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!

[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.)

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: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.