Sink The Pirates

[Soulfein]

QFT. This didn't seem like an article so much as a blog post. The problem with excluding pirates from the debate is that, without talking to them (us), you can only speculate on their motivations. That, apparently, leads to crap like Mass Effect's DRM, which, judging by BioWare's forums, was pretty counter-productive.

Actaully, you dont have to speculate on thier motives. Their motives ARE free stuff, nothing deeper.

To Angron, if I use your logic I can steal cars because I bought one and these ones that I steal cost too much?

The industry should listen to pirates. They might learn something.

They could listen to them, but they would not learn anything. Pirates pirate because its free. If you really want to know if a game works, consult people on the internet.

 

[JonnWood]

The long, considered agreement for the article I had planned would be easier if not for that picture of plushie Captain Jack Sparrow.

The funny thing, of course, being that piracy has been around at least as long as the gaming industry, and has yet to be blamed for the death of a single format.

Currently being blamed-and not unrightly so-for the decrease in PC game sales and the increasing tendency of developers to prefer consoles.

The question is not one of morality, but of economics. When a good is overpriced, people will prefer the cheaper alternative. And piracy is not free; you still have to buy a gaming PC (expensive) before you can get onto the bandwagon.

Please look up the "Broken Window Fallacy" and come back to this thread.

I recommend reading up about Brad Wardell, CEO of PC games makers Ironclad. They made Sins of a Solar Empire, sold it online without copy protection, and made money. The piracy argument does not hold.

Your argument doesn't hold.

That's not an insult; your argument literally doesn't make any sense. Even as DVD sales rose, so did piracy, and the industry still did well. If a man is running, and slows to a walk, he's still moving forward. The argument is not that enough people are pirating to make sales negative-which is essentially what you're implying-but that people are pirating who would've otherwise bought the game.

 

[JonnWood]

Cevat's 20-to-1 figure is inflated, and without hard evidence otherwise, I think he's very far off.

So do I; a poll, taken of PC pirates and linked-to by Kotaku, claimed that only one in one thousand pirates had any intention of paying for the games they downloaded. At all. If that figure is anything close to accurate...

Yes, PC developers are abandoning the PC in droves. Is piracy really the cause of it though? Sure seems like an easy scapegoat. As Skrapt above me mentions, developers have attempted a variety of things in the name of "curbing piracy", but so very few of them have actually stopped pirates, and almost all of them have made life harder on paying customers.

Hence, the move to consoles. You can spend less money on Copy Protection and more on making games.

Back to the example of the wonderful Crysis, which was programmed to only run optimally on the top 1% of hardware in existence (at time of launch, for the entirety of the oh-so-crucial first few weeks, as discussed in every other article on the current gaming/retail landscape). Artificially restricting your own market, and then complaining that not enough people bought your product? What are you, insane?

Funny thing; if a game sells poorly and the publisher blames piracy, it's because the game is crap. If a game sells well and the publisher speaks out against piracy, they should just shut up because they're making millions of dollars.

You know what pirates do? They fix those things for me.

Couldn't they do that just as easily with a regular game? Homebrew up a patch?

 

[kiltmanfortywo]

Way out of context. Right out of the context of data duplication not having a material cost...

The closest you're coming to a coherent rebuttal is your $100 bill counterfeiting argument which does encapsulate the concept of reproduction being costless (or close enough). But it contains another serious flaw. Games have use value and so are valuable no matter how many there are. Money doesn't have any use value, it's value is based solely on rarity and so each additional unit devalues all other units in existence.

First, everybody on the thread needs to stop taking analogies literally. The purpose of one is to draw attention to a detail or a different point of view, concept, or make a point. It is next to impossible to find a 100% accurate analogy for IP piracy because for 2000 years there has been nothing close to it except patent and copyright fraud; even those are stretches.

People who fail to grasp that are about as logical as reading the fable "Tortoise and the Hare" and proclaiming the overall doucebaggery of rabbits as creatures who gloat to much.

It might be a stretch for some of the "pirating is cool" crowd but try using your brain to understand more than the obvious.

Johnwood, you seem to be playing equivocator(for the unlearned, somebody who will argue for anybody) here.
Your last paragraph in post 1 has a very good point. Even though it is not causing a negative economic growth, it is still hurting. Gaming is an industry and they want as much money as they can get. But very good points, glad to see someone on here who can think geometrically.

One point you made does not make sense however. The part of the game that sells and speaks out against piracy not being entitled to do so because they are already making millions. It's a business and they want all the money possible for the work they put into a product.

Putting this into my trusty OOCTM (trying new names) we get this fantastic result: I sell widgets(yes, widgets. Get over it) and they sell like hotcakes! However, somebody starts making exact copies of my widgets and giving them away for free. Because I have a booming industry already, can I not raise a stink about something I feel is unfair? After all, I came up with it, own the patents and the copyrights, and created a working product. How is this fair to silence me because I made a good product?

Kiltman

 

[panfist]

The concept of being able to try-before-you-buy already exists - it's called RENTING.

Show me where I can rent PC games please.

 

[kiltmanfortywo]

so because you cannot rent the games it gives you the right to steal them?

Kiltman

 

[JonnWood]

One point you made does not make sense however. The part of the game that sells and speaks out against piracy not being entitled to do so because they are already making millions. It's a business and they want all the money possible for the work they put into a product.

I know. My point was that there's an incredibly hypocritical double standard at play. When Crytek complained about low Crysis sales, piracy advocates said their actions were justified because the game was terrible. When GTAIV ROMS were leaked, the exact same people said that the game was going to make millions anyway.

And I don't care about 'profit' so much as someone's right to control what happens to the stuff they make, be it a game or a garage door. There are ways to make derivates without significantly altering the value of the original-see fanfic-but piracy is not one of those ways.

What I dislike most is all the rationalizations about piracy. I'd rather have an honest thief than one who's really good at lying to himself.

 

[JonnWood]

The concept of being able to try-before-you-buy already exists - it's called RENTING.

Show me where I can rent PC games please.

I dunno. Show me where you get to take something you want because you can't try it first, please.

 

[Dragonclaw]

The "I wouldn't have bought it anyway so nobody gets hurt" argument and the "well it's ok because I couldn't afford the high prices" arguments are just plain stupid...

I want a Ferrari...can't afford one, not gonna be buying one. If I steal one is it still a crime? Last time I checked...yes. A simple fact of life...unless you are from a VERY small percentage of humans on this planet, there will ALWAYS be things you want but cannot afford...or would like to have but can't justify the price. The fact that in this instance it is easy to steal does not make it condonable.

and for the "Would you buy a CD before you even heard one song?"...yeah, I do it all the time for bands I know I like...did it with 2 CD's just this week I either stick to bands / movies / games I like, or I check out some reviews from people I trust...there are boatloads of gaming magazines and websites...and if you know what reviewers tend to have similar tastes than it becomes pretty easy to pick winners.

 

[Bakery]

In Australia, I've seen brand new console and pc games as high as $110. This is understandable for the latest games (although still a little overpriced in my opinion) and on a student income, I'd never dream of paying that much for a game. Instead of downloading a game simply because I want it, I came to a realisation. THERE ARE OTHER GAMES OUT THERE!

Just a few days ago I bought a brand new, legitimate copy of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay for $10. Yeah, ten freaking dollars! And it's a bloody good game! Instead of holding my breath for Starcraft 2, I went out and payed $27 for Starcraft + Broodwar! People who can afford games but download them just because they want them now-and-for-free are just criminals.

Buying old games is good and all but I would like to see developers producing low cost but still awesome games. Ikaruga was developed by no less than 3 people. No, not a typo, three people. Theres no reason companies cant make cheap, great games with lower end graphics to open up a whole new market to them.

If you havent already, read this:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_158/5045-Piracy-and-the-Underground-Economy

I agree with most of the points in it. The subject of piracy isn't good vs evil, red vs blue, orks vs humans, it's a whole crazy spectrum that looks bad in one light and good in another.

 

[Blayze]

Show me where I can rent PC games please.

I suppose Metaboli could be considered renting.

 

[SirCannonFodder]

"I paid money for a game, for some reason I cannot play it anymore(damage, loss of CD key, etc) so it is right and fair for me to steal a copy?" Lets throw this into the out-of-context-machine i recently acquired and let us see what comes out.

I have purchased a widget(nothing in particular, could be anything from a watch to a plane) and it stops working. Well, I paid good money for it, therefore I own the rights to get as many of these widgets as I want without paying 1 cent more. Sounds fair to me. What about the manufacture of the widgets? Where is the fairness to him? He designed and built these things and for the right to use them he should be paid what he deems fair market value. If you have a problem with that, DON'T USE HIS WIDGETS!

But when you're buying a PC game, or any other PC software, you aren't buying the disc, or even the software on that disc, you're buying a license to use that software. It doesn't matter where that software comes from, so long as you are still the owner of that license (ie, you haven't sold it on to someone else). The disc becoming damaged or the data on the disc somehow becoming unreadable has no effect on that. If you buy another copy because you can't use your other copy, you just end up with two licenses.

Anyway, the only games I've downloaded are the ones that literally can not be bought new any more, and I don't really see why I should have to pay massive amounts of money on Ebay when the developers wouldn't be benefiting from it anyway. Even though I can't afford new-release games, I don't download them, I just wait for the price to drop.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Piracy has been around for a decade? Surely quite a lot longer than that.

Anyway, I have a pirated copy of a game on my system at the moment.

Why? Well, I bought the original after thoroughly enjoying the trial and then the disc broke.

Now, the lovely Anti-Pirate device means I can't play this without the disc, but the lovely Piracy device means I can.

So, I'm actually being forced to Pirate.

There's also the huge abandonware network (completely legal) and whilst I will always BUY a copy of a game I like, I really don't want to spend my hard-earned money (like I have) buying games that, although they say work on my system, don't.

So far: GRAW 2 and a number of recent games simply won't work; Guild Wars, EQ2, EQ1, Auto Assault etc. take over a DAY's worth of downloads just to work, as does Hidden and Dangerous, Vampire the Masquerade etc.

Of my favourite games at the moment, four need to have constant disc accessing, which is ruining my drive. And for a quick download, I'm free of that constant machine-crunching whine.

So...the view is...When Pirates provide more helpful service than Manufacturers, why trust the latter?

[I have NEVER pirated a game myself though. I've released a few via freeware though.]

 

[SirCannonFodder]

There's also the huge abandonware network (completely legal)

Abandonware is not legal, you just probably won't get in (much) trouble for it.

 

[Singing Gremlin]

First, everybody on the thread needs to stop taking analogies literally. The purpose of one is to draw attention to a detail or a different point of view, concept, or make a point. It is next to impossible to find a 100% accurate analogy for IP piracy because for 2000 years there has been nothing close to it except patent and copyright fraud; even those are stretches.

How can we not take your analogies seriously when they're pretty much the only thing you argue your point with? If you can't get an even faintly accurate analogy, don't use them. I'm amused by your rebuttal of my Dell argument, especially seeing as that was supporting your argument by explaining one of your points, something you utterly failed to do.

You are right and I agree with you that it is a business's prerogative to make money. This is undeniable. This is why I pay for my games. However when said business begins to enforce ridiculous measures that penalise me and other paying customers while barely hurting piracy, while those same filthy pirates develop a method that allows me to bypass these measures, I become increasingly tempted to turn to piracy. Not necessarily because I have any rights to do so, but because the business needs a slap and this the only way I could do it.

And please try and refrain from insulting your opposition's intelligence. No-one here is stupid and you're just lowering the tone of the debate.

 

[sharp_as_a_cork]

Wow... it's fascinating how easy it is for people debating on a forum (even one as relatively civil and eloquent as The Escapist) to:
1) Pose statements as absolute facts when they are actually nothing of the sort
2) Take things out of context and nit pick ad nauseum.

 

[Fire Daemon]

Wow... it's fascinating how easy it is for people debating on a forum (even one as relatively civil and eloquent as The Escapist) to:
1) Pose statements as absolute facts when they are actually nothing of the sort
2) Take things out of context and nit pick ad nauseum.

People here are trying to protect themselves or make themselves look better than other. Because of that people do not act rationally, similar to a console war I suppose.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Wow... it's fascinating how easy it is for people debating on a forum (even one as relatively civil and eloquent as The Escapist) to:
1) Pose statements as absolute facts when they are actually nothing of the sort
2) Take things out of context and nit pick ad nauseum.

Just like you've done?

 

[Geoffrey42]

Funny thing; if a game sells poorly and the publisher blames piracy, it's because the game is crap. If a game sells well and the publisher speaks out against piracy, they should just shut up because they're making millions of dollars.

You know what pirates do? They fix those things for me.

Couldn't they do that just as easily with a regular game? Homebrew up a patch?

You've just mixed console piracy with PC piracy, and while there are parallels, I think it best if we keep discussions of the two separate. While I'm willing to entertain the notion that PC piracy is significantly affecting PC game sales, you've got a long road to hoe to convince me that the console market is even maybe suffering at the hands of console piracy (in the West).

I have not played Crysis... I am not making a judgment about its quality. I am merely looking at the launch of Crysis through the lens of the time I spent in business classes, and through the lens of all the articles across various gaming-oriented websites which discuss the retail cycle, and the importance of the first few weeks. Crytek intentionally targeted Crysis to the extreme end of the PC performance spectrum (establishing it as the de facto reference/test-bed standard for all new PC hardware, and spawning its own internet meme). In so doing, they self-limited their potential audience. Did they capture 100% of their potential market at 3.1 million? I don't know. Not everyone with the hardware to run it is an FPS fan. Were their potential sales ever, EVER 60 million? Ha. As the average PC becomes more and more capable of running Crysis, I think you'll see their sales grow, but those sales will be largely useless to the company, because they are past the box office weekend.

Per the homebrew comment, yes, other people could fix those things for me. I was not saying that I pirated the game in order to employ those fixes, simply that the pirate community was the one providing the necessary patches for me.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

You've just mixed console piracy with PC piracy, and while there are parallels, I think it best if we keep discussions of the two separate.

Acquaintance of mine had Mariokart on the Wii a few days before it was released.

I'm not sure there is a difference.