So DRM doesn't stop piracy... what do you think developers should do instead?

[Treblaine]

Well, DUH.

It's very simple.

Make games that people WANT to pay for.

Piracy: The natural selection of the gaming industry.

Want to pay for?

Excuse me but have you any idea how few people have found so few games (or ANY product) that they insist on paying for them?

Trust me, this will no where near cover development costs, it may work for he music industry where the effort in making music is almost entirely artistic, the cost in MAKING games are very large and unavoidable.

OK, maybe some small indie titles made in spare time will work this way but games that take hundreds of thousands of man hours to make like Crysis, Arkham Asylum or Uncharted... it won't work with them. Maybe a price cut... but I don't see the point in a price cut considering how quickly games devalue in price due to the incessant pace of the games industry (i.e. people could jsut wait 3-6 months and the game will have dropped to half it's retail price).

If the game is really good, you'll want to buy it, thus supporting the studio. Plus, purchased copies come with official customer support and other neat things.

EDIT OARG!!

This gives me an idea, maybe publishers should use far more target advertising, seek out the customers who are going the piracy route and undercut them with a last minute special offer.

For example if someone puts into google "Batman Arkham Asylum Torrent" then the first google ad could be a special offer selling the game for an extra low price

Or a special edition (extra content, not necessarily in the Pirate cut). Give the pirate every opportunity so kind of like:

"Thirty Five quid? nah, I'm off to pirate that shit"

"no wait! How about £22.99, limited time only..."

"aww, but I could just pirate it for free"

"yeah, but this is the special edition with extra content"

And very few people would click that, the internet, and it's ads, being what it is.

Google earns hundred of billions of dollars from the money that ad companies pay for those targeted ads, people MUST click them often enough.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Then people will just start cracking and pirating console games. Life moves on and piracy evolves.

"Will start"? They startws a long, long time ago.

Of course, at the moment console piracy carries almost no risk if you don't care about going online with your console. A network based sweep and clear of modded consoles isn't going to affect you if you're never connected to it... if the console manufacturers, publishers and devs started seeing this as a major issue it's Online Activation ahoy! Probably combined with a mod scan over the network while connected for activation.

 

[thatstheguy]

Nothing. Developers just waste time and money trying to avoid pirates whom they may never lose money from, since they may never buy the game in the first place if piracy wasn't an option. Just lower the price of a game by 10 or so dollars, and I'll be happy.

 

[Dexiro]

Honestly i think the best they could do in the long run is form a relationship with their players, create good honest games with great support and attempt to gain the loyalty of their players.

I go as far as not even buying preowned now if it's a game by a developer i respect, in some cases i've bought games out of loyalty even if i knew i wouldn't like it.
If i ever downloaded a game i'd always buy the game as soon as possible.

They'll never completely eradicate piracy. They would have never got money from most of those people so they're hardly making a loss, and there'll always be a workaround.
If they got that same level of respect from at least a few of their players it'd be worth the effort though.
Even if it's not a particularly good game, if they show they

 

[Sacman]

I think they should crack down on piracy and just kill anyone who tries and make an example... it might just save the industry...

 

[octafish]

Ok. This thread is over 6 pages long, and I haven't read it all but I really like what Bioware is doing with ME2 and DA:O.

Buy a legitimate copy and get some free content later. Buy a second hand console game and pay a DLC fee to also get that content. It is a way of securing income for the developers in a market where they lose money.

A lot of people complain that that content, Shale and Zaed for example, should have been released with the game, but I don't mind because this way there is no intrusive DRM. I can run both ME2 and DA:O from a virtual disk and that means I play them more than I would if I had to get a DVD off the self. Lazy I know but it happens. ME2 requires me to have an internet connection, but I think that is a bug with my install and besides I only need it at the start of the game and then I can disconnect.

Now I know DLC can be pirated but I think this system deserves working on because it doesn't treat me (a legitimate customer) like a criminal.

 

[Treblaine]

Really how much does it cost to record a M4 firing a single shot ? 25c for the round ?

It cost a hell of a lot, you know why?

Personnel, Personnel, personnel!

It's all about the people, the TIME of specialists and experts in their respective fields who know what they hell they are doing and will get the results you need.

And how much their time is worth is also entirely relevant to home much the final product is worth, not how much training they took, nor how hard they worked, this is capitalism baby and the most important thing to buy and sell in a capitalism system is not goods but jobs.

The microphones and sound stage and all that are also in themselves really expensive and generally you HAVE to either use what the specialist facilities have or buy new.

Sure you can get cheaper buying 2nd hand but 2nd hand you can't be picky, you have to take what is available and time is an issue, you can't make demands on delivery times and quality like you can with new equipment manufacturers. Things like that would create bottlenecks in the production, slows things down, people on paychecks are sitting around doing nothing because they have nothign to work with, and when work finally comes you have to pay them overtime.

Time is money.

And it isn't enough to just record the sound, it isn't easy to manage that sound with 5.1 surround sound report, as heard by multiple different perspectives and then integrated into systems such as online multiplayer (latency, host synchronisation, etc). And clearing up all the bugs with the sound, how does it react on different sound settings or if the gun is fired in tandem with another.

Part of the reason Modern Warfare 2 cost 50 million dollars was because everyone knew how well it would sell so the developers were able to justify a pay rise.

Other games have ended up costing similar amount not due to the value of the workers but the TIME. Killzone 2 was in on-and-off development for at least 4 years with an average sized development staff, that can hugely inflate the cost of the game because you are hiring so many talented people to work for a given amount per year or something like that.

Remember, developers don't get a cut of the profits, 100% of the profits go to the publishers since they are the ones who put all the money into the project. But the trick is they get to spend that money on their own discretion.

I mean there is the Soviet idea that medical care should be cheap as long as you pay all the experts like the brain surgeons minimum wage, same as the janitor who cleans the floor. Well that takes a huge incentive away from becoming a soviet doctor, you do this vital work that is very challenging and you shuffle home to your Soviet apartment block. That system doesn't work, people MUST be paid what they are worth or you will all of a sudden find yourself short of brain surgeons.

 

[Callate]

Then the pirates would just start glomming to the uploaders who were reliable.

Who would then be that much easier to locate. And prosecute.

*shrug* Just brainstorming, anyway. Almost anything would have to be better than, say, Ubisoft's approach or Starforce.

 

[BakaSmurf]

Reward those who purchase legally, DON'T punish those who get their copies illegally, because, as Ubisoft has so painfully learned, all's that will do is piss off those that purchased legally, as you only end up screwing them over, rather than the people that are stealing from you.

Seriously, how could it possibly be that hard to figure these two elementary things out? HOW!?

 

[Sporky111]

Lower the prices of games. It's so simple and nobody thinks of it. Now, I don't pirate games but I borrow from people more-often than buying. I'd be much more likely to take a risk on a $35 or $40 game than a $60+ game. They would sell a whole lot more games that way than any DRM scam or anything else would save them.

 

[the D0rk One]

crappy connection, sorry to double post.

 

[the D0rk One]

Yes, you said all pirates are those things, not the people you know, but anyway let's drop that and talk about what you typed there.
This is where the no-money thing kicks in. As I've said I (and most of the pirates I know, in real life or not) just don't have enough money. 60$ are to me, believe it or not, what 240$ are to you, and trust me, it does feel wrong playing pirated games.
Those games I don't like are the ones I encourage piracy of. Modern Warfare 2 is a good example.
Anyway, sorry for the late response.

I thought your perceived generalization regarding pirates' lack of consideration for devs' work bothered you. The mum's basement and virginity crap was a joke (OK, a funny generalization, but I don't see it so offensive: at some point we're all virgins living with our parents), but I'm sticking to it. The inconsiderate part.

Even if you hate MW2, how does that make it OK for you to play it for free? Or to encourage others for that matter. I personally think ALL CoD games are crap. So I don't play them period. You seem to treat the devs like they're your personal slaves. "Dance, *****! Oh, you missed a step... no food for you tonight!!!"

Some people say that "piracy is the natural selection" of this or that industry but I think that's stupid, and here's why:

Maybe I'm a starry-eyed, cough syrup-saturated idealist, but SALES are the natural selection of any industry. If you're driven out of business because your work is worth shit and nobody's buying it, well, THAT's natural selection imho.

Piracy is in fact two evils: stealing money from devs (or musicians or whatever) and encouraging the spread of worthless shit. If you pirate and encourage the pirating of something it's like saying "X game is totally crap. I wouldn't play it to save my life. Here, you play it to, it's that fuckin' stupid piece of shit of a game".

Look dude, I got approx. 200 - 250 $ a year to buy games too, so I lend & borrow my friends' games n switch consoles n crap like that to play something I know it's worth the hassle, n I also try to be an informed buyer so that I don't buy stupid shit for no real reason, so I kinda don't wanna look like a dick, but that's why I said that about pirates.

 

[Peta Michalek]

You're so backwards in your reasoning it's amusing.

Yes, sales are natural selection of any industry. What you're forgetting though is that buying a videogame is buying a product of unknown quality. You can never know if they game you're buying is good or not, and depending on the platform there is next to no way of trying it out before purchase. This is like buying a pair of shoes without trying them on first.

Which of course brings us to your second argument: that piracy encourages spread of worthless shit. No my friend: It's people like you who encourage spread of worthless shit by buying shit games. Why do you buy shit games? Well see above: Since you buy games blindly, sooner or later you'll buy crap. And that is like saying "PLEASE MAKE MORE SHITTY GAMES". The developer and publisher don't give a damn if you didn't like the game; if it sells, they will make more, that's basic law of capitalism.

That's why I outright encourage people to pirate games. Play it first. If you like it, buy it. If you don't, don't. It's so fucking simple.

 

[the D0rk One]

Look, dude (@Peta Michalek), my reasoning is this: "wait for it".

I don't buy shit "blindly", I wait for a couple of hundred player posts on various forums and ask my gaming buddies for hear-say and hands-on opinions. And I read the reviews n stuff like that. And I know my games. This is why I don't see the point in downloading MW2 off piratebay . I KNOW it's crap. I know the guys makin' it are frustrated, downpressed devs working for a corporation who doesn't give a damn about what they would like to bring new to the series etc etc. Or perhaps they're in it for the money and they don't give a shit about what the people who love CoD and MW expect and wish of the series, but this is not the point.

What I'm sayin' is that piracy, among other things, fucking FREE advertises stupid games. Guys playin pirated stuff inflate fake player (well, actually CUSTOMER) numbers. You're sort of creating fake, ghost fans of their stupid game. The corporate fucktards in marketing don't know shit about gaming (let's face it, coke & cocktail parties people & the highest score crowd for Xeevious don't really fit together) but they see the numbers of people talking shit or giving fervent praise to MW2 (sorry to keep bringing it up, it's my latest hated title to see brought up in countless discussions), so they'll bicker less when Mackey McCandlish or the janitor from Infinity Ward asks for a raise and the livid-faced, hollow-eyed, pointy teethed, eared and nailed guys from accounting ask them about giving those particular devs a raise.

See where I go with this? You're bloody helping the corrupted system you hate. Or that's how I see it. Who the fuck downloads a cracked copy of a crappy game if not a fan.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Then the pirates would just start glomming to the uploaders who were reliable.

Who would then be that much easier to locate. And prosecute.

Not if they have half a clue what they're doing.

 

[Treblaine]

Really how much does it cost to record a M4 firing a single shot ? 25c for the round ?

It cost a hell of a lot, you know why?

Personnel, Personnel, personnel!

It's all about the people, the TIME of specialists and experts in their respective fields who know what they hell they are doing and will get the results you need.

And how much their time is worth is also entirely relevant to home much the final product is worth, not how much training they took, nor how hard they worked, this is capitalism baby and the most important thing to buy and sell in a capitalism system is not goods but jobs.

The microphones and sound stage and all that are also in themselves really expensive and generally you HAVE to either use what the specialist facilities have or buy new.

Sure you can get cheaper buying 2nd hand but 2nd hand you can't be picky, you have to take what is available and time is an issue, you can't make demands on delivery times and quality like you can with new equipment manufacturers. Things like that would create bottlenecks in the production, slows things down, people on paychecks are sitting around doing nothing because they have nothign to work with, and when work finally comes you have to pay them overtime.

Time is money.

And it isn't enough to just record the sound, it isn't easy to manage that sound with 5.1 surround sound report, as heard by multiple different perspectives and then integrated into systems such as online multiplayer (latency, host synchronisation, etc). And clearing up all the bugs with the sound, how does it react on different sound settings or if the gun is fired in tandem with another.

Part of the reason Modern Warfare 2 cost 50 million dollars was because everyone knew how well it would sell so the developers were able to justify a pay rise.

Other games have ended up costing similar amount not due to the value of the workers but the TIME. Killzone 2 was in on-and-off development for at least 4 years with an average sized development staff, that can hugely inflate the cost of the game because you are hiring so many talented people to work for a given amount per year or something like that.

Remember, developers don't get a cut of the profits, 100% of the profits go to the publishers since they are the ones who put all the money into the project. But the trick is they get to spend that money on their own discretion.

I mean there is the Soviet idea that medical care should be cheap as long as you pay all the experts like the brain surgeons minimum wage, same as the janitor who cleans the floor. Well that takes a huge incentive away from becoming a soviet doctor, you do this vital work that is very challenging and you shuffle home to your Soviet apartment block. That system doesn't work, people MUST be paid what they are worth or you will all of a sudden find yourself short of brain surgeons.

Did you just call me a communist ?

Heres a pro-tip for you halfwits that dont live in the real world. 'zOMG devs dont get a cut' they get paid by the company investing in the development. SO THEY GET PAID. Asking for a massive wage when kids in bedrooms do a better job than you (see the rapidly fading mod scene) is gouging.

No I didn't call you communist, I just pointed out how similar that train of though was to communism knowing you were NOT commie that you would see how foolhardy it was. Jesus, it's not the 1950's, I'm not senator McCarthy, if I make a comparison with communism it is because I think in that tiny aspect the comparison is fair NOT that I am just trying to smear you!

"they get paid by the company investing in the development."

Thank you for proving my point, but you implied that some aspect of game development should not be expensive (like original sounds such as an M4 firing) but I am showing how the two fold reason:
(1) how do developers get their cut and
(2) why are video games so damn expensive

As to comparison to people working in their bedroom one thing you have to realise is most of them to not want to stay in their bedroom for their rest of their lives. They want to get their own house, get a girl pregnant and start a family.

Just like Musicians have the luxury to spend their youth making music and performing for free in the end they will either pack it up or go pro.

Mod developers aren't just wasting their time, they are educating them-self and developing a portfolio of their ART! I Don't think you can easily put a barometer to the mod scene to measure it's relative healthiness but I say it is doing GREAT!

What about...
Unreal 3 engine: The Haunted
Source Engine: Curse
Unreal 2004: Killing Floor (just because it went commercial don't mean it wasn't originally a mod)

No mate, there are loads of mods still coming, in fact you could say it is stronger than ever due to how many are able to eventually make money off their hard work.

 

[Callate]

Then the pirates would just start glomming to the uploaders who were reliable.

Who would then be that much easier to locate. And prosecute.

Not if they have half a clue what they're doing.

No guarantees of that. A non-trivial part of the ease of piracy is the annonymity of crowds. I don't think anything is going to make piracy go away, but it could certainly be more difficult- and part of that is eliminating the ones who don't have half a clue what they're doing.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

One of the main problems companies need to get past is that between two titles, one that is rock solidly unpiratable, and sells 20,000 copies, and one with no DRM that is pirated over a million times, and sells 25,000 copies, the best one in business terms is the 25,000 sales.

It's like 'deal or no deal' in a way, when you see someone deal at £38,000 and then open their box and find the £75,000 inside it. Unless it actually happens you never had that money, you didn't "not win £75,000", you won £38,000. You didn't "not sell a million copies", you sold 25,000. (All figures scientifically gained by my proctologist, that is, pulled straight outta my ass)

Not only did you sell more and make more money, but you've advertised the quality of your goods to a million more people, who may in fact also have been a good part of the 25,000, or at least may be buying sequels etc.

I've certainly been guilty of the occasional game, but if it's been any good, if I couldn't afford it at the time, I've ended up buying it when it was on sale on Steam or the like, and Steam, unlike 2nd hand, means they're getting a cut of the sale price.

Hell, I got Dragon Age Deluxe edition for the PC free with 20 cans of coke, so it's not like they need to make huge profits it seems

 

[Leyvin]

I'm extremely tempted to say, "nothing of value was lost."

Age of empires was cool and all, but once microsoft said "U MAEK HALO CONSOLE AR-TEE-ESS GAEM NOW" it was pretty clear that house was over.

As far as ritual entertainemnt... sin sucked. Sin has always sucked. Sin episodes was more of the same. It was nice their death rattle was one more soul reaver/legacy of kain game (that no one played, as the series has been raped to death by eidos), but apart from that... blaming piracy when a notoriously bad IP failed to perform in an episodic format, who's only real draw was bianca beauchamp oiled down and squeezed into in a latex fetish suit... who's gameplay consisted entirely of killing waves upon waves of identical enemies... Just plain motherfucking delusional

You can say what you want about the games produced, but honestly Halo Wars is by far the best RTS on any console; due to it's controllability and one of the few RTS which actually still keeps many of the traditional mechanics which are being so brutally stripped by industry right now. You have no idea if they wanted to develop a Halo RTS or they were asked to by Microsoft, the fact of the matter is that in either case Microsoft had no faith in the product despite it being by far Ensembles best work to date as they were told they were going to close even prior to game launch... yes Age of Empire had become well very poorly aged relying on the traditional gameplay original created that no doubt lead to their dwindling sales with each installment but frankly Halo Wars proved that Ensemble were still capable of producing Triple-A titles and just needed that directional change boost that developing for a console called for.

As for Sin, I don't agree at all that it died because it was a poor game.
Sin might not have been the phenominal title like Half-Life, Quake or Unreal; but it was one of the few titles that followed a storyline that honestly you could ACTUALLY follow. Alright so the story felt like it was lifted from Robocop or such, but that's what made it an awesome story... because it felt very much like a movie. There was no deep seeded philosophical meanings with scant actual story as you find in Half-Life, or just ridiculous and obsurd that you have in Unreal Tournament 3.
Combine that with a fantastic combat system where the weapons felt like they actually had some power behind them without being overly devastating; as well as an AI/Difficulty system that literally learnt how you played and would adapt to always give you a challenge without kicking your ass at every step ... plus there are car chases!?! I mean shit what other game out there FPS or not has car chases that feel like you're actually in control of anything?! None, but with Emergence you could hang out of the window or sunroof trying to shoot enemies. Honestly you didn't find that awesome?! That combined with some extremely well designed set-piece levels requiring some skill to get through them and navigate them, seriously the game is just incredibly enjoyable.

Personally I liked thier piracy solution as well, being that if you owned a pirated copy of the game; the section in the submarine hanger became impossible to complete. I saw so many rage posts on the forums about it, but ya know those people can have fun with the fact they missed some incredible end sections such-as the boss fight with that 15ft monster which was just insane, and the shoot-out in the cargo yard where Alexis is driving you about while you try to take out a helicopter.

Shit, anyone who didn't enjoy Sin Episodes frankly has never played it cause it was fantastic; and I for one hope they will be more at some point. That's the problem though isn't it, you can tell me all you want that it obviously wasn't a good game... but they cited 350,000 people played the game, with 200,000 of them playing pirated versions. You're gonna seriously tell me that the game failed because it was bad rather than piracy? Cause honestly the figures would disagree, in-fact more so given there was a Demo of the game as well; that's 200,000 people who played the demo and wanted to play the full thing, only didn't want to pay what frankly was a paultry £15 for 5hours of gameplay AND the full original title including the multiplayer.

Seriously going to tell me that it failed cause it was bad, not because of piracy because frankly I'd say that would clearly be bullshit.