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

[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]

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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: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

[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.

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: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: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.

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?

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...

[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.

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.

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.

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?

[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.

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

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?

[antime]

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

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.

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...

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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?

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..

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.

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.

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.

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

[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

[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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

[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.

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.

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).

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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

"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"

[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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.