Piracy Numbers

[NoNameMcgee]

Yawn...

This whole discussion is just tired. Pirates who claim what they're doing is completely justified are idiots, but people who take the high ground and say pirates are all scum need to get off their high horse and shut the hell up.

I pirate most of my games first, and if I feel the game is worth the money I like to buy them at a later date. Games I am quite sure I will enjoy a lot get bought straight away, and games that I download and turn out to be 'bleh' I never bother buying. For example, I bought Mass Effect 2 straight away on launch because I knew it would be an excellent game. Last week I downloaded Bioshock 2 because I was unsure about it, I am near the end of the game now and I can safely say the game is great, so I'm going to buy it in the future. I downloaded Red Faction Guerilla because I was pretty sure the game would be 'okay' at best; turns out I was right, and even though I got through most of the game the entire experience was at best a time-waster and at worst completely lackluster, therefore, not worth the money in my eyes and I have no interest in supporting the developer.

I do care about the games industry, and I support the game developers that I actually give a crap about. I don't have the kind of money to buy all my games, and if I did, hell I probably would buy them all simply for the ease of it all. However, since I don't have much money, I have to be selective about what I buy, and I would prefer the money I'm spending to go towards a developer who actually deserves it. Since I'm getting increasingly picky with games and my overall tastes in games are often a lot different than most peoples, I can't fully rely on reviews anymore because they usually don't tell me enough about the game for me know if I'm going to really like it or not. And we all know demo's tell us fuck-all in the long run because it's a small snippet of a game that can completely go downhill at any point past the first level.

Am I a pirate? Hell yes. Am I a thief? No, I don't personally think I am. Piracy can't be judged the same as going into a store, taking something off the shelf and running off with it. You must ask yourself if I would have actually bought the games I pirate if I couldn't pirate them. The answer is hell no. In fact, if I couldn't pirate games I would buy LESS games in the long run because the games I am unsure about I would never buy. But if I pirate a game I'm unsure about, and find out it's actually pretty great (which has happened a lot in the past) I will then put it on my list of things to purchase in the near future.

I don't think piracy is good or bad, I think it's a massive Grey area. People pirate for different reasons, there are a tonne of variables involved and it's not as simple as just pointing at all of us and going "thieves!" I don't think I'm in any kind of lawful right with what I am doing, and I don't think I should be in any kind of lawful right. But what I'm doing is not morally wrong either (according to my personal morals, remember we all have our own batch of those). I really don't give a shit about developers who make shitty/mediocre games, and I don't want to support them to keep making them. So piracy is a life saver for me because it lets me pick and choose what I personally believe is worthy of paying the money for and is worthy of being in my collection. Whatever reasons other people pirate games, or the pirate community as a whole is of no interest to me, it doesn't concern me. I have my own personal reasons and I'm glad that I am this way instead of buying everything and feeling constantly disappointed and ripped off by the shovelware that keeps getting thrown at us and I am expected to pay $100 AUS for.

I'm not a jerk, I just refuse to accept all the crap that is churned out at me by the games industry.

 

[shadow skill]

Yawn Yawn, Blah Blah.

This whole discussion is just tired. Pirates who claim what they're doing is completely justified are idiots, but people who take the high ground and say pirates are all scum need to get off their high horse and shut the hell up.

I pirate most of my games first, and if I feel the game is worth the money I like to buy them at a later date. Games I am quite sure I will enjoy a lot get bought straight away, and games that I download and turn out to be 'bleh' I never bother buying. For example, I bought Mass Effect 2 straight away on launch because I knew it would be an excellent game. Last week I downloaded Bioshock 2 because I was unsure about it, I am near the end of the game now and I can safely say the game is great, so I'm going to buy it in the future. I downloaded Red Faction Guerilla because I was pretty sure the game would be 'okay' at best; turns out I was right, and even though I got through most of the game the entire experience was at best a time-waster and at worst completely lackluster, therefore, not worth the money in my eyes and I have no interest in supporting the developer.

I do care about the games industry, and I support the game developers that I actually give a crap about. I don't have the kind of money to buy all my games, and if I did, hell I probably would buy them all simply for the ease of it all. However, since I don't have much money, I have to be selective about what I buy, and I would prefer the money I'm spending to go towards a developer who actually deserves it. Since I'm getting increasingly picky with games and my overall tastes in games are often a lot different than most peoples, I can't fully rely on reviews anymore because they usually don't tell me enough about the game for me know if I'm going to really like it or not. And we all know demo's tell us fuck-all in the long run because it's a small snippet of a game that can completely go downhill at any point past the first level.

Am I a pirate? Hell yes. Am I a thief? No, I don't personally think I am. Piracy can't be judged the same as going into a store, taking something off the shelf and running off with it. You must ask yourself if I would have actually bought the games I pirate if I couldn't pirate them. The answer is hell no. In fact, if I couldn't pirate games I would buy LESS games in the long run because the games I am unsure about I would never buy. But if I pirate a game I'm unsure about, and find out it's actually pretty great (which has happened a lot in the past) I will then put it on my list of things to purchase in the near future.

I don't think piracy is good or bad, I think it's a massive Grey area. People pirate for different reasons, there are a tonne of variables involved and it's not as simple as just pointing at all of us and going "thieves!" I don't think I'm in any kind of lawful right with what I am doing, but what I'm doing is not morally wrong either (according to my personal morals, remember we all have our own batch of those). I really don't give a shit about developers who make shitty/mediocre games, and I don't want to support them to keep making them. So piracy is a life saver for me because it lets me pick and choose what I personally believe is worthy of paying the money for and is worthy of being in my collection. Whatever reasons other people pirate games, or the pirate community as a whole is of no interest to me, it doesn't concern me. I have my own personal reasons and I'm glad that I am this way instead of buying everything and feeling constantly disappointed and ripped off by the shovelware that keeps getting thrown at us and I am expected to pay $100 AUS for.

I'm not a jerk, I just refuse to accept all the crap that is churned out at me by the games industry.

Whoo hoo you win ze thread sir.

How effective is Steam integration in reducing piracy? I've never heard the numbers on a game released exclusively through steam (or requiring steam to play online). Did TF2 or L4D have substantial piracy rates (a la Spore or Demigod)?

I know L4D is easily pirated regardless of steam integration. Basically you run a cracked steam DLL that instead of the game connecting to the steam servers, it loops back to your own machine, thinking -you- are the server.

You can still play online, too.

Hamachi is a very... dark place.

But yea, steam doesn't get so much business because it's effective against piracy, it gets so much business because its the goddamn future!

Don't forget an assload of deals too.

 

[Undead_David]

@Starke
Yeah the ability to buy single is porbably the biggest factor for various reasons. I have hundreds of disk that only had like maybe 3-4 good songs out of like 12 that were really good and the bands whos hardcopy albums I buy that i am fiercly loyal to still have like a couple crap songs on them. SO with the ability to just buy the songs you like or just the hit single, could drive album sales dramatically, which probably hurts the big pop acts which have like 3 or 4 single worthy songs and the rest crap. What I am curious about is to see how piracy affects concert attendance since this is how bands actually make money, album salesonly give like 4% to the actual artist lol.

And as for the Nintendo thing, imagine if they didnt bug out and stick to opitcal disk. There never would have been a playstation (remember it was suppoused to be the new nintendo) so I think they missed a golden egg through that.

 

[SnipErlite]

Pirates are thieves. Simple as.

I only pirate games I cannot physically get, like Sim City 2000 or Aladdin (ie. old classics)

So I'm a mini-thief, I admit.

 

[Undead_David]

As for pirates being jerks, hey at least were not a bunch of racist sexist assholes like the legitamate guys on XBOX Live

 

[Slycne]

Actually, 2D Boy did mention "how" they identified pirates. They compared IP addresses of versions of the game sold to those playing the game, then modified downward to compensate for multiple installs, dynamic IPs, and the like.

No, they mentioned how they got their ratio. They never mentioned how they identified their pirates.

They said "we got this number by dividing these other numbers". One of those other numbers being, in short, "illegitimate" copies. How did they identify which were legitimate and which were illegitimate?

Most of these companies find their pirated rate by comparing users connecting to their leader-boards minus number of units sold.

 

[Wicky_42]

How effective is Steam integration in reducing piracy? I've never heard the numbers on a game released exclusively through steam (or requiring steam to play online). Did TF2 or L4D have substantial piracy rates (a la Spore or Demigod)?

I know L4D is easily pirated regardless of steam integration. Basically you run a cracked steam DLL that instead of the game connecting to the steam servers, it loops back to your own machine, thinking -you- are the server.

You can still play online, too.

Of course, if steam does find out, then they will ban your account and ALL of your Steam games. Forever. Personally, I wouldn't take that risk - though I guess you could set up a second account...?

Just had a thought: one thing that encourages people to pirate is the COMPLETE lack of a rental market - it's a case of pony up all the cash or get nothing... or download it. There are far too many 'average' games out, with fancy graphics but little substance that are good for a play through or two but no more, or rely on the multiplayer (which you may or may not enjoy) for longevity, or which have mixed reviews or unusual gameplay - there's no way for the average 20-30 something gamer to even hope to afford to try out everything that catches his interest, and as a result the industry suffers.

Those that don't have ethical qualms about such things can simply download these games on a flight of fancy, try it out and delete it if it doesn't catch their interest. Of course, having got the whole game already, there's not much impetus to buy it if they do like it, though they might be more interested in a sequel.

Those that won't download miss out on the 'what if' and the industry looses a little interest that a sequel by them might have otherwise be garnered. Sure, the argument 'if you can't afford it, suck it up' applies here, but are we really going to encourage other gamers to NOT get games? What message does that send - to only buy the biggest, most-hyped games? Only buy cheap indi games? Wait for a couple of years for the newest releases to become affordable? None of those are satisfactory to gamers or developers (well, except option 2 and indi devs, heh).

So yeah, wouldn't it be nice if it was possible to have PC game rentals - a low-risk sample of the game's full content? Hell, it would be nice if the MAJORITY of games actually released demos, rather than a tiny minority of the major releases.

 

[Lord Krunk]

And the flames are already starting to break out.

It's like the whole Penny Arcade thing [http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/2/26/]...

 

[Lord Krunk]

Pirates are thieves. Simple as.

I only pirate games I cannot physically get, like Sim City 2000 or Aladdin (ie. old classics)

So I'm a mini-thief, I admit.

Same here, although if I see said item in a shop then I won't hesitate to buy it.

I wish I could find an ISO for FF7 though. I want to know what makes it better than 8 or Legend of Dragoon.

 

[Chipperz]

I am totally not a jerk, I just dont have the money to buy a game every month.

Then buy one every two months. Or three, or whatever you can actually afford. Get games like Morrowind or Fallout 3 that can last you that kind of time. Hell, if you need to get a game every month, go without eating for a bit, get games that way. Rent one every week if you prefer shorter games.

These are all things which I have done, only to get fucked over because people like you have no self control.

As for pirates being jerks, hey at least were not a bunch of racist sexist assholes like the legitamate guys on XBOX Live

I still haven't met any of these people on XBL. At least the yeti exists in blurry photos...

OT - It's still depressing reading pirates try to justify why they feel the need to fuck over a market. I've been thinking this over for the last few weeks and the only way I can see it going is less and less quality titles for the PC each year. While the doesn't affect me 'cos I'm a proud owner of all four consoles, I can only see this ending badly for PC fanboys who are still legit.

 

[Fearzone]

I say design your games for the demographic that tends to pay for games: the 30+ casual gamers with jobs, who play to relax for an hour or two in the evening. It's not foolproof but that would be a start. Pirates will still pirate it but at least a good chunk of your fan base will pay.

 

[Undead_David]

@Chipperz
Have you plaid Halo online at all? Or any FPS on live, lol of course its mostly flowing from the mouths of kids of havent left HS yet lol

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

it is necesary: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8533641.stm

the most important thing to retain is:
"On the one hand of course he has stolen confidential data... and he actually has committed a crime. But at the same time there is value for the public in the sense that now a lot of information gets disclosed and the whole system maybe becomes a little more transparent,"

 

[medv4380]

Sorry but the 90% pirated figure is an out right lie and the developers know it. They are blatantly manipulating the figures because they know stating it as 90% of the players on the score boards are pirates gives them something to stand on in an argument. What they really know is that 90% of the players are playing a manipulated version of the game. This isn't pirating but cheating. The PC realm of gaming has and will always be full of cheaters and hackers and this is were their stat becomes inflated.

DRM is immoral and only makes it so that people who don't want to use windows must hack the game just to play it. This also results in people posting how to get the game to work under Linux which results in people who want to pirate the game getting the info they need faster. Just try to get some of the DRM heavy games to run under Wine in Linux and you'll hit a brick wall unless you hack the game and then all of a sudden you're a pirate.

I'm not surprised the stat is up at 90% I'm just surprised b4k4 keep believing it. Think of it this way, if the developers know you hacked the game why did they give you a login to the game to get onto their score boards? In truth they gave you a login if you had a valid key (if they were smart), and then if that's the case the 0% are pirated version but 90% are hacked.

 

[geldonyetich]

I don't pirate by choice. However, it's clear that piracy is so prevalent right now that the PC gaming platform is being forced in the direction of play to play games, games supported by advertising, or portal-based gaming. Eventually, I suspect a significant portion of games will only be available via cloud gaming.

The main trouble is that software piracy really can't be enforced against. Law enforcement simply doesn't have the manpower to waste on petty crimes of such a massive scale. If you could actually expect to get busted for piracy, it would be severely reduced, because most people are simple-minded twits whose morality system works on a, "if I can get away with it, it must not be wrong" mentality.

Consequently, most PC gamers have been pirating when they were Internet-savvy kids too ignorant to know any better and, now that they are old enough to know better, they see little reason to change their habits. Why spend cold, hard cash on what you know you always got for free? Why wouldn't you feign innocence if it meant stemming the tide of anyone who would threaten how you spend your money?

Well, at least I can take a certain smug pride in knowing that, by deciding to pay for my games, I'm actually demonstratively more morally upstanding than 9/10 people. Show some respect: if it weren't for people like me, the PC gaming industry would have died years ago from complete lack of monetary income.

(Incidentally, I'm a far cry from rich. I get most games when they've been out for awhile and are heavily discounted. It takes a truly exceptional game for me to buy it new.)

 

[fenrizz]

DRM has only on purpose, and that is to (hopefully) slow down the crackers so much that more people buy the game before it is available on torrent sites.
And this does not seem to be working, as new releases by [insert random game publisher here] are often on torrent sites before the game is even in stores!

I think DRM is not in the games to stop piracy. I think it's there to show shareholders that they are at least trying to stop it. It doesn't take a genius to see that DRM does not stop pirates, and I think there are at least some reasonably smart executives at the publishers who have probably figured that out already. It's just bad business to say you're not going to try to stop people who are stealing your products. Would you buy shares of a company that doesn't protect their product from criminals? I know I wouln't.

/thread

I hope they are also working on other ways to cut down on the pirating.

The new generation of consoles seem to not have such a problem with piracy.

But I think that has a lot to do with the ease of which PC games can be pirated.
A PC pirate will only have to treat the game as normal, while the console gamer will have to modify his console and get DvD's and BL discs with games.

While many of us here buy most of the stuff we watch, hear or play and only pirate a little, there is a very large group of people that never ever buy anything and pirate everything.

 

[benoitowns]

I am totally not a jerk, I just dont have the money to buy a game every month.

Then buy one every two months. Or three, or whatever you can actually afford. Get games like Morrowind or Fallout 3 that can last you that kind of time. Hell, if you need to get a game every month, go without eating for a bit, get games that way. Rent one every week if you prefer shorter games.

These are all things which I have done, only to get fucked over because people like you have no self control.

As for pirates being jerks, hey at least were not a bunch of racist sexist assholes like the legitamate guys on XBOX Live

I still haven't met any of these people on XBL. At least the yeti exists in blurry photos...

OT - It's still depressing reading pirates try to justify why they feel the need to fuck over a market. I've been thinking this over for the last few weeks and the only way I can see it going is less and less quality titles for the PC each year. While the doesn't affect me 'cos I'm a proud owner of all four consoles, I can only see this ending badly for PC fanboys who are still legit.

Most importantly, I am absolutely shocked you haven't seen those dicks on XBL, they are everywhere. Go borrow a copy of Halo or something. And guess what, you are delusional to believe that pirates are hurting these markets. I will admit, if I couldn't pirate, I wouldn't. Converse: Since I can pirate, I will probably pirate some stuff. I am not trying to justify shit. I have no reason NOT to pirate. Incentives: Play game, not pay money. Disincentives: I want to support the people who make these games. Renting sucks.
I pirated MW2, played it, then bought it. I could upload a picture, but I won't, why not, because I am too lazy. Games I have pirated: Sims 3(still have) MW2(bought) MW1(bought) Dragon Age(screwed up conversions, deleted without playing) Settlers 6(Mounting Software no longer unable, uninstalled) A bunch of movies.
But when compared to the games I buy, I help the market much more than "hurt" it. For the companies whose game I Dl'ed, I never hurt, but didn't help. It is the same as never playing the game and never buying it.The only pirated game I kept is Sims, but if I had to pay for it I would not have bought it. I am not a lost customer to EA, therefore I did not hurt them. And my friend bought Sims 3, so I guess whenever we hang out I am hurting EA because of their retarded DRM. Like I care about EA, its not like I have bought like ten of their games.

 

[Therumancer]

Okay Shamus,

Let me ask you something: getting past the whole issue of the numbers of pirates and so on out there, how much is this actually hurting the game industry at all? Other than a bunch of rich producers and CEOS with a niggling suspician that they might be able to get richer.

I say this because more and more producers are lining up to invest in games, and the profit margins continue to increase. Sure lame titles still fail, but the bottom line is that the gaming industry is hardly suffering. Itigaki was in a fight with Team Ninja to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, and Richard Garriot who made his bones before gaming was anywhere near as big as it is now managed to buy one of those uber-expensive space tourist flights. Not to mention the fact that these huge development budgets are largely spent on human resources, leading to me constantly talking about how I very much doubt rank and file coders and artists are anywhere near honest in how much they get paid.

The industry makes these massive truckloads of money, and still tries to nickel and dime us. Even if what they said about piracy was true, does it really matter at this point? In the end DRM is basically an attempt to squeeze as much money out of the consumer base as possible, because heck... even if they are wrong, if it gets even a few people to buy the game rather than pirate that's a win.... little extra to spread on the top of the already skyscraper sized Scrooge Mcduck money bin.

Whining about how bad projects and investments have destroyed game companies is pretty much irrelevent to the equasion. It happens with every business, and honestly even if they had been making more money, chances are they would have just invested that extra money the same way with the same exact results. Lay offs within the game industry are just like any other business, and truthfully it's hard to tell when a company is really in trouble or just trying to squeeze a few more pennies by reducing human resources expenses. Unless you look at the books you can't tell, and it's not like these companies are going public in most cases.

As far as the numbers go, I can say that having been part of several so called "conspiricies" over the years that it's not paranoid to say so. In general all it takes is enough people with the same general desires. Right now game companies all want more money, and are incestuous enough to all have similar opinions about where that money could come from. A good way to shoot yourself in the foot is to insult your customer base, or admit to exploitation, so all companies of course need to come up with a way to justify their attempts to inconveinence their customer base in exchange for the possibility of more money.

I mean honestly, how many games have we all seen sold out from stores a day or two after release? How many of these fairly large "midnight release parties" have had thousands of copies flying off the shelves?

To be honest in the overall scheme of things there aren't that many gamers out there. There are more of us than ever before, yes, and gaming is increasinglg mainstream, but in some cases you pretty much see every single gamers in an area hitting their local stores to wait in line. Especially if you have midnight releases for more than one title at once. Heck, some people even have to make policies about it.

Basically I consider it common sense to call "BS" on the claims of game companies that scream about 90% piracy rates or whatever. That's absurd, and you can tell that just by taking a look at what's actually going on.


-

As a side note, to qualify something I said: Back when I was working monitors in casinos, one of the things I was a part of on numerous occasions was to basically keep employees that were not well liked under as constant observation looking for even the most petty of screw ups and record them to build a case. A truely unpopular employee, or just someone who said the right thing, might literally have people from numerous departments who otherwise don't get along all in agreement that they want to give this twit a boot. So you oftentimes see what amounts to a somewhat nonsensical, but existant, effort of seemingly unrelated parties to set someone up and build a case. Then of course in defending himself the guy will go "WTF, I've been set up" and the response (since where I worked people don't just get fired, there are boards of review and such) and then of course the usual response was "Oh please drop your paranoid fantasies, what do you think, this was a conspiricy by all these people?" and umm, yeah it kind of was.

Same basic idea, albeit a bit differant. The game industry already engages in policies of non-competition and price fixing. All the companies also have similar goals (more money) and they all think that somehow there must be some way to get more sales if piracy was reduced. They they all have a vested interest in producing the same basic claims to justify their efforts.

In closing the basic point is that Piracy isn't right, but by the same token the gaming industry is just as bad, and is absolutly full of it in promoting it's own agendas. I would be surprised if the general rate of piracy is above like 5% with rare exceptions, albeit those exceptions are the ones that are made out to be the norm due to their interests. For example what happened with "Demigod" was news because of the lack of copy protection and such, and the sheer numbers. But I do not believe that is indicative of every case.

 

[John Funk]

If you don't have the money to buy all the games you want, how about you...

...don't play them until you DO have the money? Save up? Work a second job to fund your hobby? You know, the things people do when they AREN'T accustomed to everything being free?

I say this because more and more producers are lining up to invest in games, and the profit margins continue to increase. Sure lame titles still fail, but the bottom line is that the gaming industry is hardly suffering. Itigaki was in a fight with Team Ninja to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, and Richard Garriot who made his bones before gaming was anywhere near as big as it is now managed to buy one of those uber-expensive space tourist flights. Not to mention the fact that these huge development budgets are largely spent on human resources, leading to me constantly talking about how I very much doubt rank and file coders and artists are anywhere near honest in how much they get paid.

The industry makes these massive truckloads of money, and still tries to nickel and dime us. Even if what they said about piracy was true, does it really matter at this point? In the end DRM is basically an attempt to squeeze as much money out of the consumer base as possible, because heck... even if they are wrong, if it gets even a few people to buy the game rather than pirate that's a win.... little extra to spread on the top of the already skyscraper sized Scrooge Mcduck money bin.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the profit margin is actually much, much smaller than you imagine. You doubt rank and file coders and artists are honest in how much they get paid? Yeah, because a giant mass conspiracy is a whole lot easier than you just being wrong.