Piracy Numbers

[AcacianLeaves]

Wow. I didn't think Piracy was a big problem until I read this thread. Good lord you people are shameless. Pirating is the same as walking into a shop and taking one of the games off the shelves and walking out. Except in this case, you're a coward as well as a thief.

I absolutely hate people who make this argument. Much the same way I hate the "You wouldn't steal a car!" thing that goes into the standard anti-piracy ad.

Copying is NOT the same as stealing.

If I were to walk into a shop and copy a game off their shelf, THE ORIGINAL GAME WOULD STILL BE ON THE SHELF. What I have is a copy, a new entity. It's NOT the same physical game. The store still has the original and they can still sell the original.

Not saying that piracy is right, but that particular argument is wrong.

That's also wrong. You aren't buying the physical game, you're buying a license to play it. Think about digital distribution, DLC, games on demand, etc. This argument may have worked 10 years ago, but today it holds no water. You are buying the license and activation key, the physical copy is only worth the price of the blank DVDs that the software is written on.

 

[slopeslider]

great article, with facts and figures that shows you are not just whining and have actually looked at the evidence

Lets apply this way of thinking to something else.
Mw2, ME2, Bioshock 2 and BC2 are popular titles.
These games are rated M.
These games are FPS games.
Therefore ALL popular games are shooters rated M.
MY LOGICS BE INDISPUTIBLY IRREFUTABLES.

 

[Eversor]

Wow Ok, you guys seem to be missing the point. If you were going to buy the game, w/o the pirated copy you probably wouldn't have gotten it. It is stealing, don't get into semantics. I don't care what the definition of stealing is. Your stealing. Don't even. If this was happening to you, you'd be bitching and moaning to the DRM about it. The less you steal, the less DRM we would have gotten. THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT, people who have pirated. You have no one to blame for the DRM but yourselves.

This is not true at all. Why? For the simple fact that DRMs are cracked, and cracked fast. It's an ineffectual defense that only keeps the law-abiding people that would never pirate anyway away from piracy. It's a control scheme, not means of prevention.

Just consider this. Take Ubisoft's new DRM idea. How much does it cost to have servers running 24/7 so that people worldwide could access the game they paid for? Pretty damn much. That's the servers themselves, the maintenance cost, the manpower required to maintain it etc. Pray tell me, how do all those expenses help you get more money? Plain and simple, they don't. Then why are they there? Control. The system allows to concentrate the control of someone's property in the hands of few. Just one click, and you have lost all your investments without any refunds. Does make you want to abide the rules, doesn't it? Your investment makes you more tolerant to the shortcomings of the system, because hey, it won't get better if I complain, they might cut off my access to the stuff I paid for.

So remind me how this is pirates fault again? Remind how spending loads of money, development and maintenance man-hours on ineffectual prevention measures allows them to sell any more copies?

Now compare that to the idea of giving pirates incentive to buy - little to no DRM and free DLC. Little to no man-hours spent on ineffectual DRM, more time spent on actual game content. Please, don't try to tell me that this isn't more effective than the total control model mentioned above.

 

[Olrod]

I will never agree with pirates complaining about DRM as they're the problem in the first place. How can "It has DRM so I'm going to pirate it" help the situation in any way? The developer (most importantly) isn't supported if you pirate a game and secondly you're contributing to the problem. DRM is supposed to stop theft, so by effectively stealing the game you're giving them more reason to use protection.

Btw to all you pirates who think that pirating is somehow "helping" the game industry, I'll just add on to what this Olrod has said above.

The ONLY thing pirating has done for the game industry is give us DRM. So whenever someone pirates a game because of DRM, or pirates a game, and then tries to cover their ass by complaining about DRM, go get stuffed because the only reason there's DRM in the first place is because of people like you who pirate games.

I'm confused. I really don't remember writing that comment.

I know this analogy is more relevant to Movies and Music piracy, but imagine if you had a perfect memory, you watch or listen to something just once, and you can forever remember every single thing about it in absolutely perfect detail from start to finish.

How would issues of intellectual property be resolved if people only ever had to watch or listen to something just one time, and then could remember it perfectly, whenever they wanted to, for the rest of their lives?

 

[Eremiel]

That's also wrong. You aren't buying the physical game, you're buying a license to play it. Think about digital distribution, DLC, games on demand, etc. This argument may have worked 10 years ago, but today it holds no water. You are buying the license and activation key, the physical copy is only worth the price of the blank DVDs that the software is written on.

So the entire used games market is, by your own argument, exactly as bad and illegal as pirating? After all, they bought the license to play it, not the game itself.

They can not re-sell that license and thus when they re-sell the physical disc they should be performing an illegal act.

 

[AcacianLeaves]

That's also wrong. You aren't buying the physical game, you're buying a license to play it. Think about digital distribution, DLC, games on demand, etc. This argument may have worked 10 years ago, but today it holds no water. You are buying the license and activation key, the physical copy is only worth the price of the blank DVDs that the software is written on.

So the entire used games market is, by your own argument, exactly as bad and illegal as pirating? After all, they bought the license to play it, not the game itself.

They can not re-sell that license and thus when they re-sell the physical disc they should be performing an illegal act.

Who says they can't re-sell the license? If you buy a physical copy of a console game, the license to play it is attached to that copy. If you are playing it without ownership of the physical copy of the game, you are playing it without the license.

Whereas in PC games, the license is not necessarily attached to a disc. The license is often in the form of a CD-Key that requires activation in order to access the game. In this situation having the disc is useless, because the license is separate from the disc.

Game trading isn't just trading game discs, you're trading licenses. When you sell a game to a games store, you're selling them the license that you bought.

 

[Trivun]

How many people own the game but pirate it to bypass the DRM?

I don't actually like to call these people "pirates". If you own a game then I don't think it's possible to "pirate" it in a moral sense. If the DRM is giving you problems, then getting a DRM-free version is arguably self-defense.

But in any case, these people can't make up a large part of pirate crew. Even if every single person who bought the game also downloaded it, then that would still only account for one in nine of all pirates.

I can throw my oar in here with this little snippet. Just before Christmas 2009, I bought for £15 the Limited Edition copy of Dreamfall: The Longest Journey from my local GAME store. Thinking it a pretty good deal, since the package contained both Dreamfall and it's predecessor, the Dreamfall OST, and a collector's concept art book, I proceeded to install The Longest Journey on my laptop and have a great time playing it.

After I finished the first game I took a break, played some Rome: Total War, a little bit of Half Life, and then last week decided the time was ripe to load up Dreamfall and play it through. So what do I find upon installation? StarForce.

Most of you probably know what StarForce is so I won't go into detail. The point is, the DRM on Dreamfall, which oddly enough wasn't present on The Longest Journey, is incompatible with Windows Vista, at least that particular version. I therefore spent some time trying to figure out a way of getting past the DRM so I could play a game that I had legitimately bought and paid for with my own money.

Now, as it turns out, I was lucky. I was able to download a patch that upgraded the StarForce drivers on my laptop and allowed me to play the game with no problem. But if I hadn't been able to do that then I would have had no qualms about downloading the game. Would that make me a pirate? Well, by the definition of piracy, yes it would. But would I have been in the wrong from a moral standing? No, I don't think I would have. See, I'd bought that game myself and so the developer and publisher (and I have the greatest regard for Funcom as a developer) already had my money (ironically the publisher is now in administration, though Funcom, as developers, are still doing very well). So if I've paid for something that doesn't work or that I can't use, surely as a consumer I am well within my rights to use whatever means are at my disposal to find a copy of said goods or services that I can use and that do work? DLC used to be a minor thing that people were happy with, just a case of typing in a code when you install the game and everything's hunky dory. Now, as developers turn to ever more complex and, let's face it, pointless ways of preventing piracy, ways that don't even work,the consumer is the one losing out. Leading to situations like mine.

Don't hate the player, hate the game (developers).

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

You know what would get me to buy more games? Big boxes, well-made manuals, cloth maps, and t-shirts.

Anyone remember the olden days (80's/90's when we rode dinosaurs to school 10 miles through lava uphill both ways)? When games came with old looking coins, stones, big posters, fake newspaper articles and even game world specific code wheels that you needed to get through part of the game.

Then to save packaging costs the boxes became smaller, the manual became flimsy or just a PDF, and the tchotkes disappeared.

As a result the pirated game became the SUPERIOR product. Steam is a light exception because it is copy protection that adds some value.

Check this out: [link]http://cgi.ebay.com/Ultima-V-Warriors-of-Destiny-PC-Big-Box-Coin-Cloth-Map_W0QQitemZ390159871342QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Vintage_Video_Games?hash=item5ad7572d6e[/link]

$100!!!!! For the retail box...Can you imagine any modern (non-super expensive collectors edition) game selling for that much in 25 years?

Give Us Back Our Cloth Maps!

 

[Eldarion]

How many pirates are jerks?

100%

How big of you to make that claim.

Not paying for something that it cost money and peoples' hard work to make is pretty jerk-y to me.

Now, hold on. Do you ever borrow friends games?

 

[Anaphyis]

This is an interesting point, but the problem is that it's technically wrong. According to the laws of most nations, copying a game is illegal and therefore stealing.

*facepalm*

"According to the laws of most nations, murdering someone is illegal and therefore stealing. Trying to keep these two completely different legal cases separate is an interesting point but technically wrong."

I'm not a big fan of piracy but these levels of stupid to defend a asinine piece of propaganda make a constructive discussion about this topic as tedious and unfruitful as it is. Sure pirates will see the light when they are confronted with semantics, especially when they are as wrong as this glorious example.

 

[MiserableOldGit]

I regularly download stuff off bit torrent and the like, and can't say I feel bad about it-this is for a couple of reasons; first, after twenty years of buying games legimatly I feel no loyalty to any specific company, or to the industry as a whole. Games have been absurdly over-priced for years, the depriciation when you come to sell them is obscene, which I wouldn't mind if it weren't for the fact that the price shoots back up the second the trade in shop puts the title on their shelves (they seem to go at 3 or 4 times what you sell it for).
The games industry is increasingly losing it's charm, with more companies putting profit before quality or innovation, and I find that, compared to a decade ago, I can't trust a company to release a truly good game-even the ones that initially look good turn out to be dog turds rolled in glitter.
Add to this the fact that those of us that were into gaming before its popularisation have been pushed out in favour of casual gamers and adolescent smack tards, and right or wrong, I've ended up having an attitude of disenfranchisement that pretty much boils down to 'fuck you, you can't do anything about it, you took as much as you could from me when you could, now I will do the same when your at a disadvantage'
Piracy in gaming is an issue that, for me, reflects a lot of issues in general at the moment. When you ask people to respect property, observe laws, and generally act in a civilised manner, you are essentially entering into a contract with them-screw them over one too many times and they will stop playing ball-some might feel that I'm a 'jerk', but thats an easy opinion to take when you earn your cash scribbling out a column or two - work minimum wage in an office or warehouse and see how you feel about laying down your cash for the current offerings from developers at the moment you smug fat git.

 

[Flamingpenguin]

Huh. To me, pirating games is terrible. I did it once, and I felt really bad. (Well okay, twice, but I never played it because I felt bad. So only one sale lost)
It was world of goo. When I heard that 90% statistic, I felt really bad because that was 2 guys (2!!! Just 2!!!) who made a great game that was fun and artistic.
For me pirating music is different though- I have an issue with the record company- they make ridiculous profits by economizing on someone's art. If I like an atrist, I go see them play.
But games you can't see live, so I always buy mine. (plus I'm on a mac so pirating games is difficult and not really appealing)

 

[slopeslider]

A game is just a set of bits in a particular configuration.

How can someone claim to own bits that are on my hard disk? That are on a server somewhere? If my computer makes a request to the server, and that server provides me with the proper sequence of bits, and I store that sequence on my hard disk how can anyone claim to have ownership of those bits?

Ideas can't be owned, they can only be unknown. The entire idea if intellectual property is broken and unnecessary. OpenSource proves that high quality content will be created whether or not people are paid to make it.

What your ignoring is that the "bits" originally came from a copy of the game that the company DID own. No matter how you try to justify this crap, the trail leads back to a legal product.

What about your bank account? It's just bits of data. Little numbers. You don't own it. It's not physical money, so if one day someone takes out a few hundred or a few thousand bucks from your bank account big deal right? It's not like they took anything. It's just numbers in a computer.

HAHAHA!
HA.
No.
1. Pirates don't make money off software copying.
2. That analogy is dumb. When you take someone's money, they're missing it. And money isn't a file you can copy, it's a RECORD the bank keeps. My bank account is not full of $100.exe files for people to copy. Bioware is NOT 'missing' 50000 files. A better analogy is to say someone was photocopying my paintings. I still have my paintings though.

 

[Rangergord]

Well if pirates disappear (they won't) the only real solution is just to boycot and not buy at all. Just let the makert take its course, and let our lack of money take its toll. OF course this won't happen, as most of us are "Just got to have it", so there's always room for pirates if for " I just got to have, but don't have the cash because games have increased 25% in price in two and half years" at very least.

There is also the notion that companies use copyright not just to protect itself or IPs, but to dictate what games we should be playing and for how long, and general buisness game of controling both the supply and demand for their wares.
When some people rightly feel their being manipulated and bullied by this system is it any wonder that some turn to piracy when this happens, its kind of a natural reaction


Maybe more than just pirates is needed (a great man once said even bad publicity is still good publicity), maybe its time for a crash and reset the clock for some companies to dispell a little bit of their "we're in charge now so listen to us!" attitudes.


OT, sort of: Of course the greatest irony is companies (all not just games) yelling at lawmakers and convincing us "don't regulate us it'll hurt us, big government is bad, we have a natural balance with consumers, and their rational" while crying to lawmakers behind close doors "give use the tools protect us from the evil theives who elected you, their frinking crazy!!"

 

[MiserableOldGit]

I regularly download stuff off bit torrent and the like, and can't say I feel bad about it-this is for a couple of reasons; first, after twenty years of buying games legimatly I feel no loyalty to any specific company, or to the industry as a whole. Games have been absurdly over-priced for years, the depriciation when you come to sell them is obscene, which I wouldn't mind if it weren't for the fact that the price shoots back up the second the trade in shop puts the title on their shelves (they seem to go at 3 or 4 times what you sell it for).
The games industry is increasingly losing it's charm, with more companies putting profit before quality or innovation, and I find that, compared to a decade ago, I can't trust a company to release a truly good game-even the ones that initially look good turn out to be dog turds rolled in glitter.

Yeah whatever buddy, the games are shit but you're still willing to play them, just not pay for them. Go tell your sob story to someone who cares.

Why is a good portion of the pirates in this thread try to make themselves out as the victim of shoddy games rather than the person who is outright victimizing the people working on these games by stealing their stuff. "Oh woe is me, they took my money, now I'm going to get some revenge, I'm entitled to it". Give me a break.

As long as you keep buying then games will remain as crappy as they are, as for your 'woe is me' jibe- I'm fine with things staying as they are-I mostly play older games that are decent anyway, and I'll just carry on swiping the few that interest me. In the meantime you can keep slapping your cash on the counter in return for a turd in a box-we can't all be as smart as you...