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

Thank you, Captain Obvious!

[orkysoft]

I guess it still had to be said for the clue-impaired.

How do you think Microsoft got so big? People used to copy DOS and Windows, and when their companies were getting computers, guess what software their employees were familiar with, and which was thus bought?

Same thing with Photoshop. It's really expensive, and gets pirated a lot. Instead, people could have bought Paint Shop Pro or downloaded The Gimp.

Software piracy makes you serve as free advertising for the "victim" company, and when it feels like it, it can sue you for megabucks. Do the math, people (preferably not using a pirated copy of Mathematica. Get GNU Octave instead)!

Re:Thank you, Captain Obvious!

[Pluvius]

Same thing with Photoshop. It's really expensive, and gets pirated a lot. Instead, people could have bought Paint Shop Pro or downloaded The Gimp.

That's the way it works with applications (though I don't agree with your DOS/Windows example). Games are slightly different, because they don't directly compete with each other (except in scattered cases, like HL2 versus Doom 3). In this case, we assume that people pirate games from both small publishers and large ones (not exactly a stretch). The large ones can take the hit in profits, but the small ones can't, so they go out of business.

As far as the argument itself goes, it's something I haven't heard before, but it still seems to rely on the idea that all piracy translates into lost profits (which is almost certainly not true). I do agree that if you're going to pirate, you're better off pirating the big games and buying the small ones (assuming that the small ones are worth buying, obviously).

Rob (There's also the fact that just because pirates allow publishers to charge $50 a game doesn't mean that the publishers have to)

Re:Thank you, Captain Obvious!

[robson]

There's also the fact that just because pirates allow publishers to charge $50 a game doesn't mean that the publishers have to

You know, this diverges from your main point, but I'd like to point out that games have a fundamental economic problem moving forward: The cost to make games is rising, but the price of games isn't.

Atari 2600 cartridges, the first mass-market home video games, cost about $30 each. Fast forward 25 years. Last week I bought "The Suffering" for the PS2 for $45.

Now, I don't have precise numbers for the cost of development of 2600 games, but I know most were created by a single person who did all the programming, art, music, etc. Compare that with development today, which involves massive teams with dedicated departments for engineering, design, art, animation, and music. However, because of market forces, developers/publishers can't charge more for games today. The effect is that only the big, big hits make their money back. There's massive risk involved in simply developing and publishing a video game.

Thus, you see publishers trying to reduce risk wherever possible, and what could be more risky than innovation? If you complain about clone after clone, look carefully at your own buying habits. (Obviously, I'm not talking to you, Pluvius -- I'm just speaking generally.)

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:That's an interesting argument.

[leviramsey]

However, OSS won't become dominant unless and until piracy is eradicated. Freedom doesn't matter to most users (for all the pontificating about the draconian EULAs that you read on Slashdot, Microsoft et al are smart enough to know not to be too draconian on the common man). The only valid arguments for OSS that remain are quality and price (which are combined into value).

The quality argument is difficult to assess, and it varies from program to program. GIMP is still fairly far from Photoshop. OSS GUIs are playing leapfrog with Windows (KDE/GNOME have the lead on XP at the moment, but the next revision of Windows will likely see Windows retake the lead in that competition) and are probably somewhat behind OS X. And even quality won't necessarily beat an entrenched base, due to market inertia.

That leaves price. If OSS costs nothing, but so does pirated software, then it's a push, so the value judgement is deferred to quality, with inertia playing a role.

Now, if all of a sudden, everybody was forced to buy Office at full-price, OpenOffice would gain so much traction in the marketplace, it would likely be at parity with Office in a year and have hegemony in the market thereafter.

Not So Obvious

[MiceHead]

How do you think Microsoft got so big? People used to copy DOS and Windows, and when their companies were getting computers, guess what software their employees were familiar with, and which was thus bought?

This seems more anecdotal than anything else; CP/M and DR-DOS were pirated, but that didn't do much for them in the long run. You could argue that MS-DOS was pirated more, and therefore became more popular. I think the more "obvious" explanation is that MS-DOS was popular, and therefore more widely pirated.

As a profitable third-party games developer, I don't think that piracy has hurt us in terms of pricing versus first-party developers; people assign some value to software based on price, and if anything, The big-name, $50-$60 games are pushing our prices higher rather than lower. Most people, upon seeing a $9.95 game, think, "crappy puzzle game."

Software piracy makes you serve as free advertising for the "victim" company

Dollar-for-dollar, I'd prefer to have the money, and put it towards development or media.

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: Picketing campaign? Ethically wrong?

[MajikMan]

So I guess it was just as ethically wrong the last time I bought books at the local Salvation Aarmy? That kind of used-goods market just takes money out of the hands of the publishers who made the books to start with? By holding a yard sale, would I be subverting the capitalist system as we know it? ...my god, what about all the pawn shops? Gun and jewelry manufactures could be bringing in thousands of additional dollars if we just forced everyone to buy their products retail.

The fact is that, while game makers can choose to whine and complain about used game sales, that's where their action will end. They can't do anything about used game sales, and quite frankly, I think it's silly to consider something like second-hand marketing ethically wrong. Whenever a game ends up in the used bin, that mean's that someone else paid retail for the same. At some point, the company got their money for that unit. People spending $20 or less on two-year-old used games are people who most likely would never have paid for the game if it weren't sitting in the cheap bin.

Re:See, as far as I'm concerned

[2nd Post!]

As long as someone else pays for the development, of course.

As soon as a company goes out of business (have you been keeping track? Thief, for example? Origin? others?), then you lose too.

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.