There a pros and cons for almost every situation in life, piracy is no different. Piracy is the excuse for all these nasty fucking things like DRM, Day 1 DLC, etc, but in reality that is all it really is, an excuse. Publishers have been trying different forms of 'DRM' for years, it predates CD keys, and DRM. The music industry tried to outlaw cassette tapes, the movie industry complained about VHS/Betamax, and of course the game industry just complains.
A publishing company is out for one thing and one thing only, your money. They want it, that is what their job is. To get money. Anything they can do to maximize profits is in their game plan.
Don't get me wrong I don't condone piracy at all, it does a lot more harm than good, but DRM and other get rich schemes aren't caused by piracy, piracy is just blamed for it.
With that aside, why do you think piracy has become such a problem?
For the majority of people who pirate, would you walk into a store and steal the game off the shelf? Probably not. Downloading pirated content removed the physical aspect of what you are doing. Of course a pirated copy of the game doesn't always equal a lost sale, it never has, they just wanted you to believe that.
Say a game released sells 1 million copies, and has 2 million copies pirated, the investors would like at a 66 percent loss margin, but that isn't the case at all. Some pirates do purchase the game if they enjoy what they have played, other don't. The MOST harmful kind of piracy is the kind where people download games they wanted, but never intended to purchase. These are the people that complain when series of games get cancelled, or movies don't get sequels, but they fail to understand the fundamental cause of their actions. You can't expect everyone else to purchase the product to encourage the developers to make more content. Because they won't. You are not the only person downloading this content, millions of other people do it too, and at the end of the day it is the investors and publishers that have a say on what gets made from most of these companies. If they see that GAME A or MOVIE A flopped and didn't turn out great profits, they won't have more made. They could care less about how many copies of the product got pirated(in this context) because that doesn't relate to money in their accounts, only money they don't have. They couldn't give a single fuck about the metacritic score of the product because it doesn't relate to the money they have.
If you ever purchase a product, purchase for the reason that you enjoy the series or whatever and you want more to be made. And if you don't enjoy the series than why are you downloading it.
As for the demo defense, developers do need to start releasing more demos of their games. Especially the ones that do cost 30+ dollars. With the advent of digital distribution it would be easier to have full game demos(see Steam's free weekends) where people could try out the product for a couple days, and if they like it they buy and if they don't they don't. And if a player can finish your game in small amount of time(see 90 percent of most games), than limit it to an amount of playtime you know a player won't be able to finish the product.
jthwilliams said:
n particular is about the only legal industry that gets away with behavior of this type.
It really is, and that is also becoming a large problem. If a developer makes a buggy game the expect the players to deal with it. If a say an automaker produces an shitty car they are expected to fix the major problems.
If the publisher produces a shitty game, the player is expected to deal with it. If you go to a shitty movie at the theater and complain, 90 percent of the time you get free tickets to another show.
Far too long have gamers taken this kind of treatment, and it is starting to backfire.
