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Game Developer Asks To Hear From Pirates
cliffski writes "Indie game developer Cliff Harris has long waged war against games piracy, but has issued a call to pirates to tell him why he is wrong. Assuming that developers are missing out on potential sales from disgruntled pirates, Cliff wants to hear specifically from people who have pirated his games. Not to criticize or lecture them, but to answer a simple question. Why? The reasons people give for copyright infringement/piracy are many and varied, but much of the debate has centred around music and movies, with big 'Triple-A' games an occasional consideration. With specific application to the world of small budget 'indie' games like those Cliff makes, he wants to know the thought processes behind people pirating the games. What puts people off buying? Is it quality, cost, DRM, ease of access? Is there anything that can be done to convert those people to buyers? While many pirates often make good general points about the reasons for the widespread pirating of PC games, it's unusual to get a chance to address specific developers with specific reasons. If you knew 100% that the developer would read your email explaining why you pirated their game, what would you say?"
If I can't try before I buy, I often just don't buy.
I "pirate" a game to see if the damn thing will work on my system.
If it does, and I like it, I buy it. I have about a dozen games like this that I play. Lots more that I've tried and deleted.
I still use the no-cd crack because that shit drives me crazy. It's lousy copy protection and it just pisses me off.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Arrrgh!
I think H2O's group motto will answer this one:
"Try before you buy!"
Either start making games on par with the demos you release (quality-wise, anyway), or make the prices on them lunch-money.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
i'd imagine that would be the case of many
Here's to finally giving Bush his exit strategy in November
It's easier. Pirates deliver a more convenient product at a better price. Plus there's that whole "information wants to be free" ethos to follow along with.
He's not wrong, and the pirates know that. There are a few excuses that are legitimate (lost/broken CDs) and some that are semilegitimate (abandonware), but most pirating is just people wanting something for free.
Also, pirates do it for fun. No, really, they do. Read some nfos from respectable groups like Razor1911, Deviance or Fairlight, and you're bound to find a note on "why" etc. They also tell warez-users to go buy the stuff they pirate. "If you like it, buy the game - we did!", or something in this context.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
I've never played his games, but usually I "pirate" because some devs/pubs feel it is necessary to install "copy protection".
I get rather annoyed when a game won't play because I have a virtual drive on my computer.
You mad
It's good to ask the question, I suppose.
If a game developer offers a demo a couple of weeks before final release, people really have no excuse for pirating a game. The game either works on their system or it doesn't. The game is either interesting or it's not. Beyond that, pirating is just because they can get it for free.
...and I will buy it, just like I have bought Sins of the Solar Empire, Galactic Civilizations II and Space Rangers 2.
Note that SR2 I originally passed as it was originally published - it had Securom copy protection, so I let it pass.
http://www.impulsedriven.com/ is Stardock's new system, looks very promising (and more friendly than Steam, which is also nice).
If I buy a game, and it won't work on my system, I am screwed. I can't get my money back. I've been burnt like this with a few titles in the past.
So, now that I feel that the industry has gotten their pound of flesh, I just play copies. Now and again a really good game will inspire me to buy the package to support the developer. Civ4 did this. Often the pirated game gets played a few times and deleted because it wasn't all that good in the first place.
Blar.
Because we can.
-Pirates
For the cracking teams, it's a challenge. For the casual leech, there are a million rationalizations, most of which boil down to "I'm too cheap/poor to buy it." Many are sorta justifiable, many are not. I'm poor.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
I think a lot of the true Pirates will avoid the contact because they'd be concerned about their anonimity. He'll hear from the part-time leechers and the 'try before buying' crowd, but the folks who do the actual work on cracking a game probably won't make a sound.
What if Slashdot did one of those 'ask-the-developer-a-question' forum, and they took the top reasons, then sent them in (with the understanding that the developer would get back with replies and/or rebuttals)?
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
- Doctor Who
I'm a lazy git who couldn't be bothered to pay if he had the money and wasn't a skinflint. Also, there's lots of games/movies/music out there that I want, I don't have the disposable income to pay for them all, and because I don't want to bother with deciding what's more worthy of my money I just don't pay for anything.
Besides, why should I pay for something I can get for free? Not trolling, I and masses of people think that way. The only way I'd consider buying a game is if it couldn't be pirated, and had a playable demo that made me want to have the real thing really badly. Hasn't happened in at least a decade, so good luck with that!
You just got troll'd!
While not directly pertaining to any Cliff's games - I can't say that I have pirated a single one... and perhaps a bit of a rant...
Take for example the impending release of Bionic Commando Rearmed. According to their own blog, it was always slated to be $10 http://www.bioniccommando.com/en/blog_entries/view/291 - According to them as a result of listening to their customers. However, just this last week, one week before it launches I might add, they go and drop the bomb that the PC version will suddenly cost 50% more. Now before we drop off into excuses (dev/qa costs or promised patch for additional content) or business ideas like "Well, it is worth at least $20 in the first place! and many digital distribution games cost $20 as well!" - let us consider the EMOTIONAL impact that had on me:
"What a bunch of jerks. Why don't they just charge the same across all platforms? What exactly are they trying to accomplish - weed the PC platform out? set it up for the poster child of software piracy?"
I am certain I just going to buy it anyway, and really $15 isn't going to break the budget... but suddenly I am much, much more interested in a "demo" - legitimate source or not - before I plunk down the cash.
Out of interest, how long do you normally spend playing a game?
3 weeks? 4 weeks?
I can't really see that putting the sale price of a game down to $4 is going to make much sense for all but the smallest of games...
He asks what he can do to "convert more people to become buyers". You can't convert people that wouldn't have bought your game in the first place. The only way to stop people copying your game is to provide more value to a so-called pirate such that the "pirate" gets more utility from the game by paying for it than by downloading it. If your game sucks and provides only marginal utility, even if he couldn't play the game for free the game he wouldn't have paid for it.
Because, among other things: sometimes even in this day and age, a game will ship WITHOUT wide screen support, and most times you have no way of knowing this until you actually install and try to configure it.
There is simply too much glass..
Not really for any specific reason, but here are some of them:
I earn money now. As a student buying that game was taking food/alcohol money.
I don't have less free time. I have to be more selective. I play less games and the cost to purchase is the least of my worries. In fact it probably saves me cash as if I was out doing something else, I'd undoubtedly be spending more money.
I like on-line a lot. I bought Battlefield 2 for the magic code that let me go online - and I've not chipped my 360 for the same reason.
Cracking stuff makes me feel guilty. I mean yes there's all the arguments about how paying for the game gives you a more restricted copy - but Oh I dunno. If it's a good game somebody has poured their heart and soul into it, and I don't want to make them sad.
Steam - I like steam. I go there, I buy a game (after playing a demo maybe) and there it is to play a few minutes later. I can't be arsed fiddling with CDs, I usally lose/scratch them. If I'd put my thinking cap on and designed my own online distribution system - it'd look like Steam.
I'm not involved in the scene. Getting a pre-Jap release of Metal Gear Solid through the post, complete with japanese stamps on the jiffy bag - that's exciting. Clicking on a torrent link or browsing usenet.. not really a challenge. Strange point this one, but I liked the days when stuff had to be posted, or tracked down to an obscure hidden FTP dir. Too easy now.
How to stop piracy? Well that's a tricky one as I think everybody has their own reasons. If you genuinely can't afford the game - then nothing's going to stop that person pirating it (and if there's been no sale to lose - who cares?). If anything it keeps somebody in the market for future releases and hey they might turn into me and start buying them when they can.
Possibly the other thing is to make the makers of games more important. If you've been reading the blog of somebody who is making something - or eagerly tracking the return of Sam and Max - then you're going to feel more inclined to show support and buy it. When some movie-tie-in appears on 9 formats the day of the films release from 'somewhere' - well I'm not feeling a great emotional attachment to the producers.
Final bit is that I think game makers are starting to be nice to us and understand what we want. We don't have it too bad. Compare what's happening with online distribution of music and movies..
The problem I see is game developers have the same myopic understanding of their products as the MPAA and RIAA have..
In the material world, matter can't be created or destroyed. So in order to sell a widget, you have to make a widget first, and when you DO sell a widget, you only get to keep a fraction of the money you make, since the majority of the price has to go into MAKING ANOTHER WIDGET.
In the digital world, information CAN be created and destroyed. it is very easy to create, and very difficult to destroy once created. So in order to sell a digital widget one merely needs to make a copy and trade material money for it. however, the party RECEIVING the money gets to keep 100% of that money since generating a new digital widget takes no industrial effort at all to make (or allow to be made) more copies.
As the internet spreads around the globe and everybody has faster and faster access to information, there's no scarcity. ONCE a program has been WRITTEN, it can be infinitely replicated by anyone who has a copy. ..So, crying foul because people are pirating or copying your digital products literally makes no sense. No one gets rich by digging one ditch. If you don't want your information copied, don't put it out there for people to access.
I'm not saying I have the solution for "piracy", nor am I attempting to explain the motivations behind "pirates". All I'm trying to illustrate is the physics of what the situation is for software developers, and music and movie producers, and all the other people trying to "capitalize" on the information age.
everybody's motivations in this matter are merely based on physics, not greed or morals.. enjoy the spread of computers, technology, and bandwidth! ^_^
-m
US$0.02++
1. I'm lazy. Steam lets me get the games I want without having to do much work at all. If I wanted to buy a game before I had to go to do the store, or order it online, which took time and effort.
2. It's portable. If I get a new computer, I just load up Steam and re-download the games I want. No searching for disks, or serial numbers. Steam also allows me to install the game on multiple computers (say a laptop and a desktop), and since I'm not using both at the same time, it's not a problem.
3. It's getting better. The process continues to be refined, and the selection continues to grow. If I pre-order or order bundles of games, I can sometimes save significant amounts of money.
I've generally stopped pirating games now that I'm older and financially independent. It used to happen a lot more when I was living under my parents' roof. That's not a real excuse. Still, I occasionally pirate games because:
1. I want to try them out first. In my opinion, 95% of games out there suck and I get tired of them in a few hours because most don't have any replay value. As a result, I usually pirate the games to try them out and buy them later or I buy from the used game bin a few yeas after they've come out because wasting $10 is better than losing $40+. There are some companies out there who've established such a good reputation that I don't need to do this. I've purchased every one of Blizzard's non-MMORPG games since StarCraft because they've yet to disappoint me and their games have such good replay value. I still play Diablo II and StarCraft every now and then.
2. DRM sucks. I pirated Company of Heroes and then I liked it so much that I purchased it. When the expansion, Opposing Fronts, came out I purchased that too since I figured the company is good at what they do. After installing it, however, I want to pirate it because the DRM on the expansion is annoying as hell. They check for media or you have to register yourself with their multiplayer server. Both of these things are annoying for me. I would much rather go pirate it so the stupid game doesn't nag me everytime I try to play it. This is AFTER I've already purchased the game.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
A lot of programs get pirated because they're not available through legit channels. For instance, Zero Wing gets pirated because it's out of print and the public doesn't know who owns Toaplan's assets. Another case: Over a decade ago, I tried to register a shareware application for Mac. I mailed a money order, but two months later I got it back, marked return to sender. I assume the developer moved without a forwarding address.
because I'm a thief and I don't value your work enough to pay for it.
One might hope this AC was joking, but I know a lot of cheapskates who (although more than able to afford to buy anything they want) are just too damn mean to pay for anything, no matter how much they like to use it.
Furthermore, I'm ashamed to say that all of these people rank among the most tech-savvy of my acquaintances.
Personally, I generally prefer to use free/open source software as a matter of principle, with the exception of OS X on this laptop. I have to admit to (very) occasionally using a copy of PhotoShop downloaded via BitTorrent. Though for the most part I am happy enough with Gimp; my reasoning, for what it's worth, is that I simply can't afford Adobe's licencing fees, so I avoid using their product.
Look, I don't want to pirate stuff. I'll happily pay to go see a movie, and I'll happily pay to buy a good game (without even downloading it first to try it!). But here's what I demand in return: treat me with respect.
I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but the above are my non-negotiable requirements for buying software in general. I'm not out to share copies or take anything away from you, but in return I want acknowledgment that I don't owe you any extra favors just because I bought your stuff. I'm your customer and want to have a good relationship with you, so don't treat my like an asshole just because other people ripped you off.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Yarrr.
If you read /. only, you'd be convinced, that the only people opposed to piracy are the big studios and their associations, who resell the works (intellectual) of the (maltreated) artists.
Occasional reports of exceptions (such as Metallica) don't count.
And now we have a word of an indie game-developer, who, it turns out, has been fighting pirates for a while already...
I guess, the only way for him to get a mention here is by trying to talk to the (almost) thieves... What does this say about our forum?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
In those cases, matey, I haves' t' take a short sail down to the Pirate Bay and download a crack or pirated version of yer game which I just bought. An' there ALWAYS IS one, matey!
So yer efforts to prevent pirates be in vain matey! And you're makin' life more difficult than y'should for yer payin' customers. And ye be forcin' me to expose my system potentially to all sorts o' malcontents whose code I'd like to keep as far away from my machine as possible.
Now that we've cleared the air, lad, I'll be takin' that booty.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Here are some of the reasons I used to pirate games.
1. The game is abandon-ware or really friggen hard to find.
2. At the time, I was a poor student that didn't have any money (you weren't missing out on my money).
3. To try out the game.
4. Obsessive-compulsive desire to collect games and archive them. A few times, I got in the process of collecting games, just because I could. I never ended up playing those games.
5. Too many competing products in the mediocre games sections to actually buy them all.
Here are the reasons why I have stopped/don't pirate.
1. Too annoying to camp out a torrent/download.
2. Too busy with work.
3. Many games just aren't that good/innovative/have replay value, to be worth my time, i.e. I wouldn't get them if they were free.
4. Online key codes. Gotta admit, this feature of registration for online play made me buy a few games.
To be honest, it was a combination of aquireability and availability. If the game was easier to get through other means I would. Nowadays, my interest in games has lessened and I have the ability to buy the few games I want, so it's more convenient to purchase the game over downloading it. I had some friends who were more efficient at and the games they downloaded (versus payed for) were usually obscure titles of questionable quality.
The same reasons could apply to music really. Does the customer have the ability to pay for the media and is paying the most convenient way of acquiring the media. When most people act in an illegal manner, it is not out of malicious spite to the creator of the media, but rather because it is convenient, easy to do, and the product is not excellent such that the user wants to own a physical artifact. I'm willing to bet that the major demographics of 'pirates' are adolescents who want everything but don't have the means to pay for anything. It kinda sucks that that's your target audience. They're kinda like zombies: they are legion and serve as a nifty buying force, but they will eat your brains given the opportunity.
So, back to the main question: are you losing a significant amount of money because of pirates. I'm inclined to say no because 'pirates' don't have the means or desire to purchase your product when it comes down to paying money.
Well... this could be a neat ploy for self-confession
why not:
I want to hear from people who murder. I think murder is wrong and I would like to hear why you murderers out there think that I am wrong.
Oh, and don't worry, we wont log any information about you *wink-wink* *nudge-nudge*
I say don't drink and drive, you might spill your drink. Before you get behind the wheel just stop and think.
Do not require me to leave the CD in. I have a bunch of games and don't want to dig around for the installation media every time I want to play it.
So I take it you won't play a console game unless it's on WiiWare or Xbox Live Arcade. Games for consoles that come on discs typically don't install themselves completely to the internal drive, and most games for one PC don't have multiplayer.
There are 2 good reasons why people pirate games, and it's no different then any other type of entertainment. #1 Is it the best you can make? A lot of games aren't made to be top quality, but to just sell. Unfortunately for them people have realized this, but that doesn't stop people from wanting to see the game. Many pirates already know they would not buy the game, because they have a feeling it doesn't meet their expectations. For many pirates it's like they know it sucks, but they have a shred of that it doesn't, and their curiosity draws them to play it. It's like someone made "Back To the Future 4" and everyone knows it's going to suck, but because people were such huge fans of the previous movies then they're compelled to watch it. It works sorta like that. #2 Take notes from World of Warcraft. Single player games are nice but people are really into multi-player. Unfortunately there are 2 types of multi-player games. First type is single player games that have had multi-player glued onto them, like Doom 3. Second type is games built entirely around multi-player, like Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament. What people really want is Co-op game play. The option to play with friends, but also the option to play by themselves at any given point. People wanted to see more Co-op type games for a long time, and nobody has really satisfied that. By moving games to a more MMO like experience, then players will pay to play, but it has to be good. There were plenty of pay to play games before World of Warcraft and those games don't have over 10 million players like WoW does. Make it a good game or don't make it at all. If Blizzard can turn a series like Warcraft into an MMO, then anything could be turned into a MMO. People are really ready for this type of gameplay. I still wanna see a FPS-MMO type of game.
I don't pirate games, actually. I just don't happen to own that many games.
I have Steam. Paid for a handful of Valve's games. I have Unreal, from the boxed set. Have StarCraft & Brood War. Don't play those often, except with friends. Maybe once a month at most.
I have more freeware games than you could ever count, including the Touhou suite and a few other shmups, and a massive folder of Flash games. Pull those out whenever I'm bored and not in class or such.
(I know that Touhou's not free, but the developer explicitly endorses piracy of it outside Japan, since it's not sold outside of the country. Quite the chill guy, in my opinion.)
And I'm the typical casual gamer. Very few of us actually pirate out of greed and malice. Most of us only do it out of necessity.
~ C.
I think trying to address just "pirates" is oversimplifying the issue. I can think of a number of separate motivations for why game copying exists, and this amounts to a number of different personality types.
1) the fear - you only have to shell out decent money once for a crappy game to want some form of guarantee or trial period.
2) the pragmatism - playing a video game is fun, but you can live without them and spend your money on something more practical. If it's free, you'll play, but if you have to pay, you won't. (Note that counting these people as "lost sales" is a fallacy.)
3) the challenge - the age-old root of of game copying is those that like a good challenge/puzzle, especially when adding the stroking of the ego when there's a group in a quasi-competition.
4) the greed - this is the professional pirate, who lacks any qualms about doing it, and knows there's some money to be made.
I download anything before I buy it, and no, I don't buy a lot of what I download. However, I tell people about the stuff I download, and they do spend money. I have made people go watch movies by showing them screeners. Several of my friends bought the Orange Box, Bioshock, and Unreal Tournament III because I showed it to them. So if anything, in my case, more money is spent because I pirate. Plus, if I download a game, and I won't buy it, I delete it. Because if it isn't good enough for me to buy, I don't want to play it. So there goes the whole lost money idea.
The percentages of each of these might be interesting to find out. More important, however, is the percentage of people who didn't buy your games who pirated them. Since, I would imagine, most people on this planet didn't buy your game, and only a tiny proportion played it at all, then this number is almost insignificant. The correct question is:
Why did people who didn't buy my game not buy it, and how do I change this?
Whether these people pirated it or not is a side-question - a distraction. I can give you my answer to this:
Beyond that might be the price. I haven't looked at how much you charge for your games - three reasons not to buy them before I even found out what they were about made me stop looking - but a lot of companies charge a lot more for games than I would consider them to be worth (especially in comparison to something like a DVD or a book).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It is also a case of not "wanting something for free", but more of "not wanting to pay upfront for something that may suck". Right now buying a game is effectively a gamble based on whatever other people had to say about it. So it is, of course, easier to download "full version" and see if it lives up to its ratings. But the problem is that there's no easy way and no real incentive to purchase the copy of the game if it *is* good.
In fact, I wonder if distributing a game for free and then having an easily accessible "pay us" button would work. I know that I'd pay this way in an instant if the product is good and I am using it.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
I don't need to login, I want to play a local single player game.
Most games aren't as single player as you think. If you can't phone home, then you can't download or upload scores.
My main reason for pirating games is availability, price is usually not an issue. In this day and age it's a bit silly that I need to go buy a physical box to play a game on my PC. And in the Netherlands, buying the box means you'll have to find the damn thing first, as there are not many good game shops around. Most games are sold in electronics stores, who do not pay much attention to what's new and hot.
I've bought a good many things through Steam. Fast and mostly painless. You let me download your games (or movies / music for that matter) and don't apply too much DRM, I'll pay your fee.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Long out of print software tends to fall into one of those wacky grey areas that pirates like to create for themselves-- like the '24-hour law' regarding console ROMs. In this case, people have latched onto the term 'abandonware' to describe software that's no longer being produced, and never will be produced again, to validate making it available for free. Some companies send aggressive cease and desist orders (Sierra On-Line being noteworthy for this), but many others are defunct and their IP rights tucked away in some dusty, disused office. Unsurprisingly, abandonware is mostly a games thing. After all, there's more nostalgia and curiosity tucked into the games of yesteryear, than the spreadsheets.
I like getting games for free, and generally know I'm not going to play them enough to justify the price tag. I'll buy plenty when the prices have come down, and do own mostly original games but quite often I'll want to see what the fuss is about so I'll download it.
That 'model' would only be spread by increased taxes. I don't know why people will buy a book but the minute it's a film or a CD, it becomes like some contention point where they 'couldnt possibly pay for THAT!'.
I buy DVDs, games when I like the look of a film, have been recommended it, or have seen it before and want to own it. I buy it because I vote with my cash to say 'yes, I approve of this, nice one, have a beer on me!'.
Regardless of what anyone thinks of royalties etc etc, they DO, as well as falling in big boys pockets, also get passed to the rightful people, no matter how small, and that matters to me.
There's no R18+ rating for games in Australia
Cynical answer: "But there is emigration from the Australian censorship regime if you'll find another country that will take you and your family. If the game is important enough to pirate, it is important enough to leave the country for. In some cases, leaving the country can even be cheaper than the statutory damages for copyright infringement (under US law, see Jammie Thomas)."
Not that I believe anything in the above paragraph.
I hold the notion of intellectual property to be legitimate. In practice, I don't "pirate" games anymore, for a handful of reasons (very few games coming out recently that I'd want to play being a big one), but I don't think there's anything wrong with doing so.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Let's say 500,000 people buy the game, let's say 5,000,000 people pirate it and then play it as much as the people who buy it. Near as I can tell, there 290 million people in the United States who ignored the game. I would be in that latter category. To get 100,000 more sales one needs to convince .2% of pirates or .035% of the population to buy. Which seems easier?
Let's imagine that 50% of piracy is self-help try before buy. Well, there's maybe locking it down harder and hope that that doesn't reduce the 500,000 or increase support costs as honest people stumble into locked down situations. How about a 30 day pay before play policy. Well, some of those 500,000 will second-guess their decision after playing the game for a while. So... can the game beat a 16% conversion rate for the 3,000,000 looky lous? The lower the rate of looky-pirates, the higher the conversion has to be in order to break even.
I gather making a better game is prohibitively expensive?
I kinda smell that this question has the makings of a FreeCiv type of game.
living in brazil, these usually are the reasons for piracy. Many games only reach our market several months after the game was released, and with a price most gamers can't afford to pay (prices like a quarter the average salary interns earn).
Personally, i have been avoiding piracy the most, yet distribution still forces me to go pirate. Recently i tried to purchase Civilization Chronicles directly from the US (since no store sells it in brazil), and no US company would deliver it to my country. So, my options are very limited, and priacy is the only one that looks reasonable.
"life is a joke, and someone is laughing at me"
1_Your demos suck, so nobody risks buying first
2_Your marketing sucks, so nobody is interested (see #1)
3_Gamers are tired of spending money on crap games (This sounds vaguely familiar to the RIAA's problems)
4_You have no concept of how to sell games (See #1-#3) and comments that nobody knows of your games.
5_Your games are not written for multiple government regulatory bodies, so often pirating is the only way to play your game.
Proforma summary: Video games are not like baseball: Build it and they will come does not apply.
You have to market your games just like anyone else with a product to sell. From personal experience I can say that the average person does not see/notice games advertisements. I can't tell you what games are out there, but I know a few places to find mainstream news of them. Perhaps you might advertise there, and you know, do some marketing when you have a clearly playable non-sucky game?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I bought a very expensive micro-pc and it has no CD/DVD rom drive. This means that I have to burn an ISO of whatever CDs and load them with daemon tools so I can use them. Granted, not everyone has a micro-PC, but I can think of several laptops that do not have CD drive simply because they are so thin that the drives don't fit. The computer may otherwise be perfectly capable of playing the game, but since nobody wants to lug around a big external CD drive, so they burn a copy of it instead!
Flash drives are getting to be pretty cheap now, why not sell the game on one of those?
this is obviously just my opinion, but unfortunately most games suck these days. in fact in my life i have only actually purchased 3 games; Lemmings, Sim City and Civilization (several versions)
The problem with most new games is that all they developers concentrate on is graphics, they have no strategy, every game is the same just walk around point and shoot BOOOORING!!
Except that instead of keeping a few scripts to themselves, they try to sell ALL of them. Even if they totally suck. It's even moreso for cheap, low-budget games. People's expectations these days are high...really, really high. Everything that doesn't meet those expectations, they can play those on their cell phone and figure they can get a freeware version anyway. Take your cheap games and position them for the cellphone/smartphone market instead of trying to compete even with outdated stuff like Unreal and Oblivion, Guild Wars...or even the newer stuff. (I'm always 2-3 years behind on games, mostly because I wait until they're heavily modded first).
I don't play many games, but when I do they're either bargin-bin console games, or the occasional pirate ones. I would copy a game if I couldn't find a copy of it anywhere and I couldn't get it easily (such as Resident Evil 2), or because I wanted to try it out (Doom 3, cracked).
Like almost everyone else, I will gladly get a cracked copy of a game if the original has draconian copyright protection on it that prevents me from playing the game. If I know about such methods ahead of time, it can be a deterrent to even buy the game at all.
Now, as for paying for a game, there are two ways I'll do that.
* Intrusive is anything that pops up in game, flashes at me, pre-game nag screens, or anything that delays start-up or game play. The old-style Doom-esque exit screen is fine. A note underneath the "press start to play" screen is fine. If anything shakes, moves or flashes, I'll be looking for a pirated edition. Example: FoxIt's free edition has a small box in the upper-right corner of the screen that changes color every few seconds that says "buy FoxIt Pro" over and over. It ends up in my periphery, and is UNBELIEVABLY annoying when trying to read a PDF. So much so that I just went back to Adobe's reader, and I HATE Adobe.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
I buy all of my games (Which are all PC games). I use the original media to install them, then I store the disks in a safe place where they will not get dirty or scratched.
I fire up a game and get a message : "Please insert disk one of <Insert game name here> into your CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive." People around me can hear my teeth grinding every single time!
Let's see... If I want to play many different games, I have to keep all the disks handy. Every single time I switch from a game to another, I have to switch disk. Furthermore, I have a lot of data stored on DVD, so every time I want to access it I find some game DVD in my drive.
Do you even wonder why I use No-CD/No-DVD patches? I see it like patching a problem or bug with the game.
I used to pirate games simply because I could. Looking back, though, I only played about 1/4 of the stuff I downloaded. I guess you could call this the "Pokemon mentality"; I had to collect 'em all. Besides, I was a student who couldn't afford to spend $50 on new games, so they weren't exactly losing money from me.
Although I have more discretionary income these days, I find that most games simply aren't worth $50. Maybe $10 in a bargain bin, but definitely not $50. And if a game isn't on Steam or Impulse (Blizz games excluded), then it doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned. So if you're a game developer who bitches about piracy but fails to put your game on Steam or Impulse, I really don't feel sorry for you.
But if you enjoy a game, please support the developers by purchasing a copy.
Because 90% of the products on the market fucking suck.
Hey Cliff,
This is going to get modded flame bait but this is probably one of the reasons why your games in particular are getting pirated and not so much bought: people are downloading the pirated version, trying it a couple times, but because the game play is boring and repetitive, they are deleting it.
Your games are all the same with different graphics, they're all the "tycoon" style simulations with minor variations. I know this is probably not what you want to hear, but most people are generally good in that if they play a game a lot they will buy it.
Your games are niche and your intended market isn't going to be going online and downloading them, they won't be that savvy. Your market is looking for them on the shelf at bestbuy and getting roller coaster tycoon instead.
If something looks interesting... I'd like to give it a try without forking out $50 for it.
I think any gamer has shelled out good money for a buggy, short, or downright bad game. We never got our money back. Why should I commit my hard earned money to try something I may not like?
Paying $9 for a bad movie is one thing... but paying $40+ to try a game is just too much of a risk.
Am I the only one who wonders if this is just a surreptitious way to collect IP addresses, etc. of those who bootleg games?
If it is good, and I've got a pirated copy working, I still 'buy' a copy, but never bother installing it (if the cracked version works fine).
that way, I'm supporting the devs and I've got a working game.
Here's my reasons why I do not buy most games - and why I go out of my way to buy some..
1. Copy protection - There should be nothing in a game preventing me from making a copy. There should be nothing in a game that installs 3rd party bullshit on my computer. I would rather not even enter a unique code. Face it, no matter how great of anti-piracy software there is, if I buy the game it inconveniences me - while the pirated version that is easily downloadable on the Internet will not have those inconveniences. If I want to loan the game to a friend, and let him play it a few days, LET ME FUCKING DO IT. I BOUGHT THE DAMN GAME.
- THINK ABOUT THIS: Anti-piracy efforts typically only affect the people that bought and paid for the game. They are always an inconvenience. In all circumstances, the pirated version on the Internet (and it will exist no matter what game, no matter what copy protection), has most of those inconveniences removed - though the game may be missing material, have new bugs due to anti-anti-piracy, and generally have less value to the opinion of the game.
2. Pricing - Every damn PC game comes out at a ridiculous price - $60, $65, even $75.. and every damn PC game is $19.99 bargain bin after 3 months. How about make the price somewhere in the middle and keep it there. I'll buy games on release date if I knew the price wasn't gonna fall by 2/3 in a month. I think $25-30 pricing for games makes it almost more convenient to buy it - provided my other points are considered.
3. Community support - Let the community mod the games - and support them! Nothing is better than a game being released and the community taking over and creating unlimited amounts of new maps/levels.. unless the developer puts some of their own resources back into the community.
4. Pirates buy games - Yes, many pirates also buy games. When I actually had time to play PC games, I pirated many and bought many - and I definitely bought more games that the average person. Consider that. I don't like being called nasty names when I feel perfectly fine with my reasons for pirating - usually too much copy protection.
5. Don't make me have to insert a damn CD when I play the game!!! I bought the game. The pirated version doesn't make me insert a CD, why should the bought-and-paid-for version? My cd player is in my computer on the floor at the corner of my desk - and I'm a lazy gamer that doesn't want to have to open my book of cds, find the right one, and insert it! oh wait.. my cd is scratched. fuck me.
6. Stop being so goddamn confusing with the patches! I have 'pirated' games I bought just because installing the original cds, downloading the patches, installing them in order were so annoying and time-consuming. Here's how you do it. Release a game. It is version 1.0. Patch it. It is called patch 1. Now the version is 1.1. Every new patch should not require the older patch. There should never be a game version like "Awesome Game 1.01.07.0003 p004 with Nvidia enhanced drivers". WTF is that.. That makes me wanna turn my brain off and play Xbox.
7. Offer refunds. Yes, risky.. BUT DO IT. I bought X3 Reunion and was not able to play it for a long-ass time because I only had an external cd burner due to their fucked up copy protection. I posted on their forums. I was told everything was my fault and nothing was their fault. Think I'm ever gonna buy an Egosoft game again? Fuck no. Note: You would most likely have to offer 1/10 as many refunds if the game did not have copy protection. And, 'this game sucks' is not a valid refund request. The reviews are everywhere. If someone buys a game rated at 44%, they deserve to be out the money.
8. Bump up the minimum requirements. Don't say the game will run on a P3 1ghz with 128mb ram if it needs a Core 2 duo at 2.6ghz with a Radeon 4850 just to look decent! Why? Because Joe-dumbass will buy the game and try to run it on his son's shitty laptop with Intel integrated graphics. After doing that once or twice, guarantee he will becom
--- We need more Ron Paul!
I think it boils down to a whole bunch of conflicting and opposing reasons, and there really isn't one real reason much of the time. On one hand, I've bought a game I was intending to pirate because I walked by it in Walmart and the price was low and the box looked shiny... It made me want the original, manual, map, etc...
On the other hand there was a game like Dawn of War that I was intending to support because some friends of my friends were involved in the development. I ended up becoming very cynical and disillusioned with the pricing scheme of the game, where they issued like 5 different versions with slightly different playability, and all with high prices. It was a complete and utter cash grab, so I made up my mind to pirate all of them, instead of fork over the several hundred dollars that they would have cost together.
In my youth, I pirated games because often I could barely even afford the media I copied them on. I've pirated some games, liked them so much, and then bought the original when they came out with an improved "game of the year" version because it was cheap enough and I didn't feel like re-downloading it. Some games I've pirated, utterly loved, and not bought the original after out of sheer laziness, lack of memory, apathy, etc. Sometimes because I never saw the game in the store. The reason for piracy is a multidimensional formula that accounts for greed, cash on hand, laziness, opportunity to buy, chance, quality and enjoyment of the game, sense of loyalty and fairness, convenience of having no CD in the drive, DRM... Sometimes it's just a love/hate feeling of a publisher. Seriously, I'm less likely to care if I pirate a game with a Microsoft logo on it.
Sometimes it's a feeling that all information on the Net SHOULD be free, and that all the capitalists making money right now are just a dying breed of dinosaurs, and that pirates are just the small mammals who are nibbling at the still twitching and not quite dead corpse. What would a world without copyright look like? Seriously? Some people want to try and find out, and on days where my apathy isn't overwhelming I would love to see that too, just to see what happens. I don't thing anyone really knows for sure.
I'm sure I missed something, I'll add it later if I remember.
It happened to me multiple times that I bought a game and A: It didn't work on my pc (of course I can't return it and get my money back) or B: the game sucked (of course I can't return it and get my money back)
I downloaded Uplink (illegally) and because I thought it's a work of art I bought it the same day from their website, just to support them
I'm not evil, I just want what I paid for, nothing less, hopefully more
I disagree. You call it "Grunt Work." I call it "Increasing replay value."
The unlockable weapons as they pertain to TF2 are there as as an incentive to strive for. Obtaining them only changes the game play mechanics slightly. The new weapons don't significantly boost a players ability to kill off a large number of opponents. As we've seen so far, they all come with an intentional deficiency of some kind in order to keep the game balanced.
That said, I take issue with how Valve implemented the medic achievements. Some of them are damn near impossible to obtain through regular game play and thus the reason for "achievement servers" that have sprung up to help people grind for them. The pyro acheivements IMO, are actually more acheievable. I hope the planned Heavy achievements are along the lines of the pyro.
Do not read this
While i don't remember playing any of his games here are some reasons why i played pirated games. Time rich and cash poor: As a college student i had a lot of time to play games but no money to buy them. What little money i did have i spent on rent, books, beer and a computer that could actually run games. Convenience: Downloading a pirated game is easier than buying a game. No entering payment information or creating accounts. No need to keep a cd in the drive, just mount the image and play. Price: Pirated games are free, if you don't know wether you'll actually end up playing a game or not nothing beats free. Quality: Most games are crap, no really absolute crap. Most games just aren't much fun. They are invariably buggy and require frequent patching, support is horrible at best. When you've pirated a game you don't really care. But when you've spent a weeks disposable income on a game and you don't even know if it'll be patched up to a playable standard it's hard to not feel ripped off. Risk vs Reward: Where i live pirating software is risk free as a consumer. So the only thing that will force me to go out and pay for a game is a quality product. Add in some great value that is harder to pirate like great online play (think battle.net etc.) and i'll buy it. I don't play purchased games as much as i do pirated ones: Call me crazy but i played the hell out of Quake 2 pirated, i purchased quake 3 and hardly ever played it. Pirated EU2 and loved it, bought EU3 and played it once. Pirated FM '06 and '07 and played it for months, went out and bought FM'08 and played it twice. Now i didn't have any issues with this since i figured i owed them some money for the previous games. But i'm not going to go out and buy a bunch of games that i might not even like or play. The only games i know i'll play to death before they are released are by blizzard. Diablo 1 and 2 were fantastic and i know im going to buy AND play diablo 3. You see, i just can't predict which games i'll like. I can pirate a dozen games and i might end up playing one of them for months and as a consequence i sometimes buy the sequel. Demo's are useless to me, i haven't installed a demo in over a decade. If i want to try out a game i can just find a pirated copy online and see what the game is really like.
The problem is that copy protection actually decreases the value when compared to a copy, from the customer's view. The copy lets him run it however, whenever and wherever he pleases. The original requires him to register, to keep a CD in the drive or even to verify his copy every time he plays. And to make matters worse, often the original even plays slower than the copy due to protection issues. I've seen copy protections that were so insane as to run parts of the code in a proprietary virtual machine. Can you see how this MIGHT be killing performance?
All this causes at the very least inconvenience, at worst a serious quality hit, for the customer. The copy is actually better than the original!
Additionally, when you install draconic protection mechanisms, people (like me) will likely not buy it at all. Spore is a game I want, but if EA doesn't step down and remove that braindead SecuRom protection, I will not buy it. That's actually one sale lost due to copy protection that should create just what it just destroyed: Sales.
Someone who wants to pirate, no matter what, will still play it. Any kind of protection can and will be broken. It may take a few days longer if you create nontrivial protection, but in a nutshell, breaking it takes less time, manpower and resources than creating it. It's like trying to fortify a castle. The defender has to protect all sides. The attacker only needs to create a hole in the weakest one.
Instead, offer a customer additional value to his game. Give him free downloads. Give him a discount on sequels. Give him a discussion board and let him make suggestions for sequels, that also gives you free input for features your customers want. Show your customers that you don't just want to make a quick buck (no matter that you actually do), but that you do care for them.
You can't convince people to buy your game when the original is worth less to them than a copy, due to comfort issues. Increase the value of an original by giving your customers more than what they'd get when they just copy a game.
Even if that only means we have to print posters and manuals again instead of selling shrink-wrap CD jewelcases. Yes, that costs 5 bucks more per unit. But if that's the difference between making a sale and not making it, it's 5 bucks well spent.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's been my experience as well -- the crackers who broke one of my games (in three days -- took me two weeks to do the protection)
Thanks for making that point. Let me ask you this: how much better would your game have been if you spent those 2 weeks on development? ;-)
Better games sell better, logically and in practice, and you're no farther behind in "losses" after those 3 days without a crack.
(No offense intended, but you'll know you're in the big leagues when you get 0day'd.
Copy protection is like building a narrow bridge out of popsicle sticks.
You can brag about how intricately you crafted the bridge, and you can't get anywhere without it...
But it's awkward, so nobody else wants to use it, it's not wheelchair accessible, easy to break, and people looking for a thrill will just swing across and bypass it completely.
I reckon software developers are more pissed off by the time and money they waste, rather than the inevitable underground distribution.
But some of them just really enjoy playing with popsicle sticks... it's all a game from start to finish.
(Feel free to post that on your wisdom blog. ;-)
1. I was cheap.
As a teenager in the early 90s, I had about 1/30th-1/15th the cost of a then typical game coming in as pocket money each week. If I skipped lunch each day, I could maybe boost it to 1/5th of the cost of a game each week but I went hungry a lot.
Realistically, the only way for me to play the games of the time (Strike Commander, X-Wing, Stunt Island, etc.) was for two or three friends and I to each buy a fraction of the games and let the others take copies in exchange for taking copies of their games, ourselves.
Not noble. But when you're twelve or thirteen, nobility doesn't really factor in when compared to getting or not getting to play all the games the magazines were hyping up.
My best suggestion for this one?
They don't really have the income, nor are they going to get the income. You can't find a way to make people without money more profitable today.
What you can do is find a way to give them an alternative other than piracy so it's not so habitual when they finally do have money. Plus you can build their enjoyment of gaming so, when they do have money, they ultimately spend it on games. Perhaps some kind of a deal with after school computer clubs where the school systems get licenses for the games if the school wants to open them up after hours? Yes, gaming hardware, yadda, yadda... but many indie games don't push hardware in the same way.
2. Quick Network Game At Work
Everyone deserves the right to get a humiliating kill in on their boss from time to time. Getting ten or twenty people to all have a copy of a $50, just so they can play for an hour once a week, is plain crazy.
Games with real demo modes... get played on the demo mode (and those that enjoy it at work go and buy the full game for home use). Games with no demo modes get no CD cracks. With the number of discs needed, quick math has everyone asking, "Do I feel $1,000 bad about copying?" They never buy a copy afterwards as they already know how to crack it.
Solution 1: Good demos. The real old kind. Think Doom where you could play the first third of the whole game.
Solution 2: Charge for the server, online multiplayer, single player content. Give the LAN client away. Add a few extra loading screens to the LAN only install that remind you that the purchase gets you so much more. Let it serve as your advertising where you'd never get the sales anyway. 20 players all tempted to buy the full game if it's good beats the hell out of 20 pirates or 20 people who're playing something else.
3. A Lot Of Games Suck
Sorry, harsh reality check. We've all been burned by games that bought advertising on game review sites and strangely got very prominent placement and a more glowing review than they deserved. You only have to drop $50 for a Matrix game that sucks mightily, a D&D game that constantly fails its saving throw vs. crash to desktop, or Doom 3 that looks amazing yet leaves you staggeringly bored (holy crap, did I just imply I miss Romero?) and you get jaded fast.
In my case, now I'm older, money's less of an issue but time is, I tend to just skip a lot of games entirely. In the past, I'd take a copy just to try it and then... well... I had a copy, what was the point in finding $50?
Solution: Good demos again. Ones with a real, appreciable, chunk of the content.
You want to be even smarter with extra content? If there are eight chapters to your game, give away chapters 1 & 2 so people get a good chance to try it. Then offer the choice... The $40-50 box buy for all the rest or they can just buy what they want at $10/chapter via online activation. This way, your barrier of entry to the next chunk is WAY lower.
4. Nothing In The Box But Digital Data
Digital data can be grabbed from the internet or copied from a disc.
I remember a time when manuals came packed with back story, maps, hints and tips, walkthroughs of the first level or two, tables of information on spe
I think one problem with selling especially those small independent games is that people who are generally interested in pirating games usually have some warez sites bookmarked. The less press a game gets, the higher are the chances that those people stumble upon the cracked version before they even know about the game.
They just download it and either try it and delete it, or they may even play it every day for several weeks but they will never even once visit the original website of the game. So normally, there is no way to communicate the value of those games to them and therefore no way to win them as customers. However, if the game is fun, some will probably visit looking for support, a patch, expansions or a sequel and still, there is no way to make them buy it if they don't want to.
The only way left is then trying to delay the warez version as long as possible so people will read about the games on news-sites before they see the torrent on piratebay. Since tougher copy-protections usually only annoy buyers, I would honestly suggest to release many patches that add features and fix bugs but also render previous cracks unuseable. Pirates want the latest version, too; some will perhaps pay for it.
When I was a kid I would pirate games because I didn't have the money to buy. Now that I have the money to buy, I buy if I like them. But the thing that would make me pirate a game is if I've bought the damn thing and the disk goes bad and I can't get it replaced. I bought it once so I should get to keep it.
Ok, I am not targetting a specific type of media here and instead focusing on piracy in general. Here is the biggest arguments that I could think of.
1. It is cheap.
This is an important reason, especially for those who are in economically bad situations. Children, Low salaray workers, Unemployed, etc.
2. The entertainment cost is untied from the amount of media you consume.
This is probably a more important factor than the first one for many. Not having to worry about spending x here and y there is liberating for the soul. Most of those heavy consumers that buy a lot but pirate even more probably fits into this category.
3. It is easier than buying things.
It is simply easy to pirate things. Just type into a search engine and get a torrent file back that you can use to get the media. Takes about 10 seconds.
4. Pirates tries to deliver high quality products.
No DRM or cd checks. High quality video encodings. No advertising before movies or that interrupt the tv shows. No streaming that you can't skip forward or backward in and can't replay at will. Playable on standard equipment. Storable directly on harddrives (not having to deal with annoying cd/dvd discs). Should I go on.
5. Can target money to the products you like.
This is self explanatory. Try before buying is the name of the game here.
6. Sharing is caring
Didn't know what I should say in the heading, but this is basically the community argument. Piracy is a life style for some.
Trying to fix point 1 and 2 is pretty much pointless. Piracy has a huge advantage here. Especially on the second point. The best you can do is to be efficent so that you can keep a not too high price. Also, target people that actually have money and are willing to spend it.
Point 3 and 4 is where you can make the biggest difference. Make it easy to buy/download with lots of information. Make it easy to use. Also, provide things that pirates don't. Possibility to save games online. Global highscores. Online play. And make this kind of functionality noticable enough that those who are pirating may consider buying it just for the feature. Finally, a user that is disatisified because of artifical limits can very well turn to piracy just because of that. DRM and other restrictions, as well as selling the same product with different quality at different prices are things that should be avoided as much as possible. (oh, and make sure that the consumer knows that your products are easy to use and doesn't contain DRM if they don't. Not having annoying DRM is a feature that should be marketed)
Point 5 is an important one. There is some opportunity here. Make sure you provide the demo as widely availible as possible, and that includes uploading it to filesharing networks. Selling secondary products works with some media. Especially music is big here, where you have the concept of concerts. For games you should make it easy to access the company from within the game. Maybe showcase other products for example or a newsfeed for the game. Everything to guide people who havn't yet bought the product to actually buying it. Finally, as it is pretty much impossible to get torrents removed from torrent sites, you should instead try to get what little you can out of it. Place comments linking to where you can buy the real product that looks like they are made from a fan of the game. Just don't spam or people will get annoyed and suspicious. And no, there is no need to post your own torrents.
Point 6 is a tough one. The safe way is to not mention piracy at all. Staying neutral is a safe bet. But it is also possible to embrace piracy, giving it a half approval. This allows for some free marketing but is also risky in a business perspective.
I pirate everything else, but I don't pirate games. Playing on cracked game servers suck, and I only buy games for multiplayer.
I would say that Game piracy and business applications live a completely separate life and have different economics around each, so it's smart to ask the question specifically about video game piracy.
One thing to consider, is the life of a 12 year old is at the mercy of whatever "mommy would buy". Obviously a kid can save up his pennies and buy things, but ultimately that doesn't happen all that fast so a kid can only get so many things with the saved money. So the next way a kid gets games is asking them from mom. These kids are hit by so much target marketing that there are tons of things these kids are asking their parents for. At the bottom of the list are the things the kid can get themselves.
Piracy lets kids get around parental censorship (not letting them play some games) and also enables them to play all the games that they feel like playing.
Vdeo game software piracy is very prevalent amongst teenagers. In a way it becomes their status symbol amongst their friends as "the guy" who can get all the warez. They build a sense of confidence that they can hook up all their "friends" (people who use them for warez). It gives them a sense of confidence that they can do something. Some of these kids never even play most of the games that comes through them. They end up just collecting and having it "on hand" incase anyone wants it.
As these kids grow up, they eventually get a life and start weighing time vs money. So then, any game that is super huge (4 x 8GB DVDs) they will weight whether or not they're going to actually play it. And if the media has hyped it up enough, they'll go buy it. But anything that remains convenient they will just "grab". As time moves on this same behavior changes from games to 'appz' as "their friends" are asking for different things.
The place where software piracy ends is in user subscription services. If a kid could become a member of a 'free software group' for $20 a month, basically piracy ends. You take the power away from the kids to 'hook up their friends', and it empowers the kids to get anything they want, any time, and also allows parents the ability to censor and audit what they're doing.
Your software will always be pirated as long as it's fairly small (fits on 1 or 2 DVDs), not largely in the media as "the game of the year", and doesn't have a subscription policy.
ON THE FLIP SIDE, you have to consider that your piracy is 'free advertising'. And there is always a pool of 'rich kids with a life' that don't do 'warez'. So as the kids at school are talking about the things they are playing the rich kids want it too. So as long as you are writing great games and giving people a new experience, piracy can help. And eventually even a hardcore pirate will buy a game if it's something they keep going back to over and over again. I would say a MAJORITY of the software pirates have purchased software at one point.
One last thing to consider is that most software pirates are so busy collecting and distributing the warez that they don't use them. This is their game. This their fulfillment and excitement. They will extract a game, install it, play it for 15 minutes, then delete it and say, "huh huh, cool.." (in true bevis and butthead fashion). So unless you're the "most have game", locking down piracy won't really increase revenues. It will decrease distribution and awareness of the game resulting in an eventual complete lack of recognition of the game making you have to put more of your own money into advertising.
IF you want to increase your ultimate bottom line of more revenue, distribution, and awareness, here's what you do. Make a KILLER MUST HAVE GAME.
Perhaps the pirates feel that information should be free, no matter what and no matter who is hurt by it because nobody has the right to control it. Game publishers don't have the right to control the information that is their game by doling out demos and making you pay for full versions. The decision on whether to _tip_ the publisher is up to the player. Each individual act of piracy does not necessarily hurt the publisher. Whether your individual act does is between you and your conscience--and thats where it should remain.
That could be a good way to demo a game though, especially multiplayer games which generally get played for a long time, a couple of dollars a week or a one-time fee of whatever the game costs?
It is much, much faster to download many games/apps than it is to drive to Best Buy.
IMHO, this is THE million dollar question here, it's more important to find out WHO, than WHY.
I remember when Sierra released a multiplayer game called Tribes. It had absolutely NO copy protection. It installed completely to the hard drive. No cd-key was required to install it. It never performed a CD check. Even though it was multiplayer only, it did no online checks. Even the crudest CD-writing software could make a simple backup. I remember reading a developer blog which mentioned that at peak times, there were about 50% more people playing Tribes online than actual CD's sold. However, the game made a decent profit, and Tribes 2 was given the green light for development.
This would be extremely useful information to justify expensive and time consuming DRM and anti-piracy schemes. I have not seen any studies done to see who pirates games.
If you knew from a valid study that 99% of the people who pirate your games are less than 15 years old and live with parents, you might not spend as much money on incorporating DRM in your product.
This would be an excellent PhD topic for some business graduate.
However, if the study returned data that suggested a majority of your pirates are people in their 30's making over $80,000 a year and owned a Prius, then something to prevent trivial copy/burn might be justified.
I bought a PS3 a couple of months ago. I've so far bought 12 Blu-ray discs, and no games. The reason is the games are far to expensive. There are plenty of cheap PC games around that are only a year old, and costs about a fifth.
When buying games I stay away from anything with heavy DRM, as I hate that stuff. It makes life hard for legal customers who pay for games.
All of the Blu-Ray discs I've bought (except one miss) is region free. The DVD-regions have annoyed me so much over the years, that I just won't buy anything with region coding any more.
So I stay away from DRM (including region coding) as much as I can, and I stay away from the expensive games. The only exceptions are some must-have stuff.
Also my moral belief is that copying should be legal in a non-comercial situation. But still I think people who can afford games/movies/music/software should buy most of what they consume.
I don't pirate your games. I've never ever played them. I have no intention to play your games. However, except in the rare instance where I don't try before I buy, ever potential game is treated the same.
As an indie, your biggest concern should be the price. Are you pricing your games accordingly? If I can spend $15 more on something done by a faceless corporation and in turn, receive a product of quality that is considerably higher, guess where my hard earned money is going?
Unless your game is exceptional, phenomenal, do not charge $20. I can guarantee your game isn't worth that much. At that rate, you are also scaring off potential legitimate customers too. $10 or $15 is a very good range.
Audiosurf is a good example of an indie game done correctly. The creator didn't go overboard. They kept their focus and kept the game small because of that. That gave him more time to create higher quality sound and graphics too. While it's all still simple, it's presented in a fashion that's just right. $10 is the sweet spot for that game. I might have bought it for $15 or even $20, it's that good of a game, but at $10, my mind screamed at me, telling me I had to buy the game.
Just keep these things in mind. Don't go to big with your games. Other areas of the games start to suffer in quality if you do. And just keep the price low. Simple high quality games even grab the attention of a hardcore gamer from time to time.
I've never played any of his games, but looking at his website made me feel uneasy. The way it was structured, screenshots here and there, texts, some quote about how great the game is from a "trusted" magazine or source. It feels like it's TV Shop or some program that promises the next Garden of Eden and you simply can't live without it. It makes it feel like it's a scam just waiting to happen. I believe most of us have seen these kind of websites when searching for a specific kind of software.
All the excuses for warezing games or using emulation over the actual item(recent hardware like the Nintendo DS notthe Atari 2600 doesn't count) is just an excuse for people to justify that they're a thief.
If they're demoing it t hen there should be an rise in sales at some point. You can't say everyone that priates a game to demo it find it to be shit when they're often found playing it online a lot.
The "I wouldn't have bought it anyway so it's not a lost sale" crowd are just idiots. You still got the experience so you had something for free. It might be digital bits that can be replicated but does that mean you don't pay for roller coaster rides or arcade games since, once you're done, the item is still there for someone else to use? No, you don't because you don't have the balls to use that justification in real life, because you know it's wrong.
Finally, those people hat say the games aren't worth it because developers are just shovelling shit out to sell...well it's worth you taking the time to download, risk getting a virus on your PC and your time sitting there playing it for free so it does have a value, quite a high one if you think your time is valuable and your computer has something worth while on it that you don't want damaged by a virus.
The fact is most people pirate games because they can and they're children whose parents wouldn't buy those games for them or they can't afford them or it's people who spent an absolute fortune on their PC and as far as their concerned they've paid enough for the right to be gaming on that machine.
http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=about&cc=US This is the most effective solution I've ever dealt with for antipiracy. As someone who's pirated software for a very long time, I've spent quite a bit of money, happily, through steam on video games. The benefits of buying through steam however, meet the requirements of most everyone in here. No CD to put in the tray, no keys to enter (if you buy a game online [which i recommend]), constantly updated, and most importantly, the purchase is tied to the account itself, so you can download your game infinite times to infinite machines as long as it's tied to your account. I have Audiosurf on three different machines, legally :)
I think music, movies, games, etc. should all have a "pay here" button on their website. That way, pirates have a convenient way of paying if they ever do decide the product is worth it.
Being forced to buy physical media or download another file just makes paying more annoying.
Why?
Because they have to pay us to play!!
The problem for me:
The first time I really felt ripped off was with the classic adventure Full Throttle, it was funny, well paced and had good story dynamics, but i found it was too short for what I had paid for it. Within 6 hours, one session, I had the end titles scrolling on my screen. Too short!
I want some bang for my buck, in a simple â's per minute scheme.
If I pay €60 for a game I can not return and only play for 15 mins to find out the game and I don't get along, I've paid 60 euro's for those meager 15 mins, leaving me feeling ripped off.
My experience with a lot of games I 'tried' was that I played them for less than 30 mins before I got bored with them.
Demo's only work for certain types of games, racing games (Forza/Gran Turismo), 1st person shoot-em-ups (Halo/Quake), the type of games with a high level of repetitiveness to them. With adventure games this is different, some adventureg game demo's only let you play the 1st act but that 1st act doesn't guarantee the rest of the story to be interesting.
My solution:
I'd like to see a payment method in which I put down say €5,- for the media and the 1st hour of playtime and after that a reasonable amount of € per amount of time I spend in the game, to a maximum of what a game in the store now would cost (for top ps3 titles around €60).
This solution works two ways:
1) I won't feel ripped off if I only play the 1st hour of the game and..
2) The game developer gets tasked with creating a game that keeps me intrigued long enough (for a reasonable adventure-type game I'd say between 40 and 60 hours) to get his money. This 'average playtime' should be mentioned on the box as well.
Please note that this is not a WoW type subscription to a game, but a 'pay for play' solution with a maximum amount of money i, as the consumer, will pour into the game. After I've payed the max (and spent the required amount of time in the game), I can play the game as long as I like (adding to the replay value).
I agree wholeheartedly. I personally hate optical media, and see no reason why CD drives exist (for those with broadband), save installing the occasional OS. If a game that I want appears on Steam or XBLA, I'll pay for it in a second. No CDs in drives to worry about, and I can just sit back and do other things while it downloads, which to me is the perfect solution. If I notice a game that I want, and god forbid I have to go out of my way to drive and get it, chances are I'll take the other route. The reason I'm so inclined towards downloadable content is because I'm lazy and impatient. Ideally, here is my process for buying a game:
1. Hear about it through some news aggregate, forum, colleague, etc.
2. Go read a pre/review online, see what the general consensus about it is.
3. If I like the idea, grab the demo.
4. I'm sold, let me go download it and play.
Personally this is why I prefer Live to Steam. For the trial, you download the whole game - once you've finished the demo, it simply asks you to pay and unlock the full thing, and you can just continue playing as if you bought it from the start. Simple, painless, and most importantly, quick.
Penny Arcade's Greenhouse games is a great alternative to Stardock, and due to the Penny Arcade guys, it is likely to see a bigger audience.
Let me be honest. I pirated games in the past because I was broke and wanted to play the games for free. It wasn't a big political statement the way some people would like you to believe.
I prefer to buy games DRM free. But in the end, I noticed that many of my favorite game companies either closed shop, or were bought out because of financial troubles. I realized you need to vote with your wallet. I purchase games now, and that is more of a political statement. I want those games to continue to exist.
Origin Games, Looking Glass Studios, Black Isle, etc. are gone forever. I need to support the few good game shops that are left.
1 - Put out a good game. This is the most important.
2 - Put out a demo, and let people get their hands on it. Word of mouth advertising is key. Let the internet market your product for you, for free.
3 - Give a good incentive to buy. By that I don't mean a very weak, gimped demo, but rather online play, and nice features that encourage the full purchase.
4 - This is the least important to me, but please just skip the DRM. It costs you money, annoys the people who purchase the game, and in the end, it doesn't stop piracy one bit.
5 - Ask people like Jeff Vogel from Spiderweb games how he does it.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Here's a thought. Most people hate DRM, because it's a hindrance to them from playing the game. Put the cd in the drive. No virtual drives. Install this crappy software. All that stuff.
Would it be possible to use a one time keypad, like the kind you use in bank transactions instead? No cd/dvd requirements, no odd software to install and so on. Could even install it on as many computers as you'd want, including multiple simultaneous online accounts.
Obviously it'd cost you something as the publisher, but what would the "drm sucks" pirates think of this scheme? What of the regular players? As a plus it'd make it insanely hard to steal your online account if you had to use the token to log in. Downside would be selling characters, but that could be fixed in-game by allowing character transfer across accounts anyway.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Or more wise use of tax money. The Nordic states that have such admirable welfare systems and who heavily fund culture don't have taxes too much higher than the US, in spite of common assumption.
Who gives a crap? Do I really need to know that I rank 5693 of 499234 players?
Yes, some people need to know that they're in the top 2 percent of players that submitted a score today, and they're more likely to buy a game with a working brag button.
You are quite correct to apply supply and demand economics to this problem. The "intellectual property" industries (movies, music, and computer software) rely on the artificial legal construct of copyright in order to extract profit from an activity that produces a "product" that, once produced, has an infinite supply and near-zero cost of distribution.
The natural state of affairs is to eliminate the artificial legal construct of "copyright" and just accept that anything that can be rendered digitally is free to copy.
The usual objection is "well then how do artists/writers/producers make money without copyright backing them up"?
The first response to that question is to point out that it is not the responsibility of the state or society at large to see that any industry remains profitable. Once upon a time there was a thriving buggy whip industry, but there was no legal construct erected to protect buggy whip manufacturers from being obsoleted by the forward march of technological development.
Notwithstanding, the question of "how can an artist make a living without copyright?" is a valid one. Happily, there is a historical answer - patronage.
Not so very long ago, it was practically impossible to distribute artistic product at all. Without any form of recording device, the only way to hear Mozart was to go see Mozart. Want to see Shakespeare? Go to the Globe Theatre. Want to read Ovid? Pay the enormous costs of finding a copy and then having a monk copy it by hand.
The flip side to this is that as an artist, given that the costs of producing your art were so very high, the only way to make a living doing art was to find a rich man who would hire you to produce the art - a patron.
The nice thing about zero-cost duplication and distribution of artistic content in the modern age is that it allows the cost of patronage to be spread across a very much wider audience, meaning that the cost of being a patron is very much smaller.
In effect, erect a means where your customers/fans can get money to you, and then let it be known that if they wish to see future product, then they need to contribute to the pool, or development will cease.
Yes, many people will just download the game/song/whatever and never pay. So it goes. But if the product is good enough, enough people will contribute to allow you to continue developing more product - and that's a win. How many of us get to make a living at their passion?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I usually do buy my games, and THEN download a pirated version. I know, it sounds stupid, but I hate the localized versions (I live in Italy) because of the bad dubbing and dubious translations (ok, "anello" is a translation for "ring", but not when applied to a bell on an hotel desk. Gabriel Knight 3 anyone?). On top of that, when playing games on a laptop, carrying with me the original CD's and DVD's when i am on the move is a bit of a chore. They use up space, they can get easily damaged, the copy-protection is invasive and can even cause system instability and driver conflicts. I have recently bought a few games through Steam, and for the moment I am fairly satisfied. However, what will happen when the steam servers will go offline?
I am a student that does not earn any money.
But i love video games. I play them a lot AND play a lot of them in my free time.
I have several options:
1. Do not pirate, and only get to play a few games a year.
2. Pirate, and get to play lots of them.
You see, there is no option like "3. Do not pirate and play lots of them. "
Also, it is very important to note that option 2. includes buying all the games i would have bought through option 1.
Since i do not know this developer's games, i will mention my experience with my last video game console, the Wii:
The signal-to-noise ratio for this system is crap.
I have bought Zelda, wii play, tony hawk, Guitar Hero and Mario Kart. I also have, however, pirated many other games. Why? I simply cannot afford playing every game i want to play.
Most of them, however, have only been "distractions". I would not have bought them anyway. The main reason being they are expensive and i feel most of them are not worth it.
Sadly, i also buy games that were not worth buying, and end up not buying some games i should have bought instead.
make a good game, price it fairly and make it easily available. People with money will buy it. People without money were never going to. but if the people without money get it like it and tell there friends with money,that increases sales.
NOte I can't tell you how many times i've downloaded something and found it so good I either bought it later, bought the next version the day it was released or started buying other software from the company.
I don't often pirate DRM heavy software but rather I simply ignore it. There are lots of games which don't force me to put up with such crap so I just buy those instead.
I pirate because money is tight, plain and simple. I don't care about copy right protection (I can break any, and anything that wants internet for single play easily still plays even when when denied by the firewalls), lost cd keys (I copy all cd keys into a txt document that is updated across three other duplicates, and I write the key down in my cd book) or having to stick the disc into the drive to play (woopy, discs are so close to me, its no problem, then again I have so many games half the time is spent: what to play?) Do I plan to purchase the games I had pirated? Yes, most definately. As money comes and it becomes a worthwhile interest to do so, I get a replacement for the pirated copy, which I promptly delete, unless the only difference between the two is a CD Key, which I'll just keep the pirated copy as a backup (while making sure I can also backup what I bought) To me though, there is no "crappy game" because from what I've read: "Oh this game sucks cuz the graphics sucks so its crappy!" or "This game is crappy because its repeatative!" or "this game is crappy because the monsters look cheap" or some OTHER MINOR tidbit that someone things clouds out other things that could make up for it. I could care less because hey, if the game is decent enough someone will mod it ^.^
I want a co-op MMO-FPS that is well made, highly polished, and doesn't lag to the point of unplayability.
There's a number of reasons I'd personally need to get a "pirated" copy of a game, even a game I've actually bought. Let me summarize a few of them.
1. Games that require the disc to be in the CD/DVD drive to play. The game isn't the only thing on my computer, nor the only thing that wants/needs that drive. If I have something else that needs the CD/DVD drive, I have to choose between the game and that something else. That ends up annoying me, and if there's a "pirated" version or a crack that bypasses the disc check I may be inclined to get that just to free up the drive.
2. DRM and anti-cheating software. When a game installs that stuff, it usually winds up affecting more than just the game. Remember, the game is not the only thing I use the computer for. If the DRM and anti-cheat software the game requires is nasty enough to interfere with other legitimate things I'm doing on the computer (and it usually is), I'm going to either dump the game or go looking for ways to get rid of the interference. I'm sorry, but I simply can't afford to dedicate a piece of hardware with a 4-digit price tag to the job of playing one single solitary game. I don't care how good the game is, it's not good enough to justify a 4-digit cost. On-line checks are just as bad. Unless the game's specifically a multi-player on-line game, I may not have an active network connection while playing. If the game demands that I do, it may not be physically possible and even if it is I may not want to go to the hassle of running a wire or setting up wireless on a computer that doesn't otherwise need it.
Notice that the two have a common theme: games that assume they're the only thing on the machine and that satisfying their demands is the only priority. That's fine on a dedicated console, but a PC isn't a console. You want to make it less likely I'll have to go looking for a pirated or cracked copy? As a game designer, start taking into account the fact that your game has to live alongside everything else on my computer and not cause problems for me when I'm doing all the things I do with the computer when I'm not playing your game.
3. Economics. Look at the target market for your game, and how much disposable cash members of that market will have. Then look at the price of your game. Can they afford to buy it? If you're pricing your game at $45, and targeting early teens, you're going to have rampant piracy. 13-15 year old kids don't have $45 burning a hole in their pocket. Especially not with the economy the way it is right now. And no, the fact that your game really is worth $45 isn't relevant. As people trying to sell homes they can't afford are finding out, the value of something isn't what it's worth, it's what a buyer can afford to pay for it. If the buyer can't afford the price, you'll have no buyers regardless of how good a deal it is. If you go about deliberately creating a demand for something in a market that can't afford the price you've set, don't be surprised when piracy goes through the roof. Either re-evaluate your target market, or re-evaluate your price.
4. Accessibility. How easy is it for members of your target market to buy the game? Again, if you're targeting early teens, they aren't going to have a credit card to buy on-line. If the game's also not readily available in stores, how are they supposed to buy it? And when it's available on-line, if it requires physical shipping (meaning a wait of several days to a week) people are going to go looking for alternatives like downloading. If getting your game legitimately is annoying, aggravating and takes a long time, and downloading a copy from a pirate site is convenient and fast, don't be surprised when people choose convenient and fast.
Note that this last one's a good example of a rule I got from an old shopkeeper friend: "Whatever you do as a store owner, never ever make it hard for the customer to give you their money.". A lot of on-line stores could stand to listen to that advice. I put my stuff in the cart, go to
It turns out that the article summary presents a very different question than what the actual article author asked. I responded to the SlashDot version first, and the real version second. I also primarily posted this on my blog so that trackbacks would go appropriately to his blog. Still, since there are more people here, I'm leaving the response where I found it, so that I'll get responses.
I've been running and co-running a number of small communities about game development for more than a decade now. Several of them have a real problem with pirates who show up looking for help with piracy. It's sometimes hard to tell the difference between a pirate and a kid using the wrong terms for things ("how do I build my ROM", etc); as such there's sort of an ongoing competition among the people who run these groups to see who can get these goons to uncover themselves the fastest, usually by feigning sympathy.
As a result, I've seen about three times as many warezers as the human population of Earth. Every single one tries to tell me, after they're removed, how it's not their fault they stole - the game is too expensive, or they don't want to feed EA, or they'll pay for it if they like it. Many of them have already forgotten that during the sympathy phase, they gave us lists of the games they had. Particularly galling are the people who brag that they have ROMs of every single DS game, or what have you, then turn around and pretend that it's just due to cost.
With respect, Mr. Harris, you're asking the wrong question. You could be selling your game for a quarter with a change accepting machine in their rooms; they wouldn't buy your game. They're out there getting every game they can find, often just for the bragging rights of having stolen more than their peers. Many of the people stealing your game haven't even heard of it and will never play it. These people cannot be converted into customers; they are too used to theft to recognize it as such, invariably vomiting up the same tripe about a false and meaningless distinction between copyright violation and theft, because they don't think of themselves as thieves and cannot face the honest nature of what they're doing. These people will never voluntarily give up money for your hard work, and you cannot get them to stop taking your work.
There are two somewhat more legitimate questions you might ask, however.
The first is "how can I profit from these people." That's not the same thing as turning them into customers. For example, though I do pay for my games, I play a lot of free games on the web which I wouldn't pay for (I'd just play more Civ instead.) DesktopTD is a great example: when it was news to me I would not have bought it because it looks poor, and by now I've played it so much that I don't even play it for free anymore. During my addiction I might have paid a couple of bucks for it, but probably not, and the market doesn't offer a sales mechanism that hits that phase.
However, DesktopTD has probably made about $3.50 from me by now. I'm not pulling that number out of thin air; I made an honest estimate of plays based on my best guess about when I found the game and how often I play, and ran it through the numbers for MochiAds. Admittedly, I'm not a warezer, so my example applicability is limited, and indeed I do know a few people who brag that they're running ad blockers so they're not inconvenienced with ten seconds of advertisement to put money in the developer's hands, even though the developer is giving their game away. Most of these people, unsurprisingly, are warezers.
The other questi
StoneCypher is Full of BS
I bought a few game DVD's back in the day where I was "good" and piracy was "evil".
The first game, Spiderman, sucked. I got ripped off, so there go my $60. I even got angrier after a few months later the same game was available for $20.
Then I bought a copy of the Robotech game, and it sucked big time. There go another $40.
Later I got Silent Hill 3, and unfortunately my DVD got scratched and could never play well after that. It kept crashing after a certain moment. I tried to fix it using DVD Skip Dr, and now the game was rendered completely unusable. There go $80.
In total, I ended up paying $140 for something that never worked at all.
I also purchased Castlevania: Lament of Innocence after I had bought a bootleg and decided I'd like to have the original. But without being able to make a backup copy, I fear my investment will go to the garbage, too.
So how do I get my money back? Well, simple. I get pirated games just to get from the videogames industry what they took away from me. And I swore I would never purchase an original game ever again.
My only exception is the Konami Castlevania games. Unfortunately I find no way to pay them without having to pay the middlemen which overinflate the prices to no avail. And I have no plans of purchasing an expensive console which will be obsolete in any minute. And due to stupid exclusivity contracts, there are no Castlevania games for the PC (even less for Linux). In order to punish the industry, I boycott them simply by playing through an emulator.
My message: I love the game, but I hate your commercial practices. Until you give me what I ask for, you won't be getting one yen from me. Sayonara.
It's the same reason that people don't leave a good tip to a waiter or other person in the service industry. Basically, they just don't see the value/hardwork that went into the "product" and since it's not required to pay, they don't. Anything else is just a lot of talk with little behind it.
as opposed to stuff they have to pay for
duh
the real story is that there are people out there for whom this is an earth shattering parable bending conceptual leap forward
if we must make an intelligent observation in a thread under a really stupid question, let it be this:
once upon a time, some german dude invented the printing press, and previously uneducated clueless serfs were now able to read on the cheap, birthing the middle class, and fancy ideas from the likes of voltaire and jefferson about equality and democracy. no one intended this, no one planned it, but this is what the printing press did
of course, the previous understanding was there was an aristocratic class, who knew all and decided all, and the uneducated rabble, who were to be herded and put to work, and that is the way god ordained it. there are still people coming to grips with the way the printing press has changed this equation
well, now we have the internet, no less earth shattering than the printing press. and what is the internet going to change?
it destroys the concept of intellectual property
you either get that, or, like those who still believe in the preeminence of a ruling class, you don't get it. and you will be befuddled for many centuries to come
intellectual property is dead. the internet killed it. understand that, or not, but it is the truth whether you like it or not. deal with it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Hey, all these games are huge time waste, and bring zero value. I could use the wasted time to earn money or do something useful, instead I end up playing some worthless junk! And they want me to pay money for that?!
And they should pay extra for the night shifts!
Seriously don't ask why people pirate your games, if you are not important enough for people to already know what games you made.
I mean if Will Wright asked me this I could answer, if Richard Garriott asked me this I could answer, but for goodness sakes if you are a nobody at least list the games you've created.
There is a fundamental, philosophical, problem with the traditional means of distribution: the product is abundant.
Cars are not abundant. It takes a significant expenditure of materials and effort to put one together. When I drive off in one, I cannot simply dupe it and give the dupe to my friend. The laws of physics dictate a level of scarcity to this good, and as such it makes perfect sense to expect to receive money from every person who obtains a car.
The world of "data" follows different laws of physics. Once I have the data in my hot little hands, I can dupe it and give it to my friends at zero direct cost to the producer. There is no deprivation of use nor loss of mineral resources nor expenditure of manpower nor anything of the sort on the part of the original developer when I dupe the game. None. And I can keep duplicating this ad infinitum, at the same cost (of zero). Furthermore, my friends can do the same thing with the copy I gave them...there is no quality loss. Once the good exists, it can instantly exist everywhere. It is "abundant."
So, since data follows these laws (rather than the laws of physics as they apply to physical goods) people feel like they are being cheated when they are asked to pretend like data follows the laws of physical matter. They feel like they are buying into a game of control that is unfounded in reality and ultimately to their detriment (since they have to pay money for something that doesn't cost anything to produce *at this point* (excluding initial development costs).
I think that is the crux of the issue. We all know the good is abundant, and we all feel like pretending it is not abundant is just silly, and harmful to us (our money is valuable and if we can get games for free then we have optimized our entertainment budget and have more money left over to spend on things like real cars or educations for our kids or what-have-you).
What about the potential sale that we are "stealing" by copying a game? We tend to respond to such a representation of the situation with great cynicism. We feel like the only reason you feel entitled to every single "potential sale" is because of your insistence in everyone pretending that an abundant good is not abundant. We also feel that the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism doesn't guarantee a ROI on any kind of development project, so when you pound your fist in frustration at your inability to monetize your efforts we just say, "so try something else...thats what every other entrepreneur in the world has had to do...what makes you special? If you can't make money making games, do something else, and stop whining." That is the same answer we get when we complain about being downsized, or having low-paying jobs, or what-have-you...so we are just responding in turn.
Lastly...the age-old mantra that if you can't get money for every copy of a game sold then nobody will produce games. I call BS. Piracy has been alive and well since before the computer games industry even existed...and since long before DRM existed...and the games industry thrived anyway. And it still thrives, despite the continued piracy. Enough people pay for the games (even though they don't have to) that the industry remains profitable. If that model suddenly stops working, alternative models will take its place (subscription-based games and so on). If that doesn't work, and we actually reach a state of utter cultural impoverishment where no games (or music or movies, for that matter) are being produced because nobody can figure out how to make a living doing it (and no hobbiests manage to churn out anything but crap)...which I maintain is an economic impossibility...but if it actually does occur THEN it might make sense to talk about legislation...and there would be a conscious buy-in to the legislation from the masses who are hungry for cultural enrichment. However, this has not happened, and I therefore submit that it makes no sense to try to preemptively pass laws based on the premise that it might happen (given that it is unlikely and that the situation could be remedied after the fact anyway).
There are four reasons why I pirate games:
1) Support and Return policy: Once I have opened a game for the PC, that is it. I can't return the damn thing. So I had better be sure that it is worth my money before I put cash down. Also, game publishers refuse to actually support their games. I have Test Drive: Unlimited sitting on my shelf. It has only been played a very very few times, because thats how often it actuall worked! There is no support, and patches are few and far between and seem far more intrested in updating DRM than fixing game issues.
2) DRM. This is the BIG reason. Every game I have bought has been FAR more of a headache to install and play than games I have downloaded. In fact, I tend to keep using the pirated versions even AFTER I have bought the game. I just install with the valid CD key. Again, far less headaches than using the included DRM infested media (Bioshock required me to reformat the computer to get rid of it's DRM, even after I uninstalled the game).
3) Quality: Lets face it. Most of the games out there are crap. I ussually only play about an hour or two of a game before it gets deleted off my machine. As I am unable to take the game back to the store for a refund, I had better make sure the game is actually worth my hard earned cash.
4) Cost: Games are quite expensive for what you are getting. No other application would give you such poor support, poor quality, and buggy software and still charge a premium price. The least one should expect from such a premium is technical support.
Those are my reasons.
Not everyone has a credit card to whip out (in Europe, a mere 16% apply for a credit card, the others quite happily use their bank accounts). Some people got burnt by PayPal.
Make it easy to pay.
Get a working non-creditcard-based international payment system out the door, and I will happily but Indy Games - Either that or get your game boxed in a retail shop near me. This second option worked great for DefCon, which now belongs to my collection.
Screw the FSM - Real geeks believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn
A god indie game offers significant enjoyment for free but requires a paid license to access new maps, levels, quests, etc. Ideally you should also let others make maps, levels, etc. themselves, but offer convenient centralized distribution yourself. You must let people access their friends maps quickly, say by providing a private url for them to share, but then you capitalize on their maps by distributing them with your own.
The point is you want people to remain intrigued both as players and creators. So your games continually changes outdating the pirates versions. And more importantly your pay version is much more convenient than pirated versions.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Hell, I know I pirated stuff when I was younger, and I wanted games and couldn't just ask my parents for money to buy them. Even if I had the money, the computer store was too far away to walk, and nobody rides bikes in Scottsdale.
I think he was referring to the defense a lot of people use like "It isn't worth the $40". Still though, the deveopers didn't work for free and they have bills to pay. How would you like it if your boss could decide whether your work was "worth it", especially after you've finished it and he has got the benefit from it.
If you don't think it's worth the money, don't buy it, and don't play it either.
$60 for a game you haven't played, and know little about is ridiculous.
$60 for a game you have already played is ridiculous.
How about $20 (Lost Planet on Steam) $30 (UT3 on Steam) for a game you downloaded the demo for, or are otherwise familiar with - or even $40 for a collector's edition, or a pack (Orange Box - although I got that through a promotion when if first came out for $25).
I don't even own a PS3 or an XBox 360 precisely because all the games are $60, and that's just too much. And usually by the time they get cheaper (this goes for $50 Wii games too) I've already played them through other means (borrowed from a friend, etc.).
I did buy Prey for $5 on Steam even though I had already played that (I would have payed $10 or $15 though - that's a good game).
I don't care how much it costs to develop a game, figure out how to sell it cheaper. $60 is simply too much.
http://www.unfocus.com/
Cliff, if you want to beat pirates... it's very simple. Give up.
1) No DRM. It does NOT work. Ask me a game.. ANY game... and ill find it for you in a torrent for download that has it broken already. I mean seriously... what's the record on copy protection lasting? 2 weeks? How much did you invest in whatever schema it was?
2) Make DAMN sure that the cracked version of your game isn't superior to you own. Having to call a server everytime you play is stupid. Having to have the disc in the drive is stupid. People pirate games exactly for this reason.
3) ASSUME that your customer base are fun loving gamers. They WANT to play your game and are happy to pay for it. There will ALWAYS be the criminal element or college students to broke to pay for your game. That's a fact of life. You'll spend more money trying to fight them than anything. Lets say your game gets popular via pirates... there's a huge section of those people who when they hear your game rocks will BUY IT.
4) Keep your price lower than your competitors. $49 is way too much now. I don't even buy a game until it's under $30. It's not worth it to me and yes I'll pirate if I get tired of waiting for the price to drop. I know you need to recoup the development costs but do it by offering digital downloads of your game. NO CD required!!! Most people don't give a damn about the crap in the box or the box. Most of us just want the game. Steam had a great idea unfortunately it's slow as shit.
The world is telling you that they aren't going to put up with merchants violating any of the above. They don't have to. If you aren't willing to give us the product how we want it... we'll take it. While that may be wrong to you... it's right to me. I WANT to pay for your products... just make it worth it to me. You'll save money in the get go.
I have two friends who pirate games and other software. Why? I'm not sure, but it's not money, ease, ideology, or anything like that. I think they just like being pirate.
Norm is a software pusher. He pirates stuff because he can. He's always trying to push software on me. "It's Vista man, you use Vista, here have some Vista. What? You don't use Vista? What do you use then, I can get it for you! FreeBSD? What's that? Never mind I'll get it for you. Free man, all free!" He also downloads movies. "Spiderman III man! Spidey3! Don't go to the theater they just want to take your money. Here look, I've got it on my iPhone. Look! [tiny 2" screen showing the back of people's heads in some Hong Kong theater]"
My other friend is more into movies. He subscribes to NetFlix 8 at a time. Yes, 8 at a time. Every one he gets he immediately rips and mails back. He has a rack of harddrives with ripped movies, and a case of DVDs with ripped movies. HE DOESN'T WATCH THEM! He just rips them in case he might want to watch them in the future. He doesn't have a lot of money, but for the number of movies he does watch, he can drop down to a $11.99 subscription instead of the $47.99 he has now. So it ain't the money.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Clearly it is a wiser use of taxes, and it is a brilliant use of taxes (if you like the culture it funds!), but culture funding by it's very nature does not necessarily make anyone do any more than 'break even'.
I find it strange that people seem to be against someone turning a profit off their art. I make a strong effort to profit off my programming skills (and management skills, and anything else I possess) because, well, I want to buy more items of culture! ... so why can't someone choose to profit from their art?
I think the problem of piracy is basically a problem of perception from the Business Community. They have become convinced over the years that there is this huge market for DVDs, or Games, or CDs, or whatever, but the reality is that the market isn't quite a big as they think. For people with lots of money - for whom purchasing a DVD or a CD or a game is inconsequential, piracy is actually harder than just buying the media. For those of us who have only a limited amount of money (certainly I fall into this category), I would never consider buying a $50 game, unless I really felt like my life wouldn't be complete without it. I feel the same way about most media today.
I haven't bought a CD or DVD in years - at least not for entertainment. I actually have bought a few bits of media, but only because I felt so strongly about them that I felt I needed to support the artist or idea behind it. If pirated versions of more "vanilla" media weren't available, I would probably just go without these things - God knows I have more important things to do that sit around playing games or watching idiotic films.
So, in summary, I suppose my feeling is that the "sales figures" that media companies think they've lost to piracy probably wouldn't have been "sales" anyway. Many of us simply drink from the pop-culture waterhole more often than we could really afford to if companies were getting what they really want for this entertainment media.
I wait until the games been around a bit, been patched up, thoroughly reviewed, and drops in price.
In some cases, by the time the price of a game has dropped, the online community for the game has largely evaporated, or perhaps the publisher has even unplugged the matchmaking server.
How many people play cracked counterstrike? I know I used to play 1.5 cracked, and damn it was a bitch to setup. Sure it is an online game and for the most part the new online games seem pretty secure. Even half-life 2 was so much harder play cracked than any other cracked games today. I still know some computer nerds(./ readers) who play hl2 cracked, but the majority of gamers would rather buy a game than have to go through the hassle of changing your hosts file and going through a multi-step process.
I know they got a bad rap for all the overhead steam uses.... but come on if you're running SP2 or vista your 'upgraded' OS uses vastly more overhead.
Not only did they mostly defeat piracy of their games they also offer great benefits to buying a legit version. You can download and install steam to any computer you use, anywhere in the U.S. from my experience. You can download all your games, there are no crazy DRM limitations. They also have great deals on games, I know I bought the orange box for like $70, and it was 5 games or something. They drop their prices pretty quick, and they are the only company I would PURCHASE games from.
I don't often hang on to my old cds or dvds of video games and without steam I would have lost halflife 1 and conterstrike everytime I upgrade to a new computer or need to reinstall windows.
Why doesn't anyone else get a clue and offer gamers what they want, cheap games, the ability to download it as many times as you want from anywhere you are, on any computer you have access to.
The reason people pirate games is because getting games for free is cheaper than paying for them, and because of the thrill. People have been sneaking into movies for years -- it's no different.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
While it may be OK to profit off art, that does not negate the need for some public funding. In a pure free market, art stagnates to a degree. You can hear it on American top-40 radio. Avant-garde art is initially unpopular and can't turn a profit, necessitating state funding, but it can then go on to renew commercial art. Just look at how Karlheinz Stockhausen, that obscure figure working in West Germany's colossal state radio studios, heavily influenced Miles Davis and Tim Buckley, who went on in turn to influence other popular artists. The creations of IRCAM aren't terribly popular outside a cult following, but the technology developed there has come to be widely used by popular artists (without Pierre Boulez's Repons, there might not be one track on Radiohead's In Rainbows). Sometimes it's a good thing for the world when an artist can noodle about without worrying about selling the result.
I just got sick of the DRM honestly. I used to buy a ton of games but then crap like Doom III started ordering me to delete legitmate software like clone CD etc from my computer. It's a video game, and being told what other software I can or cannot have on my machine by a bloody game is quite frankly, uppity. Not only that but all this garbage where companies kept hopping into bed with stuff like securom which has this overly complicated and in alot of cases technical show stopping problems made me never want to put legitimate copies onto my machine. I just got really tired of these DRM things telling me what to do, or trying to take control from me to do their own thing and being a pain in the ass. I don't want to pay money for a viral infection on my machine, which is exactly how some of the DRM out there acts. Plus the pirated versions have a tendacy to run alittle faster, and not require cd's. It's 2008, everyone knows that popping the cd in and out of the machine is just a ruse and the only reason for it is that the developer left in chunks of code telling the game to ask for a cd it doesn't actually need to function which just slows things down for no reason. I figure if all I'm going to do when I buy a game is go download and run the pirated version since it's superior, then why the hell go through the hassle and cost of plunking down the money just to go get the pirate version anyways? It wasn't always like that though, it's been more of a slide into never paying. After I got tired of running the legit copies and the crap that came with it, I started to crack the games after buying them. Then I started to clean up all those stupid DRM files or render them inert everytime I'd buy a game and install it after cracking it. Then I'd start to just ditch the game version because the DRM couldn't be removed so while I'd buy the game, I'd install a pirated version. Soon I just got completely fed up as going legit was such a complete pain in the ass for abunch of useless cd's I never even would touch. As more and more companies have clamped down harder and harder on piracy, it's made it really obnoxious to just buy something as fickle as a time wasting video game. I think game companies have over estimated exactly how much we care about their product, it's something to kill time after work, it should NEVER be telling me what to do or trying to take over my computer. If the game industry would pull it's head out of it's behind and throw the gears in reverse and treat their customers properly and professionally, they might find more customers again.
Mostly cost. Games aren't worth $50 or $60 dollars. They just aren't. There's not enough entertainment value in them. Luckily, if you are patient, you can wait for the price to drop to something more reasonable, like $30 or less.
Add to that that the pirated/cracked version is EASIER TO DEAL WITH. The original Xbox really demonstrated this. Soft-mod your Xbox, and you can rip all your games to the hard drive, and never have to deal with load times or scratched disks again. On the PC side, cracked games don't require the CD in the drive.
I understand that games are expensive to produce. But so what? Movies are more expensive to produce, and yet, even brand-new, "triple A" movies costs $25 when they get released on DVD. Yeah, they sell more copies than games, which lets them price them cheaper, but again, so what? Make games that more people want to play. Sell them for $30. Leave all the copy protection off. Watch profits soar.
I'm sure that the various game publishers have done the math on all this and determined that they are charging the optimal price for their software, but I think they're wrong. Make it cheaper, and people will pay for it. Right now, software of almost all kinds is too expensive to fall into the "impulse buy" category, and that HAS to limit sales.
This is an easy one and is true in nearly every aspect of the web where good people do bad things.
Anonymity breeds immorality. People know they will not be caught, so they steal it. Suppose a different application and it becomes apparent. Take for example a grocery store that we all visit with frequency. Now imagine that if everyone went there knew that if they simply filled up the cart and wheeled it out of the store they could get everything for free and they would never be caught for whatever reason. Now imagine if everyone knew this and knew that it was true - how many people would skip that checkout counter?
The answer is 95%.
Game developers should stay muted on the issue because the more they talk about it, the more people find out they can do it and the problem snowballs. There is no answer where anonymity is ensured. Most people are only good people when eyes are upon them to pass judgment.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
As a game developer, I don't bother with copy protection. In fact, we released a game that had zero copy protection on the full version, and it was still pirated. So yeah, basically pirates are just jerks that do it for shits and giggles.
What I've been more interested in lately is just modification prevention, not copy protection. As I've discovered that most game mods are crap and made by people that have no concept of game design whatsoever. If they want to shit up someone's game, it's not going to be mine.
I mean, seriously? Mods aren't really an excuse to get a PC Version over a Console Version. Most if not all the mods for Oblivion are 'rebalance' mods, aka people trying to turn the game into one it is not (and once again, they have no concept of game design).
Consoles see more sales because places like Gamestop allow them to trade stuff in... which is IMO is why console gaming attracts more young people.
True. Also a decent video card costs as much as an Xbox and won't stay current for as long. Then you usually need more RAM, etc.
Back when I was in high school, we would have LAN parties, but most games back then would run on ordinary computer hardware -- the same thing you would type your papers on, that Dad used to pay the bills. Heck Doom even ran OK on a 486 with no FPU. Can you imagine that today?
With the cost of hardware so high, it's amazing that any kids these days pay for software.
In the past when I downloaded cracked versions of games it was to 1) try them out first and/or 2) get a version I was able to mod after purchasing the full version.
This guys games have demos and are built to easily be modded. So I would never pirate them. I also have little to no interest in them. They look like games intended to be teaching tools in classrooms more than anything else.
My guess is people pirate them just to do it for fun. Or because they want the full game to use in their classroom and they are underpaid teachers that don't want to shell out the bucks themselves.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
The reason people pirate, and I think if everyone who has pirated software or movies or whatever is honest will admit, is because of price. The free market revolves around pricing being based on what the market will support. Look at Photoshop or Windows. I argue the two most pirated pieces of software out there. For them both people are faced with two options. Pay the TOTALLY over inflated price of the product, or steal it. Software has gotten away with pricing whatever it wants since its inception without regard for the market. There is no PS alternative. And since softwares inception people have been pirating. To me this is pretty obvious. Software is grossly over priced and some people are choosing to steal it. I bet if you reduce the cost of windows or PS to $10 or less piracy becomes almost extinct for those applications. Thats my theory and I bet it would be true. I know people want to be compensated for their work. I have no problem with that. But I don't believe you can be pricing your software for hundreds of dollars and not expect people to "vote with their dollars" and just steal your work because you are ignoring the market and super inflating the value of your software.And that is what piracy is imo it's people telling you your software is SUPER inflated in price and not worth it so either lower the price or accept piracy. I think piracy and price are directly related. This is my opinion but I am willing to put money on it being valid.
I can't speak for the US or Europe... but I can tell you how it works in "developing" countries like mine.
It's just simple economics:
* A computer here costs about 50% more than in the US because of import taxes.
* The salaries are about 30% of those in the US.
* This means, in average, it costs a whole month's salary to buy the cheapest desktop PC you can get (about u$s 600 including the monitor)
* Then, the reasoning is "I've paid a LOT of money for the computer. No way I'm paying for the software too!"
I used to think that way until I discovered Free Software.
Now I don't use unlicensed software, but I don't buy it either (I also earn a lot more than the average, but I don't spend it on software)
Games these days are becoming so crappy that I actually read user reviews before deciding if I want to *pirate* a game! And even though I do that I still end up downloading doozies like NWN2. Not even brand loyalty helps nowadays, with Bioware putting out games like Mass Effect.
I mean seriously, what's the point in a "role"-playing game where the role you play is predetermined and the only control you have over the plot is what your character says? And even then all the other characters ignore everything you say and continue on their predetermined plotlines. No wonder they put lots of enemies in the games to kill, because the player will be pretty pissed after being treated like nothing in all of the dialogue!
Another problem with games today is their level of difficulty. I don't know if kids today have low esteem or something and need to complete a game on the first try, but it doesn't really give a sense of accomplishment to win in games where the difficulty comes from keeping yourself from falling asleep.
A person pirates because they don't want to pay. The reason for not paying varies, but that's all it really boils down to.
From my own experience.. the closest I've ever really been to outright pirating (I think this counts) was continuing to use academic software I purchased after I left school (not for money or work or anything.. just personal use). Years later, as happens to most of us when we age, many of my hobbies/interests/goals have changed. I no longer pursue those 'avenues' facilitated by the software I purchased.. but if I ever decided got back into it, I'd reinstall that software and continue to use with no qualms (as long as I can get away with not needing whatever new features are available - probably) - even though I'm not supposed to now that I'm WAY beyond my academic years.
If I was using as part of my livelihood or for other professional purposes, I'd definitely buy. But really, I have no desire, nor could someone convince me to rebuy my software to regain legitimacy. I have the money for it, but I just don't see the point in replacing what I already bought once (the discount allowed me to purchase over doing without).
I identify most with a group which I'll label "The Conditional Pirates". Pirates who see a critical flaw in your product. They can be converted to sales, but you flubbed something significant that's a barrier to their willingness to buy. Game lacks crucial features or was abandoned.
The flaws I notice the most which will prevent me from buying is overzealous tamper protection (like GameGuard, PunkBusters, etc.) which somehow restricts my use of software which I paid for (or would have). As a Linux user I'm particularly offended when developers use tamper protection to make sure I don't run their program in Linux. Once I pay for their software, they shouldn't care or have any say over which computer, operating system, or environment I run it in. Because of that, I won't pay for software which will police how I use it after I buy it.
The other flaw is abandonment of a game. Buying a game comes with an expectation of support because game developers ship games fully aware of the many bugs it contains and intend to patch them later. When I buy a game, I'm not given the option of "abandoning my payment", but game developers/publishers choose to abandon each game at an arbitrary point, sometimes that point is acceptable, many times it's not, and pirating games is really the only weapon people have against abandoned game rot.
If you build a relationship based on lies and deception, expect it to go both ways. Game developers/publishers lie about the fitness of their product, and the consumer lies about their purchasing status.
A few specific cases:
Shadowrun (Windows Vista/XBox 360) - Released June 2007, Abandoned September 2007. Company closed a few months after release, the game still has many critical bugs that lead the game to have about a 20% crash rate. There are no game servers, it's entirely peer-to-peer so the company was able to wash their hands of this mess 100%. Take notice, the game developers felt no obligation to let players know they closed the studio and abandoned the game. For 8 months after the release, the game's web site still had information leading people to believe it was a vibrant an active game supported by the company with a message that you could "play against the developers!"
Giants: Citizen Kabuto - Released December 2000, Abandoned immediately upon release. I bought this game on the day of the release and the game's link to play online brought you to a web page which said they had changed their mind about supporting online play, and recommended you give Gamespy Arcade a shot if you want to play multiplayer. To make a decision to pull a game's support on or before the release date is shady by any definition. It didn't stop them from talking up the multiplayer features on the box or on their official web site.
Tribes: Vengeance - Abandoned upon release. The company even stated in future messages on the forums that support of the game was conditional on the game's success. They knew the game had a lot of flaws when they released it, and even completed development of a patch, but decided not to release the patch because they didn't see a future in supporting the game. That's real hard for my mind to process. That they would actually pay for a patch, get it, and decide not to release it for spite of poor sales. Their refusal to release a patch they had already developed was nothing short of malicious.
When game developers are so willing to treat customers maliciously, why should I feel like I owe them something? To address the argument that "My company doesn't screw people like that..." As an industry, developers and publishers who do screw people aren't ostracized by the ones who don't. The first time Vivendi Universal screwed people, every development company under their umbrella should have turned their backs on them. It should have become virtually impossible for Vivendi to stay in the industry. But companies which have poor practices aren't ostracized, it's seen as business-as-usual or a "toug
Lets face it. When you download a pirated game, you're not doing it for copyright reasons, philosophical reasons, or even ethical reasons. Trying to rationalize one's behavior behind "acceptable" reasoning is pretty bad, and I can guarantee 99% of the people who claim they "buy the game" do not.
Don't be ridiculous... people pirate games because they cost money. I've pirated plenty of games, ever since I was a teenager--why? Because I didn't have the money to buy them. And what's easier, paying money for a game, or not paying money for a game? Seriously, do you really think sites like GCW et al exist because people have huge personal issues with DRM (that are apparently circumvented by theft) or because demos don't exist? Be realistic. Don't hide behind false reasons.
I'll be perfectly honest, since it seems people don't want to be. I'll buy games that I know I'm going to enjoy--I own all the HL2 expansions, TF2, etc., because I enjoyed their successors and had a reasonable expectation that their sequels would be equally good. It wasn't a risk I was taking--it was a sure thing. And even though most of the people posting here won't admit to it, I have the feeling that its that uncertainty--whether or not one will enjoy a $50 game--that makes people more willing to pirate than to take a monetary risk.
Not to mention one of the same excuses I used to hide behind--regardless of whether or not I'm going to pirate the game, if I wasn't going to buy it anyway, is the company really losing money on me?
You mean the welfare systems which are starting to break down?
The Nordic welfare states are going just fine. In Finland, things seem to be going even better. The only people who shout for any need to change are corrupt politicians often educated in the US.
I'd gladly pay for more games.
Some games I'm not so sure about. Perhaps no demo. Maybe the demo is too short or is missing too many features. And in my experience, most of these that I'm not sure about end up getting deleted or forgotten about not long after install - a lot of times I'm left feeling glad that I didn't buy the game, but not necessarily at any fault of the developer. Different tastes! And yes, that's what demos are for. But if the demo doesn't exist or doesn't tell me enough, a no-effort pirated copy is a hell of a lot easier on my vague mental relation with you as a developer than, say, buying and attempting to return it with a BS excuse.
And no, I won't claim that I run out and buy it the second I decide it's worth the money. It's just too damn convenient NOT to, and a lot cheaper as well. (Though I'd feel a bit more generous for an independent title)
It's all about making the process terribly convenient at all stages. Steam and Blizzard have decent systems in place.
-Bittorrent is good. Blizz uses it for WoW patches to great effect. They don't care about piracy of course, but it's still a good alternative to pressing DVDs. All it takes is some web seeds with Akami or such.
-Re-download is good. One can download WoW and expansions by logging in to the WoW site. One can get Steam games on any computer, just have to download Steam. Would you rather me torrent it when I lose the CD and contribute ever so slightly to less legitimate piracy?
-Activation and CD checks are bullshit that make us look for cracks. It's too easy to lose the CDs, and we all know what happened with Bioshock.
-Preloading is good. Blizzard does this with patches, Steam does this with not yet released games. Yes, it's 1 month until ship. But let people place digital download orders long in advance - let them buy on impulse as soon as they play the demo. 99 percent of your assets will be the same on launch day as they are some time before.
-Logging in to play is bad. WoW is excused, but not Steam games. Let us download it anywhere with one purchase, play offline as normal - add a check for multiplayer to disallow multiple copies online w/ single account # as seen in current games. Doesn't hurt anything really. Sure, it's terribly easy to download a copy just for a friend, but I would advise you not to care.
-10 minute time limits on demos and such are retarded. Make it a good, solid demo. They can pirate at anyway and your bandwidth is dirt cheap thanks to Bittorrent - give us the first 25 percent. It's not like shittier demos with arbitrary constraints reduce piracy or increase sales. Yes, we know it's probably unfinished at the time of the _first_ demo. Release another one _after_ release. The polished one, bit identical up to level 5...
Yes, you still need to press disks. Just come to terms with the fact that if it's good enough, it will be pirated, so don't piss people off in trying to think otherwise. Put your game online, embrace peer to peer, and take away all the little excuses pirates have stood by.
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
I don't want my cc details buried into a game.
I don't actually think there's really a need for DRM at all.
Example I've always liked is books. High Street is full of shops selling them, Amazon built an entire business physically posting them - yet nobody bothers to copy them (well OK, not in 'the western world'). No reason it couldn't be scanned to a text file (cut the spine and shove it through a $99 OCR sheetfeeder and you'd be done in no time. That txt file could easily be sent to anybody on the planet as an email attachment, could be read on practically any computer/phone/PDA etc etc - yet nobody does it.
Guess there are a few frontrunners in 'reasons why':
People like books, they like picking them up, they like holding them, they like reading them - Now I personally feel that ties more to the 'contact with the maker' thing. Somebody wrote this book, their name is on the cover and now I'm reading their words. I'm guessing if books were uncredited and just had a serial number (or some other whim of mine), then people wouldn't quite feel the same about them. This is something that surely needs to be encouraged in the 'games' world (or for that matter any software).
Books are cheap. Well OK the textbooks I had to buy when I was my poorest, were the most expensive.. but by and large they're cheap for the time and pleasure you get out of them.
Libraries - never quite understood how they and the sale of books managed to co-exist. I mean you can walk into your library and walk out with the book you want to read. Bit more fiddly/time consuming than purchase - but definitely a lot cheaper... Do you think there are people that use libraries buy less books than those who don't? Are these the people that can't/won't buy books - would they all resort to piracy if libraries vanished - or just go illiterate.. oh questions questions.
Anyway, where was I going on this one.. I'm full stream ramble now..
Oh right - that's where I was. Audible. I love audible. I pay them £15 a month and I get two big audiobooks to shove on my ipod. I listen to them as I walk to and from work every day and I've probably got more books through my head in the last 2 years than the previous 10 (well OK, 5). Now maybe I'd pay a bit more for three books (occasionally I run out and may be forced to 'borrow' one from elsewhere). 4 books a month? 5.. No I mean I simply don't have the time to listen to them all. I mean with 5 maybe I'd quit playing something I hated but.. they'd just stack up and up. Back to games. I could pirate 5 game DVDs each night. I could pirate their games faster than they can make them. Now when I did pirate, that's what I would have done. I'd be downloading everything I could possibly get my hands on. I'd be archiving it on DVD, NAS, etc etc - it was more about the collecting - I physically couldn't have played all these games. I would however leap from game to game, play 5 mins, get bored and then onto the next one. Occasionally I'd hit a gem; The orginal PC GTA, Total Anihilation (both of which I rushed out and bought), Einhander, Puzzle Fighter etc anyway, point is the best bit of messed up world of piracy was you did get to love stuff nobody else had heard of. So...
How about a subscription based model to games - either:
Pay £x for a new game of your choice from Steam each month (plus 50% off if you pick up a second).
Or Pay £30 a month and play any game you fancy on steam. I mean you just go hog-wild and play whatever takes your fancy. Now revenue sharing from this might be a bit strange - split up by hours you spent on each game? number of times you loaded it up? Review scores? Player review scores? Who knows - but it'd make the world a lot more interesting.
I mean something similar is already happening with MMOs - DVD is given away free with months online trial. They're hoping to get you hooked and get those monthly fees. New Battlefield game is going to be microtransaction based. How's about £1 extra on your WoW sub, for £5 credit in Battlefield?
A
Games in New Zealand are usually in the $120 range for new releases. Most new games suck donkey testicles. These are the facts. (Developers take note).
I'll DL/Torrent the whole game before I buy.
If it's a good game, and if I need a valid key to play online, and I see myself playing the game a bit, then I'll get online and buy the thing from an overseas supplier to avoid paying the retarded price in New Zealand.
Mostly though, the games I torrent end up having 2 hours of game play, and then I'll dump it, because it's crap.
Often, I spend a great deal of time looking for resources for the game online. Developers seem to think a 6-page PDF is enough of a manual for a game, but that's bullshit. Usually I have no idea how to play, and even finding out what to do can take hours. When this happens, and I don't find a really good fan-built resource or active online community which can answer my questions, then I give up in disgust.
Tip for Developers: engage one of your DEV team to create a "X-HELP" web site, where X is the name of the game. Assume NOTHING when assembling the site. Treat a player like they have never played a game before. Make a link to the site from within the game.
Try looking for Descent 3 Help, or D3 Help to see what I did for the old game. That's what's required (and more).
Here's a tip: if you think your game is going to be predominantly played online, then give the game away for free, but charge for an online gameplay key.
Here's some general tips for game devs to avoid fucking off potential purchasers:
Don't disable normal functionality in a game. I swear, No wonder people hate paying for games when developers stops a scroll wheel from scrolling a list of options!
When I click the EXIT GAME button, it's because I want to exit the fucking game! I do not want to see a stupid fucking dialog saying "Are you sure you want to exit the game?" Because I wouldn't have clicked the fucking button unless I was sure!
Allow the game to run in a window for fuck's sake!
Allow me to alt-tab out of the game without it crashing. AAAARGH!
Don't fuck with my mouse settings! If my middle button is double-click then let me use it!
Let me re-assign EVERY control in the game. I mean EVERY SINGLE ONE!
Let me use any god-damn controller I want! If I want to use a Magic-Orb from 1996, then let me do it! If I want to use a steering wheel to play Quake, then that's my choice, NOT YOURS!
Let me create customised commands using macros WITH A NICE INTERFACE.
Don't make your game in OpenGL: ATI cards suck for GL!
Let me turn off the fucking annoying splash screens and revolting adverts EACH AND EVERY TIME THE GAME STARTS. If you want me to pay for a game, stop making me watch adverts for the fucking thing! AARGH.
Make it possible to disable an Antivirus scanner, or simply prevent scans from taking place when your game is running. How hard can it be???
That's the easy ones. Good luck.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Here's an honest (non anonymous) answer:
When I was a kid/teenager, pirating was preferred because:
Now there were still games I bought as a kid, but each game was after saving precious allowances over months just to buy a stupid game.
When I was a teenager and working, pirating still occurred because:
However, I will say that legal purchases increased quite a bit for games that were better than others.
Now that I am an adult, and working full time paying for everything. I can afford your crappy games but I know better, I know that most of the time your game sucks so I refuse to buy it unless I can try it either by playing it at a friend's house or pirating it and trying it. If there's a demo I'll try that. But if the quality (time spent for fun received) doesn't justify the asking price ($50 or whatever) then I delete your pirated data from my computer because it isn't worth my time. If it is, I will make a legal purchase to support you and your industry.
Finally there is a phase for some poorer people where they pirate simply to pirate. They collect what they can get for free even though they never use it. It isn't the fact that they are playing your game every day and actually having fun. No, your data just sits on a hard disk somewhere but it is never read. Even if you prevented these people from pirating, they wouldn't buy your product.
The other thing is most of the people pirating (as I've described above) simply can't afford your product. $50 seems like so little yet for someone who's working at McDonalds, $50 is probably a lot. Therefore these people would not buy your game either if they couldn't pirate it because they simply can't afford it either.
So when you see a pirate, each pirated copy does not necessarily mean a sale was lost. Even if you stopped all pirating, you probably wouldn't get good sales, or even worse sales, because the pirates are no longer contributing to word of mouth marketing or hype.
Finally, I will give you the trick to why this is so. If you charge a flat rate for your product, you are alienating out a certain markete while giving another market a price benefit. In a real market, people would not pay a flat rate, instead each purchaser would buy the same product at a different price based on their circumstances. So for example, if I'm as rich as Bill Gates, and I really really am a fan of your product, I probably wouldn't mind throwing you $1000 for your game because I really really like what you did and I feel that your game is worth $1000 I'm throwing at you. Now if I am a poor kid who gets lunch money from my parents and that is it, I'm not going to give you $50 even if I think your product is the shit. As a stupid and poor kid, I don't have the buying power to give you money. But if you lowered your price to $1 or even $2, as a kid, I might be able to make something worth with my birthday and christmas gift money.
So if you are a game developer, sell your product at whatever price the target market you want to hit will pay. If you want poor people to buy your product, sell it for a dollar or two. If you want middle class people to buy your product (be warned, these folks don't have all the free time in the world), sell it for $40 or $50. If you want rich fucks to buy it, sell it for $100 or $1000. Finally if you want to sell to all three markets, then you're going to have to alter your product or marketing in some way: poor people can only download a copy of the game, middle class get a fancy box + cd/dvd + poster or toy, rich bastards get a 5 dvd set, autographed 'gold plated' dvd set and HD movie disk, etc.
But don't come crying when it is obvious your marketing strategy sucks balls and you're whining because you can't deal wi
In the case of Mass Effect, the cracked version of the game has had better support than the real version. For example, there is a bug in which your weapons permanently overheat. The cracked versions of the game have this fixed and the distributed version still does not, despite a recent patch. As someone who bought the game, this is very frustrating.
One would assume so. The medic was specifically chosen as a test-bed because of it's wide interaction with the other classes.
I agree about availability. As a Brit working in Poland, I sometimes find it hard to get an English language version of games off the shelf. The Pole are very proud that the games are in Polish language versions and that's great for them, just not for me. I either have to order from abroad, which isn't always possible, wait until I travel home or friends come out, or look for alternatives... i.e. pirate versions that I can understand. I suppose I could purchase the Polish boxed version just to show support etc. But what's the point of having a game I can't properly understand or enjoy fully?
Avant-garde art is initially unpopular and can't turn a profit, necessitating state funding
I disagree, quite vehemently. Much of the greatest art is created because the artist wanted to create it and he could afford to create it. Great artists create art for art's sake, so the only consideration as to whether or not they create it is whether or not they can spare the the time and resources necessary to create it.
So in a world without intellectual property laws, a world where most of the current venues for commercialization of art were unfeasible, you would likely end up with a situation much like the pre-modern world: where only the very wealthy, or those sponsored by the very wealthy, could become great artists, because only those people had the leisure time and disposable income to practice their art.
You are suggesting that the state must step in to provide the funding necessary to provide artists with the time and resources they need to create their art, but I say that that's sidestepping a greater problem: why don't ordinary people have leisure time and disposable income sufficient enough for them to be artists in their spare time, if they so please? It could be because there is just so much real work to do that all of our society's resources and manpower must be devoted to doing that work. If that were so, then I would say the loss of the arts would be natural and acceptable, because there would be much more important things to focus our efforts on. But it doesn't not appear that that is so, for some people have plenty of disposable wealth and leisure time. I think the problem is the broader one is economic disparity and the related issue of economic (organizational) inefficiency. The technology is there for us all to share a leisurely society; it's the social organization we use that's gumming up the works.
In short, there is no need to provide a motive to create art art; art is its own motive. You need only to provide the means to create art, and rather than having a state-sponsored font of such means, I think we need to address the broader issue of seeing that everybody has the means to do things like art for their own sake.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
It's always really irritating to grant a refund. I pester them for "why?" first, and if they don't answer me, they don't get their refund. This is largely to track down solvable technical issues (some people would rather request a refund than ask for tech support, but with prompting can have their problems fixed) and to get hints on what people would like to have in future games. But I, like a lot of people selling downloadable products, DO grant refunds.
I've gotcher 'Women In Gaming' RIGHT HERE!
think I meant to put this as a reply to the post above.
The issue is the expectation that content production should be outrageously lucrative, to the tune of millions of dollars a year.
That probably won't happen... and that's not a bad thing. There is no need for an artist to make any more money than any other profession.
Up until the invention of copyright and mass distribution, artists managed to - with the aid of their patrons - make a decent living and produce content. Mozart and Bach did just fine, and they didn't have the ability to reach mass audiences that modern day artists do.
Yes, during the switch between "legally enforced artificial scarcity" and "patronage" there would be some lean times, as customers need to realize that if they don't contribute back to the artist, the well dries up. But is fining people, sending people to jail, and the other MPAA/RIAA madness worth it?
As far as "lots of cost for no return"; it's the same thing in every other business. Even a normal retail business has to be able to carry its costs (with no expectation of sales, never mind profit) for at least a year - why should content creation be any different?
You pay your dues, do your time, and if people like what you do, they contribute to your efforts to do more. If they don't like your work - no contributions.
Hell, that's how most webcomics fund their livelihoods. Read up on how t-shirt sales drive most web comics sites - that's a form of patronage. I buy a shirt because it keeps my favourite comic in production (and as a bonus, I get a cool shirt)
Real artists are driven to create. They'll fit it into their lives however they can. Patronage allows an artist to take their passion full-time.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Quite a few pirates are gamers. They just love the replay value of a bigger, broader game; especially when it has human opponents rather than AI.
Cliff, I think, of the things you mentioned, DRM and ease of access are what should be focused on by the developer/publisher. What else stands in the way of obtaining and starting to play a game?
While that is hopelessly inaccurate, I will explain why you are wrong. When you work for your boss, you have a contract that states you get paid for service performed. You obtain that contract by going through an interview process, proving your skill base (either through previous contacts, or educational requirements, etc), and showing that you are capable of completing the job. When I choose whether or not to buy a game, and decide not to, the developers aren't entitled to my money.
On the other hand, when I choose to buy the game, I have entered into a contract for ownership or lease, depending on the game and the performance of the game must be as advertised. If not, I should be able to get my money back. In a purchase method (no monthly fees) game, if the demo/advertisements of the game do not match the actual game system requirements, I should be able to get my money back. If I sign up for a multi-period contract for a game license, and system requirements change due to an upgrade, I should be able to break my contract. I should not be able to get my money back for the periods I have already used, but I definately should not be held to continue that contract.
Similiarly, if I break my contract to do my job to my bosses satisfaction, and have claimed to be able to do so in advance of the work, I should not get paid for lying about what I could do. If I am hired for a specific job (build a house in x time), and do not build it to spec, I should not be paid, even if I build it to not spec and it is useable. Of course, if I build it to spec and complete my job, the contract has been completed and there is a legal obligation for me to be paid. Why arent games treated the same way? If I buy a tv and it breaks before the end of the warranty, I get a new tv under the terms of the warranty (or my money back). If my game breaks, through no fault of my own, I can't even trade it in for a new one.
...it's human nature.
I used to buy PC games all the time, however as technology improved, so did the requirements for the games I wanted to play. It started becoming a hassle to make a game work on my PC, even if it met all the requirements. Despite that, I still continued to buy games because the store I bought them from had no issues with accepting a game that you couldn't get working on your system.
Of course, times change. Pretty much all stores since then have stopped allowing the return of games, for ANY reason. When that started happening, I stopped buying games.
Even if my computer met all the requirements, there was still a decent chance I wouldn't be able to get it to run, or run with decent performance. I wasn't going to spend $60 on something I wouldn't be able to use. It has happened to me before. I used to have games packed away in my closet waiting for the day I got a new computer or got an upgrade.
At first, I'd use the demos as a way of checking if the game would run on my computer or not. Pick up a copy of PC Gamer or other gaming magazine. But then slowly the price of the magazines kept going up and the content of the demo discs kept going down. In addition to that, fewer demos were released.
It got to the point where the developers/retailers/publishers made it damn near impossible for me to buy the game without gambling the little money I had.
Sadly, little has changed. I have a brand new computer that even makes little revving sounds when I turn it on, but I still find myself struggling to get certain games or applications to work as they should. I'll spend hours trying to find patches for my video card, sound card, and OS. Things I really shouldn't be doing when I #1) Meet all the requirements. #2) Destroy all the requirements.
Secondly, demos are rarely released and when they are, they are of such huge file sizes that you might as well be downloading the entire damn game to begin with. Why spend hours or days trying to download something on fileplanet when you can download the entire thing in half the time on bittorrent? It doesn't help that these file hosting sites try to convince you to buy premium memberships by purposely throttling the speed of the download.
Cliff (and others), hear me out. Don't see pirates as a problem. Pirates get your product out there, it's free promotion! They are organized (somewhat), they have loyal followers, they are all over the net. How else can you reach a million eyeballs with $0.00 investment ?
The kids that pirate your game, if they end up liking it, they will tell their friends. Those friends might tell others, and you suddenly have 10-15 more people who like your product. Eventually one of those will convert into a paying customer, either because they're against piracy, or because you've released an expansion or sequel and they got hooked on the original.
Another thing to keep in mind is why you got in the business in the first place. If you're doing it for the money, you're screwed. If you're doing it because you love making games and channeling your creativity, then keep doing it! The warez scene has made celebrities from relative unknowns... do you really think Sid Meier would have been so successful if it weren't for students copying Civ floppies back in the day ?
Price is another point of contention. I personally don't think the $50-70 price range is reasonable for any game. They should aim for $20-35, with "budget" titles under $10. I don't care what MBAs say; everything they know, they learned from other, failed MBAs :P Make the game so inexpensive it becomes an easy impulse buy, and plan your development budget accordingly. Some of the biggest hits have been simple, cheap-to-make games, sold at a low price point to broad markets.
More random advice: stay the hell away from DRM / copy protection. You will waste your money buying those "solutions", and some teenager will crack it anyway. More importantly, the copy protection will annoy your paid users, precisely the ones you should be worshipping.
One fantastic way to fight piracy is to offer added value for paid users. The most common example is online play, but there are numerous other opportunities like members-only leader boards, contests, random giveaways... anything to entice people to get legit. As a small developer, you have the complete freedom to do whatever it takes to please your users. I suggest you take advantage of this agility to its fullest potential.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I think that this is actually quite a complex problem consisting of many factors:
b) some people don't want to spend the money on crap games with little replay value
c) some people don't like to wait for a few days or weeks instead of hours to get it through some torrent site
d) any of these people have enough motivation or ignorance to face the increasing dangers of searching for cracks on malware ridden websites
1) some people will pay for the game because they still don't know what P2P is
2) a few people will pay for the game because they have enough money to afford and don't mind waiting a bit
3) a very few will pay for the game since they don't want to bother with cracks. This factor is increasing with online play (see WoW or Steam for example).
If you can cut out (as much as possible) the middleman, set a reasonable price, make the game available to a worldwide audience within a few click "distance" and have them pay for your game in a simple and not frustrating manner I think there should be enough people to pay for the game.
The main problem is, that there is no such globalised and convenient financial system available to the masses in comparison to the availability of P2P networks. I, for example, don't have/or use a credit or a debit card, and so are many of my peers, eventhough they could get it - there's just not yet such a need to use one, and certainly not for games only.
Eventhough Steam is showing the path, it can't address the financial problem completely. But I guess this problem will fade away as the gaming demographic matures worldwide even more and the financial transactions will move online.
Quality and replay value are also an important factors. If you're making a game, that most people would play it just once and then forget, it would be better if it could be rented online. I can't figure how would this work (micropayments,...?). On the other hand, games of high quality and good replay value have a better chance of being bought. Mods and community are a big plus in my opinion.
The best anwser against piracy is actually quite obvious: don't build just a game, enable diversity through mods, create a community, build a following around it, and don't forget to scale your development properly. Game is just a core product, the services is what matters today. The regular "run-through-and-forget" consumers wouldn't buy the game anyway, if they can get around P2P.
Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse delendam.
and yet I believe that, ironically, Tetris will still be remembered 10, 20, 50 years from now, and Crysis will likely be long forgotten in a string of mediocre, but pretty-looking FPSes.
Just goes to show that a bigger development budget doesn't necessarily mean a better game. I'd rather pay $50 for Tetris than Crysis, but that's just me...
Because I don't like paying for things I don't have to.
Of course, it's different than in real life. I still consider piracy to be theft, after all I'm taking and using something without paying for it. I stole it. But it's much different than walking into a store and pocketing something. I don't have to be too sneaky, I don't have to hide what I'm doing, and I definitely don't have to face anybody while I'm doing it. There's no Loss Prevention in my home to escort me out the door and ban me for life, and there's really nothing to "get away" with. I just do it and am successful. Cool, now I have Crysis and $60 I can spend on other things, like hardware.
Let's say you create a game on the assumption that 500,000 people will want to play the game, based on demographics and popularity of similar games. You want to sell it for $50 each so that's a $25,000,000 budget - pretty good!
This is exactly where most games lose me. I work full time, have a family, etc. There isn't much between minesweeper and Unreal for non-dedicated PC gamers. Nintendo game found this market wide open with easy to learn games that doesn't require complex manuals and a large dedication of time to enjoy. Much of the piracy is simply limited time and money budgets and wanting to try lots of games. They are not priced for casual gamers. I've never spent over $20 for a single game. I sometimes pick up recycled games as I don't need the latest and greatest. With online registration and failure of right of first sale, even this has died.
Now days, I stick to older games, Linux games, and other mindless time wasters. (the demo games are fun)
Often the demo is almost playable to encourage you to buy the full version, but the full version is priced for hardcore gamers.
The truth shall set you free!
There are so many horror stories about Paypal (they're too greedy, untrustworthy and unregulated); I'm terrified of credit cards; and there's no bank transfer or similar option (like with debit cards at shops where a PIN provides some semblance of security).
I've often wanted to buy or donate small amounts online. I never have.
I'll make this clear and simple: I buy well made games that last. Example? Quake 3, released in 1999, I still play it nowadays in 2008. Starcraft? Diablo? Well, Blizzard sure knows how to make games with long lifespans
Civilization II, III etc. from Sid Meiers? Oh you better believe it, such brilliant games that can give you loads of fun for a good while and take away what was left of your social life.
So, those games when released cost what? $60-70? Why the fuck would I pay that much for a game I know I won't play for at least a good year or more, especially when it doesn't have multiplayer.
I mean yeah, CD protections and such do get annoying, but I'll just crack the shit and continue to mind my own business. It's not a reason to go "OMFG I GOTTA PUT MY CD IN, I MUST PIRATE IT!" that's bull. What makes me buy a game or not is if it's fun and if it will last. Most of the time that depends of how good the multiplayer is.
Solution? On consoles it has existed forever: RENT THE GAME. You could pull this off by making what you buy/download online expire after "X" months, like $5 a month or something. It may already exist, I can't say but a well implemented not too greedy online rental games service would be successful to distribute games that are worth playing just once or twice.
My $0.02
I used to copy games from friends, download from Usenet, etc. but I just don't anymore.
Reasons (for me):
* I'm not a Uni bum anymore, I now have a well-paying job, and I feel guilty.
* If a game gets bad reviews or the demo sucks, I won't play it.
* If a game is so riddled with DRM that it treats me like a criminal for paying for it, I won't play it.
* Steam. If a game isn't on Steam now (unless it's something awesome like most Blizzard products), I won't buy it. I don't want to have to go all the way to EB Games and pay outrageously extortionate Australian prices; not when I can click a couple of buttons and download the content from my ISP's Steam content server, importing by the exchange rate (which is relatively awesome right now for Aussies).
The only "lost sales" here are the publishers' and developers' own damned faults. Not because of piracy (from me at least) but for releasing garbage and expecting people to buy it.
Additionally, content distribution systems like Steam just make things way too easy (and cheap) to buy games that if you have money and STILL pirate the game (if you know it's good and you'll get good replay value), you're a tightarse.
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
I know this might be a little to generalized for your liking, and it certainly isn't specific to this specific publishers games. However this is why people pirate...
There are so many games these days, that you're never sure which you should spend your money on. The bar is consistently driven up by games like Half-Life 2, Crysis, and in the indie market Gish. If you don't meet this bar enough, we don't want to play your game. However, how do we know this?
This is where we pirate, we don't demo. Demo's have often been either too crippled or released too early, such that they aren't an accurate representation of the game. Because of this, a lot of people ignore them, or they will play them with the purview that this will give them an idea on whether or not they will pirate it.
After this decision has been made, whether or not to pirate it, you then go to pirate it. You search for cracks, serials and similar. You'll often find something, which will allow you to play the original game completely. You'll either play it for a small amount of time, or all the way through. All this time you are valuing the work. This is where, there might be problems with the cracked version, but you aren't sure if it's the crack or the original game, and so it becomes devalued. There might be problems in the game, or features you don't like, so it becomes devalued. Does the game try to force you to pay for it (eg, does it have starforce or similar)? You might not play it as much in relation to others, etc. Until such point, that in your mind is an intangible value that you assign to this game.
You now take into account your financial standings. If you can not purchase the game, because you are poor, you don't even consider it. When I was in primary and high school, no one ever considered buying games, besides the ones with parents who liked buying games. As we grew older, we found ourselves buying the games we liked.
At this point you compare your intangible value, to the actual asked value. Does this game, in comparison to the other games you've bought, deserve your money? If the amount they are asking for is too much compared to how you have valued it, you will not pay for it. If the value is below you will pay for it. However this is relative, and so you are competing with the other games in this persons catalog.
This is why people pirate. This is why people pirate games, tv, movies, music, and anything.
We are all bombarded with useless low value works that we need to value and decide about, that this is second nature.
I have found this to be true for 95% of people, in fact, my anecdote about me in high school and being unable to pay until I got a job, guess which games I bought when I got money? All of the games I valued and hadn't been able to pay for years earlier.
As it stands I've bought Half-Life and Half-Life 2 and mods about 3 times now. (Due to packaging and losing cd/serials)
I've bought WarCraft 2, twice. (Lost the CD)
And over the years about 20 other games, and I'm not even a gamer. I have an antiquated system which couldn't even think about playing Crysis, and I don't spend any money on things I don't like. But even I've still bought a lot of games.
You'll hear a lot of "why should I buy this, if I can get it for free" from people. These people don't understand themselves, or the situation. I've talked to a lot of people with this ideology and when you explain the above to them, and question the reason why they bought the games they did, it always comes back to "well i really like (value) that game.
What should you as a developer/publisher take away from this?
Sell your game for a specific amount, but have it on an honor based system. Ask them to pay for it, but allow them to play the full version. If they value it, they will buy it. Look at providing community competition based features, like a competition board where everyone who pays a monthly fee gets to compete for scores, or organize other contests. Have an area where people can donate
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I used to generally pirate games unless they have multiplayer support that I like, in which case I bought them. (Counterstrike and BF2 here). I know this is bad, because there were plenty of single player games I loved and in retrospect, feel bad that I didnt support.
Now that im no longer a cheap teenager, I do pay for the games I play. I think some crucial points are though:
1. The $50 price point is too much, especially when hardware is expensive, and more so when you charge the same in third world countries where piracy is so rampant(I was from one). A lower price would be nicer.
2. Some emphasis on multiplayer(i know this isn't applicable for every game) would also sweeten the deal, especially at a lower price point.
3. Hi quality free/reasonably priced DLC from game devs, like more weapons/units/maps. Im a little peeved off that PC games still don't get as much out of DLC as console games.
4. Package deals - have one copy of the game for $x, and a 4-pack for $2.5x. This would encourage sharing.
5. Bundles - Similar to Valve's Orange Box idea
Also, maybe a simple message to gamers at the splash screen reminding them that studios depend on their money and support. And maybe incentivise people to upgrade from a pirated copy by possibly making the game a little cheaper.
Stop calling it Piracy. It has nothing to do with Piracy. They are not seizing the games by force.
People who crack and copy games are like hobos. Much like the hobos ride the rails, not actually costing anyone anything, not intending to pay for it, and generally not causing any real problems, aside from a few people they annoy.
I wrote Cliff a rather long letter, explaining how and why I got started pirating things. Somewhere along the way, I explained how and why I have been converted to Open Source and Linux. I finished by suggesting that the very business model under which software writers work is all wrong, and suggested that he take a look at http://www.baen.com/library/ where he MIGHT stimulate his mind to explore alternative business models. I hope that a lot of other serious minded people take the time to explain politely why piracy canÂt be beaten, and why he should join the community, instead of fighting it.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
>What it means is they'd have to focus on the thing they have that can't be copied: their skill and talent. In other words, their labor.
Um... what exactly kind of service market is there for GAMES? Games aren't some mission-critical thing that you need support for. They're entertainment. There is virtually 0 market for post-sale support.
For multi-player games, you can still require access to servers (which is why games like WoW aren't pirated as much), but for single-player gamers, that's just not viable.
The programming skill/labor is paid for when you purchase the product. What do you think you are paying for? With digital distribution becoming more popular, you should KNOW that you aren't paying for the disc. You're paying for the work that went into creating the game.
You claim that they need to find a new novel solution; but none is evident to either yourself or others. Do you propose that game companies lose billions over the next couple years to find a new business model because you feel entitled? This isn't like the music business where you are going to go see a live show.
If piracy continues at current levels, you'll see one of 2 things CONTINUE to happen:
1) Big-budget games will move to consoles where they are less-often pirated.
2) Development companies will go out of business or move to small budget "casual" games.
That's the price of piracy. Personally, I don't like those options so I make a conscious, greedy decision to purchase games with the intent of giving monetary support to developers I like.
Few years ago, I wrote a launcher program to celebrate the lovely Treo 680. It was $12.95 and registered users will receive a key code to unlock the full version, which turns off a random "Please register me" message.
As usual, the crack was posted within a few days.
I logged on one of the active Treo discussion forum (not a crack site) and asked "Why you people use a crack, instead of paying for my hard work?".
"Too expensive!"
So I discounted the software to the point whether most forum users said, "fair enough."
"More features!"
Then I add whether features I can do, as options.
Eventually, that become one of the longest thread in the forum history. And I earn more than 100 registered users in the country, which I could never dream of.
So, a brief conclusion: ;-)
- people are willing pay for what they love, if the price is right (for them)
- listen to customer, usually the early versions lack one or two "critical" features
- pirates are also human, they just want to earn a living (or flame, or.. what), because
- when I was young, I also loved boot code trace my Apple II box, some day, they will become a programmer
Just in case you want to know the thread, pls Google: treo launcher hi-pda.com ohho
Just because I have no interest in owning a game doesn't mean I don't want to play it. I read a lot of replies, but I haven't seen anyone mention renting. I rarely buy games, I rent, I play, I mail them back.
I don't want to own games, I want to experience a game. Once I've done that I usually have no reason to play it again. Renting allows the developer to get paid (Gamefly bought it) and allows me to experience a wide variety of games at a lower cost that purchasing them.
//TODO: Insert catchy phrase
There isn't much between minesweeper and Unreal for non-dedicated PC gamers.
There's an enormous number of games that you're missing out on! Check out any random flash portal for an easy example of exactly what I mean (e.g. kongregate, newgrounds, armor games), but there are also plenty of downloadable games (plant tycoon, diner dash and anything Popcap come to mind) in the same broad niche. Also check out the huge number of $10 games on Steam. It's a thriving sector of the industry.
That's great for you, unfortunately you and I are not the kind of people this question is targeted to.
My son is into games big time... and I just opened up my old game binder and found some classics that were some of the best buys I've ever made w.r.t games... Sim City 2000 and 3000 (bargain bin buys); I bought Total Annihilation in 1998, two years after it was "game of the year." I just loaded it up (and found it runs under Wine, even, unlike the Sim City games), so I don't even have to reboot. My son is LOVING these games.
But they are all legal... there's simply no justification for pirating a game. I don't care what any of these "but it's got zero duplication costs" people think; big new commercial games have big budgets, and you often find they have lengthy and expansive game play... something well worth the money compared to other pastimes.
Sorry, but new cutting age games are expensive; if you've simply got to be one of those people who's got the latest greatest games all the time, and you invest in a $2000+ gaming "rig," you're a freaking leech if you stoop to pirating.
I know, I know... they should have offered you a demo, right? Well they didn't... that doesn't give you the right to steal someone else's labor. Besides, I still see MANY games being offered in demo versions.
I guess my rant is less about people being pirates and more about how they justify doing it... if you're going to pirate, pirate; just admit you don't respect other people's labor. There's no "real" justification. You're not entitled to someone else's labor.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
People pirate because it's so easy to do. Compare piracy to ratio of "books stolen to books purchased".
That would be a far lower number then the ratio of "software copied vs. software purchased."
It happens because it's easy. The fact that it's easy is why it is a lesser crime then stealing. If something else that was easy to do was made illegal, like bumping into people on the street, a lot of people would break the law.
As a developer you have to realize this and use it to your advantage. If people want to play your game for free, enable them. Then adjust your profit model accordingly.
For example, WoW makes a lot more money on subscriptions then game sales. They could probably increase their player base by giving the game away for free. Another option is to release say, %25 of your content, and charge for the rest while making it easy for people to purchase and play the game. e.g. Offer a free demo that contains an option to buy and download the game online, right from the demo.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
Is this guy a real game developer? Has he been using computers since age 13? It always seemed to me that cracking the game was part of the territory -- almost as if cracking the protection mechanism was part of the game itself, the first puzzle. A friend would buy a game, and then everyone who wanted a copy would search BBSes for keys for the game, or ask an older brother if they knew a password. Did this guy grow up in a different world, or what? Or did he, as a young computer user, studiously make sure that all of his games were legitimately licensed?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I used to almost exclusively pirate games until I became about 20. Then I discovered Steam, and it was all downhill.
Part of the reason was I simply didn't have the money to throw around. Once that became a non-issue, I found that Steam made the buying process so much more convenient, and, more often than not, provided a discount over an over the counter retailer.
While it's great to have a sweet box with sick graphics and a nice manual and the occasional poster, getting to a brick-and-mortar store (for me, at least) can be a pain. I live in the 'burbs, so a trip to GameStop for me is at least 20 minutes, and then with having to deal with the idiot behind the counter trying to upsell me some stupid warranty and blahblahblah, it's just easier to download the game.
I can't, however, say that Steam has prevented me from pirating completely. Hellgate: London, is a good example of this. The demo was great, but I wasn't really convinced, so I got some cracked version of it. After playing it, I'm SO glad I didn't drop $50 on it, because the game is completely half-assed. After some 10 hours of play I got rid of it.
Then there are the old games like Serious Sam and Duke Nukem and Yserbius/Cawdor (damn, remember those??) that you just can't find anywhere, and I mean what choice do you have?
Having said that, of the games that I've pirated in the past, none of them equated a lost sale, because I wouldn't have bought them at that time in my life anyway.
Cost. I consider games a poor value compared to novels or movies. If video games were $20 versus the $60-$70 they are now, I would buy more and pirate less. I only shell out for video games that have a superb multiplayer experience that allows for hours and hours and hours of gameplay.
I used to pirate games. In fact, I never paid for any for about 15 years. Then I happened onto Direct2Drive. The prices were reasonable (because they were US prices, not Australian prices, which are stupidly inflated) and I could buy a game, download it and play it in a few hours, without having to leave the house.
As a result, I bought quite a few games this way. Then Direct2Drive stopped allowing sales to Australia. Guess what happened next...
1) Games are expensive for my budget. I don't feel like it's MY fault I don't have gobs of money to spend on games. Either way -- my piracy isn't hurting the developer because I couldn't buy the game anyway. Maybe someday I might be able to by that developer's game, if my personal financial situation improves.
2) Support. What if I buy a game and it doesn't work for some reason? What if my hardware version has some little bug that causes problems that make it unplayable? Most places won't allow you to return opened software, and I can't say that I feel comfortable relying on the developer to either resolve the issue, or refund my money.
3) Investment. I think of a game as an investment. Something I buy once, and can enjoy as much as I like. I DON'T feel like just being able to play the game is worth anything. I want the game to come with a poster, maybe a tshirt. Something value-added that doesn't really add much expense, but gives me a little something extra. Most games these days are just a DVD. Or worse, they're a download.
More importantly, if I am making an investment, I want to be able to try out what I'm going to be buying. Most game demos these days are a joke, and shareware seems to be a thing of the past. For example, I'd be interested to try Age of Conan, but I'm not paying $60 for it, only to find I might hate it. And since it's a game I CAN'T pirate a copy of... I'm just not going to fool with it. So they could be losing a sale + many months of subscription.
4) DRM. I refuse to have to have the CD in to play a game. I don't want to authenticate with some servers to activate my copy. I'm going to find a way to crack that if possible. I figure if I'm going to have to crack it anyway, I might as well pirate the software to begin with.
It boils down to: I want to play the game MY way, on MY computer, under MY conditions.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
and now you mention it, I do have a copy of the O'Reilly bookshelf somewhere.
Maybe electronic books are considered to be 'software' and therefore treated as such? I'd never really though of it before - might possibly explain the reluctance of publishers to go electronic.
As for the O'Reilly thing - I swear I never used it Mr O'Reilly and much prefer buying your books with their pretty covers.
When I had my first PocketPC and was honeymoon happy with it, I did buy a legit e-book. Never got passed the first chapter and decided I hated reading on that little screen (I think it was the screen thing, but maybe I just like paper books).
But the ones who can adapt will choose another business model, based on selling the service of writing software rather than selling a disc in a box. From our viewpoint here in the present, we can't know exactly what that future model would look like. We can, however, see that the fundamentals are all there: programming and game design skill is a scarce resource (unlike data), and it's one that people are already willing to pay for.
So who pays for it? Perhaps a rich benefactor pays for the development of a game for their personal use, then decides to release it to the public free of charge. That seems unlikely though.
More likely is the development of a model whereby the public can pay developers directly for the service they provide. Perhaps this would take the form of commissions, where members of the public get together and pool their money to pay for the development of a new game. But this raises many questions of coordination--how would the decisions be made as to what the game would be, and which developers will get picked to provide the service? As you mention, this would require a huge middleman layer.
or a new payment model to allow millions of individual gamers to fund development rather than a handful of investors
Perhaps the cost of the development service of each game could be broken up into many shares, and each person who plays the game could pay one share. That way only the direct benefactors would pay for the service, which seems fair.
Is this sounding familiar yet?
The unimaginative ones might decide that making games just isn't possible anymore, since they wouldn't be able to look past the business model they've been relying on for the past couple decades. But the ones who can adapt will choose another business model, based on selling the service of writing software rather than selling a disc in a box.
I would say that you are the unimaginative one, since you seem fixated on the disc without realizing that the current business model is in fact the same one you're advocating. Developers are directly paid for their service by the public in the form of "shares" known as game licenses.
You can't have it both ways. If you want to make the point that games are essentially a service not a product, then you have to ask who is the recipient of the service? The person playing the game, obviously. The current business model apportions the service cost to each service recipient through the concept of the software license. Forget the disk, what you are paying for is a small part of the service that developed what's on the disk.
This idea of infinite abundance is totally ridiculous. Yes, after a service has been performed, the end result is already in existence. That does not mean that games are highly abundant in general, it simply reflects the reality of any service, which is that once it has already been performed, there is no natural incentive to pay. Pirating games is like dining and dashing. "Why pay for this dinner? I'm already full." People say, "Why pay for games? I can already get a perfect copy for free." But the very first copy does not just appear out of thin air.
Most people do not dine-and-dash for two reasons. First, people recognize that it took time, effort, and expertise to prepare their food, and feel a moral obligation to pay for that. Even if they did not like the food. Second, this feeling has been codified in the law so that it is a crime to dine and dash. I would say the same concepts apply to game piracy.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The old style of patronage did not work very well, which is why we have our legal concepts of "intellectual property" today.
Remember that the system you advocate predates, and was largely replaced by, the concept of copyright. That happened for a reason. Simply asserting that the other way was better betrays a lack of historical knowledge. If it was better we would still be using it. There is absolutely nothing preventing a patronage model today--the reason it is not common for things like music and software is simply that it does not work as well.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I was introduced to torrents when I was 14. I have never looked back. Not only does pirating provide me a way to get material that I otherwise wouldn't be able to get with my limited cash, there's also the allure of doing something illegal and sticking it to the large gaming corporations that are largely just profit making vehicles. Besides, you tell me if it's right that I bug my parents or work a meaningless job to purchase things that hold no real physical value.
I believe that the ideas and intellectual works of others should be free to use for enjoyment and noncommercial purposes. If I made a video game or a computer program or wrote a song, I'd distribute it over torrenting just because it's the right thing to do.
I feel bad for the people who still pay for things, and I constantly try to teach my peers how to pirate and avoid being exploited. Yarh.
I think there's a more general, obvious question: Why do people steal? Software is unique in that there is the *potential* to thwart thieves through the same medium that makes up the goods. I suppose just like Masterlock likely uses its own product to prevent breakins to their warehouses, developers try to adopt the same strategy. However, perhaps this is a lost cause. Thieves will get what they want, despite the technology. However, the useful function is about the percentage of honest people out there. Perhaps the real problem is that software just costs too much. If bread bakers charged $50 per loaf, I would suspect they would suffer the same thievery rates as software. Perhaps Microsoft Office should be $50, not $500. After all, there are more than 100 times the number of honest potential customers than there were when they started that product. Indie games should cost less. There is often a sweet spot where the effort to steal is just not worth the cost of the software.
There are two kinds of games that I usually buy, games that I find on Steam (because I can download them directly (access) and play them within hours) and MMORPG (which has an attached monthly subscription.) If more developers would put their games on to Steam there would probably be less Piracy, or at least that is how things work out for me.
(atm. I don't have any pirated games on my PC, but there are several titles I would have bought if I could have found them on steam.)
Everyone has their own rationalization for why they do (or don't) turn to piracy. An example for myself: I pirate movies all the time, but I've also got a Netflix subscription, most of the movie channels on my cable service and a DVR. A lot of the time, however, it's just more convenient to grab a torrent and have a movie in an hour or so than have to wait for it to come in the mail or, worse, show up on TV and the studios are still getting my money anyway (I don't pirate movies that are still in theaters).
I know plenty of people who pirate simply because they can. A lot of them only end up using a fraction of the things they download. I think it's a result of two big changes in our culture: The quest for consumption, which is instilled in us from a young age. And an overwhelming respect for curiosity, which I think the vastness of the internet has strengthened in the last decade or so. The fact is, a lot of people, download things that they've only got a cursory interest, but it's so easy to pirate that figure they might as well check it out. The same way I might look up Boudhanath on wikipedia, but if I had to go to the library to do so I'd lose any interest I might have had in it.
Personally, I rarely pirate games. Those that I do pirate are usually old games that I either want to revisit (roms) or just never got to play when they were still new (I didn't have a computer as a kid, so I missed out on a lot of classics).
A trend I have noticed, however, is that a lost of publishers are including intrusive and annoying DRM in their games and sometimes even in the demos of the games. I remember on my last computer I'd been having problems with the disc drive for months before I found out about Starforce. Removing it fixed all of my problems. Those sorts of things make it clear why even legit customers would prefer to use a pirated version.
It'd be foolish to think that you could stop piracy completely, but I think the best way to reduce it is to make your product as easy to acquire and use as possible. It's pretty difficult to beat the pirates at ease of acquisition; with torrent sites people can go to one place for anything they need, whether it be games, music, ebooks or what have you. Something like Steam, but for EVERYTHING, that worked in a browser rather than as a stand-alone app could put up a good fight, I think, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Increasing ease of use can be done pretty easily, though. It just means throwing out any DRM that impedes functionality (of the game OR the system it's run on), because that will just turn customers into pirates.
I was once a horse.
I dont download anymore. years ago i used to do it coz i could, recently i have realised that it has become like stamp collecting for me. Hard drives full of warez that have never even been looked at, it had become a habit nothing more. Just something else i'd do when i sat at a computer. The day i stop was when i realised 80% of my 'collection' had never been looked at.
Well, Bart, your uncle Arthur used to have a saying: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
So, here it is. I used to be a heavy pirate when I was a kid. Nearly every game in my rather large collection was a pirated copy. The reason behind this was that games just didn't last for me. At $40 - $60 a game, I just couldn't afford to shell out for the latest titles which only kept me occupied for a few weeks to a month. So, I copied them. I had other things going on in my life which also required money, and there was no way to get around paying for those things. So rather than sacrifice them, I chose not to pay for games. Things are different for me now. Forking out $100 - $200 a month to feed my habit isn't a big deal. So now, a lot of my games get purchased. It avoids a lot of hassle in my opinion. Many games now register with a serial number online, and while you can crack them, they're often not usable for multiplayer. In there here and now, for the indie game devs out there - a lot of the times I won't purchase your games because they just fail to impress. There may be some real gems out there, but I can't say I've seen them. It's also possible that you're just not getting the right kind of exposure. You're competing with big game makers, some of whom set very high standards. Ones I'm not sure small teams of 1 - 3 people can stay on par with, or outdo very easily. As gamers, we're used to having the bar constantly raised. I feel for you guys. As a programmer myself, I can appreciate how much time and effort goes in to these things. I can appreciate that it's a labor of love. However, you have to consider what it is you're going up against. I'm not saying don't do it, I'm saying you need to be sure that your game is of a quality level that can compete in today's saturated market.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Consider the use cases for the game player:
1. I buy the game. I go to a physical brick&mortar store, I locate the game, pay for it and bring it home. I infest my computer with DRM software I didn't ask for, click through horrible install processes that are actually pointless, enter a 40+ digit entry code and then can play the game - that I never played so far. If I didn't like it, I'm essentially screwed.
2. I download the game. I don't even have to get dressed, it's delivered at high speed into my bedroom. I install it, which is an easy process that does not install outside of the target directory. No nagware, no infestation, no DRM. No CD required, I can use it for another CD. No Cd key required, or I can copy/paste it from some other tool. If I like the game I can send money their way, but that's a conscious "I like it" choice. If I don't like it, I don't lose my money and I don't get to go through a lengthy process to return it.
Can you imagine anybody considering pirating games?
How about:
- Make it easy to install
- Make it painless to use
- Make it simple to remove completely
- Make it easy to return for full refund within X days (>= 8)
- Make it run properly on my PC
- Make it so cheap that I can fit it in the cracks of my budget (like $10-20).
In that category, I recently bought Portal. It fits all except for the easy install and the full refund. It's still annoying because it's on Steam which is a load of shit (that already corrupted its install once) and I can't give the CD to somebody else and expect them to use it like I do with my car (for instance).
Because it's easier to download a game than go to the shop and buy it?
Because I'm going to use no-cd crack anyway, since I absolutely hate swapping CDs?
Steam solves quite a few problems for me - when the game is on Steam, I buy it there (though I still hate the fact that it often costs more than buying it locally). Steam doesn't require me to swap CDs to play my games. Steam doesn't even require me to HAVE those CDs - I can uninstall the game at any time and simply redownload it later, when I feel like it.
Yes, it doesn't solve all problems, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.
game physical worth is near-zero in electronic medium and demanding people to pay, sounds absurd to many.
Game anti-features like DRM/anti-cheat/bugs also
devalue the original version,so that cracked/pirated one(with them disabled or patched) at $0 is "worth" more then $60 original.
Local retailers refuse to exchange a game for anything except the same game (i.e. defective media). They don't care if my system meets the spec on the box but won't run because the copy protection doesn't like a SCSI CD-ROM.
Best Buy and GameStop (or whatever they are called today) did this.
Sometimes I just don't feel like giving a fuck about Imaginary Property so who knows what might happen.
Blar.
ByteShield has released a whitepaper entitled Is Anti-Piracy/DRM the Cure or Disease for PC Games?
Only customers hate DRM, pirates remove it â" this is how one developer summed up the current state of software protection from piracy. In summary, the current state of anti-piracy in the PC game industry is:
1. DRM efforts have largely failed to protect vendors legitimate rights because they are rapidly cracked
2. They have contributed to destroyed customer relationships and trust by impinging, inconveniencing and even impugning honest customers
3. Annoyed and hostile gamers publicly vent their outrage and fury on game suppliers and DRM suppliers via portals, blogs and message boards
4. Impacting honest users tends to shift their sympathy towards the pirates rather than the developers and publishers. In effect, onerous DRM legitimizes piracy â" because with pirated copies you avoid the hassles DRM imposes
How did technologies and efforts designed for the benefit to the industry instead become the enemies of the software business? And how do we fix it? This whitepaper draws from multiple sources across the PC Games industry to answer these questions and it can be downloaded from http://www.byteshield.net/byteshield_whitepaper_0005.pdf.
ByteShield, Inc.
http://www.byteshield.net/
I've only pirated games these days if I absolutely want them but I absolutely can't get them from local retailers. And before anyone worries, I usually do that only for some really good reason. If the opportunity arises, I buy the game.
A recent example was Final Fantasy VI: I played the SNES ROM. None of the retailers here had the PS1 version (though they did carry FF7, 8 and 9). I bought the GBA version at the earliest opportunity soon after it was released here - and I've been quite happy, thank you for asking.
It's usually the older games that are almost slipping in the abandonware territory already anyway. If the publishers want to combat this, they should elevate the shovelware CD collections to a new era, or make the old games legit freeware. Perhaps make buying old games easier online (I can't do Steam - no credit card and my debit card can only be used nationally). Hey, I'd sure as heck buy a giant collection of DOS games on a DVD-ROM if the price was right... Not long ago I bought a collection of D&D RPGs for 40€ and I suppose everyone agrees it's a steal for 8 games and 5 expansion disks =)
I have never pirated a game but I'd love to have a game developer that listened.
About the packaging: most valid points have been made, but to sum it up: respect the customer and make installing and playing a game convenient. I *still love* the UT version I have that plays without the CD in the drive. Another reason I kept UT for years and years now is that I've managed to install it on my Linux box, and for years I simply copied the folder were it sits when I upgrade my system and it still just works.
The last game I've bought was Half-Life2 in 2004 but since that game only works on windows I hardly get to play it (on wine didn't work for me). I'm still interested in games but it's difficult to sort out the trash and find new ones I like. Also, I don't like upgrading hardware just because some new game has even more bloated graphics - rather would like to see better AI, better interactive and online features. C&C being the first game I spent a lot of time with, I was pleasantly surprised to discover how smoothly Warzone 2100 Resurrection runs on Linux and how incredibly small it is. If volunteers can make 3d games for Linux like warzone or openarena how hard can it be for a commercial firm to make something like a 3d version of Riven, more ineractive and multi-platform, like warzone? I would buy that!
Valve's Orange Box had a lot of additional game content that I had already paid for.
1. I'd pay $30 for the two new single player games. TF2 is of no use to me.
2. I won't pay $.01 to EA for it or any other game until they've patched out the bugs they patched into the last game I bought from them (SimGolf, it'll never happen), so I'll only buy it online through Steam.
3. It leaves me wondering if I'll have to buy all the old stuff yet again to get the new content when Episode 3 comes out, so I have to wait for that, too.
Here's your sig.
Cliff Harris: "Why am I wrong ?"
Pirates: "'cause ye just arrrrrrr."
Sorry about that, I'll get my coat.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Can't speak for everyone in the world, but when games consistently carry a whopping $110 price tag in Australia but merely $50 in the US despite a near equal exhange rate, it can be a just a *little* discouraging. And it's even worse when online services that would normally negate this problem, such as Steam, are made to follow suit by publishers, artificially raising prices based on detected region.
Here's my list.
1: I've downloaded games because I was broke at the time and couldn't afford them, but I was a fan of the game. When this happens, I do normally feel guilty about it and if the game is a good game I will be sure to tell my less-broke friends about it.
--These are not lost sales, but gained fans.
2: I've downloaded games because they were less buggy when not dancing around your crappy copyright protection program. There is no shame like the pirated version working better.
--These are lost sales.
3: I've downloaded games because it is simpler. Please note I have not nor do I intend to EVER download a steam game without paying (with 1 exception to #1... was broke at the time). Valve has done it right. Unlimited re-downloads, a smooth interface, automatic updates, a reason to keep it connected online (which you can't do pirated) and for the love of god a NON INVASIVE INTERFACE. The second you ask me to install a toolbar I'm downloading it out of spite. Don't be ashamed to follow their model, because the worthless crap version that EA has is insulting.
--These are lost sales.
4: Sampling. Many times I can't find a good demo for a game, and I won't pay $60 with nothing to go on but game review sites that you sent gifts to. If I can download a demo in these cases I would (if it was faster download, NON INVASIVE, and worth the time of download (more playtime from it then time it would take to download). If not, i'll download the whole damn thing.
--These are normally lost sales, there have been a few that I went out and bought afterward.
5: Spite. Some companys have already lost my willingness to buy from them.
--These are lost sales
_______________
Fixes: Easy online interface like steam that is not like EA's version. Steam good, EA Downloader crap bad.
Demo's that last more then 5 minutes after I spend 30 minutes downloading them. (Faster connection or longer demo, get it to a 1:1 download/playtime ratio or better for the demo)
Acheivements/rewards for connecting to your servers. Once again, valve wins. I love being able to look at my gamer profile on steam and see all the stuff I've done, my stats for each game, and so on. That is a perk for connecting (pirated versions don't work online, so you miss out on this)
Honest reviews, but of course that's corruption on the reviewing end not on the makers end. (Though threatening to 'cut them off' if you don't get a good review? That's pretty bad)
Blah, blah, blah. We want steam. We want you to have your game set up thru steam for delivery, because it is the best. We don't want you to f--k steam up though in the process. Leave it as is, and the first time someone in middle management advises you to 'pretty it up' you'll be at the crossroads where you choose between your customers and your managers. Kick him in the balls for us.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
their cost of distribution.
What difference does it make if you sell a million COPIES of something at $10 or ten million at $1.
0. Lack of cash, surprisingly simple reason for at least 80% of all Piracy. Why pay for something if you don't have to, it's capitalism in its purest form. Capitalism operates off the ability to pay the worker less then what the true value of the work done is worth. This discrepancy is the Profit margin. It's the same thing but in reverse. The investor hasn't protected their investment enough to stop these types of shenanigans, hence why software comes out with more and more elaborate copy-protection mechanisms. It's the same reason Banks' have really thick walls. The easies way to save money is not to spend it on things that don't have to be purchased. Make what you want of that last sentence.
1. Pre-releases. If you really know where to look sometimes you can get the game before it hits the selves (before you ask I don't know any of these places, but you read about them, e.g. Oink). So you have the elite factor of saying I've played it, its {great | crap} on the forums.
2. Like number 1, but staggered world release dates. A game comes out in the US but Europe has to wait a week. Would be Pirate thinks I want that game NOW! All my forum buddies are playing the game and I can't talk about it with them, why should I have to wait, feck it! download time.
3. Inconsistent world pricing policy of distributors. Metal Gear Solid 4 as an example US $59.99, Eur â59.99, GBP £39.99 now that again in US for Eur $90.04, GPB $76.81. Is the rest of the world subsidizing the US gamer? The âFree-market' isn't working right if you ask me. Regionalize of consoles' game distribution in order to rip the customer off, PC doesn't suffer from this, yet. DVD & Blu-Ray again have this problem; they also get pirated. For some reason Intellectual Property has different values in different parts of the world for no other reason then you can't import it from a cheaper source, this is caused by monopoly & cartel'ing.
4. Popularity, be the go to guy. There's always one who seem to have all the music, all the games, all the TV shows. It's a tool to win & expand his/her popularity in a peer-group.
5. Cheap Bandwidth; people will download all sorts of crap if it's free just to try it out because they're bored. Flavor of the month syndrome. But this would be more Music then Video Games.
I'm sure there's more but I'm bored now.
Back in the day every game that came out was proceeded by an awesome demo you could download very easily. You could then decide if you wanted to buy the game (or just continue to play the demo to death).
I don't know why, perhaps the size of games now, but it seems this is no longer the practice, and if a demo is released, it is sometimes only on those pay for file sharing sites, which really defeats the whole purpose.
Combine that with a rash of really horrible games, and an industry that is generally considered to be bought by the developers (10 out of 10!), that leaves the consumes hanging out to dry.
Generally speaking I go by user reviews mostly and certain trusted developers. I bought Quake Wars because of ET. Blizzard of course is gold, and WOW is so well known AND has a great demo.
Apart from a few others, that means that i will hear about the hype, and then probably download a copy and try it out. If I like it and if there are limitations to the download I will likely buy it. However if the answer to either "if" is no, then I likely will not. That simple.
The industry likes to blame pirates (just like any other), however they have no one to thank but themselves for their current situation.
Here is an idea, before you release the game, release a good demo via bit torrent and advertise that you did so. Then assuming you make a good game expect more sales.
I can see many people thinking that, especially youngsters who have grown up with it.
From my point of view I get sick of copy protection. I have never downloaded a cracked copy of a game I don't own. I have many games on the shelf that have never been inserted into the machine. I prefer to create CD images to mount and run from hard disk because the sound of the CD drive (albeit getting on in years) whirring up and down is very annoying. And I don't have to worry about damaging the original CD.
I use the CD key that is provided inside the case but that's all.
I understand their arguments for the inclusion of copy protection and agree to some extent, but it doesn't take away from the fact that it makes playing a pain for me as a paying customer.
Some would say that by buying the games I'm supporting the use of copy protection but the truth is I don't buy anywhere near as many games as I once did, and I now earn more than I did back then. (I haven't purchased a new game for about a year). It has just become too inconvenient for me (in all respects). [But you can't win: they will only put fewer sales down to a increase in 'piracy'].
As for the demo argument (mentioned elsewhere in this thread), I can see that being an issue as demos themselves are generally overly-restricted. Only x minutes play or whatever.
I have only ever bought one game based on impressions from the demo alone and that is because it provided a plentiful amount of game play for me to play through. I was pleased that the final game was perfectly represented by the demo.
I think the solution for solving both these issues is to find some model where there is more openness. Someone else mentioned higher up the thread that they could include copy protection that prevents progressing beyond a point later in the game. If done well I could see that working - if nothing else, it's something for game companies to think about.
As for demos, they need to be much more than a video trailer or a couple of scenes or a single objective IMHO. The demo I mentioned above actually approached having too much content (I was surprised when section after section was opened for play while all the time I was thinking "surely this one is going to be locked") but this is preferably to having too little.
The key is not to treat customers like criminals (music and film execs listen up too!). That is not to say that a solution will be easy and all this is just my opinion as a user but that's the way I see it.
"Three eyes are better than one" -- Lieutenant Columbo
With smaller/Indy games that I just cant go out to the store to buy (and generally don't buy that type of game at the store anyways), I don't like having to give out my information to a dozen different sites / smaller vendors / people that I may not trust. A few months ago I got an account on Steam. I think I wanted to try a demo of Audio Surf. I played the demo, was impressed - then decided to buy the game since it was a very simple no-hassle process. Over the past few months, I've ended up buying a few games off of Steam. Its easy, always there and very low hassle. I click buy, enter in my credit card info that I assume is only going to Steam, a few minutes later - I have a game installed and ready to play. I don't need to go to the store, I don't need to open any extra accounts anywhere else. I don't need to provide random people with my credit card information. The other day I bought Portal on there, a friend of mine asked me "why didn't you just download it?", my response was - Quality game - An appropriate price - Less hassle I didn't need to deal with torrents, cracks or risk getting a virus, and the game was cheap enough that it made it good for an 'impulse purchase'. Had the game been say, $30 or $40, I might of eyed up the torrent sites a bit more instead.
Bingo! Sins of a Solar Empire is the first game I've bought since Civ IV. There have been several games I was interested in, but this one I bought - precisely because it has no copy protection. I can play it on a laptop on the road, I can let my kids give it a try on their computers, etc. FWIW I haven't pirated any games either - cracked copies have their own problems - so I'm not the type of person he is addressing. But I am is target audience - someone who likes games and has the disposable income. The bottom-line: make it easy: no copy protection, no CD-check, etc. Life is to short to put up with crap...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Another reason to add to the other more "righteous" and "lamenting" ones: humanity is not "one size fits all".
people in the west have become too used to fixed price systems. This is not the case everywhere. Markets can be found world-wide where people haggle over prices.
In the absence of this, there will always be some people in economic straits dire enough to consider themselves worse off than the program vendor. I would think if they are capable of convincing you to that effect, you would lower your price, lend, or donate a copy.
Back before the new world order, people used to operate on such flexible arrangements, making local society much more friendly and flexible, and while it still occasonally happens today, the departure from such policies has led to much strife and resentment.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Moral: RIAA should be campaigning against marriage. CD, Movies and Games are bought by those that need it most and not by those that will be castrated should they dare buy anything "entertainment" related unless it includes a 3-course dinner, roses, candle lights, bath salts, oil etc.
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
If you REALLY have the D2 key in hand, you can go to Blizzard.com, create a free account, then "register" your keys that gives you access to the game download from Blizzard that you can then install and play.
Don't forget to patch to 1.12a.
e to the i pi equals negative one
I would say he can learn from Steam. The other day I went to the mall, looking for half life 2... and I couldn't find it. I started thinking about copying it from some friend to get it, when I remembered about Steam. I logged in, downloaded Steam, purchased the game, and have been playing it happily ever since.
The key aspects here are availability and convenience. If you make it easy for me to get a good product from a fast online service at a reasonable price, then there's no need to go out to buy it, which is what people tries to avoid by copying it in many cases. This is the same for pirated games. I believe that "availability" and "convenience" or the lack of them, is what drives most piracy.
diegoT
Dear game developer:
my respose could be inappropriate, because i do not know any of your game but maybe my VERI LONG essay could illuminate you.
i'm not a software pirate, not in the sense of creating cracks, but as everyone that i know some time i had used some made by other for various pourpouse:
- evaluation of commercial software for work before expending a lot of money on it
- evaluation of private software
- trying games (sometime quite current one, frequently abbandoware like).
- using pirated games until legit copy was easily buyable (in many case like abandonware, download only with hard drm and other, they will never became at disposal)
- using MY legittimately bought copy in a friendlyer way (lost activation code, no cd crack to use 10 games on my laptop whitout a ton of disk swapping and more).
on my experience anti pirating protection has about no good use and tipically irritate legit customer.
and about any software whort buying will be cracked sometime (earlier if is really interesting).
about any protection is an hindrance to the legit customer:
- better not start talking about the old method of inserting the magic word on page 32 line 4 of the manual! imagin games with a foreign translation of the manual! and the ability of any man to lose a manual in the first x years!
- long digital code to insert at install is a nuisance (and an huge problem if the code is lost!).
- various drm mean an inability to easily backup my game copy and so be prone to disk damage or loss!
- the requirement of a playing disk on the dvd reader is an HUGE hindrance! expecially on a laptop: i could not use my only reader for other thinks like background copy of data, music playing an so on; it make noise, consume power and produce heat; it consume the only copy of the game disk!; it's a nightmare of disk swapping if i whant to tour many games; it require having always many disk with me instead of installing all the data in the huge modern hard disk!; i can't install a game then use it an year later on a whim because i no more have the disk near; some more that at the moment doesn't surface.
- continuous internet connection is simply inacceptable! i'm not always on lyne. (i never play on lyne multiplayer games, i'm a bit old scool)
- on lyne registration is a nuisance (and an huge problem if the seller go out of business and the poor buyer could no more use his game!).
- linking a game sale to a specific pc hardware is madnes! i have more than one machine, and whant to be able to play it in any suitable one, not talking about reinstall of the OS for a newer version or hardware upgrade!
an example of what a not drm encumbered game could obtain (if it is good, but if you produce shit and expect people to gladly pay for it...):
- last year a friend of mine found news of a game (hearts of iron II) visited the site, liked what if showed and ordered it. in the weeks before it arrive it downloaded the iso from emule, tried it, became entusiast, showed to us, make a copy of it so that we could try it extensively, we became entusiast ourselves, make an huge order on-line, showed it to other friends, make them try it for themselves and they too bought it.
the result was 12+ copy selled in a week were an hugely drm encumbered one could maybe have been showed (but not throughly played) to much less friends many week later and resulted in less copy sold much later (myself for example had overcomed 2 fears in troughly trying it, that it work on linux under wine and that it wasn't too complex to play and enjoy).
the fact that the game is sold at a relatively low price (20-25 dollar at most) had obviously played his part, as is the ability to simply copy the data in the disk and the absence of a continuous disk access. a pair of people hardly played it but they buyed it because of the magnificent game and fair policy!!!
my ideal games distribution way:
- it was similar to the one used (and i fear now partly abandoned) by
Tell me one good reason not to.
Assuming that developers are missing out on potential sales from disgruntled pirates, Cliff wants to hear specifically from people who have pirated his games.
Well, this assumption is just wrong. People who pirate your games wouldn't care to buy them, they'd play another pirated game instead. That's the value they give to your product. Zero. Because they would never pay to waste their time using your product.
Ditto.
Until I pirated it, that is.
I had and have no intention of dealing with Steam(-ing pile of crap). I found (and continue to find) the entire concept ludicrous. If I buy a single-player game, I expect to be able to play it whenever, wherever, forever. No SecrapROm, no Online checks, no Nada. I'm willing to punch in a CD Key, provided it is no longer than 32 digits, and even that long is pushing it.
I think game publishers need to understand a few basic truths of business:
1) There will ALWAYS be thieves. No matter what you do, or how much money you spend on stopping them, a small percentage of people will always find a way to steal your products. Some will do it for no other reason than because they can. Don't like it? Too bad, that's business in the digital age.
2) Using DRM, rootkits, Online-checking single player games and spyware-like software to try and "secure" your game against "piracy" is at the very least ineffective and mostly nigh-on useless in actually stopping piracy. (See rule #1)
3) Assuming that ALL your customers will be thieves and thus distributing software with the garbage listed in #2 UPSETS your customers. Surprisingly, people get annoyed when software they paid good money for treats them like a criminal and/or refuses to run due to DRM and/or breaks other things in their PC, up to and including the OS itself.
4) Angry and annoyed customers means both lost revenue through negative word of mouth advertising, and by driving some customers and potential customers to outright piracy. Why should anyone pay for a game that is broken with DRM when the pirated version will come out in a week with the DRM stripped out and will be FREE to download?
5) The best way to keep piracy to a minimum is to serve up a clean game, with no DRM or anti-piracy junk other than a CD key. (One that doesn't require the CD to play would be nice as well). And since you aren't wasting MILLIONS on third-party DRM crapware, you can charge LESS for the game, and still make a higher profit. In other words, Cheap and DRM-free games sell.
I think that just about covers it.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
In the current system, gamers get to see the finished product before paying for it, and reward the creators based on their results.
You want to replace that with a system where "middlemen" decide what's good on gamers' behalf, and gamers pay for games sight-unseen in hopes that they'll be good?
If you won't pay for a game that you A) can play right now and B) already know you like, why would you pay for a game that A) won't exist for months and B) might suck?
Art ought not to be held hostage to the whims of what's popular. But I realize that video games aren't going to be funded by the NEA any time soon. I'd be fine with some kind of public fund that was on a willing donation basis. Even better would be if it were tax-deductible.
A much more simple solution:
Write your game so that non-online play is free, but limited. Allows you to get a feel for the gameplay and decide if you want it. Online play? Monthly subscription. Simple solution to many types of games... not all games, but with this market, why not create a subscription style game and give away the application that accesses the backend network?
Before commenting on the Bible, please read it first
Same with copyright protection. Joe average isn't going to know jack about circumventing copy right protection. Just like the same Joe average isn't going to know diddly about picking a lock or disconnecting a alarm system. The software developers know they cannot keep a software pirate/cracker from making copies for ever, they can just delay it a while so they make some profit before piracy kicks in lowering the profit margin.
The problem, as some other have pointed out, is the "physical" medium. Unlike traditional goods, a "video game" exist only virtually.
If someone could copy a car with no repercussions, people would "pirate" car and auto-dealers would complain, car manufacturers would complain and such... Hey it's free cars and no one will arrest me, why not do it?
"Physical" games, like board games, don't have the problem, they cannot be reproduced easily. Every medium with "virtual" formatting has the same problem: music, movies and even online books, among others.
So there's *only* two possibilities to "solving" the video game pirate problem:
1) Change the way people think and treat a game pirate the same way as a car thief, with "real" repercussions.
2) Make the game "physical" instead of "virtual". This requires developpers to be inventive:
Integrate the hardware component along with the software...
Like Eye of Judgement on the PS3, where i cannot even imagine ANYONE pirating the game since it requires physical components to play. If they pirated the game itself, why even care as no one is even able to play it?...
The same way, i don't see anyone pirating Steel Battallion, Guitar Hero, DDR or Rock Band because of their special respective controllers.
Of course, all the examples listed in solution #2 are on console, which are "somewhat" harder for Mr. average joe to pirate in the first place.
And to people thinking pirates don't have *that* much of an effect, i would point to the fact that where the PC was king of gaming, now it's on consoles, notably because it's harder for the common folk to copy, requiring mod chips and other such "heavy" modifications, which is not within reach of most people.
This leaves PC gaming in a sad state indeed...
are always born with new ways of hiding
your privacy isn't dead, its just shifted to new forms
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's not one MAIN reason that wins it all. there are ALWAYS going to be people who don't want to pay for anything. but here are the issues I see with gaming [I haven't even bought or downloaded games in a long time because of these issues, in no particular order]:
1. DRM [self-explanatory] - do you not trust us when we buy the game? I used to buy games and use a crack anyway because I hated having to use a dongle or CD or have it phone home to prove I am a paying customer.
2. Demos - they're not as easily available anymore. look at some demos; they end up being like 2 GB installer, and the full game would be a 2 GB compressed iso to download off tpb or something. if you have fios you're in good shape, but some of us are still stuck with comcast [who are STILL throttling, even after the FCC ruling, those heinous bastards], and we'd rather not spend 2 days downloading your demo which will be a crippled version of your game and could've downloaded the full thing in that time. I'd like to see more episodic based content like sam 'n max, and where a shareware version would really give you a whole part of the game, like doom or wolfenstein.
3. Quality - EA is one of the most guilty, although not all of their games are like this. everyone wants to push out these games every year and have big sales, but the problem is, good things come to those who wait [by that principle, duke nukem forever should be the valhalla of all games].
4. Difficulty - games are getting shorter and attempting to be easier to appeal to the casual market. Call of Duty 4 would've been more fun/longer if you [in the words of yahtzee for other games that do this] couldn't just go hide in a corner sucking your thumb every time you got shot and be back at full health. sure, you can do infinite lives, but how about a punishment [bioshock, I'm looking at you] for not staying alive? think risk/reward. make multiple difficulty settings where you CAN suffer a little to play through it [it makes the game a little frustrating, but don't go overboard]. it doesn't need to be another rygar or anything, but at least make the game last longer than 4-5 hours which leads me to...
5. Price - games are short. attention spans are shorter. you release a game you can finish in 1-2 sittings and you still want $50-70? I could get several bottles of alcohol for that price and it would last a lot longer than this. if the game's gonna be done quickly, charge a modest $20. if it's going to be a long investment [some games deserve this!], then charge that full $50-70.
I'd like to see games go the way of the digital download, and be cheaper. charge me $20-30 for the orange box if I spend my time to download the whopping 9 GB instead of the $50 box with the fancy tin. I'm trying to save YOU money. this is like when artists release music on the internet but don't release it in say, FLAC and still want to charge you several dollars per song. it shouldn't cost the same as a CD if you aren't getting true lossless quality! offer tiers: $5-7 for 320 kbps or V0 VBR, $8-10 for FLAC, and I bet the CD is $12-15. and for christ's sake, give the artwork as part of the package!
It's more convenient to download a torrent from Pirate Bay overnight than it is to drive to Best Buy and fork over $60 for a game you'll finish in a weekend. It is more convenient to play a cracked copy of a game than it is to put up with DRM on top of CD checks or Steam. Make a decent game with few bugs, make a good demo for people download, and price it to sell, and you'll make money. Painkiller was an impulse buy for me at $30 at BB, for example.
I bought my first PC because I heard you could get alot of cool games on it, so for me PC = gaming when I was young.
Me and my friends shared games on floppies, someone found a cool mini-game and shared it, and we had fun in the experience, someone bought a new game, told us about it, we played it to share his experience by grabbing it from him and have a fun experience together.
There are games out there I bought because the game really made me say "now this is reward-worthy! This is something I love to play"
Then there are games out there I didn't buy, but friends of mine bought, and they liked it alot, so I tried it, downloaded it and had fun with them over LANs and such with them, but they bought it, not me. We shared the experience though, and had fun, but the game wasn't what I'd have bought.
Then there are games none of us bought, but tried and had fun for a few moments.
You see, sharing the gaming experience is a part of the value of a PC, the fact that a friend of your buys a game because he loves it means of course I'll try it, but I won't buy it unless I love it as well, but I'll have shared the experience with him, and that will enrich both our experience with the game, something we can then share with others.
People really shouldn't have named what we do pirating, it's not stealing, far from it, it's enhancing the experience for the buyer. Think about it, you have a PC, your friends have a PC, you buy a game you love, and can share that experience with your friends, for the guy who bought the game, and loves the game, that's a pretty powerful reason to look at the package as an item of value.
And guess what, this sharing is the behemoth marketing campaign which gets people trying the games out there. None of us have huge budgets for games, none of us can buy all the games we try, and if PC gaming was as locked-in as some game developers would want, PC gaming would never have come this far this fast.
Games I buy today, I never take out of the shrink-wrap, why? Because today it's alot easier to download the ISO and use the cracked files to skip all that gameprotection crap. that's also the best way for me to make sure that when I Lan with my friends, we all got the same version and no incompatibility issues arise.
What sells games is letting people try them in their own comfort-zone, that's why steam kinda works. The only thing I'd like to add to steam is "share this game with your friends", it would do alot what sharing games did for me, allow me to buy the games I'm interested, and allow me to share the experience of a friend buying a game he likes.
For the hardcore pirate, piracy means complete freedom to play the game the way you want, when you want, however you want, and protection-lock-in doesn't sway the freedom fighter to give up his loot.
For me, I like the freedom, I like to play with my friends, but I am budget constrained, and I will buy the games I love, and play the games the friends and I like.
"Piracy" is allowing people who can't afford buying your games to play your games, and to share them with people who can afford to buy your games, what joins those 2 groups is that these are friends sharing things with friends.
PC Gaming has been enjoying it's success because people tear down the wall between itself and the game and give themselves full freedom to decide to buy or not, thus try alot more games than they would, thus get more and more interested in gaming.
As a gaming company, what you want is as many people experienceing the product, and let the people who want to buy it, to buy it. This is most easily done by pirating the game. People get to see it, try it, but because they're pirating, they actually have to go outside this experience to buy it.
Bring people together, make it easy for people to invite friends to try, make it easy for people to play without having to jump through protection hoops, and -here's the important bit- : make it easy for people who are trying the whole game because they asked for a free (time)limited try, or a friend of theirs invited them to try the whole game for free, to buy it.
Pirate your own game, let people play it, just let people know they can buy it if they love it.
I have to agree with this post. I've pretty much stopped buying PC games because I don't know what they're doing to my system. I did start running games in Sandboxie, but it's pretty sad that I have to do this with product that I bought.
The only thing I'd like to add is:
6) Include a demo of the game so I can try before I buy. If you think you've created a great game, then prove it instead of expecting us to just trust you- I've been burnt by worthless games way to many times.
Before the development of most of the copying technologies and legal concepts that we know and love today.
There is actually nothing preventing the patronage model of funding the arts today. Plenty of art each year is commissioned by private or commercial patrons, and there is nothing preventing someone from choosing to become the "de Medici of videogames" and fund development of new games as a patron. It just doesn't happen much though, which is what I meant when I said it's unlikely. The fact that copies + copyright are more widely used is basically a market decision.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
You need to try the indie scene. There's a ton of stuff out there in this range. Check out Manifesto Games, for some examples.
The developer who initiated this thread is an indie developer. Indie games often have free demos, are priced way below $50, and cover a whole range of tastes, from casual to hardcore, and people still pirate their games.
Piracy isn't really about price sensitivity. In fact, almost none of the reasons that I've seen pirates give are really valid. They're usually rationalizations, after-the-fact. Here are some examples:
This is why people really pirate games:
Here are some lessons:
Um, your argument works nicely against the people who are selling pirated game CDs. Not so much against the torrents. Thanks for playing, though.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Of course this is going to date me, but when I was younger, I'd waste maybe 5-10 minutes playing a game that was worth 25c to me. That way entertainment was a refreshing diversion, not something you had to budget -- time and money -- for.
So you propose a "pay up front for someone to make games" solution, which only makes the problem worse. Essentially gamers would have to pay someone who SAYS they will make a game. Assuming they aren't scamming, it will take years and might suck.
How is this better than paying AFTER the fact to reward someone whose work ALREADY pleases you and encourage them to make more? AKA "the current system?"
I think a more realistic solution is this: developers make games. Some people pay, some people pirate. Developers adjust their development budgets accordingly. Gamers get exactly the output that they're willing to pay for. The end.
Thanks for the info! (yes, I was serious)
Personally I think that most crackers won't buy the game - its all in the intellectual challenge. If their wasn't a game to crack they would find something else.
Without wanting to own up to having downloaded cracked / pirated games, if I had done so, it would have been because the game was not being offered or sold in my location.
I live and work in China (Shanghai) and very often the games I would like to play are simply not available at a local retail level. In other cases, they are available but have been "localised". Although I speak, read and write Chinese, I do prefer to game in English.
Amazon et al often refuse to ship certain items to addresses in China leaving me with very few options.
I do not mean to suggest that my circumstances are common, but they are not that unusual either.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
To start, I don't pirate games. I suppose I did back in high school (but still bought some)... People have already answered with excellent text about the main points:
1. Lack of demo/accurate demo/upgrade path
2. Almost all demos either suck or I find out by the end that I've already seen all the gameplay = boring
3. Buggy shit released as commercial product
4. DRM/invasive spying/rootkits or CD requirements
5. Ungodly costs for completely unknowable electronic data
6. Lacking any kind of manual or documentation (even online!) except the 1-page quick-start guide
7. Doesn't work on my system (graphics, memory, CPU, 64-bit, wrong OS, needs patches...)
8. It requires an online service (f-u Steam), activations, or monthly payments
What else?
The whole industry has it's problems, but I'm not talking about the typical 'big industry' or 'cookie cutter games', but rather that there are no standards for... well anything. Except possibly the age-ratings committee (phooey).
Particularly marketing, product descriptions, and system requirements.
When the only thing people are shown on the boxes and in advertisements are completely fake photos, artwork, and cut-scenes...
When the only text is flowery or rude descriptions of the fictional world instead of what the user interacts with, their goals, user paradigms, or even a list of the UIs in the game...
When the system requirements give vague ideas of either the computer or OS which is needed (saying "Windows" or "MS Winsows XP" is not the same as having a big sticker saying "Does not support Windows Vista nor 64-bit CPUs"...
It means customers have absolutely no information about the electronic product they're about to spend money on and have no chance of returning.
Not just PC games, but console and portable games. I can't even buy a console game unless I've already rented it because there's no guarantee it is a $5 or $500 game for me. Good or bad, I own hundreds of Windows games - many I can no longer use (I need a WINE guru...), and fortunately they go cheap pretty quickly. One of the quirkiest and fun is Startopia (even Metal Fatigue), but no new ones can displace the happy memories of the MechCommander or original Magic the Gathering serieses. Dawn of War made it's own happiness, until Soulstorm showed up. Hundreds of games almost made it but make it more frustrating to play or use parts than the fun parts (Space Rangers 2's economy and difficulty levels, X-COM:* and other's excessive difficulty curves, any RPG's inventory management, any * Tactics' character class/level/XP management...)
[rant]The only new game that has excited me in the last 2 years and lived up to the promises and the demo is Puzzle Quest and even that was a close call because the Windows demo came with the notice that it would only be released on NDS! OTHOH, Zelda:Crossbow was the best surprise I've had... just because it lived up to and surpassed the on-box marketing. Sins of a Solar Empire is a much better piece of crap than their earlier SotS and others, but still largely crap[/rant]
What it comes down to is that for a few years now the strategy guides are almost always more informing, dependable, and even more entertaining and certainly cheaper than the games they're supposed to be helping you with.
Why on earth would you spend $1 that you knew was going to support organized crime when you could download the game online for free?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Troll? He clearly isn't clever enough to moderate.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I've paid for too many games that don't work, from the 1980's to the present:
"World War 2" never showed it's animations correctly
"The Global Dillema: Guns or Butter" showed color screen shots on the box, but was ONLY black & whit
Accolade's Test Drive 2: The Duel (which never worked due to copy protection)
Sierra Online's Heros' Quest 1 (which always crashed when you threw the ball to knock over the pot of magma to win)
Sierra Online's Homeworld (which never worked past a certain point due to copy protection.)
I've seen the same thing in more serious software products, such as Wolfram's Mathematica that refused to work due to my needing to call in to get it activated, but the activation line was always closed,
Microsoft's Photo Draw 2000, which refused to work once I scratched a CD,
Microsoft Windows XP refuses to install due to an error in the copy protection, but Microsoft's support refuses to give me a correct CD key
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...
I've been screwed so many times that I refuse to pay for software.
Andy, the college Comp Sci prof
P.S. I always vote "NO" on all expenditures of funding for computer software also. We can bootleg it or use FOSS.
I might have bought Crysis if I hadn't pirated it on Friday afternoon and finished it by Sunday morning. It's amazing how a game can have so much content and so little content at the same time. That's the main reason I won't buy most games even after checking them out. By the time I've driven down the street to get it I could have used up half of the supposed $80 worth of content playing the cracked version I already have.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.