And the Most-Pirated Game of 2010 Is...

[randomsix]

It would be interesting to find out how many people were downloading the same thing multiple times, or sharing the downloaded files to get more accurate findings from that data, but I assume that would be very difficult to do.

 

[RicoADF]

I guarantee you this: the first time you ever put blood, sweat and tears into making something good, put it up for sale, then see it stolen by 95% of the people who claim to be your fans, your views on piracy will harden. It's literally a visceral shock to realize just how blindly two-faced a lot of these people are, mainly IMO because they have no idea what it means to produce something rather than just consume.

Cheers

Colin

Each of those games sold a couple million copies on PC too.

Shitting on your fans, because unrelated people don't give you money, is the most retarded thing anyone working in an entertainment industry can do.

I refer you to my above post, sir. The games industry is more than high-end AAA+ games that sell millions of copies. And I stand by my argument that if you get dozens of hours of pleasure out of someone's creative work, but refuse to pay the (usually quite reasonable) price they're asking in return, there's a certain cognitive dissonance in calling yourself a 'fan'...

Cheers

Colin

$110-120 AUD is NOT a reasonable price, its a bloody rip off (with very few exceptions). Having said that, I just wait till the prices go down or a sale brings them down to a fair price. I don't pirate because I want to support the games I like, but I wont be riped off and esp wont risk that much $ for a game that may be boring (as most games are getting so copy paste of each other their worth only a few hrs tops, esp in the fps genre). Also agressive DRM is turning me off alot of games period, or forcing me to only get them on console so I can play the game I pay for. So yes piracy is an issue and wrong, but the industry also has alot to do with it, rather then punishing those that purchase their games they need to start making the games fun, not have DRM issues and cost a fair price. Piracy will never be stoped, but if they make a good game and sell it at a fair price the amount pirating vs buying will turn more for the latter. Oh and selling games in some countries later than others is also a sure fine way of getting it pirated by those not willing to wait (idiotic way of selling games in this day and age).

 

[CyberAkuma]

These numbers aren't fair.
I pirated the game, beat the SP campaign then I went out and shelled out the $37 for it at the videogame store to have access to the multiplayer.

If ThreyArch wants people like ME to stop pirating their games, RELEASING AN EFFIN' DEMO SO PEOPLE CAN TRY BEFORE THEY BUY.

I'm so sick of this non-demo bullshit generation

 

[nipsen]

It would be interesting to find out how many people were downloading the same thing multiple times, or sharing the downloaded files to get more accurate findings from that data, but I assume that would be very difficult to do.

Well done - yes, the stats will typically be based on numbers of hits on the parent site. Torrentfreak doesn't usually claim any accuracy on these numbers (unlike the anti-piracy outfits), but simply offer traffic data as an indication of what is being downloaded the most.

 

[murphy7801]

Yer well i wouldnt pay for black ops

 

[ninjajoeman]

For a second there, I thought you linked the site for pirating.

 

[Ilyak1986]

Spoiler

I disagree that piracy of a digital object is stealing.

In my opinion, this is why:

Simply because there are an infinite amount of digital objects.

Let's take an arbitrary computer game produced by company XYZ (I'm sure it drives some people bonkers who've seen enough widgets produced by company XYZ in college textbooks, but bear with me here). Company XYZ employs some programmers, artists, etc... all of whom they keep on their payroll. So, company XYZ incurs some fixed cost producing this game, which is the total of all of the money spent producing this game. This is, I reiterate, a fixed number.

Now, in order to break even, if company XYZ were to only sell 1 copy of this game, it would need to charge the entire total of all of its production costs on that one game. Were it to sell two copies, it would need to charge half of its production costs on each game. And were it to sell N copies of this (sorry for sounding like a math teacher now), if we were to denote the total cost of the production of the game as K, in order to break even by selling N games, company XYZ would have to charge K/N dollars per game.

Well, my line of thinking is this:

When the game gets shared in a peer-to-peer fashion, thereby creating an infinite number of such games in circulation, then what should the price of each individual game mathematically *be*?

Well, as anybody knows, any constant divided by infinity is zero.

Now, of course, the total number of games both bought and pirated is not infinity. After all, there is a very finite amount of people living in this world, and even fewer of which actually have interest in this particular game. So, it stands to reason that the price of this game should not be zero. However, odds are, the prices currently being charged are probably too high, and if people can get the full-featured game for a lower price (or for free) that's not from the initial source, they probably will.

I believe that Dan Floyd (and the rest of the wonderful Extra Credits) crew actually did an episode touching upon this subject, which ended in technical difficulties due to Allison going haywire on everyone with a heavy-duty eraser. I forget which it was.

However my point is this: we, the consumers, do not pay *directly* for the time of the developers. We are not the ones hiring them. What we *do* pay for is the commodity which is the computer game. That commodity has an infinite supply, by virtue of the fact that it is available on the internet for anyone to download (whether through legal means or not).

In my mind, price comes from the scarcity of a commodity. Why must food have a price? Because growing food takes up *land*, which is scarce. So therefore, we do not (and cannot) have an infinite supply of food. So, we pay for food. However, by virtue of the vast storage space online, we in fact *do* have an infinite supply of any computer game (or anything else) that we can torrent. So since there is no scarcity, the price is zero.

CD keys, DRM, etc... are all ways of establishing artificial scarcity, in order for game developers to recoup their fixed costs spent developing the game. Because even if a very large number (going by the Magic: the Gathering definition, aka "you have an infinite loop, but you have to end it sometime, at which point you will have a 'very large number' of whatever it is you are producing") of people downloading something and not paying for it, you still would be left with $0.00 as opposed to a small percentage of this very large number were they to pay a teeny tiny bit apiece.

In my opinion, game developers (and anybody else planning on being compensated by creating an item for which there can be a theoretically infinite supply) need to have a better business model going forward. Google gives its end user products away, and makes money through a third party. That is just one way. However, DRM is not the way to go IMO.

Now I can go on and on about this, but the best compendium of arguments (particularly for) and somewhat against can be found in Chris Anderson's book "Free: the Past and Future of a Radical Price" which is a fantastic book in my opinion.

Spoiler

please dont... you are right or couse but you must understand that this argument does not end ever and that some people cant wrap their mind around the fact that you can not steal that witch has no physical being and that you cannot commit theft by downloading games You CAN commit copyright infringment (thats a crime to and a serious one) but not theft

Spoiler

The way I see copyright infringement is if you are making money form somebody else's work. If I write a book, I would feel that you are infringing on copyrights by selling that book under your name, or otherwise take credit for having produced it. But if someone else just reads the book, they are not profiting off of my work. Now would I like to be compensated for writing that book? Yes. Buuuut...do I have a right to charge for something which has an infinite supply? Philosophically, I say no.

Does this mean that authors/musicians/video game developers/etc... have no right to compensation? No. It just means that they should probably find a better business model than to try and fight the onslaught of the internet manufacturing and giving away infinite copies of whatever they try to sell.

Spoiler

You are still taking something that belongs to someone without their permission for you own personal gain, whether it be selling it, or just getting what you want.

This, in essence, is stealing, and when put into this specific context, is copyright infringement.

Stealing an apple from a market stall is theft, since it follows the above statement and the apple does not have a copyright on it.

Pirating a game online is copyright infringement. Which base definition is the unauthorized use of a product under copyright. In this case, you have taken something that isn't yours that is under copyright.

Copyright infringement, in this case is a one-up of theft. It follows the essence of stealing but also has a copyright on it.

Which leads me to the whole infinite copy branch of your argument. The creators of that game have the right to the data they created. People that take their data without their permission are breaking the law despite the unlimited amount of copies they can create with it.

The infinite amount does not make taking it without their permission legal, that concept is just an excuse for pirating that doesn't work with economy. There may be no limit to the number of copies, but each one pirated is stolen. Also, the fact that those copies are illegal also makes this reason of yours seem highly invalid.

Spoiler

What I am taking is data which belongs to a certain end user, who copies said data and willingly gives me the data. For example, say I bought an e-novel in PDF form. I read the novel. I then emailed said novel to my friend because my friend wanted to read this novel. Is that suddenly copyright infringement? So, by ultimate extension, is letting your neighbor borrow your DVD to watch it suddenly illegal, or rather, your neighbor borrowing your DVD to watch it illegal?

The way I see it is that people who upload something, be it anime, a PDF, a video game, yadda yadda yadda are saying "I have something, and I'm allowing someone else to enjoy what I enjoyed."

See, in my mind, the moment something of infinite supply reaches a source willing to *share* that infinite supply, then there is infinite supply. It is their right to share what is theirs. It isn't their right to profit off of what they did not create, but it is their right to file-share their computer game.

In a similar fashion, I believe it's also legal for friends to share textbooks in college, which I have done multiple times in the past "Hey Ryan, I want to do my finance homework today, can I borrow your textbook?"

Are you really going to come down on me for sharing a college textbook with a friend? To me, file-sharing is just a case of "what would happen if my friend were able to copy that textbook for me perfectly? That way, he can use his textbook, and I can use my friend's copy". All of the bittorrent files are simply just extensions of that.

As for "well it's against the law", well: laws are made by people, and people are often stupid, or in the case of most politicians, corrupt. Anybody who believes that politicians are out for the little guy have another thing coming. After all, file-sharing would probably be a huge boon to indie music artists. Think about it:

Indie artist: "Hey I got a cool tune, but no record company's going to sign me. Gogogo file sharing! Yay, free advertising! And when people finally have a chance to hear my work, I can go on tour and have concerts!"

Big-name musician: "Hey, I can sell my cool tune for lots of money because I have a lucrative deal with a record company. I don't need any advertising because everyone knows who I am! I'd rather just make one CD and get millions as opposed to have to go on tour and perform! Die file sharing!"

It's as Chris Anderson says: commodity information wants to be free. That is, information that you can just copy-paste a zillion times over (a book manuscript, a music CD, a video game) has a marginal cost of zero to produce, and that's the price that should be paid for it. While customized information, such as booking Chris Anderson to come to speak at your gig, takes his direct time, so that information wants to be very expensive.

If I want to hire a programmer, that is customized information. But if I simply want another copy of a piece of software, that is commodity information, and if there is an infinite supply of it, then I should pay the market equilibrium price of supply and demand, which is zero. And the laws of politicians be damned. What some people dub "piracy" is in fact an economic force of what happens when people realize that there is an infinite supply of something. They are the "hand of the market" that guides prices lower.

I shall reply to each of your paragraphs

Paragraph 1: You can't really compare pirating and sharing of DVDs. When someone buys a DVD of a movie, they can let someone else borrow it, they have a right allowing them to do so. However, a person who owns a game does not have the right to reproduce it, whether for profit or not, thus making it Copyright Infringement.

Paragraph 2: As much as that would be lovely, if it has a copyright, that's illegal. You know how a bunch of youtube videos get pulled off because of copyright issues? Yah thats why.

Paragraph 3: People have a right to share what is there's. That is, except for what you think it can. It is not their right to file-share computer games, that is illegal.

Paragraph 4: Physical copy, the friend owns that textbook, it is they have a right to share it, not reproduce it.

Paragraph 5: I'm just going to completely and utterly doubt that anyone in their right mind would actually copy a whole textbook down for their friend "perfectly". If he copies it "perfectly" then that is reproduction of something copyrighted and illegal, and still completely illogical.

Paragraph 6: I completely agree that the majority of people are stupid. But dumb laws rarely get by, as there are many "trials" that a bill must get through and dumb laws rarely get that far. If a dumb law is placed than it is normally repealed by the supreme court after a small period of time. Besides, a law such as this is part of a basis for our economy. Without this in place, the whole gaming industry would fall apart and shatter. In fact, our whole economy could fall apart without copyright infringement because if something good was made, than everyone business would make it and drop the price for it. That is just how our economy is set up

Paragraph 7: Just put it on Youtube, trust me, somebody will find it within a day at most Also, if the person with the copyright wants it on there, then it isn't or shouldn't be a prohibited use of the product.

Paragraph 8: Not a very good example? Yes file-sharing hinders their sales, thus why it is illegal....?

Paragraph 9: Honestly, I truly am surprised that you think this makes sense. You link together illegal things and legal things like no tomorrow. Of course illegal stuff is normally free. It's illegal!! But legally wise, no there isn't an infinite supply that anyone can produce. There is a supply that the people that own the data sells for a profit in order to keep their business.

Paragraph 10: My goodness. This infinite supply of yours is illegal. Only the people that own the copyright have the right to copy it. Nobody else does. That is how economy works.

I believe we're arguing from two different perspectives. You're arguing from the perspective of legality. I'm arguing from the perspective of amoral economic forces, going by what I see in reality.

You're saying "it's illegal" and I say "so what?". Just because some lawmakers say "no" and then there are a few symbolic cases of a few people getting sued for exorbitant amounts of money they can never pay by having a few songs on their computer, that doesn't make any of these file sharing laws enforceable. And that's really what my argument rests upon--that there are tons and tons of people that *will* get something for free, whether it's legal or not.

How are you going to pursue them? You won't. Crying THAT'S ILLEGAL! is ridiculous in this day and age in my opinion. These no copyright laws have been flouted time and again and it won't stop. If you want to be in the business of producing an easily-reproduced something, you need to find a business model that does not depend on unenforceable laws.

 

[SomebodyNowhere]

I find the fact that more people pirated Alan Wake and Dante's Inferno than purchased it legally really sad. I wanted to play Alan Wake when it looked like there might be a PC version, but with the spectre of rampant piracy I guess I can see why they cancelled it. Also as much as Dante's Inferno may not have been very well recieved its illegal downloads more than doubling its sales is really awful.

 

[WestMountain]

There's no good multiplayer crack for Black Ops so many of the ones that pirated it will probably end up buying it for the multiplayer, so there's probably not as much lost sales as Singleplayer only games like Mafia 2 for example.

 

[Dogstile]

The reason wii party is so pirated is because most people who play that don't realise its illegal to get it for free or cheap from someone who offers.

Yes i'm generalising.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

its sad that people in the gamer public consider the gaming industry their enemy, they are activly shooting themselves in the foot. Just think if the pirates win and the game developers go away, what do you gain? the pirates wont make games, we wont see triple a titles. All that will be around are facebook games. So inconclusion those who are pro piracy and sticking it to the man only want to see facebook games in the future.

just an observation

As a consumer, I consider anyone who intends to part me from my money in return for some good or service they are selling as an adversary, if not an outright enemy. The devs here may be just trying to make a living, but the publishers are trying to squeeze as much profit as possible out of the consumers in order to earn insane amounts of profit for the shareholders. Unless you're a robber baron a captain of industry filthy stinkin' rich yourself, those guys really are your enemy.

 

[Lisa Cerilli]

Totally not surprised that the main pirated games are not games I'd play.

 

[Lisa Cerilli]

Totally disagree. If it were not for those people, you would have no games to play in the first place.
Now, if pricing were more realistic to what people can afford, and if the developers didn't riddle their games with DRM, then maybe they wouldn't get such a bad rep.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Totally disagree. If it were not for those people, you would have no games to play in the first place.
Now, if pricing were more realistic to what people can afford, and if the developers didn't riddle their games with DRM, then maybe they wouldn't get such a bad rep.

Actually, if it weren't for the publishers, a significant portion of the cost, which usually goes to those middlemen, would be cut out, and I'd probably be downloading cheap games directly from the devs as a result -- which is the model used by many indie developers. This isn't some wonky "gamers vs. the man" thing, it's a simple statement of truth about the relationship between consumers and producers. As a consumer, it is my job to make my money go as far as it possibly can. As producers, it is the job of the publishers to squeeze as much money as they can out of the consumers. These goals are diametrically opposed, therefore, as a consumer, I have an adversarial relationship with the producers.

Also, welcome to the escapist. Don't feed the trolls, don't piss off the mods, and please, stay out of the basement. For future reference, if you want to reply to somebody, press the quote button at the bottom of the post and quote them in the body of your text, like I just did. It gives the person you're replying to a message, telling them that somebody quoted them. This is important, because otherwise they may never know that you were trying to tell them something.

 

[Lisa Cerilli]

Totally disagree. If it were not for those people, you would have no games to play in the first place.
Now, if pricing were more realistic to what people can afford, and if the developers didn't riddle their games with DRM, then maybe they wouldn't get such a bad rep.

Actually, if it weren't for the publishers, a significant portion of the cost, which usually goes to those middlemen, would be cut out, and I'd probably be downloading cheap games directly from the devs as a result -- which is the model used by many indie developers. This isn't some wonky "gamers vs. the man" thing, it's a simple statement of truth about the relationship between consumers and producers. As a consumer, it is my job to make my money go as far as it possibly can. As producers, it is the job of the publishers to squeeze as much money as they can out of the consumers. These goals are diametrically opposed, therefore, as a consumer, I have an adversarial relationship with the producers.

Also, welcome to the escapist. Don't feed the trolls, don't piss off the mods, and please, stay out of the basement. For future reference, if you want to reply to somebody, press the quote button at the bottom of the post and quote them in the body of your text, like I just did. It gives the person you're replying to a message, telling them that somebody quoted them. This is important, because otherwise they may never know that you were trying to tell them something.

Yeeeeeeah... I figured that one out already. The "quote" button part. Thanks for the tip. Wish I'd read that sooner.
Trolls are meant to stay in the basement, with the mods throwing things at them while we watch. Makes things more entertaining.
Thanks for the welcome.

Yeah, publishers are a bunch of money grabbers no matter the industry. I maybe should've rethought what I was trying to say first.

 

[Wolfe90]

Eh, why bother? the game is crap and is not even worth pirating in my opinion.

 

[fallouthirteen]

Developers do not usually "get paid before the first unit is even shipped." An advance, which is what they get, is a loan that they have to pay back.

Yep, that's what I've heard. They don't start seeing royalties on sales until that money is paid back to the publishers. With the amount they actually do make on individual sales, it's also very rare for them to make enough money to hit that amount too. Developers just in general are in a bad spot, they get screwed over by publishers because there is no alternative.

 

[Kyman102]

Sissies. March into a store, look the associate in the eye and demand to buy Kirby's Epic Yarn like a MAN.

Hey, only the manliest of men confident in their machismo will admit to liking Kirby. The only reason I didn't rent Epic Yarn is because my parents have moved the Wii to the downstairs entertainment room and hijacked it for Netflix. >_> Thanks mom and dad, really.

 

[LitleWaffle]

I believe we're arguing from two different perspectives. You're arguing from the perspective of legality. I'm arguing from the perspective of amoral economic forces, going by what I see in reality.

You're saying "it's illegal" and I say "so what?". Just because some lawmakers say "no" and then there are a few symbolic cases of a few people getting sued for exorbitant amounts of money they can never pay by having a few songs on their computer, that doesn't make any of these file sharing laws enforceable. And that's really what my argument rests upon--that there are tons and tons of people that *will* get something for free, whether it's legal or not.

How are you going to pursue them? You won't. Crying THAT'S ILLEGAL! is ridiculous in this day and age in my opinion. These no copyright laws have been flouted time and again and it won't stop. If you want to be in the business of producing an easily-reproduced something, you need to find a business model that does not depend on unenforceable laws.

Your beginning opinion was that "piracy of a digital object isn't stealing", now your saying "so what"?

A pirate will never/rarely stop at just "a few songs". After they do it once and don't get caught, what makes you think he won't keep going? By the time they do/if get caught, it will be more than a "few songs".

And honestly, they have been making progress on thwarting pirating.

http://blog.wirebot.com/2010/08/27/microsoft-prepares-to-ban-pirates-caught-using-leaked-halo-reach/

That was from a while ago, and they have the potential of catching pirates.

And it seems that we could accomplish catching these people if we could have that ACTA thing go in action. I wouldn't be surprised if all of the people against it have pirated and would be in trouble. If you don't have anything to hide, than i'm not sure why it is such a big deal.

You saying "so what" to the fact that it is illegal is exactly the cause of pirates. If people won't respect the law, than the law shouldn't respect human rights.

That's like a little brat changing the rules of a game in his favor all the time. There are two possibilities of how you feel about that kid.

You either A: Hate him and want him to pay or B: Are that brat.

Teach that brat some gog dang respect and he'll grow up into a respectful and fine citizen.

Teach the pirates as a whole some gog dang respect and your country will grow into a fine, more law abiding one, instead of that stupid brat.