Nuke_em_05 said:
jthwilliams said:
Nuke_em_05 said:
There are a lot of items that you cannot "try before you buy" with no guarantees or return policies. Life is full of disappointment.
I ask you to name six items or industries that are not software where
1) You cannot try out the product before you agree to pay for it
2) You cannot return the item if after a reasonable period, you are not satisfied
3) You cannot get your money back, in store credit, or some type of compensation if you were disastisfied.
4) The industry is not heavily regulated to protect consumers from fraud, misleading information, and abuse.
5) The service or item is legal.
All I can think of is sporting events. Even there if you compained that you were sat behind a poll and couldn't see the game, you could probably get free tickets to the next game or simular compensation.
Face it, software and gamming in particular is about the only legal industry that gets away with behavior of this type.
Housing, Banking, Credit, Investing, Education, I'll even go one more and throw in Government.
But seriously, sure, that is kind-of a racket.
Here's the problem, and the first part of my post: there is no way to know how many people, after "pirating" a game, actually turn around and buy a copy, or honestly decide that they don't like it. For all intents and purposes, they are the same as "group 1" as far as the publisher is concerned.
So I know you were half joking but just to proove the point
Housing - Heavily regulated, deeds, inspections, certificates and legal documents that protect both the buyer and the seller are required for every house sale (can cost up to 10k just to cover the costs of all the inspection and legal review) Not to mention building codes, electric codes and everything else that goes into certifying a house.
Banking - despite the last few years of fall out, banking is again one of the most regulated and getting even more regulated daily. People have and continue to succesfully sue and win against banks for failing to meet consumer protection requirements sometimes getting a free house or two out of the bargin
Credit - you can cancell a creditcard at anytime, and the industry is heavily regulated to protect consumers, but yeah people still get in a lot of trouble over fees, that is why there is more regulation limiting fees and increasing loan sharking laws
Investment - OK 3 of the things you have named here are all the finance industry. It is heavily regulated even though creative bastards seem to get around it to everyone dismay from time to time.
Education is also regulated, A school or college must be certified to be accredited and is audited. You can also withdrawl without penity from every acedemic program I am aware as long as you do it in a certain period of time. You can also audit classes at most schools for little or no cost.
Government - well you may have a point here, but government isn't so much an industry as a way of life.
Everything you stated was a service and not something that creates a tanglable product that you buy transactionally. (except housing)
------------------- OK kidding or kind of kidding aside-----------------------
I feel strongly that piracy is a direct response to having no return policy for games which in theory is justified by piracy.
Also, the game industry needs to take a page out of some of the larger software companies. Rather than seeing piracy as a lost sale, they need to look at it as a potential sale that has not yet converted. You could go crazy trying to prevent piracy, but if you could find a good value add for you legit users and then give people who (accidently) got a pirated version to get a legit version easy and quick and without accusations, then you might convert 25% of those 2million pirated version and really increase your proffit.