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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."
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" ?
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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.
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.
... 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.
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).
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).
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