Pirating Game Dev Tycoon Dooms Players to be Ruined By Piracy

SecondPrize

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lacktheknack said:
But fine, piracy caused always-online DRM. We know this because the developers and publishers specifically said it was in place to combat pirates. Therefore, this isn't theoretical.

Therefore, if it wasn't for pirates, we wouldn't have had the disasters that were Assassin's Creed II, Diablo 3, and SimCity server crashes.

Your move.
It's also pushing devs towards F2P models. You can't pirate something that's free, so they figure they can move their revenue out of sales and into micro transactions.
 

lacktheknack

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SecondPrize said:
lacktheknack said:
But fine, piracy caused always-online DRM. We know this because the developers and publishers specifically said it was in place to combat pirates. Therefore, this isn't theoretical.

Therefore, if it wasn't for pirates, we wouldn't have had the disasters that were Assassin's Creed II, Diablo 3, and SimCity server crashes.

Your move.
It's also pushing devs towards F2P models. You can't pirate something that's free, so they figure they can move their revenue out of sales and into micro transactions.
Jury's still out on whether this is a bad thing... but if it turns out to be so, then yes, here's another problem.
 

Voltano

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lacktheknack said:
You are not a "legitimate customer" until you buy the product. Before that, your'e a potential customer. Huge difference.

In your cupcake example, there is a little stand with free slices of cupcake on it. That's the demo.

The maggoty cupcakes are on the counter, but NEVER SERVED to anyone who buys a cupcake. The good ones are behind the counter, and you give them a good one when they buy one. They get to have a slice before they buy any.
But how would I know which ones I'm serving? The maggoty cupcakes intended to deter thieves or the ones that are meant to be sold with no maggots? I don't recall talking about the position of either one.

I'm a programmer and I'm aware that bugs are going to appear in any program. Even triple-A products like "Aliens: Colonial Marines" or "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" has their own fill of bugs that could hinder any kind of customer's -- whether legitimate or potential -- experience. AI might not work right; save games may get corrupted; or game-breaking events trigger to ruin the player from making any progress. These bugs can appear more as more features and people work on a product. Someone might be using the wrong assets in the game during launch which leads to some issues. Which, as I recall, what happened to EA with "Medal of Honor: WarFighter" that they had to release a massive patch on day one to fix.

So how can this form of DRM be trusted? We already have a good history of DRM working poorly in the game industry that it now has to be covered up -- such as "SimCity" being an MMO. We already know the developers intentionally put this DRM in their game to stop "thieves" and "bad men" who hurt them by "stealing" their work -- which they uploaded, by the way. Now this form of DRM is integrated into the core mechanics of the game instead of acting as a wrapper, as it triggers the state where the player keeps losing due to pirates for pirating the game. Am I suppose to trust the developers that they know what Boolean variable to flip to true/false when I pay them? Would you trust me with what cupcake I sell to you when I hand one over?

This has nothing to do with economics. In the cupcake example I intentionally put maggots in there to "teach the community" a lesson by being a troll. If I wanted to win people over to my cupcakes I should present it in a nice way, and treat any kind of customers with respect. I don't want maggots in my cupcakes, so I see no reason to make them to spite any thieves or "bad people". I should win them over for making good cupcakes.
 

JazzJack2

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Space Jawa said:
JazzJack2 said:
lacktheknack said:
Art/entertainment = necessity?

"Guzzling mountains of corporate cum"?

"No developer that actually cared would say you [should pay for it]"?

Are you human, or a whirling vortex of bizarre non-sequiturs that you picked up off the internet?

I dare you to back up your statements, especially the corporate cum one. I DARE YOU.
A developer that cared about his craft would want as many people to play his game as possible, he would not pass judgment on how people choose to get it, a dev that condemns piracy cares only about money and not about art or craftsmanship. Publishers frequently enforce the idea that their practices are necessary and games only exist as business and not an artform. And the worst part is people are gullible enough to believe this, I frequently see people saying DRM is necessary or microtransactions are fine, they are 'guzzling corporate cum' so to speak.
Really? You don't think a person who cares about the craft might also care about whether the people who are enjoying it paid to enjoy it or if those people said "I want to enjoy this, money be darned! I DESERVE to enjoy this!" and decided to enjoy it without compensating the person who made it?

Have you ever considered that the "artform" you call video games probably wouldn't exist as we know them if it weren't for business and corporations? They certainly wouldn't be as prolific and you probably never would have even heard of the vast majority of the most popular titles.
Corporatism may have helped build video games up but now with the internet as an easy way to publish games it's nothing more than an anachronism, corporatism has all but destroyed quality in recent mainstream video games bar a few bigs devs that refuse to follow it (such as CDProjektRED).
 

-Samurai-

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I think you lose the right to complain about piracy when you, ya know, put the game out there yourself.

Granted, it was a modified version, but it's out there because they put it out there. Don't give something away for free, then complain that someone took it.

And yes, I'm well aware that developers don't usually put their game out there, and it gets pirated anyway. But that is totally different from this case.
 

bug_of_war

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J Tyran said:
I hope there is a special circle of hell for people that pirate an indie game that has no DRM and has a demo. All of the excuses for piracy fall to pieces, its cheap, you do not need to crack it because of broken DRM and you can try the demo.

Plus its not a protest against big publishers and their practices its just the little guys trying to earn a living, no excuses whatsoever.
I find most pirates to have no excuse all round, regardless of it being an indie game, heavy DRM, or sticking it to a publisher. You are still technically stealing something that someone spent time on and that to me makes the whole, "Oh but it was for this reason" a terrible excuse. If I beat a woman, but say, "She was pregnant with my child and wouldn't get an abortion" I'm still an asshole who deserves to go to gaol. If I steal a frying pan, but say it's because I need something to cook my food, I'm still going to be punished via some form of recompense to the store/owner.

There is no reason to pirate a game. If you have a computer, you can afford to spend money on one game per month or one game per 2 months. I've only ever heard one viable excuse for piracy, and even then it's still not a good excuse (See Extra Credits Piracy episode).

So yeah, there is practically no excuse for piracy.
 

JazzJack2

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lacktheknack said:
An artist does NOT compromise his artistic integrity if he dumps thousands of dollars into something and then wants people to pay for entry.
An artist who wishes money for his art does not compromise his integrity but he does if he refuses to allow people to see it who can't afford to, it shows money has more value to him than that of his art.

Regardless of how it's implemented by whom now, IT STILL STARTED BECAUSE OF PIRATES. You cannot deny that.
It's not as if pirates are forcing them to do this, and while companies will try and scapegoat pirates for it they ultimately chose to include drm and they are ultimately responsible for treating their customers like scum.
 

The Wonder of the net

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Some faith is restored in humanity for such a funny troll. Oh god, if they only had this game for windows I still would have bought it. (I just bought it now and I can't wait to play it.) God thats soo funny.
 

lacktheknack

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Voltano said:
lacktheknack said:
You are not a "legitimate customer" until you buy the product. Before that, your'e a potential customer. Huge difference.

In your cupcake example, there is a little stand with free slices of cupcake on it. That's the demo.

The maggoty cupcakes are on the counter, but NEVER SERVED to anyone who buys a cupcake. The good ones are behind the counter, and you give them a good one when they buy one. They get to have a slice before they buy any.
But how would I know which ones I'm serving? The maggoty cupcakes intended to deter thieves or the ones that are meant to be sold with no maggots? I don't recall talking about the position of either one.

I'm a programmer and I'm aware that bugs are going to appear in any program. Even triple-A products like "Aliens: Colonial Marines" or "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" has their own fill of bugs that could hinder any kind of customer's -- whether legitimate or potential -- experience. AI might not work right; save games may get corrupted; or game-breaking events trigger to ruin the player from making any progress. These bugs can appear more as more features and people work on a product. Someone might be using the wrong assets in the game during launch which leads to some issues. Which, as I recall, what happened to EA with "Medal of Honor: WarFighter" that they had to release a massive patch on day one to fix.

So how can this form of DRM be trusted? We already have a good history of DRM working poorly in the game industry that it now has to be covered up -- such as "SimCity" being an MMO. We already know the developers intentionally put this DRM in their game to stop "thieves" and "bad men" who hurt them by "stealing" their work -- which they uploaded, by the way. Now this form of DRM is integrated into the core mechanics of the game instead of acting as a wrapper, as it triggers the state where the player keeps losing due to pirates for pirating the game. Am I suppose to trust the developers that they know what Boolean variable to flip to true/false when I pay them? Would you trust me with what cupcake I sell to you when I hand one over?

This has nothing to do with economics. In the cupcake example I intentionally put maggots in there to "teach the community" a lesson by being a troll. If I wanted to win people over to my cupcakes I should present it in a nice way, and treat any kind of customers with respect. I don't want maggots in my cupcakes, so I see no reason to make them to spite any thieves or "bad people". I should win them over for making good cupcakes.
I said this earlier... it's literally a separate version. He released the main version for purchase, and THEN he modded it and put the rigged version on the torrent sites.

There's literally no possible way for a customer to download the rigged version off the main site, because it's not DRM. It's a trap.
 

romxxii

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JazzJack2 said:
AdamG3691 said:
JazzJack2 said:
But piracy doesn't make developers lose money, in fact it does the opposite, devs gain money from piracy.
do you know how devs are paid?

evidently not.

at the start of the development, the developer is given a certain amount of money, that money is what funds the game.

when the game is released, the devs get NO MONEY FROM SALES until they sell (initial budget/cost of a game) copies, after that they start to get money although most still goes to the publisher.

if you pirate or buy a preowned game, that doesn't count as a copy, and if the developer doesn't make enough to break even, they are unlikely to be hired again.

now explain to me, how is it that piracy increases the number of copies sold? because if you are going to argue that the good press from the game contributes, then you better be forcing two people to buy it full price, one to make up for your own actions, and one to allow your flawed justification to make even a tiny bit of sense.

Piracy leads to more people playing your game, and if your game is good then they will not only gain trust in you as a developer (leading to much better sales for future games) but they will help market your game through word of mouth. Look at minecraft, not only is it one of the most easily pirated games of all time it is also one of the most successful indie games of all time. Why? Because piracy helped send it to almost viral like popularity.
Nope, Minecraft was already popular even during its beta days. If anything, it -- just like the Call of Duty franchise -- has a customer base so large, and cuts across so many demographics, that even if more than 50% of that demographic doesn't pony up cash, the rest are paying enough to guarantee the publisher some revenue.
 

SecondPrize

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lacktheknack said:
SecondPrize said:
lacktheknack said:
But fine, piracy caused always-online DRM. We know this because the developers and publishers specifically said it was in place to combat pirates. Therefore, this isn't theoretical.

Therefore, if it wasn't for pirates, we wouldn't have had the disasters that were Assassin's Creed II, Diablo 3, and SimCity server crashes.

Your move.
It's also pushing devs towards F2P models. You can't pirate something that's free, so they figure they can move their revenue out of sales and into micro transactions.
Jury's still out on whether this is a bad thing... but if it turns out to be so, then yes, here's another problem.
Experiences may vary but I've yet to try a F2P that offered the same quality of experience as a p2p game if you spend a normal box-price or monthly sub fee in micro transactions. Most of what i've found has been either poor quality games or games with potholes built into the experience and a cash shop that sells gravel, but at a price far higher than what a normal game would cost you.
 

lacktheknack

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JazzJack2 said:
lacktheknack said:
An artist does NOT compromise his artistic integrity if he dumps thousands of dollars into something and then wants people to pay for entry.
An artist who wishes money for his art does not compromise his integrity but he does if he refuses to allow people to see it who can't afford to, it shows money has more value to him than that of his art.

If you say so.

Regardless of how it's implemented by whom now, IT STILL STARTED BECAUSE OF PIRATES. You cannot deny that.
It's not as if pirates are forcing them to do this, and while companies will try and scapegoat pirates for it they ultimately chose to include drm and they are ultimately responsible for treating their customers like scum.
You asked for an example of pirates negatively affecting a game, and I gave you one.

The point is that the existence of pirates made DRM a thing in the first place, making any comment on who is using it irrelevant to your original request.
 

Covarr

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Voltano said:
But how would I know which ones I'm serving? The maggoty cupcakes intended to deter thieves or the ones that are meant to be sold with no maggots? I don't recall talking about the position of either one.
Because any decent programmer who deliberately makes a broken game would do so in a branch, rather than committing the maggots to master and choosing whether to enable them based on DRM/activation status.
Voltano said:
I'm a programmer and
Heh.

P.S. Thanks
 

JazzJack2

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lacktheknack said:
You asked for an example of pirates negatively affecting a game, and I gave you one.

The point is that the existence of pirates made DRM a thing in the first place, making any comment on who is using it irrelevant to your original request.
A) I should have been clearer, I meant games that where commercially damaged by piracy
B) Blaming pirates for DRM is just an apologists attitude, the blame is entirely with publishers.
 

lacktheknack

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JazzJack2 said:
lacktheknack said:
You asked for an example of pirates negatively affecting a game, and I gave you one.

The point is that the existence of pirates made DRM a thing in the first place, making any comment on who is using it irrelevant to your original request.
A) I should have been clearer, I meant games that where commercially damaged by piracy
B) Blaming pirates for DRM is just an apologists attitude, the blame is entirely with publishers.
A. Moving the goalposts, man.

You know I can't do that anymore than you can prove that piracy has helped anything (and before you bring up Minecraft again... no. I found out about it back when it was in Alpha, had a kickass demo and a tiny pricetag. And I got a bunch of people hooked on it at that time as well, as did many of my other friends. There was a whole bleeding Minecraft league at my University, and not a single one of them had pirated it. Figure that one out.).

B. Why not share the blame? When there's people involved, it's never the fault of just one. Maybe pirates should stop trying to depict themselves as free market knights (they're anything but) or even the trampled common folk (they lost that status once they started getting everything for free) and just admit that they've helped cause some crappy stuff to happen because they're freaking greedy. Everyone knows it, they just don't like to admit it.
 

Ushiromiya Battler

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I own 204 games on steam and I have over 100 boxed copies in my shelf....
I also have 50 ps3 games in my shelf and 20 on psn...
And you know what? Almost all of those games I pirated before I bought them.

I'm a poor student that downloads games and play them.
When I finally earn some money I buy the games I've pirated.

Don't go saying every pirate is a bastard that only pirates because he wants free stuff.
 

SecondPrize

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Magefeanor said:
I own 204 games on steam and I have over 100 boxed copies in my shelf....
I also have 50 ps3 games in my shelf and 20 on psn...
And you know what? Almost all of those games I pirated before I bought them.

I'm a poor student that downloads games and play them.
When I finally earn some money I buy the games I've pirated.

Don't go saying every pirate is a bastard that only pirates because he wants free stuff.
What gives you the right to set up your own demo plans? Have you ever tried going to a car lot and asking for a monthlong test drive?
If a developer releases a demo, play the demo. If they don't, don't.
 

RJ Dalton

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Eight bucks? That's extremely reasonably priced. Too bad I'm not into this sort of game.
 

JazzJack2

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lacktheknack said:
(and before you bring up Minecraft again... no. I found out about it back when it was in Alpha, had a kickass demo and a tiny pricetag. And I got a bunch of people hooked on it at that time as well, as did many of my other friends. There was a whole bleeding Minecraft league at my University, and not a single one of them had pirated it. Figure that one out.)
Well I remember very clearly that the original spreading of Minecraft through the internet was largely by a mixture of pirates and Notch's viral marketing on 4chan which gathered a large userbase there who then spread it via word of mouth.

B. Why not share the blame? When there's people involved, it's never the fault of just one. Maybe pirates should stop trying to depict themselves as free market knights (they're anything but) or even the trampled common folk (they lost that status once they started getting everything for free) and just admit that they've helped cause some crappy stuff to happen because they're freaking greedy. Everyone knows it, they just don't like to admit it.
Because pirates simply aren't accountable for the actions of publishers, publishers choose to add DRM and thus they hold full accountability. Using the cupcake metaphor someone was using earlier, if I found out someone had been stealing cupcakes from my store and I decide to spoil them on purpose to stop the thief, there is no conceivable way I can blame the thief for my own stupidity in doing so, how I reacted was purely my own choice.
 

Covarr

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JazzJack2 said:
Because pirates simply aren't accountable for the actions of publishers, publishers choose to add DRM and thus they hold full accountability. Using the cupcake metaphor someone was using earlier, if I found out someone had been stealing cupcakes from my store and I decide to spoil them on purpose to stop the thief, there is no conceivable way I can blame the thief for my own stupidity in doing so, how I reacted was purely my own choice.
By the same token, publishers can't be blamed when their DRM encourages dissatisfied customers to resort to piracy, but I'd be willing to bet you wouldn't make that argument. Using the cupcake metaphor before, following this train of logic, if someone steals a maggoty cupcake, they have no business complaining since they're the one who stole it.

While a person or publisher has a choice in HOW they react to something, the fact is that a reaction still requires an initial action. Pirates may not be directly responsible, but they certainly created a strong reason for DRM to be made. To say they deserve no blame is just ridiculous.

P.S. Thanks