Game Developer's Response To Pirates

cliffski writes "A few days ago, indie PC games developer Positech publicly called for people pirating their games to explain why, in an open and honest attempt to see what the causes of gaming piracy were. Hundreds of blog posts, hundreds more emails and several server-reboots later, the developer's reply is up on their site. The pirates had a lot to say, on subjects such as price, DRM, demos and the overall quality of PC games, and Positech owner Cliffski explains how this developer at least will be changing their approach to selling PC games as a result. Is this the start of a change for the wider industry? Or is this the only developer actively listening to the pirates point of view?"

Comments

mod me up!

[pxc]

In honor of the parent, whose post can only go up to +5, of course. ;-) (Yes, I do agree with the parent, as well.)

Exercising self control

[pandrijeczko]

These days, I view people who copy games (or other media) as being as evil as the games/media companies they're ripping off as well as being weak-minded.

I'm in my 40s and I've done more than my share of copying stuff, right from the days of the ZX Spectrum, through the Commodore to the PC. Maybe it's an age thing but about 6 or 7 years ago, I came to the realization that I had horded a mass of copied games and music that, ultimately, I spent more time cataloguing, archiving and burning disks for friends & family (I never ever sold any of the copied stuff that I amassed) than I did actually playing or listening to the stuff myself. I also understood that because I could download the stuff so easily, it actually had little or no value to me & couldn't therefore see any further justification in downloading any more of it. So I threw away just about all of the CDRs I'd burnt and erased my hard drives.

At that point, I started listening to my legal music collection & playing some of the legal games I'd purchased in the past. There was a lot of stuff I no longer liked so, over a period of time, sold it off on eBay and used the proceeds to buy stuff I did want. I actually got a real buzz from finding the best & cheapest prices for games & CDs, read all the reviews that I could & for music, I'd still download an album from Usenet or BitTorrent just to play it through before deciding to buy it or not. In the end, and to this day still, I have a really treasured music & PC games collection, all of it legal.

The point I'm making is that I am by no means a saint but I have now got into this mindset where I don't consider anything as something I *must* have, or indeed, *must have there and then*. I'm very cynical of advertising, I try my best to ignore it, & even though I'm at an age and salary where I don't have any great financial worries, I set a monthly hard budget as to what I will allow myself to spend on entertainment for myself - consequently, I appreciate more the money I allow myself, I eke it out as much as I can & I just refuse to buy stuff unless I'm pretty sure that, to me, it's worth the price being asked for it.

For example, I'm a big fan of Unreal Tournament & was looking forward to playing UT 3 when it came out. But I simply will *not* pay anywhere near the standard £34.99 price for a PC game here in the UK. So I just waited, picked it up for £15 last week and I think for that price it's great value for money.

Think about it for a moment. When people queue up for 24 hours outside a store to buy the latest Harry Potter book or the latest iPhone, what message does this send to the corporations that produce all of that stuff? As far as I can work out, it sends only one - there are a whole heap of weak-minded people out there with a great big wedge of money that, by the power of marketing alone, can be manipulated into believing that they need something so bad, they'll stand in a line waiting for it and happily hand over their money as soon as they get to the front of the queue.

People need to calm down with the "I want it now" mentality. It's great living in a part of the world where we have lots of money to spend but if we part with the stuff so easily, why do all these corporations need to bother with making good quality stuff any more? Just churn out any old stuff and force people to want it through marketing - and that explains why today, in music, computer games & just about everywhere else, there is simply *SO MUCH CRAP* about.

And when there's so much crap about at so high prices, some people find their own justifications to pirate it rather than buying it, this gives the corporations the excuse they need to use copy protection and DRM as a basis for extorting more money out of the people who do buy the stuff, pisses the pirates off even more, etc. etc. *WHERE DOES IT END?*

People *NEED* to start developing some self-control. If something isn't worth the money, don't buy it and don't copy it. Then the corporations have no justifications for DRM, the only thing they can do is reduce prices, churn out better stuff or go out of business - it's that simple.