Lionhead: "Piracy these days on PC is probably less problematic than second-hand sales on the Xbox"

[BloodSquirrel]

Lastly, if publishers are so worried about second-hand sales, then maybe they should focus on creating games which people will want to hold on to. The reason games are now sold second-hand so much isn't just because of the high cost of each game at launch- it's because publishers and developers have spent so long copying each other, following each other, and sponging off each other that many gamers have now come to see modern games as entirely interchangeable and dispensable. Why should EA expect someone to not sell their copy of BattleShooter6 when next month is seeing the release of FutureWarSoldier7, and to most people the games are practically identical, differing only in their 'new-ness'. If you've helped create a market where practically all shooters are pretty much the same, then you have no right to complain when someone sells your game to purchase the latest and flashiest one. If you didn't want that to happen, you shouldn't have made a game so samey as everyone elses.

I've been saying something very close to this for a while now:

If you create game that can be finished in an afternoon, don't be surprised when someone sells it to recoup some of the cost. When you see used games on sale 2-3 days after launch you shouldn't be thinking "Man, those are going to sell to people who should be buying new copies!" it should be "Would that person really have spent $60 on my game if it was only going to interest him for 2 days and he couldn't sell it?"

Also, this is the side effect for going after the broadest market possible. There are more potential buyers there, but they're also less dedicated fans. They're less likely to buy new launch day and more likely to sell the game later.

I also think it's funny that developers are busy making their games as easy as possible with the result that people are blowing through them and selling them that much faster.

 

[DaMullet]

?????????

You people make no sense.

Because something is legal that makes is perfectly okay for everyone? And if something is illegal you must purge it from this world?

Does that mean cigarettes are healthy for you and everyone while smoking pot kills kittens?

Saying that the laws that we have right now are perfect is so... shallow thinking. How many times have laws changed over the course of history? It was illegal for women to vote remember? That changed, because there was a problem with the law.

I'm not saying that piracy should be made legal, but it should be the law that the IP owner of a game should get some sort of profit from any sale from the game.

So if a developer gets $10 for a $60 game, they should still get $1.67 if someone sells that game for $10.

There, done. Problem solved. Now buying and selling repeatedly one copy of a game leads to developers getting lots of money so they can afford to hire things like... good voice actors for example!

 

[newwiseman]

I've always been a fan of buying a game a few months after release when the price drops, it's not second hand, it's not pirated, it's not $60 for 10hours of play.

Random of topic note, Portal 2 had the fastest drop in price I've ever less than a month after release you could get the PC version new for $20 and XBOX new for $30.

 

[Hristo Tzonkov]

Only poor countries pirate.Let's be honest on this.Most of those guys wouldn't even be able to buy the game.But a person who could afford it would rather buy it second hand because it's cheaper.Which really harms the industry?

 

[Madman123456]

I don't get why anyone would even calculate second hand sale as a loss. My Car is.. erm, lemme look it up... in fifth hand. The company which built this thing still exists.

With Games, this could be even "worse". Any new game is made to fit onto the current console generation and the older games are in no way generally worse then the newer ones. My Car was cheap and i have to care about rust here and there and certain parts are getting really old. Also, i don't have many of the fancy extras newer cars have.

With games, the older ones are just as good as the new ones. No expensive parts will fall off due to rust and old age.

When i do buy a game used, i do not appreciate being told that i'm part of a problem the gaming industry has.

I see the Problem they have with Gamestop, since this is a company that basically leeches on the used sales. I do not see a problem with used games in general.

I buy the game and i should be able to sell it whenever and to whomever i see fit. Maybe i'll use the money i get from selling old games to buy something new.

Despite this, i'm okay with steam. I know in advance that i wont be able to sell this game, so i do my research and play demos. If the game can entertain me for at least 100 hours, i got my moneys worth out of that and when i get bored with it afterwards i have no problem having it sit in my account, unused.



Almost the entire games industry is pissing me off. Describing what is my perfectly legal right as a "Problem" that is apparently bigger then a felony is just another punch in the face of the consumer.
After pissing all over the PC market with ludicrous and in some cases illegal copy Protection (seriously, the state of the PC market is caused by the industry.) most potential customers wont bother anymore instead of buying a console. The next big game sells poorly on PC and the pirates are blamed again. Most customers wouldn't even bother to get some of the games for free, but whatever, the evil pirates are to blame.
The fact that with certain games, any virus you'll get from torrent downloads is removed easier then invasive copy protection has nothing to do with it. The fact that PC ports very poor for the most part and you'll have to download usermade patches to make the game playable, which the copy protection will then prevent doesn't have anything to do with this either.


My point is: the industry has made most of their pirates themselves. The "moral" option would be to buy a game and then download a playable version of the game you just bought. Otherwise you'll have problems with the software.

 

[veloper]

Typical for Lionhead to be the last ones to figure things out.

The rest of us already figured this years ago.

 

[DEAD34345]

The way I see it,
If there is a game collecting dust on my shelf because I don't play it anymore and I give it away for free, I'm robbing the developers too, right?
In your eyes it's morally wrong to give something away that you don't use.
Because the person I give it too will no longer buy that item from a store.
You know, the store that ALREADY paid to developer for the product.

Lets take a hypothetical here.
A gameshop buys 100 copies of Halo Scrolls: Call of Warcraft.
They have to pay the Publisher say 5000 Euro. That's 10 euro less then each individual game sells for.
So for every sale, the store gets to keep 10 euro profit while the other 50 has already been used to buy the games in the first place.

Now, I buy a game, for 60 Euro. The store gets their 60 euro and they have money to buy more stocks in the future. More people do this, and they sell about 80 copes of the game.
They still have 20 unsold copies in their shop. Already paid for. A few months pass and they lower the price. 50 Euro's for a game. No profit, but at least we'll run even. and Yes, all other copies get sold.

meanwhile I finished Halo Scrolls: Call of Warcraft and sold it back to The Gameshop for a neat 20 Euro's. They sell the game for 25 Euro's as a sold copy. Making a 5 euro profit.

In the end, they made a cool 15 euro profit on 1 game.
There were also 3 other people that did the same thing as me.

Now, it's next year, Halo Scrolls: Fable of Zelda comes out, and because of the extra profit made with the sale of used games, they now buy 101 copies of it to sell in their store.

See, this is how the actual trade goes.
When you buy a game, the store already paid for it. Your 60 Euro doesn't get split into 10 for the store and 50 goes in a neat envelope to Nintenvison. More store profit means more games can be bought by the store to sell.

First of all, I never said buying games used was morally wrong, I said it is morally exactly the same as pirating a game. Either way people get the game for "free" in terms of money going to the developer.

What you have to remember is that if 50% of the sales of a game are used, then a store only has buy 50% as many games from the developer, thus the developer only gets 50% as much money. If all of the people who were going to buy used instead bought new, then the shop would have to buy twice as many games in the first place, since none of them would be given back for resell. Effectively every used copy of a game that is sold, is a theoretical "lost sale" for the developer.

Remember where else you have heard the words "lost sale"? How about every piracy argument ever. Buying a game used has the exact same effect on the developer as pirating a game (one theoretical "lost sale" for the developer). I consider 2 things that achieve the exact same effect to be morally equal, whether one is illegal or not.

The only way it is different is that one gives money to game retailers, and if you really think that incentivising the retailers to carry on cutting the profits of developers is helping the industry, then go ahead. I do not think that helps the game industry in any way, but I can understand it as a justification if you think that these programs have a positive effect on the industry overall, which is very debatable.

 

[Andrew_C]

@Dastardly :
Thanks for your answer, you have given be much to think about. I didn't realise some shops inflate the price of 2nd hand games so much. The ones near me aren't as blatant as that (no Gamestops), but thinking about it they do charge a lot for 2nd hand console games. I'm primarily PC gamer and don't buy many second hand games so i hadn't really noticed.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

No, because the former isn't illegal.

It's not a question of legality: a purely legal factor can have more impact than a non-legal one in any domain...

...and not on this one. At least the second-hand copy has been legitimately bought before, and counted as a sale.

this x10000

that first sale still counted, for piracy, that number gets smaller and smaller as more people pirate

 

[MysticToast]

The thing about piracy versus used games is this: with used games, the game was bought retail at one time, so the developer got the money. With piracy the company never got the money

 

[cainx10a]

In either case, the publisher/developers won't see the money right? Ain't piracy usually, one man/woman buys the game, then make an image of it, and distribute it via torrent or otherwise? You know how the used game system work, except, someone else make some money off of it -hint- Gamestop -hint-. Sure, in the latter, it's a 1 - 1 relationship, one purchased game is re-purchased by a user game buye, but money is involved, more so than in piracy.

When I buy for the x-360, if I can, I will buy used for older games I missed, but I honestly believe that some of that money should make it in the dev pockets.

 

[NoNameMcgee]

"The pirates, whatever you do on whatever system, they will crack it. It might take no time... I think the longest it's taken to happen is two days.

Actually the record is 424 days. The StarForce protection on Splinter Cell Chaos Theory proved incredibly hard to crack and major ammounts of code had to be reverse-engineered to get it working although these days there are easier workarounds and cracker groups don't have much trouble with StarForce. Assassin's Creed 2 also took about 2 weeks because of Ubi's online system.

Don't know why I felt the need to point that out, but just sayin.

 

[Shiftysnowdog]

2) What do you think game shops use the money they make of used sales for?!
Golden toilets?
No, they use that money to buy more games to sell in their store.
More money to gameshops = more money to buy more games from Publishers = more money for publishers = more games.

You make a very childish mistake. You are assuming that the owner of gamestop, who I believe to be J. Paul Raine, did not buy the company to make money. Do you honestly think that all of the 3.5 billion dollars of profit that Gamestop made in Q4 of 2010 went to marketing games, buying new games and upgrading their stores? hell, if I made nearly 4 billion dollars in 3 months, I sure as hell would have a golden toilette seat.

Both pirating and second hand sales hurt the people who spent over a year of their lives to make something for people to enjoy. That being said, in no way does that fact stop me from pirating. The last game I bought was portal 2, that was because I HAD TO. The game before that I bought was BFBC2, because I couldn't enjoy the multi-player without buying it. The only way to stop pirating is to eliminate large sections (or all) of the game to those who did not purchase a copy. That being said, current DRM outside of steam is shit. We all already know this. I have pirated many a game in my time, and I have pirated ALL of my music. The last time I bought a CD was in 1996, but alas I digress.

The point here is that buying a second hand game from GS for 3 dollars off full retail price is both ludacris and crippling for the game companies. But pirating a game is equally crippling for the company. Notice I used the term crippling and not deadly. Why the fuck do any of you care about a multibillion dollar industry losing a few million dollars? Good games are not going to stop being made because of a few hundred thousand pirates. I refuse to listen to any argument that says otherwise. Look at all the indy game devs making thousands of dollars! Did piracy hurt Notch? Is piracy killing Microsoft? Sony? Nintendo? Bioware? Activision? Short answer? NO. Long answer? Either very slowly, or not at all. I honestly wouldn't have purchased DA1 Or DA2 (games which i never played to completion)




And to leave on a final note, if piracy and second hand sales are hurting companies than so is borrowing a game from a friend! A buddy of mine at work gave me God of War 3 to play on my ps3. A game that I beat in literally a weekend. Why the hell would I pay 60 bucks for that?

Now observe as I receive either a warning or a temp ban for promoting piracy. even though people are either going to do it or not despite what I say in this post.

 

[bombadilillo]

Well Dev's.

1. Make your game so awesome that people can't help but buy it at/before launch.
2. Get rid of the 60$ pricepoint. People aperrently are not willing to pay it, so stop bitching are change your supply to fit demand. Somebody sure as hell knows how much people are willing to pay.
3. If everything moves to downloaded games. No physical media then this problem goes away no?
4. Nobody seems to whine about renting games, but that just as bad for the dev's. And as a avid gamefly user I get screwed all the time on day on dlc BS.

 

[DigitalAtlas]

It hurts devs much more. Not everyone can pirate, but everyone can take a deal from GameStop.

Still, it's not worse seeing as they are still paying for a product.

 

[TelHybrid]

I'm just going to throw my personal opinion out there, if anyone would like to discuss it with me, you know where the quote button is, hopefully I wont receive any butthurt responses.

We've already covered to death that one's legal, and one isn't. Does legality = morality? I don't think so.

I'll give you a for instance scenario. When Halo Reach was released, Gamestation were selling the limited edition for £55. In about 4 days, they had second hand copies being sold for £50.

People were buying these used copies (for quite frankly a very small difference in price proportionately), and Bungie wouldn't see a single penny of this.

Personally, I think there should at least be a 3-5 month waiting period between a game's launch and when a shop (or auction sites like ebay) should allow used sales of said game. Let's face it, the old "what if I buy it and don't like it?" argument isn't really one of much substance these days, considering there's downloadable demos a lot of the time, and at the very least, gameplay footage.

Now, there's the question, is piracy ever acceptable?

This is the one that gets people's backs up a lot. My view? If the game is no longer available from a source that will ensure the publishers (and by proxy the developers) get something for it, then it's simply abandonware. Why should I pay some random stranger on ebay £40 for a copy of System Shock 2?
Thankfully a large number of older games are being made available through services like Steam these days, so that helps remedy the problem somewhat. (No way I'm paying £80 for a copy of Castlevania SOTN on PS1 when I can download it on live arcade for 800ms)

What if you can't get a particular game at all through legal means? is piracy acceptable then? Should peer to peer transfers of this software be encouraged to ensure that these games are always available and don't disappear from circulation?

 

[AdamRBi]

So, here we go: the debate. Is buying used worse than pirating?

Yes

For one, it's legal. If the prospect of "stealing" something is enough to deter you from downloading an illegal copy onlineI feel the real pirates are those who copy and distribute in the forst place, not the downloaders., buying second hand is morally the better option even though it pays the same to the developer.

Also there's the wider and easily accessed market for used games. It's easy to forget that there are a lot of customers out there that find themselves having to buy games that would never be able to use game cracks or even know what a torrent is. They have to buy the game.

So if we take into account that let's say half the people who download illegally are lost sales to the company, compare that to the 100% lost sales to the company through used game sales and it's clear which is worse for the developers.

 

[TelHybrid]

Well Dev's.

1. Make your game so awesome that people can't help but buy it at/before launch.
2. Get rid of the 60$ pricepoint. People aperrently are not willing to pay it, so stop bitching are change your supply to fit demand. Somebody sure as hell knows how much people are willing to pay.
3. If everything moves to downloaded games. No physical media then this problem goes away no?
4. Nobody seems to whine about renting games, but that just as bad for the dev's. And as a avid gamefly user I get screwed all the time on day on dlc BS.

1. Quality doesn't necessarily mean sales. Sometimes a bad game can be marketed very well and get great sales at launch.
2. Games are expensive to make, and costs are always increasing. I'm surprised games have kept the same prices as they had in the 90s.
3. Then piracy becomes easier, and game retailers wont want to sell your console as they would have no games to sell for it (hence large scale store protest to PSPGo *urgh what a fail that piece of shit was*), and areas of poor internet reception are then isolated and abandoned.
4. "A spokesperson from one of the UK?s biggest game retail companies, LoveFilm, has explained that its own rental distribution process in the UK begins by consulting the publisher: ?We buy wholesale from the publishers with their permission. We have a good relationship with these publishers and we negotiate rental deals as well as actively promote them.? - Source: http://gadgetspy.co.uk/consoles-and-video-gaming/is-game-rental-piracy/1528

Publishers seem OK with rentals as long as it's on their terms.

 

[infinity_turtles]

I'm going to ignore the actual question being asked because damn if I haven't made those rants before, and target a specific argument. I really hate the argument that some people are making that "Piracy is teh evils but if developers hate used game sales they should add in good multiplayer." Seriously, that's your answer? Change the focus of all AAA games to multiplayer and multiple paths? I don't just hate that argument, I hate anyone who makes that argument. I like a good singleplayer experience, and if your answer is that those shouldn't be made anymore, fuck you in the ass with a spiked, vibrating, rotating, multi-headed dildo.

 

[aashell13]

well, the faster publishers get on the digital distribution bandwagon the sooner they can kiss this problem goodbye. That said, I have no qualms with used game sales. The main difference between used sales and piracy is that if you put up a torrent, any number of people can download it, while only one person can buy your used copy. Frankly, I don't think that publishers have any right to be upset over used game sales, it's no different than used sales in any other market. And most other manufacturers simply accept used sales of their product as a good thing, without any sort of greedy gimmicks like EA's online passes, because it increases their brand's presence in the market.

[rant]

seriously EA, your various online schemes have given me no end of trouble. get the hell off it already.

[/rant]