Dragon Age 2 leaked

[squid5580]

I find it funny that when something gets leaked, it usually goes on to make a shit ton of money.

What's your point? Products deserve whatever the market decides they're worth. If people decide the price point just isn't worth it, they can not buy it. No one gets to circumvent that bedrock of our economy unless the owners say they do.

Um, the pirates do. I wouldn't say "no one". As you said the products deserve whatever the market decide they're worth. Piracy is impossible to stop. Let that sink in for a moment as a factual statement. Once you have, realize this is a game of casualties and causalities. This site like to paint piracy as black and white when it is a big fat hulking gray.

I am anti-piracy pretty much in day to day life. A cousin is a pirating fool. I mean everything he can get his hands on. I have learned quite a bit about pirating from him and have done it. It is why I own a bought copy of Minecraft, VtM:Bloodlines, New Vegas, Evil Genius, UFO Aftermath, and probably a couple others. Any game I am on the fence about I get to check out before I buy it so far. Some I have opted not to buy and I haven't kept them. I have also pirated games I have already purchased like Civ 4 back before the 3.19 patch so I didn't need the disc in the drive.

Anyways, my point was ^ that mixed with the fact that games that get shitty sales as a general rule get shitty downloads as well. They do crappy because no one is interested. The ones that sell well also happen to be the ones that get downloaded the most. Now look at my piracy habits for 1. I pirate games I am interested in and they usually end up getting money from me. To assume every download out there is just wanting a free game is foolish. Every sold copy of the game is a business deal. I am the type of business man who likes to evaluate my purchase before buying instead of relying on hype and a pretty cd case. I have to put some effort into doing it this way yes, but I find it worth it because I don't get burned often like I see some people bitching about online.

Piracy by itself is not inherently evil. Customers wanting to see if this purchase is right for them is not a bad thing. I understand some people want free stuff, hell I want free stuff. But I want to support the devs that make the games so I can have more. Had DA2 been cracked a month ago I probably would have checked it out. But a demo was released, looks cool I am good to go. Man, there is alot more to this than this but it is already too long.

I could go into the specifics as to why piracy isn't a bad thing but people on this site don't want to listen as they are too busy shouting that piracy is the worse than devil worship.

Yeah... devil worship... Or maybe just annoyed at the people who make things worse for the rest of us when publishers look at the insane amount of downloads they see for their games and have no idea what this is costing them, or what to do to protect their investments.

I think using hyperbole to describe people who aren't on our side doesn't do any good.

That isn't what it is. There is just an abbundance of people on this site that don't know 2 shits about economic weight but like to pretend they do. That crap about the downloads is playing the victim for publicity for the most part. These companies deal with millions of dollars every day on every half decent title. The key to that whole sentence is bolded. No one knows that dollar amount because it is speculation and speculation doesn't hold water. It's not hard to grasp that the actual number of lost sales is a fraction of the total downloads. CEOs are greedy people, it has to do with raising stock returns. The gamer crowd is just making it out to be more than it is because a million dollars to them sounds like a LOT of money.

Furthermore, I could smack the people in the face that ***** about the used games market. That is downright retarded and nonsensical from an economical standpoint and I seriously can't believe customers are falling for it. I work in sales and the nature of business is Shrewd jackass assholes get a better deal than the nice people you would rather give the better deal to because it is a cost casualties game.

Huh that is funny. I see my name but not any of my words. Are you a wizard? I didn't even quote you the first time lol.

 

[katsumoto03]

Case 1: Person A Pirates game. Persons B,C,D buy game. Net gain: 3 sales
Case 2: Person A Doesn't Pirate game, and doesn't buy game. Net gain: 0 sales.

This doesn't make sense to me. Either way, Person A doesn't buy it, but where are persons B,C and D in the second case?

 

[KeyMaster45]

You can't throw a virtual rock without hitting something DA 2 related.

*picks up a virtual rock* Hrmmm... *closes eyes and hurls virtual rock in random direction* Uh oh, I think I just broke a window on Old Man 4Chan's house. Quick! Cheese it before he sicks his pet troll on us!

OT: Can't say I'm surprised, what game doesn't get leaked before its release nowadays? No point in getting up set over it anymore. People are going to do it and the flame war we like to refer to as a "debate" over it is locked in a maddening loop of logic that every thread on net piracy takes. There is no more meaningful discourse to be had on the subject because both sides are very set on their opinion and neither will concede and inch.

Oh great, more childish arguments like this. He's written a length post discussing the economics and intrigue in the scenario and you basically 'lulz' it away with the same old tired "But if you stole a material good blah blah blah" argument. As always incorrectly trying to apply physical goods economics to a virtual good.

His argument is very simple:

Case 1: Person A Pirates game. Persons B,C,D buy game. Net gain: 3 sales
Case 2: Person A Doesn't Pirate game, and doesn't buy game. Net gain: 0 sales.

Please, if you want to discuss this, at least address the full issues at hand, and don't reply to thought out prose with the equivalent of a 'party line'.

Yours and notch's points are just as "party line" as anything the other guy said. I've seen that argument made many times in piracy discussions. It's an arguing point in the discussion that's just as old and tired and frankly childish. Notch hasn't said anything "enlightening" to add to the piracy debate he's only repackaged the same BS people have been tossing back and forth for years into his own format.

An argument between the pot and the kettle calling each other black goes nowhere because at the end of the day neither of them will listen to the other.

 

[Echo136]

I still think piracy boils down to "would you rather have everyone playing and many of them enjoying your creation, or would you rather have a comparatively small number of people playing your game with an even comparatively smaller number enjoying it?"

I don't think money should be an important factor in deciding your sales model. Notch wants as many people as possible to experience his creation, which just isn't going to happen in the $60 pay before you play it, no demo sales model of today.

When you are a big triple A game developer with 50-100 people on staff making your game and a million dollar ad campaign Im pretty sure the bottom line is how much money you can make out of it. For Notch, who copied the code from freeware game Infiniminer and for the most part did most of the work with out anybody on a payroll until later in its development and raking in all the profits for himself, and a self-professed pirate himself its no wonder he would say what he did.

 

[Triarii]

There's a pretty basic difference between Minecraft and Dragon Age 2.

Minecraft is a brand new IP developed independently by a handful of people on a shoestring budget.

Dragon Age 2 is a AAA title produced by an international studio employing hundreds of people (not to mention employing marketing consultancies, external studios and so forth which will also add up to hundreds of people) and shareholders, all of which (justifiably, in my opinion) expect to see some kind of return on their time and/or money.

In economic terms, this means that, for Minecraft, having anyone play their game and talk about it is good. Since knowledge about the game has spread largely by word of mouth (and forum activity, etc) then anything which increases the amount of discussion of the game is good. The game also cost very little to make and has pretty much come out of the blue as a breakaway hit, this means that the expected profits are already massive due to the extremely small development budget.

Dragon Age 2, on the other hand, has likely cost millions to make and market. It has been marketed to such an extent that if you're the kind of person who is likely to play it you already know it exists. You aren't going to turn around and buy it because you see one of your friends playing a pirated copy or because someone says something nice on a forum about the pirated copy they bought, you're going to buy it because you want to play it or otherwise. It has been extensively and professionally reviewed, has taken up reams of advertising space, has a pretty comprehensive and free demo, there is a whole prequel which is fairly indicative of what the game is going to be like. There really isn't any excuse on being undecided on whether or not to buy it.

Don't try to reclaim some moral high ground by whining about how people in the industry would want you to play their games even if they're pirated. Those people also want jobs, they also want the big budgets which will enable them to produce the high quality AAA titles which we all enjoy playing. There is room for Minecrafts and Dragon Age 2s on the market, but don't try to pretend the marketing model is in any way similar, or that because Mojang can afford to say it's okay to pirate their game then Bioware should do the same.

No matter the argument he is right. There is no way to justify pirating.

 

[Irridium]

It leaked already? Honestly, either the people at dev teams hate security or are plain sloppy with it. Who the hell leaks these things?

I'm guessing its usually review sites. Which shouldn't happen, since I'm pretty sure EA controls what copies go where, they could put in a line of code, and when a certain game gets leaked, they could download it, check the code, and if it has an identifying line of code special to the review place it was sent to, EA can crack down on it and, oh I don't know, deny them first access to any new EA game.

If it doesn't have a special identification code, they'll know it was someone from the inside, and can take steps to prevent that.

 

[kurokenshi]

I'm guessing its usually review sites. Which shouldn't happen, since I'm pretty sure EA controls what copies go where, they could put in a line of code, and when a certain game gets leaked, they could download it, check the code, and if it has an identifying line of code special to the review place it was sent to, EA can crack down on it and, oh I don't know, deny them first access to any new EA game.

If it doesn't have a special identification code, they'll know it was someone from the inside, and can take steps to prevent that.

I like the way you think, thats a brilliant idea!

 

[Snotnarok]

Oh I'm so getting it! ...Yep when it comes out, on disc...though I hear there's some crappy DRM on that version so perhaps I shall seek it out on Steam.

No, EA caved in at the last minute. Originally the idea was to have periodic phone home to verify that you are not an evil thief, and also to transmit your game telemetry (how you play, how often, achievements etc etc) to EA's big brother server. However that is now officially scrapped, and there is just a one-time online activation. After that it will check if you happen to be online, but should work if you never go online again. See the BioWare social forum for details (but beware of the Tali romance threads - they can leave you scarred for life).

That's good considering making your version worse than the version the pirates got is a bad selling point.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

It leaked already? Honestly, either the people at dev teams hate security or are plain sloppy with it. Who the hell leaks these things?

I'm guessing its usually review sites. Which shouldn't happen, since I'm pretty sure EA controls what copies go where, they could put in a line of code, and when a certain game gets leaked, they could download it, check the code, and if it has an identifying line of code special to the review place it was sent to, EA can crack down on it and, oh I don't know, deny them first access to any new EA game.

If it doesn't have a special identification code, they'll know it was someone from the inside, and can take steps to prevent that.

this is smart but i'm surprised they don't already do it...i mean really, your giving out early editions of your game, how hard is it to add some additional code just to track which one is which?

 

[Savagezion]

Huh that is funny. I see my name but not any of my words. Are you a wizard? I didn't even quote you the first time lol.

What the hell? I quoted MisterShine on both of those. I didn't even quote you once yesterday. I dunno, sorry man I am gonna go back and see if I can fix it.

 

[Ascarus]

I find Notch's argument to be complete crap. If I steal a new 3D TV but watching it convinces 4 friends to by it it is still stealing. If you pirate a game it is the same thing. To compare it to something a little better if you steal an idea and use it in your paper it is plagiarism and possibly a violation of copy right laws.

He focuses on "loss of sale" which I agree it's not, but they do not make money and you enjoy the fruit of their labor. If someone wants to sell their intellectual property either you buy it or you don't, but just taking it is wrong.

end of thread.

 

[Ascarus]

I find Notch's argument to be complete crap. If I steal a new 3D TV but watching it convinces 4 friends to by it it is still stealing. If you pirate a game it is the same thing. To compare it to something a little better if you steal an idea and use it in your paper it is plagiarism and possibly a violation of copy right laws.

He focuses on "loss of sale" which I agree it's not, but they do not make money and you enjoy the fruit of their labor. If someone wants to sell their intellectual property either you buy it or you don't, but just taking it is wrong.

end of thread.

It would be, if Ascarus made any sense. Piracy is not stealing. You're not removing the original product as you would be with his example of a 3DTV. So yea, argument = invalid.

If you could COPY that 3DTV, as in walk into Best Buy, take one look at it, and build your own in ten minutes, nobody would stop you from walking out of the store with the one you just built. That's still not a great analogy though, because the materials required to build that TV cost money, whereas the materials required to build a game or piece of software generally do not.

what? here is his entire "argument" in a nut shell:

?Piracy is not theft,? he said to those gathered in San Francisco. ?If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world."

and it's completely bogus. if i steal one car and make copies of it to give away, you can be damn sure that i would not only be charged with theft of the vehicle, but also charged with countless numbers of copyright infringements and who knows what else, by the manufacturer of the original vehicle (and it's partners and subsidiaries).

whether or not those car copies inspire someone to actually purchase the vehicle from the manufacturer after the fact is IRRELEVANT. i stole the original car. stealing = theft. doesn't matter if it's car, software or cow pat.

it's a pretty linear argument.

 

[Hader]

I don't think it will matter with DA2 too much, what with all the preorders I am sure there have been, many have already bought it.

 

[MisterShine]

Two things I'd like to apologize for, first that it took me so long to respond to this, I didn't get a quote mail so I figured the topic had died. Second for dicing your post into bite-sized pieces and responding to them, I know its annoying to see that but you make a lot of points and I'd rather not garble up my responses.

Um, the pirates do. I wouldn't say "no one".

I meant that no one has the right to do that (I'll go over why I think that is below), not that no one actually does it.

Piracy is impossible to stop.

Fact.

However, DRM isn't even about stopping piracy, its about slowing piracy down and limiting it to as small a group as possible. Why did every game back in the day use disc checks? Any sufficiently clever person knew how to get around them, and anyone with even some moderate experience in IT knew how to do away with them entirely. So why put them on there at all?

To stop someone from saying to their "Oh hey I got this game, its totally awesome! Oh don't bother buying it, here's my CD!" Now some companies choose to put no DRM on their titles and that is their business (like GOG.com), as long as the DRM is disclosed before-hand people have the right to choose not to purchase that item because they don't like the DRM. If the gaming community as a whole didn't put up with DRM (like we didn't put up with it for the PC edition of AC2), then companies will see it is costing them far more money than it is making them and act accordingly. Or if they refuse to follow the consumer trend, they'd go out of business and other companies would not follow their example.

~snipped anecdotal evidence on potential benefits of piracy~

And hey, game companies are allowed to release their products free of charge and ask for donations from users if they thought it was worth the price of admission. I don't know how viable a business model that is but anyone is free to try it.

Now, do I think your cousin is automatically a bad person for breaking copyright law and taking something to which he has no right? Not really. Should he be punished for circumventing one of the major parts that keeps the world economy spinning, both to prevent him from doing it again and as a warning to others? Yes. Not like on the level of those wackos who work for the music industry who sue for like 30,000$ a song, but yes he should be punished.

I am the type of business man who likes to evaluate my purchase before buying instead of relying on hype and a pretty cd case.

And now we get to the heart of it all.

We are not entitled to anything except what the company says we get beforehand. People have no right to try things before they buy them. If the company chooses to put out pre-release info on game mechanics or story or a demo or the whole damn thing, that is up to them. Just as it is up to you and me whether what they release beforehand sounds like something we would wish to purchase.

If you don't think that is right or fair, take it up with your congressman or heck, you can run yourself and change the laws. But then, maybe most people don't care or realize this would put undue burden on the company that the consumers can already decide for themselves and no one would vote for you

Customers wanting to see if this purchase is right for them is not a bad thing.

Fact again. Doesn't give anyone the right to take someone else's property without their permission. Either their sales pitch is enough for you or it isn't.

That crap about the downloads is playing the victim for publicity for the most part. These companies deal with millions of dollars every day on every half decent title. The key to that whole sentence is bolded. No one knows that dollar amount because it is speculation and speculation doesn't hold water.

Major companies and governments base pretty much everything they do looking forward off of speculation. Figuring out market trends the past few years and their own sales to figure out how much money think they can spend on projects this year. Then next year they find out if they're right or not.

CEOs are greedy people, it has to do with raising stock returns. The gamer crowd is just making it out to be more than it is because a million dollars to them sounds like a LOT of money.

A million dollars isn't chump change to anyone. Rich people get rich because they don't do stupid things with their money. Usually.

Also, accusing them of being greedy and divining their supposed motivations for crying how much piracy is hurting looks an awful lot like you're trying to paint them as the vicious tyrant who oppress us poor gamers, why, whatever can we do to fight those evil powers? Pirate!

If the 'gamer' market at large REALLY had a problem with not having demos for most games or the demos just not being representative enough of the actual game, people would stop purchasing those products and companies would realize that their consumers just aren't going to take that crap. Since it hasn't happened yet..

 

[gl1koz3]

To be honest, why can't things just be out the day they are done? These delays to get "released" are redundant and are only necessary to suit some desires of the masses to stay in endless lines, whereas they think it makes their e-dick bigger.

Seriously, release when it's done. All in all, I support leaks of finished product.

Release dates are there for a very good reason. This is so that they can make sure every single store has their copies on the same day. It really wouldnt be fair to ship gamestop their copies on the 3rd and allow them to sell them when their direct competition doesnt get theirs till the 5th. Its because of these shipping issues that companies are supposed to wait till a certain day to sell a game. Just because its finished that does not mean that every single store macigally has it in stock.

That changes nothing. It artificially bloats the market. We all know the game is actually done well before the release date, so why do I have to wait for some blokes with their shipping problems when I can get it NOW? These "problems" do not justify anything; why does it affect me, when it's clearly not my issue.

As I said, market bloat and artificial regulation. They should be on a first-to-get first-to-sell basis to call it a good competition.

Not to mention that your statement is nearly entirely not valid for digital distribution; the thing I've been only buying since 2008 already.

 

[sneakypenguin]

It leaked already? Honestly, either the people at dev teams hate security or are plain sloppy with it. Who the hell leaks these things?

I'm guessing its usually review sites. Which shouldn't happen, since I'm pretty sure EA controls what copies go where, they could put in a line of code, and when a certain game gets leaked, they could download it, check the code, and if it has an identifying line of code special to the review place it was sent to, EA can crack down on it and, oh I don't know, deny them first access to any new EA game.

If it doesn't have a special identification code, they'll know it was someone from the inside, and can take steps to prevent that.

I'm sure someones already said this, but if you work in retail Target/wal-mart/gamestop these games come in up to a month before release. If you have 500 copies of halo reach sitting in the backroom for 3 weeks in 1000s of stores someones bound to get a copy. Thats why console pirates get things so early before release dates. For some reason we never got PC games early/if at all at my old store though.

 

[Vanaron]

@evilthecat Yeah, I'm sure Bioware will go under because DA2 got leaked...

I think most people just oppose piracy because it's against the law or because it is "moral" to do so. I've never actually seen any non-controversial evidence that piracy actually hurts the digital media market in any way, in fact what I tend to observe is the opposite... BSG (the new TV series) and Photoshop are the greatest examples of this.

I think the Photoshop effect is the greatest example of piracy actually helping a company. Today photoshop is synonymous with Image editing/enhancement and that's because people from all over the world use for casual uses, people who would NEVER be able OR inclined to buy a retail copy even if the full software cost half the price.

Edit: Disclaimer: Let me just clarify that piracy IS against the law, so "seeing no harm in it" is no excuse. If you disagree with an established law, vote to change it. DON'T BREAK IT.

 

[Mumrik]

Piracy is a double-edged sword more than ever.
It can help spread hype and attention, but it also spreads critique if the game is bad or buggy. In the end it's extremely difficult to weigh the loss in sales against the effect on the hype train. Sometimes it helps and other times it is without doubt very damaging. I'd guess the latter especially goes for games that are done early and where final code is leaked long before the street date.

 

[Nimcha]

Oh lord, these piracy threads are always exactly the same... honestly can't people just accept it's a complicated issue where nobody is entirely right?

On a different note, I wish the PC version had leaked as well. I've already pre-ordered it long ago but if the chance arises to play it a week early I don't think I could resist the temptation...

 

[KafkaOffTheBeach]

I find Notch's argument to be complete crap. If I steal a new 3D TV but watching it convinces 4 friends to by it it is still stealing. If you pirate a game it is the same thing. To compare it to something a little better if you steal an idea and use it in your paper it is plagiarism and possibly a violation of copy right laws.

He focuses on "loss of sale" which I agree it's not, but they do not make money and you enjoy the fruit of their labor. If someone wants to sell their intellectual property either you buy it or you don't, but just taking it is wrong.

I'm amazed that you would compare piracy to stealing a television.
Your second point is fine, hell, it even makes sense, however, and I mean no offence by this, your first point makes you sound like a retard.
You seem to understand why it is nigh impossible to crack down on this kind of piracy, so why would you say something so incredibly asinine to begin your post?