Popular Android Dev Blasts Pirates for Forcing Him Freemium

[ShAmMz0r]

I also have to ask, if you used to be a pirate, did you ever buy something you downloaded because you liked it?

Nope... because I already had it. Moral issues aside, it's silly to pay for something you already have. It just doesn't make any sense, except from an extreme sense of moral justice (and if I had that kind of moral fortitude at the time, I wouldn't have pirated the stuff).

Gentlemen, I simply have to intervene at this point. There is a completely rational reason for a pirate to buy products they pirated and liked. It goes like this:

I enjoy this product -> I want to see more from this developer -> I should invest in them -> I'll buy this game I pirated and will not only support the dev, but reap additional benefits like timely patches and community access (not with every product granted, but the point still stands).

It's the same idea people generally have when they donate to support authors of free stuff on the web. It's not that rare and if you fail to acknowledge existence (or considerable size) of this demographic then you simply are ignoring the evidence that does not support your point of view and that you therefore dislike.

As for the whole piracy issue my position is this. Since there is an acute shortage of actual (trustworthy and convincing) data on the effects of game piracy on the industry, any condemnation or defence of piracy is either based on inferences none of which are substantially backed (despite almost always seemingly being "common sense") or is from a moral position, which is a bit silly to say the least. How people manage to form such strong opinions on the matter without actually knowing effects of piracy (I mean strong factual evidence here and not so called "obvious common sense") is baffling.

One thing for sure though. As Grimrider6 quite intelligently pointed out

once reasonable copyright reform exists, and creative works are allowed to enter the commons after a reasonable period of money-making time has elapsed, THEN we can start talking about ways to mitigate piracy and make the software market safe.

Now copyright reform, that's a subject worth discussing if I ever saw one. This is what this silly piracy threads should be about and not about whether piracy is "right" or "wrong".

 

[Gennadios]

I notice that piracy gets blamed for game's failure in an inverse fashion to how good the game actually is.

I don't have an iOS device, but does anyone know if the game's actually good?

 

[Signa]

Now copyright reform, that's a subject worth discussing if I ever saw one. This is what this silly piracy threads should be about and not about whether piracy is "right" or "wrong".

I'm all for that, but there's a few problems. Either you agree that it needs reform, or you don't. Even if every single one of us agrees, and petitions the government to change the laws, nothing will come of it, because we don't have the money that the copyright industry wields. They bought those broken laws, and they aren't going to go anywhere. At least I have no faith they will.

 

[The Lunatic]

Yes, launching on a platform renown for having small indie games being pirated and then complaining that your small indie game got pirated, is a bit silly.

I get it, it's not your fault your game got pirated, but, you know, there are other platforms that you could release on as well.

 

[ShAmMz0r]

Oh, if only that happened in a statistically significant number of cases...

Can't say I know how many people we are talking here but for me it was a fairly easy line of reasoning to develop once I got enough income to support my gaming hobby. Stands to reason that people would like to invest in future games by their favourite studious and the very best way to start doing that is to buy the game you like so much.

Flag on the play, trying to compare something made 'for profit' with something made 'for free distribution'. And please, don't try any of that "Information wants to be free" stuff because I'll just say that your Social Security number, your bank account numbers, statistics on how frequently you wet the bed, etc. are all information that should be released to the public.

The point was to remind that people are actually capable of supporting authors and developers even if the product is available free of charge. Besides do you think that people are less likely to support developers working for profit compared to ones releasing their projects for free? That is not a rhetorical question. If people are more likely to support developers working for profit then my comparison stands and if not that raises some interesting questions regarding our current marketing models. But that is a discussion for another thread.

As for the "Information wants to be free" argument I think you are being a bit disingenuous here. Surely the mere existence of some kinds of information that can be reasonably deemed private is no cause to cry that "information does not want to be free". People do so love to use absolutes in arguments, don't we?

How do you know it's 'not that rare'? Is there actual evidence that states that it happens with frequency? It's obviously not unheard of, but are there any actual, solid numbers for it? You mention evidence but, please, provide it.

Well for starters we have all websites relying on donations to rent their servers. I'm sure you could find some owners who combine donations and advertising, and probably some who use only donations. One could argue that if a website is large and popular enough to require serious dedicated servers, then large number of donations can be expected. I'm not willing to argue the details here. One does not need look farther than scanlating and fansubbing scenes to see such a model at work (I realise that these scenes may not be the best of examples, since they are a bit of a grey area, but let's not discuss that here).

How is looking at it from a moral position 'silly'? Why is "You shouldn't take things that don't belong to you" 'silly'? No, everybody, take your fingers off the Quote button. You don't all need to point out that piracy doesn't fit the antiquated definition of 'stealing'. You're unlawfully obtaining the use of something. It's me, breaking into your house, scanning your diary, and posting it online for everyone to see.

So your position is as follows: It is morally wrong to obtain information unlawfully. Then we go to the next logical point and examine just what "unlawfulness of obtaining information" is.

What I'd like to draw your attention to is just how is our law constructed from an anthropological perspective. Law can be thought of as a tool to regulate effects detrimental (and beneficial) to society, so if piracy in fact has a detrimental effect then it should be considered illegal and be punished accordingly. Otherwise it should be encouraged instead.

Now this argument is grossly oversimplified for the sake of concision and of course nobody would just determine the overall effect of piracy and be done with it. The issue is much more complex. But my main point here is that if your perception of piracy as a morally wrong deed is dependant on the lawfulness of it, then it is thereby dependant on effects piracy has on society. And these effects are not comprehensively explored by any standard. So you end up going with current copyright law as your moral compass, which is far from perfect in my opinion.

Copyrighted works eventually falling into public domain is all well and good, but what does it have to do with pirating a video game approximately 1 hour after its release? I don't think that qualifies as "a reasonable period of money-making time" having elapsed. Do you?

Naturally not. But piracy is not the biggest problem gaming (and software in general) industry has right now. Current copyright law is an abhorrent bloody mess and should be completely reworked before one can even hope to speak about piracy in any meaningful way. Talking about piracy crippling this or that product's sales while copyright law is used by publishers to exploit authors on a daily basis is just crazy.

 

[Alterego-X]

The problem with piracy arguements, (pro and con), is that they create a huge moral issue out of something mundane.

It's like abortion debates, where one side are the baby-murderers, while the other side are the woman-enslavers. All that, for drawing a precise line at slightly different positions in the legal treatment of a fetus.

Likewise, gamers are really only arguing about exactly HOW MUCH control artists should have over their work, but they pretend that it's an epic battle between two ideals where one side says ALL COPYING IS THEFT, and everyone who would ever download someone else's work is a thief, while the other modifies the old anarchist "property is theft" into COPYRIGHT IS THEFT, so they are fighting against "The Man" who wants to restrict our rights to share information.


If I download an unauthorised the Lord of the Rings novels, am I a dirty thief and a grave robber, who steals Tolkien's property? And if download The Count of Monte Cristo, am I robbing Dumas?

You can say yes, because you truly believe that IP is the exact same thing as property, and that piracy is always theft, then logically both of these should be treated as immoral, even if our governments allow the latter, it is much like China allows piracy of Windows, or the USA used to allow slavery, int hat we should still FEEL that it's not right.

You can say that no, both of these should be allowed, because dead people shouldn't have intellectual property. In that case, you are a piracy supporter, you feel entitled to take away rights from some copyright holders, to increase you own rights as a consumer. You might want different specific things than someone who pirates an android game, but the principles that you say about them are the same.

You can say that Dumas is fair play but Tolkien is not, because the law says so, and at the moment, we should respect that regardless of what we want. And that's a sensible statement, but it's important to remember, that LAW DOESN'T DEFINE MORALITY. On that basis, you might give an advice about how people probably should pirate because they might get into trouble, but without first giving some justification of WHY you think that copyright holders should be allowed to have a hold on the creation of digital copies, don't start to preach that they have a moral right not to be pirated, solely because they have a legal right for it.

 

[ShAmMz0r]

I'm all for that, but there's a few problems. Either you agree that it needs reform, or you don't. Even if every single one of us agrees, and petitions the government to change the laws, nothing will come of it, because we don't have the money that the copyright industry wields. They bought those broken laws, and they aren't going to go anywhere. At least I have no faith they will.

A bit of a depressing thought isn't it. That your own government will side with corporate interests against it's own citizens. Well that's why you chaps have the second amendment. Madison thought you'll need to remind the government who to side with at some point so go forth and give them a bit of a shake-up XD. I'm not sure things are so bad just yet though. We did get some response with the whole SOPA malarkey.

That's assuming you are from US of A of course. If not then you are probably stuck watching your government slowly copy the worst ideas from US copyright law into your own like me.

 

[Signa]

I'm all for that, but there's a few problems. Either you agree that it needs reform, or you don't. Even if every single one of us agrees, and petitions the government to change the laws, nothing will come of it, because we don't have the money that the copyright industry wields. They bought those broken laws, and they aren't going to go anywhere. At least I have no faith they will.

A bit of a depressing thought isn't it. That your own government will side with corporate interests against it's own citizens. Well that's why you chaps have the second amendment. Madison thought you'll need to remind the government who to side with at some point so go forth and give them a bit of a shake-up XD. I'm not sure things are so bad just yet though. We did get some response with the whole SOPA malarkey.

That's assuming you are from US of A of course. If not then you are probably stuck watching your government slowly copy the worst ideas from US copyright law into your own like me.

Yeah, I'm USA, and copyright law is one of the bigger examples of why I'm not anti-gun. It sounds so far-fetched saying it that way, but the second amendment is a fail-safe that I hope we won't have to use. Nerfing that fail-safe is dangerous business.

Damnit, these piracy conversations always go on weird tangents.

 

[Signa]

No, my position is basically "It's my toy, you can't play with it unless I say you can". It's respecting the wishes of the creator. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

"No," says the man in Washington, it belongs to the poor.

I don't think that was the point you were trying to make, but it does work out that way.

 

[ShAmMz0r]

"I want it -> I don't want to pay for it -> I'll pirate it". An even easier line of reasoning to develop, since it's totally selfish and requires no sacrifices whatsoever on the part of the reasoner.

I guess it boils down to how much a person is interested in future projects by the same developer. I usually can only muster enough interest in a game if it is so good that it's developers deserve my patronage. We're unlikely to get our hands on some hard data though, so we are again reduced to speculation about how many people think like me.

I shouldn't think so, because the answer is easy. "Yes." Because it's hip to be Socialist, and denounce Capitalism. Because it's big business that's dragging everyone down, the blogger says, making a Tweet with his $400 iPad.

People are capable of supporting authors and developers, but there's no reason to assume that such a thing is the majority opinion.

It is probably not a majority, but not so small a part as to be ignored in a discussion about piracy.

Eh, there's an easy rule to remember for life: "People are dicks."

"Most people are dicks." An important qualification I'm sure you'll agree.

Absolutely. But if we respect the designation of 'private' why is there no respect for the designation of 'private, unless you pay'?

Oh I doubt we'll achieve proper freedom of information in the foreseeable future. It's a beautiful ideal to aspire to though.

And yet there are still more 'leechers' than there ever will be 'seeders' when it comes to this sort of model. The few that donate feed those who do not. How many of these groups have disbanded, because nobody was donating, and all of their work was being distributed without proper acknowledgement?

And how many still going strong as ever? There will always exist successes and failures in any model. It does work reasonably well, so I think I'll count it as moderately strong evidence. I'm sure you'd be able to find some other examples if you cared to look. I'm thinking we have established that indeed noticeable percentage of people do support authors even if they don't have to. Notice that the reasoning behind supporting a scanlation group is pretty much the same as when supporting game developers. "Want more of their stuff -> support them" or "like this stuff they released -> give them some money as a thank you".

No, my position is basically "It's my toy, you can't play with it unless I say you can". It's respecting the wishes of the creator. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

Now we could argue about "taking away your toy" vs "making an identical copy of that toy without taking yours away", but I personally think that the whole issue is not worth it. I say we determine what effect different information distribution models have on societies and choose the one we like most. But then again I'm the weird guy who proposes to use rational reasoning and science for policy making so what do I know.

Why is it crazy to look at more than one aspect of a problem at a time? It's like saying we shouldn't try to cure cancer until we cure AIDS.

Oh it's not crazy to look at more than one aspect of a problem at a time. Some priorities should be kept in mind at all times though. Piracy issue pales in comparison to the state of current copyright. Besides after we rework copyright the nature of piracy may change quite a bit, so dwelling on it now is not all that useful.

 

[Alterego-X]

"I want it -> I don't want to pay for it -> I'll pirate it". An even easier line of reasoning to develop, since it's totally selfish and requires no sacrifices whatsoever on the part of the reasoner.

And yet there are still more 'leechers' than there ever will be 'seeders' when it comes to this sort of model. The few that donate feed those who do not. How many of these groups have disbanded, because nobody was donating, and all of their work was being distributed without proper acknowledgement?

A number of them. And a number of creators in non-pirated sectors have disbanded because no one bought their stuff. And a number of them are getting by. A number of them are getting rich. But there is no sign that honor-based systems are particularly LESS viable than others.

That's also the fallacy of this article, the single-cause fallacy. A number of artists will ALWAYS fail. Simply pointing at the fact that in this model, we can also see a grou of freeloaders who maybe could have payed, at least some of them, potentially, some money, under certain circumstances, doesn't mean that the system doesn't work.

As long as stuff gets made, why does it bother you that some people are contributing more than others? If a game on a piracy-free console forces 100.000 players to buy it, so it has 100.00 players, while a similar PC game has 100.000 sales and 1.000.000 players, why do we have to call the latter's audience selfish dicks, 'leeches', thiefs, and worse things, instead of just accepting that in the online world, business is based around people expecting a free access to everything, and a smaller circle of invested members also paying for it?

Isn't that what the freemium model itself is also about? Or those who only play the free part of it, are also leches? Are we leeches for just reading The Escapist without throwing money at it?

"People are dicks"? Well, if you have unreasonable expectations of them, they are all dicks compared to that. If you have unreasonablylow expectations of them, they are all saints. If you look at what they ARE, they are people.

No, my position is basically "It's my toy, you can't play with it unless I say you can". It's respecting the wishes of the creator. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

Most creators don't have "wishes". They have publishers, with bottom lines that need to be raised, and lawyers who know exactly how much they are legally allowed to ask for.

Believe me, if they could, EA, Activision, and Ubisoft would charge you for every screenshot taken, for every friend playing at your console, for every article written discussing the game's content, and for every Let's Play on Youtube.

That they *CAN* get away with ask for cash per digital copy, is a result of modern copyright law history, not some deeply held moral conviction that the sweat of their brow must manifests itself in sold discs as opposed to freemium or other models.

No, one could say a lack of originality is the biggest problem, springing from the desires of the audience for the safe and familiar and the rejection of the new and unusual. But that's a different thread altogether.

Actually, the two issues are not unrelated. The need for "playing safe" is magnified by every gamer being expected to pay for every single game.

In a more open system, where everyone is alowed to play around with everything as long as enough money flows into the industry, there would be more chances of these "leeches" finding a hidden gem, and making it popular, then profitable.

 

[Signa]

Snip

Snip

Why is it I get into an argument here and sound like a dumbass, only to have you guys come in after I shut up as say the exact same things but far more eloquently that I ever could. You guys suck!

No, not really. Thanks for having better control of English than I do.

 

[mlcc]

I think that the main problem with the piracy is that you need a creditcard to buy from the android market. I'm not trying to defend piracy here but it's much easier to just download the apk from somewhere than going through the work of making some kind of virtual creditcard or something like that.

Here, you can finally pay with your mobile phonebill. But I think there are only three providers which do that and one of them just recently made it possible, people with other providers can pay like that since almost half a year or longer.


I just wrote this because most people were like "omg its only 1$ why dont you pay???" and I only wanted to tell that some people just can't buy them.
But I have to admit that I downloaded some games but I immediately bought them once I was able to. Slap me, burn me, twist my nipples. Just wanted to let you know that there are some "pirates" which do this stuff.

 

[Callate]

I'll just say it's a pity. I can kind of- sort of- get behind "ad supported games", so long as the placement of the ads isn't invasive to the game itself. But "pay more real money to do well in the game", or worse, "pay more real money to play the game as it was originally designed to be played" is a concept I would happily have seen die with Double Dragon III.

Piracy has been a problem for a very long time, but it was a little more innocuous when it was floppy disks swapped between friends. In the age of the Internet, it's actually having a real effect on business models- and worse, game design.

 

[thesilentman]

I am holding a random game here in my hand.

Please tell me. Do you like this game?

That's basically the experience you go through buying a game on day 1. You purchase on good faith without ANY option to return the game after playing without selling it to someone else.

The anti-piracy guys are always so vehemently opposed to having options to try out games with demo's. They would rather just trust Mr Big marketing corporation to give them their information. I suppose you also get your reviews from gamespot .

Any way did you figure out if you like the game I'm holding in my hand? Not yet? Well guess I sort of made a point. I could Borrow it to you... but that is also illegal according to the EULA. You'll just have to take a leap of faith and send me 50$ to buy this game. I'll even send you a photo of the bland box art and the marketing blurb on the back.

It's always nice to see people defending corporate greed and suffocating legislature and business practices under the defence of "stopping theft".

My gaming library exists of exactly 2% pirated games. These games are so ancient you can't buy them any more. The rest have all been bought either on recommendation from others or by playing a demo. When no demo was available. I simply pirated the game, play it for an hour and if I didn't like it I simply deleted it and never looked back.

Come on. Please tell me how I'm evil and horrible for stealing games that nobody sells. I mean I'm so horrible right? Or maybe. A crazy idea here. What if games ALWAYS came with demo's? What if we reinstated the 24 hour trial of the olden days? Before CD-keys ruined that.

It would allow people to buy games more freely and return them, the store usually just gives out credit so the credit will still be spent on games. Just not on the one that sucked. I think that is a fair trade off right? Instead of making a purchase of games permanent, making a short lapse in judgement a punishment worth maybe 10% of someone's monthly income.

Let's not suck the cocks of corporations shall we? Let's instead look at why people pirate. Address the issues and then condemn those that still do it because they can.

I'm quoting this post because this is the first person to get it right.

The rest of this thread is a sad, pathetic, and over-emphasized morality battle between two parties:
1) people who refuse to recognize the growth of piracy as an indication of market problems
2) people who refuse to recognize that some people are just going to pirate the shit out of digital media even if they don't have a reason for it

Yes, some people will ALWAYS pirate digital content. This is how the world works. There are always going to be people who do illegal things because they want to. And then there are the morally-grey cases. It's impossible to know how many people pirate for those reasons, but we'll find out if the corporations take the time to deal with those service issues.

Deal with these service issues first. Then we'll start talking about the legitimately bad people out there. >_>

Exactly right. I will also confess that I pirated games and music before iTunes and Steam. I would've kept pirating if I hadn't realized that the money I used to buy games would mostly go to the developers.

That would be in a perfect world.

I understand why developers blast piracy. The money's needed to make up for the budget. But at the same time, piracy isn't a fallback reason for lost sales. DRM and crappy services are (Origin and Ubisoft's UPlay, for example). So stop treating pirates as cheap scumbags and instead look into how to please the customers without creating frustration on their end. (Angry stare).

Now, I made a promise that I'll only pirate games that can't be found anywhere through Steam, GoG, or in my region. That way they'll see that people want to play their game and actually release it in the region I'm in.