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Game Developers Should Ignore Software Pirates
wraith808 points out a story about remarks made by the CEO of software and game development company Stardock about sales in the PC game industry. His suggestion to other developers is simple: ignore the software pirates. From Ars Technica:
"'So here is the deal: When you develop for a market, you don't go by the user base. You go by the potential customer base. That's what most software companies do. They base what they want to create on the size of the market they're developing for,' Wardell writes on his blog. 'But not PC game developers.' Don't let people who aren't your audience control the titles you make, and ignore piracy. This is much like Trent Reznor's strategy, although the execution is different. Instead of worrying about pirates, just leave the content out in the open. The market Reznor plays to will still buy the music; he's simply stopped worrying about the pirates. He came to the same conclusion: they weren't customers, they might never be customers, so spending money to try to stop them serves no purpose."
Perhaps this is something that Microsoft should embrace for their own good...
"You mortals are so obtuse." -Q
But copy protection still stops a lot of piracy, especially for shareware authors and multi-player games.
Devil's advocate here:
Public game companies can't just ignore pirates because shareholders will be all over them for not doing anything about such a big "loss of revenue".
Yes, to us, CD-ROM protection and such is worthless and only encourages cracks, but a lot of companies use it as CYA, mainly to fill out the "due diligence" checkbox for the blank of "stopping IP loss", so when the copy protection stuff does get cracked, the company can shed crocodile tears, tell their shareholders at the next quarterly meeting that they did their best, but the old evil pirates beat them again.
Private companies, or those not shackled to having to keep their quarterly profits up, to heck with anything else, its different In the long run, not having some form of copy protection brings in more revenue because more people see the game and will at least pick it up, especially if it has expansions.
These days a lot of the money from games comes from places other than boxed sales. There's add-on content and online play. If you charge $5 a month to play the game, who really cares if the player pirated it or not?
Put identity in the browser.
The purpose should not be to stop copying, but to convince those who would otherwise get a free pirated copy that getting a hold of that pirated copy will not be something easy to do. If all it takes to get a free piece of software is downloading some file, you'll have many more people copying. While most of those people wouldn't buy the game regardless, some would have. The point? Make some security, just so that those who would by don't become convinced that it's really easy to copy. Do everything you can without impeding upon the normal, legal user's experience.
For a moment I read the title of this article as "Game Developers Should Ignore Software Patents"
TFA says "stopping piracy" is irrelevant.
That is... it doesn't matter to you, the profit-minded game publisher, how many people play your game. All that matters is how many people buy the game. If spending money on copy protection doesn't actually increase sales, then that money has been wasted: you would've been better off using it to make the game better, or just keeping it in the bank.
Strong copy protection might stop people from playing games they haven't paid for, but that doesn't mean it makes them go out and buy legitimate copies of those games. It might just make them move on to a different game (freeware or more easily cracked payware), or spend their time watching TV instead.
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FTA "So even though Galactic Civilizations II sold 300,000 copies making [eight] digits in revenue on a budget of less than $1 million, it's still largely off the radar. I practically have to agree to mow editors' lawns to get coverage... [Sins of a Solar Empire] has already sold about 200,000 copies in the first month of release. It's the highest-rated PC game of 2008 and probably the best-selling 2008 PC title. Neither of these titles have CD copy protection"
The game I work on, Mortal Kombat, sold close to two million units on all SKU's on the last release. Guitar Hero sales have just racked up $1 billion for the franchise. That's correct, $1 billion. When you're the top selling title of '08 on the PC and you're gonna make $2-3 million that's nothing compared to being just a contender on the consoles where you can make $10-20 million.
I won't believe it until Netcraft confirms it.
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I don't mean to sound like a copyright hawk (I'm not), but this advice is awful for game makers outside the freeware/shareware model. for one, no large game company is going to listen to this guy, so this ends up another tidbit for armchair game developers on slashdot to tell each other and assume it is true.
For another thing, it isn't true. It's bad advice on face. Any product which takes significant production costs but can be gained for the use of a user's time (read: free) will lose money if the product is sold at marginal cost--or, if the product is offered at some rate above marginal cost but that cost is avoided for most users. The nature of game design is huge up front costs and a probable revenue stream to make up for those costs and generate a profit. If the average user out there can costlessly pirate the game, a good deal of that revenue stream is lost.
This does NOT mean that games should have 100% piracy protection features. That's also stupid. It is arguably physically impossible to prevent a (non-remotely authenticated) game from playing on a computer where the user has custody. All of the required parts are there--it's the same argument for DRM. No one is going to generate a copy protection scheme for computer games with 100% efficacy. What it SHOULD mean is that a reasonable protection should exist to prevent most copying, just like plenty of games have now. No spyware, no intrusive checks. Just some reasonable authentication measures. All you need to do is prevent a good percentage of people who would pirate it costlessly by downloading it. Not everyone.
Steam is a flawed example of what might work very well. Steam can (probably) be spoofed, but who cares? Most of us don't spoof it. WoW is another good example, their game works on a subscription model, so it is almost pointless to pirate it. Q3 is close to the extreme--it's probably pretty easy to pirate it and the demo basically includes the game (for the most part).
the right answer is to find an envelope type solution. Envelopes don't prevent people from stealing or reading your mail. They don't even ensure that you can check 100% if your mail has been read in transit. but they deter the least motivated due to the minimal effort required (versus a postcard) and they deter others based on the threat of detection. there is no reason to build a piracy scheme similar to the HDMI demands--don't get me started. but it also is not even remotely realistic that major software companies will take a shareware outlook to piracy in the near future.
Public companies can do anything the hell they like, as long as the inform their shareholders - if they tell their shareholders they're not going to worry about piracy anymore, then those shareholders can feel free to sell and invest elsewhere if it bothers them.
Advanced users are users too!
Firstly, I would like to say that I work for a major games label, and I have specific knowledge of why we do put DRM on the discs, and I call bull on this CEO. I dislike DRM just as much as the next /.er, but we actually do have a damn good reason for DRM, and it has nothing to do with preventing you from making copies of the game for backup, or your friends, or putting it up on a BitTorrent tracker - honestly, we don't care about the individual small-scale pirates. That's why there is not Game-Developer-IAA hunting after college kids.
What we do care about is when somebody in the mastering lab, or somewhere else along the line in between when the title goes to manufacturing and when it hits shelves, decides to take the game to a wholesale bootlegger. What we do care about is when a bootlegger makes half a million copies of our game and gets wide distribution to retail stores that either don't know any better or don't care. This is a major problem in Asia, particularly China. Bootleg retail copies hurt us in two ways: (1) Obviously, we lose revenue, but just as importantly (2) Customers tend to blame us, and not the bootleggers, when something goes wrong with a store-bought game because it was a bootleg (CD's that start flaking, etc) - it's a major problem for the brand-name.
Yes, it sucks that backup copies are collateral damage in this battle. But you tell me a better method for us to guarantee that no wholesale bootlegging will occur, and I'll take it to my superiors.
It is going to become the defacto distribution for PC games and maybe even other opportunities with media.
Their library of games is huge and you can take them with you anywhere to play.
Actually there's a very valid reason to consider pirates: possible conversion into paying customers. If you provide a reason for someone who has already pirated to buy the game then piracy becomes a sort of free advertising. This is one of the good things about unique CD-key requirements on online games: it doesn't really prevent piracy, but it provides something extra for pirates to come into the fold in the form of multiplayer. It can even be legal. Just look at the spawn-copy and CD sharing systems blizzard implemented in Warcraft 2, Starcraft, and Diablo. Shareware also served much the same purpose. Sure you could get a full copy of a game off a pirate BBS back in the day, but if you already knew you liked the game you couldn't shake the lingering feeling you were being a total scumbag as you did it.
Find out why the piracy happens in the first place. Most PC users will not think much of spending $20 for a reasonably entertaining game or $50 for a great one. What went wrong? Lack of being able to complete the purchase 100% online? No substantial demo to help one evaluate if the game is worth buying or works on a particular computer? Need for "$2 per level pricing" so that people who loose interest do not hesitate to buy the next game? Lack of differential pricing for developing countries.
Most restaurants do not have problem with patrons running off without paying the bill. Game/general software industry needs to figure out how they encourage the behaviour that hurts them.
Trent Reznor's cost of manufacturing is quite low in comparison with the amount of effort spent on copy protection. A game that costs $200 million to make and hopes to earn $250 million can afford to throw $500K into copy protection without really hitting the bottom line.
As long as the Internet remains a free and open protocol (with the same effect seen in the sneakernet before it) then absolutely nothing will stop a pirate with half a brain cell. The trick is to find a way to not punish your customers who actually bought the product along the way. I hate the inconvienience of digging through a pile of hopefully unscratched from the digging discs to find the one I want to play. Fair-dealing here in Canada lets me use cd-cracks to avoid that hassle. I wouldn't mind seeing a two stage system for games, if you're online contact a authorization server to play (yes single player) so you don't have to have the disc in the drive *or* if the server is unavailable then require the disc in the drive. For me this would mean not even going into the grey area of cd-cracks because the hassle would be mitigated - I wouldn't be punished because others steal the effort of the developers.
As an aside, Information should be free in a perfect world but until shelter and food is then damn well pay what someones asking for their effort. You pay the publisher they pay the developer, they pay their employees, they pay their rent. Until that last requirement is removed then a effort sharing system (aka capitalism) is just required for luxury items. Linux is an example that sidesteps the monetary requirements in that the effort is spread around enough people that the cost per person is actually minimal. If entertainment matured more towards current open-source models then it could benefit from the same situation: organization - open model, sound, geometry, engine packs would mitigate entertainments profit dependence.
Shh.
Whining about pirates is like complaining about all the girls you could have dated. But didn't.
I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
> The first few bucks (say, on actually having a CD key) stop the 8-12 year olds who would just download it and play it. The next large chunk of money (some online authentication) stops another class of people from just getting the iso and the crack and running it.
Given the level and sophistication of the cracks out there, I'm not convinced that any of those measures stop very many people. Even an 8-year-old can download a crack these days!
Hell, there's even bnetd, which I'm pretty sure you can still find online, in spite of the lawsuit, which basically killed even the online authentication bit.
Shareholders aren't managers. A company's discretion is not changed wildly by their public/private status. Shareholders may vote, choose new managers, or in RARE cases, sue, but they usually don't get (or want) control over the day to day running of a business. Most shareholders aren't active investors concerned with specific policies. they are mutual funds, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and the like. They don't know and don't care. They invest based on fundamentals and their needs to diversify. That they would become involved in an issue this arcane is silly.
In my case approach of Stardock worked the other way - I have boxed versions of Both Galactic Civilisations and GalCiv II...and I even not really into 4X strategies! (though GalCiv II might be changing that, not sure yet...)
I wonder if they sorted out availability of Sins of Solar Empire in EU...not only I'll buy this game because it DOESN'T MESS IN MY OS (similar to..."scene" cracked versions of many other games), but I might actually like it a lot.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Raise your glass and say cheers, someone gets it! The people who pirate seem to have a common bond, they are not willing or able to pay for it. Ignore them and they will walk all over you, but at least your not wasting your potential profit trying to stop them. It's a "cat and mouse" game. If the cat catches the mouse, it just craps it out... there always seem to be more mice. Mice find ways around obstacles, even if they have to chew through it (reverse engineer) or sacrifice one of their own (get someone on the inside.) Mice tend to want to help one another. For the people willing to pay for it, they will buy it. Some want to taste the milk before buying the cow, even if it means draining an entire cow and buying another cow (beating the game and then buying it because they liked it). By putting a copy protection on a game, it just means that once the company goes under, legitimate owners of a media will not be able to recover or play an old archived version of a game. Many purchase the products and use cracked or patched games to get rid of the need for media insertion. This is especially true for laptops that make a humming noise when a disc is in or creates vibrations you feel while gaming. Don't waste money to create an hassle for the consumer. Waste the money to make it better for the consumer. Everyone hold up your glasses and say cheers. If you are not wearing glasses then hold up a glass. If one is not around you than pretend to hold up a glass (if you have no arms and cannot physically hold up a glass than you can still pretend to.)
"Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock, has a much different point of view: the pirates don't matter.... ignore piracy"
Uh huh. I call BS. With his Galactic Civilizations II, they didn't use DRM. You know what they did do, however? They enticed users to own legitimate copies by limiting updates and bug fixes to those legitimate users. At that time, he argued that DRM could be cracked and was burdensome on legitimate users. But - by offering upgraded service to legitimate users, he was aiming to make sure pirates had a weaker experience of his game. Brad Wardell is *not* ignoring the pirates - he's got his own ideas about dealing with them, but "ignoring them" is not his strategy.
Copy protection works for software. The error that most people seem to be making is thinking that if it doesn't stop everyone it failed. That is not true. Reznor's argument is only partially correct, only higher level pirates can not be converted. Lower level pirates can be, and they are more numerous. This also means that the most intrusive and questionable anti-piracy methods do not need to be used.
On numerous gaming forums over the years I have witnessed a recurring story. Kiddies saying: I burned a copy of my friend's disc and it didn't work so I went out and bought my own. Copy protection worked.
On a larger scale I am familiar with selling academic software in a university bookstore. I've seen required software sell 1/15th of what the required textbooks sold, software that was initially released without copy protection. The developer then added some copy protection, simple and easily defeated copy protection, a package that is known and had pre-existing cracks. It worked, the next quarter's sales of the required software was nearly in line with required textbooks. Copy protection worked. I'd like to add that this was in a university environment, no shortage of people with the technical knowledge to crack the discs for someone else. Also, these were pretty inexpensive software packages, the textbooks came with coupons reducing the price to about $30.
Most pirates will pirate software if it is trivially easy to do so, regardless of a low price. If you erect some sort of barrier a large number of these will buy.
Trying to stop all piracy is futile. But not using simple non-intrusives copy protection does cost sales. There is an optimal point balancing protection and incompatibility, and it is not zero protection.
This is what I've been saying about music. Ignore the pirates. Oh, same about all the stolen beer. Hiccup! Oops. Err wasn't me.
Keep telling yourselves that... as much as you want to believe otherwise, making this kind of stuff available for free does not make them more money, unless it's a completely unknown product. Oh I dunno, that depends on how much PC gamers have been annoyed by games that require the disc or games that fail to run due to over-zealous protection. I'd also say it depends on if a game gets a sequel or not. A no-sale on the first game may create a fan for the second. That no-sale in the beginning wasn't necessarily money lost, just not money earned.
I'd say more but I'm arguing with an AC calling people tards who obviously hasn't put any thought into what he's so opinionated about. Good night.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
1. If the company sees financial savings with no ill effects from abandoning invasive DRM systems then it's reasonable to assume that they can provide shareholders with the same graphs, charts, presentations, and analysis that would convince them that it's a good idea. If they don't like it then they can take their dollars elsewhere. they don't actually have any control in the company aside from the threat of selling their shares.
2. "Ignoring Pirates" wouldn't be such a big deal if the estimated loss due to piracy wasn't so ridiculously over-inflated in the first place. If any company has a hard time convincing shareholders that it's not worth worrying about pirates it's only due to their own fear mongering at a prior date.
Collector's Edition
No matter what a game company does to protect their game as in terms of copy protection, its never gonna stop the pirateing. about mostly only effective is the cd-key for online play, if person likes game enough for single player a lot of them will buy a legit copy to play it. Granted there have been private server cracks for pirated versions but usally for game is hard to find them, and its much nicer to just buy game and have axx to every server.
I am absolutely sick and tired of wasting money on these idiot game companies. I don't mind paying actual money for games; in fact, I PREFER to do so. But I have been burned very badly by these idiot game developers who have no idea how to architect things correctly.
Often when I used to buy a game, I'd find out that the rocket scientists in charge of development have absolutely no concern with what hardware I'm running. Especially the video card. They demand the latest and greatest card, which means I have to shell out a good chunk of money just to play their game. And hopefully there are no other compatibility problems with the other hardware and software on my system.
So, to play their stupid $50 game, I have to spend $100 or much more just to upgrade my system.
So I've given up on buying a game and praying that it works (feh - their supposed compatibility list is usually a lie).
What I do now is download their game off of bittorrent, and try it out in a VmWare image. If it works, then I'll actually buy the game. The reason I use VmWare is that it adds a layer of security, because there are a lot of free games out there which contain various trojans and whatnot. Anyone who would run one of these blindly is just asking for trouble. So that's why I will actually spend money and buy the game from the store, but ONLY if I know that the game will work first.
Or, to use the more popular recent buzzword in high-tech, consider it a try-and-buy.
This works out well for the game company, and it works out well for me. So yes, this so-called "piracy" is actually in the game industry's interest, and benefit.
Now, if only they'd learn about backwards compatibility and standards, then that would make my life a LOT easier. But that seems to be a rather impossible task with game developers.
they give you (or don't hinder you from stealing) the single player to entice you to buy the multi.
Imagine if blizzard gave away a single player WoW that you could play over hamachi with your friends...maybe you would even play it A LOT over hamachi with your friends.....but eventually (because the game is so good) you will want to play it online with more ppl. you weren't going to buy it anyway before you played it....what did they lose by giving you a piece of it?
that is pretty much exactly what occurred with sins of a solar empire with me. got the torrent, got sick of beating the shitty AI at a great game....played my friends (who also got the torrent) on hamachi (when they wanted to)...felt shamed for stealing such a great game (gasp) and wanted to be able to play whenever I wanted to...then bought it.
I am an unrepentant software thief and I bought soase. Maybe there is at least a tiny bit of truth to what he is saying.
I am not disagreeing with what you say in your post, just pointing this out.
You're missing the point. Piracy is easier than getting the game legitimately and will continue to be so as long as pirates can crack the game. Once the lock is picked, it's picked for everyone. Don't waste money putting a better lock on the thing, put your money into providing value for legitimate customers.
If you make the game just as easy to get legitimately as it is to pirate (remembering that you can't make pirating any harder), things become clearer. Pirates don't buy games and never will; honest people do and always will as long as you don't punish them for it. You can't stop the pirates and you don't need to stop the honest people; who are you protecting against?
...a pirated copy does not usually equal a lost sale. Duh. That's what I've been saying for years. People pirate stuff because they wouldn't or couldn't buy it in the first place.
I'm not talking about counterfitting, which is entirely different in my mind from piracy. Counterfitting is when someone produces copies of a product and passes them off as the real deal for profit. Counterfitters should go to jail for trying to make a buck off someone else's hard work. Piracy is when someone snags a free and obviously unofficial copy for themselves and no one makes any money off the deal. Pirates should be left alone because they're not hurting anyone.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
I think we agree (or would) on a lot of things. Offering a full featured teaser and charging for the (easy to police for copyright problems) multiplayer is a GREAT solution. That offers copy protection for the customers that want to pay for it in an inobtrusive way. That's what the guy isn't saying. It's not like they would be cool with you ripping them off for the multiplayer (though it is clearly possible). That's their real game.
He just needs to be clear about it. That isn't zero copy protection. That is smart copy protection designed to make customers happy, not pissed off. I like stardock. I like most shareware game companies. Since I grew up on macs, those are the only companies I knew, because most "real" games didn't get ported (except mist......woo....hoo....). Shareware companies have the right idea about copy protection for THEIR level of game making. If EA produced sins of a solar empire, you might feel less of a twinge about ripping them off. I alwas felt bad about ripping those shareware guys off because their site always made it seem like they were eating cat food and my purchase would help them feed their kids. The feeling of altrusism is hard to replicate.
They are on the way to the right idea. but they deliberately (because they are pushing their business model as teh awesome) are understating the nature of piracy (queue scary MPAA ghosts and PSA's about how ripping GTA means you fund terrorism). The low level piracy problem is converting those firs few chunks of potential pirates/buyers to buyers. The money still means that most game companies will choose the conventional route for now.
I for one will never buy a game that uses Starforce copy protection. When i bought Call of Juarez i was unable to play it without reinstalling windows because it was convinced that i was running a CD emulator.
Cd keys, online authentication and the like are fine, but there is a limit to what is really necessary. There will probably never be a game that cannot be cracked and redistributed (Although WoW came close) so the author is absolutely correct. Spend the time and resources on the game, not the pirates who will thwart you anyways.
Oh yea, the cracked copy of Call of Juarez I downloaded from pirate bay worked great, thanks pirates!
Please explain us carefully where DRM will stop any pirate bootlegging 1/2 million CD/DVD copy of a game. Especially that most crack appear within hours of the game being released. So a good bootlegger would break in/pay somebody inside to give an iso at the same time as the gold master is pressed. And the bootlegger would still have a leg on you, because frankly they probably have the same equipement as you do to press their bootleg, or can pay professional hacker to remove the freaking DRM. DRM was NEVER EVER against the bootlegger, it has always been against CASUAL copying !!!. And that is where the article shine : who cares about casual copying ! Only an extreme minority would buy the game instead of casually copying it. And that minority is MOST PROBABLY offset by people having problem with the DRM, be it software problem (freaking DRM don't always work) or philosophical problem (why should I root my PC for your piece of crapware ?). You are NOT increasing your market share by ANY means, you are lowering it !!
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
This is an amazing blogspamming circle jerk. Slashdot posts a summary about a summary on Ars, about a summary on TechReport, about a blog post from the CEO of Stardock.
RTRFA (read the real f'ing article) here:
http://draginol.joeuser.com/article/303512/Piracy_PC_Gaming
Dear Internet, please stop this crap, thanks.
I think the article is pretty insightful, and shares a lot of my own sentiments that I've had since the "Don't copy that floppy!" era. The average software pirate on the Internet is not within the publisher's potential customer base. Honestly, how many young adults do you know who have the money to plunk down on Adobe Photoshop, yet how many have it? If they weren't able to get Photoshop for free, they would not get it at all, and would instead go with a free (or at least cheaper) alternative. Net money loss for Adobe: 0. Popularity and word of mouth advertisement (maybe reaching those that DO have money): priceless.
Personally, I'm a starving college student. I also love video games. The problem here is money: I really can't afford to pay for my favorite hobby, yet I keep my finger on the pulse of the gaming industry. Unfortunately, until I graduate, I won't be able to contribute, effectively excluding me from the potential customer base (though rest assured, I do buy games whenever I can). Whether the publisher prevents me from playing their game or not makes no difference, they can't take money where there is none. Though, there is a boon... gamers come in packs. If I download a game that I end up loving, and give a glowing recommendation to my friends, they will pay for it. Sure, the publisher didn't profit from me directly, but this one penniless pirate hooked 2 or 3 paying customers that wouldn't have otherwise bought the product. The publisher still wins.
I have never met a person who could comfortably afford to pay for their games and does not. Though many do pirate games here and there, the game industry still gets their money from games they do buy. A person tends to spend an allotted entertainment budget no matter what; even if a game is potentially free, if the customer has money to blow, they will blow it.
please stay in your shell thinking that DRM measures of any kind work always work and shal stop anyone what they do is make the end user cost higher and justify loss of citizens rights in order to do this stupid stuff.
While I have a great deal of respect for the author, this doesn't help quite a few of the companies (and PC gamers) out there.
Basically, the position 'we will only attempt to sell to people who would prefer to buy over download' doesn't scale to big budget titles. There are a lot of gamers out there who like AAA, content rich games. These are the games that need to sell a million+ units just to break even. Ignore the programming - some of these games have dozens of artists and designers working for multiple years.
The 'make niche games' position doesn't help these developers (or the gamers who love their games). We're talking about shops like Valve and Relic here.
The game industry is certainly eyeing whats going on in the movie and music industries. The basic truth is that most people would rather download for free than vote on what they want to see in the future by buying it.
Consumers demands for content rich games is exceeding sales. This means that big blockbuster titles are likely take a hit similar to flight sims several years back. For some gamers, this is probably great. There are plenty out there who would love to see the death of the FPS/action genre if it means a few smaller games come out in their place.
Its going to be a rough few years as big devs figure out how to stay in buisness. Its likely to drive the 'big/blockbuster' titles even more towards the consoles which big markets and lower piracy rates so far this generation.
There's another wrinkle to ignoring piracy-- the DRM development concerns might take offense at you rebuffing their concerned offers of support, not unlike the 'insurance' offered by neighborhood protection rackets. This is the same outfit that had a pirated torrent of their game posted on the Starforce forums, by a member of the Starforce forum moderation team no less. Officially no harm was meant, but unofficially... come on. Ignoring DRM in favour of adding value post-purchase is the last thing that the copy protection racketeers want.
"What we do care about is when somebody in the mastering lab, or somewhere else along the line in between when the title goes to manufacturing and when it hits shelves, decides to take the game to a wholesale bootlegger. What we do care about is when a bootlegger makes half a million copies of our game and gets wide distribution to retail stores that either don't know any better or don't care. This is a major problem in Asia, particularly China. Bootleg retail copies hurt us in two ways: (1) Obviously, we lose revenue, but just as importantly (2) Customers tend to blame us, and not the bootleggers, when something goes wrong with a store-bought game because it was a bootleg (CD's that start flaking, etc) - it's a major problem for the brand-name.
Yes, it sucks that backup copies are collateral damage in this battle. But you tell me a better method for us to guarantee that no wholesale bootlegging will occur, and I'll take it to my superiors."
If Asia is so non-profitable because of bootleggers, then just don't sell your game in Asia. This is a perfect example of what Stardock's CEO was talking about. You're looking at the huge user base in China, but ignoring the fact that Chinese IP law makes the customer base much smaller.
Asking for a better method to stop wholesale bootlegging implies that you already have a method that works. This is yet another delusion that the games industry seems to have fallen under. Piracy, and to an even greater extent, bootlegging are not stopped by DRM. DRM has been a near complete failure for the games industry. All DRM does is force bootleggers to do things to the game that may make it less stable, and you just said that you get blamed for that.
The games industry is under the mass delusion that DRM increases their profits. The only people with measurable profits as a result of DRM are the companies making the DRM packages.
Stardock is one of the few sane game developers I've encountered. They have NEVER lost money on a game. They have NEVER made a bad game. For any other developer, that is called success, and commands respect. Yet, because what this guy is saying flies in the face of the standard nonsensical business practices of the games industry, "big" developers - who regularly make unprofitable and often terrible games - are thumbing their noses. It's very "high school" to be honest.
I don't think that's quite right. Quite a few shareholders do want to know, and do care about detailed aspects of the business. These types of things are the essence of detailed fundamental analysis, and knowing these things are what gives good investors an advantage. The better mutual funds' managers are all over this kind of stuff. They are not active managers, but they are active evaluators of management. That's how you try to make money in this space.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
Finally some common sense. :)
Focusing on what you want, who you want to please, for the benefit of them and yourself.
Piracy only hurts because they spend so much time and effort trying to stop it rather than on their product.
Using your time Constructively rather than destructively always produces a better outcome.
No, it isn't. Managerial independence to run companies is fundamental in making profits in the long run. And as short sited as investors are, part of the model for stock valuation comes from long run growth prospect versus acceptable risk and alternatives.
Due diligence is important, but is REALLY important for large individual shareholders. in other words, a large shareholder may be able to press a company into a course of events it might not have done so otherwise, but it will require a lot of pressure. Not only that, it requires time, and time is (presumably) precious for someone who has lots of money.
That is not to say that analysts and mutual fund managers aren't hounding companies to take action, but the OP's suggestion was that action by a company was precluded by shareholder interest, which isn't true in large part.
..the person quoted in the article to +5, Insightful. I think he's got the right of it, game pirates are always going to find a way around your protection scheme you spend $1,000,000 developing, so why worry about it? Most people will pay for the game anyway.
Surely the professionals selling half a million illegal copies to stores can circumvent the control measurements (especially those "must have cd to play" measurements). I always thought the control measurements were to "keep honest men honest", while those who make a sport (or a business) out of getting illegal copies will manage to find a way.
It does sound like a much smarter business strategy than the norm of giving *worse* service to customers than to users of unauthorized copies.
I never make unauthorized copies for a number of reasons, but I hate when I can't find the right CD needed to play a game I already have installed on the harddrive, or I want to play a steam game when I'm not online. Same for DVD's that won't play in my region, or won't allow me to fast forward over boring legalize, or music that can't be transfered to my favorite player.
The people I know who pirate the most also buy the most. They're games junkies. They can't get enough.
Seriously, Blizzard did this 10 years ago. If you have neat stuff online that pirates can't get to, there's more incentive to buy the game. LAN games aren't effected, (we're not going to buy 8 copies for one LAN party) but there's much incentive to buy, even if you're buying Bnet more than the game. You really can't stop local piracy, but you can require online accounts to require genuine CD keys to create.
All copyprotection does is punish your legitimate customers. Slightly different industry, but mining software is appalling for this. Surpac/Datamine/etc all have the most god-damn-awful licensing software on the face of the planet. If you were to run a cracked version, you wouldn't have to deal with it.
Effectively by going legit, you're paying to be fucked around by the licensing software.
Same with code-wheels, safedisc, etc, etc. Its an inconvenience to your PAYING customers that the pirates don't have to deal with it. Fuck that.
Include a decent manual, an additional online content (forums, news, ability to post suggestions for expansions, etc - whatever) for paying customers - but don't punish them.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Those guys sitting at home pissing themselves because ATI finally released drivers to use CrossfireX in a quad GPU setup with two HD3870X2's are the guys willing to take a chance on the new games, proselytize the games they like, and most importantly - pay a premium for the privilege ($50+ each). Developers can produce games for these guys and be somewhat at ease that they are going to recoup a good portion of their costs even if the game is a flop. Much more so than if they publish a flop that hardcore gamers aren't willing to try out. Who is going to pre-order Half-Life 2: Episode 3 if it is graphically similar to the original Half-Life?
Developers know that a few years down the road when an HD3870X2 is worth what your 9600 is worth now, late adopters will still be around to shell out $10-20 for the same title - and at that point it is probably all profit. Given a decent catalog of games, at the very least those titles will help keep the lights on.
"they weren't customers, they might never be customers, so spending money to try to stop them serves no purpose" really hits home. Case in point, I am a NIN fan, one who is willing to buy the latest album even if have not previewed it. Same thing with Stardock. I own GalCiv, GalCiv2, and SINS (and also a copy of Windowblinds). Sure I could have pirated these and used them for free, but why bother? It's easier for me to justify spending my hard earned cash on worthwhile products that I enjoy while at the same time supporting the developers who make the products that I enjoy. Wins all around...
Now. about that copy of CS3 that I downloaded... I'm at odds with this because I've grown accustomed to all the great features Adobe has provided. I can rationalize it by saying that if Adobe doesn't make a profit from me then I will not make a profit from Adobe's software, but this is still wrong and vexes me so. Not everyone that buys Photoshop is looking to make a profit from it and can justify it thusly, so I am still in the wrong.
And now to my point. I would some day like to be able to afford a fully licensed copy of Photoshop. If Adobe were to employ the tactics used by the RIAA and MPAA I don't think I would be inclined to buy anything from them and would instead seek out alternatives to support. However, since I have not been subjected to any raids or subpoenas, I do not feel threatened, and it is merely my moral fiber that keeps me in line. It is that same moral fiber that says "I shouldn't be using this, but I will, humbly, so that some day I may be able to afford it" rather than "Oh yeah. CS3 is MINE, bitches. Suck it, 'The Man'."
No it's not right, but it will do for me thinking that I'm morally superior to all the other pirates out there.
Meh, humility... Sometimes it's for me, other times it's not.
There is simply too much glass..
It has to increase sales by at least the amount that the protection itself costs. The includes all the costs which include not only the purchase cost (or development cost if you roll your own) but support costs (at lest some users will have problems with it) and potentially some lost sales from people who don't like or can't use your particular kind of copyprotection.
So it isn't just a matter of saying "Well this protection increased sales by X," it isn't worth the money unless X is greater than the total cost of implementing said protection.
Thus far I haven't seen any studies done on this sort of thing, so I wonder if it really does save them money, or if they sort of take it on faith that it does.
They follow their own advice, and it has worked so far. Galactic Civilizations II didn't have any copyprotection. They had a CD key if you wanted to get updates (not that you couldn't copy those as well) but the game had no technical measures to prevent copying. Well, it didn't just sell, it in fact did very well. It sold well enough that a number of retailers ordered a larger second batch (normally your biggest sale is your first batch, the rest are just to replenish inventory). For that matter you can download games you've bought by logging in to their software. However the files you download aren't encrypted or tied to the software in any way, they could be copied to another computer no problem. So they aren't just talking out their ass here.
Now will it keep working? I don't know, but we'll see. They just launched another game, Sins of a Solar Empire, that is supposedly the same, no copy protection. I can't tell you about it, my copy from Amazon hasn't arrived yet, I'll get it Monday.
While you are probably right that companies won't do this, that doesn't mean his view is invalid. He isn't sniveling that other people should make no money like him, because in fact they do make money. Also, while Stardock is small compared to many, they aren't a "shareware over the net" company. They sell boxed software in stores. Go in to Target, Sins of a Solar Empire is on shelves right now. Thus he's got some room to talk about how he thinks things should be done.
I will pipe up also - I agree with the approach recommended in the article. I came to the same conclusion years ago and it was based upon one simple fact: the industry (and this applies to the music and film industry also) seems to think that a downloader equates directly to a lost consumer (buyer), this is rarely the case. Most downloads are of content which the user has no intention of ever purchasing and would simply ignore were there no chance of obtaining the same benefit for 'free'.
Users who obtain a copy of digital media that can be easily reproduced can hardly be blamed for doing so, and should be left alone completely. What should carry severe consequences, is the re-packaging of someone else's content to create and sell non-legit copies.
The understanding of anyone who creates digital content should be this: dont expect people to not talk about, and freely share, the work and ideas you created and placed into the public realm. For profit, there are several ways to present legitimate users with a means of compensating you for your work. If you want to guarentee a 1-to-1 user-to-pay ratio, dont deal in an industry where the content can be, unlike a car or a house, instantly reproduced with no damage or loss to the original content (this is why software 'theft' can NOT be directly compared to traditional 'robbery', you know.. where the original user would no longer have the item which was stolen).
The catch is: Nobody has the right to re-sell your work without your consent.
Simply crack down, hard, on the people running entire illegal factories that churn out illegal copies of film,music and software, and ignore the average people who probably wont purchase your semi-decent product anyways (top-notch software never has this 'problem' of not selling.. isnt that something? *sarcastic*).
Now. about that copy of CS3 that I downloaded... If it weren't for people like you (us) learning Photoshop on free downloads, it would never have become a verb; and I wouldn't have pushed for 5 licenses of the CS3 suite at work.
In others words... don't use anti-pirating measures that might actually alienate your paying customers!
I'm a working game developer and I totally agree with Brad (CEO of Stardock) about how to deal with piracy. I sort of cheat by dealing with MMO's, but the basic principle is the same: Who gives a shit how many users you have? Our job as game developers is to make money (and also feel fulfilled artistically, they're not incompatible), so we need to focus on paying customers. Pirates are just a force of nature, and we need to manage them correctly (that thing that Titan Quest did where it crashed for pirates is just plain idiotic) instead of fighting a self-destructive war against them. It's kind of like fighting a guerrilla war in the mideast: there's no way to win.
Further ramblings are available on my blog at http://doublebuffered.com/2008/03/20/piracy-customers-and-making-money/.
Game developers generally put a lot of money into making the games harder to crack. The bad part is that they're still being cracked. So they lose money over nothing...
I'm starting to get to the point where I'll happily buy Stardock games without even bothering to check the reviews. Galvic II is...not spectacular imo, but a plain good game. SoaSE is pretty good as well, but in both cases it's the fact that a) they don't treat me as a criminal until proven otherwise and b) the sheer convenience of their distribution model that won me over.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
IGN
1. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
2. Sins Of A Solar Empire
3. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest
4. The Sims 2 Free Time Expansion Pack
5. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack
6. World Of Warcraft
7. The Orange Box
8. The Sims 2 Deluxe
10. Crysis
Courtesy of NPD
February's Top 10 Best Selling PC Games [March 13]
Amazon.com
1 Hoyle Card Games 2008 $12
2 [Logitech Laser Mouse]
3 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
4 The Sims 2: Free Time
5 Command & Conquer: Kane's Wrath [Out March 24]
6 Sins of a Solar Empire
7 SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition $15
8 Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War Soulstorm
9 World of Warcraft 60 Day Pre-Paid Time Card $30
10 The Sims 2 Deluxe
March 21 [early AM - updates hourly]
The Amazon list is interesting for its diversity - and for its demonstration of the endurance of a classic PC game. SimCity 4 for the Mac will set you back about $60.
There are free online servers for WoW, from what I hear. I'd be surprised if there weren't for any of the other online-only games.
Expansions and updates are also easily cracked.
The only (non moral) reason to pay for the online experience is if your friends refuse to use pirated versions. No use playing the game to spend more time with your friends, if you can never get to their (legit) server.
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
> But you tell me a better method for us
Don't get your cds pressed in a cheap labor country, like China. If you're in the US, get them pressed in the US, then sue the hell out of them if they do leak the thing. You get what you pay for. Pay less, get shoddy service. Also, why do you think that a person who can make half a million copies of your game would be deterred by DRM?
I know it's probably, most likely, not that easy, I appreciate that it's not your choice, that for global distribution it's probably easier/better to have multiple plants press your media.
The point of TFA is that you have your legitimate customers who you deprive of value. You call it "collateral damage", I call it "I'll buy from someone else."
> to guarantee that no wholesale bootlegging will occur
Either with or without DRM, wholesale bootlegging "occurs." This is not something you're going to stop, as has been demonstrated by DVD, Blue Ray, CD protection rackets of various sorts, etc. Any and all media are distributed freely over the internet. DRM lost (didn't see that one coming?) so it might be just better to create a better game for the money and run with the people who are willing to pay for it, your loyal customers, the one group you do not want to piss off.
Galactic Civilisations is a very good game. Yes - I probably could have just pirated a copy, but no, I bought it. I was actually persuaded to do so because of this account of a game. Very entertaining. Unfortunately, though it would run on my old Linux system under Wine with an Nvidia graphics card, it keep crashing with my new AIT card. Well, it crashes with the proprietary drivers. It works with Mesa but doesn't have any 3D acceleration which makes it a little tricky to play.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
That only works the first time. Also the hardware is usually sold at a loss while the profit comes from the game titles.
I'm fed up with Stardock attitude. They say they do not use DRM while using, the worst kind of DRM, in my point of view : online activation. ...
Sure there is a twist : when you buy the DVD, yes, the game on the disc has no DRM whatsoever. BUT, if you update the game, you are REQUIRED to activate the updated version online. Version 1.0 has no DRM, but version 1.0.0.0.1 which could fix whatever critical bug must be "activated". And with online activation comes all the usual what-if problems : what if the activation servers are down for whatever reason, what if the activation server denies the authorization because of whatever "reasonable use" rule implemented on it,
Stardock attitude is typical of all the others DRM defenders : trust us, our DRM is not really a DRM, 100% compatible, no problem ever. Like all the other, they do not tell the whole truth...
That's his point: we consider these markets "niche", because of the number of people who play them. But when viewed in terms of the number of people who buy the game, they're not niche markets.
So, in other words: fighting piracy with intrusive DRM is an expensive and risky undertaking: you reduce the value of your product in the hope that you'll succeed in staving off the pirates a couple days at retail, and you often fail at that.
So, factoring piracy in, what does your market look like? That's what you build games to.
Another sideswipe: much of the DRM out there is designed to prevent zero-day (or even pre-release) cracks hitting P2P. A lot of people seem to like to download their games. So why are some companies still releasing games to retail only?
I downloaded the first release of GC2. The first release of GC2 had some usability problems... for instance, when flying my constructors around, i didn't see their area of affect - so i was never quite sure where to place them for optimal play. First update came out, and it included a feature to show that... Granted, I probably could have found a pirated version with the first update. But at that point I had already determined that it was a great game, so I went out and bought it. I'm not saying that everyone did as I did, but I was really hoping to convince the company (with my money) that there were lots of reasons to make more versions.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
someone pirates your music, repackages it to make it look legit, then tries to sell it to your customer base? Like bootlegs and knock-off from Asia.
The kind of copy protection that people put on CDs won't stop that kind of piracy, because someone who has the resources to package music or games by pressing new CDs in a plant in Asia has the resources to pay for a high school script kiddie to crack the software before you make the master.
You need to make the game into an online service to effectively protect it, and if you've done that you don't NEED to protect the game, because the copy of the software itself isn't where you're making your money any more. Look at Second Life: Linden Labs has made the actual software open source under the GPL. They're making their money from fees, like people renting virtual land on the Second Life grid.
I don't buy that premise, either. However, labels have traditionally served as imperfect filters - screening out TONS of really bad music, and also screening out some good music. What they actually sell is selected based on perceived commercial viability, which may include a musician's appearance and stage presence and touring record as much as the quality of their songs - but musical quality IS a factor.
In many cases, big-label music is merely adequate in quality. But being an indie musician and having swapped CDs with a lot of other indies, I can tell you that there are ways of sucking, musically and lyrically, which do get effectively screened out by the labels.
Labels are dying, or at least shrinking. As that happens, more of the burden of listening to every wanna-be musician's stuff and screening out the crap, trying to find the diamond in the rough, falls on die-hard music fans. It's probably a better system, but if you're on the front lines of it, you'll quickly let go of the notion that "indie" = "better."
Your point about WoW is exactly what the article makes. Blizzard makes their money from the subscriptions. It's only in their interest to worry about people that crack the game and ruin it for paying customers. If a small percent want to crack and run their own servers, then what is the benefit versus the cost of stopping them... what is the COST to the good will from the PAYING customers if you put stuff like StarForce on their machines that trashes the CDRWs of the HONEST people? What the CEOs are saying is that the "perfect" protection anti-piracy companies are selling is a scam, more about proving THEIR software works and not increasing YOUR sales. Tt's often counter to your HONEST, PAYING customers intentions.
Note, Stardock has a login system to get patches, you may get the game, but you won't get official patches or updates unless you pay and register. Because they don't have to pay for protection per copy, they can charge a much lower price for the game than the other titles. Also, they aren't "betting the farm" on sales either. They have a diversity of products and only spend time and money on a game they feel they can recoup REASONABLY. They budget 100,000 sales as good, if they make more money, it's all profit, but most importantly they don't LOSE money up front. That's the REAL key he's not saying... they are not putting the company in hoc to make the "best game ever" like 20 other companies are. They don't need to have the best graphics, just really good, they don't need massive amounts of content pre-generated. Keep the games simple and replayable.
Compare to say Doom 3, big, complex, a financial drain on the company and investors, loads of highly specialized content that's not reusable, VERY short actual gameplay and not replayable, etc. Doom3 cost armies of artists and developer time for what? (it was a tech demo for an engine for games, more than an actual game anyway) Because so much money is sunk, the investors demanded putting nasty copy protection that trashes machines and upsets HONEST customers, etc. Of course you can STILL find it cracked before it ships! The Stardock guy is saying why bother, and release what you can Afford and make customers happy... then they'll come back and buy another!
"You need to make the game into an online service to effectively protect it"
I for one sometimes *like* playing single-player, non-online games. I play plenty of online games too. But, well, maybe my Internet connection's not working, or maybe I just don't feel like interacting with other human beings. Or maybe I want to play a game at my own pace. Many great games of many different genres would not work well as online games (for example, there are certain types of games where timing is critical (think high-speed racing games, platformer games, etc) where making it online doesn't work as well because of lag issues. Certain types of story-driven games where making it online doesn't work well either, because you want every player to start 'at the beginning' of the story and work through it at their own pace, instead of dropping into the middle of the story. Or games where player actions have actual real, meaningful impact on the story (something quite possible with single player games, or even networked games where a small group of people works through the story together - e.g. Neverwinter Nights, etc, but that doesn't work well with most online game models).
Also, as a customer, sometimes I don't want a game that I have to keep paying for forever. The online model usually also is based on the premise of companies making me pay perpetually to play the game (2nd Life is, of course, a little bit different in that regard, but it's also not exactly a game in the traditional sense; more of just a virtual space for people to hang out in). I kind of like the model of paying 20 or 30 bucks, then being able to play the game whenever I want without paying additional fees.
Valve did something really simple (old school HL fan here) that other's didn't. They actually kept a DB of the shipped keys. So you weren't just authenticating against the idea that a key COULD be valid, you were authenticating against the unique existence of a key. That's much stronger than most cd-key strategies out there, which is why it was so good at getting folks to purchase their (IMHO) really good multiplayer FPS's.
My Babylon
I for one sometimes *like* playing single-player, non-online games.
So do I. There's a big market for offline games. It's huge. I didn't mean to imply that companies shouldn't develop for the offline market. I entirely agree with the original article: companies that develop for the offline market are wasting their time with copy protection, because they can't get effective control over their product without abandoning that market.
is when the pirate is producing knockoffs that your real customers are deceived into buying, thinking it is the real thing. That kind of pirate you have to stop. Your customers are buying authentic copies from you instead of downloading/accepting free copies from a stranger for a reason. Commercial pirates are taking away that reason.
So the CEO of one of the most successful minor game companies out there "doesn't know anything about business"? You are aware that software pirates have NEVER been deterred by DRM? And that it's whether to put in legit-user-annoying DRM or not that is the subject at hand?
Compare to say Doom 3, big, complex, a financial drain on the company and investors, loads of highly specialized content that's not reusable, VERY short actual gameplay and not replayable, etc. Doom3 cost armies of artists and developer time for what? (it was a tech demo for an engine for games, more than an actual game anyway)
Maybe that's the problem. I still play Doom 1 & 2 on a regular basis, because they're great games. I'd love to be able to pay for more episodes of Doom that are as well designed as the original. As it is I have little interest in Doom 3, even now that I have a computer that can play it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
And it's not that they hate these cheap games, either. If they thought the cheap games were crap and not worth paying for, then pirating them makes no difference to the seller. But if you read their posts, they LOVE these casual games. They're eating them up. They whine and beg for someone to steal more of them. They talk about how much their children love playing these stolen games they're providing. They don't seem to feel that ANY price is worth paying, even the $8-per-game of a membership at BFG.
Most restaurants do not have problem with patrons running off without paying the bill.
Read Customers Suck on livejournal sometime. They don't have too much trouble with running out, because that's easily catchable. THey have a lot of trouble with bastards coming in, ordering a bunch of expensive food, bothering the waitress with special requests, and then inventing a 'problem' with the food they already ate and demanding that they get their whole meal for free. People suck. :)
I've gotcher 'Women In Gaming' RIGHT HERE!
if i could buy a cd with a game on it for a buck, i'd buy lot's of games
if you can't make money selling a piece of plastic for a buck, it must be a really lousy game
Extensive DRM not only hurts legitimate users, but it makes the game look bad to pirates as well. I've used many pirated games in my life. Making them work is a chore. The games often crash, have issues starting up, not to mention the DAYS of tinkering to get multiplayer going with my friends. I'm no psychologist, but what is the average pirate going to remember about the game? I assure you, it's not going to be that pirating is wrong and they shouldn't do it again. They'll remember that the game was buggy, it was a pain to work, he was miserable before the game even started, and his friends all feel the same way.
I'll admit, I pirated SoaSE. I put it on, tried it out, and it JUST WORKED. I played the game, tried out different things. Sure, features were missing, I couldn't play online, it didn't come with a campaign, but the core gameplay was there. I could try everything out, and play with my close friends, without ever once getting angry or frustrated. My friends all pirated the game, and they felt the same way. That's what I remember. Now I have a box. And so do they.
The conclusion, of course, is to stop developing games for Windows.
Games for consoles such as the Wii, DS or PS3, are much harder to copy, so although they have a lower installed base, the percentage of users buying the games is higher.
The same is true for Mac users. Although it's probably not harder to copy games, Mac users usually (a) have more cash, (b) are less accustomed to fiddling with their computers, and (c) usually only play a handful of games, so they are more likely to buy the few games they play.
Sorry, the same does not go for Linux users. Being accustomed to free software (and free games), they're less likely to pay for games. Even if they are honest and do not pirate them, they're more likely to think it's ethically wrong to play "proprietary" games and to look for "free alternatives".
The problem with ignoring pirates and piracy is that the pirates have an agenda - prevent others from paying. Sure, there are some isolated pirates out there that are just collecting all the software they can without any agenda, but in my experience this is a rarity.
The problem that pirates pose is their desire to "spread the wealth". They believe they have obtained something of value and their personal value (reputation, karma, whatever) will increase if they are able to spread this around.
It also must be understood that there are pirates and people that benefit from piracy. The pirates would like to think that there are no users, just pirates. They call the people benefiting from their efforts leeches but make few real attempts to prevent leeching from happening. The result is there is large ratio of benefiters (leeches) to pirates. The people benefiting from piracy probably wouldn't ever think of themselves as pirates. They just aren't the sort to turn down a free meal. Or movie. Or software.
Look at The Pirate Bay. Their sole reason for existance is to provide a means for others to benefit from the piracy of others. They derive their repuation and some level of revenue from providing a distribution channel. Now the consumer has a choice - they can visit Amazon and order a DVD or they can visit www.thepiratebay.com and download the same movie. This puts The Pirate Bay as a direct competitor to Amazon and believe me, there are individuals that want to spread the word.
This works the same way with software, for identical reasons. The piracy movement is evangelical, with the goal being the elimination of commercial distribution. When it is all available for free, what purpose does Adobe serve? Or Warner Brothers? Or some struggling shareware developer that actually does have a better application?
Secondarily, if I know about a great pirate software web site then I can get things that other people cannot. After a while, I can increase my value (reputation, karma, whatever) by telling others about the web site and educating them that they can stop paying and start downloading.
No, I don't believe for a second in "try before buy". If I go to McDonalds and get a free hamburger would I then buy one? No. After I have a high quality movie download and watch it why would I then run out to buy the DVD? The problem used to be that pirated materials were of inferior quality and you could get much better buy paying. This is no longer the case - most pirated media is from digital sources and is flawless. In fact, with the stripping of commercials, it can be said the pirated media is of higher quality than the original. So once I have a flawless movie or a working version of a software product, why would I buy the "original"? Well, I wouldn't. As for buying because of some sense of guilt, well, no. I was originally raised Catholic but that much guilt just didn't stick.
So sure, plenty of people making use of pirated materials are just collectors and not real customers. But the goal is to eliminate the revenue from the equation, and the pirates are currently winning. With higher broadband speeds more and more people will become digital "haves" thanks to evangelical pirates and people benefiting from piracy.
Can pirates be ignored? I don't think so. They are a economic force to be understood by anyone involved with entertainment or software. Discounting them is foolish and will lead to nothing but bankrupcy.
Heh, so in your words you are a "unrepentant software thief" yet when you pirate something good, you "felt shamed for stealing such a great game". If you had no qualms with what you were doing, you would never feel shame. On the other side, there is obviously some protection on the game or you could have played whenever you wanted to. So basically, the same could have happened to you with any software as long as the cracked version did not give you some functionality that you really wanted.
In any case, your friends can let you play WoW for free for a month with a friend invite, many games have demos, and you can always find a game reviewer you trust and base your purchases off that. Any magical "piracy made me buy this game" is just a justification for doing something you obviously know is unethical. I am not trying to change your ways...I honestly don't care. I just don't think that you buying sins because you pirated it really proves his point. You just couldn't pirate the full contents of the game.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Soldat is a sub-$20 game that is fully, entirely, playable just fine if you don't even pay for it.
If you do pay, -you- get the extra of customizing the player character (which is only two dozen pixels high) and you get a minimap (overview of the full map with your team players indicated on it, etc.). If you do pay, the developer gets some $$$ and is more likely to keep developing.
Just playing regularly at a major 'realistic mode' server from time to time, I know that more than half of the people who showed up as 'registered' didn't pay for it - but just wanted e.g. 'red jet flames' and didn't feel like spending less than $20 (I think the price back then was $9 and it went up to $13?) for it.
Pirates don't pirate because something is too expensive - they pirate because no matter what the amount, it's "not free". Nevermind that most of them go out on a beer binge every friday night that would have paid for it. Oh well.
For online games...
No matter how 'eleet' the group, no matter how skillfull, nobody has cracked, say, Blizzard's bnet key scheme. Sure, two days after, say, Starcraft came out, you could download Razor1911's 'cracked' game as well as no-CD patches. But, ten years later, there is still no way to play on Blizzard's network without using a legit key.
When done correctly, online-only games (WoW anyone ?) are impossible to crack (and, no, having a separate network, allowing to play in a separate economy, doesn't count as defeating the key-protection scheme). This is a fact.
And it's 'gg' for the pirates. pwned.
"Ignore Pirates, throwing money at them is a waste of money"... best concept voiced by a game industry professional I've seen in over a year. However, I don't think the Nine Inch Nails parallel completely fits. In the case of Radiohead and Reznor, they're allowing you, without remorse, to download their albums for free. If I didn't have much interest in helping the artists (which I, personally, do), I would be completely conscience-free to download the albums without any donation.
However, game sales are a little different. Simply removing all copy-protection doesn't say, "here, have my game for free." If it's still sold in stores, and downloaded off of corporate web-pages for money (even if you theoretically could borrow it from a friend and rip it), is psychologically very different from the Radiohead/Reznor model.
What it is is the traditional audio-CD model. Audio-CDs have no DRM, they can be freely borrowed, ripped and passed around, but for the most part, the audio-CD model works. And that's what the game market should be based off of. It's about convenience and level of security. For example: say there's a little shop in Seattle that has a sign "take what you want, donate what you want". Now, many people will pay, but some wont, and probably the owner won't make as much as they would in a traditional market, because most people will only donate the bear minimum enough to satisfy their guilt. Then there's another shop that has armed guards with AK-47s posted at the entrances, and a security checkpoint. People are going to stay the hell away from that because it feels like an invasion of privacy and a complete lack of trust/respect for the consumer. The best is something just to the right of the first example, where there is very strong encouragement to pay, that will make people feel horribly guilty if they don't, but don't scare them with guards. Make it clear that you expect compansation, but that their is room for negotiation and personal exchange.
Radiohead and Reznor may have been very successful with their model, but that's partially only because they are some of the first. People are currently very quick to support artists who have taken these kinds of revolutionary strides, so they're willing to donate quite a bit. If their model were to become common-place, though, people would likely just take advantage of it. Down the road, if corporate whores like Garth Brooks & Maddona were to do the same, people would be just as quick to say "fuck you" and bleed them dry, even if they like their music.
I very much respect the Radiohead model, but I'm unfortunately very skeptical that its really a viable solution for an entire market, or two. As much as I say it, I think this guy's just a big NiN fan (for Radiohead actually pioneered it first), and having fun spouting Reznor's name... which is cool cuz Reznor's a great musician. But I don't think that what he's really proposing is going to look much like the Radiohead/Reznor model.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
PC gamers are people who like to take on challenges on their computers, and feel a sense of victory and accomplishment when they use use their wit and skill to defeat a difficult level. The last thing you should do is turn the act of stealing your game into another challenge for them to conquer.
If you employ DRM, gamers will feel disrespected by your company, and they will feel pretty cool when they manage to defeat it. If you use no DRM, the gamers will feel that you trust them, that you "get it," and stealing from you would make them feel like cheapskates.
Publishers, and sometimes even retailers, require some level of copy protection also. Sure, Galactic Civilizations is a huge famous video game with no copy protection... but where is it sold? I've never seen it at Target or Fred Meyer. (Admittedly, they have a small game selection.)
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I know as a game developer that I certainly see many, many, many more pirate downloads than I do sales. I try not to stress too much about it, because giving myself ulcers really won't help. But most people do NOT pay. Which is thoroughly annoying when they then whine about, say, a lower art budget in the games they're ripping off. If more people /bought the games/ then it would be practical to spend more money on them... otherwise, as a tiny independent producer, I can't waste more money making a game than I'm likely to get back from selling it. I like having a roof over my head, thanks. :)
The pirate may be able to steal the game for free - I can't steal the custom content needed to make it. :)
I've gotcher 'Women In Gaming' RIGHT HERE!
Next thing you know, you'll ask them to start making movies/songs that don't suck! Oh the nerve, the nerve!
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
To you, Microsoft might appear to ignore piracy. To me, it does not. Otherwise, the maker of Xbox video game consoles wouldn't have joined Sony in the lawsuits that brought down Lik Sang.
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I've been working with computers since about 1978 - I remember the copy protection wars that took place with the Apple ][, et al systems of that era. Every time a game came out, we cracked the protection in a short period of time. Sometimes it was something unique, and it took a while because we had other things to do (like going out with our friends in the woods on our BMX bikes), but sometimes it took a short period of time.
But we cracked EVERYTHING that came out. EVERYTHING. Half-tracks, quarter tracks, spiral tracks, "over burn" tracks, polymorphic code, self-modifying code, "look up the code in the book" protection, dongles, etc...
All that crap the manufacturers tried and spent tons of money on was completely and utterly worthless at preventing us from cracking their protection. Most of the time we didn't even play the game more than once - it was more for the challenge of cracking the protection than anything else. We'd collect the games just like trading cards - just to show off and say "Hey, I've got Miner 2049'er today... U wanna trade for Choplifter?"
As we grew up, we moved into "real jobs" and cracked software because the protection created some PROBLEM for us. Either it didn't run, or we'd purchased it but lost the manual (or the page had a coffee/twinkee stain on it), or the dongle got eaten by the dog, or whatever... The software companies weren't willing to give us a new manual (or even sell one) or replace the dongle, etc. and we weren't going to pay full price for another copy, so we returned the favor and cracked it - best of all, WE saw what they could do to our fair use rights with the copy protection, hated that prospect, and cat'd the proverbial finger to their screens by cracking their protection...
As companies like Micro$oft came on the scene with Office, and started charging exorbitant rates for some "suite" of bloatware with a ton of features, 80% of which we'd never use, we asked for smaller suites to use - with targeted features, for less $$$... We'd be more than willing to pay for what we used, but the companies refused us. There were no other choices, and you *HAD* to use their crap to communicate with other businesses, so we cracked it. Or there'd be some activation failure, and the software would shut down, so we cracked it.
As Linux and open source came on the scene, and things were more and more compatible, we migrated to those solutions. Hell, some of us even purchased "support" licenses (although we didn't have to) because the price was FAIR, the software did what we wanted it to, and we wanted to support those entities.
But I digress - if companies want to increase their sales, they need to:
* Provide the product the customer wants
* Price it FAIRLY. Yes it costs to develop it, but $500 for an office Suite copy is assinine.
* Forget the protection and DRM. If it's priced fairly, the vast majority will purchase it. If it's not, expect it to get pirated.
* Don't piss off your paying customers by making the software difficult to use or "protecting it". Trust them. Be their friends, they'll come back and buy something else from you at some point.
* Stop worrying about the "pirates" - they're not buying from you anyway, and some of them are just doing it to add to their collection... Some may run it a few times, and BUY it if it's fairly priced...
* When faced with a country where the pirates are rampant - the solution is to sell it for a lower price - just above what the pirates are selling for, and make your version worth it to pay a bit more for. If those sales don't pick up, then sell it for the same price as the pirates are. The marketplace just set the price, so meet the price over there, and move on to developing the next version of the software....
>Sure, The ones I like only account for c.5% of the music I've downloaded,
>but I was never going to pay for that stuff anyway. The other 95% have lost no revenue.
Yes, but the *reason* you weren't going to pay for them is that you could pirate them. Therefor, piracy *has* cost lost revenue. Unless of course, you are as I suspect, one of the DOLIMBs (Drop Out Living In Mom's Basement), who has no money in the first place to buy music with.
Hoards of college and high school drop outs living in their mom's basement seem to believe that society owes them a free ride, free music, and everything they want without having to pay for it or work a day. Additionally, they are also convinced that they are unappreciated "computer geniuses" because they know how to install Linux, and becuase they troubleshoot their mom's Windows install (does this sound familiar slashdot?). Those of you expressing these views should be aware that in the real world, outside of your Vampire the Masquerade LARPs, and furry fetish clubs, you are held in contempt.
On the internet, you can pretend to be highly skilled professionals, but no one buys it. I'm calling you all out, and letting you know that I can tell the difference. No professional software developer I have ever met has told me that they "deserve" to steal free music, or software. Nor have many of the complained about the one dollar fee for purchasing music legitimately on Itunes. Thus, you complainers are revealed as the jobless fucks that you are!
So, DOLIMB's, feel shame that you have been unmasked. Please leave the internet (which is serious business!) and spend the rest of your life masturbating to furry cartoons and reading 4chan in isolation. Or, maybe, just maybe, stop feeling sorry for yourself, get off your bum ass, and go back to school and get yourself a job. Then actually paying for music and software won't seem such a burden!
The article is essentially correct, copy protection is basically a waste of the game developer's money.
I'm tired of having to keep a CD/DVD in the drive, as I tend to end up playing several different games each month, or going back to old games. Since I am swapping discs, I sometimes end up leaving one laying on the desk, and it can go unnoticed for a bit. I've had 2 game discs ruined by that, which is admittedly my own fault. But the game was already installed on my HD, so I should have been fine. I wasn't.
The only copy protection that I've seen be effective against pirates is what I like to call the "zero day release protection" that seems to happen. All games these days are released too soon, with little to no beta testing or Q/A. So, bad bugs are present when the game hits the shelves, and often times the bugs are fatal issues to the game. Without a patch to fix those bugs, the game is basically a demo disc. Unlock the full game by getting the patch that was miraculously available a few days after release, and the game works much better.
Really, I would much rather have to register my copy of a game so I can patch it, than have to keep the CD/DVD in the drive. Once validated, I'm good.
It's why I've played so many MMOs over the years. No discs in the drive, the game gets patched all the time, and I get new content frequenly in most of them.
I was really disappointed with Hellgate:London, as they made you keep the DVD in the drive for solo play, but for multi-player, they didn't need it. Why? Because they wouldn't let you play on a LAN, it had to be on THEIR servers. I found myself playing solo on the multi-plyaer servers so I didn't have to keep a disc in the drive.
Most copies released on Usenet and through torrents are zero-day releases, so there is no patch available without a valid/registered CD key. Pirates get to play a "demo version" that will crap out within 2 hrs of starting gameplay in most zero-day releases. They get to see if the game is crap, without having to use the real demo that is usually so spit-polished that nothing ever goes wrong. That's the only advantage I can see to pirating a game. You know more than the flawless demo shows you, which is often some of the best of the game.
I personally will not buy any PC game that I haven't played. So, the publisher has two options.
1. Release a demo.
2. I pirate it.
I normally purchase any game that I play for more than the first hour. Take it for what it's worth.
I pirated both games and only purchased one. The fact is, I felt Stardock deserved my money since it was a quality product.
Ok, so you don't want the large-scale bootlegger to sell half a million copies of your game. But does copy protection ever actually do that? I can't think of a game that was never cracked, and usually they're cracked 0 day or earlier. If even one person on earth can crack your game and put it into the warez channels, the bootlegger got the copy anyway. All they need is one. Does paying all that money for copy protection slow down the bootlegger? Of course, if you ask the copy protection people you are paying money to, they will say "Oh yes, it's working great!"
Glad to hear him say it, I always respected what Brad Wardell's said in previous interviews I've read. I have been saying pretty much the same thing since the 1980s. Every game that came out for the Apple ][+ back then was cracked, without exception. Some people spent a brief amount of time putting in some existing copy protection technology. I saw other people I worked for spend immense amounts of time putting self-encrypting/decrypting disk access routines into their code. Didn't make any difference in the amount of piracy as far as I could see. The pirates loved that kind of stuff, it was like a new puzzle to solve.
When one of my employers asked me to hook in the copy protection supplied by the disk duplication firm we used, into a Commodore 64 game, I hooked it in with one call in the bootstrap loader. Knowing that the average user trying to copy a disk image would be defeated, and the serious, assembly-tracing pirate (or anybody who got their games from one) would not be. Same result as if I'd spent extra hours, days, or weeks peppering more protection calls & other tricks through the code. (Plus more disk checks would slow the game down.) I spent the minimum amount of time needed to get the job done, and I went back to programming and designing "fun", which is a game developer's job. Not working on annoying copy protection technologies that don't even boost sales much.
It always bothered me in the 80s and 90s when the Software Publishers Association would report the amount of sales lost to piracy by calculating it as if 100% of the pirates would have bought a legal copy if they were unable to obtain a free one. That's just clearly untrue. But then, overestimating numbers ludicrously to support your point is a time honored human tradition, isn't it?
I'm in online games now, where piracy is mostly a non-issue anyway. But I was always glad a lot of people played my single-player games. As an artist, amongst those billions who would never want to buy my work, wouldn't I rather some of them see it and experience it, rather than none of 'em? Of course I do. I could wish they'd all give me money - but then, I could wish the Flying Spaghetti Monster would give me magic jellybeans that grant wishes, too. I'm a pragmatist, I try to shoot for things I could actually get to happen in this world.
-- Dr. Cat