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Valve Takes Optimistic View of Piracy
GameDaily recently spoke with Jason Holtman, director of business development and legal affairs for Valve, about online sales and piracy. Holtman took a surprising stance on the latter, effectively taking responsibility for at least a portion of pirated games. Quoting:
"'There's a big business feeling that there's piracy,' he says. But the truth is: 'Pirates are underserved customers. When you think about it that way, you think, "Oh my gosh, I can do some interesting things and make some interesting money off of it." We take all of our games day-and-date to Russia,' Holtman says of Valve. 'The reason people pirated things in Russia,' he explains, 'is because Russians are reading magazines and watching television — they say "Man, I want to play that game so bad," but the publishers respond "you can play that game in six months...maybe." We found that our piracy rates dropped off significantly,' Holtman says."
Attitudes like this seem to be prevalent at Valve; last month we talked about founder Gabe Newell's comments that "most DRM strategies are just dumb."
Finally some intelligent thought on this matter from game publishers. They should focus on benefits that will get pirates to switch over, rather than annoying DRM technologies which do nothing but hinder the use of the game by legitimate customers, while real pirates bypass them with ease.
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Common sense is a lot better than DRM. Glad to see that at least some companies are willing to spend a few hours to identify reasons why people pirate games and think of simple solutions.
From my experience in various Eastern European countries over the last decade, the reason people pirate is not because they don't get attention from publishers. It's because people don't think films and games should cost much more than the cost of their storage media. Who doesn't want to get stuff for almost free?
Many countries speak English, so release English versions same day everywhere, and localized releases shortly there after. And if people in China, Russia, whatever can buy a pirated copy of that game for $5, then you can't sell a legal copy for $60. In certain countries, they may just have to sell legal copies for $10-$20.
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Steam allows you to get content online. They are leading the charge to remove boxes from shelves. Today there was mass chaos at some Circuit City stores, because their CEO ran that company into the ground and won the worst CEO of 2008 award - Philip Schoonover, possibly the worst businessman in retail history. And that's saying something.
Next up is Best Buy - do you really need to travel there to pick up a disk to have a game anymore? No.
Sony kinda gets it, you can download some games with a PS3 that are fun, esp. for little kids, without needing to go get something. Pretty soon all the consoles will realize the revenue stream in controlling the distribution channel for all software via broadband.
Do that, tie it to reasonable encryption keys, and alot of piracy will go away. PS3 games aren't up on piratebay for a reason, while Xbox games are. Just make it available, and make it easy - to the world, and the internet will take care of it. The loss of sales via the retail front won't be as bad as the suits fear, and mail-order is always available for the PC gamer living in an Igloo.
I downloaded Team Fortress 2 via torrent and played on some cracked servers. But that was pain because the servers were changing daily, then had to manually download patches, update and then realize that the next day servers reverted to the patch before etc. But the game was excellent and I thought, those guys really deserve the money, and I would have a hassle-free experience. Then I went out and bought Orange Box (which includes TF2).
Now year later I'm still playing this excellent game and it was worth every penny.
But I see a problem though. I generally use Steam as the game updater, nothing more really. But take for example GTAIV. It requires three services to be active when playing: Steam, Games for Windows and rockstar social club. 3 separate registrations and 3 resource eating programs. That is way over the top.
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
Just so, at least in my case. And I hope that music and movie publishers will come to this sensible conclusion as well. I'd love to be able to download a legal "zero day" copy of movies direct from the studios... or go see the movie in the week of its release. Not wait until they finally get around releasing it in my country. As for music... the not-really-legal AllOfMP3 should be an example to the music industry. A wide selection of music, and more importantly, a wide selection of formats, from MP3, WAV, to OGG. Now there's "plays for sure" for you... And you could choose the bitrate as well, from small files to files without compression.
If publishers stop punishing their legit customers with crippled products and late releases, those customers might decide to not turn to piracy.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
That's all great, but it's just words. On the other hand, when I wanted to buy GTA4 on Steam from Russia, I found out that the release was North America only (and despite this, I've got bombarded by ads urging me to preload and save, etc - all also NA-specific). After seeing the ads and the trailers, I really wanted to have that game, and getting such a slap in the face on release date was... very unpleasant. I immediately went and downloaded it from the torrent, and I am not going to pay for it anymore. I wanted to in the first place, but they said "no, we won't let you". So be it, then.
I guess it's publisher policy really, not Valve, but still, Steam is and will be associated with Valve first and foremost, so maybe they should clean that mess up before speaking on this. Once I've got burned, I looked around, and I've found that there are many other games that are similarly released first only in North America, and then gradually elsewhere. There's even a Steam group, "Rest of World", that's dedicated to this problem, with over 10,000 members.
I think part of the problem companies have is they try and group everyone who copies games or music or whatever in to one group. They talk about "pirates" as though it is one homogeneous group with one mindset. That's not the case. There are important sub groups, and the question needs to be what do you do about each? For example I'd say you can divide people who copy along these rough lines:
1) People who want stuff for free and wouldn't pay no matter what. You write these people off and just don't worry about them. They are the kind that even if you made it impossible to copy your stuff, they'd just do without. You aren't going to get their money so just don't bother. Let them do what they do.
2) People who are doing a "try before you buy." In music in particular I've known people like this. They want to download albums to see if they like them and want to buy them. For these people you needn't worry too much, they are likely to buy if they like your stuff. Only things to do is make sure you are offering quality stuff, and try to offer a superior experience if they pay. For example in the case of a game maybe a nice online community and auto updater, that requires a legit copy.
3) People who pay for some stuff, but don't have enough money for everything they want. They are somewhat similar to the first group, but they do buy things, just not everything they get. Something like university students with little disposable income. This is the only group that tighter DRM measures might help you get more money. However if everyone is tightening DRM, well you are back to where you started.
4) People who would like to pay you, if only you'd let them. These are the people who either live in a country where you refuse to release your product, or people who have been screwed over by your DRM. They'd like to buy your stuff, but you won't let them, or your protection technology means it won't work. Thus they turn to copying it. These people the answer is less, not more DRM to get more money. Give them the ability to pay legitimately, and they will.
Ok well when you start breaking it down, you see that really there are a number of groups that you just need to write off. You aren't getting any more money from them, so stop worrying. Don't screw over people who want to be customers just to try and screw over those who don't. It really needs to be looked at as a profit maximization thing. Implement DRM only to the point that it actually helps you make more money. Don't just try and "punish" people for copying your stuff. I mean really, who cares? You are in it to make money, not to be a justice crusader.
I also think firms fail to take in to account the cost of DRM. It's never free. Most of it is purchased from a third party and there's costs for that, Macrovision isn't a charity, and if you develop it in house you are paying the development cost. Either way you pay the support cost. So if you spend $100,000 buying a DRM package, but it only gets you $50,000 in additional sales, it was a lousy buy because you actually lost money. If it then also loses you $25,000 more sales from people who can't play, well then it was a REALLY lousy buy.
I think the best thing companies can do it make it easy for people to buy things legitimately, make the legitimate buying experience better than the illegal copying, and provide things that are a good value for the money. That will get the most sales. The copying figures don't matter, what matters is getting the most sales you can. If you do something that increases copying by ten times, but also sales by ten times, well then that's a win. Doesn't matter that copying went up, what matters is sales went up.
Its not that Slashdot loves piracy, its that many people on /. hate the idea of copyright infringement being treated as equivalent to theft of physical property, and they hate stupid DRM schemes that make life difficult for people who have acquired software legally but which the most serious, organised, pirates seem to have little difficulty circumventing.
I'm a software engineer and I'd be out on the streets if our customers illegally downloaded our software.
No, you'd be out on the streets if not enough of your customers paid for your software to keep the company profitable.
but most pirates are people who want to listen to music, watch movies, or play games for free.
In which case, they were never going to pay for your software anyway, so unless they physically stole a boxed copy which you had paid to manufacture, you have not lost a dime. Most software/recording industry scare stories make the ludicrous assumption that every pirate copy represents a lost sale.
Conversely, some people who pirate your software will go legal when the next version arrives (or someone checks up), recommend it to others or (if its serious software) acquire skills in using it which result in future sales.
Equally, if you try and stamp out piracy by treating your paying customers as potential criminals and using intrusive DRM, you will lose customers to the competition (be it pirates, other companies or open source).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
The goldsrc engine was a heavily modified quake engine, and the source engine was a rewrite of the goldsrc engine. This is not news. Everyone knew that during the release of HL2. The only thing the code leak showed us was that Valve rewrote the engine by replacing the goldsrc engine piece by piece; something that Valve told the public even before the leak. So yes, Source is Valve's creation with a structure derived from the work at id.
And secondly, "Gabe Newell is a total programming novice"? I guess it does represent the legitimacy of your rant quite well.
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The reason people download tv shows in New Zealand is because kiwis are reading blogs and watching fansites - they say, "Man, I want to watch that show so bad," but the networks and distributors respond, "you can watch that show in six months...maybe."
Repton.
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It's really simple. Most people DO want to pay for their games.
When I'm paying a game I paid for that I really like and I helped support the people who made it, it gives me a big rubbery one.
The problem is, companies want to make it too much trouble to buy their damn software. Stores where I live don't carry most software, and I'm not about to pay 30 dollars shipping for a 30 dollar game CD. Even if I get the game, some distributors, like EA, think I'm going to tolerate not being able to install my game more than 3 times (I've already installed every game I've bought this year more than 3 times. Get over it.) With Steam, I can say "Hey, I want to play Half Life Blue shift. I've never tried it.", and 4.99 on my mastercard and a 1GB download later, I'm playing it. If I re-install and want to play some more, I just download steam, download the game, and enjoy.
I design industrial control systems for a living. We have to follow human engineering principles all the time. For example, if an instrument is lower than a person's knees or higher than their face, odds are it won't get maintained. Therefore, you can get all moralistic about how tradesmen are lazy and they should do their jobs, or you can do the right thing and design your plant so people naturally are inclined to maintain the most important equipment. If you get all moralistic, though, be prepared to do it while your plant is down and you're losing tens of thousands of dollars of production per hour.
This is no different. Companies like the RIAA member companies, who want to bitch and whine, who want to sue their customers, who don't want to make the experience of buying music any easier, they're going to see their profits fall, and piracy skyrocket. Companies like Valve who design their systems so it's easier to buy than to pirate, they'll see their profits rise, and piracy fall (as this article says they've seen).
It's been a long time.
The DRM in Spyro the Dragon kept the game from being pirated for literally months. There is an article at gamasutra about how they managed this. http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20011017/dodd_01.htm