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Engaging Debate on Piracy and Videogaming
koworld writes "WotR have put out a really intriguing issue on piracy this week. It has Jeff Minter arguing that piracy robs developers of their livelihoods and then a senior industry figure (writing under a pseudonym) offers the counter that piracy has done more to expand the overall videogaming market than any other factor. Just to round off the debate a number of insightful personal accounts of piracy and its effects are also included."
No doubt this is a two way street. Depending on the popularity of a game, piracy is going to help or hinder.
Those games that have massive massive popularity, helped along by friends copying from friends, will still manage to make money. By becoming legendary, they guarantee enough sales to keep a company or lone developer going.
Unfortunately for those games which are less popular, piracy is just going to dig in HARD to the smaller income, and what happens to those developers? the ones making some headway into a business but still need a little more skill. They lose out completely, the gaming industry for them becomes nothing but something to suck their time and energy.
In the end all that happens is we're left with the huge gaming houses (Sony sponsored ones, for example) and the odd few developers who are lucky enough to get it right first time. The raw up and coming talent gets whacked down with a big pirated 2"x4" as soon as they make an effort. You could say that they don't deserve success without the effort and without the ability to overcome obstacles, but games aren't about making developers work hard. It's about letting the really good ideas come to fruition and work for us as players.
Lies, deceit and propaganda - the state of Broadband in Australia
If they had no value to you, you wouldn't want to copy them anyway.
Having no value and having a value less than $50 are two different things. There's plenty of games out there that people wouldn't mind playing for free, but would never consider paying $50 for. The Sims comes to mind.
I don't even want to bother discussing any ethics involved with piracy right now. I know tons of people have their own opinions about that kind of thing. The one thing I do want to say, however, is that with an easy (and free) way to obtain video games, a lot of developers are realizing that if the game is crap, people aren't going to buy it. To a certain extent that pisses them off because they can't make any money churning out horrible titles (of course this doesn't always work in real life because of the idiots that countless sequel regardless of quality). If I ever pirate a game, I use it almost like a demo, I play it for a while, and should I really consider a quality game that I enjoy, I'll go out and buy the whole thing just to support the folks that made it. I believe that if every one else treated piracy like this, then it wouldn't be too much of a problem. But there are folks out there that only pirate and don't give any returns by buying 'em... -E
It's not just to recover R&D costs, it's also to cover the vast majority of games that bomb. There are definitely way too many games made these days, and I think a lot of companies would be better off if they took the Blizzard route rather than "Quick, crank out more WW2 FPSes" route.
Am I the only one who kind of tuned out after (or even before) reading this?
COMPUTER! Whatever happened to Blueberry Muffin?
Imagine a cute fluffy puppy, frolicking happily and wagging its silly puppy tail. Imagine someone offering that puppy a lovely pig's ear. Think of the bright eyes and lolling tongue of the cute little puppy as the treat is offered, imagine the little nosie twitching in anticipation. then imagine that just as the puppy goes to take it, the pig's ear is harshly snatched away, and the bearer gives the poor little puppy a hefty kick in the nuts.
That is what pirates do
How did this get passed the mods? it's meaningless and boring, poorly-executed humor. There is no news, at all, anywhere here.
You know what that's called? A troll. I call bullshit.
It's a kind of checks & balances system if you ask me. The video game industry has become such a gold rush that people are packaging sun-dried dog turds and selling them at premium prices. To me, buying a game, realizing you don't like it and returning it to EB or something is just as bad, if not worse (cd key now compromised, thus it starts to really cost companies money after a while, especially when you multiply it by millions of people) than pirating a copy with an unuseable CD key and seeing if you like it.
.02..
These days, "FPS" and "Online Multiplayer" aren't enough to warrant a $50 pricetag. What if the interface sucks? What if the framerate sucks? What if the internet playability is crippled? What if etc, etc, etc. People are sick of wasting money on crappy games.
A solution: All videogame companies' business model (or roadmap for a particular game) should include a full-featured demo (limited to 1 map only, or something similar), which includes multiplayer, internet support, all that, BEFORE the retail release of the game. If you do this, and your game is good, people will respond, embrace it and not worry about pirating it and just go buy it (in most cases). It's no different than listening to records in a record store before you buy them. I'm sick of seeing demos for games come out months after the retail version is released. In my opinion, this is practically asking for pirates to "check out the game" before buying it.
Bottom line: If your game is good, people will buy it.
My
Piracy is directly related to convenience which is only indirectly related to price.
It's much easier to just download something than it is to go out and pay for it. Once you are familiar with the avenues for acquiring illicit software it's easy. It's as easy as searching on Google. Software on tap. Want to see what this-and-this game is like? 40 minutes later I've got the leaked ISO and with Alcohol 120% I don't even need to burn it. No credit card bills, no going to the ATM, no driving to the store, no waiting for the official release date. Is this game worth $50 to me? Is it worth $20 to me? Is it worth $5 to me? I don't even need to think about it because it's $0 every time.
Ok.. solution.. just give away the software right? Wrong! I'm too lazy to even pay for it after I've played it and enjoyed it. Pay for it... that requires getting a credit card or going somewhere... pain in the ass and it's time I don't need to spend because I've already played it.
The only reason this is working for the games industry is because the people that get all the games are walking advertisements. Whenever they open their mouths and talk about a game the word of mouth is worth more than a spot during the Super Bowl. That and, for most people the convenience is not there. They don't know P2P, they don't know where the crack sites are, they don't want to figure it out. These people are the ones paying, but if it ever comes to the point where it's just as easy to pirate there's little holding them back.
Are there people that pay because of morals? Sure. Should we ever count on the morality of the common man? God help us, no.
Convenience is king. If it's ever easier to buy a game than pirate it then we'd all be buying them. But for those of us that know how to pirate it's much, much easier on so many levels.
If some modicum of honesty is telling you not to steal, listen to it. There are lots of alternatives. Wait till the game has been out a while and is in the bargin bins. Have your kids mow an extra lawn or two. Cook them dinner instead of taking them to McDonald's for a huge dose of fat. Subscribe to a gamer mag and get demos to the latest games on CD so they can try them out, have fun, and decide which games they REALLY want.
Do you really want your kids to be learning to steal at age 10 and 13? Is it really that critical that they have the very latest game that they may play for 30 minutes and decide is crap?
Sounds a lot like the music industry. Do we really want the gaming industry turning into that?
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Ah, I see. Along with bankruptcy protection, and tax breaks for businesses that lose money, we also have to pay for their failed products, even if we had the good sense not to buy those products explicitly when they were on sale. Gee, thanks. I feel much better about pirating stuff now. If when I make legitimate purchases I'm paying for stuff I didn't get then it's only fair that I get some stuff for which I didn't pay. P2P. Power to the people.
Okay, I've been around a while. I've seen piracy in the form of ZIP disks of Police Quest 1 on the local warez BBSes. I've met the biggest warez pirates out there, the type that have 4 drawer file cabinets FILLED with photocopied manuals, and disk boxes stuffed with 3.5" disks that complety filled closets.
A few observations. In my youth, my parents could have never afforded to buy me the programs I pirated. They did buy me some software, thousands of dollars worth over the years. Boredom and curiosity led me to download other games, but I never spent much time playing them. Heck, there were Sierra games I never spent much time playing (Space Quest III was the BOMB though!).
In terms of applications, when I got older it helped me out in terms of being familiar with business applications. 14 year olds don't normally need Autocad, 16 year old's can't afford 3d Studio. Once you hit the business world though, things change. Lets not forget though, some prices are artificially high (Abobe bought and killed Aldus Photostyler which was awesome, eliminating competitive products, etc).
Another thing, the warez people like to collect programs. Many of them don't use them, it is just some sort of wierd obsession with collecting programs in mass. Given the amount of time it takes to play or complete a game, can someone with 2900 games in their pirate library really utilize them?
Given the costs of software, if every person bought all of their software at retail prices and there was no piracy, do you think many people would possess skills with apps like Photoshop? I can't think of many cases at all where I've not purchased a program (having the money to do so) and opted to warez the software.
I think the console games are priced as they are because the market will bear it, and there are many young adults that have jobs, living with parents, who can afford to pay the $70 or whatever it costs now for a single medicore playstation title.
Look at ID software, they made good titles and profited well. I know their stuff was pirated, but people with the money purchased the games.
A friend pirates every new game. He buys the good ones. I've seen the stacks of boxes, I'm sure he spends well over $2k a year in new releases. He was one of the evil pirates that had Dreamcast and other console hacks. What if pirates are your biggest customers?
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!