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Videogame Piracy - Is a Stricter Approach Necessary?
Thanks to GamerDad for its editorial focusing on recent attitudes to videogame piracy, in which a change in approach is argued for: "The [ESA] should be less focused on the ratings system... and more focused on educating consumers that downloading games is theft, plain and simple.... Consumers only understand one thing, the game is available freely on the Internet with a minimum of work and that means they don't have to pay for it." The writer continues: "I can't bring myself to download games, even the things at a place like The Underdogs which specializes in supposedly 'out of print' games to download. Out of print used to mean something was rare and worth something. In the digital media world it apparently now means 'Ok to steal.'" He concludes by suggesting ways to make games more attractive again: "One great way to do that is including good stuff in the box. Give me a color manual or include a poster. Maybe a CD with all the music from the game? How about liner notes with each game describing some part of development?"
It may be wrong, it may be illegal, but It's not theft. Plain, simple, or otherwise. It's copyright infringement.
it's worth supporting. However, if you cannot support it, then should you not be able to play it? I don't think so. To the publisher of an out of print game, it is the same whether I download it or pay an inflated price for it to some dude on ebay.
Games (especially 0-day warez) are only easy to download if you're in the know. You need to know what site to go to, or a friend with an FTP server or you need to have a very reliable USENET hook up or something along those lines. Otherwise, pirating games online is a nightmare minefield of porn pop ups, links to other sites with more porn pop ups, viruses and mislabelled 600 MB downloads.
The 'consumer' does not find this easy or fun. The 'consumer' probably doesn't even know that they could be trying to do this. People who are downloading complete games illegally are fairly sophisticated users. I would guess that they all know full well that they're doing something illegal. I just think that they don't care.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects
What annoys me is that its often easier to get a download a pirated game than buying it in a shop.
:)
Pirate game:
1. Game was released today!
2. Download for an hour
3. Play
Instant gratification.
Legit game:
1. Find online shop with game.
2. Wait for shop to have it in stock.
3. Agonize that other people are playing this cool game while ytou wait.
4. Wait for the package
5. Open package, rip CD, toss rest of crappy cardboard away.
6. Play!
Now what if the developer had a Steam like download avaliable? Preferably before the game was in the store? Then it would be as easyer to download a legit game than downloading a pirate game...
There should be a way to mark a whole article "-1 Troll"...
This comment does not exist.
Those "out of print" games are not supposed to dwindle away into obscurity and only be owned by those elise few who had the money to buy them at the time.
:P
This is copyright protection, after the authors don't exist anymore (companies died) the copyright is not protecting anyone anymore... kinda like artists' right to make money on their creations?
Perhaps read something Orson Scott Card wrote on this subject once and you would change your mind.
A collector will still strive to own the game... but I'm more interested in the art of it, than in it's physical manifestation.
I'm still interested in buying it if I can... but not on e-bay or in a way that will not benifit the original authors.
The author is just plain silly...
Then again... this is from someone who has 3 legal copies of NWN and Quake 3....
-grin-
Anyone remember the "evidence" that came with Deadline, including two "pills" that were actually Smarties candy (yeah, I ate 'em)? Maps, booklets, and other details like that really helped set the stage for those text adventures.
I personally won't download games from "warez" sites, but I'd bet that if more care went in to the final product, people might value them more.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
This is a problem that has been and always will be. I remember being thirteen and playing Leisure Suit Larry. Did my parents but it for me? No. I had it copied from a friends computer. At the time the game came on 2 3.5 floppys.
Here is the problem, it is the way the games and programs are marketed for the most part. Who do most of the games market to in the PC world? Males age 14-28. This group is heavily marketed since they are about to turn the corner to being males 29-36 and are known as the most economically secure in America.
Meaning, we need a way to just make games cheaper or free and put more marketing in them to lead the soon to be older audience. You can't stop them, so market them.
I know what the thought to that is... Then game quality sucks. Or ends up looking like a NasCar add.
Whole movie production have been paid for with product placements. We even got to see Hallie Berry's chacha's for seeing a product for 25 seconds in movie.
Now I wouldn't product place to sell the product to the people playing the game today, but product place for the people who will be stronger consumers tomorrow.
Mc Donalds did this in the early years and still does it today. They lose money on the playground, happy meals, and birthday parties, but make customers for life.
For these reasons we need to see a paradigm shift and let the entertainment be free, and the quality can be the same.
Fine and good, but I wouldn't make such a black & white blanket statement regarding "out of print" games. There are games around which will be covered by copyright until hell freezes over, but which are not for sale, no longer available in arcades, which have no support or patches, and which make the owning company no money at all.
I know that the real answer here is to convince the copyright holders to release their old games into the public domain--it's good for the gamers, and good PR for the producer, or at least to address the underlying legal structure (release things into the public domain on which maintenance/profit have lapsed, or some similar solution.) But until that occurs, I don't mind downloading, say, a MAME ROM for such a game.
The other aspect which makes, say, games a bit unique is that of "what if it sucks"? I don't really feel the need to justify my behavior here, but I like grabbing a game and trying it out a bit before I buy. A lot of good games do decent CD key checking online, so you almost have to go out and buy it--plus, if I really like it, I want the booklet, the case, whatnot.
I really do not have an issue with downloading a cracked version and giving it a spin before buying, whether there is a demo version available or not.
For me, this goes in the same direction as being able to get your money back in a lot of movie theaters (at least in the US) if a film is so crappy that you have to walk out of it. I recently downloaded Ubi Soft's IL-2, Call of Duty, and Vietcong; I love CoD, and am going to buy a copy. Jury's still out on the other two.
The argument's been made for people like me that if I don't buy a game, the creators will go out of business. Fine. I don't pay for games that suck; it's called "survival of the fittest". I realize that not everyone can be relied on to adhere to this sort of principle, and that if stricter copy protection becomes standard, we'll have no choice but to buy a game before playing it. But when that occurs, I'll probably go back to Angband or having a life.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
With the shift towards online gaming, this becomes less and less of an issue. With registration servers checking up on each person playing the game, using a downloaded game with a fake serial becomes more difficult. With the popularity of MMORPGs, the entire gaming model might change. We may see games that are free to download but pay-to-play.
No matter what, game companies are going to have to come to the realization that people will always pirate games, copy protection doesn't work, and pissing off the customers with poorly devised protection schemes only loses them customers.
In my opinion, there's no great secret or mystery to reducing piracy. Rather, it could be achieved quite simply through a few steps (and no, these don't include "make games cheaper").
1) Get rid of region encoding. This also applies, to an even greater extent, to DVDs. Restricting products to certain markets alienates customers who can't buy them and encourages a "if they don't want to sell it to me, just take it" mentality. I'm not sympathetic to piracy in the slightest, but if there was perhaps one argument which would convince me to soften my attitude towards it, it would be this one.
2) If your game is online, use CD-keys. They work. Seriously. Admittedly, this doesn't help much with offline games.
3) Get rid of this cheapo DVD-style packaging for games. In the old days, when you bought a game, you'd usually get a hefty and well-produced manual, which would frequently do a lot more than just tell you how to navigate the menus and play the game. Anybody remember the manuals that came with Lucasarts classics like Their Finest Hour and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe?
This is a complex issue thats not going to change over night.
I go to lan parties and find that most of the people there expect games to be pirated. Sure some people buy a legit copy, but its ussualy one person, and by the end of the party everyone has a copy. Most games come from downloaded cd images.
As far as im concerned, CD protection means nothing, All types of protection can be cracked in some way or another, its just a matter of time. But would removing copy protection spur more people to purchase the game? Nope. The issue is more complex than that.
I think most people would be willing to purchase a game for the right price. $50 for a game you might only end up play for just a few hours is ALOT. It better be a damn good few hours. Saddly most games can only offer a mediocre few hours.
I would be willing to purchase much more games myslef if the publishers stop taking me as stupid. I would love to be purchase and download games. But not for the same price as a retail box, Im not stupid, its alot cheaper for a publisher to distribute a download version. Why dont they pass on some of the savings. Instead of expecting us to pay the full price. Stuff like Condition Zero can be purchased via steam for $40, but you can probably find it in the bargin bin or for less than $20.
There will still be some people who will absolutly refuse to pay for any game, but still be wanting to play them. Those people should burn in hell.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
I honestly don't know exactly how it would work, but I believe that all or nearly all copyrighted material (books, music, software) should be "sell it or lose it": if the copyright owner doesn't care to sell copies of it, for instance because it is not deemed profitable, the copyright lapses.
Clearly, if it's not worth selling, the copyright holder doesn't lose much if the copyright lapses early, 5Nth anniversary precious metal editions notwithstanding. Of course, companies who are in the business of selling the same pile of tripe every few years with a different name would suffer. (Quicken 2005? No thanks, I like Quicken 2000 just fine and don't want to learn anything new. What, you mean I can't buy Quicken 2000? I think some music labels and book publishers would find themselves in the same bind)
This belief is what makes me feel not at all bad when downloading abandonware games to play on my Commodore 64 emulator, for instance.
Failing "Sell It or Lose It Copyright", I'd love to see a non-profit corporation in the business of buying the copyright to abandoned software, particularly games, and releasing it to the public domain. In my mind this would involve finding out what copyrighted items people were most interested in, reaching a deal with the owner, and then raising the money online. I have no idea whether it would work, but I'd love to see it tried. I'd put up a few bucks to see EA's 8-bit software collection enter the public domain, and surely a lot of geeks would do the same. Would it add up to the piles of cash Electronic Arts would demand? Well, I don't know.
With video games, "out of print" doesn't mean the game data is rare and valuable. It means just what it says. "Out of print".
Umm, article poster needs a clue. He sounds like quite the conscientious idiot to me.
Original game "paraphanelia" for out of print would be quite valuable yes. Even if there are newer versions of the game out. An unopened retail box of an original "tetris" for the NES would, I'm guessing, be worth a lot to some people.
The game DATA is not that valuable. It's a string of bits. Anyone can make perfect infinite duplicates of it. That tends to decrease the "rareness" aspect of it.
Look, original article poster guy, good for you that you don't download games. I don't download games either - for another reason entirely - I tend not to play them. And your suggestions for what game publishers can do are nice.
But your apparent doe-eyed naivety about copyright infringement, and the attitude... makes me wonder.
-Laxitive
The mindset that's so pervasive with the RIAA is the same one that's causing PC game publishers to treat their buyers like they're criminals first, and customers second. Piracy probably is at an all-time high, but so are the number of PC users.
I remember back in the days of Hero Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, no one had legitmate software. Everything was on a floppy that was copied from the friend of a friend of a friend who downloaded it off the BBS of this guy who knew from 2 states away, because the only place to buy the game was from some specialty store a two hour drive away, staffed by irritating, condescending Alpha Nerds, full of overpriced hardware, and reeking of french fries.
Now, PC games have become infinitely more accessible. Even Target carries current titles. Best Buy, Future Shop, Fry's, CompUSA, Circuit City and their ilk have large portions of their stores devoted to hawking practically any big-name software made in the last 5 years.
So, is there more priacy now? Undoubtedly. But PC games (and PC software as a whole) has matured from a tiny, largely enthusiast-driven niche market to a full-blown industry. Relative to the number of users, I'd bet 'piracy' is down from years ago.
But, the idiots publishing the games aren't gamers any more than the idiots at the RIAA are musicians. They're old, out-of-touch, and disinterested. They're not technically savvy, and think they can prevent piracy; it's like a 5 year-old thinking he can prevent all crime in the world by becoming a policeman.
They can't stop piracy. The developers know it. The consumers know it. Yet, the publishers refuse to learn. Either that, or they're genuinely stupid enough to believe it's worth pissing off thousands of legitimate, paying customers in the name of futily attempting someone from getting the game off some 0-day warez site and playing it relatively unhindered.
Atari's an instance of such a company... I had to get cracks for Neverwinter Nights, UT2k3, and Temple of Elemental Evil to get them working, despite having bouhgt retail copies of the 3 games. They'll never be seeing another penny of my money.
Dave writes "in the digital media world it apparently now means 'Ok to steal.' Sorry, I can't agree with that." Yet, he inadvertantly highlights a major problem with the ownership of intellectual property that has yet to be solved.
If we're concerned about morality here, than ultimately we want the appropriate people who worked on the game to be compensated. But that doesn't happen with "out of print" games. The person getting the money when Dave buys that still in shrink wrap copy of Starflight for the Amiga isn't Greg Johnson, Binary Systems, or even EA. 100% of however much Dave spends on the game goes to the collector. No one is getting compensated with out of print games that really deserves it. So how does Dave justify this? If Dave really wants to be do the "right thing", he ought to download the game from Underdogs and then send the game creators a check. Buying the physical product off of ebay does nothing at all.
And secondly, he's tying games to books with the out of print comment. There's a big difference between out of print books and out of print games. Books are so cheap, and so easily distributed that rare books are specific editions, and not the actual book itself, what we would consider, say, one intellectual property unit. What is rare is a first edition (I assume) of Catcher in the Rye. But just because it's rare doesn't mean I will never be able to read Catcher in the Rye. With games, there are no editions. A game that is out of print really is unfindable, save perhaps paying a collector who had nothing to do with the game's creation. What's more is that the public - in the form of libraries - has maintained books for public use. So who's doing this for games? Perhaps because games are still viewed at as pure entertainment and not as a vehicle of communication we have yet to see gaming's Carnegie. That will change, but it will take some time.
The creator of Underdogs is, in my opinion, a far more moral person than Dave. Underdogs is more concerned about the money reaching the actual source rather than a collector. If I were Dave, I would be doing some serious reevaluation of a morality system that allows the rewarding of collectors for scouring garage sales and reselling them at a vastly inflated price, instead of compensating game creators for making a game worth finding 10 years later.
Nah, just shorten copyright periods to below 20 years. 7-10 years seems about fine to me.
If you can't make money from a work within 7 years, then that work sucks or you suck.
If a software maker cannot make a new program sufficiently better than 7 year old programs, so that they will make enough money out of it, then perhaps we'd see real innovation rather than stupid bloat or lock-in.
There's lots of wasted resources going to "slightly better" or "no longer supported by vendor - but vendor owns copyright so we have to upgrade to next version".
If 7 years is too short for some cases you could have different durations for different sort of works or different classes of copyright owners.
The whole piracy issue is sort of a Catch 22: People say that they pirate games to try them out before they buy them as not to waste their money on a bad game/cd/movie that they can't return, and most stores won't let users return opened games/cds/movies because of piracy.
Somebody brought up a point that many movie theatres will offer refunds to people that walk out of a movie early because they don't like it. Of course, they won't refund you if you sit through the whole movie, I believe they only will refund if you walk out in the beginning. Perhaps a similar system could be set up for games?
Here's an example: When users install a game, they can register their copy of the game online. Up to a certain point in the game decided by the developer (whether the point be measured by how far they have progressed, or how much time they have spent playing, how many rounds they have played, etc), they will have an option to request a refund. If they chose this option, they could print out some sort of form that they can bring back to the store they bought it from and return it, and at the same time the software would be uninstalled from the machine. The store would honor the return, refund the customer his money, and mail back the game/form to the company and get their money back.
I know my example's not perfect, but it's an idea. There will still be people that will want to get the entire game for free without paying, but if you at least give customers the option to return games they don't like, then there will probably be a large amount of customers that will do that instead of illegally downloading the game to try it out.
Take one part Usenetserver account ($3.00 a day for a 3 day trial, or $15.00 a month), and mix liberally with one part NewzBin usenet archiving service. Add your favorite y-enc enabled newsreader to flavor to taste. Serves an entire campus, until your OIT decides to block port 119.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
I can't bring myself to download games, even the things at a place like The Underdogs which specializes in supposedly 'out of print' games to download. Out of print used to mean something was rare and worth something.
Out of print also means a variety of other things. In this case, it's just as likely that no one cares about the game except for the few thousand who will download it from The Underdogs.
One great way to do that is including good stuff in the box. Give me a color manual or include a poster. Maybe a CD with all the music from the game? How about liner notes with each game describing some part of development?
Or how about just lowering the damn price tag on these games?! $50 is just too much for a game, even Doom3 (though I'll probably still buy it at this price). Sure, putting some "good stuff" into the box might entice me more to buy it, but generally, one man's good stuff is most people's trash. Do I really want a color poster that will no doubt clash with the rest of my room? The CD with music will be pirated just like the game, so that's not anything. Color manuals get scanned, etc. You need to include physical things that are not easily digitized, e.g. action figures, 3D glasses (whatever, kids games), etc. But ultimately, I don't think many people care so much about these games. It's all about the bottom line. If the price is right, people will buy these games instead of pirating them.
Prime example: this past weekend, I saw an ad on TV for ESPN NFL2k5 (coincidence that it just got a /. story) and saw that it was advertised for only $19.99. I checked the IGN review, and a couple hours later, I came home from the mall with a new copy of NFL2k5. I barely even gave a thought to looking for a torrent or checking FTPs or whatever. Why waste my time when it's only twenty bucks.
If publishers and developers drop the prices of their games, they will capture all of the people that would have bought it anyways, but pirated it instead because the price was too high and it was more convenient to pirate it. Once the prices drop lower, then it's not that much more convenient to pirate the game and the only people pirating the game are those who wouldn't have bought it in the first place.
Funny this article coming up now, just an hour ago I was reading this article by UK games journalist Stuart Campbell, saying that the whole industry's holier-than-thou approach to piracy doesn't stand close scrutiny since historically such a large part of it is basically based on ripping off other people's ideas.
Stuart Campbell writes a lot of thought-provoking stuff on piracy... his main gist is that if games were cheaper and the industry didn't treat us with such contempt then they might sell more copies.
... mildly annoyed by this article? For those that didn't RTFA, here's the summary:
Look at me, I'm so great, I don't download games, I (and "gamers like me") am the greatest because of that!
When the whole article is written in this tone, it automatically makes me want to run to IRC and download all the latest games, just to spite the author.
...means more games that I have to uninstall my CD-R software to play, I have some choice words for them as to where they can stick it.
The most recent game purchase I made was Thief 3. One of my friends can play his pirated version just fine, but with my legit copy I have to uninstall the two CD-R utilities I have, and manually delete any reference of them from the registry before the game will load. Otherwise it pops up a dialog that says "Conflict with emulation software detected".
I can't return the game because it's open, and the tech support responce was to reinstall windows if I continued to have problems.
Gah! Is this really the way they encourage more people to be paying customers?
"He concludes by suggesting ways to make games more attractive again" Some things that would make games "more attractive again" to me are - 1) REASONABLE prices at release, not two or three years later in the bargain bins. (Where the game might not even be, and thus forcing us to go hunting in the OOP sites...) 2) Games that actually WORK as advestised on installation, not waiting 6 or 7 months later for multiple patchs & Bug fixes to do so. (If you can't hire somebody to fix your cr*p, don't complain when we have to resort someone who can...) 3) REASONABLE Recommended system requirements, and not having to dump practically half a grand to supe up pc before the game becomes decently playable each time. (If you can't hire somebody to program your cr*p tightly, don't be bitchin when we find someone who can...) 4) GOOD playability, and replayability, Not just play it once and discard like another milk carton. (We're trying to keep them from heading into the landfills, but you ain't us helping any by making non quality stuff that isn't fit for a freebie box at a garage sale.) 5) Either STANDARDIZE player interfaces or make them more configurable, so I don't have keep re-learning strange Keyboard/mouse/joystick setups as I move across titles while playing them. Carpal tunnel be damned! Getting Gamer's hand cramps sucks worse! (You wanna pay our Medical bills? I thought not.) . . . 6) Oh yeah, I almost forgot - STOP making silly arse Yet Another Year/famed one, and instead sell modules in which players can add in their own choosen "flavoring". (Hey, you know something? I've been so sick of the 'Yet Another Sports Title' game syndrome, that I won't even bother looking at those titles anymore... Can't live without marketing them ? Go ahead and make them, I'll just keep ignoring them, But don't be complaining that the game industry is 'tapped out' or whatever when you keep on making those stupid decisions.)
[Now, I'm off to lift my le... Um, visit... at another place.]