Excuses on the High Seas

[matrix3509]

On the whole "How can you make money off of something that exists because it is free" argument, I say:

The same way television stations still profit when people watch TVs online instead of on TV.

All you have to do is make it easier than pirating. DRM pretty much screwed the pooch on that one, and because pirating is so easy to do (and easy to learn), it will take a long time to recover.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

The sooner the publishers are gone, the sooner developers will finally be able to create to their imagination's delight.

Assuming they're held together by goodwill and gumdrops and less so by something practical...like money. Unless, you mean Indie, which are typically out-of-pocket anyway.

Sure production values will go down, and developers will be more responsible for their mistakes, but thats the way it used to be.

You lost me here. When was this? If you responsible, do you mean going under? Kinda like what would happen without an adequate source of funds? Doesn't patching show some form of responsibility?

Assuming they're held together by goodwill and gumdrops and less so by something practical...like money.

To this end, I support piracy. Lets take the decisions out of the hands of people who don't know or care about the fans.

"People who don't know or care about the fans" can also refer to pirates, oddly enough.

And way to bring down a huge cooperation by not buying their offered goods. I can't help but wonder if you dig through the dumpster behind McDonald's because you're "fightin' the man."

You give the impression you qualify as a pirate by sheer definition of performing acts of piracy, not because you actually HOLD interest in a company's offered goods. Kudos to your stand against those evil publishers. If you have to crush those developers who depend on them, then By God are they crushed!

Edit: Golly gee there's more!

On the whole "How can you make money off of something that exists because it is free" argument, I say:

The same way television stations still profit when people watch TVs online instead of on TV.
By selling ad space? Publishers of shows buy time slots on stations, and so do commercials.

So by that logic, if we load the game with as many ads as we can possibly muster, then profits for everybody!

Hey wait... Don't people hate in game advertising?

All you have to do is make it easier than pirating. DRM pretty much screwed the pooch on that one, and because pirating is so easy to do (and easy to learn), it will take a long time to recover.

I find this a bit hard to swallow. If you still have to pay for it, isn't it still more complicated than pirating it?

 

[nipsen]

Good comment, Shamus. Would that all people who wrote about games had actually bought a few of them themselves.

 

[ragestreet]

I just pirate because I get bored and want something to kill time with.
Edit: Since when do i need a reason to pirate whatever i want?

 

[jemborg]

Funny you should drop a link to the World of Goo site and yet fail to read what they have to say about Piracy and why they consider DRM is a "waste of time and money"...

http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/

Note that World of Goo is the second best seller at Amazon after WotLK.

 

[Deadman Walkin]

I honestly don't care. Sure people make up excuses, but I try to be as much of a dick as I can to them corporations who seem to have all the money and run everything!

 

[bkd69]

Abandonware
That's quite a gray-gray area you mentioned there. Honestly I don't know exactly how the legal situation works out there. Can rights on a game run out over time? Can it run out if the company producing the game doesn't exist anymore? What if the game can no more be bought anymore? There exists an association in the states trying to deny any use of games after their date ran out but what use is a game you can no more obtain unless from an abandonware site?

Actually, it's not gray at all, here in the US. Pretty much all games are still under copyright protection, unless they've been explicitly released by the authors/developers, and consequently, distribution of said titles is illegal.

Yes, copyrights are supposed to expire, however Berne convention compliance removed the need for specific registration, while there have been several extensions to the original term of 26 years. I believe the current term is 90 years, though I think the term was only 50 at the inception of the video game age. In fact, this was one of the arguments in the Grokster case, that while Congress did have the authority to extend copyright term limits, the perpetual extension of unexpired terms was unconstitutional, as the explicit intent of copyright was for a "limited term."

Now, as for the specific companies in question, many are still around, though in significantly different form (Atari, Activision), many are owned by EA (Origin), in some instances, the creators have reacquired the rights to their titles (Intellivision), and in many instances, the rights exist solely in the back of some file drawer in a liquidation company or bankruptcy attorney's file cabinet.

All that being said, while the illicit copying of abandonware is strictly illegal, when there's nothing being legitimately marketed, it's kind of hard to argue that there's any sort of moral infraction, though it can be argued that such distribution harms the development of any future markets for such titles. But that doesn't seem to have been the case to date.

There's an additional type of abandonware that rarely gets mentioned. Unlike original titles, games that rely on third party licenses are typically only licensed for a limited term, so all those Pern games, and Trillium software's sf adaptations will likely never see rerelease, as you would not only have to negotiate with the current holders of the game rights, you would also have to relicense the IP tie in.

 

[Skrapt]

Ah, might I suggest you actually dig down into the financials of a TV station. You might be surprised. Of course, it's harder to catch over this great sucking sound of the economy in general, but TV stations aren't doing so well on their online ventures. Turns out that they have to charge a lot less for an internet advertisement than they do for a television advert -- go figure. And funnily enough, this has an effect on their bottom line.

But don't worry, soon I'm sure we'll get to the 6 minute show amidst 24 minutes of advertisements and everybody will be so happy about it, right? Right?

At least they are attempting to solve the problem instead of sheltering themselves from it, as other media outlets refuse to show TV shows and the like online or outside of particular regions, so you know how I get around it? I pirate, because there's no other option as there are no DVD's around and they won't appear on my TV for years to come. It's the same problem with a older programs that are no longer on TV, they are not online and although they may still be in shops they are still exceptionally expensive so again I pirate. These problems could easily be solved (ironically with a service like Kangaroo which was canceled by some ignorant old people in the CC) with online, ad supported endeavors which may not bring in much profit, but at least they're bringing in some.

Beating piracy is about competing to offer a better service, the conscience talked so much about in the article may not be enough to keep most people from piracy currently but that's only because currently, the way companies deliver media to us is decades behind the file sharing scene. When that gap gets much closer like with online TV services, Steam, etc. it's surprising how many would be pirates will turn to these services despite the increased cost/ads.

 

[shMerker]

The argument that pirates are free advertising or an underserved market doesn't really succeed in taking the next step and showing that what they are doing is justified. The implication of such claims is that pirates should be left alone to do what they want or even have laws altered such that what they are doing is no longer illegal. What then? Once it is legal to download a copy of a video game for free, who pays for it? The time and materials required to make things will have to come from somewhere. You might say that things should be made more cheaply so that the cost is absorbed by the creators and made for the enjoyment of others rather than for profit. Fine then, stop playing games that cost millions to create, and stick to freeware games.

 

[Skrapt]

Kwil, the problem with you view is that you're breaking one of the first rules of marketing - don't make an enemy of your consumer, now a pirate may not be a direct consumer but as you may have noticed with the recent TPB trial, consumer opinion is overwhelmingly on their side as the prosecutors like the RIAA have made a habit out of suing people that mostly turned out to be innocent and refused to target the real problem of the uploaders.

And although this may only be anecdotal take the case of me, a few years ago I pirated pretty much all my music, such as all the SOAD albums. Now I have bought most of those albums as CD's do you think that would have happened if the RIAA had attempted to sue me? There is potential profit in pirates and only a fool would alienate them as a consumer base.

 

[oneofm4ny]

Games get pirated, because it can be done easily. In the first half of the 90ties piracy was rampant. It was easy to copy a floppy disk. This stopped with introduction of games on CD-Rom which couldn't be copied due to larger file size.
Now with widely available broadband game size doesn't matter anymore. So piracy is rampant again.

Yes I'm convinced that stuff gets pirated, because it's possible. People are always searching for a cheap advantage. That's why WOW gold is sold on the internet or bugs like the duplication bug in EVE got heavily exploited.

High morals are nice, but piracy is going to stay for a long time. I know it's wrong. I know game developers need to eat. (They are actually humans and not robots? I'm still shocked!) Thanks for the reminder. Doesn't change reality.

Publishers should ask themselves: what are pirates offering that we don't?
The heavily bugged PC release of Fallout 3 comes to mind. 2-3 days after release a cracker released a selfmade patch fixing most of the crash issues people had. Pirates are real bad people!

In my opinion there are several things wrong with the game industry:
-insanely high development cost: costing several millions to produce a blockbuster title must rake in more profit to break even. That's why suddenly the used games market is considered to be evil. EVIL!!11

-no or only few demos: How should I know if a game is worth 50-60 €? How should I know it runs on my outdated machine? Free demos are also a sort of advertisement. I remember playing the deus ex demo over and over again til I could finally buy it. Same with the sam & max episodes.
The funny thing about the whole demo issue is the difference between consoles and PCs. There are lot of demos available for download over PSN and Xbox live. But for the same games there aren't demos for PC. Why? Oh yeah right. PC gamers are pirates.

-futile race for better graphics and higher realism: I think that's a major cost factor. Graphics can be astonishing for about 15 minutes. Then you get used to it. Regarding things like the uncanny valley trying to create realistic looking characters instead of a more comic style approach might be a bad idea. I'm not sure.

Okay enough ranting

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Kwil, the problem with you view is that you're breaking one of the first rules of marketing - don't make an enemy of your consumer, now a pirate may not be a direct consumer but as you may have noticed with the recent TPB trial, consumer opinion is overwhelmingly on their side as the prosecutors like the RIAA have made a habit out of suing people that mostly turned out to be innocent and refused to target the real problem of the uploaders.

That's more a case for saying that the RIAA is being too timid to target the uploaders. That's not entirely their failing, as current laws (even that silly DMCA) just aren't up to the task; see the tangled mess of the current Pirate Bay case.

Consumer opinion will often support the "little guy" fighting the "big, mean corporation," especially when they don't see the acts of the little guy threatening consumers. (This thread, for instance, is a fine illustration of that thinking.) The problem is that consumers don't necessarily understand the ecology of the industry, and don't understand what the parasitic load of piracy does to those creating the content they want.

-- Steve

 

[Kevashim]

Shamus, kudos to you on this article that makes for relatively light reading in comparison to others on the same topic and further on provoking such an entertaining read via the ensuing comments.

I personally realised a while ago that piracy had just become a habit; there was no strong motivation or reason for engaging in it other than it being possible. The realisation that there were few titles strong enough on the PC market to illicit a purchase (amongst other contributing reasons) lead to a switch over to primarily console based gaming in its stead.

 

[Halbert]

Blah blah blah "character assassination" blah blah.

You, sir, fail at ethical philosophy. Shamus begins his article by establishing an ethical framework, piracy is wrong, and then expounding in it. To declare that an action is wrong and then work within the boundaries implied by it is not "character assassination." Do you even understand what the term means?

You'd be better off arguing why piracy is not wrong, why it is not unethical to gain illegitimate access to content. Although I suspect that if you could have you would have.

 

[Skrapt]

Consumer opinion will often support the "little guy" fighting the "big, mean corporation," especially when they don't see the acts of the little guy threatening consumers. (This thread, for instance, is a fine illustration of that thinking.) The problem is that consumers don't necessarily understand the ecology of the industry, and don't understand what the parasitic load of piracy does to those creating the content they want.

-- Steve

I think the biggest problem here is how bigger deal the industry is making of this, and this is why people are rooting for the pirates. Because when these companies make a fuss over piracy, nothing changes. EA said Crysis had a 90% piracy rate, did that stop them from releasing a sequel and Far Cry 2? Nope, the industry claims to lose all this money and business but nothing is visibly changing because the industry isn't really feeling any squeeze because piracy doesn't really create one.

The economic downturn is visible to the consumer, you have an immediate effect on your wallet and jobs are being lost daily. The movie industry then claims to lose $1,000,000,000+ to piracy, next in the news Hollywoods 100 million dollar movie has smashed records and made a gross of 150 million, their CEO is giving himself a $100,000 bonus this year and they've just signed deals to pay some actor $1,000,000 per week!

Piracy is a scapegoat, the movie/gaming industry isn't losing much if any money to it and they continue to release AAA titles and huge budget movies and continue to report even bigger profits. They make a big deal of piracy because no. of downloads x price is a big number but even if piracy was wiped out overnight, they wouldn't see a penny of that figure entering their figures.

 

[Rolling Thunder]

I pirate music, and some games I own are pirated, though they all fall into the 'own the hardcopy but fuck the DRM' class, or the 'It's no longer for sale' class.

Don't listen to the fuckers, Seamus. This is a balanced, rational and logically-constructed argument. Everyone knows that piracy is breaking the law, no matter how you look at it. You appropriate blame to both pirates and corporates, as is deserved, and I must congratualate you for a reasonable, well-thought-out article.

Kudos to you.