Slashdot Mirror
An In-Depth Look At Game Piracy
TweakGuides is running a detailed examination of PC game piracy. The author begins with a look at the legal, moral, and monetary issues behind copyright infringement, and goes on to measure the scale of game piracy and how it affects developers and publishers. He also discusses some of the intended solutions to piracy. He provides examples of copy protection and DRM schemes that have perhaps done more harm than good, as well as less intrusive measures which are enjoying more success. The author criticizes the "culture of piracy" that has developed, saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century, and piracy has apparently somehow become a political struggle, a fight against greedy corporations and evil copy protection, and in some cases, I've even seen some people refer to the rise of piracy as a 'revolution.' What an absolute farce. ... Piracy is the result of human nature: when faced with the option of getting something for free or paying for it, and in the absence of any significant risks, you don't need complex economic studies to show you that most people will opt for the free route."
Piracy is the response of all good, thinking people to an epidemic of Ninjas.
I'm already there, you ignorant clod!
People will pirate when it's overpriced. When it's right-priced, most people will gladly pay for it.
What does gaming have to do with piracy?
Well, there's always a third route: Not getting that something, meaning that having these three options:
- 1. Play for free
- 2. Play at a cost
- 3. Don't play at all
Many people will sort it 1,3,2.
Also, some people will happily do 2,1,3 as long the price is reasonable and so it what they get.
So... stop trying to get money from people who just don't value your product if it isn't free, because it can't be done. You can piss them off though, and that can hurt your business.
If i buy the game. They treat me like a thief. Install things that may or may not fuckup my computer or game. Require the disk to be in the drive. Require activation and other bullshit. Limit the number of installs i can do. Tell me what programs i'm not allowed to use like daemon tools. And costs a shitload for a semi-beta game.
If i pirate the game. I don't have any of that. AND it's free.
Piracy. Better product, lower price.
You're kinda foolish not to pirate anymore...
Piracy is the result of human nature: when faced with the option of getting something for free or paying for it, and in the absence of any significant risks, you don't need complex economic studies to show you that most people will opt for the free route.
Right, there's also moral values in the balance. To some people piracy is all bad, to some people everything should be free, to some other people it's fine to pirate from big studios but not from small developers who try to make a living out of it. It's called moral values. It varies from people to people, with also varying degrees of importance in the role it plays in decision making.
You just got troll'd!
The OP suggests that "most people will opt for the free route" simply because the product is free. I would argue that due to overly restrictive DRM, people prefer the free route because "hacked" or pirated products are better. I buy DVDs, but I wouldn't buy DRMed movies because it's effectively wasted money -- one day those movies will be unwatchable.
Also, in the field of ebooks, often it is possible to find an ebook that's been pirated when no legal copy exists for sale. In this case, the publishing companies are not servicing a demand that is clearly present. Sure, I could scan in my own paper copy of the book, but why go to the trouble when someone else has already done it?
Obviously you are aiming at a cheap +5 informative.
Would be nice to respect other people's work, as these people weren't obviously aiming at 10 cheap ad pages.
The article goes on an extensive analogy about DRM equaling Door Locks, and it completely misses the point. Yes, DRm prevents the majority of hackers from being able to do anything to the actual, hard copy of the game. This is worthless, though. All it take is for one person to break through the protection and upload it to a torrent site, and then everybody with internet access can have the game for free. It does not matter that most people couldn't break the encryption themselves. They don't need to, because somebody else already has.
Do you have any idea how long it takes to dig graves for twenty-three oak trees?
The bottom line is that the Scene provides better long-term support then most game companies ever have, and I only like to buy the games that I can and will indefinitely far into the future, which usually requires some variety of cracks and emulators, which is why even the games I have bought in the past are not installed in favor of the infringed+enhanced versions.
I know there are people like myself who purchase games, don't install them, but do install a downloaded copy that has the DRM restrictions removed. This may or may not be viable with Steam-related DRM, but I'm anti-social enough that online multiplayer doesn't really hold a whole lot of appeal for me. And if I did decide that I absolutely had to play something online, I setup an account just for that game so that I could resell my original copy (with the account info) when I was finished with it.
Some of the copy-protection schemes are also designed to try and kill the secondary ("used games") market off by locking out copies from being reactivated.
The mindset of some of these companies is that a game (or other software) has to generate revenue for them each time it changes hands. In other words, they refuse to accept the "first sale doctrine" at all.
Buying one copy and distributing multiple copies to others is piracy. Uninstalling the thing and giving the disk and key to someone else is not.
It all boils down to greed and control, really.
Piracy is the result of human nature: when faced with the option of getting something for free or paying for it, and in the absence of any significant risks, you don't need complex economic studies to show you that most people will opt for the free route."
The article summary includes the following quote, but it doesn't actually seem to be the case if you actually study the issue. In many studies it has been shown that "honor systems" result in fewer thefts than systems where there are technological or potential criminal penalties. In many, many cases building a system of trust and relying upon people's morals and ethics is the most effective solution.
I scanned this article and then gave up because it seemed unoriginal and completely one-sided. If you can't even understand the perspective of people on one side of an issue, how can you rant for so many pages about your perspective on it?
Instead of debating whether or not piracy should be called piracy, how about we discuss that actual issue of how piracy affects games, and what effect DRM has on piracy.
Honestly, I think the solution is to provide benefits to paying for the game. You're not going to stop piracy through DRM. And DRM may chase off paying customers. So about instead of pushing people away, you attract customers with benefits?
For instance, online play that is only accessible to paying customers might convince pirates who downloaded your game to start paying for it.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Dude, you just pirated that article.
Try before you buy. Why is it that we have to pay for a game before we play it? Why don't trials or evaluation periods exist for all games like they do for other applications? Don't say short-sighted demos or one-sided reviews do any justice. They don't. The gaming industry has coasted far too long on the "pay first, be disappointed after" system and is in need of an adjustment; this is why piracy is rampant. Why would anyone want to pay for a game not worth the money? Only good game developers that have fulfilled my gaming desires get my money: Blizzard and Valve.
I'm not blindly buying another Hellgate: London.
Keep pirating. Buy the games you like. Let the weak game developers wilt and die. This will only cause the market to shift to the games we truly desire or at least a system that doesn't rob you up front and leave you sore after.
Until people understand basic economics, people will simply conceptualize piracy as stealing from "the Man" or whatever rather than recognizing that it both drives producers out of the market and drives up prices for the paying customers who have to be responsible for recouping the development costs. Undoubtedly a lot of anti-piracy measures taken have only made things worse, but that shouldn't obfuscate the fact that piracy is a huge problem. Unfortunately, the impact of piracy on markets is largely invisible to customers, while the benefits (paying $0 vs. paying the shelf price) are anything but. The post-hoc ethical justifications are particularly disgusting... I really loved the ironic discussion of how file-sharing systems used for free-riding pirates have to deal with their own free-riding issues.
A society that holds itself to embrace science, rationality, and logic should ignore numbers that have no sources. Do not accept numbers that came from no place.
Where is that society? I would love to move there.
What is needed for culture to evolve and flourish is hat the creatives make a decent living. That does mean enough people have to be willing to pay. For music, this is clearly the case, if you expect "normal" earnings and stipulate reasonable talent. Same for other areas.
For business however, piracy is a problem. Cultural business aims at dominating and creating a mainstream, were a relatively low-quality product is sold in high numbers. People realize the low quality level and are often pirating or not interested at all. Ftom the point of view of evolving culture, the business apporach is very harmful. should it fail permanently and go away, at least todays networked world with very low publishing cost can expetc culture to get richer and more interesting.
Of course the people that get rich on the talent of others will say everything, lie, cheat and steal in order to keep their revenue flowing.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The article is quite biased anti-piracy, pro DRM.
Instead of taking a balanced close look at the causes of piracy the same old (pro-piracy) arguments are assembled into strawmen and then quickly ripped apart. When the focus turns to DRM there is a lot of handwaving and chanting "if I don't want it to be true it will not be".
A shame really.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Tell people: "If **AA can refer to unauthorized copying as piracy, it should be fine if we refer to the filing of SLAPPs as 'rape'"
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I'm sorry, but Titan's Quest had a lot of problems that were not piracy related. Even those with a legitimate copy had severe issues getting the game to play. Trying to cite that as an example for negative perception underscores the fact that the developers, or maybe even the producers, rushed the game out before it had proper QA testing.
I got into piracy because as a child i wasn't terribly well off...
If i saved my weekly allowance, it would take me several months to be able to afford a legit game, and i may be able to get one or two at xmas or a birthday.
I started off buying games, quite a few in fact, and i found that a lot didn't live up to the hype, the demos/reviews were often very different from the actual game, like a demo that would include the first level which was quite good, and then the remaining levels were extremely poor and you couldn't save your progress, so you would do the first level, get to the second, die, and have to start again from scratch (the lion king is an example of a game like this)...
So for my stack of 15 or so games, i had 2-3 which were good and got played a lot, and was finding that the newer games performed poorly because my hardware was now out of date... I still had all the advertising hype and peer pressure pushing me to want the new games, but not only could i not afford them but i now couldn't run them adequately either.
So i started pirating games, and spending what little money i had on hardware upgrades. I was better off, i no longer had to be bombarded with commercials for games i couldn't afford to play, which is a very unpleasant feeling for a kid.
I think all the heavy advertising is extremely unpleasant for the poorer kids who cant afford all the latest stuff (not just games, but most things you cant get for free so easily), games are overpriced especially seeing they mostly target kids...
While on the subject, people are always complaining about the level of crime among teenagers and younger kids these days, but is it any wonder why?
When i was that age, the average kid would be walking around with maybe $5 worth of stuff not including clothes, hardly a worthwhile target for robbery... Now, kids have ipods, cellphones and all kinds of other valuables for thieves to target.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Outright lies. After being half way through the second page wall o' text, I did some skimming and found certain things to just not ring true. Quoting 2D boy's erroneous numbers, further more quoting the old erroneous old figure over the newer, lower erroneous old figure? Equating DRM to a door lock? Saying that STEAM doesn't work in offline mode? Citing Titan's Quest when that game didn't work right even if you had the retail version? Figures where there's a lot of "unknowns"?
Sure, copyright infringement, which is what I prefer to call it instead of some term to denigrate people, is indeed a problem. But you know what? There's fuck all you can do about it. You can try to slow down the crackers, but when they get the game two weeks before release, you've already failed. When you purposely put in measures which makes the game crash to piss off pirates, you've also failed. When the game doesn't work at retail, guess what? You've failed again!
I suggest to Slashdotters, who typically don't RTFA, to not read it. It's not worth the time or effort.
I call bullshit on this article, from a number of different angles!
One of the biggest reasons is lack of logical coherence. The author cites lots of numbers, but then does not actually put them together in an objective way to actually support his conclusions. In fact, his conclusions appear to be foregone. He seems to have ignored a good body of evidence that would lead to different conclusions.
For one example, he cites an article about game piracy on Macs. The article mentions the "pirate's argument" that it is okay to pirate because that person would not have bought the product anyway, therefore there is no lost sale. However, the article only discusses this topic from the point of view of whether it makes a valid moral or ethical argument.
The cited article (and main article too) ignore that several university studies have in fact shown that somewhere in the neighborhood of 80% of piracy occurs when there would not have been a sale anyway. (In most cases because there was insufficient money to purchase the product, but there are several other reasons this occurs.) That may not be a sound ethical argument in favor of piracy, but that is irrelevant. More to the point: it is an economic reality. Economic realities are; they exist. Simply putting them down as unethical is to ignore the actual causes, and possible solutions, for the situation. Further, trying to prosecute -- and especially fine -- people for not buying a product they probably could not afford to buy anyway is completely counterproductive. It offers no societal solutions to the actual problem; it simply fosters fear and antagonism. And backlash, as the RIAA and MPAA are finding out, probably too late to do them much good. They were warned by the society of their customers, but they did not listen.
In another example of faulty logic, the author indulges in the classic logical Post Hoc fallacy argument to conclude that piracy causes DRM, not the other way around. (For those not familiar, this is the argument that because one thing happened after another, the earlier event must have caused the later event. This does not follow: in fact it is just as likely that some third event caused them both.) In particular, he states that a game that was released with no DRM resulted in lots of downloads, then claims that "The evidence is overwhelmingly clear: DRM does not cause piracy, piracy results in DRM." When in fact his "evidence" shows nothing of the sort.
As a systems manager and tech (and now Software Engineer) with many years experience, I can testify that there are a great many cases where, in fact, DRM causes piracy. One example is when I worked for an engineering company, which used quite a few proprietary programs for certain involved, specialized calculations. Many of those programs came with various forms of DRM. And I can tell you this in complete honesty: every one of the programs that used DRM failed on us. Almost always at an important point in the project. And I mean that literally: every single one of them failed, without exception. And in every case, the cause of the failure was the DRM. Further, our calls to support for the software were almost always unproductive: "You must not have installed it properly." or "You must have been tampering with the copy protection". Nonsense. We had paid a lot of good money for the software and were not about to treat it so casually.
In such cases, we were forced to either try to break the DRM ourselves, or to try to find a cracked version of the software, just to get the functionality we had already paid for! Which technically made us pirates. But it was DRM that forced us into piracy, not the other way around. Keep in mind that this was specialty software for which there was often no alternative product available. But just FYI, the invariable DRM failures did cause us to look for alternative products. Our official company policy became (this is true): "If there are alternative products available,
When we talk about piracy, we say the desire to get less for more is a moral failing that must be fought and punished. When we talk about the market, this same desire is used as a justification: there's no point fighting human nature. So we have piracy, a practice driven by greed, coming up against a system, the market, also driven by greed. How do we know which greed is good and which one is bad? If this fellow really thinks piracy is human nature, then he should stop trying to fight what can't be changed and instead find a system that works with it. But that rules out moral indignation, and it can be more satisfying to pronounce on good and evil than to seek workable solutions.
Now I don't think satisfying one's greed is admirable, and I'm skeptical of claims for some immutable human nature. Adam Smith argued not for outright greed, but for enlightened self-interest. Too often in this debate, all the enlightenment is expected to be on one side, while all the self-interest is on the other.
Art is a labor of love. Love does not require profit, and an entire industry that puts its entire weight behind commercial success and greed can only do harm to one of the arts that I love.
May they crash and burn. I really do mean that. I'd rather have ad-hoc groups of 5 or so people who really love the labor they put their time into.
The entire games industry was born out of this love, this passion. It's disappeared from big companies. People who once sat in their rooms hacking assembly on ancient machines, out of passion, are now being exploited into grinding their lives away on a schedule, their creativity mostly ignored in favor of a few elite designers' "market-proven talent".
Bring back the love. Bring back the passion.
Agree with the above poster. The article is a classic example of tendentious writing. It wouldn't stand even the most basic requirements for an entry level university essay.
:rolleyes:
It is written arrogantly and from an pro-industry perspective. Point by point, it consistently takes sides but continuously claims it is not doing so. There is no underlying theory or methodology other than "examine every aspect of game piracy".
1) The article starts with the author claiming neutrality and utter non-bias
2) The article seems to have been laid out beforehand, written as intended and fleshed out with quotes and references where found as supporting his theses
3) Sources are quotes selectively to further his preconceived conclusions
4) Alternative interpretations are ignored or dismissed
5) There is no source criticism
6) Frequent hand waving and usage of weasel words 7) Interjected unsubstantiated strong conclusions, as "The evidence is overwhelmingly clear: DRM does not cause piracy, piracy results in DRM."
Also, you gotta love an author who writes a long article, POS as it is, proves a "printable" link, which takes you to a page which says "if you want to print it, print each page, schmuck".
People who use gpl'd software are unethical? People who borrow a library book are unethical? Kids who believe in Santa Clause are unethical? All charities are unethical? Taxes are unethical? GMail, Yahoo Mail, MSN-Whatever-they-call-it-this-week are unethical? People who watch TV or listen to the radio are unethical? Visitors who use city parks or streets are unethical? Free public clinics for the poor are unethical?
Methinks you've got a very strange idea of "unethical."
Why is copyright necessary? Why can't all information just be distributed without restriction? Copyright falls under the banner of a range of laws controversially referred to as Intellectual Property laws. The aim is to provide intellectual property a similar type of protection as that afforded to physical property. For example, whether you spend your life building houses or writing books, you should be equally entitled to reap the rewards of your labors and have the same sorts of legal protections against people seeking to unfairly benefit from your work without contributing appropriately towards it. It's argued that without protection against such theft, both the builders of houses and the authors of books would have much less incentive to invest their time and money into their respective outputs, particularly because they would stand little chance of earning appropriate income from their work.
"have the same sorts of legal protections" - This i don't have a problem with... The problem is profiteering, when people will produce something once and then produce infinite copies of it for virtually nothing. Someone who builds houses can sell each house they've built once, and then have to go to the same time and effort to build another one. If they stop building houses, they no longer have any houses to sell and stop making any money.
The two things are completely different, and thus should not be afforded the same level of legal protection at all. It sickens me to see greedy people continue deriving revenue from something they did many years ago, and for that matter deriving obscene levels of short term profit.
There should be a cap on the level of profit, after which copyright should lapse... What makes these people so special that they can work for a year or two and then have a life of luxury while the rest of us have to work for 50+ years.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
From TFA:
So really, all locks and keys do 99% of the time is present a constant inconvenience for legitimate users. If we lose them, we're locked out of our own houses or cars. Yet strangely enough, you won't find a groundswell of popular opinion stating firmly around the Internet that "door locks don't work!" and demanding that everyone remove them because of the inherent inconvenience that they impose. Why is that? Probably because everyone is the owner of physical property of some kind, and is willing to endure the constant inconvenience of various locks and keys in their daily lives in the hopes of protecting that property from potential theft, even if in reality it actually provides them with no real protection against most thieves.
If I have a lock on my door, it only inconveniences ME (the owner) and the thieves. Now if I want at least some protection from thieves with added inconvenience to ME, it is my right. The lock on MY door will not inconvenience YOU (if you are not a thief).
DRM inconveniences CUSTOMERS and not the OWNER (the company which made the game).
Now, you know that stores use video surveillance and those detectors near the doors that beep if you have something stolen. Those measures are relatively not intrusive, but do not eliminate shoplifting 100%. Suppose a store decides to really eliminate shoplifting - by having every person leaving the building stripsearched. How many customers would that store have?
1. Should IP be protected at all? (I expect even many of the pro-piracy group would support some level of IP protection)
yes, but it shouldn't be treated like physical property... it is not physical property and pretending like it is, is just stupid... the protection should be extremely limited with an aim to ensure a producer gets a short term benefit relative to the effort they invested, just like if they were working a normal job.
2. How long should the protection be for (plenty of support here for shorter terms, but how many people are *honestly* saying they feel 0 years is appropriate?
It should definitely be much shorter, especially in the modern world where things become obsolete so quickly... as it stands, lots of software ends up being lost or completely unobtainable because its no longer profitable but also not legal for third parties to distribute... having a shorter term should also serve to stop profiteering, where someone earns a completely disproportionate amount of money relative to the amount of work they did, i dont think anyone should have the right to continue profiting from work they did years ago, you lazy arrogant assholes get off your ass and actually earn some money.
7. The games suck. How will I know if I like it before I buy it? Nobody forces you to buy it. Games are not a fundamental human right. Don't get me wrong, I think it's horrendous that companies release crap, buggy games. 100% not relevant to whether it is morally wrong to pirate the game.
If people knew a game sucked beforehand they would never buy it... but how are you meant to find out if a game is lousy without buying it? demos are often very different from the final game (like a demo will have a good level, the full game has 20 more crap levels) and you don't get bad reviews anymore because all the reviewers are bribed or coerced by the big publishers... magazines and websites doing game reviews get the games for free to review, and a good portion of their revenue comes from advertisements... if they publish a good review then the freebies continue, the publishers buy advertisements in publications who give them good reviews and they may get other kickbacks (read: bribes)... but if they print bad reviews, then the advertisements will dry up, the freebies will dry up meaning they have to buy everything they review further increasing their costs, and they stop getting bribes... an unfavorable review can easily kill a game review publication.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The author mistakenly thinks that the TPB's infrastructure must not cost a lot simply because the website is spartan. The Pirate Bay is a tracker, and the author should look into what a bittorrent tracker does, and then multiply that by the millions of people that visit TPB each hour.
"Piracy has pushed id as being multiplatform" stated Hollenshead [id's CEO] (source)
Oh Noze! A company that grossed over ONE MILLION DOLLARS PER EMPLOYEE PER YEAR for many years in the 90's quit innovating had to start selling to a wider audience to maintain their profit ratio.
Their fucking kids must make Ethiopians look soooo fat.
(note: I always bought their stuff because I respect the hell out of Carmack. But, your argument sucks.)
You completely miss the point. There is a vast difference between someone letting you use their work for free of their own free will and taking their work against their will.
The cake is a pie
You're missing the point here. Calling it piracy, and thus people who do the act, pirates, is just denigration. It's done to vilify the people more than what they probably deserve.
Here's a few gems as I struggle through:
Just as the printing press brought about a whole new set of problems with regards to unauthorized duplication, the Internet has similarly required specific measures designed to address the new possibilities for piracy it opens up.
Not necessarily. Anyone remember the videocassette?
Every new invention, including the printing press, has been fought by exactly the industries which stand to gain the most from it, if only they are willing to change. And when that change inevitably comes, they find themselves even richer than before.
The important difference between digital piracy and the types of copyright infringement that came before it - such as taping songs off the radio - is that digital piracy allows perfect reproduction with no quality loss.
Burning CDs allow perfect reproduction with no quality loss. The music industry fought burning CDs. They ended up making money by selling media and burners -- at least, Sony did -- and they continued to make money selling CDs and concert tickets.
And so it is with the Internet. Their costs of reproduction are pretty much nil, even costs of a live broadcast are much smaller, and it's that much easier for the fans to connect, as well. It is their greatest opportunity yet. But they are fighting it, and that is why they're failing.
The aim is to provide intellectual property a similar type of protection as that afforded to physical property.
*head asplodes*
Physical property, when taken, must be replaced. It is real, and can be possessed. It operates under fundamentally different rules.
And when you factor in DRM, you find that they are not trying to protect intellectual property. They're trying to take away what you assumed to be your physical property -- your CDs, DVDs, etc -- and ensure that you are, in fact, only renting.
For example, whether you spend your life building houses or writing books, you should be equally entitled to reap the rewards of your labors
Indeed -- so find a system that actually parallels them.
If I build a house, I can't then replicate it into thousands of identical houses for a fraction of a cent each, and then sell them for a profit. And I'm sorry, but that model is ending for other media, as well.
The successful artists are getting paid like the housebuilders -- for actual work. That is, if you're a musician, sure, print a CD, but it is a promotional material -- let people pirate it. Your product is your tour.
Without copyright laws the GPL couldn't operate, because it's through the rights that are enforceable under copyright law that the Linux movement can place terms and conditions on their licensing arrangement in the first place. Without copyright, the default and only possible distribution method for anything everywhere would be via the public domain
I'm sure that many GPL advocates would be perfectly happy with that situation. After all, the primary evil of proprietary software is that it discourages sharing.
Disclaimer: I don't actually think it's evil, and I do develop proprietary software.
The argument is straightforward and both intuitively and logically sound: for every pirated copy of a product, there is some potential loss of income to the producer of that product.
The arguments put forth here universally center around the loss piracy causes.
What they completely ignore is the potential gain. Piracy demonstrates a much more effective method of distribution -- I'm at a loss as to why I can't legally obtain TV shows or movies via BitTorrent. It is also free advertising -- a pirate may eventually buy the game, and if the pirated version is at all good, they may in fact convince others that it's worth playing.
It also increases awareness of the game and the brand, something which might otherwise be done with expen
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!