Exploring How Piracy Should Be Handled.

[jboking]

[small]Preface: I wrote this up a while ago, and I thought I'd share it with the escapist to see how they felt about the issue. How should piracy be handled?[/small]

How should piracy in the video game industry be handled? There are a ton of arguments on both sides, and I haven?t really chosen mine yet. One of the more common arguments is that because piracy is a crime and close to(but not completely) equitable to theft it should be handled by the government. This argument is fair, but, as software pirates are pursued by the government currently and piracy is still an issue, we can say the current approach isn?t working. Texas House Representative, Lamar Smith, recently made his ideas on the issue known by penning the Stop Online Piracy Act(SOPA). It was Smith?s thought that by giving corporations the power to declare what websites are hosting their copyrighted material and then forcing Internet Service Providers to block the offending websites DNS, we could stop online piracy. While this may or may not have been true, the bill itself had enough vague wording that it could be misconstrued and cause many websites (such as Wikipedia, Youtube, and Facebook) to come under scrutiny. This vague wording lead to the bill being protested by such prominent sites as Wikipedia and Google; who both essentially stated that the bill had the power to limit the first amendment (?Sopa protests planned,? 2012). This method of stopping piracy can be labeled attacking the offenders. However, there is another method.

Gabe Newell of Valve Software has a different idea. At DICE 2009, Newell gave the keynote speech where he talked, among other things, about piracy. It was Newell?s idea that pirates are essentially underserved customers and that by turning the process of buying video games into a service, rather than it just being a sale, you could incentivize being a paying customer. Essentially, Newell is saying that by making buying games attractive, you can minimize the number of pirates that download your Intellectual Property (Remo, 2009). He reinforced this by showing statistics about the sales of one of Valve?s games called Left 4 Dead. Newell used his digital distribution platform, Steam, to discount the game. During the small amount of time Left 4 Dead was discounted, it sold 3,000% more than the game did at its launch (Leone, 2009). This kind of price flexibility is viewed as part of treating the games as a service. Along with this was Newell?s idea of breaking down the consumer-producer barriers and providing new material to existing games to incentivize sales and to retain customers.

One great argument against Newell?s idea of breaking down this consumer-producer barrier and providing games as a service comes in the form of the Humble Indie Bundle. This pack of independently made games had one truly unique quality: You could pay whatever amount you wanted for it, even 1 cent. They also provided the game with no Digital Rights Management software, which is used to monitor customers in an attempt to stop pirates. This is a great example of breaking down the barrier between consumer and producer, where the producers are just interested in spreading their Intellectual Property and sharing it with the consumers. Unfortunately, over 25% of the downloads of the Humble Indie Bundle in 2010 were illegally gotten and this doesn?t even include the people who used a torrent program to obtain the bundle (?Reflections on the?, 2010). It would seem that better service alone is not enough to stop pirates.

This does bring up one of the great fallacies used to defend Software Piracy: ?The problem isn?t poor morality on the part of the pirates, it?s that the price of video games is too high!? The case of the Humble Indie Bundle helps to expose this as a False Cause. However, policy makers that view the issue of piracy as being solely related to an individual?s poor morality are exhibiting a fallacy in Overlooking Alternatives. There are some people who live in countries where certain video games cannot be obtained. They pirate the material because they cannot buy it, not because they don?t want to. Most often, you will see False Cause occur in arguments about piracy, as the first thing you have to do to stop piracy is examine why it occurs in the first place.

I feel the strengths and weaknesses of both sides of this argument are clear. Government intervention is overpowering and can lead to abuse, but it does go far in ensuring that piracy will stop. Treating entertainment as a service is less invasive and inviting to the customer, but it provides no guarantee that it will stop piracy (Though it may curb it). This is just the start of my research on the issue, more to come.

sources​

Leone, M. (2009, February 18). Left 4 dead on steam sold more last weekend than at launch. Retrieved
from http://www.1up.com/news/left-4-dead-steam-sold

Reflections on the humble indie bundle piracy. (2010, May 26). Retrieved from http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2010/05/26/reflections-on-the-humble-indie-bundle-piracy/

Remo, C. (2009, February 19). DICE 09: valve's newell on 'using your customer base to
reach new customers'. Retrieved from http://www.gamasutra.com/php-
bin/news_index.php?story=22378

Sopa protests planned by google, wikipedia and others on jan. 18. (2012, January 17). Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sopa-protests-planned-by-google-wikipedia-and-others-on-jan-18/2012/01/17/gIQALKBL6P_story.html

 

[Esotera]

I'd love to see more game developers release their work as free software. We have plenty of creative commons works for books, movies, music, art, etc, but there's a lot less choice for games, and very few genuinely good games that are available free, which would help alleviate piracy.

People are always going to pirate, the best thing the industry can do is add a few, non-intrusive protections, which will stop a few people. Developing entirely via kickstarter & offering low prices is also going to be the future. Publishing is a doomed business model in pretty much all industries, digital distribution is the future.

 

[DoPo]

This does bring up one of the great fallacies used to defend Software Piracy: ?The problem isn?t poor morality on the part of the pirates, it?s that the price of video games is too high!? The case of the Humble Indie Bundle helps to expose this as a False Cause.

No, no, no. What you wrote before this point was fine, but this is a wrong way to look at it. Esotera already said what apparently must be repeated over and over again in these discussions - some people are just going to pirate. Some of them truly do pirate because they can't afford games (let's leave it at that, don't want to go more thorough right now), others just because. There are lots of reasons to pirate stuff, it's difficult to make a generalisation. You can't say "Oh, the HIB was pirated, therefore all pirates don't care if they can afford software or not!". What this is showing is that there are some software pirates who are just irredeemable.

Whatever the action take is, heavily locking down software with DRM is repeatedly shown to be ineffective. And that is because DRM isn't handled properly. "When all you have is a hammer" and so on.

Gabe Newell has the right idea - make selling more appealing. One reason to pirate stuff is because it is so much easier, as humorously shown in this [http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones] Oatmeal comic. So, Steam is a step in the right direction - it makes a lot of things easier. Of course, it could be improved, but still.

This would help reduce piracy but not stop it. Because it cannot be stopped. It's unreasonable to claim that it can.

 

[Lucem712]

Well, I enjoy how FOSS deals with it. You release everything for free and rely on donations and your userbase to contribute or charge money for true technically support.

Though, it's probably not viable for everything in the marketplace

 

[Uber Waddles]

The forums have a rule about talking about piracy, and for a good reason.

Its not something you can just simply handle or stop. You have two clear cut sides, as well as a massive moral grey area. No matter how much you try to make something an incentive, you still are faced with people who just want a product without paying for it. And when it comes to free, people will do ridiculous things.

"Cant play Online? Cant get patches? Cant do X, Y, or Z? Still got it for free" is the mentality. And you don't really get the moral stigma of theft - what you are taking isn't something physical, and your ownership of it doesn't translate to someones loss of it. In all respects, piracy is a Copyright issue - and its hard to sympathize with multi-billion dollar corporations. Its often said "Im doing this to try it out" or "I wouldnt have purchased it anyway" or "I dont support the company" - all weak, childish excuses, but ones used none the less.

On the flip side, you have people defending art. You should always support the artists they say, and that taking something without paying is just a scumbag move. People put time and effort into making that product, and taking it without due compensation is just wrong - thats like asking you to work without pay. Granted, in the case of music, that person may be rich - but thats just how life works. In terms of videogames, those guys aren't making boatloads of cash, but a pretty decent ammount. Its seen as a harm, rather than anything good.

And then we have the grey area. What if the person lives in a country they where game prices are outrageous, or unavailable? What if I live in a first world country but I'm extremely poor - I deserve entertainment too? What if its just a ROM hack - or a backup of a game I already own? A game I used to own? An iteration of a game I currently own? What if I have the the funds to play it, but the game would cost me $200 because its rare, or I need to mod my console to play foreign games? Where is the line in the sand, and what counts as crossing that line? Does it effect the industry, since all the losses are hypothetical?

You compound those three arguements, and you get something that cant be handled or discussed maturely. Its a complicated issue, and while there are ways I think it could be handeled, they won't be used. DRM is what people use now because they know they cant stop it - they just want to make it as much of a pain in the ass to crack to ensure first week sales arent effected - those are what really matter in the business.

Its not going to stop unless there is a HUGE crackdown, which would mean losses of privacy among other factors. Services like Steam are a step in the right direction - but even they are a bit too heavy handed when it comes to stopping Piracy (for example - you have to be Online to turn off Online mode, which makes playing games when disconnected a pain in the ass).

 

[Praetox]

Even if it doesn't stop piracy, I absolutely love CD Projekt's reaction to the matter, by just making awesome, DRM-free games and showing immense customer appreciation. They know people will always pirate, so they just try to make their paying customers as comfortable as possible

 

[tendaji]

I hope we see the major publishers crashing down soon. Cant wait.

I hope you love not playing games then.

*Glances at kickstarter projects*

So you want to rely on consumers to fund brand new IPs that nobody has never heard of, only based on the goodwill of the developer's promises at the pre-preproduction phase of game development? The only games that would possibly receive Kickstarter projects will be those that are sequels to games that never got another chance at making a sequel.

And even then, how long will customer's support funding production costs and spending the money on the game before they just stop donating period, due to lack of interest/funding/etc.

 

[Rednog]

Developing entirely via kickstarter & offering low prices is also going to be the future. Publishing is a doomed business model in pretty much all industries, digital distribution is the future.

Sorry, but this is a pretty naive view of how kickstarter and the industry works.
Kickstarter is precisely what it says, it helps to kick-start projects, it doesn't fund them entirely.
Kickstarter takes a cut of the money, the government takes a cut of the money, whatever digital retailer they use ie: Steam takes a cut of the money, creating and sending out all the rewards takes a chunk of the money. In the end they are left with enough money to get off the ground and make a game in hopes that when they finally hit the market they will be able to turn a profit. This isn't a case where they launch the game day 1 and they are starting at a break even point. The companies are most likely at a negative.
I mean look at this kickstarter, they raised $37,000 but after all their costs they have $4,000 left for the actual making of the game. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/116805-Star-Command-Dev-Reveals-Where-the-Kickstarter-Money-Went
Also, a lot of these projects have people who believe enough in the project that they are essentially working with the promise that they will get paid in the future when the game sells.
This wouldn't work for any huge titles, I mean look at any of the big games and how huge the credit list is, do you honestly think that many people will work on the promise that the game will sell big? If it flops a ton of people would have worked for nothing.
This is why publishers exist, big games cost big money and publishers are the bankroll for the game, everyone gets paid upfront for their job.
In terms of funding small projects, yes kick starter can be the future, but it will never replace publishers in terms of any major project.

 

[Sinclair Solutions]

The forums have a rule about talking about piracy, and for a good reason.

Its not something you can just simply handle or stop. You have two clear cut sides, as well as a massive moral grey area. No matter how much you try to make something an incentive, you still are faced with people who just want a product without paying for it. And when it comes to free, people will do ridiculous things.

"Cant play Online? Cant get patches? Cant do X, Y, or Z? Still got it for free" is the mentality. And you don't really get the moral stigma of theft - what you are taking isn't something physical, and your ownership of it doesn't translate to someones loss of it. In all respects, piracy is a Copyright issue - and its hard to sympathize with multi-billion dollar corporations. Its often said "Im doing this to try it out" or "I wouldnt have purchased it anyway" or "I dont support the company" - all weak, childish excuses, but ones used none the less.

On the flip side, you have people defending art. You should always support the artists they say, and that taking something without paying is just a scumbag move. People put time and effort into making that product, and taking it without due compensation is just wrong - thats like asking you to work without pay. Granted, in the case of music, that person may be rich - but thats just how life works. In terms of videogames, those guys aren't making boatloads of cash, but a pretty decent ammount. Its seen as a harm, rather than anything good.

And then we have the grey area. What if the person lives in a country they where game prices are outrageous, or unavailable? What if I live in a first world country but I'm extremely poor - I deserve entertainment too? What if its just a ROM hack - or a backup of a game I already own? A game I used to own? An iteration of a game I currently own? What if I have the the funds to play it, but the game would cost me $200 because its rare, or I need to mod my console to play foreign games? Where is the line in the sand, and what counts as crossing that line? Does it effect the industry, since all the losses are hypothetical?

You compound those three arguements, and you get something that cant be handled or discussed maturely. Its a complicated issue, and while there are ways I think it could be handeled, they won't be used. DRM is what people use now because they know they cant stop it - they just want to make it as much of a pain in the ass to crack to ensure first week sales arent effected - those are what really matter in the business.

Its not going to stop unless there is a HUGE crackdown, which would mean losses of privacy among other factors. Services like Steam are a step in the right direction - but even they are a bit too heavy handed when it comes to stopping Piracy (for example - you have to be Online to turn off Online mode, which makes playing games when disconnected a pain in the ass).

I think this is probably the best summary of this issue I have ever read. You should be commended, sir.

 

[jboking]

This does bring up one of the great fallacies used to defend Software Piracy: ?The problem isn?t poor morality on the part of the pirates, it?s that the price of video games is too high!? The case of the Humble Indie Bundle helps to expose this as a False Cause.

No, no, no. What you wrote before this point was fine, but this is a wrong way to look at it. Esotera already said what apparently must be repeated over and over again in these discussions - some people are just going to pirate.

You do not stop attempting to curb the number of times a crime occurs because it is going to happen anyway. You could apply the same logic to regular theft, murder, any crime and see the problems there. I won't insult your intelligence by going into that any further.

Some of them truly do pirate because they can't afford games (let's leave it at that, don't want to go more thorough right now), others just because. There are lots of reasons to pirate stuff, it's difficult to make a generalisation. You can't say "Oh, the HIB was pirated, therefore all pirates don't care if they can afford software or not!". What this is showing is that there are some software pirates who are just irredeemable.

This is true, there are more than one cause, but the defense of price is so commonly used that it begins to look like the only reason. We have to provide evidence that suggests there are people that pirate without price being the motivator behind it at all. This was my first small post about the issue and I was using this to open up to the idea that neither the "Make games more attractive" or the "Punish all the criminals" approach work on their own. I'm at the point almost having my final conclusion on the issue, which is that both are necessary to curb piracy and create a better games industry.

Whatever the action take is, heavily locking down software with DRM is repeatedly shown to be ineffective. And that is because DRM isn't handled properly. "When all you have is a hammer" and so on.

Gabe Newell has the right idea - make selling more appealing. One reason to pirate stuff is because it is so much easier, as humorously shown in this [http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones] Oatmeal comic. So, Steam is a step in the right direction - it makes a lot of things easier. Of course, it could be improved, but still.

This would help reduce piracy but not stop it. Because it cannot be stopped. It's unreasonable to claim that it can.

If steam is a step in the right direction, it would go to show that DRM is a step in the right direction, as steam is DRM. It's DRM with a digital distribution store attached. That doesn't mean it is bad, just that we can't say that DRM isn't handled properly when Steam is a clear example of how it is being handled properly today.

Also, since my OP did talk about government control, you should know that there is a way to stop piracy. It can be as simple as shutting down public ISP's, which the USFG could do if it decided that the internet was a threat to national security. Hell, as it is, the president could mandate that any day without having to be approved by congress. However, that is just being silly. What we're really looking for is reducing piracy to the point of insignificance, and heavy law enforcement mixed with laws like SOPA on an international level could get that done. The issue is that no one wants laws like SOPA to come about because of the implications. However, there are laws out there about Piracy that have worked exceedingly well. Check the DMCA and how it effected the hosting of copyrighted material on United States hosted websites.

 

[jboking]

The forums have a rule about talking about piracy, and for a good reason.

Its not something you can just simply handle or stop. You have two clear cut sides, as well as a massive moral grey area. No matter how much you try to make something an incentive, you still are faced with people who just want a product without paying for it. And when it comes to free, people will do ridiculous things.

"Cant play Online? Cant get patches? Cant do X, Y, or Z? Still got it for free" is the mentality. And you don't really get the moral stigma of theft - what you are taking isn't something physical, and your ownership of it doesn't translate to someones loss of it. In all respects, piracy is a Copyright issue - and its hard to sympathize with multi-billion dollar corporations. Its often said "Im doing this to try it out" or "I wouldnt have purchased it anyway" or "I dont support the company" - all weak, childish excuses, but ones used none the less.

As I said to DoPo, this was actually my first entry on the issue and was about 3 months old, I just wanted to share. What I am doing now is looking at how we can combine typical law enforcement with proactive behavior on the part of the developers to create a better future for the games industry. One with substantially less piracy.

On the flip side, you have people defending art. You should always support the artists they say, and that taking something without paying is just a scumbag move. People put time and effort into making that product, and taking it without due compensation is just wrong - thats like asking you to work without pay. Granted, in the case of music, that person may be rich - but thats just how life works. In terms of videogames, those guys aren't making boatloads of cash, but a pretty decent ammount. Its seen as a harm, rather than anything good.

And then we have the grey area. What if the person lives in a country they where game prices are outrageous, or unavailable? What if I live in a first world country but I'm extremely poor - I deserve entertainment too? What if its just a ROM hack - or a backup of a game I already own? A game I used to own? An iteration of a game I currently own? What if I have the the funds to play it, but the game would cost me $200 because its rare, or I need to mod my console to play foreign games? Where is the line in the sand, and what counts as crossing that line? Does it effect the industry, since all the losses are hypothetical?

You compound those three arguements, and you get something that cant be handled or discussed maturely. Its a complicated issue, and while there are ways I think it could be handeled, they won't be used. DRM is what people use now because they know they cant stop it - they just want to make it as much of a pain in the ass to crack to ensure first week sales arent effected - those are what really matter in the business.

Its not going to stop unless there is a HUGE crackdown, which would mean losses of privacy among other factors. Services like Steam are a step in the right direction - but even they are a bit too heavy handed when it comes to stopping Piracy (for example - you have to be Online to turn off Online mode, which makes playing games when disconnected a pain in the ass).

Honestly, I believe that piracy can be curbed substantially if international law was involved, rather than just US law. Part of the problem right now is that there are many countries where there are no laws restricting copyright infringement on the internet that could actually be enforced. If international laws were introduced, foreign websites that host this material could be found responsible for having to take down said material, or, more preferably, the people who put the material online could face litigation. However, that, by itself, is not the best situation. Companies like Valve do have a good idea. Create price flexibility, increase communication between consumer and producer, and increase availability.

My issue with your analysis is what you see as a gray area. Simply understanding copyright law in your country can give you the answer. If you physically own the product, you can create/download a backup of it for your personal use (you can't share it with others), as you own the product. If the product is exceedingly old and unavailable, the most you have to do is look to see if the company who created it still exists. If the copyright entitled the company to the ownership of the product, yet the company no longer exists, the copyright is effectively dissolved. A publisher may have the rights to the game, but that is something you need to research yourself. Many publishers own rights to more obscure games and recognize the problem of availability and are thus putting those games online as downloads which you can pay for (take the eshop, PSclassics, GOG, etc as examples). The only real gray area that I've found is the issue of lack of availability due to one's country and that is mostly because I've yet to research that. Gray area, in my opinion, only exists on the issue due to a lack of research on the one claiming the gray area.

There are other issues, as there are numerous 'causes' for piracy, though I feel a plan of combining law enforcement with developer service could address nearly all of them.

Sorry for ranting at you.

 

[AngleWyrm]

Neptune's Pride [http://np.ironhelmet.com/] is an online PvP galactic conquest game. I was enjoying it for a while, and wanted to buy it; mostly I wanted to give the developer $10 or so as a genuine "thank you, this is fun."

But when I went to do so, I was hit with the Service business model; the game offered recurring monthly fees instead of a purchase. I was so turned off by that arrangement that I didn't give him the money I had planned to give him.

 

[DoPo]

If steam is a step in the right direction, it would go to show that DRM is a step in the right direction, as steam is DRM. It's DRM with a digital distribution store attached. That doesn't mean it is bad, just that we can't say that DRM isn't handled properly when Steam is a clear example of how it is being handled properly today.

And I never once claimed that DRM is undesirable. Abusing what DRM can do is the issue. DRM is fine when it's handled properly. Think of a lock - you want to stop random people from wandering inside your house, but you don't want to do so at a significant cost of your own ability to enter. DRM can very well serve a similar function - for example, it can try to stop random people making a free copy for their buddy to play (You need a CD to play the game or the game has to be in your Steam account to launch it and so on). You don't want to stop actual paying customers from playing the game. As has happened before. Example: when Ubisoft introduced their always online DRM and people couldn't play Assassins Creed (if I recall correctly, that was the title) for a day or two, because their servers went offline.

Also, since my OP did talk about government control, you should know that there is a way to stop piracy. It can be as simple as shutting down public ISP's

Shutting down the internet will in no way stop piracy. It may reduce it, yes, but not stop it. Piracy existed before the internet and still does. The internet just makes it less of a hassle to transport. People still can get a hold of physical copies.

And SOPA is so utterly stupid that it will not have a huge impact on piracy.

What we're really looking for is reducing piracy to the point of insignificance

Which is the point of "some people will just pirate". If they want to, they would.

and heavy law enforcement mixed with laws like SOPA on an international level could get that done. The issue is that no one wants laws like SOPA to come about because of the implications.

Also, because SOPA will not have a big impact on piracy. The implications are surely undesirable too, but even with them aside, SOPA simply wasn't going to be able to tackle piracy on it's own. It was a stupid way to tackle piracy in the first place.

However, there are laws out there about Piracy that have worked exceedingly well. Check the DMCA and how it effected the hosting of copyrighted material on United States hosted websites.

This I do not question. Laws can work. But they need to be smart and designed by intelligent people who understand the issue. As it stands, the people currently in charge are not the best equipped to deal with piracy. Case in point - SOPA again.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Those major publishers are the only reason you have kickstarter projects in the first place. Without them there wont be enough people to fund one or people who know about them.

The collapse of the Publisher system today only means that the market will regrow with new boundaries, and (hopefully) a new, better direction. But gaming as a whole is far too popular to stay down for long.

Further, computer and video gaming started as a hobby, it would easily survive as a hobby.
I think you grossly underestimate the amount of indie talent out there. Do not forget that some of the most influential forces in gaming's infancy started out purely as amateurs at one point; they didn't just grab tailored educations from a college and go to work.

Valve started as Quake modders out of their own basements. id Software's first games were not the shooters they became known for, or the 3d engines that drove the business (Fun fact: CoD4.x runs on a heavily modified Quake 3 engine), but side-scrolling platformers.

Indie developers have more tools for efficient coding and production today than ever before. The tech gap between hobby-modder and professional has never been more narrow.

It's not like they can't succeed without Publisher backing; Terraria did incredibly well in sales last year, and kept pace with CoD4.4's usage stats on Steam during the holidays.

Publishers in their original role were not the problem; they became a problem when they overstepped their role as distributors and became the outright owner of everything they distributed.
It's a system that consolidates power in such a way that the creator ultimately loses power over everything, including their career. If such a system is starting to cause serious problems within the market, then clearly that system must be eliminated, and replaced.

 

[hawkeye52]

I think peoples general perspective at piracy is wrong. The way I see it is that piracy is a symptom of a problem as opposed to the problem itself.

Take a look at the top 10 pirated games of 2011 and then the top 10 games of 2011 and you will most likely see that the most pirated ones are games that are in their Xth reincarnation (Fifa series, CoD series, BF series stick out on that list) while in fact the games that are considered the best often stay near the bottom if not off the pirate list entirely (highest rated pirated game on their was portal 2 coming in at 5th I think).

I would have thought that this has shown that only games which rehash old IP's and/or are developed by developers which are known to be mediocre at best tend to be the people hit worst by it. You also have to look at the top pirated game which was crysis 2. People probably downloaded this just to see the game as opposed to play it and act as a rig test game since its main USP is so shallow for just being "OMG LOOK AT THE GRAPHICS" and then being a shooter behind that.

Also the people that complain about piracy the most tend to be publishers of big brand name IP's that rehash old products over and over again (Activision, EA). Valve stays relatively quiet as do other smaller less known developers who have a dedicated fanbase like that of Paradox Plaza (publishers of Arrowhead games (Magicka) and developers of Grand strategy games who conincidentily have no DRM on their products at all) or Tale world games (devs of Mount and Blade who just ran a simple cd-key). CD projeckt (or however you spell their name) the developers of the Witcher announced despite their attempts at DRM have just ditched it completely since they have realised that DRM is completely useless because pirates will get what they want anyway and have even started distributing via platforms like GOG.com which runs 0 DRM.

Piracy only heavily occurs in games that are more of the same generally so I generally see piracy as a way of seeing how many people are actually willing to trust the dev enough to buy their game without seeing what the gameplay is like. Also on that issue the fall of demos etc has probably contributed to a rise in piracy. For example I would have never bought and probably just pirated Company of Heroes if I hadn't played a demo of it. Same goes for Warhammer 40k Space marine since I'm generally bored of games like that but Space marine provided a new angle which piqued my interest.

Though as people have said though. It doesn't matter what you do piracy will always be there just because it is pretty much and theres not much to stop it.

 

[DoPo]

I think peoples general perspective at piracy is wrong. The way I see it is that piracy is a symptom of a problem as opposed to the problem itself.

Take a look at the top 10 pirated games of 2011 and then the top 10 games of 2011 and you will most likely see that the most pirated ones are games that are in their Xth reincarnation (Fifa series, CoD series, BF series stick out on that list) while in fact the games that are considered the best often stay near the bottom if not off the pirate list entirely (highest rated pirated game on their was portal 2 coming in at 5th I think).

I would have thought that this has shown that only games which rehash old IP's and/or are developed by developers which are known to be mediocre at best tend to be the people hit worst by it. You also have to look at the top pirated game which was crysis 2. People probably downloaded this just to see the game as opposed to play it and act as a rig test game since its main USP is so shallow for just being "OMG LOOK AT THE GRAPHICS" and then being a shooter behind that.

Umm, no. The games that get pirated the most are usually the most popular ones. Try and make a comparison between sales and piracy, I'm pretty sure you will see a correlation. It has held true in the past, I doubt it has changed in the last two years.

Also, for everybody else, here are the numbers reported for most torrent downloads

Spoiler: most pirated games

Name of source withheld, just in case.

So it's mostly the hype that pushes more piracy, not people not liking the game. In fact,if people didn't like the game, it would stand to reason that they wouldn't pirate it.

Also the people that complain about piracy the most tend to be publishers of big brand name IP's that rehash old products over and over again (Activision, EA). Valve stays relatively quiet as do other smaller less known developers who have a dedicated fanbase like that of Paradox Plaza (publishers of Arrowhead games (Magicka) and developers of Grand strategy games who conincidentily have no DRM on their products at all) or Tale world games (devs of Mount and Blade who just ran a simple cd-key). CD projeckt (or however you spell their name) the developers of the Witcher announced despite their attempts at DRM have just ditched it completely since they have realised that DRM is completely useless because pirates will get what they want anyway and have even started distributing via platforms like GOG.com which runs 0 DRM.

But as you see - big games - more piracy. Small games studios could get away with flying below the radar, so to say. The fact that they don't complain, doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.

Also on that issue the fall of demos etc has probably contributed to a rise in piracy.

I agree, it's way too easy to get a game that you cannot play at all. having demos or at least realistic requirements for the game would help.

 

[Snotnarok]

Part of the biggest problem I feel with piracy is that it's simply a reaction to game makers not pricing their games. New game? 60 bucks+ no matter what.

The Heavy Rain dev came out and said that over 1/4th of sales were used and that is hurting them. Let's not go into how they made a really really nice profit despite used sales but it's not really the used sales. It was a 4-6 hour long game that had very little replayablity that cost 60 bucks, of course people are going to sell it and get something else! Reviews will tell them it's not worth the 60 bucks and they'll wait till it goes used.


Piracy is the same exact thing in the light that, someone wants to play a game but knows it's not worth the full price, or the creators were just dumb and didn't release a demo for the game leaving people to wonder how it plays/if their system can run it.

There's a lot of things pubs/devs can do to sell their games better. Lower price points for games that are short, not make every fucking game look ultra real, and not put stupid USELESS DRM into a game, be a company other than Steam to have sales.

If you dive into digital games they can be more expensive than the disc copy (Xbox live) or they're identical but sales happen making it easier to get them ...but then to rub salt into the wounds even if a game does go on sale, often the 20-60 dollars worth of DLC never does.

Look at Mass Effect 2, the price dropped pretty quickly on PC...the DLC? Same price as always in the xbl/bw points format. The GoG president came out saying these big sales hurts customers and game companies, they don't. They make people willing to buy games that were overpriced to begin with.

Angry bit!I really don't have much pity for game companies since they are constantly looking to do scummy things to get money, weird DLC, bullshitting system requirements, DRM, not even including a manual with the game, charging extra for shit that would have been included 5 years ago. Yes games are 'technically' cheaper than they were, but cartridges were also more expensive, the boxes were better, manuals were thicker, there typically was more content and games made less money then. Now they make more profit, give less, have taken away and yet everyone is out to hurt them, the used games market, pirates.

 

[kingthrall]

Solution to Piracy-

1. Let Refunds for dis-satisfied customers on their products, Boost the Encryption on cd's to make then 10 times harder to copy. I mean online registration anyway makes a lot of multiplayer games impervious to piracy.

2. Price of games- It all depends on where you are from and what kind of game it is, but when I travel oversea's they set the prices too high for just the average guy in Romania or Hungary to buy it. However in Australia we have the luxury of purchasing brand new releases as we have a good economy. There are global pricing issues that need to be addressed more than Western prices.


That said I know for a fact that in Russia, Ukraine they have torrent sites that let them play games on steam. They have serious organised internet piracy websites going on and my friend was playing in Ukraine cod 3 using pirated Russian downloads. Not only that but they get the language packs also, and due to the language barrier most people have it makes it even harder to track down this issue.

 

[drednoahl]

I can only speak for myself. What stops me from pirating is devs making a product I want to buy - something I value or even cherish. The vast majority of devs and publishers simply are not doing this.

I'm very much against piracy, but I feel very strongly that consumers are being thought of as potential pirates rather than a potential sale. That attitude more than anything else is rampant among devs and publishers, which leads to some of them making games that copy competitors games that are already proven sales. Meanwhile some publishers are using piracy as an excuse try to get laws passed like SOPA which infringe on what I consider my rights, but they are doing virtually nothing about piracy directly - that makes me very suspicious of their motives; there are some publishers I no longer trust. Now I like to think I'm a fairly tolerant bloke, but I do not buy stuff from people I don't trust, so I don't think it's reaching to think that a significant amount piracy is simply down to gamers not trusting publishers to deliver a product that works as advertised.

At least in my case, AAA games are dead - not even worth pirating their fiscal value is that low to me, and that is a publisher problem - not mine.

Mind, my last game purchase was Space Channel 5 pt2 (last night) for no better reason than to throw SEGA some money... it took two hours to get working. At times like that I honestly hoped that piracy cannot be stopped because it was getting mighty close to my last option to play the game I paid for (turned out to be steams fault, not SEGAs after all.)

Damn I'm rambling again... about stopping piracy, I've no idea. Loads of ideas on how to reduce it, but in a world where people cannot be civil to someone just because of their faith/sex/colour etc, I think we have bigger issues to worry about. I wonder if either devs or publishers have actually asked (not demand) pirates not to pirate their games though - might be worth a shot even if it means they find out why pirates were pirating their games.

 

[Antari]

I can only speak for myself. What stops me from pirating is devs making a product I want to buy - something I value or even cherish. The vast majority of devs and publishers simply are not doing this.

I'm very much against piracy, but I feel very strongly that consumers are being thought of as potential pirates rather than a potential sale. That attitude more than anything else is rampant among devs and publishers, which leads to some of them making games that copy competitors games that are already proven sales. Meanwhile some publishers are using piracy as an excuse try to get laws passed like SOPA which infringe on what I consider my rights, but they are doing virtually nothing about piracy directly - that makes me very suspicious of their motives; there are some publishers I no longer trust. Now I like to think I'm a fairly tolerant bloke, but I do not buy stuff from people I don't trust, so I don't think it's reaching to think that a significant amount piracy is simply down to gamers not trusting publishers to deliver a product that works as advertised.

At least in my case, AAA games are dead - not even worth pirating their fiscal value is that low to me, and that is a publisher problem - not mine.

Mind, my last game purchase was Space Channel 5 pt2 (last night) for no better reason than to throw SEGA some money... it took two hours to get working. At times like that I honestly hoped that piracy cannot be stopped because it was getting mighty close to my last option to play the game I paid for (turned out to be steams fault, not SEGAs after all.)

Damn I'm rambling again... about stopping piracy, I've no idea. Loads of ideas on how to reduce it, but in a world where people cannot be civil to someone just because of their faith/sex/colour etc, I think we have bigger issues to worry about. I wonder if either devs or publishers have actually asked (not demand) pirates not to pirate their games though - might be worth a shot even if it means they find out why pirates were pirating their games.

So very Ninja'd ...

If the industry wants to try to eliminate piracy they can start by changing how they do things. They can stop blaming everyone and everything but themselves. Then there might be a chance they could eliminate piracy.