Will Piracy Ever be Fixed?

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
20,364
0
0
Will Piracy Ever be Fixed?



According to Miles Jacobsen, studio manager at Sports Interactive, the answer is no - the problem isn't one of DRM or copy protection, but one of society.

Jacobsen is the man behind the Football Manager (the type that we Yanks call "soccer") games, a popular series of PC games. It seems like piracy and DRM were at the forefront of everyone's minds in 2008, a year in which indie titles like World of Goo had reported 90% piracy rates and Spore became the most-pirated game of all time. Jacobsen himself is no stranger to the controversy - when Football Manager 2009 was first released last November, fans who bought the game early had trouble authenticating their - entirely legitimate - copies.

In an interview with Videogamer [http://www.videogamer.com/news/20-01-2009-10426.html], he still thinks games need some sort of DRM, though perhaps not for the usual reasons: "There needs to be some kind of copy protection in your product otherwise retail aren't going to stock your product, so we do have to take some measures."

Even so, Jacobsen's remarks were sober and realistic, acknowledging that there's only so much that DRM and other protection can do to staunch the bleeding of piracy. "I don't know whether there is a proper cure for piracy without a change in society, to be honest ... I don't think it will ever be fixed and it is a shame because the price of games would go down if the issue was fixed and we'd be able to have more people working on the titles."

Jacobsen was asked to comment on the 90% piracy rate reported by rival series Championship Manager, and said that it seemed right. He gave an anecdote as evidence, mentioning that there had been one specific keycode that a Russian piracy site had claimed would work with all versions of the game, but in reality wouldn't work at all - said code has been attempted by 338,000 unique people.

"But I don't know what the figures are because we've got no way of tracking it. We don't believe there is a way to track fully exactly how many downloads we have. What we do know is there are countries out there where there are 30,000 members signed up and active on a local language forum and we sell 2,000 copies in that country to date. So, that 90 per cent level could be a low figure. I could pick a figure out of my arse but it wouldn't really do anyone any good. But piracy is incredibly bad!"

The man does have a point: people do like getting free stuff. I can't really say that there's anything in his remarks that I disagree with - if there weren't any piracy, I think prices would go down, as there'd be far less need to recoup on the percent that legitimately buys the game. But, on the other hand, I find it hard to believe that piracy would suddenly stop happening even in established markets, let alone emergent developing nations where piracy is the rule, rather than the exception.

Permalink
 

L.B. Jeffries

New member
Nov 29, 2007
2,175
0
0
The two solutions that look like they have potential are either 1) promise people with legit copies oodles of free stuff like Burnout Paradise or Dawn of War 2 has done or 2)accept piracy and try to make-up the loss with cheap DLC while selling the initial game at a lower price.

Don't really know which one is going to work, but they're going to hit the ground this year with several major releases and the numbers will start pouring in.
 
Feb 13, 2008
19,430
0
0
The whole problem is that Piracy is a game. Test your brain against the creator. So as long as games exist, there will be pirates. Even if the games are free, someone will still try to mod/crack/copy them.

Joe Public is the saviour here. If games are actually good enough, and cheap enough, people won't mind shelling out a few dollars for something that actually works. Given it has the added benefit of not having to deal with the anti-social pirates. ;)
 

Baby Tea

Just Ask Frankie
Sep 18, 2008
4,687
0
0
L.B. Jeffries said:
2) accept piracy and try to make-up the loss with cheap DLC while selling the initial game at a lower price.
I would be more than willing to bet that people would steal a game if it was $5, so I don't think a lower price point will many any dent in piracy. Piracy has to go down before prices will, not the other way around. The companies have everything to lose by 'making the first move'. Those stealing have nothing to lose, except free stuff. Who do you think will call the cease fire?

I agree with Jacobsen, and I think it's funny, and sad, that people demand so much of this industry: Constant originality, consistency, extremely high quality. And yet so many are willing to suck the resources away needed to do those things.

EDIT:
Hunde Des Krieg said:
It's called human ingenuity. People always try to find ways around the rules, it's part of our nature.
This isn't 'finding your way around the rules'. It's flat-out breaking them. It doesn't take ingenuity to goto a torrent site and download something you should be paying for. It might take technical or programming know-how to break the copy-protection, but I wouldn't be quick to praise anyone for that.
 

zBeeble

Doublethinker
Nov 19, 2008
32
0
0
I'd like to jump in with a serious note: even if piracy for a game were 0%, the price would not go down. Seriously. Game prices are not based on cost recovery, they're based on what the market will bear. That's why we have such a hectic release cycle for games --- a certain segment of the market will pay $60. You get all of them, then you discount it to $50. You get all of those suckers and then discount it to $40 and so on.

If games were more reliably profitable, then some studios might spend more on creating the game or take more risk, but don't fool yourself. The price won't come down. The price has nothing to do with units sold.

Steam (and there was a good link from /. a few days ago --- or was it her) has a completely different take on piracy ... in that a lot of piracy are underserved customers. They gave the example of how Russians were a big source of piracy for them until they started simultaneously releasing their games there --- after which piracy dropped. On a personal note, Steam offered Bioshock for $4.95 last month. That's too good an offer to pass up. I pick up a lot of older titles on Steam that I wasn't willing to pay for new. Steam seems to be able to offer better prices and discounts than retail channels and the Steam service isn't offensive DRM wise (now that Mass Effect is available on Steam, I'm kicking myself your downloading it from EA --- I'm afraid to uninstall it because I only get 3 installs).

Maybe I'm just another underserved customer. I don't have a big budget for games. I certainly can't buy many at $60, but for the $200 or so I've spent at steam, I have a lot more (legal) games. Bonus for buying slightly older games: the hardware to run them is cheap :).
 

Zephirius

New member
Jul 9, 2008
523
0
0
Developers (specifically for PC games) need to release more demos. I'm a member of the 'want-to-try-it-out' crowd of pirates, and if there is no demo then the developers can take a hike if they think I'm going to wager ?60 to see if a game is good. I'm also still waiting for the video game industry to fuck right off with their retarded pricing and take a look at some fucking exchange rates. God, that really pisses me off. ?60 DOES NOT EQUAL $60!
 

Jursa

New member
Oct 11, 2008
924
0
0
Piracy isn't a glitch in reality, it can't be fixed. Piracy should be looked at like like a fast breeding creature and doing what people normally do to too fast breading creatures would work just fine... aim at the head, and kill them.
 

AnotherFineMess

New member
Jan 12, 2009
143
0
0
Zephirius said:
Developers (specifically for PC games) need to release more demos. I'm a member of the 'want-to-try-it-out' crowd of pirates, and if there is no demo then the developers can take a hike if they think I'm going to wager ?60 to see if a game is good. I'm also still waiting for the video game industry to fuck right off with their retarded pricing and take a look at some fucking exchange rates. God, that really pisses me off. ?60 DOES NOT EQUAL $60!
Yeah, same happens to music and other stuff.

And I might add that some time ago I was part of the no Income mass. Plus my parents never bought me games. Well I was always a gamer and they wouldn't spend nothing in it. They prefer that I would spend the same amount of money in movies or anything else for that matter (had some inner laughs when my parents said that I didn't wanted anyting)...
Anyway, in that kind of situation is not hard to be a part of piracy. But finally I got some income and first thing I did was round up my favourite albums and games and start spending some money.

Of course if I see something that deserves it, I'm wanting to buy it! But if the game doesn't give me any kind of incentive, what am I suppose to do?
I bought Hellgate. found out that's going to shut down... am I pissed? a bit! but hell, at least I got SP.
 

Skrapt

New member
May 6, 2008
289
0
0
I agree with the article on all but one point, that game prices would go down if piracy were stamped out, because they wouldn't. I guarantee you that pirates would not legitimately buy any of what they have downloaded (maybe some would, but you're talking less then 1% here). So even if there was no piracy, these companies would not suddenly see their margins rise and be able to drop prices their margins would be almost completely static, in fact many Indie developers would probably see their margins drop, as titles like World of Goo have been subject to a lot of media attention which even if that attention is to do with piracy will end up with the game being in more peoples heads.
 

arcainia

New member
May 16, 2008
292
0
0
Well...perosnally, the only reason I -cough- pirate games is because I simply can't afford them. I don't really enjoy having mass amounts of paper wraped, badly labeled CDs. But I want something to enjoy in life, and I just can't affored waisting 400nis on one game.
 

Abedeus

New member
Sep 14, 2008
7,412
0
0
I'd have to agree with the "make more demos" argument.

I'm not going to buy any game without a demo version, ever since I wasted a lot of money on pre-order of Neverwinter Nights 2.

Same as I'm not going to a movie without seeing it's trailer first or buy a music CD without knowing any songs on it and hearing to at least one of them.

arcainia said:
Well...perosnally, the only reason I -cough- pirate games is because I simply can't afford them. I don't really enjoy having mass amounts of paper wraped, badly labeled CDs. But I want something to enjoy in life, and I just can't affored waisting 400nis on one game.
Then why not steal graphic cards, computers, cars?

If you can't enjoy your life without a computer game... Well, I pity you.

If you REALLY MUST get the game, save money for it, work for it and do something to earn it. Everyone is such a bloody leech, wanting everything for free.
 

scarbunny

Beware of geeks bearing gifs.
Aug 11, 2008
398
0
21
Skrapt said:
I agree with the article on all but one point, that game prices would go down if piracy were stamped out, because they wouldn't. I guarantee you that pirates would not legitimately buy any of what they have downloaded (maybe some would, but you're talking less then 1% here). So even if there was no piracy, these companies would not suddenly see their margins rise and be able to drop prices their margins would be almost completely static, in fact many Indie developers would probably see their margins drop, as titles like World of Goo have been subject to a lot of media attention which even if that attention is to do with piracy will end up with the game being in more peoples heads.
I dont see why margins wouldn't increase, if they had a full proof system that couldnt be broken then the pirates would have two choices 1)buy the game 2)dont buy the game.

I cant see the pirates suddenly finding a new hobby so in theory profits would go up and they could pass on a price cut
 

Skrapt

New member
May 6, 2008
289
0
0
scarbunny said:
I dont see why margins wouldn't increase, if they had a full proof system that couldnt be broken then the pirates would have two choices 1)buy the game 2)dont buy the game.

I cant see the pirates suddenly finding a new hobby so in theory profits would go up and they could pass on a price cut
Pirates pirate games because:

A: They don't want to pay
B: Rare game that is no longer widely available/not available in certain regions
C: They lost the game and don't want to shell out for another copy.

Even if they only have those 2 choices, buy or don't buy the game. I don't see that changing the major pirate philosophy of "we're not paying for that". Pirates won't pay for it in the first place, and although the piracy of music is widespread and known by almost all teenagers, downloading and being able to crack a game is still something that needs a little bit of determination and not known by the average consumer.

Although talk of what would happen if piracy where stamped out is more then a little pointless anyway, because to be honest there is no real solution that could effectively kill piracy and the pirates aren't going to stop their sharing/cracking anytime soon.
 

scarbunny

Beware of geeks bearing gifs.
Aug 11, 2008
398
0
21
Skrapt said:
Pirates pirate games because:

A: They don't want to pay
B: Rare game that is no longer widely available/not available in certain regions
C: They lost the game and don't want to shell out for another copy.

Even if they only have those 2 choices, buy or don't buy the game. I don't see that changing the major pirate philosophy of "we're not paying for that". Pirates won't pay for it in the first place, and although the piracy of music is widespread and known by almost all teenagers, downloading and being able to crack a game is still something that needs a little bit of determination and not known by the average consumer.

Although talk of what would happen if piracy where stamped out is more then a little pointless anyway, because to be honest there is no real solution that could effectively kill piracy and the pirates aren't going to stop their sharing/cracking anytime soon.
You seem to have missed the main reason for piracy, it was my reason and all my friends reason, I didn't want to buy games because I liked getting stuff for free. I know there are the few who say otherwise but at the heart of it people like free stuff. I now have a lot more disposable income and so havn't pirated any games for a few years, but if I lost my job then sure I'd probably go back to my old ways.

Also most of the actual cracking is done by big warez groups so all the "consumer" has to do is copy on file in to the directory.
 

Dechef

New member
Feb 7, 2008
322
0
0
scarbunny said:
Skrapt said:
Pirates pirate games because:

A: They don't want to pay
B: Rare game that is no longer widely available/not available in certain regions
C: They lost the game and don't want to shell out for another copy.

Even if they only have those 2 choices, buy or don't buy the game. I don't see that changing the major pirate philosophy of "we're not paying for that". Pirates won't pay for it in the first place, and although the piracy of music is widespread and known by almost all teenagers, downloading and being able to crack a game is still something that needs a little bit of determination and not known by the average consumer.

Although talk of what would happen if piracy where stamped out is more then a little pointless anyway, because to be honest there is no real solution that could effectively kill piracy and the pirates aren't going to stop their sharing/cracking anytime soon.
You seem to have missed the main reason for piracy, it was my reason and all my friends reason, I didn't want to buy games because I liked getting stuff for free. I know there are the few who say otherwise but at the heart of it people like free stuff. I now have a lot more disposable income and so havn't pirated any games for a few years, but if I lost my job then sure I'd probably go back to my old ways.

Also most of the actual cracking is done by big warez groups so all the "consumer" has to do is copy on file in to the directory.
No, he has that reason in his post.
However, he did miss a rather important reason.
Pirates pirate because they can get away with it.
 

scarbunny

Beware of geeks bearing gifs.
Aug 11, 2008
398
0
21
Dechef said:
scarbunny said:
Skrapt said:
Pirates pirate games because:

A: They don't want to pay
B: Rare game that is no longer widely available/not available in certain regions
C: They lost the game and don't want to shell out for another copy.

Even if they only have those 2 choices, buy or don't buy the game. I don't see that changing the major pirate philosophy of "we're not paying for that". Pirates won't pay for it in the first place, and although the piracy of music is widespread and known by almost all teenagers, downloading and being able to crack a game is still something that needs a little bit of determination and not known by the average consumer.

Although talk of what would happen if piracy where stamped out is more then a little pointless anyway, because to be honest there is no real solution that could effectively kill piracy and the pirates aren't going to stop their sharing/cracking anytime soon.
You seem to have missed the main reason for piracy, it was my reason and all my friends reason, I didn't want to buy games because I liked getting stuff for free. I know there are the few who say otherwise but at the heart of it people like free stuff. I now have a lot more disposable income and so havn't pirated any games for a few years, but if I lost my job then sure I'd probably go back to my old ways.

Also most of the actual cracking is done by big warez groups so all the "consumer" has to do is copy on file in to the directory.
No, he has that reason in his post.
However, he did miss a rather important reason.
Pirates pirate because they can get away with it.
Agreed I missed the first point, however this point invalidates the rest of his argument, if people cant get it for free then they either have to pay or not play, and as most pirates are gamers the chances of them passing up most games are pretty slim.

I also agree with you that another big reason is the chances of being caught are so slim they could hide behind Paris Hiltons modesty.
 

Finnboghi

New member
Oct 23, 2008
338
0
0
Abedeus said:
I'd have to agree with the "make more demos" argument.

I'm not going to buy any game without a demo version, ever since I wasted a lot of money on pre-order of Neverwinter Nights 2.

Same as I'm not going to a movie without seeing it's trailer first or buy a music CD without knowing any songs on it and hearing to at least one of them.

arcainia said:
Well...perosnally, the only reason I -cough- pirate games is because I simply can't afford them. I don't really enjoy having mass amounts of paper wraped, badly labeled CDs. But I want something to enjoy in life, and I just can't affored waisting 400nis on one game.
Then why not steal graphic cards, computers, cars?

If you can't enjoy your life without a computer game... Well, I pity you.

If you REALLY MUST get the game, save money for it, work for it and do something to earn it. Everyone is such a bloody leech, wanting everything for free.
You're getting into the nitty-gritty of piracy.

It's not theft by the legal definition.

Granted, it is still wrong, but it isn't theft; it's something else.

If I stole a graphics card, then the manufacturer/vendor no longer has that graphics card. They can't sell the thing I took from them to anyone else. But if I pirate software I wouldn't buy (for example; Spore), then the company loses only my business; they still have their own copy hat they can sell to someone else. And, if I wasn't going to buy it in the first place, they didn't even lose my business.

Frankly, the only 'solution' to piracy is morality; if you would buy something, buy it to support the creator. If you wouldn't, then either don't get it at all, or pirate it, use it twice, then get rid of it.
 

-Orion-

New member
Jan 20, 2009
4
0
0
For one, the one suffering the most from pirated games are not the studios but the publishers. And the studios suffer from the publisher (a bit generalized here).

Interesting enough, publishers lose almost as much from people selling their game second hand early on, as from a pirated game (a game sold second hand is a game not bought at full price!).

Now as with music, the piracy of games is just an indicator for a flawed system. It took the music industry years to stop whining and finally selling music via internet (which makes a WHOLE LOT OF MONEY). The same goes for games. Retail "shelf" games are a product of the past. Only very few publishers (not studios!) like EA can actually get their games onto the shelves.

Services like Steam are part of the cure. Studios get the chance to circumvent expensive publishers (if only Valve was not their new publisher, but the deal seems fair). Buying games is easier - you can buy the game online, and download it at highspeed - instead of having to drive to town and hope the rare game you are looking for is on the shelf of the local supermarket, just to pay for the game, the publisher and the store you just bought it in. It's almost faster to just pirate the darn thing.
Now Steam becomes more problematic for studios, if the publisher puts the game there, because then again, the development studio is the last in line to get a little share out of the deal.

Alternatively games "for free" pop up that are ad-powered or financed by micro-transactions (you buy extras, like better weapons or new levels, etc.). You'd be surprised about the money they make from that, while everyone can play the game for free. Companies have to adapt to the system instead of complaining about the loss of money, that stems from them not grasping it. Piracy is just a rule within the system of software sale. If you fight it on one place it grows stronger somewhere else.

Apart from all that - it is not a surprise that piracy is so popular, as the whole monetary system is inherently flawed on it's own. Apart from us all essentially living like kings already (compared to medieval standards), we could do even more so, if not three quarters of our hard earned money would end up on the central bank (and not our own account!).