Piracy Helping Larger Game Developers?

Carlos Camacho writes "Piracy has been in the news recently within the game developer, and game player communities. You've seen all arguments against piracy in the past... Or have you? GBA and Mac game developer Aaron Fothergill of Strange Flavour Software wrote iDevGames a guest-editorial that will hopefully lead more users who copy games to re-think exactly it is that they are hurting. 'One of tenets of the software thief, is that "software is too expensive." They will then usually go on to bemoan how the 'giants' of the industry treat users unfairly and how stealing their software is their way of getting at 'the man.' Unfortunately, little do they realise, that the opposite is happening! Instead, rampant software theft benefits the 100 stone gorillas at the expense of new products that would otherwise be able to compete on price and features, resulting in only the big monopolistic companies keeping their products in the market and being able to control it'."

Comments

That's an interesting argument.

[00420]

I've never thought of it that way before.

Personally the reason I don't have any pirated software is I've found everything I need on packages.gentoo.org, and freshmeat.net. (With the exception of a few games, which I was glad to pay for).

I do understand why people pirate some software, like Photoshop, Autocad, etc... They're industry standard and too damn expensive. And, I can see how this could potentially block out smaller competitors.

However, due to the continuing growth in popluarity of OSS, the software industry is destined to change. Piracy isn't any concern for OSS.

Re:Not So Obvious

[Goldberg's Pants]

The entire software industry is based on theft, if only of ideas.

Piracy is a problem for smaller companies and that sucks, but when you get scumbags like Electronic Arts releasing games like the recent MVP Baseball that only works with "approved" gamepads, leading you to spend two hours hacking around in your system registry to bypass it, I don't care if I get modded as a troll, but those fuckers deserve it.

There is no excuse for pulling this shit, and a lot of people have been screwed over by EA on this, as playing the game with the keyboard is virtually impossible, and after shelling out $50 for a new game, you shouldn't then have to go out and buy a new controller just because EA are money grabbing bastards. (For the record, my "not approved" Gravis Xterminator from about 5 years ago works just fine in the game once I hacked the registry to make the system believe it's a Logitech Dual Action Gamepad.)

I hate to advocate piracy, but companies that mislead and deceive, like Electronic Arts, really do deserve to be punished. Whether that be through pirating rather than buying, or just flat out not bothering at all, whatever the case, making it so they lose a sale is no more than they deserve.

Piracy can help smaller companies though. For a great example of how piracy helps the smaller companies, Id Software would never be as prominent as they are now without Doom and Quake being widely pirated. I also remember a few years ago there was a rather persistent rumour that Lucasarts were deliberately leaking their games onto the net to build buzz for them. Seemed to work too.

I'm glad to support the smaller developers. My pre-order for Out of the Park Baseball 6 is already in:) This is an unpopular opinion, but piracy is not without it's benefits. One pirated game does not equal one lost sale. Piracy has also driven computer sales. The Commodore Amiga, by Commodore's own admission, was as popular as it was due to the rampant software piracy.

I've pirated stuff in the past, and ultimately wound up buying a game I pirated because I liked it. I would never have bought it had I not pirated it.

For all these doomsayers about piracy, the fact is, while there are many negatives, the positives are largely ignored.

I fully expect to -1, troll now, but ah well. Someone has to post the unpopular opinion:)

Re:Not So Obvious

[orkysoft]

If they pull stunts like that, it's best to not bother with the game at all, and not pirate it either. Tell all your friends about it, so everyone knows not to bother. Pirating the game doesn't equal punishing the company: they still get the exposure, and other people you invite in, who try the game, might actually buy it. If you don't have it, you can't promote it that way.

Weren't early iD games released as shareware? That seems like a good distribution method, which combines legality with low distribution costs with try-before-you-buy.

Re:Meh

[meta-monkey]

I think you're missing the point. Right now, the situation is:

BigAwesomeSuperGame2004 costs $49.95. Joe wants to play a game and knows BASG2k4 is hot right now, but doesn't want to pay $49.95 for it, so he pirates it. Joe completely ignores PrettyCoolAlternativeGame from Small Software Co for $24.95.

If there were no option to pirate the game, it might work like so:

Joe doesn't want to pay $49.95, but knows that's the only way to play BASG2k4. Instead, he wanders up and down the software rack and finds PCAG for $24.95 and buys that instead.

Piracy is hurting the small game developers, not just because their software is getting pirated, but because people won't even consider it if they can pirate the big name games instead. Maybe if the big companies actually felt some pressure from sales lost to smaller companies with less expensive games, they might change their pricing.