-3 which were good and got played a lot, and was finding that the newer games performed poorly because my hardware was now out of date... I still had all the advertising hype and peer pressure pushing me to want the new games, but not only could i not afford them but i now couldn't run them adequately either.
So i started pirating games, and spending what little money i had on hardware upgrades. I was better off, i no longer had to be bombarded with commercials for games i couldn't afford to play, which is a very unpleasant feeling for a kid.
I think all the heavy advertising is extremely unpleasant for the poorer kids who cant afford all the latest stuff (not just games, but most things you cant get for free so easily), games are overpriced especially seeing they mostly target kids...
While on the subject, people are always complaining about the level of crime among teenagers and younger kids these days, but is it any wonder why?
When i was that age, the average kid would be walking around with maybe $5 worth of stuff not including clothes, hardly a worthwhile target for robbery... Now, kids have ipods, cellphones and all kinds of other valuables for thieves to target.
You show your ignorance. (Score:1, Interesting)
Second, for the most part, pirates are NOT "taking food from someone else's mouth". There may be exceptions, but in general the gaming industry is making more money now than ever before. There is good reason to argue, in fact, that piracy probably increases sales.
I could go on but I won't bother. You clearly don't know what you are talking about.
Re:BULLSHIT. (Score:2, Interesting)
Buddy, knowing what I know now, if I was given the choice between going into video game development and going into plumbing, I'd have made more money and been more satisfied with my career 99 times out of 100 learning to fix a pipe and pretending I was Mario while doing it.
You know, if you're going into the games market - or ANY entertainment market, music, movies, books - and expect it to be your career, then you're going to be disappointed unless you really have good contacts and really know what you're doing. This is all kind of tangent to the original article, but the similarity is that figuring out this stuff really isn't that easy. It's not that easy to pitch to your shareholders and executive and marketing that everything will be better if you just don't bother trying to stop pirates, and if you're a company that hasn't had this conversation or innately believes that piracy is wrong in every branch of your organization, then you're probably not big enough to make the Top 100 Dowloads list on thepiratebay.
Building on what the parent suggests, here, publishers like EA deserve to be excoriated for some of their DRM antics, but just like piracy goes up when the prices of goods goes up, so does the worth of anti-piracy efforts go up when the profits goes down. Do you think that the big conspiracy efforts like Steam to stop people from being able to re-sell their games on the used market would exist if Gamestop hadn't made the used game industry such a serious force? Would piracy really be as much of a bother if it took more than just a Google search to crack a game's copy protection? Lord knows a lot of people would rather just pony up the 99 cents on iTunes than spend days on Limewire trying to find a half-decent quality version of a song for free.
The only easy thing that can be said about the issue is that there's no flat easy answer. We're still gonna be bitching about this thing a decade from now.
N64 vs PSX? (Score:1, Interesting)
The article casually makes mention that the PlayStation was widely pirated, while the N64 wasn't. But... the playstation totally KILLED the N64 in sales.
Also, nintendo ds software is very widely pirated, and it's extremely easy to do. Yet the DS is one of the most popular platforms ever, and many companies feel so confident that they can make a profit that there are countless crappy shovelware titles on the system.
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:1, Interesting)
Alright! So apparently Doctor-Patient Confidentiality and Privacy are right out the window... since sharing information isn't ethically wrong.
Perhaps when you spend two years of your life producing said information and, instead of being reimbursed people tell you "It's not wrong. I'm not hurting anyone. I'm not stealing." you'll know what it is like to be on the other end.
I spend a year writing a game. I sell it. 1,000,000 Play it. 1,000 Buy it @ $20.00. I've gotten $20,000 for a year worth of work, which 1 million people are enjoying indefinitely.
It's pretty simple: If it isn't worth the price, don't buy it and don't use it. If you want to use it, buy it.
If you honestly believe piracy doesn't hurt anyone, you can talk to a few friends of mine:
1. Produce a game -> 2 years for 5 people.
2. Launch game and sell it @ $20.00
3. ~54,000 in sales (GROSS $1,800,000.00)
4. Money which goes to the team : $5 per copy ($270,000.00) (They actually get less than $5 per copy, but it illustrates the point.)
5. Split that 5 ways: $54,000 for two years of work.
6. Find out your multiplayer match-making service has 400,000+ players regularly...
Guess what 7 is:
7. Go sign with EA because you will actually get paid working for them.
oh and
8. Close down the match-making service because you can't afford to run it at eight times capacity.
That is what is happening to small development studios.
You don't have to believe it.
We have to live it.
Re:Piracy is the result of human nature (Score:5, Interesting)
[...] technically you could say they're stealing[...]
Except that no one is stealing anything! There are technical, legal definitions of theft, which don't include the act of making digital copies. It would be difficult to make an unambiguous law so broad that it prohibited both burglary and file sharing. So — technically — you couldn't correctly claim that. Note that I'm not mincing words because I want to assuage my own guilt (I'm an amoralist.), but simply because you said "technically."
Sophistry aside, it's hard to understand the purpose of largely unenforceable laws. The total prohibition of file copying doesn't have popular support. Even if a minority find it immoral or unethical, they will probably need to come to terms with the reality of it. Is it more likely that people will stop sharing files, or that the relevant laws will slowly change as public support for them wanes? From a historical perspective, the illegalization of file sharing does not seem very different from the Prohibition. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) The largest difference I can see is that illegal file sharing hasn't created a criminal class to supply its (cooperative, non-profit) black market.
Re:Piracy is the result of human nature (Score:3, Interesting)
Firstly, the word has been in use since the 1600s (wikipedia has citations) so it's not like publishers have recently made it up.
Secondly, these days, pirates are more likely to be associated with romantic notions of living free and sticking it to the man, thanks their portrayal in stories like Pirates of the Carribean.