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."

Comments

Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[erick99]

I'm a single dad of two boys, aged 10 and 13. I pay for all of their Windows,PS2, and XBox games. I think that the titles cost way too much and I wonder if they really need to cost that much to recover R&D. Maybe they do. I don't know. I have thought about pirating some of the software that they want but I haven't done it yet. Hell, I haven't even backed up the $50 CDs that the damned games come on but I probably should even though I am told on the licensing agreement that I may not do so. I guess the bottom line is this, at some point I will have spent enough and I might just pirate some games - or not. I have this incredible ambient level of guilt (thanks to my Catholicism maybe?) that keeps me from doing it thus far. But, I digress - I think a lot of pirating is directly related to price.

Happy Trails!

Erick

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a lot of pirating is directly related to price.

I think it's increased because of iPods

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[nomadic]

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.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[grubber33]

It's a vicious circle that doesn't seem to have an escape. On the one hand, developers want to make money from their work. On the other, they want to market it in a way that it seems like it would be a shame not to buy the game for the price. Factor in piracy "stealing" money from the devs and you get the video game market. Like I said, there doesn't seem to be a way for everyone to play nicely unless one side digresses.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Doppler00]

Considering license fees, and the retailer mark up, most companies would only gross about $10 per console game that retails for $50. Maybe $20 if it's a PC title since no licensing fees to the console maker have to be paid.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[murdocj]

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?

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[dsanfte]

Sounds a lot like the music industry. Do we really want the gaming industry turning into that?

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[TyrranzzX]

As a Pirate, I'll be honest so any corperate drones reading this can get a jist of what the pirates think.

Just today I went out and baught Battlefield Vietnam so I could play with my clan buddies. I pirated it first so that I knew I wouldn't be wasting the $40 it costs.

Why do I do this? Well, because I'm treated like a criminal by the stores and because I'v been shafted a number of times by really bad games. For example, awhile ago I blew $9.99 on the "special edition" of Deus ex, thinking it was the full version. In reality, it as a "specially labeled" demo of the game. I take it back to the store and they won't let me return it. I'v also been dissapointed by Morrowind(shitty engine), Dungeon seige (repeditive), and a slew of other games I'v baught that if I had baught them when they were new for a bunch of money, I'd probably feel real burned. So now, I pirate before I buy.

But, surely you say, I can trust those game reviews, and demo's, right? Goto Gamefaqs, pull up any new game, and then look at the user reviews and compair them to the reviews of the websites that make their money off of reviews. I'v also been misled by demo's being real nice then when you get to the game it sucks. Kinda like they put the best part of the game on the demo, promise more and then don't deliver. Sometimes, you see some in-game movies like the UT2k4 movies that rock and then demo just sucks ass.

Anyway, the reviews convince me look at movies, movies convince me to try the demo, the demo convinces me to pirate, and pirating convinces me to buy. Unfortunatly, however, I don't buy many single player games. Infact, now that I look at the shelf, I think I stopped buying them after Morrowind which was probably the 4th time I got ripped-off on. The box says 800mhz processor, 256 meg ram and a 3d-card with 32 meg ram if I read it right for reccomended requirements, and my system beats all those by 2 times. Infact, if you could run it on those requirements I'd be suprised. On my box it runs like a slideshow on even the low settings.

A big part of that is it's hard to pirate single player games and have some self control and go out and buy the game if you really like it. Most of them you don't know if you like it until you've played through the entire game and by then the point of buying is null.

Anything I play online, however, I make sure I have a legit copy of. Not so much out of fear of persecution, but more out of the fact that the game requires a key to play and if I'm going to be playing a game compeditivly I'd like to have a real copy of it (which is where the last shred of my non-pirating decency lies). I'd say about half of the games I'v played are pirated (which is common, I assure you). I really don't see myself buying a game for $50 without researching it. At $10 on the value-rack, it's an entirely different story (which is where about 2/3 of my non-pirated games that suck come from). Some of the best games I'v ever baught were on the $10 rack, like Tribes and Total Annihilation which I took off of a friends word for like $15 apiece. The one expensive game I baught that rocked was half-life platinum collection for $35. Hopefully Battlefield vietnam will be another good game.

If gaming companies want to stop the pirating and general disrespect their customers give them, they've got to stomp out the bad games, bad advertising, and ripping people off. Inotherwords, show some respect to your customers. They've also got to update their buisness model some. A good game with a single player campaign and decent multiplayer means your average joe is going to buy the game for the SP and multiplayer, and your pirate is going to consider the SP the demo, and the multiplayer the real deal.

The industries real enemies aren't me. Their real enemies are the people who pirate everything regardless of where it came from and then go ahead and sell it for $5, or the people who are the occasional gamer who download the games without paying for th

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[harkabeeparolyn]

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.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[hyphz]

Well, see, it already is.

The equivalent of "payola" in computer gaming - and in many other industries - is hype. Hyped titles get picked up by retailers because they're seen as more likely to sell. If no money is spend on hype, the producers will instead have to spend money paying retailers to carry their product.

You can then throw in the "payola" of console development kits. They're vital for access to the wider market of gamers, but not only are they astronomically expensive, you can't even buy them unless you're already an industry member - instant chicken-and-egg.

It's happened plenty before. Like, Spheres of Chaos - that was sent to a distributor to be put in stores, but because it wasn't hyped or paid for, no retailers carried it. The distributor just shrugged their shoulders and said "if they don't want to carry it there's nothing we can do". Or, Alien Flux. A guy worked on that for around a year and tried to sell it over the internet. But without paying for hype, he initially sold about 5 copies because people couldn't be bothered to shop around and find out it existed.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[tgibbs]

I think that the titles cost way too much and I wonder if they really need to cost that much to recover R&D.

The price of a game has nothing to do with recovery of R&D. Game companies have a responsibility to their investors to charge the profit-maximizing price, as best they can judge it. That means that if the price were reduced, the gain in sales would not offset the reduced per-copy income, and if the price were increased, the increased per-copy income would not offset the loss in sales. Of course, companies that fail to recover R&D rapidly go out of business. But people don't buy games out of charity, to keep the developers employed. What the consumer is willing to pay for a game depends not upon its development cost, but upon its value to the consumer. It is not surprising that honest consumers are willing to pay $50 for a game. Although people often complain that games are too expensive, a good game typically provides on the order of 50 hours of entertainment. At $1/hour, that makes games highly competitive with many other entertainment media. And if you don't think a game will provide enough hours of entertainment to be worth the purchase price, you can always rent it for $5 or so.

Hell, I haven't even backed up the $50 CDs that the damned games come on but I probably should even though I am told on the licensing agreement that I may not do so

Unless you are incredibly abusive of your CDs, it is not cost-effective to back up game disks. They just don't cost enough. Out of hundreds of CDs, I have yet to see a game fail. Even my young nephews have only had one game fail (a friend dropped the disk on the pavement while riding his bike). You'll end up spending more on blanks than you'd spend by simply replacing any disk that you damage.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[drinkypoo]

What's the blizzard route, create one or two good games and then spend the rest of eternity rehashing them?

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[drinkypoo]

You are spot on. Demos (when they are even available) don't give you a chance to actually see what's going on in a game, especially since they don't even use the same version of the executable as the final product in most cases! It's an older version of the engine, if only slightly. Sometimes demos are so bad that companies have actually released patches for demos! And, they usually don't give you a chance to try out all modes of play, or in some cases, they don't give you a chance to really understand what play is like. For example, UT2004 (one game I haven't downloaded, because the demo WAS enough to convince me) only lets you play one map per mode of play, and doesn't give you access to single player. I don't give a shit about the single player mode, but someone who does might not be convinced by the demo. (Of course, downloading several gigs of game DVD image probably won't be too fun either.)

I buy every game I continually play. I started out by copying the vast majority of them. There have only been a small handful of games I've just gone out and bought, just like you. Most of the time, the stuff I download sucks and I either toss the game CD, or delete the install rip/iso image if I didn't burn anything, because I'm never going to want to play it again. You can usually tell in the first couple of hours how the game is going to go.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[blackdragon7777]

Yes, but both are AGAINST the law. I would not teach my future kids to break the law in any way even speeding if I could. It is still a BAD lesson to teach. Buy them bargain bin games instead, since they are much more reasonably priced.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[crackshoe]

I wouldn't go so far as to say that payola is insignifgant in other industries - although i can't say at all about video games. In dealing with college radio (specifically CMJ magazine ) the magazine tells the station what the play the next week, and then magically it happens to be the top pick of the next few weeks.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[radixvir]

What's the blizzard route, create one or two good games and then spend the rest of eternity rehashing them?

how about coming up with great new ideas, thinking them through, and when they are ready releasing them. Blizzard has a huge devoted fan following because all of their games (minus one or two) have been really good. not only that but people buy their games knowing that they will have a long life span. just the other day Blizzard released an update to Starcraft, a game released in i think 97. i end up always buying their games because they have alot of replay value (battle.net) and arent repetitive (like many FPS)

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[sir_cello]

Teach your children to produce rather than consume.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Anonymous Coward]

how about coming up with great new ideas, thinking them through, and when they are ready releasing them.

Yeah. Because Warcraft/Starcraft weren't just ripoffs of Westwood's Dune II / C&C, oh no. And of course Diablo was a "great new idea", any similarities to the decades-old Rogue model must be entirely coincidental. And now they're making... whoa, look at this! They've come up with this amazing new idea of, get this, it's like an RPG only it's massively multiplayer and online! I wonder why nobody thought of that before?

...enough sarcasm. You're welcome to be a Blizzard fanboy, but please don't go round asserting they have any claim to originality. Blizzard have never come up with an original game concept. Ever. What they have done is made very good ripoffs of other people's ideas, sometimes even better than the originals. But "new"? Don't make me laugh.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Mycroft_VIII]

I won't speak to everything you said. The deus ex thing was wrong on thier part, I would have simply told them take it back or I cancle the check/revers the cc charges. I have gotten a store to take software back once. It was a 19.99 and supposedly would let me connect to the i-net for free (and show ads, that's how they got paid back for giving out the free bandwith, kinda juno did back then) only thing is the box didn't tell you service was only available in about 8 western states, in fact the box implied the whole us.
When I took it back to walmart they didn't want to take it back at first, when I pointed out the box lied on the outer package and was effectively false advertising. I told them I would quite happily notify the bbb and states atorny general would get a nice letter, etc. (the manager I was talking to had an attitude that really ticked me off or I might not have been ready go so overboard for $20), well I got my money back on that one.
You say Morrowind ran bad on a >=1600mhz machine with >=512k of ram and a >=64 meg card? I had it running smooth except in rare cases on a 900mhz tbird core athlon with 640meg ram and a 32 meg vid card under WinMe. I suspect you've got somthing wrong with your system, possibly a virus as unfortunately some number of pirated games, cp hacks, etc. are trojans for malware, just an off the cuff supposition. You know there is even an fps utitility for it that will dynamical increase the view range beyound the games normal maximimun for faster machines, a lot of people with systems at or near your specs wanted to see farther and were running pretty high fps. It will also dynamically lower fps where the scenery gets complicated so that your fps stay within whatever range you set it for.
It did run sluggish on my brothers old machine, but that was a 400mhz amd chip with 384k and a 32 meg vid card. And it was almost playable even then. He got most of my above system when I upgraded last fall

Mycroft

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Kpt Kill]

Lords of the realm 3?

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[syrion]

I hate to slashdot them, but a really useful site is Cheap Ass Gamer. It relies on people posting deals, but so far I've had no problems with them (I got Rygar for the PS2 for $10+cheap shipping). It can save you a ton of money.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Pantheraleo2k3]

If you had curious, bored teenagers who played around with Xbox and their music collection (probably obtained from iTMS) a lot, and might enjoy an Xbox media center, would you introduce them to Xbox modding? The only way it is illegal is through the DMCA, and all of /. would probably agree that the DMCA is unconsitutional (as illegal as it gets). So I ask you, would YOU encourage this "illegal" behavior?

Or would you just move to Canada where it's legal.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Asmodean]

I've found that I spend the same amount of money on games regardless of wether I'm currently pirating any or not. If I'm without broadband for a while I still only pay $x amount on games. I have shelf after shelf of recent games I've bought, and I've also pirated tons of games as well.

I have no guilt what-so-ever about pirating games. I spend the maximum amount of money on games that my current wages will allow. There are more games that I want to play than I could ever afford. Even if I had a very high paying job there is no way I could afford to buy them all. So I spend as much as I can and download the rest.

How is this hurting the Game companies? They would not get one dollar more from me regardless of wether I'm pirating games or not.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Corpsesarecute]

It may not be new, or creative, but they sure know how to make it good. That's the thing they do, make someone else's idea damned good.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Artifakt]

"Game companies have a responsibility to their investors to charge the profit-maximizing price, as best they can judge it."

One of the underlieing causes of the current antagonism is that cost benefit analysis is a black art that masquerades as a science. The MBAs who come up with price points are by and large the same guys who were advising the dot coms before the bubble burst, using an inadiquate tool that ignores a lot of really useful math because it's seen as too complex to teach to MBAs.
Cost benefit analysis, applied classically, 'proves" that any negative consequence, no matter how bad, is a good deal if it comes far enough in the future. A medicine that ups the average lifespan by 10 years, but will eventually sterilize the whole species within in a few hundred? Mathematically, species extinction looks like an acceptable trade off if it just takes a few hundred years to get here.
These prices are being set by the same system that shows managers how to maximize the next quarter's profits and drive the company into the ground two years later. What happpens to customers as a result has many similarities to what happens to the society as a whole when the stock market gets unsteady, and it ought to be viewed as a 'bad thing' for much the same reasons.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[toastednut]

let us not forget that marketing and advertising is an extremely large chunk of that price. how could anyone buy the game if they don't know about it in the first place?

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[qoa]

A couple of years ago I purchased the special edition of Serious Sam thinking it was the full version. The full version was like 5 dollars more I found out later. I was actually looking for the full one, so I guess croteam missed out on that one.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[cdrguru]

I do not believe any cost-benefit analysis enters into the picture here. Retailers pretty much dictate the prices. They have a model that says $49.99 is what a game costs, so they "encourage" the publisher to price it there. If they price it lower, it will not be shelved because the retailer makes less per copy than the other 400 games they have to choose from. If it is priced higher, it might be put on the shelf but it won't sell.

This could be considered the big-box retailer effect. If you don't go along with it, you don't get to be on retail shelves.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Devar]

Best demo I've ever played to date was the demo for Descent.

7 levels of unside down robot-killing action. And at the end, one bad-ass-boss. That demo was a game in itself, and gave you a REAL indication of what the full game was like. You wanted more.

I've never played a demo that's beaten it since.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I think that the titles cost way too much and I wonder if they really need to cost that much to recover R&D.

Of course not. If the goal is simply to recover development costs, all software is grossly overpriced. For that matter, with a few notable exceptions, so's pretty much everything else.

Let me introduce you to my little friend, the profit motive.

If you want to engage in a commercial venture, like coming up with the next big video game, you're going to need money. Lots of it. Millions of dollars, certainly; possibly tens of millions.

Where does that money come from? Your own pocket? Well, if you're lucky, sure. But most of the time it comes from investors. Investors are people who have money and who want more. If you have some money and you want to make more money, you've got a lot of options. You can buy and sell commodities or stocks. Or you can go to Vegas and bet on black. But lots of people believe that you get a better return--better odds, that is--by putting your money into an investment instead.

Now, which investment are you more likely to show an interest in? The one whose business plan calls for selling the product for the lowest price possible to recoup costs? Or the one that calls for a nice, healthy profit margin?

Yeah. The profit-y one.

That's how things happen. That's why CD's don't cost a nickel, and that's why video games cost $49.95.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[tgibbs]

These prices are being set by the same system that shows managers how to maximize the next quarter's profits and drive the company into the ground two years later.

The way to maximize profit is to charge a price equivalent to the value of the product to the average honest consumer. It is hard to see how a company is going to be driven into the ground by charging a price that a large number of consumers find to be fair. However, it is possible for the entire industry to be driven into the ground by the greed of pirates.

"Games cost too much" is purely a rationalization. If it were truly the case that games were not worth $50, then pirates should be satisfied to rent them. Surely, if a game offers only a few hours of entertainment, then one or two rental periods should be sufficient to exhaust the game's entertainment value. The fact that pirates are insistent on owning the games, and willing to break the law (and take money out of the pockets of the people who create the games that they enjoy) to do it demonstrates that games have a high value even to pirates.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Hatta]

If a game is worth anything, word of mouth will be all you need.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Hatta]

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right... Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1849)

When people are taught to respect the law, it just makes them easier for tyrants to control them. Teaching them to respect what's right and instilling a healthy skepticism towards authority is the best lesson a parent can give.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[DotDotSlasher]

I think a lot of pirating is directly related to price.

And I think a lot of pirating is directly related to impatience.
I'm not pure of this particular "tonic", but awhile ago I noticed that if you could wait 1 year -- 12 months for the latest to become "so last year", content really is affordable.
PS2 and XBox games are $20 or less if they're popular and a year old. Less if you find them used at Blockbuster or eBay.
You can buy a year-old movie on DVD for the same cost as two full-price admissions at the theater.
My library has year-old DVD movies waiting on the shelf (while new releases have a waiting list stretching for months).
I found a year-old copy of Neverwinter Nights for less than $20. Money well spent.
Oh, and you know the game-of-the-year winners before you go shopping.
And somehow I want to teach my kids to respect copyrights, even while their friends have thousands of free songs on their iPods.

I'm not always that patient. But don't blame the price - we have lots of choices.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[spyware scams_suck]

i bring my nephews to Fresh Choice for fresh and healthy and we buy ingredients at the market and we all cook our own fresh, hygenic, healthy, and bargain-busting burgers and pizza.

McD's is crap unless it's breakfast. What do i wanna feed them a $2.99 big mac made of month old bread with who knows what kind of very thin patty with old wilted lettuce and onions and no tomatoes and then to top it off fatty fries (which accidentally fell on the McD's kitchen floor which are picked up again coated with roach spray) with a fatty coke drink (and there's no difference if you call the coke "light").

i told them i wanted to show them what money was worth and wouldn't buy any videogame over $25. we went to the bargain bin and got "Gradius" which became a hit a year later and you couldn't find it anywhere for under $60. they play old final fantasy games and love it.

same thing with music. i told them i wouldn't buy them any RIAA-infested music (since 1) you'll be paying $20+ for 1 hit song and rest is filler and 2) i hate RIAA pop trash) so they had to search like squirrels for independent music they liked. they may be 2 of the only kids in their class who've got other artists on their Christmas lists instead of just Nirvana and Eminem

companies only hold you if you

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[spyware scams_suck]

companies only hold you in their monopoly or cartel if you with those high $$ prices because you're submitting to the materialistic advertising-infested "ain't i sexy--pop trash" culture we live in.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[pnuema]

The solution to the price of video games is simple: find a source of reviews you trust.

I'm 30+ years old, and was on a business trip, I had nothing to read on the flight over. Embarassed, I bought a copy of PC Gamer magazine to entertain my exhausted brain. Best 8 bucks I ever spent. I agreed with every review I read of games I owned. I have gone against their recommendation only once since, and was very disappointed (LOTR: ROTK for PC - PC Gamer rating 69% maybe?).

They use a very granular rating system (0-100%), and have honest, in depth reviews. Look at it this way - if trying it out stops you from blowing your $50 on just one game, it has paid for itself for 6 months.

It doesn't have to be PC Gamer, just find one you trust. Personally, I think the fact that good review material - be it movies, music or games - is available to those who seek it out nullifies the argument of "they're too expennsive; try before you buy". I save more time (by not downloading crap to see what it is like) and money (by only buying games I know I am going to like) by investing a few bucks a month in a "child's" magazine.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[buddy53711]

Kohan: Ahriman's Gift. A wonderful game (though a rehash of the old RTS style, this game brought new depth to a tired, boring, dead-horse genre) that I had never heard of and picked up at Lou's Super Fat Discount Store On Anything Our Corporate Office Deems Noteworthy Superstore for a minimal sum on a whim. I am not trying to be dickish (is that a word?) or agrumentative...just playing devil's advocate a little.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Sigma 7]

For example, awhile ago I blew $9.99 on the "special edition" of Deus ex, thinking it was the full version. In reality, it as a "specially labeled" demo of the game. I take it back to the store and they won't let me return it.

This can actually be very close to false advertising. Unless the outer packaging of this "special edition" states that only a portion of the game is included, then you can legally demand a refund (and make accusations of fraud without any form of legal reprisal.)

I have such a "preview edition" myself - at least it was clearly labeled on the product bundle that it only contained five missions out of the fifteen or so.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Sigma 7]

I was actually looking for the full one, so I guess croteam missed out on that one.

I did a little research on that edition, and it seems that the culprit is either Take 2 Interactive, or Global Star Software.

The last post on this forum page implies that the developers wanted to release a Limited edition of the game to allow some players to see how part of the full game is like. It appears to be a case of bad wording on the box, a sign of publisher tinkering to make more sales.

BTW, the Global Star software logo appears on the special edition - I haven't known them for even touching TFE or TSE until now... it's Godgames and Croteam that associated with SS's production, rather than this unrelated company.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[slayer111]

I pretty much agree with everything you've said, but I would like to add a few things.

In my house, I have several hundred games. And before anyone starts gasping, I'm talking about *legally bought* ones. 30 on PS2, 20 on Gamecube, 10 on GBA, and a helluva-huge-number on PC. Not to mention the N64, a Dreamcast which my mates has 'borrowed' for a year or two now, and other stuff right back to the Spectrum... but the majority are PC games.

And this ALSO doesn't include all the games and hardware I've bought over the years and don't own anymore for whatever reason (although it does include gifts etc.) At the tender age of (just) 22 years, I've probably spent thousands, perhaps ten of thousands, of pounds into the games industry, heaven knows how.

And how many of those were worth the money? Quite a few, I'd say... A mixture of luck and judgement has let me avoid a good amount of the dross... but not all. A lot of them were *good*, but not as good as they cost me. (To be fair, there were others I would gladly have paid more for, but still.) Then still others were completely dire, or for whatever reason I couldn't play at all.

The first pirate game I got was Castlevania: SotN, because I'd bought it once, sold it, and then spent the next few years trying to find another copy after realisiing how stupid I was. (For the record, I wound up finding a copy and buying it... only to lose it somewhere. Figures.) A lot of the pirate games I've got follow this pattern... most are old NES games which I couldn't find if I tried, and even if I did, they'd cost way more than they're worth to me nowadays.

But when it comes to current games (and being generous here, current applies to anything in the last 5 or 6 years,) I have, at a guess, 10 pirated games, maybe 20, about half of which I haven't even installed yet, and a couple of which I intend on buying because they were actually good. As for the rest, as far as I'm concerned, that's compensation for money spent on crap over the years. I've more than paid my cash dues to the industry, and if anyone wants to talk to me about the morality of stealing those eight games left over, I'll ask them about the morality of coding games which are buggy, unplayable, incredibly short or just plain crap, and then telling everyone they're great and asking full price for them. And if they carry on, I'll make them buy Big Rigs: Over The Road. That'll learn 'em.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[qoa]

Yeah. They (Global Star) did an great job of making it look like the actual game. I still have both cds in a stack somewhere and to this day, I put the wrong one in to install sometimes.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Prehensile Interacti]

Global Star is Take 2 Interactive's budget label.

The original release was on T2 - now several years later, it's Global Star's job to milk the budget release :-)

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[KeeperS]

You're absolutely correct. Blizzard doesn't come up with any amazing new ideas, they just take old ideas and do them right. Is Starcraft a good game because it had some great new idea that blew everyone away? Hell no. Starcraft is a good game because it's extremely polished and it's a blast to play.

This seems to be a winning strategy. A new idea won't always make for a fun game, but a well thought out implementation of an old idea probably will. I've always thought that many people put too much emphasis on innovation in games. Games seem more suited to evolutionary changes than revolutionary ones.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[TyrranzzX]

Wow, 384k of memory? You must have some 1337 skillz or some hidden ram or somethin...or you're just a moron who doesn't know what they're talkin about. Morrowind runs slow because it doesn't do occlusion and has insane polygon counts. Then there's the loading times... Bethesda built their game on a lisenced engine that wasn't designed to do what they wanted it to do. Then, they decided not to update the engine in any way which essentially means as their games get bigger and bigger, the game gets more resource hungry. I suppose if you reduced the fog to the point where you can see like, 10 feet infront of you the game would be more playable, but not in my opinion. I still don't know how they use 300meg of ram up when it's set at the lowest settings, and then there's the loading times... Inotherwords, the engine is incredibly inefficient. Compair morrowind to, say, UT2K4 or Tribes2's huge maps and you can see this.

FYI, the boxen is an AMD XP1800+ w/ 2 sticks totaling 512meg PC2100 with 2.5 cas latency on an Abit KR7A raid motherboard with a Geforce 4 Ti 4600/128 with the proper optimumizations to win2k to boost the speed about 5-10% (Standard PC instead of ACPI, service removal, uses about 70meg of ram on boot) and with proper resource allocation (Irq's, etc). Infact, the only thing I haven't tried to get morrowind to run properly is adding another 256 meg of ram and installing the hardware raid.

The vast, vast majority of cracks don't have viruses in them. I virus and malware scan them before and after installing and running them because I don't trust them. Many of the groups that make the cracks and hax take pride in being 1337 by doing it and don't put crap in their installers. Now if you're dumb and donwload from anyone and then proceed to install without scanning, good luck on keeping your box up. I also packetsniff my box when nothing's running every onceinawhile to make sure it isn't sending or recieving anything it shouldn't be.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Mycroft_VIII]

Hmm that pretty much leaves win2k as the only significant item that could be causing your problem with morrowind. It doese have a higher system resource load (more bloat if you will) than win9x and Morrowind wasn't really designed with win2k in mind. On the slim chance you haven't installed the patches for Morrowind I would try that, I seem to remember it had issues on win2k (it was written for win9x systems)that had to be patched.
It runs o.k. on my system with everything turned all the way up. My system is an athalon2200+ with a single 512meg (single pc2100 dimm), a Radeon 9600AIW, a soundblaster live platinum, an 80gig hd, a 27gig hd, and winxp.

Mycroft

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Deliveranc3]

If some modicum of honesty is telling you not to steal, listen to it.

See when I look at someone's wallet I feel the urge not to steal when I look at a juicy ISO file I feel the urge to encourage the programmer to continue making more quality video games and show my respect for his skill.

When I go to a video game store I feel revulsion for the idea of paying a producer to bombard me with advertising and copy-protection thus making my life more difficult.


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.

See this doesn't make sense either, playing games over and over again or missing out on questionable titles for no reason? If the game maker KNEW I wouldn't be able to buy his game he would gladly allow me to get it for free. Waiting till it hits the bargain bin doesn't really get the game makers any additional money as the retail channel marks the game as a loss anyway and even if you purchase it they won't replenish their stock.
So many of the reasons why I woudn't steal don't apply to information freedom that piracy or theft doesn't even come close to describing it. The nature of the damage inflicted is a matter of personal opinion and the whole issue reaks so badly that it's opening a generation's eye's to the relationship between the law and justice.


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?

As a twenty something adult with a teenage younger sibling I do question the moral value of allowing her access to free media, when it gets to easy and she doesn't seem to care about the people who put creativity into a title I feel a tinge of remorse.

But I know she gets to experience all the media she wants regardless of producers, costs, or anything else and I think there is something valuable about her access to any kind of information.

She recently picked up iTunes, at first I was disapointed but if she wants to spend money in a way which will make her life easier so much the better. I won't judge her for contributing to SONY, BMG or any of the other creativity destroying, crap promoting,and media INDUSTRY creating corperations, somehow they made it easier for her, it's the first time they've managed to do it and I commend them for it, me I'll stick with Tag and Rename.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[TyrranzzX]

After spending $50 on the game and feeling ripped off, I pirated the other versions to get the patches, and it ran even slower. I basically uninstalled everything and shelved the game after that, deleted the pirated copies for space and gave it the finger. When I double the specs of my boxen in a year I might take it out and try it out again, mabye when it runs decent I might not feel so ripped off.

As for Win9x being faster, it really isn't. Win98 isn't faster than win2k, it's just more ancient, unstable, and has less overhead by default than win2k. However, after you strip off the overhead and extra processes from win2k things tend to run a bit faster on win2k rather than win9x simply because the API's are better.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Mycroft_VIII]

It's not so much which windows version was better. win2k is nt based which is generaly considered a better codebase than 9x.
The problem is win2k's win9x compatability wasn't very good or robust by all acounts (no personal experience), and thus a lot of stuff written to work on win9x had issues on 2k, a few don't even run. It's my best guess this is your problem in this case.
If you can you might try XP as it's win9x compatability is much much better and you can even tell it to run a prog as if it were win98se or some other windows version. And you still get an nt basd kernel.
I found Morrowind to be amazing an game in many ways, especially with all the options for creating your own content. You can literally transform into a whole new game with sufficient effort.
I consider it one the very few games worth $50 or more. I generaly refuse to buy a game till it's droped in price at least once if not twice.
I for one hope the next installment in the elder scrolls series is as good. If they clear up the few remaining issues (rain is a good one, if it's raining it goes right through overhangs, etc.) and of course the fact that there is no hidden poly removal eating up cpu time. The engine they used is pretty good without that, with it sight range could have been greatly extended and you could have some amazing vistas.

Mycroft

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Artifakt]

1. If you charge a price equivalent to the value to the "average" honest consumer, you have just eliminated the 49% of your potential market that estimates a price below average, and even MBAs aren't usually dumb enough to throw away half the potential market.

2.Real pricing consists of finding a point where your total profit is highest, whether you make a few cents per item but sell millions, or a few tens of dollars a piece but sell only thousands.
Applying a little math on the level that most physics undergrads are used to will often reveal several different price points, with about the same predicted total profit. What will happen under real world conditions to these predictions? Some industries have been willing to test these variant price structures. (They are why Ford and Chevy make a bottom of the line model that usually sells for no profit at all, so that they get loyal consumers who move up to the mid-priced models. They are why you can probably buy a 2 liter generic soda for 50 cents if you live in a US location). The recording industry has been reluctant in the extreme to explore such alternate price structures. Outside people who have done the math tend to one of three conclusions. Either 1. The recording industry is seriously misreporting how much it pays artists, gross revenues, and other factors, and so the outsider's predictions are wrong for lack of data, OR 2. This is about power and control, with the industry willing to cut its own profits to maintain that power, OR 3. The industry is full of people who are unable to follow the mathematical arguements advanced, and should expect poor profits regardless of piracy until they hire some bean counters who can actually count beans.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[Artifakt]

Retailers have some influence, particlarly mega-stores (If you thought Babbage's could impact the market,then the word for what Wallmart did is dominate). Independants don't have much influence at all.
There are other factors. As just one example, if the prices for alternative entertainments (DVD movies, CD music, etc.) aren't fluid, then games tend to be compared to those alternates, and prices can't shift as much, or as quickly. However, there is always some play. It is literally impossible in the face of free-market forces to keep all prices in lockstep without industry people negotiating and agreeing to keep them that way. (And it's called anti-trust if they do.).
Beyond this, console game makers, including ones that write first for the PC, and plan to do console ports later, can't try to sell to some price points, because those points would only be available if X million people bought the console. You can't shoot for 120% of predicted market saturation.

Re:Piracy, Price, and P2P, 4 Peas in a Pod

[tgibbs]

If you charge a price equivalent to the value to the "average" honest consumer, you have just eliminated the 49% of your potential market that estimates a price below average, and even MBAs aren't usually dumb enough to throw away half the potential market.

That can readily be dealt with by dropping the price after awhile. The ones in a hurry for the product are typically the ones who place the highest value on it. Those who value it a bit less are willing to wait a while to get the best price.

Applying a little math on the level that most physics undergrads are used to will often reveal several different price points, with about the same predicted total profit. What will happen under real world conditions to these predictions? Some industries have been willing to test these variant price structures.

And indeed, the videogame industry has done so, offering prices for games as low as $10, one fifth of the typical retail price. So it seems likely that their estimate of the optimum price point is probably pretty accurate.

What about game publishers robbing consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

50 bucks for Max Pain 2?! For 5 friggin hours of gameplay?

cd key

[pythro]

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.

Re:cd key

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

And when that box gets bought, the system will lock both you and the legit user out of multiplayer mode. If that would work, buying one copy and distributing it with its own CD key would also work.

Re:cd key

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Even better is to hide the game in some other section of the store...you might as well enjoy your multiplayer knowing that the game won't ever be sold.

Downloading/uploading/cracking/etc. may be debatable, but that is clear piracy in its purest form. This is theft of the company's products. The store paid for the game so it may be sold and the store may recoup their costs. Even if you do not take the game out of the store (which you may as well do), this is stealing software by preventing valid payment for what it contains.

And I wonder if you have any conscience to be able to "enjoy" the multiplayer knowing you've caused the store to lose money; I know I wouldn't.

Re:cd key

[maximilln]

I'd like to make the same point but use the pharmaceutical industry as an analogy. People whined and complained for years that they wanted good drugs for pain, or for health, or for hair loss, or whatever. Then, when the drugs come out, then the people whine and complain that they want them cheaper. The pharmaceutical industry ran the propaganda that prices were high to recoup the development costs and keep the developers employed. People started going to alternative distributers which, while not free, were like pirating prescription drugs. Then the government set up Medicare and Medicaid to help the people who couldn't afford the drugs that they need so bad.

The software industry is the same way. The propaganda from on high is that the cost is right where it needs to be in order to keep the developers employed but,.just like the pharmaceutical industry, anyone with half a brain will see that the greed from the top is really driving the costs.

Feel free to apply the same general system to the RIAA/MPAA and their constant whining about music sharing.

Maybe we need Medicare/Medicaid for software and music. What's everyone going to do when we're all 80 years old and CDs are $65 each? We'll all have to go back to singing church songs and playing checkers.

Re:cd key

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Because stealing from the store is illegal. The store doing unethical things is just immoral. Not everything that is moral is legal (and vice versa, of course).

Besides, if you're so moral as to argue that the store is underhanded and deserves punishment, wouldn't you be moral enough not to debase yourself to their level?

Re:cd key

[jp10558]

I think the reality that so many people cannot face is that many, if not most, of the people in it don't believe in morals.. i.e. They don't have any. They may not even have a conscience. Just as the Ken Lay's don't feel bad about stealing the millions he has, just as Bill Gates doesn't feel bad about his underhanded business practices, just as Jack Valenti felt no pangs at his organizations actions, so too the downloaders, pirates, gang members etc. see no problem with what they do, and certainly do not feel any remorse over the laws they break or the people they rip off. It is an epidemic across america at all levels. So I find it odd that the media mogouls and the parents and the government find it so shocking that everyone else is basically just like them.

Re:cd key

[pythro]

I was not implying that I bought the game and returned it only so I could get the cd key, I actually bought the game and kept the box/cd/cdkey etc. I didnt jack the key off the back of the box.

Re:cd key

[Mycroft_VIII]

?!?!?!?
Artificialy inflate thier prices?
If you don't like the what they're charging for somthing, irregardless of the reason/excuse or lack thereof, go down the street and buy it somewhere cheaper.
Just because you think someone or some corporation is getting to rich too easily doesn't make the actuall stealing or destroying thier property any different than doing it to your next door neighbor.
You don't have to care why they charge what they charge, unless it's price fixing which is illeagle, you are alway free to shop somewhere else or do without.
As far as overcharging, well if you mean they are charging more than the price it's labled/advertised at plus applicable taxes this is called false advertising and is illeagle almost everywhere in the US.
If you believe a company/person is making money illeagly you are free to report them to the authorities.
If you think they are doing so immorally / unethically, you can report them to everyone you know.
If you think, like many do, that our government has bent excessively in favor of corporations making money over the best interest of it's citizens, then you have a right to protest, write your congresscritters, boycoyt the companies that lobby for this crap, and so on.
But stealing is still wrong. And stealing because you feel somthing cost too much and the reasons given for it's price are false are just juvinile.

Mycroft

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[spectecjr]

if im not going to buy them anyway, does anyone lose out?


If they had no value to you, you wouldn't want to copy them anyway.

Ergo, they do have value to you - which means that you should pay for them.

A two way street

[Saven Marek]

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

Re:A two way street

[Aldric]

I doubt many people bother downloading games that just aren't very good. What probably hurts them the most is reviews - most people avoid a game that gets bad ones, even the pirates.

Re:A two way street

[Deraj DeZine]

Don't forget Monopoly Sharing; by pirating popular games, you're giving independent developers less consideration and perpetuating the market bombardment of sequels and "Same Game 2004" titles.

Re:A two way street

[Life2Short]

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.

Re:A two way street

[jinxidoru]

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.

Re:A two way street

[Life2Short]

Another "two way street" thought: If you're a game developer, you work in an industry where all of your costs are essentially R&D. Your manufacturing (reproduction) and distributing costs are (relatively) very small. Contrast that with the computer hardware or automotive industry, where not only do you have R&D costs, but then you actually have to build the thing and ship it. Again, it doesn't justify piracy, but it is something to think about.

Re:A two way street

[Deraj DeZine]

I've nearly given up on reviews since I saw rave reviews of UT 2004. Well, I got a copy of that game and it's basically UT with one or two new play modes. Same unbalanced arsenal, same poorly designed levels, even some of the same characters.

Why, oh why, did I get UT 2004 instead of Painkiller?

Re:A two way street

[MMaestro]

No doubt this is a two way street. Depending on the popularity of a game, piracy is going to help or hinder.

I think thats what this discussion should focus on instead of all this 'piracy causes billions and billions of dollars to be lost' argument. Considering theres no solid evidence to support these numbers (whens the last time anyone here took a survey asking if you pirated a game?) theres no real argument.

Re:A two way street

[ymgve]

Maybe you didn't read the reviews well enough? Every review of UT2004 I've read have said that the game is exactly like the previous ones, only with more stuff added. The reason it got rave reviews was because people liked the previous games too.

Re:A two way street

[yRabbit]

Hah, I wonder how many people are downloading (or even buying) Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, just to see how bad it is.
Every single review I've been witness to has said it's bad.

hours of gameplay???

[kaufi]

why not paying the games by approved hours of gameplay they provide??

and why are there nofurther adventures ala "monkey island" ?

Re:hours of gameplay???

[Sigma 7]

why not paying the games by approved hours of gameplay they provide??

The problem with that approach is that developers (or their managers) become more willing to implement timesinks - sections of the game where you have to do a tedious procedure.

However, I do agree with the theory behind your statement - games that take longer to conquer because of a greater challenge or options of greaters challenges are worth a bit more, even if the pricing doesn't fully reflect this. (e.g. RTS games allowing giving bonuses to AI players if you can already nail them even when they throw the kitchen sink at you.)

Re:hours of gameplay???

[Asmor]

That's all well and good if you want to play some single player action game or something, but what about fighting games, RTS's, FPS's and the myriad of other games who have a relatively short single player experience (in the case of fight games often a half hour or less!) but provide as much entertainment and time as you're willing to put into them in multiplayer and/or mastering them.

Re:hours of gameplay???

[LaBlueCow]

Interesting idea - pay for play. That's what most MMORPGs do. Unfortunately they also tack on a $50 tag up front just for the 'privelege to pay further to use the game'.

As far as Monkey Island, I prefer King's Quest, but unfortunately, most gameplayers these days seem to require:
1) 3D Graphics (Notice it's #1 on the list?)
2) 3D Graphics (No, not an accidental reprint)
3) Big Weapons / Historically Accurate Weapons
4) Bleeding edge sports rosters
5) No thought to play.

Re:hours of gameplay???

[yRabbit]

How would we get a definitive "hours/cost" rating on these games? Some people can really blaze through some games in a few hours, others might spend days.

Re:hours of gameplay???

[DroopyStonx]

Ouch. I'd hate to see the price tag on pacman!

Re:hours of gameplay???

[scot4875]

Why not price them based on the overall quality of the title?

--Jeremy

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[Anonymous Coward]

But if he couldn't afford to buy it, and thus wouldn't have, no money is lost.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[kauschovar]

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.

Piracy and Video Game Sales

[SilentOne]

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.

Re:Piracy and Video Game Sales

[refujee]

No longer crackable? There's no such thing. Have you ever tried cracking the new versions yourself? Nah, didn't think so.

Re:Piracy and Video Game Sales

[Deraj DeZine]

It's funny that you mention purchasing games that you would never have wanted if you had been able to play a demo before hand. Why is this funny? Because the publisher just made more money by NOT releasing a demo and hurting customers. Oh how I love the gaming industry!

Re:Piracy and Video Game Sales

[ThisIsFred]

Oh, come off it. Open up your phone book and look for a local gaming center. There you can make a minimal investment ($5-$6 US) and have an hour or so at the monitor to try out a new title.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[LordK3nn3th]

Some people don't buy certain games because they don't last long enough-- especially if they have multiplayer. Even if they do find them fun.

A convenient evil...

[MistaE]

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

Re:A convenient evil...

[Deraj DeZine]

Yes, that all makes sense and I think that such use of piracy is not morally wrong, BUT...

The game publisher doesn't care if you like the game or not; they just want you to buy it so that they can make money. Sometimes not releasing a demo and tricking people into buying a game is a good money-making strategy. If they completely botch the news Star Wars game, but market it as being awesome by bribing reviewers (and no one can find out for themselves since there's no demo), they make more money.

So, I doubt that any publisher would have any sympathy for what you're doing. Good customers buy all the latest sequels =)

It's the same story since 1980

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:It's the same story since 1980

[Epistax]

Money is actually my only real reason. At this point it's still quite unrealistic for me to pay $50 for a game. My attention span has a crippling infant mortality and there's a good chance I simply won't like the game. If I download it play it and like it, then I already have the game and see physically going to store and buying it as an annoyance-- what ever happened to real manuals?

Anyway I'd gladly pay around $20-$30 for a game. It's not much money and infact I donate about that much to open source projects I like. What I would really appreciate is a buy-a-key program. That is, you download the image, burn it yourself, then install and play with a bought key. Instant access, and virtually no bother to me. The only issue is I don't get any bonus includes but those are pretty much drying up anyway (moo2 to Moo3, Civ2 to Civ3, where are my roll-out maps and tech trees now?).

Re:It's the same story since 1980

[yRabbit]

It's actually possible, here in the present, to buy games and get none of those extras. ;)
I got Thief with a Soundblaster Live! X-Gamer, no printed manual. (Then again, the recent Eidos Platinum Collection with Thief and Thief 2 has no paper manuals either.)
I got Morrowind (plus Ghost Recon and Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project) with a MSI GeForce 4 Ti 4200 some time back. No manuals, etc.

good times..

[MikeHunt69]

"Yeah... I'd like a half ounce of Chaos Engine, a Quarter of Xenon 2 and 20 Sensis"

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?

Re:good times..

[lordofthemoose]

When I was a kid, I used to copy lots of game disks for lots of friends, and I ended up having no time to actually play those games. However, it got me interested in how to use a computer and how it worked ( how the hell does ARJ manages to compress those megs onto only TWO disks??). A few years later, I completely stopped gaming, being too busy coding various graphic effects. And then thinking at what I did when I was a kid, I decided not to become a game programmer because my games would get pirated anywhere and I would not make a living, and started studying maths &physics.

A little coarse...

[Fwonkas]

...one isn't a complete cunt for doing that. Perhaps one is only a quarter-clitoris and a couple of damp pubes.

Am I the only one who kind of tuned out after (or even before) reading this?

Re:A little coarse...

[Hogwash McFly]

Not so much the language that bothers me, it's the fact that he's trying to be funny and/or insightful and failing worse than all the second posters combined. Those two sentences absolutely reek of someone trying to use 'amazing literary skills' to sound clever. I can picture the smug bastard typing that line and sitting there smiling to himself, 'Hur hur man I'm on fire, that's such a clever use of words, they're gonna love that'. Add to that the fact that he's trying to sound travelled in the field of female anatomy and you have a double whammy of lameness.

However, maybe he isn't a complete retard for doing that. Perhaps he is only a permanent grin and a couple of crossed eyes. Haw haw...

Re:A little coarse...

[Deraj DeZine]

The best part is that his comparisons make absolutely no sense. He seems to be thinking along these lines:

• What's gaming like? Picking flowers while dancing in the warm summer sun and sipping sweet nectar from goblets given to you by hummingbirds.
• What's piracy like? Being raped in prison by other inmates while being kicked in the crotch, followed by the guards running a train on you.
• What happens to the poor developers? Their houses are pillaged and set on fire by pirates and their massive creative talents are forced to hibernate while their soul is extracted by powerful magnets and then caged in a zoo and mocked for all eternity.
• What happens to the pirates? They live an outrageous lie of a life until they're finally forced by their friends and family at the Pirates Anonymous meeting to admit their mistakes and commit mass ritual suicide to repent their sins against the holy game developers.

If any of those examples make sense to you, you're probably under the influence of an illicit substance that you obtained from Mr. Minter.

Re:A little coarse...

[Fwonkas]

Didn't say I was offended. I just tuned it out. I did think that the rant was childish and not particularly clever or funny. Therefore, he didn't do too well in persuading me of his point. That's all.

Re:A little coarse...

[offpath3]

Yeah. He coulda picked a much better analogy. It's really hard to take someone seriously when the best way he can describe software pirates is to insult potentially half of his readers.

Re:A little coarse...

[Dun Malg]

Heh. Modded troll already. Must've struck a nerve with some brit who thinks calling people "cunt" is the height of culture.

Re:A little coarse...

[Dun Malg]

Looks like an old picture. He didn't seem at all like a 15 year old when I last met him.

That might indeed be an old pic. It's entirely possible that he's just another geek with no social skills. He may be an entirely reasonable person in real life, but just doesn't realize that some conversational vernacular that sounds OK when spoken makes you sound like a jerk when written.

Re:A little coarse...

[Forgotten]

What I don't get is why anyone would think calling someone a cunt was in any way pejorative. I mean, they're great. Unless you're a gay male perhaps. I don't give enough of a crap about video game developers to know or care whether Minter is, though. Or their opinions.

Actually, most of our pejoratives make no sense and aren't really pejorative at all. Scum is an essential component of most ecosystems. Fucker describes, well, most every human being througout history except some religious nuts. Lots of people I know are bastards and are perfectly nice (including my mother, in fact). I also know lots of nice bitches, though some of them do tend to drool on me. As do cocksuckers, who are certainly some of my favourite people past and present. And I scarcely need mention why a dick is a perfectly good thing to have.

Even shit has a purpose in the world. We need a nice original pejorative with no other connotation. Which, of course, would kind of defeat the purpose. But I still can't imagine why anyone would dislike cunts. Maybe Minter's just not getting any? That would explain the uptight obsession with things that just don't matter.

Thanks for reading.

Re:A little coarse...

[Quinling]

[...] the kind of people who use the word are generally the same class of people that use the word FAG, or FAGGOT as a derogatory term here in the US. [...]

From where did you pick up that idea? The word is commonly used in this country (the United Kingdom), although not generally in 'polite company'. Do you mean to imply that writing in an informal style implies bigotry?

There does seem to be a cultural divide here. I've heard that, in the U.S., the word is strictly linked to female anatomy and, indeed, is usually directed at women. Over here, a person calling someone 'a cunt' (in the derogatory sense) is no more thinking of vaginas than a person saying "bastard" (in the same sense) is thinking of illegitimacy. Neither is there any implication that the person using either word disapproves of fannies or births out of matrimony. Mr Minter's expansion of the derogatory 'cunt' to descriptions of feminine naughty bits was akin to a pun, recognisable as such and thus humorous to most Brits but, presumably, not to foreigners for whom the word apparently has only a single meaning.

To witness the word as it is commonly used in Britain, simply search for it on the YakYak forum where you will find that Mr Minter is frequently and playfully referred to as a cunt himself.

[He] just doesn't realize that some conversational vernacular that sounds OK when spoken makes you sound like a jerk when written.

Outside of his native country, perhaps. BTW, I understand that, in the U.S., 'jerk' is a reference to masturbation. Do you therefore mean in your statement above either that people who use such words sound sexy to you or that you find 'jerking off' unpleasurable? If neither was your intention then I suggest that your 'jerk' is semantically similar to our 'cunt' and 'bastard'.

H.
--
"Great Britain and the United States are nations separated by a common language."
[Attributed to George Bernard Shaw]

I really wish I hadn't RTFAed

[MC_Cancer_Pants]

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.

Re:I really wish I hadn't RTFAed

[33degrees]

Not only that, the analogy simply doesn't work; I highly doubt there's anyone in the software business who isn't aware of the risks involved in terms of piracy. If you start a business without doing proper market research, you deserve what you get.

Re:I really wish I hadn't RTFAed

[RonnyJ]

It's also claimed in the article that 'buying originals off Ebay is just as bad' as piracy. Seems to me like the only priority of this software developer is money.

Re:I really wish I hadn't RTFAed

[jp10558]

Well, are we talking about used games, or pirate CD's? If they are used games, SUCK UP AND DEAL game developers. Yeah, that thing called first sale? If, however it's pirate CD's, well get law inforcement involved. Even in the pirate friendly slashdot, most people seem to be against pirating for profit.

Well

[cubicledrone]

If piracy is good for the industry, then it should be encouraged, right? Unfortunately, once piracy reaches a certain point, it destroys the industry.

This is really no different than the outsourcing issue. It's just one group of people who already benefit from a market of plenty seeking to deprive others of their share and keep it for themselves. The ever-famous something for nothing.

Just pay for the game.

Re:Well

[Queer Boy]

If piracy is good for the industry, then it should be encouraged, right? Unfortunately, once piracy reaches a certain point, it destroys the industry.

I'd like to see evidence of piracy destroying any industry.

Jeff Who?

[JessLeah]

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...)

Re:Jeff Who?

[refujee]

If you're such a retro gamer you should definitely know who Jeff Mitner is...

Re:Jeff Who?

[JessLeah]

This does not answer my question. Also, I know games-- not game programmers/execs/other-people. Also, I was first exposed to these games when I was around 8.

Re:Jeff Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeff Minter was huge on the Amiga and Atari during the early 1980s

Hairier than Richard Stallman, and more bovine too. Just about everything I remember him writing has Yaks and Llamas in it

Re:Jeff Who?

[TomV]

Jeff Minter is LlamaSoft. He wrote a number of very classic games on a variety of 8-bit platforms, several of which are available as freeware from Llamasoft here, including Gridrunner, Attack Of The Mutant Camels, Headbangers Heaven, Revenge of the Mutant Camels, Hover Bovver, Sheep In Space, Mama Llama, Batalyx, the Atari ST version of Defender II, Llamatron, Defender II for the Jaguar and , not a game as such, the Trip-A-Tron.

Jeff Minter was an 8-bit god, and as you might guess from the names and his long-term handle 'Yak' has a bit of a thing about ungulates.

Re:Jeff Who?

[Cyph]

Here's the MobyGames summary on Jeff Minter:

MobyGames Auto-Generated Summary *:

Jeff Minter was credited on a game as early as 1983 and as recently as 1997. His/Her career probably spans more years than those displayed since these dates are based on the credits documented in MobyGames (which are incomplete). Jeff Minter has been credited with the roles Programming, Sound, Graphics, Design and Other. Jeff Minter has been credited on games developed by the following companies: Llamasoft, Atari Corporation, High Voltage Software and Atari. This does not imply employment by these companies.

Games Credited

Defender 2000 (1996), Atari Corporation
Tempest X3 (1996), Interplay
Tempest 2000 (1994), Atari Corporation
Ancipital (1984), Llamasoft
Attack of the Mutant Camels (1983), Llamasoft

Check it out here: http://mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/develope rId=12816

If the summary is any indication, the guy is pretty behind the times when it comes to video games. Or at least developing them.

Re:Jeff Who?

[payndz]

Broaden your retro horizons and get a C64 emulator! Minter wrote games (mainly) in the 8-bit computer era (C64 for the most part). He also wrote Tempest 2000, one of the best 'twitch' games of all time, far better than the original Tempest coin-op and not far behind Robotron, IMO.

He also wrote Defender 2000, which sucked because Defender is one of the very few games that needs no improvement, but everyone makes mistakes sometimes.

Minter might never have been cutting edge in terms of eye candy, but he's always been focused on what actually counts - gameplay. He's also been a lot more willing to experiment with control concepts. Nobody else would have come up with Ancipital's four-way gravity or Iridis Alpha's simultaneous twin playfields. Some of his experiments may not have worked out (like Mama Llama's confusing llama family/droid combo), but when they did they made the games unique - as if the bizarre enemies and trippy FX didn't already!

BTW, if you get down to the bottom of the article and wonder who Andy Braybrook is, he was another British developer who wrote classic C64 titles like Paradroid and Uridium. And yes, it's a tragedy that he stopped making games to write accounting software instead - but you go where the money is (literally, in his case).

Re:Jeff Who?

[Bender Unit 22]

I remember those games, and I failed to understand what all the hype was about. I think whey were terrible games.
But of course I guess there has to be something for everyone.

Re:Jeff Who?

[pommiekiwifruit]

Hey, I've played his games...

Hey wait a minute, piracy is bad? So Gridrunner, Attack of the Mutant Camels etc. were for sale then originally, not just passed around on unmarked discs/tapes at computer shops? Oops...

Re:Jeff Who?

[pommiekiwifruit]

Gary Liddon told me Jeff's new game (Unity I guess) is the prettiest thing he has ever seen, which is pretty impressive for programmer graphics :-)

Re:Jeff Who?

[kubrick]

If the summary is any indication, the guy is pretty behind the times when it comes to video games. Or at least developing them.

What, you mean he doesn't have the resources of a major Hollywood studio? Some of us prefer our games made the old-fashioned way.

Re:Jeff Who?

[Cyph]

No, I'm saying that the last game he was credited with was released in 1996. Technology has improved a lot since then. The piracy scene (point of this discussion) has advanced a lot as well, due to the increase in broadband use. The games he's credited with are not just old-fashioned. They're also old. The latest (and only) game on his site is a port of an Atari ST game to PC.

It's amazing how irrelevant your comment was to my comment... was there even any point in posting it? I realize that he's working on a GameCube game right now, but considering that he hasn't released any games in a while, there's very little chance that he has a lot of up-to-date first-hand experience with piracy.

Re:Jeff Who?

[kubrick]

He's recently been doing PocketPC games, and before that was doing console games for Nuon (aka Project X). A couple of niche platforms, admittedly, but that listing must have been incomplete. I think that piracy during the C64 and Amiga days was pretty high as well. How big were most of those games? 1 disk, 2 disks? Easy enough to copy in minutes and swap in the schoolyard, or download from a BBS. I'm old enough to remember the demo scene, and its growth out of the pirate scene, on the C64...

The basics of pirating these days surely aren't all that different from what they were like then, only the proportions have changed.

Re:Jeff Who?

[kubrick]

It's amazing how irrelevant your comment was to my comment... was there even any point in posting it?

My reading of your comment was a perfectly reasonable one, given that you didn't indicate that you were considering his attitude to piracy. Also, you looked at an incomplete softography, which *says* that it is incomplete, and assert that as history, when the real facts are easy enough to work out with a few minutes research. Just as much point to me posting my comment as there was to yours -- I'm stating an opinion and asserting my view of the facts, same as you. If you don't like that... too bad.

Charles Darwin said....

[darth_silliarse]

Piracy will be around as long as people want the software/games/etc. It's human nature!

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[Lord Kano]

What do we call people who take things of value to them without the permission of the owner - who it also has value to?

Are you talking about TAKING or unauthorized copying?

Contrary to what the RIAA and MPAA would have us believe, there is a difference.

LK

Companies could take the Derek Smart approach

[Lord Kano]

by making their games so complicated and in depth that you NEED to have the manual to play it.

Then again, even with the rampant piracy of Doom and the Quake series in their day, I doubt that iD would trade places with 3000AD.

LK

Re:Companies could take the Derek Smart approach

[ejaw5]

oh good God No!

"Congratulations! You have captured the red team's flag. To continue with the game, please enter the word on the top of page 948 of the user manual."

Re:Companies could take the Derek Smart approach

[Dun Malg]

"Congratulations! You have captured the red team's flag. To continue with the game, please enter the word on the top of page 948 of the user manual."

Or my favorite:

.________
/_______/--------/\
\\\\\\\\\________\/
.\_______\/
Look at the pictures scattered through the book to ID this thing:
A) it's a GoorKogger
B) it's a ThimFuddler
C) it's a Xum

Re:Companies could take the Derek Smart approach

[Lord Kano]

I bought BattleCrusier Millennium, you don't want to try to learn to play using a PDF. I suppose that you could just print it out, but the game is so in depth that you need to reference the manual continually while learning to play.

LK

Single player games?

[Killswitch1968]

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.

Re:Single player games?

[bonch]

Note that Knights of the Old Republic was also a console game--lots of PC games are coming out as ports because console games are harder to pirate.

The fact is that PC games sales are taking a hit now...and we're seeing beloved titles being cancelled because the ROI is just not worth it. Witness the other posts here saying things like "piracy among the young should be tolerated, because I pirated but now I buy games." You just can't argue with such illogic. Games companies aren't even trying anymore--it's going to console. Why do you think Eidos pressured Ion Storm into making Invisible War for the X-Box? The game suffered as a result--it lacked the depth of a PC game. But it's just harder to trust people's ethics anymore, because they've built entire mindsets to justify illegal and immoral behavior, simply because they've gotten used the convenience of it and don't want to see it go away.

Re:Single player games?

[antime]

At least around these parts, Grim Fandango is available in stores under LucasArt's "Classics" label.

Re:Single player games?

[Have Blue]

All that's going to happen is that games are going to start requiring a unique CD key to play the SP campaign as well, periodically authenticating it over the network (which you will be required to leave connected during play). I remember a ruckus over Valve planning to do this with Half-Life 2, but I'm not sure how (or if) it was ever resolved.

Re:Single player games?

[qoa]

I see an awful lot of xbox and ps2 warez channels in irc. The people pirating xbox games are saying the same thing as you, only opposite.

Re:Single player games?

[Duty]

That can and will be cracked, as the key isn't just the connectivity, it's creating a mode of play that requires dynamic data (like a server list) from the authentication server to be entertaining.

Re:Single player games?

[Carpet]

Hold on here... "Grim Fandango is largely heralded as the greatest adventure game of all time..." among fans who actually know it existed.

Grim Fandango sales were weak, very weak, partly due to insufficient marketing, and partly due to dying interest in the adventure genre. While piracy may have been an issue, wanna know what people around me were peddling? StarCraft, Half-Life, Railroad Tycoon 2... all big-name games. Grim Fandango barely registered as a blip. Almost all the computer gamers that I know have either 1) Never even heard of Grim Fandango or 2) Pull out their treasured legit 2-CD set and rant about how great it was. In the meantime, Half-Life was pirated halfway around the world and back. Mind you, for HL this was back in the day when WON allowed for multiple instances of one CD-key to run, and CS was just catching on.

S&M 2 and Full Throttle were canned because Lucasarts today is a company that won't take the risk to sell anything without the words "Star Wars" on it.

Re:Single player games?

[bludstone]

Which makes no sense because very few of the online games are actually profitable when you factor in server costs.

I'll stick with the single player ubisoft games for now. If you havnt picked up "Beyond Good and Evil," and "Prince of Persia: Sands of Time" I suggest you do. Some of the most incredible games ever made.

ROI?

[Realistic_Dragon]

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.

Re:ROI?

[Sarth]

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. Its an interesting, but slightly skewed, perspective. Yes, pirating games may have led to you becoming an avid gamer, and you pay for your habit now.. so, GameCompanyX, that went under because of weak sales due to Piracy, helped Sony bring in more money, because their product got you started for free. Generally speaking, when drug dealers do that, they sorta expect you to come back to them for your fix, not some other guy.

Re:ROI?

[maximilln]

-----
GameCompanyX, that went under because of weak sales due to Piracy
-----
Company's do not go under because of weak sales. They go under because of weak popularity. Popularity isn't entirely determined by sales. A good relationship with a upper level investor helps quite a bit to move stock into the umbrella of a 401k investment plan.

-----
Generally speaking, when drug dealers do that, they sorta expect you to come back to them for your fix, not some other guy
-----
Perfect! Since software companies are all owned by the same people at the level of controlling shareholders and executive boards then it does function somewhat like a drug ring. The same twelve players move a different set of henchman from one crackhouse to another. When a crackhouse dies out it's not because the drugs were being pirated but rather because it was just time for a change.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[refujee]

Someone who steals your grandma's panties is a thief, someone who copies a CD is merely a pirate.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[kauschovar]

Are you talking about TAKING or unauthorized copying?

Contrary to what the RIAA and MPAA would have us believe, there is a difference.

That is true. If you were taking the source code and artwork from the developers, I suppose that would be stealing (certainly if you then deleted it from their hard drives as well), but downloading an illegal copy is copyright infringement.

Both Articles..

[MikeHunt69]

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"

I don't know who this Jeff Minter guy is...

[vyrus128]

... 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.

Re:I don't know who this Jeff Minter guy is...

[hyphz]

Jeff Minter is one of the most well-respected programmers in the industry, and author of a large number of games on several platforms including at least 2 platform killer apps. He has always worked pretty much completely independantly. Thus it should not be surprising that he doesn't have many kind words for pirates! ;)

As for the claim about software/music, I think the idea there was that a piece of music is just that, a single piece of music, and once you've listened to it it's done, so you might buy more from that band. A game, on the other hand, you can play right through once pirated, and most people do not buy games based on the names of their developers.

Re:I don't know who this Jeff Minter guy is...

[vyrus128]

Don't get me wrong -- I have a lot of respect for programmers, being one myself. Now knowing who he is, I have a lot more respect for him; but that doesn't excuse the drivel that people are calling an argument.

Re:I don't know who this Jeff Minter guy is...

[Deraj DeZine]

Actually, I've seen such rebranding of games when my friend picked up a few while in the Ukraine, but I don't think most publishers are expecting to sell a lot outside of Japan, the US, and Europe, so you're right to say that it's a non-issue.

Re:I don't know who this Jeff Minter guy is...

[hyphz]

> Jeff Minter WAS one of the most well-respected
> programmers in the industry. It has been a
> VERY long time since he did anything notable.
> Now he's just a loud-mouthed boob.

Uh, no, that's not true. He is still highly respected. Gridrunner++ for the PC became one of the few Shareware games to recieve the highest possible award from PC gamer in the UK, and the very announcement of Unity (his next project) was the subject of an entire issue of EDGE.

Re:I don't know who this Jeff Minter guy is...

[Dun Malg]

Re:I don't know who this Jeff Minter guy is... (Score:1) by hyphz (179185) on Saturday May 01, @04:04PM (#9030514)
> Jeff Minter WAS one of the most well-respected
> programmers in the industry. It has been a
> VERY long time since he did anything notable.
> Now he's just a loud-mouthed boob.

Uh, no, that's not true. He is still highly respected. Gridrunner++ for the PC became one of the few Shareware games to recieve the highest possible award from PC gamer in the UK,

What? Have you PLAYED Gridrunner++? It's not even a good game by Commodore 64 standards! Its distracting background with unnecessary psychedelic palette rotation is a throwback to 1985 (the last time this dork wrote a game that sold well), the graphics quality bites HARD, and the play format (a vertical shooter) has been dead for 15 years. It's like playing Galaga, only with WORSE graphics, and flickering that threatens to induce epilepsy. I'm sorry, this guy has very little "game developer" cred. He's a potty mouth pothead with a knack for assembly language. What a wiener.

and the very announcement of Unity (his next project) was the subject of an entire issue of EDGE.

Here's a cut from lionhead's description of Unity:

"Unity is a fabulous journey through a succession of beautiful abstract 3D spaces, with gameplay varying in tempo, from fast paced shooting to a more gentle progression"

Great, sounds like another scrolling shooter with irritating psychedelic bullshit thrown in-- but in 3D this time! At least it's a collaberative effort with Peter Molyneaux, so it won't be JUST a tie-dyed circle jerk.

Re:I don't know who this Jeff Minter guy is...

[Dun Malg]

Jeff Minter is one of the most well-respected programmers in the industry, and author of a large number of games on several platforms including at least 2 platform killer apps.

I think he's well respected for his programming ability perhaps, but the stuff he produces has never really impressed me. He doesn't seem to have gotten past his fascination with psychedelic palette rotation-- a trick which was already old in the Commodore 64 days. He's a stoner with a knack for assembly language who hasn't done anything particularly noteworthy as far as I can tell. Gridrunner++ is, at best, a nostalgia game; a throwback to the C64 days. His only other project of late, Unity, sounds like it's going to be a 3D shooter full of more psychedelic crap. I respect him for what he did once, twenty years ago, but he's certainly no Sid Meier.

Re:I don't know who this Jeff Minter guy is...

[sadangel]

I don't think I'd say he's taking the "moral high ground" at all. He's a hypocrite. He tries to argue that music piracy is alright(ish) because it could prompt you to buy more music by the slighted artist.
I fail to see such clear distinctions between music and software piracy. If one is wrong, so is the other. If pirating music may make you want to buy future and past albums, pirating software my put you on the lookout for expansions and additional titles by the same developers.
You can't talk out of both sides of your mouth to try to win the support of music file sharers by sidestepping the moral issue there. It's self-serving and less than honest.

The point being missed

[bonch]

It doesn't matter if it helps spread games (I'm sure lots of things would spread if they were completely free!) or bring it to more people.

One doesn't have the right to violate the rights of the copyright holders and spread their intellectual material everywhere. It just doesn't matter what justifications are given because it's still illegal and no permission was given by the copyright holder.

I remember Nintendo busting ROM sites, and people were saying, "B-but Nintendo doesn't even sell these games anymore!" It didn't matter--it was Nintendo's property and they had the right. And of course fast-forward to now, and Nintendo is planning several old NES releases for the GBA, as well as compilations coming out for the Gamecube.

Copyright holders' rights are being completely ignored. Well, except when it's a GPL violation article, that is! Suddenly copyright enforcement becomes a really big deal then...

Re:The point being missed

[bonch]

f I purchased the right to play that game (a license), then why shouldn't I have the right to play it in different ways?

Are you talking about game cracks or something?

I wasn't talking about those. I believe in game cracks to (in fact, a lot of developers do...it's the publishers who make them put in that CD verification junk).

I was just making a point about how people are forgetting the rights of copyright holders. This article is moot because it doesn't matter if someone thinks there's a benefit to widespread piracy--it still doesn't pay the programmers, and it's still illegal and blatantly violates their rights.

You kinda have to get legal permission first before you go off distributing someone's materials!

Re:The point being missed

[Deraj DeZine]

That's a great legal argument and all, but I honestly do not feel like I've done anything morally wrong when I pirate a game that I can't get any other way. When it comes down to it, I don't think laws (such as copyright) are really the bottom line in people's decisions.

As for the troll at the end, the moral situation in that case is significantly different (using others' code that they are actively distributing and trying to make money off of it versus copying stuff that can't be obtained any other way simply for entertainment purposes).

Re:The point being missed

[hyphz]

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).

Re:The point being missed

[Aneurysm9]

Would Nintendo know that there was a potential market to be exploited if there weren't ROM sites distributing their old games?

Re:The point being missed

[bonch]

As for the troll at the end, the moral situation in that case is significantly different (using others' code that they are actively distributing and trying to make money off of it versus copying stuff that can't be obtained any other way simply for entertainment purposes).

I don't think it was a "troll."

I was just pointing out that it's a bit of a double standard to think copyright law is a flexible gray area when it comes to piracy, but when the situation is about a GPL copyright violation, suddenly copyright law is a golden scroll to be followed to the letter by all honest companies.

Re:The point being missed

[bonch]

How should you have the right to download someone else's intellectual property if they haven't given the permission to distribute it?

ROMs are binary images of their intellectual property. That's the thing about intellectual property, it can take any form--it's why MP3 piracy is still piracy even though it's not the audio CD it came from.

It's hardly a "paradox."

Re:The point being missed

[Deraj DeZine]

For one, the situations are completely different from a moral standpoint, so the comparison is not valid. If you gave an example of a non-profit company using OSS, but violtaing the GPL, to successfully cure AIDS in all of Africa then I'd call it a double standard. But companies trying to get rich quick by stealing code are already morally suspect.

Second, this topic has been brought up a million times and the antagonist (you, in this case) always refuses to acknowledge the fact that there is a wide range of opinions on Slashdot and only a fraction of people are complete morons. You're posting on Slashdot, afterall, so you must share this double standard as well, right? Of course not.

Re:The point being missed

[Coryoth]

Copyright holders' rights are being completely ignored. Well, except when it's a GPL violation article, that is! Suddenly copyright enforcement becomes a really big deal then...

Indeed - but that doesn't mean freely copying and trading is wrong per se, it merely means it is wrong in the current model (where games are bought/licensed on a per consumer basis). It would be interesting to see if other models could work. I would be suspicious as to how well all the people busying pirating now would take it if game companies shofted to a new model of operation.

Imagine this. Id software says "We're not going to sell Doom3. When it's done everyone can just grab copies for free, and copy it as much as they like. To cover the time and effort of our development of the game, however, we are not going to do any more work on it until $15 million (random number, I have idea of game development costs and expected profits) has been donated. Donations can be made by credit card HERE..."

Would enough people donate to raise the sort of cash required? Hard to say. It does make for an interesting model. The consumers and gamers become the venture capitalists, supporting whichever games have the most promising story ideas/artwork/mockups/short demos. I think it would be a fantastic system if it worked. I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that everyone would be waiting for the free ride and not enough capital would be raised for development.

Has anyone tried such a game development model (not one man band geocities, but a serious games company looking to raise some venture capital for a game idea)?

Jedidiah.

Re:The point being missed

[badboy_tw2002]

Has anyone tried such a game development model (not one man band geocities, but a serious games company looking to raise some venture capital for a game idea)? It happens all the time. Joe Consumer isn't going to put in venture capitol. The devs raise it on their own from private sources. Eventually they have to go to a publisher if they want to get it on store shelves (its one thing to raise capitol for making a game, its another to raise money for a production run, marketing, wining and dining distributors to get it on store shelves, etc). And I laugh at your suggestion people would donate based on a concept while the biggest piracy apologist argument is that there's so much crap people want to try before they buy. In your plan they're going to pay for story drafts and concept art? I don't think so. For myself, I don't usually buy into hype and I don't have an itchy buying finger. I wait until reviews from trusted sources have been published, and hopefully a good demo. Word of mouth sells me a game more than any bought-and-paid for "review." If the game isn't worth me paying for, then its not worth the time for me to find, pirate, and play. I think if you spend any time at all using someone's creation, then you need to give credit where credit is due.

Re:The point being missed

[maximilln]

-----
How should you have the right to download someone else's intellectual property if they haven't given the permission to distribute it?
-----
I hate to burst your bubble but it happens all the time.

You folks in the software industry just seem to think you're all special and deserve extra legal consideration because you have an electronic paper trail.

Take for example the guy working on an assembly line sorting and or counting parts. If he figures out a better way to arrange the items per tray so that he can count them faster isn't that his intellectual property? Absolutely. Can he patent it? Not if he wants to avoid the bosses boot in his backside.

Take the poor shmoe flipping burgers. Say he figures out a way to arrange his cooking area so that he can turn out burgers twice as fast as the next cook. Is that his intellectual property? Absolutely. Can he take the time out to patent it? Not if he wants to avoid the bosses boot in his backside.

Take the 12-year old delivering newspapers. Say he figures out a better way to run a route so that he can deliver the same 60 papers in less than half the time. Is that his intellectual property? Absolutely. Can he patent or copyright it? Yeah right. Like some 12-year old paperboy can afford that process or even begin to fill out the forms unless his daddy is some rich lawyer.

What about the football player that, in the middle of a game, figures out how the other team's defense is functioning and comes up with a route which leaves him wide open? Is that his intellectual property? Absolutely. Can he patent it? Well, for one, he's making too much already, for two his teammates don't know the difference unless he tells them what he's up to, and if the coach ever finds out then, well, he'd darn well better make that open source info or the he'll be running wind sprints all week at practice.

What makes you computer people feel that you deserve all this extra special protection?

Re:The point being missed

[hu420]

How about downloading rom games of nintendo games you used to own or still own but are no longer playable. The license agreement says that I have the right to play the game. Does this make it illegal for me to download a rom copy of a nintendo game since probably only 1 in 100 old school nintendos still can actually play games?

Re:The point being missed

[Coryoth]

It happens all the time. Joe Consumer isn't going to put in venture capitol. The devs raise it on their own from private sources. Eventually they have to go to a publisher if they want to get it on store shelves (its one thing to raise capitol for making a game, its another to raise money for a production run, marketing, wining and dining distributors to get it on store shelves, etc).

Yes, but that capital is BORROWED, not paid as in the model I was suggesting. Such money must therefore be PAID BACK. That means the developers need to SELL individual copies of the game, and hence piracy thwarts them. I'm talking about rasing money directly as payment for the game. Once the money is raised, the game is paid for, and it does not need to be sold. See the difference?

And I laugh at your suggestion people would donate based on a concept while the biggest piracy apologist argument is that there's so much crap people want to try before they buy. In your plan they're going to pay for story drafts and concept art?

Or maybe a (short) runnable demo. In theory you are also running on the success of your previous games. That means a company like Valve would probably have been able to raise some cash for Half Life 2 based solely on the success of Half Life. It is undeniable that SOME people would donate under such a situation. I am in no way claiming that anywhere near enough money would be able to be raised. In fact, that was kind of my point - this is the model which the piracy fans ought to be advocating... it is, essentially, what they are advocating when they say piracy is okay. The question is, would such a model work? I'm thinking no, probably not. Not enough donations would occur to cover the costs of modern game development. You also seem to think it won't work. It might though, so I'm interested for other opinions.

Word of mouth sells me a game more than any bought-and-paid for "review."

Well, that's what the pirates are trying to say really - if a game is freely copyable it gets much better word of mouth transmission. Of course, if the game sucks, that word of mouth transmission isn't very useful, but a good game that is absolutely free (development has been paid for under above funding model) would have VERY GOOD word of mouth. The theory is that the game company that developed that game would then have a good chance at raising some funds for a sequel, or their next game. Once again, I am NOT saying this is a workable model for game development. I am merely throwing the idea out there for opinions. My personal opinion is as follows:

A game compoany that worked in such manner would have huge community support, and lots of people saying how wonderful they were... Until they very quickly run out of money, because while everyone was cheering them on, no one was actually donating any cash to develop new games.

Jedidiah.

Re:The point being missed

[k8er]

I once had an idea for a gamer's union. If it were large enough, and had enough buying power, it could negotiate terms with the developers. The union would tell the developers what they wanted in a (specific) game, and then buy the rights to the game. They could distribute it to their members (or non memebers, but there would be no incentive to do so).This would eliminate distrubution and advertising costs.

There should be fewer bombs if the developers listen to and work with representatives from the union throughout the process. The developing company can negotiate a price that covers their costs and then some. They also have the right to sell copies to non-union members, of course. That would all be profit if the union covered costs. There would have to be be different sects for different genres. It's probably a stupid idea, but I think it would have some benefits. It seems that the cost of developing and distributing would go down, so the union members should be able to get a copy of the game for less, or it could be covered in their dues.

Re:The point being missed

[HybridJeff]

They may not have the right to ignore the decision, but they do have the right to not abide by it. As long as you are willing to face up to the consequences, then go ahead and violate copywrite all you want. Weigh in the change of getting caught, with the penelty for doing so, annd Im willing to take that gamble.

I do pay for some games, online play like battle.net requiring valid cd keys, or anything that I spend more than a few hours on usually comes out of my pocket. Evreything else, I dont need to justify to anyone else. I dont have a moral problem with downloading 1's and 0's and it ends there. Stealing somthign physical in my opinion is a completly different matter.

Re:The point being missed

[Dun Malg]

Imagine this. Id software says "We're not going to sell Doom3. When it's done everyone can just grab copies for free, and copy it as much as they like. To cover the time and effort of our development of the game, however, we are not going to do any more work on it until $15 million (random number, I have idea of game development costs and expected profits) has been donated. Donations can be made by credit card HERE..."

Probably wouldn't work. Stephen King tried that with some story, I think. It was distributed in installments online on the "honor system". He eventually quit working on it because only 1 person was paying for every 100 or so downloading.

I think a good model would be giving the game away free, but charging money for an account # that lets you play the game online. Or perhaps you can play one map online (a really simple one) unless you've paid.

Re:The point being missed

[Mycroft_VIII]

No actually when it comes to the GPL it's not that suddenly peoples opinion of copyright has changed, it's people opion on HOW copyright is used and the concept of IP is used and aplied that creates the false image of a double standard.
Many see IP as an artificial restriction that has no basis in the real world. Say I show someone how to make somthing usefull and good, now that I have 'given' then that knowledge, am I somehow deprived thereof? no of course not, if anything I've improved society. This sharing is a good thing.
However many good ideas and knowledges and devices, etc. take considerable time and effort to devolop into a workable system. Time and effort that one could spend on say feeding thier family, or persuing personal gain, or any number of other, more imediatly rewarding, goals.
Those that set up the US constitution saw this issue and debated it, the answer they came up with was that the trade off of limiting the gain from ideas to thier creators, for a short time, was an acceptable tradeoff in exachange for the increased inovation it encouraged.
They did not feel it was an inherent right, nor that it was even desireable, for and individual or group to have sole use and controll of ideas and concepts. Some of them actually argued against such a thing as they felt is was preposterous, and feared it could lead where it has. One has only to look at 75 year copyright terms, patents on math and one click shopping, and so on to see why.
The original intent of copyright was indeed to incourage inovation and the sharing thereof. As it was intended for works to fall into the public domain, and for the patent office to eventually be repository of ideas and inventions, that uppon expiration of patent, would be of free use and benifit to all.
If anything the GPL and other licenses that guarantee sharing of the work with all commers more honours the intent of copyright than the current laws on the books, and all the clickthroughs you see on modern software. The fact that it uses current copyright laws in a ju-jitsu like move to do so is simply ironic justice.

Mycroft

Re:The point being missed

[Kalani]

You have made quite possibly the stupidest comparison I have ever seen on this issue. It's a sad day for slashdot that this dreck had any positive moderation at all (let alone 'insightful').

We're talking about the difference between sharing some interesting new technique and 'sharing' the fruits of *YEARS* of work. Yes, game makers share minor innovations of the sort that you describe without making an issue of it either (else there'd only be one guy who was allowed to implement bump mapping), but they don't toil away for years just to give it all away -- that's an untenable financial strategy.

Re:The point being missed

[ckathens]

Not that i necessarily agree much with the original poster, but you've completly miscast intellectual property law.

Typically (with SOME exceptions turning up now), software is not patentable. It is, however, copyrightable. The reason why those computer people (and the other industries whose products fall under IP) deserve extra special protection is because they produce commercial products. To use standard property theory, they've mixed their labor with something tangible, hence procuring ownership over that thing. We protect their right to do so because if everyone can wantonly copy, then there is no incentive to mix their labor with something and produce it.

All your examples involve someone to whom the thing being patented is only collateral to their job. Their primary purpose is to sort parts, flip burgers, deliver newspapers, or play football. Their company may have the right to patent certain methods or use copyright and trademark to protect their IP, but the individuals do not.

Realistically, too, the methods you've listed above for the individual workers will likely be property of their employer under a standard contract provision....

Re:The point being missed

[bluesnowmonkey]

A software application is more than just a way somebody figured out to do something. You're not walking down the street and suddenly the source code to Windows springs forth in your mind, fully formed.

Software isn't really a product at all. You're paying for the service of the developers. A large game requires a dozen or more highly-skilled, highly-talented people to labor for maybe a couple of years. That costs millions of dollars, which is one reason you pay $50. The other (bigger) reason is that the market will bear it.

You have to have a certain amount of legal protection, or the system doesn't work, games don't get made, and everyone's playing Quake 3 for the rest of eternity. Is that what you want?

Re:The point being missed

[GileadGreene]

I suspect that the major problem with your model is that it pays based on past performance, rather than on the quality of the product actually being delivered by the payment. As the financial community likes to say, "past performance is no guarantee of future results." Then too you have the problems that (1) if I have no past performance (i.e. I'm just getting started) then I have no way to gain revenue, and (2) since the game development is, in a sense, pre-paid I'm placed in a position where if I develop a game that's wildly popular I can only cash in on that success by developing another game. For those two reasons I don't see this being a viable model.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[Dark Lord Seth]

Ergo, they do have value to you - which means that you should pay for them.

However, there are games that I wouldn't pay for if I had to, not because I don't like the game, but because technically or content-wise the game is lacking. ( Hello cheapo-console ports, bad translations, lousy rip-offs. )

I'm not paying good money for a crap product that one might or might not enjoy.

So, I download questionable games and put up with the bugs. Good games ( Hello Bioware! ) usually end up being bought. After the hype dies and the price hike is dropped, thank you.

Also, what about games that are no longer being made?

I think its a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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 .02..

Re:I think its a good thing

[Sigma 7]

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)

No, it's not bad at all.

Do you see stores selling second hand books? That is completely permitted under the law - video games are no different. This does not matter with single player and multiplayer games, especially since second hand multiplayer games

There are some countries/legislative districts that explicitly allow licences of any kind to be transferred (although sometimes require a formality such as notifing the originator that it was performed). This just furthers the notion that giving away the original after its uninstallation is an act that is fully legitimate in a legal and moral sense.

Might I sugesst

[beakerMeep]

http://www.gamefly.com/

This might save you some money for 2 teenage gamers :)

please note though, I have yet to try it this service so this is not an endorsement... but the idea seems like such a good one (basically netflix for games) I am really just waiting till my next game to sign up.

Re:Might I sugesst

[Trashie24]

Note on Gamefly - great service. I can highly recommend it as:

A: a great place to rent games
B. a great place to pick up used games at a great price

Being a software pirate is just as EVIL as...

[JBMesserly]

...being FEMALE!

Or at least, that seems to be the gist of Jeff Minter's anti-piracy argument.

I couldn't even finish reading his article.

Re:Being a software pirate is just as EVIL as...

[Quinling]

...being FEMALE!
Or at least, that seems to be the gist of Jeff Minter's anti-piracy argument.

Dear, oh dear. If I may clarify, in Britain the word 'cunt' is used pejoratively against persons of all genders by both males and females equally. It does not imply any prejudice against female anatomy any more than the pejorative usage of the word 'fucking' implies a dislike of copulation.

If I may further clarify on a wider point, many people seem to have mistaken Mr Minter's article for a solemn missive or angry rant. Those who've taken the time to read more of WotR, and perhaps even browsed through some back issues, might realise that the columnists write in a spirit of fun and gentle teasing. Mr Minter and 'Cubit' are in reality good friends who agreed to write mutually polarised articles for the purpose of stimulating debate. Both articles were written to stimulate thought and neither were entirely serious. Just read what else is on the pages, for Goddess's sake! :-)

H.
--
"Climb into the Chao with a friend or two
And follow the Way it carries you,
Adrift like a Lunatic Lifeboat Crew
Over the Waves in whatever you do."
["The Honest Book of Truth"; The Book of Advice, 1:3]

Simply rule to prevent revenue theft

[dfranks]

Here is what I recommend when asked:
If you would pay for a title if you couldn't get a free copy, then you should (pay for it).

Making a copy of a game is only theft from the IP perspective, it costs the developer/distributer nothing. Choosing to make a copy of software/music/whatever instead of purchasing it does effectively cost the developer/distributer money.

That said, remember that even copying for evaluation or limited use is illegal. Be prepared to accept to consequences, or don't make the copy.

Re:Simply rule to prevent revenue theft

[beacher]

Yeah! Don't copy that floppy!!

Free windows games

[lightspawn]

Try looking at free games. You'd be surprised how many there are. Of course most aren't worth playing, but that still leaves quite a bit.

Here's a few places to get started:
Remakes.org - remakes of many many classic games.

Freeware World Team - many categories including games.

Freestle freeware - small but good.

fullgames

world of free games

Feel free to suggest more / better resources.

P.S. So many console games drop to $20 if you're just willing to wait a year. The sports games are even cheaper if you don't absolutely need this year's updated roster. If you don't want to buy games at $50, just wait a bit.

Re:Free windows games

[rokzy]

>Of course most aren't worth playing

this is also true of the non-free games

Re:Free windows games

[Zigg]

P.S. So many console games drop to $20 if you're just willing to wait a year... If you don't want to buy games at $50, just wait a bit.

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.

Re:Free windows games

[maximilln]

I've always wondered about this. They can't possibly claim to have actually sold every copy of Half-Life that was available yet the price never got below $40. You're perfectly right--only the crappiest crap available makes it to the $10-$20 rack.

So is this a marketing conspiracy? If a game hits platinum status do they simply decree that it will never be sold at a discount to prevent us thrifty consumers from keeping a sharp eye out for it?

You know... like music stores where Master of Puppets is still $16 even though it's 15 years old. Because it achieved such a high status the corporations greedily know that anyone who wants it will pay for it and anyone who pirates it becomes an instant potential lawsuit.

Re:Free windows games

[radixvir]

to add onto that take a look the the underdogs a site that hosts abandonware (old out of date) games. you can get classics from your youth there. definitely one of my fav sites

Re:Free windows games

[Syriloth]

While your point is valid in general, I don't think it really applies to this guy's situation. You forget that he's buying all of these games for his kids, and if they haven't gotten to the point where they're paying for their own games, then I doubt that they've gotten to the point where they can see the wisdom of waiting a year for a game's price to come down, or where they are interested in playing a free substitute instead of whatever shiny new game their friends have. Just a thought.

Re:Free windows games

[Nataku564]

I keep a little text file on my desktop of games which I monitor. Every few weeks I go check amazon or some other online retailers and get their prices. So far I have been able to find everything on my list. Its usually just the big chains that stop carrying large amounts of the discount titles, online stores still keep them in stock. If nothing else, ebay probably has what you are looking for.

Re:Free windows games

[Hatta]

Feel free to suggest more / better resources.

P.S. So many console games drop to $20 if you're just willing to wait a year. The sports games are even cheaper if you don't absolutely need this year's updated roster. If you don't want to buy games at $50, just wait a bit.

Goodwill or the Salvation Army is great for getting old video games. Breakout is still as fun today as it was 20 years ago.

And don't forget nethack. The deepest most sophisticated game ever is free for the playing.

Re:Free windows games

[void*]

Having that wisdom when the kids don't - that is what parenting is.

My son doesn't have the wisdom to see that running in the street without looking is a bad idea. That's why I'm there holding his hand, even when he doesn't like it.

Your post may be dangerously close to 'give the kids everything they want' ... which in my experience tends to be a bad mode of parenting ... just a thought. :)

Re:Free windows games

[zbuffered]

Gran Turismo 3 is $20. I bought it and a force feedback steering wheel at full price.

The bad video games drop off the face of the earth. The best ones become discounted to $20 when they've sold a certain amount. You know, they've recouped their costs and are now able to sell it for a lesser amount. Makes sense, doesn't it?

Re:Free windows games

[maggot the shrew]

You know, the "bargain racks" are just garbage racks, but if you are looking actively for the games you want, the retailer will dump the price on hot titles to "liquidate" their overstock, and for two or three months there'll be huge discoutns on really hot titles. That's how I bought Civ3 for $20. Just check the shelves at CompUSA, or Best Buy (not the game boutiques w/no shelf-space). There is always something that was just the hot ticket with a big discount, even if it's not exactly the game you want.

Re:Free windows games

[acxr is wasted]

I just bought a brand new, never been used copy of F-Zero GX for just $20. Seems like it's been about a year since it came out, too.

Re:Free windows games

[spike hay]

Try Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory.

It originally was going to be a multiplayer expansion pack for Return to Castle Wolfenstein. But then the decision was made to release for free as a standalone multiplayer game.

It's about a 250 megabyte download. The game features very stragetic team combat, with different player classes, such as medic, engineer, etc. Very good gameplay. Popular, as well. There is well over 2000 servers.

Re:Free windows games

[murdocj]

How come I can buy StarCraft for $9? Or, for that matter, that I can hop online and fine Half-Life for $18 (I'm sure you can get it for less, that's just one particular store I looked at)?

Wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Wrong.

[AmericanInKiev]

There is a marketing strategy which is DEPENDANT on (what is here called piracy) But its double speak. Nobody steals our software because we protect it with a dongle.

If we let people steal it - it would be more popular - but we would probably not ever see a point in which market saturation rendered the product a requisite (such as is MS OFFICE).

The point is as you say - the cunts as they say - are spreading the good word at a cost - the designers WANT the product to spread - and the WANT to call the spreaders criminals so they can charge AFTER the product becomes popular.

I suggest this double standard is illegal. They should require everyone top pay - and use means to require payment - or allow free use - but software vendors are not entitled to a confused state in which the product is viable only because it has been freely shared by design.

The fact that they COULD lock up their content - and they CHOOSE NOT to lock up their content is a vote for free distribution in which the act says more than the doublespeak.

AIK

Re:Wrong.

[Nataku564]

Yeah, you are so right - because the copy protection that sony tried to use for their PS games was so darn effective in locking up their content .... wait ... darn sharpies.

For every attempt at preventing piracy, there will be an exploit. Its not as if these companies could completely prevent their games from being pirated, nor should they be required to. That would raise the cost of games, something I dont want to see happen. Besides, I get most of my game info/press from online review sites and gaming magazines.

Re:Wrong.

[yRabbit]

Ah, but it's much easier, with the right mindset, to sit around in your chair without moving, and search and download a game, than it is to go out and buy something from a store.
Of course, you could perhaps order something from some website (Best Buy, ebgames, etc.), but then you come to the people who just don't have any money. Or they want a game and don't actually want to pay for it.
Then you have people who do actually buy games, but STILL pirate them, they install the games on multiple computers (such as so they can play multiplayer with other members of the family), violate their licenses, etc. Because they don't want to buy multiple copies of the game (or have their brother, etc., have to buy another copy)

Re:Wrong.

[AmericanInKiev]

The CD format could have included a unique serial number for each disk (via barcode for example)

If fact - it may still be possible.

If one could print over the data bits, and then programatically discern which sectors had been obscurred - one could reveal a serial number.

Such serial number could track copies, make duplication (more) problematic and set the bar fairly.

Without copy protection - the bar is consumer dictated which means the cost is disporportionately assigned to the honest.

Honor system make for horrible game strategy in an anonymous world.

distribute the cost fairly by a mechanism to ensure everyone pays the same price.

As a consumer - I have the right to the same price as anyone else - if some people can get it for free - I am entitled to that price.

I understand that in some case "free" is outside the EULA - but it may not be outside the "Marketing Plan"

Take Word for example. Marketing plan:

Let everyone use it for "free."

Let all highschool kids get used to using it for their homework - then magically when they go to work - MSWord is the defacto standard - why BECAUSE IT IS FREE - at least effectively and intentially free to an introductory audience.

That is a kind of bait and switch - and this is the flip side of piracy - the use of "the first one is always free" marketing.

Fair market rules:

1. Charge everyone the same price for the same thing.

2. Giving the product away in order to leverage the price later on is a distortion of the free markets ability to choose the best product at the best price.

3. Market distortions should not be upheld.

AIK

Piracy = Sales?

[MachDelta]

Actually, its funny you mention Civ 3. I never really was a Civ fan, but I managed to get my hands on a demo of Civ 3 Gold a few weeks ago... and it was shit. You could only play for like three hours total (and as any civ fan knows - thats NOT a lot of time), limited to 30 minute stretches, and confined to the middle ages as far as progress.
So, frustrated and annoyed, I dug around and found a warez copy of the game. I just wanted to check things out, sans-bullshit, you know? I never planned on buying it, never mind keeping it for more than a game or two. But then, a funny thing happened. I got hooked. Its like crack, I couldn't stop playing the game! So, I went out and found a used copy of Civ 3 + a new copy of Civ 3 Conquests. Now i'm happy, and i'm sure the publisher (Atari) and developer (Firaxis) are happy too. Thanks to warez.

Funny how things can turn out, no?

Re:Piracy = Sales?

[rokzy]

"Civ 3... Its like crack"

lol, they should have used that in the ads.

Re:Piracy = Sales?

[jp10558]

You know, a funny thing about games. I seem to have horrible luck with getting games I buy to run. Tech support is nonexistant. The games I warez? They all work flawlessly. I have no idea if the pirated games are the versions with the bugs worked out, or if the crackers somehow fix some of the bugs... Maybe I just don't remember the warez's that didn't work out since I was out $0. But when I am out $50+ for a game that just doesn't work at all, and I can't return it, I just stop buying games. I'd spend my money better on the state lotto.

Re:Piracy = Sales?

[Deluge]

That's easy - half the time it's the copy protection which the crackers so helpfully strip out of the game that breaks things. That's why a lot of people who actually buy games still go to gamecopyworld and download no-cd cracks.

yet another reason why consoles will win

[UnseenEnigma]

as of late their are fewer and fewer pc (windows) games coming out and more moving to the increasingly impressive and inexpensive consoles. Consoles have a great many advantages over pc to both the user and the companies making games for them. Piracy on consoles is possible but considerably more difficult (did u see the modchip install on a ps2 its insane - 40 points all over the board connected to the chip via wires).

And with the fact that realistically i dont think their will be much more native development for linux thats not bad. Ill continue to run linux on my pc and game with my ps2.

Mirror , just in case

[pigscanfly.ca]

Hi their, just in case things go sidewise as it were I have put up a mirror.
The mirror of http://www.wayoftherodent.com/backissues/33cover.h tm is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_139/www.wayoftherod ent.com/backissues/33cover.htm
The mirror of http://www.wayoftherodent.com/guests/bob_yak5.htm is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_139/www.wayoftherod ent.com/guests/bob_yak5.htm
The mirror of http://www.wayoftherodent.com/guests/bob_cubit1.ht m is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_139/www.wayoftherod ent.com/guests/bob_cubit1.htm

My opinion

[haxor.dk]

What nobody mentions, and most dare not say is that piracy is a reponse of the market to unbearbly high prices on software.

Piracy is a competitive factor - if companies price too high compared to the features or quality of a product, people don't pay.

If companies start doing anticompetitive shit or in general, perform actions that piss the customers off, they lose sales to piracy.

If more executives would realise that they are in the end to blame for piracy THEMSELVES, we would have much much less piracy. But no, they insist on releasing full upgrades ever other year - at full price. But the gain in productivity for most users is negligible.

Does anyone here seriously think that say, the jump from Office 97 to Office 2000 or 2000 to XP made them a lot more productive? Did Photoshop 5.5 to 6 make you more productive ? How about Mac OS X 10.2 to 10.3 (yes i dare say, keep in mind that I'm a Mac user myself, so no flames please ;).

Piracy is mostly due to the customer base being pissed off.

Re:My opinion

[hyphz]

I've posted on this topic before, but I thought I'd better say it here.

When it comes to *applications* software, piracy does more to *increase* prices than anything else. This is because it kills the concept of price competition. Why bring out a lower priced version of one of the big name programs, when all that'll happen is that those who can afford the big name will buy it, and those who can't will just pirate it?

Re:My opinion

[rokzy]

the perfect example of retarded developers is the new game Painkiller.

piracy was the only way to play this game if you happen to have any of the blacklisted software (CD-writer e.g. Nero, virtual drive software e.g. Alcohol) on your computer and don't want to uninstall legal programs just for a game.

I believe an official patch fixed or will fix this problem as even the 'tards in management can understand that an unusable product will sell poorly.

Re:My opinion

[Knos]

For application software, you also have a certain credibility attached to price alone. A certain price instantly reassures the high-quality or professional status of certain types of software. (Imagine, the amateurs could afford them!)

Re:My opinion

[Queer Boy]

When it comes to *applications* software, piracy does more to *increase* prices than anything else

That's bullshit because there's no way to account for piracy. It's voodoo speculation and nothing else.

Cell Phones

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Cell Phones

[3rdParty]

only idiots pay for ring tones. there are plenty of places to get them free, and if the idiots would only spend two minutes to find them, the pay sites would evaporate, but instead, they prey on idiots.

Re:Cell Phones

[Zebbers]

common carrier

Re:Cell Phones

[flink]

Yeah that and the $60 dollar kit to connect my phone to my PC. I'm sure there are ways around buying the software kits/cables, but for the ammount of effort involved, I think I'll just stick with the tones that came with the phone ;-)

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[Decameron81]

"If they had no value to you, you wouldn't want to copy them anyway.

Ergo, they do have value to you - which means that you should pay for them."

I think that you have just hit an important point here. IMHO, the reason behind piracy is that most people find that game titles have a value to them, but such a value outweighted by the cost by far.

Diego Rey

Video games are a drug

[maximilln]

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.

Re:Video games are a drug

[hyphz]

Um.. only problem with this theory is that you don't have to pay to carry on playing a video game you already own. In fact, it saves you money - if you bought UT2004, say, and got hooked on it, then you never need buy another game, and you won't be spending money on other entertainment to fill in the time you spend playing.

MMORPGs excepted, of course, but they're almost entirely junk anyway.

Re:Video games are a drug

[maximilln]

You and I both know that's not true. Video games, just like drugs, eventually tail off in their efficacy and the user is led to move on to the next great thing. Red Alert simply isn't popular anymore. Prozac is starting to lose some of its popularity as well.

Well, I hate to break it to you

[bonch]

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.

But that doesn't justify anything. If there's something you would be willing to play for free but not be willing to pay $50 for, guess what? You just don't buy it. You move onto something else.

I mean, if someone's actually going to justify piracy with "Well, I just didn't want to pay that much," you'd have to be pretty silly to think that's a valid argument that's going to fly. It doens't matter if it was priced more than you could afford--that just means you don't buy it and move on. Or wait until it drops in price. It's called capitalism.

You can't violate copyright holder rights just because you didn't like how they priced their product. Hell, I remember those old shareware games you could buy for $10-$15, and people still pirated them. Why? Because if given the chance, people just like to get things for free instead of paying for them. It doesn't really matter how much they're priced if you can just go onto eMule and grab whatever you want for free--people will download it no matter what.

Re:Well, I hate to break it to you

[kauschovar]

But that doesn't justify anything.

I agree. I wasn't trying to justify it. Just the other day I shelled out close to $50 for UT2004. Now that I'm in my twenties I can afford to buy games and I do.

Re:Well, I hate to break it to you

[Lord Kano]

But that doesn't justify anything.

I don't believe he was trying to justify anything. I think he was debunking the notion that he was costing the developers/publishers money by downloading something that he wasn't going to buy anyway.

For example, I'll never buy a Ford, but if I were to win one in a raffle or something I would take it. Is the raffle costing Ford money? No because I wasn't going to buy one of their cars anyway.

If there's something you would be willing to play for free but not be willing to pay $50 for, guess what? You just don't buy it. You move onto something else.

True enough.

LK

Re:Well, I hate to break it to you

[dsanfte]

Why should he have to deprive himself? This is silly. We aren't obligated to masochistically thrash ourselves with the spiked whip of capitalist 'ethics'. If he wasn't going to buy it, he hurts no one.

Typical american conservative. "It doesn't hurt anybody, but it goes against my 'ethics', so don't do it or I'll smack you." That's also why Bush wants his anti-gay ammendment, and why the US prisons are full of people who were caught smoking a naturally-occuring plant.

Re:Well, I hate to break it to you

[cabra771]

For example, I'll never buy a Ford, but if I were to win one in a raffle or something I would take it. Is the raffle costing Ford money? No because I wasn't going to buy one of their cars anyway.

I take it you are trying to make an analogy. You failed miserably.

Re:Well, I hate to break it to you

[spectecjr]

Why should he have to deprive himself? This is silly. We aren't obligated to masochistically thrash ourselves with the spiked whip of capitalist 'ethics'. If he wasn't going to buy it, he hurts no one.
... except the author of that software who is now deprived of the right to set a price for the goods they have created. If anyone can come along and say "Hey, you know what, I'm not going to buy that for $20 - instead, I'll take it for free - and you can't do anything about that", then what is stopping everyone from doing that?

That's right. Ethics. Of which you have none.


Typical american conservative. "It doesn't hurt anybody, ... except the software developer ...

but it goes against my 'ethics', so don't do it or I'll smack you." That's also why Bush wants his anti-gay ammendment, and why the US prisons are full of people who were caught smoking a naturally-occuring plant.


Nice attempt to marr the debate there by bringing in two completely unrelated topics.

Piracy games?

[syrinx]

Piracy games?

http://www.firaxis.com/company_showrelease.cfm?r el easenum=42 ....

what?

Re:Piracy games?

[syrinx]

Slashdot seems to have snuck a space in there:

try that again as a link...

Stealing. Is. Wrong.

[MysticalMatt517]

I refuse to pirate games. I really believe that unlike the music industry, games aren't really that over priced. I never understood until I started programming how long it takes to do even simple things sometimes. When I look at a game I see the millions of lines of code, the hours of artwork, and the sheer amount of time spent to get the sound right. For a really good game, $50 is not a bad price to pay. Unfortunately that price is a bit much for starving college students like myself. Is pirating tempting? You betcha. Is $50 too much for the majority of the games found at your local Wal-Mart? Definately. Consequently I think that instead of complaining about the price, we should all just be really selective about what we buy. I won't drop $50 for anything less than a HALO, Half Life 2, or Metroid Prime quality game. If anything else looks even remotely interesting I grab it from Gamefly. The point is stealing at any level is wrong. I also don't buy into the "Sampling a lot of games is expensive" bit. Not when I can go to Blockbuster or GameFly and rent as many games as I can handle in a month for $20. Every game out there has somebodys blood, sweat, and tears in it. The least I can do is show them a little respect and pay for their work if I play it.

Re:Stealing. Is. Wrong.

[Drantin]

I won't drop $50 for anything less than a HALO, Half Life 2, or Metroid Prime quality game.

So, you've tried Half-Life 2 out then?

Re:Stealing. Is. Wrong.

[Dun Malg]

Not when I can go to Blockbuster or GameFly and rent as many games as I can handle in a month for $20. Every game out there has somebodys blood, sweat, and tears in it. The least I can do is show them a little respect and pay for their work if I play it.

If you're renting the game, you're not paying the programmers doodly squat, so what's the difference between that and pirating? How about buying a used copy? They don't get doodly squat for that either. Is that as bad as piracy?

Re:Stealing. Is. Wrong.

[qoa]

Used copies aren't a universal answer. Go into Electronic's Boutique's used PC game section sometime. Count how many games with online play have cdkeys in plain sight. It's a good bet that the person that sold that game back is still playing it with that cdkey, and probably a few others that have written those down.

However clearance games are where the action is at. I got a new copy of XIII for 6 dollars lastnight.

Sad to say

[vandelais]

that consumers don't have much choice.

Trial licenses don't work very well. And the video game industry puts its propaganda machine to buy and pay for electronic games media which are supposed to inform. The industry thinks they are entitled to have their consumers decide based on the box? Fuck you and hell no!

Publishers make gobs of money off quality titles because MOST people know it is wrong to utilize piracy as a substitute for purchase when a game is played and enjoyed to its fullest. They lose money when a pirated low-quality title gets tried for three or four hours and ends up as a coaster.

I don't feel bad for manufacturers of poor quality titles that I have played that were pirated. For games that my friends and I did play through and enjoy, we have kept our end of the social contract and purchased. It keeps us from getting ripped off and doesn't reward deceptive advertising and packaging.

Get "passed" the mods?

[JessLeah]

How did that sentence ever get "passed" (sic) your brain? ;)

Is always simple economics

[clusterix]

The world's budget for software is less than the total amount of value publishers want to put on it (as a whole). This is mostly because the world's demand for software far outstrips what it can budget. And publisher's only have a gauge on demand.

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).

Re:Is always simple economics

[Gannoc]

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.

That is so absolutely, completely wrong. Thats not economics at all.

You figure out how many people will buy something at each price, and then you price it to make as much money as possible.

Do you think one day if piracy was magically "fixed" that EA would announce $15 off all of their games?

Piracy is caused by lazy developers

[Simonetta]

The entire issue of piracy is not an issue of whether or not the developers are getting paid for their efforts, or whether the people who copy and distribute are stealing.

Beneath the entire issue of copying and cost is the point that there has not been the order of magnitude increases of productivity in the software development field that there has been in the hardware field. This is because software developers refuse to press for new types of software writing tools that will make it possible to develop a commercial game in 1/10 of the time that it takes today.

Software is basically a 'cost-plus' industry. Developers take as long as they like to make their product and then add up the number of hours and expected sale units and price each unit accordingly. There is no incentive to conceive and code whole new classes of development tools that will give order-of-magnitude in productivity.

This is the real reason that software costs so much and why the developers get so upset about copying. But, hell, most of them are still using C or C++: the most backward, cryptic, and unproductive languages imagineable.

Software development has really changed since the early 1970's. Although, it's not completely the software community's fault. Every time they begin to feel that the tools that they are working with are inadaquate, the hardware people come up with a order-of-magnitude performance increase that sends back to assembly language (like the microprocessor did to the VAX in the mid-1970's, and the flash Harvard-bus microcontroller did to the microprocessor in the mid-1980's, and the net did to the PC in the 1990's, and the next-big-thing will do in a few years).

Piracy is GOOD because when developers can't make enough under the old approach, they will actually be forced to develop the tools that will allow to get the order-of-magnitude gain in productivity that has been eluding them since the development of the first compiliers (40 years ago).

If Intel was a software development company they would be pissed that they can't charge $100 for an 8088 anymore, and would be taking legal action to remedy the situation in the interest of fairness.

Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers

[Simonetta]

Software development has really changed since the early 1970's.

Software development has NOT NOT NOT really changed since the early 1970's.

Learn to use the preview button, girl!

Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers

[maximilln]

Software is like a joke. There are people who produce it and people who benefit from it.

The people that produce good jokes don't get much for the joke. However, properly used at a dinner party, that good joke can get you laid or even get a promotion at work.

Good software writers don't get much for their software. Properly marketed efforts, however, can get a person laid or even get them a promotion.

Piracy doesn't cost any jobs any more than spreading jokes around has defeated humor. The only thing that costs jobs are the greedy SONS OF B**CHES SITTING ON THE EXECUTIVE BOARD HORDING ALL THE CASH.

Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers

[drinkypoo]

Yes it has!

No it hasn't!

Anyway I am not a developer but even I can see that things have changed. The languages have changed, the programs have changed, and the way programs are planned has changed. It might not all be for the better, but the fact is that as programs have grown more complex, things WILL have had to change.

Nonetheless, if you have an argument, make it - don't just be a negative nancy.

Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers

[Simonetta]

This is a book-length argument, and I only have 30 minutes on the librarie's internet computer with a weird keyboard.

The core of the argument is this: software developers need to develop new tools to vastly increase their productivity. This is the cure to the problem of piracy. If they could take ten hours to develop the same software that takes 300 hours now to do, then they could reduce the cost of their unit product significantly and this would greatly increase sales and make copying an irrelavent issue.

Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers

[drinkypoo]

Even if you cut down the coding time through heavy use of reusable components, which is called "licensing a game engine", it's going to be more than ten hours. And the artwork is still going to take about the same amount of time as it always has.

Lots of people, people smarter than me, and probably smarter than you, are working on making software development more efficient. New development tools and new languages are invented all the time by people trying to make programming faster and/or easier.

Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers

[Haeleth]

But, hell, most of them are still using C or C++: the most backward, cryptic, and unproductive languages imagineable.

You obviously don't have much of an imagination.

Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers

[Guilly]

This is the real reason that software costs so much and why the developers get so upset about copying. But, hell, most of them are still using C or C++: the most backward, cryptic, and unproductive languages imagineable.

And what currently available language do you suggest developers use to create kick ass new console and PC games and why?

What is wrong with well-written C++ code as far as game programming is concerned? OO sure is the way to go anyway, if you want productivity, assuming you can write good and reusable code.

Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers

[shaitand]

A couple problems with this:

Piracy generally isn't that big a problem (although it can hurt small commercial projects if someone is really low and won't pay the $5 or $10), for the most part it's actually advertising. It doesn't cost the software house a dime. It's not like stealing a box off the shelf, in that there is something gone which cost money to produce.

In the case of software if you borrow my cd and copy it, guess what, my cd isn't gone, I haven't lost anything. Most of those who pirate a piece of software would never have bought the program or WILL buy the program after trying out a fully functional non-time limited demo. It's no different than music, where cd sales have dropped by the bottom line is actually ahead since filesharing has begun.

Now for the second side of the coin, your tools for rapid development. People are always looking for ways to develope software faster... lots of people at given second of every given day and improvements are being made.

But the truth is the kind of tools you speak of already exist, most are built right into programming languages their called loops, functions, objects and variables. Without those development would take 100 fold as long. There are plenty of other tools as well which speed up coding time, and those have reduced things 10 fold from the reduction you get with these constructs in the language.

While new tools are being made that work, and work well there is no magic tool which makes it that much faster. The reason is simple, speeding it up drastically further than what we have now requires simplifying programming, and simplifying programming means giving up flexibility, which in turn means not being able write any non-trivial program.

It also means a lack of efficiency. If I hand write code I can choose to do it in the most efficient manner possible, in alot of cases this is critical because otherwise the program will be dog slow. If I use cookie cutter functions to make things easier I end up with lots of generic redundant code which is aimed to be as generic and reusable as possible so it's the need of everyone who might use that cookie cutter. It's not tailored for MY use.

A good example of this is VB, VB is about as dumbed down as you can get (in the typically unintuitive microsoft fashion) and with VB you can get a graphical application up in a matter of minutes. However even the most trivial vb application would be faster if it was written in C or C++, it would use less space on the hard drive, use less memory and use less processor. And by most trivial I mean something that simply pops up a diaglog which says "Hello, world!" with an ok button.

Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers

[cdrguru]

Excuse me? Lazy? I think you should be focusing on the primary content of games today if you want to talk about where the bottleneck is. As a former game developer, trust me, it isn't the software.

It's the artwork.

Nobody pays for text-mode games anymore or games with crude developer-created graphics. Oh no, they want 3D realism with extensive models. The last game I worked on (a baseball game) they had models come in for motion capture so they could then move the 3D models realistically based on how a real pitcher, batter, etc. moved. Was this expensive? You bet. Was this time-consuming? Yup. How long did it take to merge the motion capture data with the 3D models to create the animation? Nearly a year.

There were over 30 people involved in that production, from designers to artists and programmers. No "new development tool" is going to change that in any meaningful way.

Oh, and for other types of software development, yes, there are tools for doing things in different ways than they were done in 1970. Having been a software developer in 1974 I can tell you things have indeed changed - mostly for corporate software development. Where extensive runtime systems can be required and where interpreted code can be used extensively.

If you want to distribute something to relatively clueless Windows users, it needs to install cleanly, not conflict with other applications they have installed and not be easily stolen, rebranded and sold under a different name. That leaves out many recent development environments.

Console games are a special breed - you end up writing lots in Assembler because the requirements for the game push the limits of the hardware. If you let some unneeded overhead creep in, you lose - someone else's game is faster, more responsive and has better graphics because they are using Assembler coding.

Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers

[thirty2bit]

Developers take as long as they like to make their product and then add up the number of hours and expected sale units and price each unit accordingly. There is no incentive to conceive and code whole new classes of development tools that will give order-of-magnitude in productivity.

No. Developers are rushed to get code out the door so publishers a.k.a. middle men a.k.a. the 'software mafia' can start making profit. Think RIAA, you'll get it. Oh, or the release of a new crappy hollywood film necessitates a rushed 'officially licensed' game for more profit. [mel brooks] Moichandizing, moichandizing, moichandizing! [/mel brooks]

And the problem isn't always incentive to innovate but lack of time. Who has time to write an engine when the (Doom, Quake, whatever) engine can be licensed, hacked up, and something spit out quickly.

Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers

[f97tosc]

I really disagree with the argument "it is too expensive/ their coding techniques suck, so I have the right to take it".

If you find that everyone else are selling expensive and poor products, then you are in an excellent position to start making better/ cheaper alternatives, no? And if you find this impossible, then maybe everyone else is not so bad after all.

Tor

Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers

[danila]

There were over 30 people involved in that production, from designers to artists and programmers. No "new development tool" is going to change that in any meaningful way.
How about endorphin development tool? Combine it with genetic algorithms, teach your bots the rules of baseball and leave them running for a week. Come back and import all that into the game.

The truth is that a lot of content in the games is still created completely from the scratch. GTA levels were created in 3D Max as one huge model. Most character models are too created in 3D Max as one huge model. The best you can hope for is that a game would dynamically add some objects (grenades, other equipment) to the model. Of course, with the emphasis on high-quality bumpmapped models the source art must have 1+ million polys and that takes time. But the alternative (a smart, a rational, a forward-thinking one) is to use an automated face generating tool (drag a bunch of sliders and you have a 99% realistic face in 3-30 minutes), add a customizable generic body, touch it up with some other existing tools, add cloth from another tool and you have a Hollywood quality model. Now import some movements/AI from endorphin and you are ready.

Some of these tools exist, but they are sometimes too crude and not used widely enough. Because of that R&D costs go up and profits go down. BTW, piracy is a constant factor and doesn't actually cause the decline in profits.

Re:Piracy is caused by lazy developers

[murdocj]

Most of those who pirate a piece of software would never have bought the program or WILL buy the program after trying out a fully functional non-time limited demo.

It's a pretty safe bet that having pirated the game, someone isn't going to buy it. It's one thing to play a demo, decide you like it, and buy the rest of the game. It's another to pirate a full copy and then get overwhelmed by honesty and pay for what you already have.

It's no different than music, where cd sales have dropped by the bottom line is actually ahead since filesharing has begun.

As one of the original articles pointed out, software IS different from music. Titles take years to produce, and pretty much stand on their own. Pirating one title does NOT contribute to the sale of another.

If I hand write code I can choose to do it in the most efficient manner possible, in alot of cases this is critical because otherwise the program will be dog slow.

And in most cases it simply won't matter. 90% of the time is spent in 10% of the code. The smart thing to do is not to lovingly hand craft every line, but to do a decent design, find the hot spots and tune them.

However even the most trivial vb application would be faster if it was written in C or C++, it would use less space on the hard drive, use less memory and use less processor

Nope. Typical compiled VB app is MUCH smaller than any linked C++ app. As far as speed, it sounds like you are thinking of old, slow interpreted basics... you are a few years (or decades) out of date.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[Deraj DeZine]

I'd call such a person a nonpotential consumer. They're not going to pay for the game, so whether they have the game or not is irrelevant from an economic standpoint. Just because it has value to them doesn't mean that they'd ever pay money for that value.

"Try Before You Buy?"

[bonch]

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...

Re:"Try Before You Buy?"

[Rylfaeth]

It's harder to pirate the fuck out of console CDs
I beg to differ.
-Rylfaeth

Re:"Try Before You Buy?"

[ArekRashan]

And you are correct, so long as you are talking about Xbox or PS2 console DVDs.

But those GameCube discs? Fucking righteous protection on those bad boys. Nothing's impossible to duplicate, but the GCN discs are so ornery that it's just not worth it.

Again, the smart money is on Nintendo. I think they probably see more profit from their first party software than the entire PC gaming industry. And that's _before_ you consider Pokemon, which is still far and away the most popular game IN THE WORLD, despite its many crappy aspects.

Re:"Try Before You Buy?"

[Queer Boy]

You can never justify illegally distributing someone's copyrighted materials, because it will always be illegal and immoral

Oh for pete's sake, now copyrights are a moral obligation? Give me a break. So places where copyrights are not recognised legally, are they immoral if people copy something? How do you argue that?

We champion the forefathers who broke the law and destroyed property, real, physical property that cannot be replicated ad nauseum, in the Boston Tea Party but pirates are immoral. Rrriiiiiight.

Only in America.

Re:"Try Before You Buy?"

[bonch]

Oh for pete's sake, now copyrights are a moral obligation? Give me a break.

No...paying someone for the fruits of their labors is a moral obligation.

Or do you believe everyone should be giving away the fruits of their labor for free because you demanded such?

Re:"Try Before You Buy?"

[Queer Boy]

No...paying someone for the fruits of their labors is a moral obligation.

You, sir, could be a politician. Morals and money go hand in hand, eh?

The problem is choosing to try and make money in a medium that has the inherent flaw that people can replicate the goods without external involvement. As stated before there is no value in the physical property of software, i.e. floppy, CD, and as stated in other threads this is usually a liability.

So I am paying for a license to use the product and not the physical medium? Then I should be able to get a replacement for software that has been corrupted because of the medium. Oh, wait, there's a clause that says I can't get that because I am responsible for the physical medium, but yet I cannot make a backup of the software.

Now who's the pirate?

I think maybe...

[a whoabot]

Those against piracy seem to clench onto the idea that if games are pirated, then there availability is decreased because there's less incentive for companies to produce games. And, at a certain level of piracy there would be no games made. Consumers as pirates are aware of this, but they're also aware of more.

They're aware that with the production of the games comes also the production of the desire for the games. The hype surrounding them. They know if all of sudden there were no games, their lives would not be directly affected negatively in any important way. "Oh, no new games? I guess I'll just go outside and play shoot some hoops." There is no natural desire to create grand, expensive, consumeristic forms of entertainment. There is merely a natural desire for entertainment itself. Without the production of games people are without desire for the games, and so will merely do something else for entertainment, and be no less happy. Piracy is a strategy of the masses. An unsaid(unrecognized?) strategy to save the product of their work created with the knowledge that all is relativistic.

Re:I think maybe...

[hyphz]

Well, yes, the business of piracy destroying industries is somewhat over the top.

I mean, can you imagine what would happen to the job market if a media industry just closed down?

Morality? Ethics? What's that?

[presarioD]

Piracy is the healthy reaction to overpricing. It is the "wonder" of capitalism in action. I am sorry but if I know that a product costs $2 overall to make and an "arbitrary" price of $15 is set on it, it doesn't matter that I CAN affort to buy it, I still know that I am being ripped off! Reaction: I'll find a pirate version and enjoy myself for free or I will not buy the product unless I have to for some reason. Morality is a relative principle. If it is moral for some corporations to overcharge because they can do so, it is moral for me to do anything within my powers to acquire their product as cheep as possible. Does this screw them over? Of course! Does this hurt capitalism and the "foundations" of our society? Of course not. It just prevents some CEOs buying the next condo in Florida as quickly as they thought. Life is tough I know...

Re:Morality? Ethics? What's that?

[murdocj]

Piracy is the reaction of someone who never graduated to adulthood when they are frustrated. "I want that shiny bauble... I have to have it... I'm going to grab it".

According to the pirates

[bonch]

According to the pirates, it's a "culture movement." They'll go to great lengths to justify it. They'll tell you games are overpriced (doesn't matter, you still don't have the right), or if they made better games piracy would go down (if games are crappy, why are you pirating them?), and so forth.

Hell, I'm surprised it hasn't been turned into an "anti-SPA" issue like the MP3 issue...painting the RIAA as the scapegoat was the most devious and clever distraction of the issue I've ever seen. Somehow an organization is bad for protecting its own copyrights!

If piracy is good for the industry, then it should be encouraged, right? Unfortunately, once piracy reaches a certain point, it destroys the industry.

When Internet2 becomes the norm, just you wait and see--shit is going to hit the fan. Why even bother getting your ass out of the chair to drive to the store when you can fire up eMule and grab the CDs in less than an hour? Price won't even matter, they could price it $15 and people would still rather pirate it, because it's there, and it's free.

Morality and the issue of ethics doesn't even come into the picture unless you're the poor sob who actually worked on the thing for a year of your life, only to watch it get sucked away by self-righteous pirates. :P And if you bring it up? The pirates will label you "greedy!" Greed is a mass of people demanding free entertainment, not a company expecting to get paid for the fruits of its labor.

Re:According to the pirates

[LaBlueCow]

I'm absolutely certain this post will get ripped to shreds, but let's have at anyhow...

First off, yes, piracy is wrong - in the legal sense, it is absolutely wrong.
Morality is a different issue, however. Morality is relative to the person. Ask someone in the 1800s if pre-marital coitus was immoral, and you'd get a resounding yes. Ask folks now, and that resounding yes has stifled to a trickling maybe. Same act, same ramifications, different response.
Now, take into account that different people justify piracy to themselves for different purposes. To some, piracy is free entertainment. To others, it is a way to make money. To still others, it's a way to try the real deal before sinking THEIR hard earned money into what may be an over-hyped POS. I would personally argue that the first 2 groups are absolutely in the moral wrong. However, for me at least, the third group is a gray area. We have the right of the developer not to be ripped off for their hard work, versus the right of the consumer not to be ripped off for the hard work they did to earn the money. Morally, it's an impasse. The only decisive input is the law.

Bottom line, not all developers are starving artists, and not all pirates are immoral greed-fiends.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[Sarth]

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 call bullshit. We've HEARD that argument before, and nobody believes it.. let me refresh your memory.

"CDs cost too much, for just a few songs that are good. If I could pay just a little bit, for just the songs I wanted, and have them sent eletronically, I wouldn't pirate music anymore, honest!"

Nothing new here, folks. Justification is the first skill the unjust learn.

The solution

[nazsco]

Game companies should invest in broadband titles and then just remove the copy protection.

Re:The solution

[88NoSoup4U88]

Steam (www.steampowered.com) seems to be a sign of that.

If games were cheaper...

[shirai]

If games were priced at around $20 MSRP, I'd buy them just to put into my library. In a sense, they'd be like collectibles that I might play occasionally, especially when friends are over.

I find DVDs are actually pretty reasonably priced (CDs not!), especially some of the ones that have been on the market for a while and have come down to $10. I have a huge library of DVDs and friends will sometimes borrow them. I like this.

Games have no such collectible value. Unless I absolutely LOVE the game, I'm not going to add it to my collection for $60 for the sake of having it. But at $20, I would buy many of them.

At the risk of being called flamebait, I don't mind great games costing more. I'd be willing to pay more for a game like Gran Turismo 4 when it comes out because of its play value. But for those cool but not great racing games (I'm a driving game fan), I'd pack in a bunch of them at $20 a piece that I would never consider buying at $60.

"rights"

[verbatim]

If I spent time, energy and money creating something, why don't I have the right to say "if you want to enjoy the fruits of my labor you must pay me $50."

Is that so wrong? Is that terribly evil?

It's just a collection of monkeys who want something for nothing and will go to whatever ends to justify it.

Yeah yeah. There is a blurry line of what to call it. Theft, while not entirely descriptive of the crime, is pretty darn close. If the owner of something hasn't granted you the right to that something, then you have no business using it. You are benifiting from someone elses work without compensating them for it.

If this had been a story about how a company was redistributing a GPL'd program in binary form only, there would be countless posts from zealots crying bloody murder on the part of that evil entity. But an opinion about how taking software without permission is wrong yields retards who think they have some inherint right to whatever they lay their grubby hands on.

Re:"rights"

[Deraj DeZine]

So what? These monkeys are going to start paying endless amounts of money for games just because people whine about it? If you're trying to point out that this article is not news, I agree wholeheartedly, but the monkeys are not customers. Period.

As for the GPL argument, it looks like the articles linked in the summary are "crying bloody murder" against pirates. So developers of games hate pirates and developers of GPL software hate GPL violators. You're looking at two different types of people; just because more people on Slashdot fall into the second group doesn't mean that they're any more or less retarded.

Re:"rights"

[verbatim]

My GPL comment was directed towards posters, not the article.

My point was, or should have been, that the choice belongs with the developer. If they choose the GPL or a better OSS license, then users should abide by that licesne. If the developer chooses a commercial-style license, then customers should abide by that.

Of course, someone who takes software isn't a "customer" and doesn't have any "rights" with respect to the software in question.

Re:"rights"

[fermion]

The basic fallacy is that profit is right. It is not. The value of a product in the free market is what the people will pay. We have laws to create monopolies so that products that people might not naturally value, like sports and books, can make a profit, but even these have to live within the basic rule: profit is not a right.

This is why so much time is spent building value. To take a regular /. example. Many do not value the Apple computer and will instead buy cheap knock offs, but many will pay the premium to own the original. Apple has taken the time to make their machine have a value beyond the parts that it takes to build one. MS has done the same thing. One thing I notice with the music labels is that they spend no time creating a value for the CD. This is quite different from the movie studios who do spend time adding value to the DVD.

I think the same is true for games. A developer cannot just create a game and expect profit to magically appear. The game must not only compete against other games, but also against the nearly free versions of itself. To say that we can't compete against free is just naive. Kids are spending good money for Rice krispy snacks, a delicacy that I can make for 1/10th the cost. Shoppers regularly spend twice as much for makeup or 10 times as much for accessories to get the name. A good brand is worth it's weight in gold. Cartridges can compete against free, they just need to get over the mentality that the player somehow have a responsibility to buy the game. They don't. The supplier has the responsibility to create value.

And the licensing is kind of a separate issue. We have copyrights to provide the author an opportunity to make money. Licensing in an additional creation to maximize the opportunity by limiting the rights of the consumer. Probably the person who uploaded the game violated the license. For the person who download, the violation would likely only be copyright. Unless the click through license is gospel, I see no reason for an end user to be liable merely for use. OTOH, the GPL, as we all know, exists to give users additional rights.

Re:"rights"

[LaBlueCow]

I posted this earlier in the flow, but re-iterate a part of it now

While I agree that yes, the developer has the right to be paid for their hard work, I also believe that the consumer has the right not to be ripped off, convinced by shiny packaging to shell out THEIR hard earned money to purchase a product. In a very oversimplified form, this would be... fraud? If I manufacture a 12" B&W TV, and sell it to you in a 24" HDTV box (keep in mind, I never TELL you it's either), wouldn't you cry fraud?

Re:"rights"

[verbatim]

"And the licensing is kind of a separate issue."

Why? What gives you the right to use that game/program/app/whatever without a license from the person/entity that created it?

It's all about the license.

"The basic fallacy is that profit is right. It is not. The value of a product in the free market is what the people will pay. We have laws to create monopolies so that products that people might not naturally value, like sports and books, can make a profit, but even these have to live within the basic rule: profit is not a right."

Wow. That is so backwards.

Yeah, profit is dictated by what the market will bear. You can't sell a gallon of water for $900 (yet) because no one will pay that much. However, no one can just take your jug off the shelf and pay $9.99 because that's not what you're asking for it.

In a "free market", both the buyer and seller have to come to an agreement on what the buyer will give the seller and what the seller will give the buyer. If there isn't an agreement then there is still that button called: NO SALE.

If you won't pay what the seller wants, that's fine. It's a free market. Go find someone else who is willing to sell you something of comproable value for less money.

"We have copyrights to provide the author an opportunity to make money. Licensing in an additional creation to maximize the opportunity by limiting the rights of the consumer."

A copyright says who owns the right to copy a work. A license outlines the terms that a copyright owner is "sharing" his or her rights to that work. You cannot sell/give a license something if you don't have the copyright or a license that gives you that right. You don't have the right to use software if you don't have a license for it. You don't have that right because the owner of the right hasn't given it to you.

"Probably the person who uploaded the game violated the license. For the person who download, the violation would likely only be copyright."

I will agree that there are differences between the person who downloads for their own use and the person who "trades" and "distributes" and even "sells". But, just because you aren't uploading, doesn't mean you've magically aquired the right to use that software.

"Unless the click through license is gospel, I see no reason for an end user to be liable merely for use."

Do you even understand the contention with "click-through" licenses?

The problem with them is that they are the only thing that grants you the right to use the software. Often, if you don't agree, you have no way to get your money back. There are times when you don't want the software - say if you had a pre-install of Windows and you wanted to install Linux - you want your money back. The contention with "click-throughs" is not a matter of the right to use even though you didn't get to see the license before, but that you have no way of returning the product if you don't accept the license.

In short: if you don't have a license with the software - game, app, whatever - you have no business using it. If you *think* you have a license - say you bought it from someone who sells warez - then that's a gray area where, if/when you find out you don't have a real license, you should stop using it. If you *know* you are using software without a license, then you are every bit as responsible as the person you downloaded it from.

"OTOH, the GPL, as we all know, exists to give users additional rights."

Nope. The GPL exists to take away rights just like any other license. The idea of the GPL is that if everyone has the "source" to a program then everyone will benifit. Thus, the GPL is a license that requires conformance to it's rules - just like any commercial license.

The only difference is that the GPL is more copy-friendly than commercial software (including games). But the GPL is certainly not a "free as in liberty" license. Not at all.

Re:"rights"

[verbatim]

Of course there is fraud.

And I would agree totally that the customer should have a right to try the product before purchasing. Like when you go to a bookstore, you can flip through the book a bit before reading it to see if you like the kind of writing.

The problem with "art" is the same problem with "games" in that the same product has a different effect on different people. Some love it, some loathe it.

Blatent mis-representation should be delt with and I would be a big proponent of game companies (and software companies) actually standing behind their products... Most of them do.

This isn't about crying "fraud", it's about people respecting the rights of authors. And it should be two-way - authors/companies respecting their clients.

This isn't about consumer activisim. It's about theft.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[maximilln]

Let me refresh your memory...

-----
CDs cost too much, for just a few songs that are good. If I could pay just a little bit, for just the songs I wanted, and have them sent eletronically, I wouldn't pirate music anymore, honest!
-----

My prescription costs too much. I only need a few weeks' worth of pills. Why do I have to pay for the development of all of these classy pharmaceuticals when I just need an antibiotic. If they could just make cheap penicillin then I wouldn't need to use Medicare to afford this prescription, honest!

Okay... it's a little over the top but if you have a brain and aren't a robot programmed to argue by default, you'll catch my drift.

The pharmaceutical industry is getting slapped for charging too much for its products. What makes you think that the software and music industries are so much more benign? You can say that no one _needs_ software or music, but in all reality, you don't need your anti-cancer drug either. Just accept your crappy life for what it is. If you can't afford the drug then deal with it.

So again, why is it that the music and software industry is so benevolently protecting its developers but we need Medicare/Medicaid/insurance to cover the costs of your drugs?

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[Knos]

Why is it bullshit? Isn't iTunes some sort of success of the buy-only-the-tracks-you-like idea?

Then Wait and go used, budget -- or rent

[Xhad]

Paying $50 for ICO is an absurd rip-off. That's why I just forgot about it until I saw it used for less than $15, bought it, played it off and on until I beat it, then brought it back to the store. I paid $10 for my copy of Starcraft, and that was before WCIII was out, and this was right out of a retailer. Bitching about CD prices is one thing because CDs NEVER go down in cost unless they are absolute crap. Games are another story.

I'll admit it

[WhiteWolf666]

I've pirated games in the past.

Still do, sometimes.

Now that I have an income, however, it is much easier to track down games at the store than it is to find them online.

Still, I ALWAYS had rules on my pirating.

If I pirated a game, and liked it, I purchased it.
'Nuff said.

I downloaded Master of Orion 3. It sucked. I deleted in two days.

Total Annihilation was pirated too. I liked it so much that I purchased 3 copies (got boxed sets for my friends), the expansion packs (core contingency), and even purchased TA: Kingdoms solely on the strength of TA. (Kingdoms sucked, but thats besides the point).

I feel like I should get more of an opportunity to try out games before I buy them.

Sure, pirating is wrong. If the stores allowed me to play those games for 15-30 minutes before I selected them, however, I would never pirate games.

Lately, however, I've been too lazy. I purchased Universal Combat on a whim, as well as Command and Conquer generals.

I still have ABSOLUTELY no 'ethical' objection to piracy.

But if you are a game developer, rest assured, that if I like your game, I will buy it, possibly buy copies for my friends (Savage: Battle for Newerth had me buy 5 CD keys *evil grin*), and generally evangelize your product.

Re:I'll admit it

[Dun Malg]

I downloaded Master of Orion 3. It sucked. I deleted in two days.

I actually did worse than you did. I bought it and returned it, thus probably costing them actual money. I should have pirated it. Man did that game SUCK!

Blatant Thievery

[Xhad]

Even if you don't believe in copyright, if you are playing a multiplayer game on someone else's network using pirated software, you are accessing their network without consent.

No matter how many arguments anyone may have against intellectual property, bandwidth theft is "real" theft.

Re:Blatant Thievery

[Xhad]

OK, even if you want to play the mince words game, at the very least you have to admit that when you use someone's server, system resources, and bandwidth (none of which are free), you are actively costing the company money. At least with IP "theft" you can say "well I wouldn't have bought it anyway so it's no difference to them either way".

But that's supposing; I still don't agree with you. Transferring something of financial value in a zero-sum fashion from someone else to yourself without said someone's permission IS theft.

Re:Blatant Thievery

[ssstraub]

I go to walmart.com and I don't pay them anything. It's on the public internet. Same with game servers.

That may be bit different, but the difference isn't very big.

Re:Blatant Thievery

[Xhad]

Battle.net is only "public" in the sense that a nightclub with a cover charge is "public". Walmart.com is more like walking into a walmart but leaving without buying anything.

And no, I wouldn't call sneaking into the nightclub theft...it's in a similar category to piracy in that you aren't actually taking anything away from the club but you are getting a service without compensation or consent. With game servers, on the other hand, you are costing the host money just by being there.

Can we just clarify..

[dave1212]

Piracy is selling the games/movies/music that you download. Selling. Not just downloading.

So sick of seeing 'piracy' everywhere, as if it actually applies to what is being discussed.

Re:Can we just clarify..

[shark72]

"Piracy is selling the games/movies/music that you download. Selling. Not just downloading. So sick of seeing 'piracy' everywhere, as if it actually applies to what is being discussed."

Hope this helps.

Re:Can we just clarify..

[dave1212]

that helps noone.

Best way to combat piracy

[Orion Blastar]

Is charge for the online account access, and only charge for the media and manual that the game is packaged on. Then collect the revenue from those who pirated the game, but are forced to create an online account to use the game. Everquest, Merdian 59, and other 3D Muds could be like that. Chances are the pirate is going to play for a few years at $20USD - $30USD a month. Since the pirate does not want to pay for your software, but is forced to create an online account to use it, you actually earn money off the pirated copy. Just not the initial $35 USD to $60 USD for the initial purchase. So you earn $480USD off the pirate if they use your game for two years. You earn $0USD if you put copy protection on the disk and the pirate cannot use it. Multiply that amount by a few thousand or whatever, let's say 10,000 for this example, though piracy can copy more than that, but 4.8M revenue extra in two years if you allow pirates to use your game for free yet pay for online access to it, or a loss of $4.8M in potential revenue if you don't.

So use piracy to your advantage and earn that extra revenue.

Re:Best way to combat piracy

[AC-x]

MMORPG "Eve Online" is a free download, with a charge to set up an account and the usual monthly carge, which seems pretty sensible to me. If a game needs to be played over the internet then what point is there buying a CD? It may as well just be free with a setup charge to create an account. I think Eve Online is also avaiable on CD (with a key for a free account) for people who can't be bothered to download it.

Super large video games

[phoxix]

I think the guys at Epic have zero issues making their UT2004 game 5 CDs. For every CD their game is, it only becomes that much harder/annoying to massdownload it from usenet (proken pieces), bittorrent (will take forever), p2p networks (no promise of getting it all) and where ever else.

just my two cents

Sunny Dubey

PS: Bless the Epic guys for UT2004. It has the software renderer back, comes with a single DVD version, and supports linux

Re:Super large video games

[Jacer]

What are you talking about? Anyone who is seriously in the warez community has no problem with it. I'm on a 10mbit connection, so I'm a dump site. I've had about a dozen dial up users get the UT2004 DVD. That's a 4 gig iso, they just kept chugging along until it was finished. They could get it from multiple sources easily as all the rar's from a release group have the same md5. So they'll get 10% from me, and if they start getting shitty speeds, they'll jump somewhere else. You'd be suprised how many DVD movies go through my site. So, anyway, no, size has nothing to do with it.

Re:Super large video games

[phoxix]

Anyone who is seriously in the warez community has no problem with it.
[ .. ]
I've had about a dozen dial up users get the UT2004 DVD.

Thats the problem with warez kiddiots. They'd rather waste their lives downloading software, as opposed to doing something productive. Shit, I'd rather spend the 24392394234 hours needed to download UT2004 on dialup, doing something productive like learning perl. Why ? Because 29483984234 hours of my life isn't worth saving 50 bucks. Only if the warez community would get a clue ...

I'm on a 10mbit connection, so I'm a dump site.

You have a trackable slashdot account, and you publically admit to this ? Sure there are bigger warez fish to fry, but the less anyone knows about you, the better.

Sunny Dubey

Re:Super large video games

[denisonbigred]

While your line of thinking is definately reasonable, in fact I have found that whatever obstacle size might present, it simply isn't enough. Kids at my school (not denison anymore, despite the handle) are most certainlly actively pirating the game. Spcifically, one kid downloaded it off of the i2hub (yes the same one mentioned in yesterday's story) and then redistributed it on a DC++ hub run exclusively for students at Cornell.

Furthermore, while I always buy anything I really enjoy after pirating it, there is a large group of people who do no such thing. What people who have no ethical concerns about piracy don't understand is that MOST pirates have absolutely no intention of paying for anything they can pirate from the internet, be it music, movies or software, regardless of if they can afford it or not. Pirates would rather watch a shitty, free copy of a movie made with a digicam then shell out the 7-10 dollars to see it in the theatre, even if its a great movie with stunning visuals.

Re:Super large video games

[bmantz65]

I'm on a 10mbit connection, so I'm a dump site. Wow, your internet penis just got bigger.

Re:Super large video games

[Jacer]

They don't have to monitor their downloads, presumably they just have to reconnect to the interweb every eight hours. Or however long it is before their ISP disconnects them.

Re:Super large video games

[qoa]

I skipped downloading and buying this game for two reasons. Download: it's 5 cds. Purchase: it's it's 5 f'n gigs installed. Games trying to take up more and more space on my hdd(s) are making me not want any of them.

Re:Super large video games

[The Spie]

Sorry, wrong. Took me less than a day to download a copy of UT2K4 from BT (and less than a day for the equally-as-large Far Cry as well). All depends how many people are seeding and leeching, and with a game as highly wanted as UT2K4, there were a LOT of people doing it. BT's become a primary end-user distribution channel for games due to its speed.

Your two cents are therefore worth nothing.

Try used games

[Orion Blastar]

Companies like Game Stop allow people to buy/sell/trade used games. If $60 to $50 is too much, look for a slightly used version in one of their stores or on their web site. Many people buy the game new, and then cannot play it, or find it wasn't what it was advertised as, etc and then sell it. Also check Half.com for used copies of games and other things.

From Warez BBSes to the Internet, software addicts

[telemonster]

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?

Piracy is Dute to Cost and Cost alone

[CMoZ]

I feel that this is true for most people. If I had the money to purchase a game I would and have done on many occasions (BF Vietnam being the most recent) but for a growing segment of the population it's not viable to spen $50-60 on a piece of software that may be total crap. By my logic I would never have played the games I've pirated anyways thus the developer is losing NO money by me pirating because I still make an effort to buy anything that I actually enjoy and don't discard by the wayside. I am 99.9% positive that if people could afford games they would buy them, I know I would. But the cost is unreasonable don't forget add the cost of hardware to play the new games onto the cost of the software (games are requiring hardware farther and further towards the bleeding edge of technology $500-$600 Video cards, etc. and it puts buying the hardware and games out of the reach of most of thier audience. As I stated before if someone who would never have bought the game to begin with pirates it how is the developer "LOSING" money as opposed to the person never buying or pirating it.

Re:Piracy is Dute to Cost and Cost alone

[elflord]

but for a growing segment of the population it's not viable to spen $50-60 on a piece of software that may be total crap.

Games decline in price very quickly. So this is not a justification at all. The reason that piracy occurs is that these guys want it both ways -- they want the very latest but don't want to pay for it.

games are requiring hardware farther and further towards the bleeding edge of technology $500-$600 Video cards, etc.

I'm not familiar with any such games, but then I don't insist on owning all the latest games. If you need the latest technology, then pay for it and quit whining.

Re:Piracy is Dute to Cost and Cost alone

[CMoZ]

1. I'm not whining
2. How much does a Geforce FX5900 or ATI 9800 XT cost? What will Doom 3 Require or Half-Life 2?
3. As I stated before I can say this with 100% confidence/accuracy Every game I've played for more than 1 day I've paid for (ie: Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament 2003, Hitman 1 & 2, Battlefield 1942 & Vietnam, Morrowind, Diablo 1&2 etc) All of which I pirated and liked thus decided thay were worth buying! If I had wasted my hard earned money on any of the games I've Pirated and not purchased then I would have felt ripped off and those developers would not get a second chance at my wallet. What ends up happening is that pirates download games and if they suck the developer gets no revenue (why should you make money of marketing when your product sucks ass) and if the game is good all the good pirates buy it to support the developer and get more high quality games, and the bad pirates go and buy it to get the features that you just can't crack like online play added content etc. Get your head out of your ass and stop defending those who push shoddy products.

Re:Piracy is Due to Cost and Cost alone

[CMoZ]

BTW the subject should be DUE not DUTE. Typing too fast :P

Re:Drugs can be essential. Games, merely beneficia

[maximilln]

Life without music or video games sucks because it's simply more boring. The answer is: "Wah. Deal with it. If you can't afford it then that's your own problem."

Life without pharmaceuticals sucks because you might die or be plagued by a disease. The answer is: "Wah. Deal with it. If you can't afford it then that's your own problem."

I'd say that's pretty much the same.

Quality products

[Orion Blastar]

Very hard to do when organizations still use Classical Management and want everything done quicker and cheaper.

For example getting rid of experienced developers who thoroughly debug the programs and produce quality code because they earn too much, and replacing them with developers who work cheaper but write sloppy code full of more bugs.

Perhaps you forgot the trend in business these days for programming? Outsource to the cheapest source of labor, that works the fastest. Then hope they have a quality assurance analyst working for them that knows how to do their job correctly. If not, you have a low quality product.

Also when the games are outsourced to reduce the costs, the game price stays the same. No benefit is passed on to the consumer, except a buggier game of a lower quality than they wanted. But hey, instead of $24/hr developers, you got $3/hr developers working for you, so who cares? Right?

The concept of total quality management is lost on most modern US corperations and game-makers. Release the game on time, and like Microsoft, slowly release bug fixes that should have been in the product during its launch.

Re:Just try

[Vancorps]

last I checked cdrecord has no issues with any of those antipiracy measures. Unless they've started coding the media with some special chemical while I wasn't looking.

cannot agree more....

[6wl]

"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.

Moral decay

[Peaker]

Calling information sharing and helping a friend in nasty names.

If these video games wouldn't exist in order for us to regain the freedom to do these things - then video games should not exist, they are not worth our freedom.

I would never buy a copyright-protected piece of software because it is against my principles, and I also try to avoid infringing on existing copyrights because that also encourages the general use of the copyright-protected software.

Almost all of those who still support copyright only do so because it is unenforced, and they infringe on it themselves (with all sorts of self-justifying reasons).

I haven't paid $50. ever

[YrWrstNtmr]

Between freeware, shareware, demo's, and 'last years'...most of mine come in under $20, much less $50. And my kids don't notice the diff. A couple of weeks ago, my 13 year old asked "Dad, can we get Commander Keen on this machine again?"

I think the absolute most I spent was $40, twice, for one of the Quakes, and Ratchet & Clank. It is actually a very good game.

I understand your prob, though...

Piracy, Growth of Video Game Market, and Windows

[9mind]

Although Piracy is indeed a bad thing... it has:

A) Directly contributed to the Growth of the video game market.

Reasoning... I've seen many people who pirate a good game and love it, eventually by the game. Why? Because after awhile you get tired of looking for cracks for the latest patch etc. And most people pirate because of a lack of money... when they get older, the tend to buy if they can.

B) Piracy of Computer Games and Software made Microsoft the monopoly it is today.

Reasoning... People wanted DOS/Windows because Apple and other OS vendors didn't have the game support for all the pirated computer games we played. Many Others who saw the fun factor of Windows and weren't savvy enough to pirate, had to go out and BUY the stuff they wanted...

Did I say piracy was a bad thing?

I really wish I hadn't read the REPLIES..

[threc]

That particular part, the fluffy dog, the cuddly cat, and the neglected sheep, the individual parts themselves didn't make a very compelling argument, but at the bottom of the article it was all brought together.

We who make the software - we are not out to rip you off; we are lovely people who just want to make an honest crust, and we smell nice. We are pretty sheepies, we are happy puppies and we are the fluffy kittens. And all we ask is that if you should happen to find yourself in a situation where you can try before you buy - then do so, but if you like what we do, then please make a point of offering us the Digestive biscuit of your approval, the pig's ear of your support, and the half a dead rat of a little financial cooperation.

As an explanation for the most braindead amongst you....

The animals were being mistreated in the sense that someone wanted to give the fluffies a treat in the first place, because ... they were cute. However, since the people being depicted doling out the treats were "cunts" in the authors words, they never paid out.

Meaningless? Not entirely ... the developers metaphorically representing the animals are "cute" or "good" in the sense that they're doe-eyed wishfuls making games to surprise and please the masses. The masses in turn show their appreciation by waving dollar bills (aka the Pirate-it-be-for-your-buy-it BS), but realistically just steal the damn games off of BitTorrent.

So it's not utter tripe. It's a bit silly, a little crude even, but the author makes his point.

Re:I really wish I hadn't read the REPLIES..

[Quinling]

I would add that the decreasing fluffiness of his metaphorical beasties, along with the increasing damage inflicted by their teasers, suggests that Mr Minter was not being entirely serious. Indeed, his statement that, "we smell nice," is particularly laughable to anyone who knows him :-D.

In short, his exaggerations were tongue-in-cheek or, as we say in Britain, 'taking the piss'. His point was that developers and pirates are not the cute little bunnies and evil total bastards of anti-pirate mythology but still, as someone trying to make a living out popular programming, he'd like some financial appreciation from those who like what he produces, if that's not too much bother, please.

H.
--
How To Write Good
11. One should never generalise.

Discounted games

[lightspawn]

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.

Final Fantasy X is $20 everywhere. Ikaruga's $20 online at bestbuy.com, and my local Best Buy (for example) has five remaining copies of Ico for $15. These are all arguably the best games in their respective genres.

The discount racks are full of low-quality stuff, but that doesn't mean the odd gem isn't there, just that it's not that easy to find.

Reviews

[pommiekiwifruit]

MCV this week had an article which showed there was very little correlation between review scores and sales figures. There was a slight bonus for games that got over 90% but otherwise not much effect.

It seems people don't read reviews, and if they do read them, ignore them anyway, or as the article put it, prioritise different inputs (i.e. the marketing and how cute the movie star was rather than if the game plays ok).

I can understand that attitude for pop music, since that is a very personal taste, but I would consider games to have more things that can be criticised objectively, so it seems odd to me.

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

Thou shalt not steal.

I'm not saying, I'm just saying.

My Career Began with One Pirate

[VonGuard]

When I was about 6 years old, my father got an Atari ST 520 for our house. After I begged for him to bring the color monitor home and use the black and white a one at work.

My dad and I loved this computer, and played Silent Service together on it. We wanted more games, but the Atari platform was not exactly popular in Maryland at the time. Silent Service and SunDog were all we could find. SunDog, however, was one of the best games ever made, but I was too young to appreciate it.

A fellow at his office, who went by the name "The Roe" told my dad to come over on the weekend and pick up some software for the ST, since he was a major enthusiast. My dad and I went to The Roe's place and he loaded us down with well over 100 Double sided disks of games from Brattacus to Time Bandits to a Spy Hunter clone who's name eludes me at the moment.

I played those games for 10 years. My life was irrevocably changed by that large stack of pirated Atari ST software. Today, my life revolves around games, though I buy them now since GameCube games aren't only available from a single small shop stall in Virginia.

But The Roe's single afternoon of piracy made me who I am today.

This guy knows his shit

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

The guy who wrote about being a pirate knows his shit. How can you tell. The man listed ICO has a work of art.

BINGO. ICO, REZ and Prince of Persia: Sands of time were all incredible games.

The sad thing is that most folks never got to experience ICO.

how do you think...

[Sfing_ter]

how do you think M$ made M$ office the number one office product, they made it easy to copy and install without any checking of licensing.

Doom, Wolfenstein, Heretic, Quake, all became the most popular because a) they were fun and b) you could download and install it and not have to worry about squat. Games that suck, suck, and should die off.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[spectecjr]

Actually, he's just a copyright infringer. "piracy" would have more raping and pillaging, if you ask me.

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.

PI'RACY, n. [L. piratica, from Gr. to attempt, to dare, to enterprise, whence L. periculum, experior; Eng. to fare.]

1. The act, practice or crime of robbing on the high seas; the taking of property from others by open violence and without authority, on the sea; a crime that answers to robbery on land.

Other acts than robbery on the high seas, are declared by statute to be piracy. See Act of Congress, April 30, 1790.

2. The robbing of another by taking his writings.

One more point...

[spectecjr]

Why should he have to deprive himself? This is silly. We aren't obligated to masochistically thrash ourselves with the spiked whip of capitalist 'ethics'. If he wasn't going to buy it, he hurts no one.

By your logic, I am well within my ethical rights to take any GPL software I want, and use it in my own closed source software, without releasing my software under the GPL. After all, no-one is hurt, and I shouldn't have to deprive myself of using the GPL'd source code in my own closed-source binary.

Re:One more point...

[ymgve]

As long as I can pirate your closed-source application afterwards, I'm all for it.

Game availability?

[Mecanico]

Could game availabiliy be counted for piracy cause?

In poor countries that availability is almost nill. When you go to a store you find the latest game to be the original Homeworld. So if you want a game you can buy it from Amazon (or whatever store you want) with a 60% price increase because of customs tax and shipping. so the only way to get a game for most is to download a pirated copy (you surely can pay it, but you would have to stop eating for the next 2 months) ;)

I am a PC game dev

[Cirrius]

And I have far too many friends who have been laid off after a project due to sales not panning out as hoped. The games usually however did great in various warez avenues. Most of them have moved to console development, where piracy still exists, but in far far smaller numbers.

Anyone who thinks piracy helps the developer is not a true developer who's livelihood is made or broken by the sales numbers of their game. My money says Mr. Psuedonym works for a publisher...if a game sells poorly they fire the dev team and write off the game as a loss.

This was modded insightful?

[CreateWindowEx]

I don't even know where to start. "Developers take as long as they like to make their product and then add up the number of hours and expected sale units and price each unit accordingly. There is no incentive to conceive and code whole new classes of development tools that will give order-of-magnitude in productivity." Developers typically have a scheduled finish date, and they try to cram as many features, technology, and improvements into that time to be competitive with other games, and have a chance of success. The development of every game involves many risks; from the engineering challenges of inventing new technology to just making things fun (often ideas that sound good on paper don't end up working out). Publishers typically lose money on most of their games and make it back on the few "stars". Prices are set by what they think will generate the most revenue. Development contracts are awarded based on expected sales. However, nobody can predict which games will sell well, so they must gamble in this fashion in much the same way as music and movie publishers, although the trend is towards "safer" bets such as sequels and licensed titles.

"But, hell, most of them are still using C or C++: the most backward, cryptic, and unproductive languages imagineable." Games are typically coded in C/C++ because that is currently the best compromise between ease of use and efficiency of generated code. Skilled programmers spend their time solving language-independent software development problems, not battling syntax errors. The previous generation of console games were mostly coded in assembly; on modern consoles assembly is used fairly sparingly. Even C++ is considered too inefficient by many console developers. On a given hardware platform, the more efficient the code, the more graphical detail and behavioral complexity (e.g., physics and ai) can be achieved. Game developers typically write many custom tools to increase productivity, optimize scene data, etc.

"This is because software developers refuse to press for new types of software writing tools that will make it possible to develop a commercial game in 1/10 of the time that it takes today." If we knew of some magical language that would let us develop in 1/10th the time with the same quality we would all use it! The main potential for lowering development time (and thus cost) is the increased use of middleware such as Renderware and pre-made physics engines. However, besides the expense of most of these products, there is also the decreased efficiency and utility of a general "one-size fits all" toolchain instead of a custom, product-specific engine. We make the best guesses we can about how to best achieve our development goals--while we might screw up sometimes, it is inconceivable that we would deliberately avoid any solution that would increase our productivity. Game development is very competetive, and we will do just about anything to get an edge. Use of middleware will probably increase dramatically with the next-generation consoles, especially the PS3, but any savings in development time will be overshadowed by the ever increasing demand for more game complexity, more textures, more complex scene data, more special effects, more animation, more online support, etc, etc.

Piracy won't "force" any improvements in the game development paradigm--the main effect of piracy is to lower the sales of games (when people who would have purchased the game pirate it instead), and to cause developers to spend more time devising anti-piracy schemes. Many pirates claim they use piracy like shareware (if it's actually good then I'll buy it), but in practice this happens rarely enough that there is no positive "reward the good games" effect. When total sales are lowered, basically the market shrinks and developers and publishers go under, fewer and less-ambitious games are developed. However, since many people who pirate games wouldn't have bought them anyways, the true effects of piracy on sales are impossible to accurately measure.

Re:This was modded insightful?

[danila]

Piracy won't "force" any improvements in the game development paradigm
My economics textbook says it will. Seriously, if game developers/publishers have some innovativeness left, they will find a way. Businesses always do, whether it concerns selling plane tickets for 10$ or doubling your product's performance in 18 months. There are ways to make games very cheaply. The only problem is to find these ways, but thankfully, this isn't my problem. :)

Just kidding. The solution is to reuse more code, to use less manual labour and automate more tasks (including content creation), to share code (and art, or actually art-generating software) between games and between companies. Probably an open source model where you pay a membership fee for the access to code and must contribute everything that you write to the pool (perhaps with a clause that it can't be used immediately) would work for the game industry. I am amazed at screenshots and videos of Stalker, but I think I know the reason they had to delay their game (like Valve and id did before, not to mention 3D Realms) - trying to make everything themselves. And since they are doing everything themselves, they don't have much to gain from automation - it would take more time to write a face-generating software than to make the faces in 3D max manually.

The developers need some pressure on them, like Ford, GM and Crysler needed in the 80s. By pirating games I support innovation!

Re:This was modded insightful?

[danila]

My economics textbook says it will.

And my day job says your textbook is full of shit.
And my day job says you need to go back to school.

OK. So your model is that games look (even more) like they're all built out of the same code/artwork/sound, and yet people will pay more and steal less if they're given variety?
Virtually all game programmers use C++ and DirectX. By your logic they should give up the commonly used tools to make more original. Also by your logic composers should give up the music notation, because how can you make anything original when there are only 7 notes?! In case the fallacy of your argument is still not obvious to you, I will explain. You can use the same engine, same toolset, same programmable models and textures (as long as you can customize them) to make entirely different games. It was possible as early as ten years ago to make a fantasy FPS and a sci-fi FPS using the same engine with practically no modifcations (Doom/Heretic). The fact that some games are built on the same engine doesn't mean they need to look the same.

In case you hadn't noticed, that (games are all the same nowadays) is one of the biggest problems facing the industry - and your suggestion to reduce piracy is to make it worse?
In case you hadn't noticed, exactly the same problem was the biggest one in auto manufacturing starting from mid-nighties. The problem was how to make different models while still reusing as much of the components as possible. It was successfully solved, though car manufacturers still strive to push standartisation to the limit (GM's Autonomy).

Are you really that fucking stupid? Do you not think that the people whose livelihood depends on this spend every waking minute trying to find a way to make themselves more efficient?
In fact I do think that these very people spend every waking minute doing precisely the opposite. If what you describe was true, a lot of people, including many researchers in management science would be extremely surprised. I won't comment on your intelligence, but it has been common knowledge for a few decades already that most people spend to much time doing their job to find time to look into ways to improve their own productivity. Everything that I read on the topic of management in game developing companies so far confirms that.

If the business model for PC games collapses (I would give it a 50% chance of survival over the next 5 years), there won't be any more PC games - simple as that.
Most game developers, publishers and industry analysts would disagree with your 50% estimate. In fact, most of them would probably think you are insane. Simple microeconomics proves that you can create a quality FPS game for anything from 2 million to 50 million. If unthinkable happens and sales of blockbuster games decrease (they actually show the tendency to increase, despite the piracy, and the common argument is that piracy harms the "innovative independent small developer" most), the average budget will decrease, but FPS games in particular and computer games in general are not going anywhere.

Re:This was modded insightful?

[danila]

Any developer worth their salt has an in-house tools group whose sole responsibility is to improve productivity
Sure. I didn't mean to say that nobody cares about productivity at all, just that it's quite difficult to find time and money to make any changes on strategic level, especially in regards to how the business itself is run. And a lot of the technology you are talking about doesn't have the time to mature beyond what is necessary right here and now. The potential is there, but the ephemeral nature of game development means it is not realised.

PC games are in a slump, and have been for the last 12 months. Consoles are a much more attractive place to be: fixed hardware platform, and while there is piracy it's of the level that the PC was before widespread broadband/P2P (i.e., not endemic and largely confined to territories like Russian/parts of Asia - the US and Europe are relatively OK).
12 months is just a fluctuation. And everything related to consoles today will not necessarily remain true in 5 years. We are talking about 4th generation consoles - XBox 3, PS 4... The convergence of PCs, consoles, media centres, handheld devices, etc. makes one more optimistic about the fate of PC gaming. And don't forget that by saying "PC gaming" we actually mean "MS Windows gaming". And who is to say that XBox 3 will not be compatible with MS media centres and MS PC OS. And who is to say that the console market will not become more fragmented leading to smaller number of players on Sony PS (because just like before, we are not talking about "console games", we are talking about "Sony PS2 games"). Not to mention that as the larger fraction of costs today lies in art/design, there are fewer limits to porting successful games between two gaming universes.

Given that the price of an average game (of any game, not just FPS) is between $2 and $5 million nowadays, I'm not sure why you need "simple microeconomics" to get a figure that's out by a factor of 10. Oh, wait, unless you're just throwing terms around to try and look smart...
I wasn't talking about average. As of today, Half-Life 2 costed $40 millions.

And your source for that is what? Shit, EA laid off 100 people the other month, MS have just cancelled a couple of big projects (Mythica and Train Sim 2), and at least half a dozen small developers have gone under since the start of this year.
These are just parts of normal business. Heck, a well known fact is that 97% (or something like that) of small businesses go bankrupt in the first year, but noone is crying wolf and declaring the imminent death of small business. Furthermore, the whole American IT industry crashed a few years ago, but noone argued that in 5 years there will be no computers. Get real! :) The problems in the PC gaming industry are real and it's really scary for shareholders and employees, but from the macroeconomic point of view it's just business as usual. The whole American economy operates this way - every 4 years you have a recession. With double digit growth it's easy to miss a recession, but as gaming market matures, it finally has to notice that.

widespread net piracy is a lot more significant for PC games than you seem to think it is. Pick any high profile game from the last year, add "+torrent", and you can probably find a download on Google within 30 seconds: you're not trying to tell me that has no effect on sales?
Surely this has an effect on sales, but it doesn't mean the industry is doomed. Just one simple fact - it costs 3-4 times less to make the same game in Eastern Europe or Russia. So even if piracy rates increase from 30% (my estimate) to 80%, moving development abroad will allow to compensate for the effect of piracy. And this is just an organisational change - you can offset the effect of piracy with technology too, with marketing and many other tools.

As long as PC exist, there will be a market for PC games. The industry as a whole will not going anywhere.

The anti-piracy piece...

[CashCarSTAR]

Doesn't have a single word about used game sales.

Therefor, it can safely be ignored.

Re:The anti-piracy piece...

[CashCarSTAR]

Argh. Add an e.

Why?

[FirebirdGM]

Perhaps game developers should simple stop investing millions of dollars developing state of the art copyright protection and reduce the price of games by ten or twenty dollars. What's the point of the CD and Copyright Protection - It's cracked in minutes by the companies who crack and release the games, so what's the point.

I'll buy a game if I like it. I've downloaded many games that I thought would be great titles, but after playing them for 15 minutes, realized that it was total crap and never played it again. If I enjoy a game enough to play it numerous times, I will go spend the $50 and buy a legit copy.

FFX for $20

[doormat]

I picked up Final Fantasy X for $20 this past winter. Really nice game.

"Lost profit" claims are illusions..

[DroopyStonx]

"Lost profit" claims are based on the assumption that those who downloaded the games would've purchased them regardless without question. Of course, those of us with brains who can actually think realize that this isn't true.

I download 2-3 PS2 games a week, and to be quite honest, none of them have really been THAT good. Those are "lost sales/profit" to the industry, but again that's under the assumption that I would have purchased each and every one of those games regardless. I can assure you right here and now that I would NOT be buying $150 in video games every single week. That's half of a house payment right there.. at some point you gotta be realistic with this data. Even if I spent every last dime of my paychecks on video games, what about those games I DIDN'T purchase? If I downloaded them, it would be irrelevant as there's no possible way I could spend money I don't have.

A lot of people will take a black and white stance on this and say, "Well, you're playing those games without having paid for them.." Yes, you are 100% correct, however, the industry hasn't lost any money because of it.

The thing is, this is the fantastic difference about downloading vs. stealing an actual item: no one is losing money since the sale isn't a done deal. You might not agree with it, but it's the truth.

teaching kids to pirate is bad...

[3rdParty]

but if I couldn't play Tribes, I wouldn't have bought it just to make sure the devs got paid.

I write software, and while it can be cold comfort, people using my software is far better than no-one using it, regardless of my finacial standing.

i.e. piracy is good, it is the radio of the 21st century. Fight it if you think your org can waste the resources.

Law = Piece of Paper

[superpulpsicle]

If you want to be upfront about it, piracy is illegal according to a piece of paper.

Years ago the pilgrims lifestyle were restricted by law in a thousand ways. Years from now, people will realize laws against piracy is completely useless.

I am not saying developers should not be paid. I am just saying if the government really want anti-piracy initative, they would have to force M$ to create an OS where games literally run off centralized servers on a $$ basis.

Re:Law = Piece of Paper

[kunudo]

And then, of course, people would make their own games, get free ones, or stop playing alltogether.

Perhaps apples and oranges?

[Platinum Dragon]

If this had been a story about how a company was redistributing a GPL'd program in binary form only, there would be countless posts from zealots crying bloody murder on the part of that evil entity. But an opinion about how taking software without permission is wrong yields retards who think they have some inherint right to whatever they lay their grubby hands on

Now, the question you have to ask yourself is whether the same people going ballistic over GPL violations are the same ones defending other forms of copyright violations. Considering how many versions of your post I've run across attached to articles about piracy, I would be very interested in finding out whether there is a significant percentage of posters who are IP hypocrites, or whether the two classes of article draw posts from two different groups.

If nothing else, it might demonstrate how much groupthink, if any, exists among posting users.

Re:From Warez BBSes to the Internet, software addi

[kflat]

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 once knew a guy that taught himself 3DSmax, Lightwave, and Maya using pirated versions of the software. He approached a member of the dev team for Lightwave (a $1600 piece of software) and asked him some pretty in-depth questions about technique and other things. The guy just answered them, straight off. Never mind that this was an 18-year-old high school senior who could never have afforded to buy Lightwave legitimately.

Knowing this, it certainly does make sense that companies that write creativity software (Adobe, Newtek, Discreet, etc) don't worry much about IP theft because it breeds more trained professionals, who then get jobs with companies that will buy their software in large amounts ;)

High prices and piracy

[CyraX_iiit]

Tell me something. Some ppl said that high prices of games are due to piracy. However we are talking of corporations who are always greedy for more money. Reduction in piracy is no way gonna bring down the prices of games.

Some fair some unfair

[logicnazi]

Well I first want to point out whatever role piracy may have played in the initial spread of videogames I doubt it is significant now, at least not for the big developers. Quite simply it seems that everyone who is going to do so is hooked on videogames, there isn't a child out there who isn't exposed significantly to a video games system. Sure, one might claim that a certain percentage of piraters out there is good for the game industry by 'seeding' their friends, who aren't willing to pirate, to buy the game. Yes, but it is still in the industry's interest to discourage this practice, i.e. send people to jail who engage in it, to keep it small. Hell, if they wiped out all the pirates they can accomplish the same seed effect by running an internet giveaway of a certain number or copies, which no doubt would let them perfect the process making sure they hit differnt geographic areas proportionally and etc..

Now in the posts on slashdot I noticed two types of responses justifying piracy, some right-headed the other just outright selfish.

The first I noticed is probably the oldest excuse in the book, and one of the most annoying. The games are too expensive, why should I have to pay for failed games etc.. etc.. BECAUSE IF NO ONE DOES NO ONE WILL MAKE GAMES. There is no absolute price video games *should* be and they are over this price...the very notion is absurd. Neither is it the case that videogame companies are handled by complete incompetents who are just wasting money. This is just a thinly disguised excuse, "I don't want to shell out any money"

The second objection is more reasonable. Namely that they wouldn't be willing to buy the game so it doesn't hurt anyone should they play it anyway. This is entierly reasonable except for the fact that there is a natural slipperly slope here. It does however point out a terrible flaw in our pricing of intellectual property. We are being terribly inefficent because we have members of our population who could be living better at no cost to anyone (i.e. have extra entertainment in this case).

Instead the clear answer is to pay for IP directly via taxes. Fix a certain percent of total income and then distribute it to creators of IP via estimates of the use and ranking by it's readers of the work, in other words a scheme of mandatory liscenscing to all citizens. Now of course people will cry that this is socialicstic. Perhaps, but it would do well to remember *why* we use capitalism. Because it is the best way we discovered to divide goods.

It is a good way to divide goods provided that the price per good is roughly constant (for instance chairs...the price is just the materials and craftsmanship for that chair). However, intellectual property is essentially differnt, the additional cost to make one more good is essentially zero. This is why we have the government run things like the army where the cost of protecting one more individual is essentially zero (the cost of protecting the US is independent of the population). It simply wouldn't be efficent for everyone to pay for only their personal protection.

In the old days...

[Inda]

20 years ago I pirated games for the Spectrum 48k and the C64. I would buy a game and tape it for my friends. They would return the favour.

Now these games were poor. Some didn't work and some shops refused to believe me on this. They were expensive back then in my eyes too. A good 3 or 4 weeks worth of pocket money.

"Without me, the games industry today would be nothing" - Inda. ...and that's how I justify my piracy these days too.

The other point to make about developer not having food to eat is bollocks. Your games are crap. It has nothing to do with piracy.

Recently, a few thousand of us commented on a game in the making. This was an old 2D game that was going to get revamped into 3D. I, along with others, commented that some of us had more experience with games than the developers and they should listen to our worries. The game flopped, it contained none of the elements that we loved from the 2D game. I deleted my Warez copy after a couple of days... ...now they want to make Part II. It will also flop because of lack of gameplay and originallity.

You want to eat? Don't sell half finished buggy games at unreasonable prices.

Cash is King

[m3rku!_]

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.

Re:Cash is King

[DarkOx]

"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."

You realize that what you just said translates into, "Sure I could do it myself or get a job and then pay someone to do it for me but why when I can just steal it."

Sorry Pal you're a looser and a theif and you belong in prision.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[danila]

Ergo, they do have value to you - which means that you should pay for them.
A fallacious argument - does the air have value to you? What about sunshine? What about freeware and open source applications? Have you paid for all that?

I am not going to buy a lot of games. If I couldn't get very cheap pirated copies, I wouldn't play them. And I only should do what I consider right, not what someone else says I "should do". And piracy is right.

Open Devtools = cheaper games

[xoop]

While I believe in the good ole 'if somebody has put effort into creating something, and you use/play it, buy it' principle, it seems to me that game dev costs would fall significantly if there were better/quicker game authoring tools around. There's a bunch of rapid development tools like Virtools, Quest3D, Radishworks etc out there that attempt this, but it hasn't quite reached the point where you can grab a 1K game authoring package with a decent 3D engine, physics, GUI driven workflow etc off the shelf they way you'd grab, say, Studio MX. Might be something the open source community ought to look into.

$50 too much?

[DarkOx]

The most common thread here is that games are over priced for what you get. Yet people are saying like $50 is two much for 5 hours of game play. That is only $10 for entertainment. Try doing much better then that at a proffessional sports game or even the movie thearter. Maybe the best ratio you get there is $5/hour but most likely if you're sitting where you can actually see or going to a facility where you want to spend two hours in its closer to $10.
The realeative price of games does not seem to change that much either, but we know the costs have gone up. I was paying just as much for my NES games as I pay now for stuff on GC, but with NES Nintendo never had to higher voice actors, artists and modles, which is what most people expect today. So really in a certain sense the price of games is actually falling. Now lots of poeple argue that half the games that come out are crap and that might be true but the same holds for yesterday's games. People think back on the classics and go "Oh those were all so good" but that is because they have forgotten the bad ones. There were lots of really terrible NES and Atari games same for archade.

I think all this piracy has more to do with greede and lack of scruples then most people here care to admit. If you don't like the commercial software modle, like I don't use open source. I have very little PC software that is not FOSS and what is not I have paid for it. I have lots of FOSS games that I really enjoy and I thank the authors very much. Still I recognize that FOSS will never produce certain types of software, one of which is games with voice actors, live models, and highly technical artwork. Sometimes you do see the art work Tux Racer is a good example. When I want those games I go out and by the GC version and enjoy it, but that is pretty rare might be 2-3 games per year. The rest of my games time is spent with FOSS. $150 is not too much to spend per year on games, add $10-20 and you can rent things form the video store and try before you buy at least in the console world. You pirates need to just admit you're greedy and that you want something for nothing.

that about sums it up

[luckynoone]

I think it seems like the majority of people feel similar to myself. Why buy something that you wouldn't pay full price for? Of course you would pay something, but not much, not even as much as it may go for on ebay.

I recently bought call of duty and C+C generals. You better believe I pirated the games first to see how I would like them. UT2004? No thanks, not worth $40 to me.

Also, most pirates have trouble using the games for multiplayer purposes, which really is no fun for a lot of us who live for multiplayer games as well.

Lets look at the industry parallel to gaming software. Application software. I am sorry, but Microsoft doesn't need $100+ for a program for me to TYPE in. Does that mean I should have to be cursed to a pencil and paper for the rest of my life? Or spend countless hours seeking an incompatable and foreign application of lesser value?

Only the inconsiderate will contend that piracy doesn't hurt anyone. Of course it does, but then again, you must look at the other side as well to see that unfair prices and perhaps disapointing quality of games drivers people to such measures.

Well, some of us are just theives and always will be I suppose.

Dramatizing copying

[defile]

I play games and music that I haven't paid for.

Do I feel even an iota of guilt? Not really.

I'm not going to glorify it and say that I ultimately help increase sales, because I don't think it's relevant.

Nor do I particularly feel for the artists who cry that their art has been "commoditized". What artist gets upset about people enjoying their work? You create something because you want it to be enjoyed, otherwise you don't release it.

What concerns me most are people who believe that copying data creates victims, and that if there are victims then there must be criminals and that the criminals need to be punished, and not only that, but that an invasive copy-control infrastructure needs to be built to thwart these criminals.

The idea of controlling information has always been awkward, but today that position is outright ludicrous. The internet is the first step of our civilization towards eliminating scarcity, and we've started with information scarcity. Anything you want to see or hear available to you anywhere at any time. We're almost there.

Sure, the people who have built business models that depend on the existing infrastructure will be upset, but trying to prevent its collapse is sacrificing the future for the convenience of a few in the present.

One day this may carry over to the physical world: replicators. Replicators would solve so many world problems, but there will be opposition. Which side do you think you'll be on?

Piracy Forums

[Rinisari]

One of my friends is doing a senior project on Piracy...check out PiracyForums.tk.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[DroopyStonx]

Keyword: robbing.

Downloading video games isn't robbing anyone of anything if you had no intention on buying it in the first place. You're assuming those who downloaded would've purchased either way, and that's not always the case. If I had no intention on buying a game and I download it, please explain (to those reading this thread) how they lost money. That logic is EXTREMELY flawed almost every which way you look at it.

You're thinking in black & white, and it's just not that simple.

I don't know why these posts get modded up. We all know that comparing copyright infringement to theft is like comparing apples to oranges. It's completely irrelevant and holds no water. It's a lame cop out used by the entertainment industry to make them look like the victim.

Piracy != Copyright Infringment, and I think your post just proved it.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[spectecjr]

Websters is written by fucking americans and is full of hideous american newspeakings of common queen's english terms. Just because something's in a dictionary doesn't make it right. It just makes it in the dictionary. If the nazis published a dictionary saying "Jew: primate related but distinct from human, capable of great deceit", would that make the definition right? You have just appealed to an authority I do not acknowledge.

You're more than welcome to get a subscription to the OED and post their definition of piracy here.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[spectecjr]

Piracy != Copyright Infringment, and I think your post just proved it.


According to the dictionary definition they are equivalent. But go ahead... keep arguing to absurdity.

Downloading video games isn't robbing anyone of anything if you had no intention on buying it in the first place. You're assuming those who downloaded would've purchased either way, and that's not always the case. If I had no intention on buying a game and I download it, please explain (to those reading this thread) how they lost money. That logic is EXTREMELY flawed almost every which way you look at it.

If you have no intention of buying it in the first place, what makes you think you have the right to have it anyway?

You don't.

By taking it anyway - and using that lame argument to justify what you're doing - you are depriving the vendor of the sale of that game.

You see, in civilized society we have this thing called "free trade" and the "marketplace". One of the ideas behind this free trade system is that the market is policed so that people don't take things anyway if they don't like the price they're being sold for.

If you REALLLLLLLLLLY wanted that game, why didn't you pay for it?

If you weren't willing to pay that much for it, then you should have just left it there - and NOT copied it. Instead you break the law.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[spectecjr]

A fallacious argument - does the air have value to you? What about sunshine? What about freeware and open source applications? Have you paid for all that?

The difference being that air and sunshine are free by virtue of them being part of the environment. Freeware and OSS apps are given to you by the author's decision to release those things for free.

Pirating software, however, is in direct contravention of the terms and conditions that the author has set on your use of their work.

I am not going to buy a lot of games. If I couldn't get very cheap pirated copies, I wouldn't play them. And I only should do what I consider right, not what someone else says I "should do". And piracy is right.

Ahhhhh... ok... so it's your natural born right to pirate games because you deserve (somehow) to be entertained?

I wish I could live in your freeloader "entitled to everything because I want it" state. You're in for a big shock when you get out into the real world and discover that other people get pissed when you do that.

Or when you end up in jail.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[DroopyStonx]

According to the dictionary definition they are equivalent. But go ahead... keep arguing to absurdity.

Um, no, not quite. It's absurd because you don't agree? The definition you put in bold said "The robbing of another by taking his writings." If you download a game, you are NOT robbing anyone. If I own a store and you walk in, steal a game, you're robbing ME because you actually took something I could've sold to someone else. If I download a game, you're assuming that *I* would have purchased that game. Look up the definition of robbery.

Want me to prove it? Hitman Contracts just came out for PS2. I have NO fucking idea what that game is. I know it's the third in the series, but I've never played any of them nor have I ever had the desire to. If I download that game and play it just to play it, I'm robbing them of a sale? No, because I've never had the slightest inkling EVER to buy a "hitman" game.

If you have no intention of buying it in the first place, what makes you think you have the right to have it anyway?

You don't.

You're 100% right. I never said I have a right to have it. I said no one's losing money because of it.

By taking it anyway - and using that lame argument to justify what you're doing - you are depriving the vendor of the sale of that game.

What lame argument? It's a perfectly valid one, albeit one you don't happen to agree with. How am I depriving the vendor of a sale of a game that I had no intention on buying in the first place? Now you're just contradicting yourself.

At this point, you're arguing on speculation: the "what if" side of the coin. You can't do that, it's just not logical.

You see, in civilized society we have this thing called "free trade" and the "marketplace". One of the ideas behind this free trade system is that the market is policed so that people don't take things anyway if they don't like the price they're being sold for.

If you're talking about physical items, that makes perfect sense. While I do understand your point, it just doesn't apply to what we're talking about here.

If you REALLLLLLLLLLY wanted that game, why didn't you pay for it?

Who knows. Perhaps I didn't have the money? Maybe I just didn't feel like it!

If you weren't willing to pay that much for it, then you should have just left it there - and NOT copied it. Instead you break the law.

Yes, it's against the law but... no one lost any money. I'm not saying it makes it right, I'm just saying it doesn't really matter.

Please give me (and those reading this) an example on how the industry loses money on items that one had no intention on purchasing to begin with.

You're 100% dead on in stating that I have no RIGHT to have the items, but... we're talking profits here. We're talking about LOSING MONEY, which is all what it boils down to.

Everything that you've stated makes perfect sense when dealing with PHYSICAL items, but ... starts to fall apart with circular logic once you introduce something that can be infinitely duplicated.

I just can't believe

[ajs318]

that Jeff Minter dropped the C-bomb. For the first time in my life I'm actually glad I never paid for Revenge of the Mutant Camels.

Programmers have to eat, but they don't have to programme. You don't hear me getting pissed off because the sewage company don't pay me money for every piece of shit that comes out of my arse. If someone gives you money that's fair enough, but you have no right to expect it. As a member of the human race, you are obliged to contribute to the sum of human endeavour; this is in return for the fact that every aspect of the difference between your life and a feral existence owes itself to past human endeavour. If you benefit from civilisation, agriculture or technology then you should contribute freely to the advancement of the state of the art. Writing software does not mean you own it. The benefits of all human endeavour belong to all of humanity.

As far as I am concerned, copying a piece of software is not stealing -- any more than baking my own bread is stealing from the bakeries, or growing my own veg is stealing from greengrocers, or walking around barefoot is stealing from shoe manufacturers. As far as the author is concerned, it would make no difference to the amount of money they would get if I simply did without their product. Everyone going without would put them out of business just as quickly as if everyone ripped it off. Not that I have to do any illegal copying: I simply refuse to use any software that is not Open Source {and I'm still spoilt for choice}.

There's a lot of software theft going on, all right, and it's theft when companies like Microsoft keep their source code to themselves so ordinary users cannot share and improve their products.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[spectecjr]

no doubt about it, copying something without paying is wrong in a way, but not in the manner you are trying to convey. you have too much of a 'stealing a candy bar from a store' mentality going on here, which is frequently disregarded and out of place in a debate such as this.


If everyone copies a game, and no-one buys it, do you still believe that no-one will be hurt?

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[spectecjr]

Want me to prove it? Hitman Contracts just came out for PS2. I have NO fucking idea what that game is. I know it's the third in the series, but I've never played any of them nor have I ever had the desire to. If I download that game and play it just to play it, I'm robbing them of a sale? No, because I've never had the slightest inkling EVER to buy a "hitman" game.

YES. Because at no point have they given you permission to just download it and play it just to pay it. They set the price they are charging for you to have that privilege. If you feel that this is unfair, your only valid legal and ethical recourse is to abide by their decision and not use that software.

[snip]
What lame argument? It's a perfectly valid one, albeit one you don't happen to agree with. How am I depriving the vendor of a sale of a game that I had no intention on buying in the first place? Now you're just contradicting yourself.

No, it's a perfectly lame argument. It's great for rationalizing and justifying piracy, but not much else. Saying "Hey, you know, I would have bought that game, but it was 5 times what I would have paid for it, so I copied it anyway - I wasn't going to give them money anyway" is a really rather piteous excuse for what you're doing.

As for my argument only applying to physical items, how about this:

1. What happens when no-one buys the game - or only one person - and everyone copies it?

Answer: the games company stops producing games because they cannot recoup the cost of development.

2. What happens when very few people buy the game and most people steal it?

Answer: the games company stops producing games because they cannot recoup the cost of development.

Games take years to develop, involve large teams of highly skilled and talented individuals to create, and are a highly risky proposition - the chances that a game will flop are much higher than that it will be a hit, and no-one knows the magic formula to create a hit game --- because there IS NO MAGIC FORMULA. (The same, by the way, applies to making movies).

As such, the cost to produce all games increases, because only 1 in 5 (or less) will make enough money to cover the development of all of the other games in the portfolio.

Are you seriously saying that you have a RIGHT to use commercial software that you haven't paid for?

If so, show me WHY.

Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games

[spectecjr]

That's a different argument from the one you originally made. Do you admit your first one was wrong? Now you say that one should pay for things according to the terms set by the author. This comment costs 10$ to read. Will you pay me? Why not? Have you not read it?

A rather idiotic argument you've got there. You can't charge people to read your comments on slashdot. Posting to a public forum means that you intended to distribute it for free. Selling a game in a store means that they intended to sell it for a price.

Notice the difference?

And no, you do not deserve to be entertained. That is not a right or privilege.

Prince of Persia.

[bludstone]

Because "Prince of Persia: Sands of time," was a financial disaster.

Oh, wait, no it wasnt.

Re:Pirates torture puppies and are "cunts"

[Quinling]

I want to go pirate this asshole's games now.

There's no need to, sir. Mr Minter has already released almost all of his previous work as freeware :-).

H.
--
"'Tell me, you dumb beast,' demanded [Zarathud] in his commanding voice,
'Why don't you do something worthwhile. What is your Purpose in Life, anyway?'
Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied 'MU'.
Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened. Primarily because
nobody could understand Chinese."
[Malaclypse the Younger -- "Principia Discordia"]