Dastardly said:
Greg Tito said:
The arguments for game piracy seem a bit flimsy in response to stories like CD Projekt's DRM-less Witcher 2 being pirated more than it was purchased or this abominable list of pirated games from TorrentFreak [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115003-TorrentFreak-Reveals-Top-Pirated-Games-of-2011]. The games industry can't just ignore these thefts, and no amount of backwards logic can argue the impact of piracy away.
And now we are treated to the sounds of:
"It's not a lost sale, because they were never going to buy it anyway." (unverifiable ex-post-facto justification)
"Stop calling it theft. The publisher is not denied access or deprived of any property." (a "no true Scotsman" regarding the definition of "theft")
"Well the publishers need to stop being greedy, and maybe people will support them." (a deflection and complete change of topic. could be called "the Robin Hood defense.")
"If they made better games, maybe people wouldn't pirate." (logically inside-out, since any improvement to the game itself would
equally improve the pirated copy. No disincentive is established.)
"People only pirate because of DRM." (reversal of the actual state of cause-effect, since DRM measures were created as a
reaction to piracy, and DRM-less games are still frequently pirated)
So, now that we've got that out of the way, good article and I'm glad to hear lawyers weighing in on it.
Lol. Because I have nothing better to do.
1. "It's not a lost sale." Well, the counter-point, "It
is a lost sale", is an equally unverifiable claim, and using it in some kind of mathematical calculation to imply you would've made X amount of extra money if there was no piracy is wishful thinking.
2. Correct as stated, but rather misses the rather more serious point that copyright law was never intended to imply that you 'owned' your work. Quite the opposite in fact. Your ability to financially benefit from your work through the use of copyright law is contingent upon you agreeing to give up any attempt to claim ownership of your work. Of course, this is tangential, because it has no direct bearing on piracy. Piracy is still copyright infringement, and still a crime, irrespective of if "Intellectual property" is a valid notion. - However, I really don't think "Intellectual property" is an idea that should be allowed to exist, because it has some seriously nasty and ultimately unworkable follow-on effects. (mostly in regards to such things as 'fair use', derived works, and the like. if Creative works were indeed property, by what logic could you even argue for something like 'fair use'? existing? No, this is something dependent upon Copyright not in fact being 'ownership'. - There are other problems too, but this is quite lengthy already.)
3. No problem here as such. Greed is evident, and problematic, but that is a completely different discussion that has no real direct relevance to piracy.
4. "If they made better games..." That's not really a meaningful statement in and of itself. If better is defined in terms of the game itself, it probably wouldn't have much effect. If however it is defined in terms of the consequences of copy protection... Then it becomes a rather different issue. Pirated games here are inherently
better than their official counterparts, simply for being less likely to fail to run, or do weird awkward things to your computer. (Starforce and the like come to mind, but even basic CD checks can be really irritating.)
This however is an issue with the direct consequences of DRM, not so much with the 'quality' of the game itself.
5. "people only pirate because of DRM", Reversal of cause and effect? Well, yes, and no. It's true DRM exists as a response to piracy, but Cracks exist both as an aid to piracy, and as a response to people annoyed with the restrictions imposed by DRM. To say that DRM is solely a factor that
reduces piracy, is to say that DRM never fails, and never does anything that annoys anyone. That is perhaps the riskiest calculation a game publisher can make...
What are the negative consequences on sales for implementing DRM? vs. What are the positive effects of DRM on sales?
Now, as a case in point, the OP states:
The arguments for game piracy seem a bit flimsy in response to stories like CD Projekt's DRM-less Witcher 2 being pirated more than it was purchased or this abominable list of pirated games from TorrentFreak. The games industry can't just ignore these thefts, and no amount of backwards logic can argue the impact of piracy away
This is after all an empty statement when you get right down to it. That the Witcher 2 has had more pirated copies downloaded than it has had sales, certainly demonstrates that removing DRM doesn't eliminate piracy. (Why would it?)
However, neither does it prove anything about the effectiveness of DRM. Have a look at the figures for games that use significant amounts of DRM, and you might notice that their piracy figures are pretty similar.
If anything, this calls into question the usefulness of DRM as a concept, because DRM takes a lot of resources to implement and deal with, and can potentially cause a lot of aggravation to your customers.
(Pirates aren't customers, and oddly, they don't really have to deal with DRM either.)
So... To bother with DRM, you have to have some decent evidence that you actually gain something from implementing it.
It's easier to go without DRM than with it, so the burden here is not to prove that DRM-free games aren't pirated, but rather that DRM is a worthwhile investment that actually improves your profits.
Yet, that is never the tone these kind of articles set. Nor is it even acknowledged incidentally that this is in fact the real question about DRM.
No point wasting money on something that doesn't work, so it's important to be able to demonstrate that it does something useful.
Anyway... That's enough silly devils advocate stuff for one day.
