Slashdot Mirror
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."
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
50 bucks for Max Pain 2?! For 5 friggin hours of gameplay?
Yea there are alot of games I have downloaded but could not play online multiplayer because my cd key was invalid, but since I liked the game so muc h I bought it so I could get the valid cd key.
why not paying the games by approved hours of gameplay they provide??
and why are there nofurther adventures ala "monkey island" ?
---
awake and alert!
-Penguin Mints
Something that I've observed lately with a lot of games has been that cracks have come out that will support an early version of the release. Once the game-crippling bugs have been fixed (corruption in low ver Civ3 anyone?), the crackers have either moved on, or the software has been changed to the point that the game is no longer crackable.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, for one, there has been a great deal of games that my friends and myself have bought that there is no way we would have without a "Try before you buy" version floating around. I mean, who really wants to shell out $50 for 5 hours of MP2? If I'm going to be spending $10 an hour on personal entertainment, then she should have at least shaved that day.
First my Atari cartridges (early 80s) were so high because manufacturing was expensive, then the cassette tapes weren't sold in enough volume, etc. etc. Once a store salesmen told me prices were high because of piracy! Yeah, that's an incentive to buy your product, just yank the price up.
If I can buy a game for $10 at W-M or other big chain (put a $10 bill in a machine, press a button, a CD pops out) then I will buy other games than the overly-hyped big titles that occasionally come out. Of course I'm not talking about the Visual Basic games that are $10 now. Also a slot is nice where you can deposit a broken CD and new, clean one will pop out for free.
I don't want to pay a whole lot for box/manual artwork, TV advertising, and copy-protection licenses.
Chaos Engine.. Xenon 2. Man, what memories and what awesome fucking games. I've done my fair share of pirating for the last 15+ years, but I've bought my fair share of games too. Not when I was 15 though - I had no cash of course. If it wasn't for piracy, I wouldn't have bought an Amiga.
And the guys that are acting as the hubs - ie. the major distributors, usually get so much stuff they are spending all their time copying cd's (disks in my day!) that they cant *play* the games. So why bust the guy that's giving you free advertising?
I may sound stupid, but in reality, I am simply not a 'gamer'. :) So, of course, I am behind the times. Who is Jeff Minter? (N.B.: I am a retro-gamer; I miss the days of the NES, Genesis and SNES, and classic DOS/Apple games...)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Sam and Max 2 and Full Throttle 2 were both canned by Lucas Arts. Although the details are sketchy, I have long suspected it's because pirating single player games is stupidly easy.
Grim Fandango is largely heralded as the greatest adventure game of all time, and yet it's sales were weak. Incidentally, the 2-disc set is avaiable at suprnova.org as of this moment for your pirating pleasure.
Multiplayer games are harder to pirate simply because you need a unique CD-key to get on the networks. Blizzard and Valve are experts at this.
Not to say that piracy is killing the single player genre (Knights of the Old Republic for example), but multiplayer games are a safer bet if you're trying to avoid piracy.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
When I was 8-15 or so I pirated every game I played. My parents sure as hell wouldn't have paid for them.
This year alone I have paid nearly $200 for computer games and we are only 5 months in. I will probably carry on spending about this much for the rest of my life.
Is this adequate compensation for getting me into video games and computing? I happen to think so. Piracy amongst the young should be tolerated (but not legalised because these things are a hell of a lot more fun when they are illegal) as long as they do it themselves rather than buying it from someone else.
Beep beep.
Im no writing expert... (Im far, far from it) But don't the writing styles of both articles seem veeeeeery similar? Both are written in a british, light humoured way. Could be wrong of course.. Also, I haven't seen the bit where the pro-pirate article says it's from "A senior industry figure"
... but if this article is any indication, I would say he's a cunt.
But let's forget that, just for a second. I could forgive what a cunt he is, if only his article said anything new or different, made any unique or creative arguments against copyright violation, or indeed made ANY ARGUMENT AT ALL. But he fails to do that. Instead, he uses lots of profanity and random, irrelevant analogies, to what purpose my mind cannot fathom. He admits that "there is too much software out there, and yes, a lot of it is shit," and then rather than make a reasoned argument as to why we should be buying all this shitty software anyway, he falls back to another offensive analogy.
His one seemingly sensible argument is against a strawman: people who rebrand software and sell it as their own. Now, I don't know about you, but I have _never_ seen any claim that anyone is doing this in all the software "piracy" arguments I have ever read. It's a non-issue! People just don't DO it! Maybe, maybe they used to. But the issue here is file-swapping, and you know it, and I know it, and he knows it, and anything else is disingenuous.
And in case anybody would still argue in his favor because he is taking the "moral high ground," I recommend you read where he says that file-swapping in violation of copyright is not so bad after all, when MUSIC is being traded; no, it's only software that deserves the protection of the law. Double-standard, anyone?
No, not only does this Minter guy have nothing useful or intelligent to say, he's also a hyprocrite. In short, a cunt of the worst kind.
When I was young and poor (20 years ago) I pirated everything I could, even software I would never use. I really got into videogames. Now I'm older and not rich, but at least I have the money to buy the things I want. I buy a LOT of games. In no way does this justify piracy, but if I hadn't been hooked on games when I was young, I might have cultivated other interests (a wife and family come to mind). I might not be spending so much time/money on games now. Along those lines, Hint to the industry: If you're going to market your product towards a segment of the population with little/no income, don't be surprised if they get your product through any means they can.
I have to disagree. I think that it's the lower end games that gain most from piracy. In many industries, you have to accept very little return on your investment at the beginning. The purpose of this is get exposure. Once you have enough exposure, then you can possibly get covered by one of the big labels. It's the same way in writing, music, and a number of industries.
The way piracy helps these folks is that their games get played. I'm not going to shell out $50 for an unheard of game. Not many people will. But I would be willing to copy it and try it out. If I like it enough, I might even be inclined to go buy it. If nothing else, I'll be interested the next time the company appears. So the only way these non-mainstream games get much exposure is by people copying them.
It's the same argument as music piracy helping the independent bands. They get exposure. With the exposure they're able to get bigger.
No, I think the people who really suffer are the big companies. Sure, they already make a ton of money, but piracy cuts into more profits they might have made. These are the games that if people couldn't copy them, they'd go buy them.
An interesting point related to this is cell phone ring tones. They cost $1 each and to get them you just pick it out and they charge you on your monthly bill. This is a billion dollar industry! Paying $1 for a stinking 5 second sound bite!
Maybe if you download computer programs like games your ISP should check for a digital signature and charge the cost of the software to your monthly ISP bill? Your ISP can verify if you are actually the one getting it because they can trace the destination of the packets properly within their own network. Maybe the distributor like EA.com will tell the ISP like Insight to add the software to the bill at the time of download and they'll keep track of the purchase. It won't completely thwart all piracy but it will sure grease the wheels of distribution.
Video games are addictive. They lead to anti-social pursuits like staying in one place pressing buttons for purely retinal stimulation. Video games are only better than pr0n because they don't actually display naked bodies and shiny fluids.
Okay, that's over the top, but really the software industry functions the same way as any other system which distributes habit forming or addictive substances. If enough people get "hooked" then they raise the price to milk the machine for all its worth. Who doesn't? So while all the people who can afford games are out getting "high", the people who can't afford them are pirating.
Rather than bashing pirates all the time we need to take a good hard critical look at the industry. They're there to make money. So is everyone else. Why should the software industry get all the pity and remorse while the pharmaceutical industry gets tagged left and right for producing overpriced products?
It's all the same thing, folks.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
This is similar to any economy that has seen a new need/shift - required resources are not always properly rewarded/assigned.
The problem is that in the case of software bootlegging, it is that the individual end user is usually committing the harm(not some privateer or trader). This also directly effects the perceived piracy costs - if you think 1million people should want something at $30, but 30% will just copy it the market price then becomes $50 or so if you want to make most of what you feel you are owed. This ignores the fact that if it was only available at $30, then most of that 30% would probably not buy it anyway.
It comes down to costs for the user/buyer, and as it gets cheaper or more expensive, the number of buyers is not scaling linear(or generally modelable) to the revenue from them. So publishers randomly pick a sweet spot and hope(what the market will bare). What this means is that if you can only afford it at $30, but enough dumb/rich people want it at $50 then the publisher will be a success at $50(if publishers are happy with the number of dumb/rich people paying). If you want it, then you have to wait till there is no one wanting to buy it at any price between 50-30 or just copy it from someone who was rich enough.
The economics for different parts of the world dictate different prices for software. That is why piracy can be good for non-piracy users. ie. In countries with rampant piracy, publishers must compete on price and value.
Companies who have a strangle hold on a specific software domain (ie. MSFT) can do whatever they want once piracy is significantly small enough. If they can guarantee limited piracy then they can force you to buy the product at any price.
Piracy is also good for regular publishers. It creates a market where normally there would not be one. ie. People who should not be buying games, can afford them and get 'hooked' on the low priced ripoffs. Then a few years later, the pirates are removed producing a new market that the publisher would have never entered before. So everyone there either gets more money for this luxury or they trade some other luxury/need.
MSFT did this is many countries, even the US in the 80's. DOS 6.2 was free from their BBS for godsake! This made computers more easy to acquire and become prevalent and a requirement for business and education. Many application publishers got rich this way as then there are more people needing the next upgrade whether pirated or not. All that is left is to slowly crack down on pirates and add copy protection as the market will bare (ie. no new revolts of willful piracy).
Now with P2P and the internet, many things that relied on distribution being the anchor of the market value (ie. the value of geting physical CDs of software, music, even movies) are losing ground. The only publisher solution is to either prohibit copying someway or find another market value (hard for people like the RIAA/MPAA).
The natural tendency of piracy is to make something's value only the cost of distribution.
OT:
Things like F/OSS come from this notion of the value of a copy and the realization that somethings people will just need in a specific society. People using computers on the internet have to have certain software - OS, email, etc. and it is natural for people to develop 'public works' as it were to provide them legally.
This is also why FOSS companies can still succeed if they can bring additional value to market (consulting, support, etc.). FOSS should naturally have a stronger capablility to enter new markets(ie. it is allowing legal 'piracy' build the market for other valuable services).
I could have sworn that's what demos were for.
99% of the other Kazaa users aren't trying before they buy...they're just getting and not paying.
You can never justify illegally distributing someone's copyrighted materials, because it will always be illegal and immoral, there will always be the exceptions like you that don't matter (you know, the ones who claim they buy what they download) since that's an extremely small minority.
I mean, what would John Carmack say if you told him "Yeah, I downloaded Doom 3 just to check it out." He'd tell you you should have tried the demo, read reviews, seen someone else play it, or just bought it yourself and take a chance. He's not going to tell you to pirate warez of his game just so you can decide after you've played it if you feel it's worth buying. You buy a game so you have the chance to play it fully. Even if publishers didn't give you demos and such to play, that still doesn't give you the right to steal the full version of the game and not pay them for it. And the way P2P apps are designed, other people will be pirating it off of you as you download it, so you're just spreading it even more.
I mean, why do Slashdotters think so many companies are moving to console now? It's harder to pirate the fuck out of console CDs. I see PC games coming out on eMule before they're out in stores! I'd hate to be a PC games developer right now, especially with Internet2 looming on the horizon like a big sailing ship with a pirate flag...
I guess it just surprises me how supportive people around here can get of software piracy, considering so many here are supposed to be developers. But then again, after that poll that showed most Slashdotters aren't employed but are college students, I sort of stopped being surprised by it...
It's more my experience that they don't drop to $20 so much as drop off the face of the earth entirely. The $10-$20 racks are full of crap I'd never consider buying at any price.
The reason is simply because the rights of copyright holders are being stretched to breaking point.
Do you have the right to get paid for your work? Yes, of course you do, I don't believe that's an issue.
Do you have the right to STILL get paid now for the work you did 10 years ago? That's getting shaky. After all, if you leave your job, your boss doesn't carry on paying you because the firm is still making money using the stuff you worked on. (And you can bet that the same applies to the guys who actually wrote those early games, so all you do is pay the Nintendo execs.)
Saying "any justification doesn't matter because it's illegal" is rather daft. Something being illegal is not a state of nature, it's a decision made by people, and others have the right to question that decision (although not to ignore it).
"Every game out there has somebodys blood, sweat, and tears in it" And thats why, even as a developer, I'm not too concerned about piracy. I'm currently playing a few SNES and Amiga classics that without piracy would be a bitch (if not almost impossible) to get a hold of. In 10 years time, I'd be guttered if all the hours, pain and suffering I'd put into the 3 titles I've worked on thus far, had vanished without a trace. Piracy is a form of preservation, and gives people who couldn't afford, or weren't able to play some games first time round, the chance to experience some wonderful gaming moments.
Let's ask an 1828 copy of Webster's dictionary instead of you... as you don't seem to know what you're talking about.
Yep just as we thought. Copyright Infringment = Piracy.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
As a lot of people have pointed out, some people cannot simply afford tools that they need either for work or for school. In my case my parents were somewhat poor and basically refused to buy me any software. Being a minor and having no job, I really had no choice but to pirate Microsoft Office and Windows. Sure, I could have used some open source office productivity suite, but that is just too much of a pain in the ass to deal with considering Office only took 30 minutes to download and install. Now that I am older and have a job, I pay for all software I deem worthwhile after trying it out with a pirated version. I cannot fathom how many hundreds of dollars I would have wasted if the theory of "try before you buy" was inexistant. It is true that FPS are taking a big hit due to piracy, but many methods could be taken to help curtail the problem. Starforce 3 or modified Securom anyone? Offer special incentives for people that do purchase your products (see private betas of FlashFXP for members only). I think the STREAM idea developed by Valve that allows you to download new games the second they hit retail shelves is brilliant and saves gamers money. Cut out the bullshit costs passed on to consumers and you'll get your revenue back. Simple.