Engaging Debate on Piracy and Videogaming 488
koworld writes "WotR have put out a really intriguing issue on piracy this week. It has Jeff Minter arguing that piracy robs developers of their livelihoods and then a senior industry figure (writing under a pseudonym) offers the counter that piracy has done more to expand the overall videogaming market than any other factor. Just to round off the debate a number of insightful personal accounts of piracy and its effects are also included."
Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod (Score:5, Interesting)
Happy Trails!
Erick
Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod (Score:3, Funny)
I think it's increased because of iPods
Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod (Score:4, Insightful)
The equivalent of "payola" in computer gaming - and in many other industries - is hype. Hyped titles get picked up by retailers because they're seen as more likely to sell. If no money is spend on hype, the producers will instead have to spend money paying retailers to carry their product.
You can then throw in the "payola" of console development kits. They're vital for access to the wider market of gamers, but not only are they astronomically expensive, you can't even buy them unless you're already an industry member - instant chicken-and-egg.
It's happened plenty before. Like, Spheres of Chaos - that was sent to a distributor to be put in stores, but because it wasn't hyped or paid for, no retailers carried it. The distributor just shrugged their shoulders and said "if they don't want to carry it there's nothing we can do". Or, Alien Flux. A guy worked on that for around a year and tried to sell it over the internet. But without paying for hype, he initially sold about 5 copies because people couldn't be bothered to shop around and find out it existed.
Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod (Score:5, Interesting)
What's the blizzard route, create one or two good games and then spend the rest of eternity rehashing them?
how about coming up with great new ideas, thinking them through, and when they are ready releasing them. Blizzard has a huge devoted fan following because all of their games (minus one or two) have been really good. not only that but people buy their games knowing that they will have a long life span. just the other day Blizzard released an update to Starcraft, a game released in i think 97. i end up always buying their games because they have alot of replay value (battle.net) and arent repetitive (like many FPS)
Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod (Score:3, Interesting)
Might I sugesst (Score:5, Informative)
This might save you some money for 2 teenage gamers :)
please note though, I have yet to try it this service so this is not an endorsement... but the idea seems like such a good one (basically netflix for games) I am really just waiting till my next game to sign up.
Free windows games (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a few places to get started:
Remakes.org - remakes of many many classic games.
Freeware World Team [all4you.dk] - many categories including games.
Freestle freeware [freestyle-freeware.co.uk] - small but good.
fullgames [fullgames.sk]
world of free games [worldoffreegames.com]
Feel free to suggest more / better resources.
P.S. So many console games drop to $20 if you're just willing to wait a year. The sports games are even cheaper if you don't absolutely need this year's updated roster. If you don't want to buy games at $50, just wait a bit.
Re:Free windows games (Score:2)
this is also true of the non-free games
Re:Free windows games (Score:5, Interesting)
It's more my experience that they don't drop to $20 so much as drop off the face of the earth entirely. The $10-$20 racks are full of crap I'd never consider buying at any price.
Discounted games (Score:3, Informative)
Final Fantasy X is $20 everywhere. Ikaruga's $20 online at bestbuy.com, and my local Best Buy (for example) has five remaining copies of Ico for $15. These are all arguably the best games in their respective genres.
The discount racks are full of low-quality stuff, but that doesn't mean the odd gem isn't there, just that it's not
Re:Free windows games (Score:3, Informative)
to add onto that take a look the the underdogs [the-underdogs.org] a site that hosts abandonware (old out of date) games. you can get classics from your youth there. definitely one of my fav sites
Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's much easier to just download something than it is to go out and pay for it. Once you are familiar with the avenues for acquiring illicit software it's easy. It's as easy as searching on Google. Software on tap. Want to see what this-and-this game is like? 40 minutes later I've got the leaked ISO and with Alcohol 120% I don't even need to burn it. No credit card bills, no going to the ATM, no driving to the store, no waiting for the official release date. Is this game worth $50 to me? Is it worth $20 to me? Is it worth $5 to me? I don't even need to think about it because it's $0 every time.
Ok.. solution.. just give away the software right? Wrong! I'm too lazy to even pay for it after I've played it and enjoyed it. Pay for it... that requires getting a credit card or going somewhere... pain in the ass and it's time I don't need to spend because I've already played it.
The only reason this is working for the games industry is because the people that get all the games are walking advertisements. Whenever they open their mouths and talk about a game the word of mouth is worth more than a spot during the Super Bowl. That and, for most people the convenience is not there. They don't know P2P, they don't know where the crack sites are, they don't want to figure it out. These people are the ones paying, but if it ever comes to the point where it's just as easy to pirate there's little holding them back.
Are there people that pay because of morals? Sure. Should we ever count on the morality of the common man? God help us, no.
Convenience is king. If it's ever easier to buy a game than pirate it then we'd all be buying them. But for those of us that know how to pirate it's much, much easier on so many levels.
Cell Phones (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe if you download computer programs like games your ISP should check for a digital signature and charge the cost of the software to your monthly ISP bill? Your ISP can verify if you are actually the one getting it because they can trace the destination of the packets
Mirror , just in case (Score:3)
The mirror of http://www.wayoftherodent.com/backissues/33cover. h tm is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_139/www.wayoftherod ent.com/backissues/33cover.htm [demonmoo.com]
The mirror of http://www.wayoftherodent.com/guests/bob_yak5.htm is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_139/www.wayoftherod ent.com/guests/bob_yak5.htm [demonmoo.com]
The mirror of http://www.wayoftherodent.com/guests/bob_cubit1.ht m is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_139/www.wayoftherod en [demonmoo.com]
Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod (Score:2)
Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really want your kids to be learning to steal at age 10 and 13? Is it really that critical that they have the very latest game that they may play for 30 minutes and decide is crap?
Piracy is caused by lazy developers (Score:2, Insightful)
Beneath the entire issue of copying and cost is the point that there has not been the order of magnitude increases of productivity in the software development field that there has been in the hardware field. This is because software developers refuse to press for new types of software writing tools that will make it possible to develo
Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers (Score:2)
Software development has NOT NOT NOT really changed since the early 1970's.
Learn to use the preview button, girl!
Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers (Score:4, Insightful)
No it hasn't!
Anyway I am not a developer but even I can see that things have changed. The languages have changed, the programs have changed, and the way programs are planned has changed. It might not all be for the better, but the fact is that as programs have grown more complex, things WILL have had to change.
Nonetheless, if you have an argument, make it - don't just be a negative nancy.
Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers (Score:4, Insightful)
Lots of people, people smarter than me, and probably smarter than you, are working on making software development more efficient. New development tools and new languages are invented all the time by people trying to make programming faster and/or easier.
Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers (Score:3, Insightful)
Piracy generally isn't that big a problem (although it can hurt small commercial projects if someone is really low and won't pay the $5 or $10), for the most part it's actually advertising. It doesn't cost the software house a dime. It's not like stealing a box off the shelf, in that there is something gone which cost money to produce.
In the case of software if you borrow my cd and copy it, guess what, my cd isn't gone, I haven't lost anything. Most of those who pirate a pie
Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers (Score:2)
The people that produce good jokes don't get much for the joke. However, properly used at a dinner party, that good joke can get you laid or even get a promotion at work.
Good software writers don't get much for their software. Properly marketed efforts, however, can get a person laid or even get them a promotion.
Piracy doesn't cost any jobs any more than spreading jokes around has defeated humor. The only thing th
Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the artwork.
Nobody pays for text-mode games anymore or games with crude developer-created graphics. Oh no, they want 3D realism with extensive models. The last game I worked on (a baseball game) they had models come in for motion capture so they could then move the 3D models realistically based on how
Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod (Score:5, Interesting)
Just today I went out and baught Battlefield Vietnam so I could play with my clan buddies. I pirated it first so that I knew I wouldn't be wasting the $40 it costs.
Why do I do this? Well, because I'm treated like a criminal by the stores and because I'v been shafted a number of times by really bad games. For example, awhile ago I blew $9.99 on the "special edition" of Deus ex, thinking it was the full version. In reality, it as a "specially labeled" demo of the game. I take it back to the store and they won't let me return it. I'v also been dissapointed by Morrowind(shitty engine), Dungeon seige (repeditive), and a slew of other games I'v baught that if I had baught them when they were new for a bunch of money, I'd probably feel real burned. So now, I pirate before I buy.
But, surely you say, I can trust those game reviews, and demo's, right? Goto Gamefaqs, pull up any new game, and then look at the user reviews and compair them to the reviews of the websites that make their money off of reviews. I'v also been misled by demo's being real nice then when you get to the game it sucks. Kinda like they put the best part of the game on the demo, promise more and then don't deliver. Sometimes, you see some in-game movies like the UT2k4 movies that rock and then demo just sucks ass.
Anyway, the reviews convince me look at movies, movies convince me to try the demo, the demo convinces me to pirate, and pirating convinces me to buy. Unfortunatly, however, I don't buy many single player games. Infact, now that I look at the shelf, I think I stopped buying them after Morrowind which was probably the 4th time I got ripped-off on. The box says 800mhz processor, 256 meg ram and a 3d-card with 32 meg ram if I read it right for reccomended requirements, and my system beats all those by 2 times. Infact, if you could run it on those requirements I'd be suprised. On my box it runs like a slideshow on even the low settings.
A big part of that is it's hard to pirate single player games and have some self control and go out and buy the game if you really like it. Most of them you don't know if you like it until you've played through the entire game and by then the point of buying is null.
Anything I play online, however, I make sure I have a legit copy of. Not so much out of fear of persecution, but more out of the fact that the game requires a key to play and if I'm going to be playing a game compeditivly I'd like to have a real copy of it (which is where the last shred of my non-pirating decency lies). I'd say about half of the games I'v played are pirated (which is common, I assure you). I really don't see myself buying a game for $50 without researching it. At $10 on the value-rack, it's an entirely different story (which is where about 2/3 of my non-pirated games that suck come from). Some of the best games I'v ever baught were on the $10 rack, like Tribes and Total Annihilation which I took off of a friends word for like $15 apiece. The one expensive game I baught that rocked was half-life platinum collection for $35. Hopefully Battlefield vietnam will be another good game.
If gaming companies want to stop the pirating and general disrespect their customers give them, they've got to stomp out the bad games, bad advertising, and ripping people off. Inotherwords, show some respect to your customers. They've also got to update their buisness model some. A good game with a single player campaign and decent multiplayer means your average joe is going to buy the game for the SP and multiplayer, and your pirate is going to consider the SP the demo, and the multiplayer the real deal.
The industries real enemies aren't me. Their real enemies are the people who pirate everything regardless of where it came from and then go ahead and sell it for $5, or the people who are the occasional gamer who download the games without paying for th
Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod (Score:5, Interesting)
I buy every game I continually play. I started out by copying the vast majority of them. There have only been a small handful of games I've just gone out and bought, just like you. Most of the time, the stuff I download sucks and I either toss the game CD, or delete the install rip/iso image if I didn't burn anything, because I'm never going to want to play it again. You can usually tell in the first couple of hours how the game is going to go.
Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod (Score:4, Interesting)
I have no guilt what-so-ever about pirating games. I spend the maximum amount of money on games that my current wages will allow. There are more games that I want to play than I could ever afford. Even if I had a very high paying job there is no way I could afford to buy them all. So I spend as much as I can and download the rest.
How is this hurting the Game companies? They would not get one dollar more from me regardless of wether I'm pirating games or not.
Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod (Score:3, Informative)
This can actually be very close to false advertising. Unless the outer packaging of this "special edition" states that only a portion of the game is included, then you can legally demand a refund (and make accusations of fraud without any form of legal reprisal.)
I have such a "previ
Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod (Score:3, Interesting)
The price of a game has nothing to do with recovery of R&D. Game companies have a responsibility to their investors to charge the profit-maximizing price, as best they can judge it. That means that if the price were reduced, the gain in sales would not offset the reduced per-copy income, and if the price were increased, the increased per-copy income would not offset the loss in sales. Of c
Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course not. If the goal is simply to recover development costs, all software is grossly overpriced. For that matter, with a few notable exceptions, so's pretty much everything else.
Let me introduce you to my little friend, the profit motive.
If you want to engage in a commercial venture, like coming up with the next big video game, you're going to need money. Lots of it. Millions of dollars,
What about game publishers robbing consumers (Score:5, Interesting)
The point being missed (Score:2, Insightful)
One doesn't have the right to violate the rights of the copyright holders and spread their intellectual material everywhere. It just doesn't matter what justifications are given because it's still illegal and no permission was given by the copyright holder.
I remember Nintendo busting ROM sites, and people were saying, "B-but Nintendo doesn't even sell these games anym
Re:The point being missed (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you have the right to get paid for your work? Yes, of course you do, I don't believe that's an issue.
Do you have the right to STILL get paid now for the work you did 10 years ago? That's getting shaky. After all, if you leave your job, your boss doesn't carry on paying you because the firm is still making money using the stuff you worked on. (And you can bet that the same applies to the guys who actually wrote those early games, so all you do is pay the Nintendo execs.)
Saying "any justification doesn't matter because it's illegal" is rather daft. Something being illegal is not a state of nature, it's a decision made by people, and others have the right to question that decision (although not to ignore it).
Re:The point being missed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The point being missed (Score:2)
Are you talking about game cracks or something?
I wasn't talking about those. I believe in game cracks to (in fact, a lot of developers do...it's the publishers who make them put in that CD verification junk).
I was just making a point about how people are forgetting the rights of copyright holders. This article is moot because it doesn't matter if someone thinks there's a benefit to w
cd key (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:cd key (Score:2)
Re:cd key (Score:2)
Downloading/uploading/cracking/etc. may be debatable, but that is clear piracy in its purest form. This is theft of the company's products. The store paid for the game so it may be sold and the store may recoup their costs. Even if you do not take the game out of the store (which you may as well do), this is stealing software by preventing valid payment for
Re:cd key (Score:2)
A two way street (Score:5, Insightful)
Those games that have massive massive popularity, helped along by friends copying from friends, will still manage to make money. By becoming legendary, they guarantee enough sales to keep a company or lone developer going.
Unfortunately for those games which are less popular, piracy is just going to dig in HARD to the smaller income, and what happens to those developers? the ones making some headway into a business but still need a little more skill. They lose out completely, the gaming industry for them becomes nothing but something to suck their time and energy.
In the end all that happens is we're left with the huge gaming houses (Sony sponsored ones, for example) and the odd few developers who are lucky enough to get it right first time. The raw up and coming talent gets whacked down with a big pirated 2"x4" as soon as they make an effort. You could say that they don't deserve success without the effort and without the ability to overcome obstacles, but games aren't about making developers work hard. It's about letting the really good ideas come to fruition and work for us as players.
Lies, deceit and propaganda - the state of Broadband in Australia [wps.com.au]
Re:A two way street (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A two way street (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A two way street (Score:2, Interesting)
The way piracy helps these folks is that their games get played. I'm not going to shell out $50 for an unheard of game. Not many pe
hours of gameplay??? (Score:4, Interesting)
and why are there nofurther adventures ala "monkey island" ?
Re:hours of gameplay??? (Score:5, Interesting)
However, I do agree with the theory behind your statement - games that take longer to conquer because of a greater challenge or options of greaters challenges are worth a bit more, even if the pricing doesn't fully reflect this. (e.g. RTS games allowing giving bonuses to AI players if you can already nail them even when they throw the kitchen sink at you.)
Piracy and Video Game Sales (Score:5, Interesting)
What does this have to do with anything? Well, for one, there has been a great deal of games that my friends and myself have bought that there is no way we would have without a "Try before you buy" version floating around. I mean, who really wants to shell out $50 for 5 hours of MP2? If I'm going to be spending $10 an hour on personal entertainment, then she should have at least shaved that day.
Piracy = Sales? (Score:2)
So, frustrated and annoyed, I dug around and found a warez copy of the game. I just wanted to check things out, sans-bullshit, you know? I never planned on buying it, n
Re:Piracy = Sales? (Score:2)
lol, they should have used that in the ads.
"Try Before You Buy?" (Score:2, Interesting)
99% of the other Kazaa users aren't trying before they buy...they're just getting and not paying.
You can never justify illegally distributing someone's copyrighted materials, because it will always be illegal and immoral, there will always be the exceptions like you that don't matter (you know, the ones who claim they buy what they download) since that's an extremely small minority.
I mean, what would John Carmack say if you told him "Yeah, I downloaded Doom 3
A convenient evil... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the same story since 1980 (Score:5, Interesting)
If I can buy a game for $10 at W-M or other big chain (put a $10 bill in a machine, press a button, a CD pops out) then I will buy other games than the overly-hyped big titles that occasionally come out. Of course I'm not talking about the Visual Basic games that are $10 now. Also a slot is nice where you can deposit a broken CD and new, clean one will pop out for free.
I don't want to pay a whole lot for box/manual artwork, TV advertising, and copy-protection licenses.
good times.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Chaos Engine.. Xenon 2. Man, what memories and what awesome fucking games. I've done my fair share of pirating for the last 15+ years, but I've bought my fair share of games too. Not when I was 15 though - I had no cash of course. If it wasn't for piracy, I wouldn't have bought an Amiga.
And the guys that are acting as the hubs - ie. the major distributors, usually get so much stuff they are spending all their time co
A little coarse... (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one who kind of tuned out after (or even before) reading this?
Being a software pirate is just as EVIL as... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or at least, that seems to be the gist of Jeff Minter's anti-piracy argument.
I couldn't even finish reading his article.
Re:A little coarse... (Score:2)
Re:A little coarse... (Score:3, Insightful)
I really wish I hadn't RTFAed (Score:5, Insightful)
That is what pirates do
How did this get passed the mods? it's meaningless and boring, poorly-executed humor. There is no news, at all, anywhere here.
You know what that's called? A troll. I call bullshit.
Get "passed" the mods? (Score:2)
Well (Score:3, Insightful)
This is really no different than the outsourcing issue. It's just one group of people who already benefit from a market of plenty seeking to deprive others of their share and keep it for themselves. The ever-famous something for nothing.
Just pay for the game.
According to the pirates (Score:2)
Hell, I'm surprised it hasn't been turned into an "anti-SPA" issue like the MP3 issue...painting the RIAA as the scapegoat was the most devious and clever distraction of the issue I've ever seen. Somehow an org
Jeff Who? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Jeff Who? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Jeff Who? (Score:2)
Re:Jeff Who? (Score:2, Informative)
Jeff Minter was an 8-bit god, and as you might guess from the names and his lo
Re:Jeff Who? (Score:2)
But of course I guess there has to be something for everyone.
Re:Jeff Who? (Score:2)
MobyGames Auto-Generated Summary *:
Jeff Minter was credited on a game as early as 1983 and as recently as 1997. His/Her career probably spans more years than those displayed since these dates are based on the credits documented in MobyGames (which are incomplete). Jeff Minter has been credited with the roles Programming, Sound, Graphics, Design and Other. Jeff Minter has been credited on games developed by the following companies: Llamasoft, Atari Corpor
Re:Jeff Who? (Score:2)
He also wrote Defender 2000, which sucked because Defender is one of the very few games that needs no improvement, but everyone makes mistakes sometimes.
Minter might never have been cutting edge in terms of eye candy, but he's
Companies could take the Derek Smart approach (Score:5, Funny)
Then again, even with the rampant piracy of Doom and the Quake series in their day, I doubt that iD would trade places with 3000AD.
LK
Single player games? (Score:5, Interesting)
Grim Fandango is largely heralded as the greatest adventure game of all time, and yet it's sales were weak. Incidentally, the 2-disc set is avaiable at suprnova.org as of this moment for your pirating pleasure.
Multiplayer games are harder to pirate simply because you need a unique CD-key to get on the networks. Blizzard and Valve are experts at this.
Not to say that piracy is killing the single player genre (Knights of the Old Republic for example), but multiplayer games are a safer bet if you're trying to avoid piracy.
ROI? (Score:5, Interesting)
This year alone I have paid nearly $200 for computer games and we are only 5 months in. I will probably carry on spending about this much for the rest of my life.
Is this adequate compensation for getting me into video games and computing? I happen to think so. Piracy amongst the young should be tolerated (but not legalised because these things are a hell of a lot more fun when they are illegal) as long as they do it themselves rather than buying it from someone else.
Re:ROI? (Score:2, Interesting)
This year alone I have paid nearly $200 for computer games and we are only 5 months in. I will probably carry on spending about this much for the rest of my life. Its an interesting, but slightly skewed, perspective. Yes, pirating games may have led to you becoming an avid gamer, and you pay for your habit now.. so, GameCompanyX, that went under because of weak sales due to Piracy, helped Sony brin
Both Articles.. (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know who this Jeff Minter guy is... (Score:5, Interesting)
But let's forget that, just for a second. I could forgive what a cunt he is, if only his article said anything new or different, made any unique or creative arguments against copyright violation, or indeed made ANY ARGUMENT AT ALL. But he fails to do that. Instead, he uses lots of profanity and random, irrelevant analogies, to what purpose my mind cannot fathom. He admits that "there is too much software out there, and yes, a lot of it is shit," and then rather than make a reasoned argument as to why we should be buying all this shitty software anyway, he falls back to another offensive analogy.
His one seemingly sensible argument is against a strawman: people who rebrand software and sell it as their own. Now, I don't know about you, but I have _never_ seen any claim that anyone is doing this in all the software "piracy" arguments I have ever read. It's a non-issue! People just don't DO it! Maybe, maybe they used to. But the issue here is file-swapping, and you know it, and I know it, and he knows it, and anything else is disingenuous.
And in case anybody would still argue in his favor because he is taking the "moral high ground," I recommend you read where he says that file-swapping in violation of copyright is not so bad after all, when MUSIC is being traded; no, it's only software that deserves the protection of the law. Double-standard, anyone?
No, not only does this Minter guy have nothing useful or intelligent to say, he's also a hyprocrite. In short, a cunt of the worst kind.
Re:I don't know who this Jeff Minter guy is... (Score:2)
As for the claim about software/music, I think the idea there was that a piece of music is just that, a single piece of music, and once you've listened to it it's done, so you might buy mo
Re:I don't know who this Jeff Minter guy is... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think he's well respected for his programming ability perhaps, but the stuff he produces has never really impressed me. He doesn't seem to have gotten past his fascination with psychedelic palette rotation-- a trick which was already old in the Commodore 64 days. He's a stoner with a knack for assembly language who hasn't done an
I think its a good thing (Score:4, Insightful)
These days, "FPS" and "Online Multiplayer" aren't enough to warrant a $50 pricetag. What if the interface sucks? What if the framerate sucks? What if the internet playability is crippled? What if etc, etc, etc. People are sick of wasting money on crappy games.
A solution: All videogame companies' business model (or roadmap for a particular game) should include a full-featured demo (limited to 1 map only, or something similar), which includes multiplayer, internet support, all that, BEFORE the retail release of the game. If you do this, and your game is good, people will respond, embrace it and not worry about pirating it and just go buy it (in most cases). It's no different than listening to records in a record store before you buy them. I'm sick of seeing demos for games come out months after the retail version is released. In my opinion, this is practically asking for pirates to "check out the game" before buying it.
Bottom line: If your game is good, people will buy it.
My
Simply rule to prevent revenue theft (Score:4, Informative)
If you would pay for a title if you couldn't get a free copy, then you should (pay for it).
Making a copy of a game is only theft from the IP perspective, it costs the developer/distributer nothing. Choosing to make a copy of software/music/whatever instead of purchasing it does effectively cost the developer/distributer money.
That said, remember that even copying for evaluation or limited use is illegal. Be prepared to accept to consequences, or don't make the copy.
yet another reason why consoles will win (Score:2, Insightful)
And with the fact that realistically i dont think their will be much more native develo
My opinion (Score:3, Insightful)
Piracy is a competitive factor - if companies price too high compared to the features or quality of a product, people don't pay.
If companies start doing anticompetitive shit or in general, perform actions that piss the customers off, they lose sales to piracy.
If more executives would realise that they are in the end to blame for piracy THEMSELVES, we would have much much less piracy. But no, they insist on releasing full upgrades ever other year - at full price. But the gain in productivity for most users is negligible.
Does anyone here seriously think that say, the jump from Office 97 to Office 2000 or 2000 to XP made them a lot more productive? Did Photoshop 5.5 to 6 make you more productive ? How about Mac OS X 10.2 to 10.3 (yes i dare say, keep in mind that I'm a Mac user myself, so no flames please
Piracy is mostly due to the customer base being pissed off.
Re:My opinion (Score:3, Insightful)
When it comes to *applications* software, piracy does more to *increase* prices than anything else. This is because it kills the concept of price competition. Why bring out a lower priced version of one of the big name programs, when all that'll happen is that those who can afford the big name will buy it, and those who can't will just pirate it?
Re:My opinion (Score:2)
piracy was the only way to play this game if you happen to have any of the blacklisted software (CD-writer e.g. Nero, virtual drive software e.g. Alcohol) on your computer and don't want to uninstall legal programs just for a game.
I believe an official patch fixed or will fix this problem as even the 'tards in management can understand that an unusable product will sell poorly.
Video games are a drug (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay, that's over the top, but really the software industry functions the same way as any other system which distributes habit forming or addictive substances. If enough people get "hooked" then they raise the price to milk the machine for all its worth. Who doesn't? So while all the people who can afford games are out getting "high", the people who can't afford them are pirating.
Rather than bashing pirates all the time we need to take a good hard critical look at the industry. They're there to make money. So is everyone else. Why should the software industry get all the pity and remorse while the pharmaceutical industry gets tagged left and right for producing overpriced products?
It's all the same thing, folks.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Stealing. Is. Wrong. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sad to say (Score:2)
Trial licenses don't work very well. And the video game industry puts its propaganda machine to buy and pay for electronic games media which are supposed to inform. The industry thinks they are entitled to have their consumers decide based on the box? Fuck you and hell no!
Publishers make gobs of money off quality titles because MOST people know it is wrong to utilize piracy as a substitute for purchase when a game is played and enjoyed to its fullest. They lose mo
Is always simple economics (Score:3, Interesting)
This is similar to any economy that has seen a new need/shift - required resources are not always properly rewarded/assigned.
The problem is that in the case of software bootlegging, it is that the individual end user is usually committing the harm(not some privateer or trader). This also directly effects the perceived piracy costs - if you think 1million people should want something at $30, but 30% will just copy it the market price then becomes $50 or so if you want to make most of what you feel you are owed. This ignores the fact that if it was only available at $30, then most of that 30% would probably not buy it anyway.
It comes down to costs for the user/buyer, and as it gets cheaper or more expensive, the number of buyers is not scaling linear(or generally modelable) to the revenue from them. So publishers randomly pick a sweet spot and hope(what the market will bare). What this means is that if you can only afford it at $30, but enough dumb/rich people want it at $50 then the publisher will be a success at $50(if publishers are happy with the number of dumb/rich people paying). If you want it, then you have to wait till there is no one wanting to buy it at any price between 50-30 or just copy it from someone who was rich enough.
The economics for different parts of the world dictate different prices for software. That is why piracy can be good for non-piracy users. ie. In countries with rampant piracy, publishers must compete on price and value.
Companies who have a strangle hold on a specific software domain (ie. MSFT) can do whatever they want once piracy is significantly small enough. If they can guarantee limited piracy then they can force you to buy the product at any price.
Piracy is also good for regular publishers. It creates a market where normally there would not be one. ie. People who should not be buying games, can afford them and get 'hooked' on the low priced ripoffs. Then a few years later, the pirates are removed producing a new market that the publisher would have never entered before. So everyone there either gets more money for this luxury or they trade some other luxury/need.
MSFT did this is many countries, even the US in the 80's. DOS 6.2 was free from their BBS for godsake! This made computers more easy to acquire and become prevalent and a requirement for business and education. Many application publishers got rich this way as then there are more people needing the next upgrade whether pirated or not. All that is left is to slowly crack down on pirates and add copy protection as the market will bare (ie. no new revolts of willful piracy).
Now with P2P and the internet, many things that relied on distribution being the anchor of the market value (ie. the value of geting physical CDs of software, music, even movies) are losing ground. The only publisher solution is to either prohibit copying someway or find another market value (hard for people like the RIAA/MPAA).
The natural tendency of piracy is to make something's value only the cost of distribution.
OT:
Things like F/OSS come from this notion of the value of a copy and the realization that somethings people will just need in a specific society. People using computers on the internet have to have certain software - OS, email, etc. and it is natural for people to develop 'public works' as it were to provide them legally.
This is also why FOSS companies can still succeed if they can bring additional value to market (consulting, support, etc.). FOSS should naturally have a stronger capablility to enter new markets(ie. it is allowing legal 'piracy' build the market for other valuable services).
I think maybe... (Score:3, Insightful)
They're aware that with the production of the games comes also the production of the desire for the games. The hype surrounding them. They know if all of sudden there were no games, their lives would not be directly affected negatively in any important way. "Oh, no new games? I guess I'll just go outside and play shoot some hoops." There is no natural desire to create grand, expensive, consumeristic forms of entertainment. There is merely a natural desire for entertainment itself. Without the production of games people are without desire for the games, and so will merely do something else for entertainment, and be no less happy. Piracy is a strategy of the masses. An unsaid(unrecognized?) strategy to save the product of their work created with the knowledge that all is relativistic.
"rights" (Score:4, Insightful)
Is that so wrong? Is that terribly evil?
It's just a collection of monkeys who want something for nothing and will go to whatever ends to justify it.
Yeah yeah. There is a blurry line of what to call it. Theft, while not entirely descriptive of the crime, is pretty darn close. If the owner of something hasn't granted you the right to that something, then you have no business using it. You are benifiting from someone elses work without compensating them for it.
If this had been a story about how a company was redistributing a GPL'd program in binary form only, there would be countless posts from zealots crying bloody murder on the part of that evil entity. But an opinion about how taking software without permission is wrong yields retards who think they have some inherint right to whatever they lay their grubby hands on.
From Warez BBSes to the Internet, software addicts (Score:5, Insightful)
A few observations. In my youth, my parents could have never afforded to buy me the programs I pirated. They did buy me some software, thousands of dollars worth over the years. Boredom and curiosity led me to download other games, but I never spent much time playing them. Heck, there were Sierra games I never spent much time playing (Space Quest III was the BOMB though!).
In terms of applications, when I got older it helped me out in terms of being familiar with business applications. 14 year olds don't normally need Autocad, 16 year old's can't afford 3d Studio. Once you hit the business world though, things change. Lets not forget though, some prices are artificially high (Abobe bought and killed Aldus Photostyler which was awesome, eliminating competitive products, etc).
Another thing, the warez people like to collect programs. Many of them don't use them, it is just some sort of wierd obsession with collecting programs in mass. Given the amount of time it takes to play or complete a game, can someone with 2900 games in their pirate library really utilize them?
Given the costs of software, if every person bought all of their software at retail prices and there was no piracy, do you think many people would possess skills with apps like Photoshop? I can't think of many cases at all where I've not purchased a program (having the money to do so) and opted to warez the software.
I think the console games are priced as they are because the market will bear it, and there are many young adults that have jobs, living with parents, who can afford to pay the $70 or whatever it costs now for a single medicore playstation title.
Look at ID software, they made good titles and profited well. I know their stuff was pirated, but people with the money purchased the games.
A friend pirates every new game. He buys the good ones. I've seen the stacks of boxes, I'm sure he spends well over $2k a year in new releases. He was one of the evil pirates that had Dreamcast and other console hacks. What if pirates are your biggest customers?
I am a PC game dev (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who thinks piracy helps the developer is not a true developer who's livelihood is made or broken by the sales numbers of their game. My money says Mr. Psuedonym works for a publisher...if a game sells poorly they fire the dev team and write off the game as a loss.
Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games (Score:5, Informative)
If they had no value to you, you wouldn't want to copy them anyway.
Ergo, they do have value to you - which means that you should pay for them.
Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games (Score:5, Insightful)
Having no value and having a value less than $50 are two different things. There's plenty of games out there that people wouldn't mind playing for free, but would never consider paying $50 for. The Sims comes to mind.
Well, I hate to break it to you (Score:4, Insightful)
But that doesn't justify anything. If there's something you would be willing to play for free but not be willing to pay $50 for, guess what? You just don't buy it. You move onto something else.
I mean, if someone's actually going to justify piracy with "Well, I just didn't want to pay that much," you'd have to be pretty silly to think that's a valid argument that's going to fly. It doens't matter if it was priced more than you could afford--that just means you don't buy it and move on. Or wait until it drops in price. It's called capitalism.
You can't violate copyright holder rights just because you didn't like how they priced their product. Hell, I remember those old shareware games you could buy for $10-$15, and people still pirated them. Why? Because if given the chance, people just like to get things for free instead of paying for them. It doesn't really matter how much they're priced if you can just go onto eMule and grab whatever you want for free--people will download it no matter what.
Re:Well, I hate to break it to you (Score:3, Insightful)
Typical american conservative. "It doesn't hurt anybody, but it goes against my 'ethics', so don't do it or I'll smack you." That's also why Bush wants his anti-gay ammendment, and why the US prisons are full of people who were caught smoking a naturally-occuring plant.
Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games (Score:2)
I think that you have just hit an important point here. IMHO, the reason behind piracy is that most people find that game titles have a value to them, but such a value outweighted by the cost by far.
Diego Rey
Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's ask an 1828 copy of Webster's dictionary instead of you... as you don't seem to know what you're talking about.
Yep just as we thought. Copyright Infringment = Piracy.