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Indie Game Dev On the Positive Side To DRM
spidweb writes "The online backlash against DRM has gotten a bit excessive, especially since the purpose of DRM is entirely admirable: to stop thieves and free riders and to help creators actually get paid for their work. This blog entry calls attention to XBox Live, a place where strong DRM is helping to encourage quality games at low prices which make money for their developers. Quoting: 'If I could snap my fingers and give myself the same absolute control over the games I make that XBox Live has over theirs (in return for lower prices), I would. The freedom of the current system is nice, but it comes at too high a cost. Honest people need to pay extra to subsidize thieves. The unfairness is just this side of intolerable, and it's only getting worse. DRM is fair if, for what the corporations take, we get something in return.'"
To me, DRM is about two things. First it's about making sure that people don't actually have control over the things they've ostensibly bought. The Amazon debacle is a prime example of this.
Secondly, it's about trying to create artificial scarcity, which seems to me to be all the wrong strategy.
And, on a different note, I don't think the low prices you're seeing are because of DRM. I think you're seeing them because developing good games shouldn't actually take the gobs of money that it's currently fashionable to throw at the problem. I know of several indie games that seem to be doing OK for themselves completely in the absence of DRM. Word of Goo, and The Penumbra Series.
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If your software has DRM in it, it can't be transferred or resold (first sale), so there is no used market, which increases revenue. It can't be backed up, so if you accidentally destroy the media on which the software is recorded, it must be purchased again, which increases revenue. It can be remotely deactivated, so you have to buy something else to play, which increases revenue. Thus, devs should love DRM in their games.
Why would the "thieves" need to be subsidised? What costs are they incurring? Bandwidth? Aren't they all self-distributing with bittorrent, taking a load off the developer's servers? Clearly they should be reimbursed for this valuable service?
I like how the reason for high priced games is laid at the feet of piracy, instead of accepting the fact that the prices are based on what the market/gamer can bear. Who needs basic economics knowledge when you have a crusade?
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
"Honest people need to pay extra to subsidize thieves." -- why? Honest people are perfectly capable of paying the same amount of money to subsidize thieves. It's not like most the thieves were ever really going to give you money anyway. And they laugh at your DRM and attack it with 1337 h4x0ring and steal it anyway.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Didnt I just read Microsoft & Game Developer are being sued by customers who bought halo 3 because it DOES NOT WORK?
Great idea to use XBOX 360 for a shining example....
DRM is there to allow big game studios, the entertainment industry and big business ultimate control over the content that the consumer pays for.
Instances of this:
1. Amazon.com yanks Big Brother copies off all Kindles. Only after a massive public uproar does it apologise.
2. Sony implements illegal malware to implement it's DRM, gets into massive trouble and then apologises.
3. Microsoft implements dial home license checking. Most people who pirate Windows get a crack to get around it, those who purchase the produce must use it before they can make hardware changes. No change there.
Tell me that DRM has been implement for the little guy again?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
To me, DRM is about two things. First it's about making sure that people don't actually have control over the things they've ostensibly bought.
Okay then I assume then you would be in favor of a scheme were your copy is entirely unlocked (ignoring the fact that it only works on the version of the Xbox you bought and perhaps no future version). But that it is water marked with your Credit card number and you agree to be liable for every single one of the games that shows up in the wild even if its thousands of them?
If your cool with that then say so.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I think you're seeing them because developing good games shouldn't actually take the gobs of money that it's currently fashionable to throw at the problem.
But it does take gobs of money if you want to develop a very slick-looking game that, besides its graphics, is the most basic regurgitation of a previously innovative and hugely successful game. There is very rarely significant innovation in subsequent games of a given successful franchise, yet they throw similar amounts of money at the development of each installment. See: COD, Every-EA-Sports-Game, etc. Let alone the development costs for games (and this is most of them) that do nothing more than attempt to mimic the pioneers/true-greats. Ultimately, I think it's because it's infinitely easier, in the corporate setting, to pitch a remake/sequel/imitation of a successful franchise, than to take a risky stab at something truly innovative.
How many hundreds of thousands of indie games are there that have never even approached the success of World of Goo?
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Certainly all the previous people replying would -never- download and keep a game that they never paid for, but that the should have. Only the other people do that.
Jibe!
All the honeyed words in the world won't change the basic, essential, fact that DRM is a system where somebody other than you controls your hardware, against your interests. It cannot work any other way. The purpose of DRM is entirely admirable in pretty much the same way that the purpose of mind control chips would be(just think of all the crime they'd reduce!!).
That's the thing, even if everybody agreed that the objectives of DRM are 100% squeaky clean and wonderful(which is hardly the case, DRM schemes to date have had a nasty habit of trampling all over first sale and fair use, and generally giving the seller substantially greater power than copyright law would grant them) the means by which DRM must be implemented, namely taking control of everybody's property in order to protect yours, are simply unacceptable.
How is DRM admirable? Justifiable maybe, but admirable!?!?
because of DRM. I use more than one system. I do not wish to load the game on the disk and still keep the DVD in the drive. I don't like to be kicked because some stupid punkbuster program gets it wrong! I'm not a thief don't treat me as such!
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Sure, if DRM actually worked toward its purpose, there wouldn't be as much complaining.
But DRM doesn't prevent piracy. It always get cracked. And furthermore, before it gets cracked, it makes stuff hard to use and not work right.
Ergo, people are faced with a choice: buy the product that is crippled by DRM to the point that you probably won't even be able to play it on your computer, or get the pirated product without DRM for free. That choice leads to DRM not merely failing, but working against its ostensible purpose. After many years of this being painfully obvious in everyone's face that DRM causes piracy, we begin to doubt the motivations for DRM. Maybe helping content creators get paid, isn't what DRM is really for.
In the case of music and movies, it's very clear that it's about controlling what playback equipment people buy, and creating monopolies for "standards" licenses. I can buy a bluray drive pretty cheaply, but a bluray player is expensive. And that is the purpose of DRM: to keep mplayer out of the player market. So it's about making sure someone gets paid, but that someone isn't the content creator. It's Sony's electronics (not movie) division.
Now, on to your xbox gaming rant. You complain about low sales and the high price of your game. And you use DRM. You wish you could lower your price and gain sales. Well, there's one thing you can do that will not lower your sales at all, and will probably raise them: drop the DRM. You're thinking about pirates instead of the customers. Telling customers to join the pirates, isn't going to help your situation. All if takes is for someone to have one problem with your DRM, and you will have converted him to the other side: the pirates' side. Look to your customers.
I like getting paid for my work. And I think that game developers should get paid for their work too. Please point out where in my statements I say that game developers shouldn't get paid for their work.
As for working for companies that make closed source, I don't really enjoy it, but companies that make their money from Open Source are hard to find. They exist. Red Hat is doing very well. But most people seem to have the same fear driven mindset that you do and seem to think that producing Open Source software means they can't get paid.
Several of the companies I worked for produced software that I felt could have been sold as Open Source and done just fine or better than they were doing. One of the customers of one of the companies I worked for actually went to the trouble of debugging all of our poor SQL queries for us. It would've been so much easier for all involved if they had just had the source code themselves. I campaigned for this inside those companies.
Several others have been companies that made perfectly valid internal use of Open Source software, like Amazon.
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Basically the advertisement and apology for DRM is that we will treat you like thieves since there are some thieves out there. Sorry - it's all your fault. Bull - I see those locked down games for XBox and such sitting there in their big piles of unsold games at the locked in prices of 69 bucks or 59 bucks - just sitting there, nobody is buying them at those prices. XBox games are nicely locked down aren't they? Where's the price savings? Nowhere cause when you bastards have the thing locked up there are no sales, there is no price deal and no sales. 70 bucks for an XBox or PS3 game that may or may not be good? NO thanks. 60 bucks for a PC game that probably won't work on my computer cause who knows why (Could it be the DRM?). Small game developers have been able to see distribution advantages because of sales through Impulse and Steam and other companies that are online as well as from the online communities from the non PC entities. It's not the DRM or lack thereof. Typical false logic.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
"The online backlash against DRM has gotten a bit excessive..."
DRM is still popular among game publishers, which leads me to believe there hasn't been enough of a backlash. Geeks like us know about DRM and can choose to avoid it when told of a product that has it, but your Average Joe won't know the difference until it bites him in the ass, and by then it's too late for him to demand a refund. Right now software publishers can sell me a game as part of a retail transaction and then impose additional terms, after the sale, at the point of installation. I see that as a kind of fraud, and say there hasn't been enough of a backlash.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
So difficult to pirate that nobody bothers
So he's not a complete moron in thinking that a "perfect" DRM scheme exists. However, it's pretty stupid to think that something would ever become "so difficult to pirate that nobody bothers" -- remember, it only takes one person to bother.
Defense Grid is ten bucks, and it's giving me more than ten bucks worth of fun. Sure, I'm at Microsoft's mercy, and I don't "own" the product, but hey. Ten bucks.
It's also twenty bucks for the Greenhouse version, which seems more than a bit odd. It's worth mentioning, though, that you do own that one, such as it is -- the only DRM is a single Internet check on first installation, which seems reasonable for a downloaded game.
I charge $28 for a new game. I would LOVE to charge ten bucks. But, to stay in business, I'd have to triple my sales, and that won't happen. Would sales go up? Sure. Would they TRIPLE? Almost impossible.
I don't know about that. You didn't seem to have much trouble getting onto Slashdot, which would get you a fair number of sales. But your general attitude in this article already makes me skeptical, and there's no way I'm paying $28 for what I see in that game. $10? Sure, and if it was good, I'd tell my friends about it. $28? You just lost a sale, buddy.
The result? My games get pirated like crazy,
The question: Would your games be pirated less with more DRM?
More importantly: Even if they were pirated less, would that mean more sales for you? Because if I was pirating your games, and I suddenly couldn't pirate them anymore, I'd probably go pirate another game, not start paying for yours.
DRM is fair if, for what the corporations take, we get something in return.
I will agree with that. However, very often, what we get in return is nowhere near worth the DRM.
An example of a marginally fair trade: Steam. Being able to IM a friend and hop into the game he's playing is cool. Being able to back up games, with a tool that will nicely create DVD-sized files, is very cool. Being able to download every game I own -- saturating my fiber connection -- after a reformat, in case something went wrong with the backup -- and needing only a username and password to recover all my games, and they're even planning to include savegames and settings, at some point -- is awesome.
But this is still a trade many users are unhappy with. I'm online all the time -- many users would like to play their single-player games offline.
An example of a very fair trade: World of Warcraft. The DRM is pretty much inherent in the system -- it connects to a server, and that server is unavailable to anyone who doesn't work for Blizzard. While there have been a few pirate servers, they pretty much have to reverse engineer and/or build from scratch most of the content and gameplay, and there's still the network effect -- if your guild's on a Blizzard server, you're on a Blizzard server. This is a case where you give up pretty much nothing for the DRM to work -- the one thing it takes from you is the ability to play offline.
One of the problems with eBooks is they take away the ability to loan or sell the books you buy online, not to mention the lack of a satisfying physical object, and they still charge the same price for the book.
That is why those of us in the know insist on unencumbered PDFs. I can get one that's watermarked, so I can't easily pirate it to the world, but I can easily share it among friends.
the purpose of DRM is to prevent free riders (aka self-justifying weasels and morally damaged scumbags).
The purpose of the McCarthy trials was to prevent communism from taking over America. It's a noble goal, but the casualties are unacceptable.
If DRM enables pro
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
how is that fair?
Yes, I've noticed that somehow derivative games seem to be a LOT more expensive to produce. My suspicion is that basically the giant pyramid scheme that is the modern corporation siphons off too much money.
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It was never the intent of DRM to stop hard-core pirates, DRM was made to stop casual piracy, the "Oh can I borrow your game" where 1 copy of a game gets installed on five different peoples computers. The MMO people figured out a way around that, pay for play....people will pay for something they see a value in.
The quote sums up the DRM attitude: "If I could snap my fingers and give myself [] absolute control..., I would". Hell, absolute control sounds pretty appealing to me, too! But, often taking control means wresting it from the hands of others. Those who seek to control absolutely, absolutely should not!
My problem with DRM has nothing to do with wanting to distribute content illegally, defend pirates or any other such thing. My problem with DRM is that in an attempt to stop the theives, the companies are treating the legitimate customer like crap! When DRM measures first came out I frequently found that the so-called license to the music that I purchased didn't actually work the way it was supposed to. I had to purchase several songs multiple times in order to run it on different devices, even though the licenses were supposed to transfer. In short, bugs in the implementation were ripping ME off. I didn't rip off the company. Similarly, when Vista came out with a large amount of DRM integrated into it, I found that certain functionality that was important to me broken or removed. In particular, I had a lot of trouble playing certain kinds of media files even though I had legitimate ownership of them. I even created some of them! As far as I am concerned, I have NO sympathy for the media industry as long as they continue to cheat me.
I absolutely hate DRM -- it creates problems for legitimate users and does virtually nothing to stop piracy.
But... I think that it is attempting (and failing) to address a very real problem. It's all well and good for us to say "just don't worry about the pirates", but it's probably not a long term solution. Eventually, honest users feel like suckers for paying for music/software/movies/etc and they start moving towards taking stuff for free as well. I know that CD sales went up while Napster was big, but it is truly hard to imagine that such a situation unchecked would have continued for, say, a decade. At some point people just decide it's stupid to buy stuff they can get for free.
And as much as we've become accustomed to the idea of free creative works, it's not really a cure-all either. Yes, some stuff will get created even without any notion of intellectual property, but some very valuable stuff won't get created in such a world. So without any other obvious solution to the problem, it's not so hard to see why DRM is attractive to desperate content creators.
I don't have a solution. But I do believe there will be a growing problem for funding digitizable media in the future.
Cheers.
I don't mine the intentions of DRM. I'm all for game developers getting payed for what they make. The reality, though, is that the drm gets cracked and the game gets pirated anyway. So the end result is that the game costs more to make in order to put the DRM in, the user experience is often worse from having to deal with said DRM, and the pirates still do what they do. So nobody wins.
At some point (and it may have arguably already happened with some games) the consumer will be able to a get better game by NOT paying for it, simply because they will be able to find a cracked version that doesn't treat them like a criminal. (ie phoning home regularly for security, getting pissy about being reinstalled, etc.)
Well, the weird thing is, you see, I actually bought copies of World of Goo and Penumbra. And while I don't think copyright infringement is stealing, I didn't even commit copyright infringement.
And my employers have generally been aware of my feeling that they should release all software they published as Open Source. Often they became aware of this before they hired me.
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I agree with you. But I think there are things you can do that make the people who buy your stuff feel special and important. And as long as you do that, I think you'll end up with a lot of people buying your stuff.
I look at what Radiohead and NIN have done in this regard. Johnathan Coultan is also a good example.
People could've gotten and can still get the work of any of those artists for free. Many people choose to pay anyway. And the reason is that those artists do things to make the fans who choose to buy feel appreciated.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
The thing is, any DRM scheme can be cracked and it seems any DRM scheme WILL be cracked. You name it, it seems to have been busted. So this means that the people who wish to illegally copy a game can. They just go to one of the many sites offering it and get it. They are then not inconvenienced, since their copy has the DRM removed. However legitimate gamers, well those people it hurts. They have to deal with the DRM restrictions. It makes their experience worse.
That's the situation I find myself in with a number of games these days. They are protected with SecuROM or TAGES or the like that require online activation, and only let you activate a few times. Well, that is not acceptable to me. I need to be able to play the game many years down the road. I like replaying games. So, there are games I just won't buy. Dawn of Discovery would be one. It really interests me, however I won't buy it because of the DRM. I suppose I could copy it, but I don't like doing that.
So DRM hurts the legit customers, not the infringers.
That's my biggest problem with it. If you actually could show me a DRM scheme that was 100% unbreakable, ok then maybe I'd give it some credit. After all, if you really could ensure that people HAD to pay for your product, perhaps it would do some good. I'd still want to see a real study showing that it does, but at least it would be possible. As it stands now, your DRM can and will be bypassed, which means that it only hurts people who actually pay.
I'll even meet the developers and publishers half way. If DRM makes them feel warm and fuzzy, ok I can deal with it if it is non-intrusive. Impulse GOO is one I'm ok with. It doesn't bother me, it doesn't limit my installs, so it is fine. I'm not a zealot, I'm willing to compromise. However these ultra-restrictive DRMs do nothing to stop the copying, and just piss people off.
Part of the problem is that developers need to stop seeing infringers as potential customers. While some might be, many aren't. In many cases if you made it so they couldn't have the product without paying, they'd simply do without. As such you can't look at all the number of copied software and say "We are losing all these sales," because you aren't. You need to worry about not pissing off paying customers. You don't want me angry with you, I spend a lot of money on games, but I WILL (and have) take it elsewhere if your DRM messes with my ability to play.
I definitely want the creators to get paid, and I don't want people to pirate copies of their games.
That aside, I don't buy this argument. If piracy leads to "Honest people need[ing] to pay extra to subsidize thieves" and strong DRM helps to counter this, why is it that PC games are always much cheaper than console games despite their relative ease of piracy?
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
He does realize that xboxlive isn't stopping any pirating, right? In fact, it's so prevalent, there's been more than one major modder that has been arrested in the not so distant past.
http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/08/04/1319221/California-Student-Arrested-For-Console-Hacking?from=rss
This guy should probably be a politician. Ignore the facts at all costs, even if your proof directly contradicts the point you're trying to make!
Look at this shill at AOL for DRM. Typical DRM Whore!
the group think here is very much as you describe - don't worry about pirates, but if /.er's were spending 10 mil on developing a title only to see it on pirate bay for free i reckon they would sing a different tune. just look at how they react to gpl infringements....
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I disagree with you. There is a scarcity and it is skilled developer's time. Software development isn't the kind of domain where you can pay lots of low-skill, cheap, developers to replace a few highly skilled developers. They'd probably expect 60k (low end) - 100k (moderate end). Skilled programmers if not paid well or interested, will probably move somewhere else, and that costs more money to orient another employee to their work. Now if you have ~10 people on a project that spans 2-5 years, you're looking at a few million in development, not counting marketing, publishing, and lawyers (for miscellaneous legal negotiations). This implies that you should sell a few hundred thousand copies to break even. Some IPs can do this easily and others cannot. That being said, if developers came up with an ideal piracy-prevention method, it could mean the difference between staying afloat to produce another game or closing shop. This is, perhaps why some companies see DRM as a necessary evil: It annoys a small population of consumers, but might give them a better chance at surviving the fiscal year.
I really think that you could even do large globs of money games, if you were to target the game at enough audiences. How about instead of DRM, you have a counter that's very visible in the menu that says, "You have used this for whatever days. Since you like it, you really should pay us for this, then we'll keep making better things for you."
The fact is, if a person does not like your game, chances are many of them wouldn't have bought it anyway. If they like your game, and have money, a lot of them will pay a bit to fund you further. You just need to make it really easy. In fact, have a "buy game" button which takes you to your paypal account/enter cc number window right under the "pay us" message. Maybe even offer payment plans ($5 a month for 12 months), that would offset the distaste for paying $60.
Most importantly, don't cripple anything. People hate to be pressured.
to stop thieves and free riders and to help creators actually get paid for their work
"The" purpose? No, that's just the only socially acceptable purpose. There's also lock-in, forcing you to re-buy content you already own, the ability to take content back from you either intentionally or just by making a server go dark. You sir, are disingenuous.
"But most people seem to have the same fear driven mindset that you do and seem to think that producing Open Source software means they can't get paid." When you start making your money from producing Open Source software then you can talk. As is you put yourself into the more equal than others category.
I wouldn't have a problem with DRM...
If it didn't violate the First Sale Doctrine.
If it didn't violate the principal of Fair Use.
If it didn't violate my right to format shift.
If it didn't violate my right to backup my data as many times as I want, in any way that I want.
If it didn't violate my right to use my content on any device I want.
If it didn't violate my right to use my content whenever I want and without expiration, even in the event that the content provider no longer exists.
These are all rights that content providers have not been able to bribe politicians to take from us in the US.
These are all rights that DRM can strip away, by making the expression of these rights impossible without circumventing DRM and doing that is criminalized under the DMCA.
So the XBox DRM makes stuff cheaper?
If that was true than how come so much DLC content on the oh-so-easy-to-pirate PC games is often free and the same content for XBox is not free?
I posted before finishing my thoughts, oops.
DRM takes all those rights away.
And at best it only delays Copyright Infringement.
I won't use the term Piracy or Theft because those are well defined crimes that have nothing at all to do with distributing copies of content.
DRM doesn't stop piracy in the slightest. A check of any torrent site shows that.
As you rightly said, it's about control. This claim that "honest people subsidize thieves" is absolute nonsense as:
A) Despite the claims to the contrary, most people wouldn't buy the games they pirate anyway (when I did it back in the day it was for the collecting). Also people should be grateful for piracy as they're preserving these titles.
In ten years time, if you want to install Spore for example, will you even be able to install a legitimate copy and get it authorized so you can actually run it? The pirated version will still be around and you'll be able to still use it. DRM like Securom which requires online activation conveniently puts an expiration date on the games you buy. If you can't play them in ten years time, you're only choice will be to buy new games, which is exactly what EA and the like want. Once again, it's about control. Piracy is just a red herring.
B) If piracy ended tomorrow, prices would NOT drop. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a rube. These are folk in the money making business. Look at Starforce protected titles. Uncrackable when they came out. GT Legends took TWO YEARS to crack. Yet the game came out at the exact same price as everything else within that genre. Actually $5 more here.
The reason games are cheap on Xbox Live is nothing to do with piracy, and everything to do with market exposure and standardization. On XBLA games are released pretty much every week, promoted well on release etc... The points system sets down a very rigid price structure.
It's more that than anything else. It seems rather than DRM being the selling point, it's convenience and standard pricing. Stats from the like of Valve have shown that when a game is put out at a cheaper price, sales increase far beyond what was expected.
It would appear that the folk behind Xbox Live have figured this out when laying out the service. It's better to sell 10,000 copies at $10, than 2,000 at $30.
Look at Steam last Christmas. Bioshock sold an astronomical amount due to it being reduced to $5. Left 4 Dead also did the same when Valve reduced the price. So much so they said how surprised they were.
Radiohead and NIN are poor examples, and you know it.
They both were established through the system before their little experiments with downloads-for-donations.
The fact you used this broken argument pretty much proves the other's point. (Not that I agree with all the bashing you've received in this thread, I just can't let this one slide by.)
Fact is I can browse the internet and find others who did make some money with downloads-for-donations, but I can't point to but a few who made a good living at it.
Really, a post about how DRM is 'admirable' and it's only to stop the evil thieves and actually helps consumers? This can't not be a troll.
*chuckle* Point taken. I'm working on it.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
The problem with the summary goes deeper than that. It's full of weasel words, disingenuously conflating copying or filesharing with "theft" and suggesting that you cannot be an honest person if you are every the recipient of copyright infringement. Spidweb needs to get off his high horse. I think there are fewer honest people among those who shill for DRM.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Copyright infringment is stealing. Disturbing the peace is murder. Driving without a license is embezzlement. Any other minor crimes that we can rename to more serious ones?
Couldn't agree more. What people don't understand is that even a small indie-game cost at the minimum $100 000 - $150 000 to develop and thats the minimum.
The same is true for almost all musicians. Almost no musicians who go with a standard record label ever make any money at it either. Which percentage is higher?
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I really think that you could even do large globs of money games, if you were to target the game at enough audiences. How about instead of DRM, you have a counter that's very visible in the menu that says, "You have used this for whatever days. Since you like it, you really should pay us for this, then we'll keep making better things for you."
The fact is, if a person does not like your game, chances are many of them wouldn't have bought it anyway. If they like your game, and have money, a lot of them will pay a bit to fund you further. You just need to make it really easy. In fact, have a "buy game" button which takes you to your paypal account/enter cc number window right under the "pay us" message. Maybe even offer payment plans ($5 a month for 12 months), that would offset the distaste for paying $60.
Most importantly, don't cripple anything. People hate to be pressured.
That, only logged in.
You don't have a right to make money; so if you're selling an intangible product, you need to add value that makes purchasing the product attractive. In the past, when EA was "Electronic Arts", they took an approach where they treated developers like talent, and put their names and pictures in boxes and printed manuals. Packaging was creative and attractive, and the manuals, maps, etc included with the product had a certain value.
The cost was alot less as well. $30 was probably the average cost for a new computer game. Now, in an age where almost all technology-related costs have plummeted, games are easily double that.
IMO if you want to make money, you either need to add intangible value-adds, like packaging, manuals, maps, stickers, comic books or have online subscription or expansion options that allow you to pull down revenue for an extended period of time.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
PC gaming has died? Better let all the studios know that are still releasing PC games. Since July we have seen 16 releases including:
Batman: Arkham Asylum, Wolfenstine, Tales of Monkey Island, and Street Fighter 4.
That is just since July of this year. Then there's a little game called World of Warcraft that has over 12 million active (meaning paid to play within the last month) subscribers.
PC gaming is hardly dead. Tons of games keep coming out from major studios, including games also available on the consoles. That's your real indicator right there. If it were such a problem, if it were truly "dead" then why would console titles come out for it? Wouldn't they avoid it as to not have their game pirated and to save the cost of porting? However, that's not the case. Street Fighter 4 came out for arcades first, then the consoles. They spent a little more time on the PC version giving it better graphics and more content and made it the definitive version. Hardly what you do for a "dead" platform, of it piracy will just eat all your sales.
Money is being made on PC games, and plenty of it.
I bought World of Goo in part based on all the interest around it, when they did their pirating blog post or whatever. I played it for a few hours, finished it in a single day IIRC. I haven't replayed it.
In terms of total game time and replay value, it was not nearly worth it. Compare it to a game like Far Cry 2 - my current replay favourite, I love crossing the beautiful countryside avoiding the guard station hazards - and there's simply no comparison. Far Cry 2 is worth 50x World of Goo.
If we don't all die (or ascend) in 2012 then we are all going to be taken over by the robots. So.. worying about protecting imaginary property seems a little.. archaic.
That's not even the worst part of DRM. DRM is about spying on users, collecting their application usage data, and uploading that to the company server. Why the hell should anyone pay $60 to be spied upon? Is violating privacy so cheap? There must be at least a dozen ways to avoid/reduce piracy without violating user privacy and not using this DRM crap.
But it's perfectly fine to pirate software, movies, music, books, proprietary software, etc because when it comes to those things copyright is teh evil!! But don't you dare violate the GPL license (despite the fact that it's only enforceable via copyright) and suddenly you're the spawn of satan.
Nothing is developed for $0. Unless you're a worthless piece of shit who can't hold a job ... then sure, maybe your time is worth nothing.
This article is getting the rounds on all the sites I visit. This one has 90 comments already. I know this is /. and RTFA doesn't work here. So I implore all that actually bother to leave a comment tearing his pathetic, sad, sad, why 28 bucks for such a crappy game, arguments at his site. There is only 12 currently.
I don't mine the intentions of DRM. I'm all for game developers getting payed for what they make. The reality, though, is that the drm gets cracked and the game gets pirated anyway. So the end result is that the game costs more to make in order to put the DRM in, the user experience is often worse from having to deal with said DRM, and the pirates still do what they do. So nobody wins.
At some point (and it may have arguably already happened with some games) the consumer will be able to a get better game by NOT paying for it, simply because they will be able to find a cracked version that doesn't treat them like a criminal. (ie phoning home regularly for security, getting pissy about being reinstalled, etc.)
I am told that DRM often holds up for 14 days, and that the devs thinks that this is worth it, since a huge amount of the sale is in those 14 days.
But yeah, DRM sucks. For games, I still think the best solution is to put some of the game on a server. For music films and such, I don't think there is a good solution.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
DRM just makes pirate copies more useful than the originals, so even honest users who pay for the games/movies/etc often end up breaking the DRM or obtaining pirate copies anyway.
No unskippable "piracy is stealing" promos on DVDs (which the pirate copies obviously don't have), no phoning home every time you run a game, no access being denied to a single player game because your internet is down (and therefore want something to do while it comes back up), no scrambling around for half an hour looking for a disc when there's no valid reason to require one, no "you've upgraded three times since you bought this game, sorry, you have to buy it again".
Yes, it is a problem that pirates are offering a cheaper product but for those of us who want to pay for it, the answer isn't to ensure that they are also offering a superior product.
I agree - but the problem keeps being identified as thieves and this may be missing the crucial problem.
Perhaps these people aren't thieves (maybe some are) 'cause to me, a thief is going to somehow make a profit off stealing. In most cases here, it isn't being resold, remarketed, or whatever a thief may normally do to make a profit. It is being appreciated, played, evaluated, maybe shared, discussed, and so on (more often than not).
The problem may need to be re-identified as something else that allows the producers of the game/music/text to be rewarded/paid so they can continue to do this type of work. A fair tax is one way to do this. Advertising is another (which is a form of tax).
Everyone keeps falling back to the DRM which isn't really the desired method of distribution. It's a crumby way to enforce payment - and happily enforce re-paying for it again, and again.
I think that there has got to be a better alternative to actually retain value of the products without costing both the production team and the consumer (what is now being called 'thief').
The problem with DRM is implementation. Most technical implementations of DRM make a product difficult to use freely. In the case of music, DRM often locks out into a single music player or prevents you from playing music on anything but proprietary software. Furthermore, you are often not able to play the track on more than one computer, and the proprietary software often only allows you to export the tracks or record them to CD at a much lower quality. Furthermore, users will find ways to circumvent DRM which just increases development cost and time because you have to continually try and patch holes. AS FOR GAME DRM I have purchased one game with DRM and that went quite terribly. I purchased the game, played it a few times, then ended up having to wipe and reinstall windows. The game refused to start up, stating I could only install one copy on one machine (this was the same machine, same copy of windows, same serial, etc.). Contacting support proved fruitless, and I soon grew so disgusted with the situation I gave up and now intend to never purchase a DRMed game ever again. Mind you this was a few years ago, but I doubt any improvement of DRM would give me as much freedom to use what I have purchased as a non-DRM solution.
If you do not stop pirating games, all console games will transition to a thin-client model - similar to the way MMO games operate. You'll pay subscription-based access in order to play games. You will never own them.
You will buy a box that does IO - processes inputs and does basic rendering operations. All the game logic and levels will live and run on a central server - and will never be transferred to a computer that end-users have access to.
It doesn't even need DRM to work - just strong authentication security. And that's the future of the commercial videogame market if you fuckers don't stop stealing games. Pay for games - or don't play them. Period. Your "but I have the right to try it for as long as I want" bullshit is wearing thin.
Really? World of Goo has extreme pirating problems.
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
No. I would sooner drop all of my code into the public domain than slap DRM on it.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Yeah Low prices are not caused by DRM. On the contrary.
The laws of economics don't really care about legality or what not. Competition doesn't stop producing cheaper goods just because the competition is black market competition.
History has shown that as a response to piracy companies have been forced to lower prices to compete against the pirates. Windows is cheaper (or at least has cheaper editions) , there are cheaper editions of photoshop. Music on itunes is remarkably cheap (at least in Australia compared to CDs. $16AUD an album itunes vs $30 CD).
The ONLY reason these things are so cheap is because they have to provide an incentive to use them over the pirate product.
Take Microsofts approach to mass piracy in SE Asia. What did they do? They lowered the price dramatically so SE asian folk could actually afford it.
Now I do understand the angst. As an iPhone developer , it can be heartbreaking to see your app report 3x the number of deployment (jailbroken phones) then you've sold in the app store. That shit sucks, especially because iPhone apps are really god damn cheap.
But punishing honest users seem wrong to me. Dont try and manage your users rights, they don't need your management. Instead turn your users into allies and make them LOYAL to you, and they'll flip you dollars every single time.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
So RadioHead and NIN are giving all their music for free, because they had such a good experience?
No?
At the moment I cannot get their music free legally. It might be a shocker to you, but for many people this does make a difference.
Incorrect. The sole purpose of DRM is to give publishers control over a copy of a work after it has been ostensibly sold to a customer. (Its effectiveness in achieving this purpose is a separate question.)
It is laudable that you would only choose to use this control for legitimate purposes, but that does not make it the fundamental purpose of the scheme.
Furthermore, even if, in your benevolence, only intended to use DRM for this purpose, you would still stifle all uses of your work unforeseen by you. Would you have a problem with a legitimate buyer of your work using it on an emulator to enjoy it again twenty years from now? I suppose not. But if the current legal climate persists you would make a criminal of him.
No. DRM is a naked play for control. An attempt to sell something but still act as its owner. Your good intentions do not change this.
Can you substantiate this claim? I can't imagine how any cost burden is placed upon you or your legitimate customers by people who aren't your customers copying your work.
I suppose you mean that the costs must be defrayed over a smaller number of copies due to some imagined lost sales. But the question of what your costs would be if people who obtain your work illicitly obtained it legitimately is meaningless. If you attempt to discover the answer to this question experimentally by shackling your actual, paying customers with DRM you'll never know what your sales would have been without it. Much more importantly, you may or may not achieve your goals relating to those who aren't your customers, but you will certainly abuse those you claim to be attempting to protect.
The choice is yours: punish your customers out of a sense of moral outrage, or align your perception of who your customers are with reality. Either way, you, and only you, must live with the consequences.
-Peter
It's simple, DRM would be good if we could guarantee that the corporations would out to simply protect their rights.
The truth is, it's about the bottom line. They won't stop taking once they start.
DRM takes away my ability to own what I purchase. It brings software and information to the level of service and consumable not product.
I buy product, not consumables.
I've seen really good games made for well under 10k, much less 100k. Hell I've seen flash games which where equally as advanced as some PC games and just as length, all of which where made for under 5k. The only games which cost 6 or more figures are big budget games many of which actually suck.
Eventually, honest users feel like suckers for paying for music/software/movies/etc and they start moving towards taking stuff for free as well.
I have a little different view on this than you do. If I bought a game and enjoyed it, I never once felt a fool having paid for it, even when I knew how to get it for free. The developers did good work and earned my money. The only instance where I did feel like a sucker was when I shelled out money for a half-backed product. Case in point, 'Knights of the old Republic 2'. Now there's something where I felt majorly ripped off. A full priced game, but only half finished, that got a half hearted patch that fixed only the most glaring problems and was then abandoned by publisher and developer.
A long time has passed since then and thanks to "release first - finish later", my game consumption has decreased from "something every 1-2 months" to "something every 6 months or longer, if there's a good game that doesn't get bad press due to being buggy or DRM'd into oblivion". My point is, if there's a good game, there'll be more than enough people who buy it to turn a profit from it. Nowadays the PC gaming platform has a rather bad reputation for receiving unfinished games that become enjoyable only after multiple patches, whereas consoles still somewhat dodged the bullet in that regard (which might change sooner than later, thanks to online-connections facilitating patches on console titles as well).
I'm sure there are many others like me who got burned by such releases one time to many and in turn decreased their consumption of PC titles, thhus lowering overall sales figures. Piracy is oftentimes quoted as a major reason for bad sales of many a game these days and as a result cries for strong copy-protection/DRM schemes are heard, but maybe companies should also take a look at the state of the games they're trying to sell, before jumping to conclusions.
What are you talking about? Most post which are pro-copyright and more specifically pro-statuesque are modded quite fairly on this site. Why do you try and put off the air that you're being persecuted? You're not, and if anything it reduces the value of any argument you could make.
I along with several of the people I work with program to sell, and yes we've seen our titles appear on file sharing sites and networks and you know what, it doesn't phase us. We get more then we put into making the programs, quite a bit more. The people who buy our software get our support, constant updates, and the next version as soon as it comes out. Even at their best pirate groups can't mach our update speed, and if they could then our skills at programing are lacking.
The truth is piracy is a bullshit argument, and the game industry execs ether know it and are using it as a smoke screen to help push single owner sales/licensing or are just fools who are looking to increasing revenue through legislation.
Could you suggest one or two then?
The free demo world of goo helped keep various kiddies occupied, without me getting into trouble for exposing them to violence and gore.
:).
And they might even have learnt something useful from the game
I don't think I'd buy the full version for myself, but I can see how some might really like it enough.
Many people that have been burned by a shitty game will pirate before buying. As piracy increases, so do sales.
I recall reading a blog post from one of those indy devs, trying to figure out how much a "pirated copy" is really worth. I believe the final guesstimate was about 5% of the price. (which is to say, 1/20 pirates may buy your game if it's good)
However, you also have to factor in evangelism. Most pirates are very vocal about being pirates, and can offer unbiased opinions on whether a game is shit or not. I know some pirates that downloaded Fallout 3, and they've tried to get me to download it. I prefer to buy my games, so I'm waiting patiently for it to show up on Steam for $10. Ultimately this is an extra sale.
Those same pirates told me to avoid UT3, and go with Section 8 instead.
All of this would be absolutely true if it weren't for that fact that PC games are 16% to 80% cheaper than console games. For example the same game on a PC will cost $10 - $50 and on the console it costs $60 - $70. Not only that, but you get all the maps, mods and third party content free on the PC, you have to pay $5 - $10 for it on the console just for 1 - 3 maps or ONE mod (for example the horse armor mod). This is a blatant ripoff of customers because they've got you locked into the console *because* they have DRM. Also, another great example of this DRM-mentality is that MS charges $50/year (which they've been threatening to raise) just so you can play online games!!! It is free on the PC, and coincidentally on the PS3. In addition to all this shenanigans, they charge independent developers $100 a year for the *honor* of debugging and programming applications, which is also free on the PC. To sum it up, the Xbox console is Steve Jobs' wet dream, he loves lock-ins that super-inflate the price of goods and services and makes us all serfs to his whim. And, apparently so now too does MS, ironically once a long stalwart defender (don't laugh) of open platforms like the PC. It is sad.
I've read the comments here with some interest, though I think they parrot a lot of conventional wisdom about DRM and piracy that is, at best, unproven. And is, most likely, quite wrong.
I never say DRM can be unbreakable. Of course. But I AM saying you can make a system where the prices are low enough and the protection is strong enough that it's not worth pirating. For example, XBox Live. And it works beautifully.
As for rights. I don't like having to put locks on the games/books/songs people own. But hey, in a democracy, we all get what the worst of us deserve. If DRM is the price we have to pay for creators to be able to afford to create, place the blame where it belongs. Pirates. I think there's room to worry about the rights of EVERYONE.
Finally, I've been getting the comment that people who pirate will never ever buy a game. I've never seen one bit of hard evidence to prove this. Not all people who pirate are identical. I promise you that if the price is low and the bother of pirating is high (again, XBox Live) some people will buy the game who might otherwise have stolen it.
- Jeff Vogel
Spiderweb Software
Fantasy RPGs for Mac and Windows.
http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com
I guess it is tough to expect fellow geeks to understand this, but they are just games. If you don't like DRM, don't play games with DRM. If all games end up having DRM and you still don't like it, guess what? You can survive without playing video games. I went a whole two weeks one time without playing and had no permanent side effects. Honest.
I've argued these same points with Eidos employees on the Eidos forums.
Another great argument to use is when they try to claim that "games cost so much because of piracy". Really? The average price of a computer game isn't much more than it was around 15 years ago, when piracy was essentially non-existent (it may have been around, but not in an amount that would really have an impact). The price of computer games hasn't even increased enough to keep up with inflation, let alone have the mythical cost of piracy added in.
As you said, the games people pirate are normally always games that they would not have paid for. Therefore you cannot count a pirated game as a lost sale (since they wouldn't have bought it even if piracy was unavailable). Game companies use piracy as an excuse to avoid the real problem - most games these days SUCK. The games that are good sell tons of copies and make a fortune - even if they are pirated to hell and back. Why? Because people are willing to pay for a good game (and many people use piracy as a "try before you buy" deal).
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Hah, the old "if people stop pirating, prices will be lower" argument. No, a commodity is worth what a purchaser is willing to pay for it - I bet the Biz people know this very well (if little else) and thus the price of a specific item will not change as directly as that. What it (the amount of pirating) does affect is of course whether a product is worth marketing at all. A long winding argument from there might possibly lead to lower prices in some sense but it's certainly more tenous than these people would have us believe!
Can you clarify this? As stated it is surely preposterous. What is true is that nobody is obliged to buy his game. If that is what you meant, the fact that he is making money through Xbox Live suggests that even though nobody has to buy it, some people are buying it. To my eyes that works fine; if you don't like the game enough to buy it when it has DRM, just don't buy it. He seems to have discovered that that is not enough to stop some people buying it. Therefore you are happy if you don't buy it and he is also happy because enough other people are buying it.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
In meatspace, you pay extra for goods since the merchant has to add the cost of those that are stolen. But that doesn't hold true for digital works. Here, the price is set by what the market is willing to bear.
Consider that PS3 games cost $60 and are damn near impossible to duplicate. The same game on the PC costs only $50 and PC game piracy is rampant. Shouldn't the cost of the PC game be more to compensate for the thieves?
As the article points out, they aren't going bankrupt. They are making a living despite the high piracy rates. It would be nice if the rates were lower. I know I bought my copy, and I encouraged my friends to do the same.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I've been making a very good living *exclusively* from FOSS for the last 5 years, and a good part of my income was derived from work with FOSS for about 5 years prior to that.
So kindly fuck off and die.
Also people should be grateful for piracy as they're preserving these titles. In ten years time, if you want to install Spore for example, will you even be able to install a legitimate copy and get it authorized so you can actually run it? The pirated version will still be around and you'll be able to still use it.
Direct2Drive has a 5 year anniversary sale going on, I bought the X-Com collection (6 games) for $5. There's no reason not to think that I'll be able to go there in 10 years time and buy Spore. Posterity is a pretty weak justification of piracy.
DRM like Securom which requires online activation conveniently puts an expiration date on the games you buy. If you can't play them in ten years time, you're only choice will be to buy new games, which is exactly what EA and the like want.
DRM isn't a strategy by publishers to force gamers to buy new games in the future. I have dozens and dozens of games that are 10 years old that I don't play... not because DRM prevents me, but because they're old. Players move to new games on their own, they don't need any help from DRM.
Once again, it's about control. Piracy is just a red herring.
It's not a red herring: without rampant piracy, there would be no DRM. Publishers implement DRM because they believe that they lose money because a portion of the people who pirate their games would have paid if a pirated version hadn't been available... and they're right. How much money they lose is up for debate. We know that 1000 pirated copies doesn't translate into 1000 lost sales, but maybe there's 10 or 50 in there... enough to make a difference, at least in the minds of the people who make the decision to implement these schemes.
Secondly, it's about trying to create artificial scarcity, which seems to me to be all the wrong strategy.
I've heard this a lot, however, without what you call 'artificial scarcity' do you have a better way of compensating creators for their work? If we want to leave it to the free market then creators do indeed need the right to license their work as they see fit, at a price they see fit.
DRM is a (partial) solution to a very real problem. That is without something in place to limit their ability to do so, people are, in general, selfish bastards who'll happily take advantage of someone elses work without compensating them for it. Again if you have a better means of solving this problem, then by all means tell us!
At the moment I cannot get their music free legally. It might be a shocker to you, but for many people this does make a difference.
I love how so many people on the side of the debate you seem to be on assume that everybody on the other side is a pirate. That tells me all I need to know right there. We're all criminals.
I didn't know that you couldn't get NIN's stuff for free legally at the moment. I just assumed that once they let that cat out of the bag they weren't so silly as to try to stuff it back in.
I'm sure you can get it that way illegally, but that's not because I'm out there doing it. I just know how the Internet and digital information actually work in practice.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Another route is advertising in game *GASP!*
Of course, everybody seems to be terribly against that for any game that also has a initial purchase fee. I myself have no problem with unobtrusive ads that can help get the developers the money that they deserve.
Look at Steam last Christmas. Bioshock sold an astronomical amount due to it being reduced to $5. Left 4 Dead also did the same when Valve reduced the price. So much so they said how surprised they were.
This is so true. I've really grown to love the sales on Steam. I hadn't bought anything on Steam since I bought the Silver Box I think it was called when HL2 came out. That was what? End of 2004?
Then I grabbed Bioshock when it was 5 bucks last Christmas. If I didn't like it then I wasn't going to be very put out about it.
Suddenly I'm a fiend. Since then I've grabbed Civ IV, Left 4 Dead, Killing Floor, Oblivion GOTY+DLC, Fallout 3, Defense Grid, a bundle of 10 indie games for 30 bucks, and Nation Red. Every single one on sale.
One I won't wait to go on sale is Left 4 Dead 2. I'm snapping that up the day it comes out.
Depending on your definition of DRM, Penumbra is not without DRM. It uses a serial number system that requires online activation, and this is used to prevent you from installing the game on more than a single computer of yours (and in particular the latter condition annoys me).
Donate free food here
Well, what do you suppose would happen if nobody paid for anything? People would largely stop making anything. And that would be a sad situation to be sure, but I bet it wouldn't last very long.
You are very attached to one particular way in which people who create stuff have made money in the past. That way doesn't really work so well anymore, so instead of accepting this fact you want lots of technological restrictions that don't actually work and have the effect of making honest people into criminals, especially since you also seem to feel that paying off the government to give those restrictions some kind of legal force is appropriate. That seems very backward looking to me.
Anytime somebody bucks the system and does things in a completely different way they are treated as the anomalies that couldn't possibly work for most people. Again, instead of looking for new ways to succeed and building on the successes of others you want the old ways to continue to work.
DRM is the iron pyrite of solutions to the problem you see. It's glittering promise completely fails to deliver in practice. And in the meantime a whole ton of damage is done, not the least of which is lost opportunity cost while the false dream is pursued.
And our current copyright system does create false scarcity, and that has a real and extreme economic cost. It costs the minor enjoyment of thousands of people who could enjoy the work if they were willing to spend more money on it. It costs in terms of extreme legal expenses in trying to create works that somehow reference or mention existing works. It costs in terms of cultural loss from works that disappear forever because new copies cannot be legally made. It also costs because it encourages hoarding of rights and increasingly large swaths of culture never being released into the public commons.
But, in your mind, all those costs are worth it, and the self-delusion of believing (even a little) in DRM is important because this old way that creators had for being compensated for their time is extremely important somehow.
I say give it up. Let yourself look for new ways. Let yourself believe in the results when you see people use new ways and actually make a living. Think about how they could be improved without the costs of the current system.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I wish to be told of the fact that a game has in-game advertising before I buy it. And after I buy it, it shouldn't be mysteriously patched so that my original choice is rendered moot.
Within those bounds, I am willing to accept in-game advertising. I might even buy a game like that if it ran on Linux.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Interesting. I don't seem to recall anything like that when I installed it on Linux. Maybe they took that out of the Linux version.
I did buy it from one of their websites, so I didn't get some version where some unauthorized person diked it out.
BTW, the game is a big pain to get to run under Linux, unlike World of Goo which was trivial.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Your claim that DRM doesn't stop piracy in the "slightest" is baseless. I know for a fact that DRM affects piracy in a negative way, just as DRM hurts the company that is employing it to legitimate customers.
It's more that you have to "polish" more to get people to buy it.
Take any game that spawned a genre. Usually, they don't come with too stellar graphics or controls. Even for the time it was created in. But they were genuinely new. Lemmings didn't have such omfgwowzomg graphics, even for its time, but it was something NEW. In a sequel, when you can't live off the new car smell of the game anymore, you have to pump resources into eye candy.
And eye candy costs. You have to hire more and maybe better artists. You have to streamline the code because you're now dealing with way more graphics overhead. You have to work on balancing and streamline the interface or else people will go "yeah, better graphics, but $annoying_nuisance_of_original is still there, basically the same game".
In short, you have to throw a LOT more money at sequels than at originals. Mainly because the "new game" bonus doesn't exist.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I also bought it from their website (on that weekend where they had that promo), but I did get the Mac version.
If you go to their online store, you can read the terms (go to the "Frictional Games Store", and click on the "End User License Agreement" at the bottom):
4. The Software may be loaded onto no more than one computer at a time. A single copy may be made for backup purposes only.
5. The rights and obligations of this Agreement are personal rights granted to the Licensee only. The Licensee may not transfer or assign any of the rights or obligations granted under this Agreement to any other person or legal entity. The Licensee may not make available the Software for use by one or more third parties.
So you're not allowed to sell your copy to someone either, as far as I can tell.
Donate free food here
DRM actually promotes piracy.
After two or three problems with DRM a legar buyer would say. What the heck!. I get the stuff from a torrent!
How to stop piracy? Put a right price, forget DRM. If the price is right, if the usage is right, most will no bother to go through the hassle to get pirated copies.
Ah! But the prices had to go down, and the complete business model would have to be rebuild. That's the real problem. Too many greedy companies trying to keep working an obsolete, overpriced sytem..
That depends. I feel no moral obligation whatsoever to care about copyright law, but I still buy DVDs simply because it's faster and more convenient than searching and downloading torrents. My "cutoff point" is around 6 euros; my local store has lots of older DVDs for sale at that price, and they put up a real fight to be picked over torrents. 20 euro brand-new movies? Not a chance.
For once, the free market seems to be doing its job: giving consumers more stuff cheaper.
Such as?
Um, movies still make hundreds of millions of profit despite being on the Net the day they are released on the big screen, and often before that. Games, such as the much-copied World of Goo, also turn out nice gobs of money. Some don't, of course, but they aren't popular on torrent sites either.
If you are a "desperate" producer, stop producing shit and asking gold for it and the problem goes away. Don't blame "pirates" if no one wants your stuff; because if you aren't making a profit, the chances are that no one wants your stuff even for free.
Which is actually good if it happens, since it'll put the producers of 3D and other digital production software under pressure to make their products actually easy and efficient to use; the current ones are neither. For example, replacing voice actors with voice synthesizers would give cost savings, probably improve quality (WARNING, CYNICISM DETECTED ;), and make modding easier, thus increasing the value of the final product. And if Spore's creature editor is as easy to use as everyone says (I haven't played it), how about using it to make the monsters to the next 3D shooter quick, easy and cheap?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
> I myself have no problem with unobtrusive ads that can help get the developers the money that they deserve.
That might be the case with advertising starting out in games, but it's likely to end up just as intrusive as it is on the web. Adverts don't sell their products unless you notice the adverts.
Why is it so damned hard to understand? You want folks to buy, yes? Then give them a good value for their dollar! Examples-I bought the entire Joss Whedon collection, I have the nice box sets sitting here in front of me on a shelf. Could I have pirated it? Sure, but then all I would have gotten is the episodes themselves, and not the actor and director commentaries, the "making of" featurettes, the makeup and stunts behind the scenes, etc. In short they gave me MORE for my dollar, so I bought.
For an example of gaming, EA got me to shell out for MOH:Airborne, even though I had already heard that it wasn't that hot. How did they do that? By packing all of the older MOH games PLUS an interactive timeline PLUS a "music of" with remixes and original recordings. in other words they gave me MORE for my dollar, so I bought.
The problem is the large game companies have been infected with the "too big to fail" mentality, where they pump out one really shitty POS after another, or worse call something "multiplatform" when it is just a really shitty X360 or PS3 port, and then get pissy when folks won't shell out $59+ for it. Well what do you expect? Are you giving them a good value for their money? or are you just putting alpha quality POS code in a box and acting like your shit don't stink? Give folks an honest value for their dollar, and back up the money truck. It was true 100 years ago, and it is just as true today. Try to assrape them with crazy prices, shitty alpha quality code that needs a half dozen patches just to at more than 20FPS, lousy games that are just a ripoff of a ripoff, filled with *&^^%*&^% DRM and watch them try to screw you back. It really ain't rocket science folks.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Agreed. Add to that my response to the following quote, FTFS:
The freedom of the current system is nice, but it comes at too high a cost.
No. The loss of freedom, for any reason or purpose, is too high a cost. It's probably the reason the submitter hasn't been killed yet for his anti-freedom viewpoint; few people are willing to risk their freedom to do so.
This is why we don't like DRM: loss of freedom. We'll take the higher prices.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
DRM is fine for me as long as the DRM scheme fulfills the following requirements:
I hear a lot of squawking about the rights individuals give up when they buy DRM products, and a lot of disingenuous sentiment about personal rights being tread upon. It is stupifying that the very audience that is most likely to create these types of intellectual works can be so flip about the others among them trying to protect their products. The *only* issue here is that it isn't up to you to decide how they sell it, what rights they apply, how they protect it or in what manner they produce it. Your choices are limited to this: buy it, or don't (or build something similar and give it away for free, but lets face it the people who steal aren't FOSS contributors, just lazy and self-righteous). Saying you only steal what you wouldn't every buy anyway is as cheap and dirty a lie as saying you only steal from the homeless because they'd just spend their money on drugs or alcohol anyway. You don't have the right to pick and choose, so when you do this at least have the courage to admit your in the same category as a common thief.
People who steal something under the guise of exercising personal freedom and/or belief are every bit the hypocrite they make corporations out to be. The arguments are all the same type that truthists and pedophiles and conspiracy theorists make: that if society just "understood" then they'd be the heroes and the MAN would be revealed as the bad man.
Not that this comment matters; it'll get modded down immediately because it isn't part of the company "brotherhood of thieves" standard fare.
But it does take gobs of money if you want to develop a very slick-looking game that, besides its graphics, is the most basic regurgitation of a previously innovative and hugely successful game.
True, but it takes even more money marketing it. Of course, that shouldn't come as a surprise. You have a (non-free) market with an abnormally high margin profits and relativly big initial costs compared to production cost. Marketing is the obvious tool to earn money here.
But that is only the start. Now ask yourself, where does the money come from to pay the marketing. The answer should be obvious. The consumer, or more accuratly, the consumer's entertainment budget. Which means what? He will have less money to spend on less marketed entertainment.
So the ones hurt the most,economically, by strong copyright (and patent) enforcement are those that rely less on marketing to sell their digital productions. That would be those who are selling cheaper impulse buys or who are getting most of their income from selling things with some perceived real value (concerts, paper books, movie theater seats, signed cd's, etc).
If piracy ended tomorrow, prices would NOT drop.
That's fundamental economics; reduce competition and prices will rise. And with protected monopoly rights, unauthorized copying is what passes for 'competition'.
An odd way to describe living on the dole while tinkering with linux in your mom's basement. How about YOU fuck off and die slowly?
I just can't let this one slide by.
They's just foolin' 'round, sheriff. Please don't put mah baby away!
I know one fairly simple way: Multiplayer capability, a good update mechanism, and a centralized way to allow people to swap game levels or user generated content. During the handshake process, a hash of the CD key is sent, and if there is another hash in use that matches, the connection is not allowed to proceed.
Yes, people can use a key generator to run solo or local network play and freeload this way, but if someone wants to use bandwidth from the game publisher for additional content or game engine updates, they will need to show that they paid their ticket to hop on the ride.
Of course, one can make a closed network and emulate the multiplayer servers, but adding a check of a CD key during a handshake on an existing multiplayer infrastructure isn't that too big a task and keeps all but the most dedicated people honest.
Sorry to rain on your communist hippie love parade, but nothing costs zero. Even the time spent has a cost - the other things that could have been done with it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Open source games are the way forward. My favourite game is Warzone2100, which is now free and open source. No DRM, you are free to give your friends a copy, so you can play them over the network. If you want to produce a variant, you can take the source and alter it to produce derivative games.
That is not its purpose.
Its purpose was never admirable.
Its purpose is to give corporations control over content beyond what the law will give them through copyright. Add on the DMCA and they can essentially do anything they want.
That is insidious.
If game companies are concerned about the sales figures about the first few days, then they can have their DRM for the first couple weeks.
Then push out a patch that dumps the DRM, about a month after release. This way, legitimate users can still play their game and not have deal with hostile "user experience" after a couple weeks. People who just don't like DRM on principle can buy the game after the patch comes out and not worry about if a video card change out is going to blow out their activation limit.
The only caveat is that is costs a lot of cash to license SecuROM or Rovi's DRM system, and bean counters will ask about why using it only for it to exist for a couple weeks. However by having it there for the critical first weeks, the licensed DRM system has done its job, and from there on out, it is a liability as opposed to an asset.
That's how ID software got on the map. A shareware game engine and one level, then for the full game, one paid for it.
I can see something like this working. One downloads the core game engine and it comes with maybe 5-10 hours of play. That is definitely enough time for someone to tell that they like the game and plunk down cash for it, or uninstall it. If they like it, they register, and get an executable which provides the ability to create content, as well as the engine for downloading the rest of the game's content.
Even better, doing a framework like this makes expansions really easy to sell.
Of course, one can buy the boxed game and install everything without requiring a download of additional content, but if someone plays a game enough and the price is reasonable, in all likelyhood they will pay the cash to have the rest of the game immediately downloaded as opposed to the relative time and trouble to dig up a non-Trojanized version of the game, uninstall the old game and install the pirated one.
I have never ever thought about buying a low budget indy game.
First, there are thousands of free and nice games out there. Free as Free Beer and also some as Free Speech. I simply do not look for another Tetris-Clone or Lemming Clone or whatever lame remake of a 80 arcade game, they are available for free in thousand versions.
Second, I can get full blown studio games for one to three bucks.
I bought Pirates! two years ago for two bucks, a surprisingly complete Tycoon-Collection last year for seven bucks, Battlefield2+AllExpansions for seven Bucks just a week ago.
There is no room for DRM-shit, it is really that easy.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
Consider this: The PS3 is still a secure platform, the XBox 360 is not. Therefore, since apparantly we pay hefty sums to compensate for software infringers and the publishers and devs are always saying how they would lower their prices if only no-one was pirating their precious bits, the games on the secure PS3 are in fact cheaper than the games on the unsecure XBox 360?
WAIT, NO THEY AREN'T!
Conclusion: The absense of software pirates will in fact NOT lead to lower prices.
In fact, I'd say the pressure works the other way, if they could price games however they wanted, prices would GO UP! Some infringement works as a safety pressure valve. Too much and the platform is destroyed, too little and the platform won't grow. Further point: Where we have console AND PC versions of a game, the PC version's always much cheaper. You know, the PC where there is the highest pressure from infringers?
So the next time these guys complain and use infringers as an excuse for their pricing, ask them to explain why the PS3 version isn't cheaper than the XBox 360 version, and I'm sure they'll give you some bullshit Sony and MS. Then ask again why we should care about infringers if the larger cost comes directly from the platform controllers...
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I think the point of TFA is that modern console security does not get cracked. There is no piracy on Xbox Live and I presume PSN is the same.
I don't think shareware is going far enough. You really want your customers to feel trusted and appreciated. That will put them in a more positive frame of mind, and thus more likely to pay you for what may be a very good work. In my view, you can classify people that get games into a few categories.
First, you have the people that will almost certainly buy the product. Currently, these people will probably download the demo in order to try it out, or they may just go to the store and buy the game outright. In either case, their mind is already set. Giving them the full version, and asking for a set donation to remove a nag screen will just make them feel trusted and appreciated. You could do worse with your most dedicated player base.
A sub group of the above are the impulse buyers. As long as you continue to sell boxed copies, and advertise through all the normal channels (Google, Steam, review sites), you should have this section of the market covered.
Second, you have the people that are not sure whether they want they game or not. They may not find the demo indicative of the full game, or they may want to play more (or all) of the game through before passing judgment. This group is where I believe most of the losses occur right now. With the modern DRM method, many such users will simply download an un-crippled version of the game off a torrent site, and play it without much hassle. Should a game be good enough, they may buy it to show support, but if the game is only passable, it may not be worth the effort of tracking down a hard-copy when you've already played it through. Having a simple method of providing patronage should solve this. In fact, it could open up a whole new world of people that pay AFTER finishing a game. To expand the idea, have several payment scales. If your default donation is $60 (or $6 for 12 months), you could also provide a $30 option to give the people that didn't feel your game was worth the full price a chance to contribute. Just require the user to complete the came first. Somewhat risky, but worthwhile if you really think your game is worth it.
Finally, there are the hardcore pirates. These people don't care in the slightest that you worked hard to make this game. For them, it's a question of free entertainment. Trying to do anything about these people is absolutely pointless, because they don't feel any qualms with piracy. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, even if you did manage to get a perfect DRM scheme, this group would simply move somewhere with a easier to crack system. I say, just treat these people as they really are, free advertisement. You want these people to love your game, so they praise it on slashdot/facebook/twitter/blog/whatever. You do NOT, however, want these people mad, because they will smear you with the dirtiest sewage that they wade through daily.
I'd have to +1 this idea.
Currently, this is EXACTLY how any of the Valves multiplayer Source engine games (CSS, Left 4 Dead, TF2) work at the moment in regards to checking that no game files have been modified (read: cheating). The server asks for hashes of a number of game files when the client connects. It works fantastically well and I personally see no reason why it would not work for making sure that a copy of the game is legal also. Obviously this leaves potential for people to use cracked servers but those are few and far between.
I seem to recall that some titles did exactly that. But I'm guessing that most companies, when pressed for resources, chooses to use them for something else rather than removing DRM.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Given the number of high-profile cases of DRM'd games being released by pirates before the official release, I think the 14 day rule is incredibly optimistic for anything that is sufficiently hyped that sales in the first 14 days are important. Less-hyped games probably take less long to crack, but have a smoother sales curve without the big spike at the front before people realise that the hype was nonsense.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I think we've entered a time where bands are going to have more and more control over their sales and their success as a musical act. However, their music alone will not let them stand out in the crowd.
I'm particularly enamored with what The Get Out Clause did with their single. (The Get Out Clause are those gents who recorded a music video using the British equivalent of the FOIA to get footage from CCTVs while they performed in public places.)
NIN, Radiohead, and The Get Out Clause's albums aren't just music, they're collectibles (that in some cases are very much personalized). This is the future of big music, I think.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
In the future, signing with a record label for a few albums is probably going to be looked at the musical equivalent of college. That's like saying "Oh, well, it sure is easy for a Doctor to get a job at a hospital. They've already been to med school!"
Unless bands get really creative with how they promote themselves and distribute their music (and thankfully, a lot of bands are doing this), they're going to have to drop a couple albums through the big corporate machine before they can be successful as independents. Not everyone can be as lucky as Jonathan Coulton.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
It remains to be seen that other things would have been done with that time- but the time itself isn't typically factored into the costs of a game, except where salaries come into the picture on it. You can't quantify things QUITE that way- what if the indie game was done in spare time as a hobby? Can I deduct the time you say "cost" on my Income Tax as a business expense? No? I think you've your answer on that one. As far as the SYSTEM we work with is concerned the cost is zero.
It's not a "communist hippie love parade" and you shouldn't frame it that way.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Each person's different- replayability's one of those nebulous traits. For me, Tribal Trouble's got a lot of replayability. For someone else, not so much so. To me, Far Cry2's NOT something that's "50x World of Goo". To you, it is.
That doesn't negate the remarks others have made or validate all the cash Crytek poured into it. It sold quite a bit, yes. Is it worth what they're asking for it...perhaps, perhaps not.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Radiohead and NIN are poor examples, and you know it. They both were established through the system before their little experiments with downloads-for-donations.
Your own argument is broken, because it applies just as well the other way around: If you are a small unknown artist, you have nothing to lose from free downloads (since you don't have any sales to speak of, the free publicity and word-of-mouth will easily outstrip the loss-of-sales); and for big established bands there are other huge advantages (they earn more from one donation than from the ten lost album sales, because their recording label doesn't take away most of the revenue).
Cory Doctorow had a recent article about this: When he was an unknown artist and released his books for free, critics said it only works because he has nothing to lose; today the same critics say that it only works because he is already famous -- you can't have it both ways!
Depends on your definition of "intrusive".
On Burnout Paradise, they've got a mix of billboards all over the place, some of them you're supposed to smash, some you can't. It's intrusive in the same sense of the billboards in real-life being everywhere; but the ads aren't distracting from the game. They're just part of the urban landscape; as you get into town the billboards get more numerous. What's interesting is the humorous ads for the Burnout features, awards, and shop items, intermixed with ads for SlingBox, Burger King, Vizio and a few others.
The ads themselves don't detract from the game (Thanks Criterion...) and they were noticeable enough that I recognized them while going between events and remembered the ones I ticked off.
In that context, the ads will work and won't likely get "worse" like you're concerned about. Other games, heh...remains to be seen.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Look at Starforce protected titles. Unplayable when they came out.
There, fixed that for you.
True, but it takes even more money marketing it. Of course, that shouldn't come as a surprise. You have a (non-free) market with an abnormally high margin profits and relativly big initial costs compared to production cost. Marketing is the obvious tool to earn money here.
Truly great games require little marketing. Someone sees them at a game convention knocking people's socks off, and they show up in all the gaming mags without anyone having to lift a finger. Rehashes and sequels, on the other hand...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But punishing honest users seem wrong to me. Dont try and manage your users rights, they don't need your management. Instead turn your users into allies and make them LOYAL to you, and they'll flip you dollars every single time.
This is absolutely correct. I will not buy anything with DRM in it.
Why should I pay good money to encourage the eroding of my rights as an individual? I cannot see any possible outcome in which encouraging the eroding my own rights as an individual is in my best interest. That's just cutting off my nose to spite my face.
Why should I support someone whose first thought is that I'm a thief? I see no reason to pay for the dubious "privilege" of being insulted. Any merchant who attacks my integrity will never get any money from me.
I will, and do, go without rather than support anything to do with DRM. I vote with my wallet, and my wallet stays in my back pocket, when DRM involved.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Whoa... Nice rant there on the link. (As a heads-up: It's Not Safe For Work and has loads of coarse language- but I don't blame the guy on it...) And it does show that this crap doesn't help anyone except the DRM companies. Seriously.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Whoever marked the parent a troll failed economics 101. The poster was arguing about opportunity costs. It is true, you can't make a game for $0.
-THE END-
The Xbox makes me feel a bit conflicted about DRM. The reason being that (more or less as the original article is pointing out) some of the uses of DRM on Xbox live arcade seem a bit less evil than you'd expect! For instance, they offer me the convenience of renting movies from a moderately sized catalog, for non-ridiculous prices, without going to the video shop. That's quite nice and it's something that would seem a bit silly to offer without DRM (unless you just streamed it, in which case quality might suffer). Generally I'd say that if you need DRM to enforce your policy then your business model probably isn't right - and to a certain extent I think that applies to online movie rentals; if you're giving someone the data you can't really make them give them back, unlike a physical disk. But in this case the Xbox isn't trying to con me, it's upfront about the cost and the fact it's just a time-limited rental. I just don't feel offended by it, the way DRM on a purchase would bother me.
However, XBox Live does really worry me in other ways. For instance, they recently added the ability to buy full released games via download. This might be marginally more convenient than going to the game shop every few weeks to pick up a new title. However, you lose the ability to resell the games or lend them to people *and* you're not only asked to pay more than a second-hand copy of the games would be - the games I've looked at are charging more than I payed for a *new* copy. Admittedly I bought those games during a sale but I got a real physical disk that I can even lend to friends and resell. The prices they're charging are possibly fair in the sense of "I feel I got enough enjoyment in return for what I paid" but they're out of proportion to what I can get elsewhere. They're entitled to try this and see if it works but when I think about a future when the console vendors control all prices, sales and resales my knees get all wobbly and I have to go play Halo to relax.
The other things that bug me about Xbox live's DRM / pricing include the fact that MS points are sold in inconvenient multiples, making it easy to have some left over. And also the rumours I've seen recently that they pressure DLC providers to charge money, so as not to create the expectation of free stuff. That's a rip off.
At the end of the day, the Xbox has plenty of DRM and, like the author, I find some aspects of it not entirely intolerable. It still annoys me and I hope that some of their more greedy efforts to extend Xbox Live fail commercially. But it's less obnoxious doing it on an Xbox where I (personally, others may get a nasty surprise) knew what I was buying into, as opposed to pushing DRM on my PC which cost me more money and came with the expectation I could run what I wanted.
Let megguess, you'd also fight back if someone mugged you at gunpoint and when you try to board the plane you refuse to have your bags searched.
Heh... Yeah, it's negative. But it's merely an annoyance to the pirates; and a disaster (Warning: Volumes of Coarse Language...) for the end-users and a financial drag on the company that deploys it.
As negative impacts go, EA's starting to figure out that draconian measures don't quite sit well with people and had to relent on the DRM at least a bit.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
DRM is a (partial) solution to a very real problem. That is without something in place to limit their ability to do so, people are, in general, selfish bastards who'll happily take advantage of someone elses work without compensating them for it. Again if you have a better means of solving this problem, then by all means tell us!
DRM removes the rights of honest people. For hundreds of years people have been buying books, and after reading them have either given them to someone else, sold them to a used book dealer, kept them on the shelf for decades, or bought books entirely as an investment. In spite of all these lawful activities publishers and authors have been writing books and making money the entire time. Now both publishers and authors seem to think they have some special right to stop all these lawful activities simply because the format has changed. Why? Do you think trampling on the rights of the consumer is the ethical solution to theft? If so, then I guess you are OK with being punished for things you've never done. You'll happily go to jail with your neighbor when he gets caught selling dope. Fair is fair. We have to put a stop to illegal activity don't we? Right? The best way to do that is to remove the rights of the individual. Right?
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
If Frictional didn't make it dead clear you were paying for a License, it was a sale, per the Uniform Commercial Code. As a sold item, they can't place restrictions on the resale thereof and typically any attempt to do so is non-enforceable. I'm not a lawyer, so you'll want to do your own research, consult with the lawyer of your own choice, etc. on this.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Can't I? It seems that economists can.
Totally is, and you can't stop me.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Crytek didn't make FC2. It's not even on their engine.
I pirate games for four reasons.
The first is that the majority of games released on the PC today are derivative crap that I already own but with a different title and box art. I'm suppose to spend £20-40 on a game that has a different set of stereotypes and improved graphics?
The second is that a lot of games on the PC are released in a sorry state. An example is GTA IV which I, regrettably, bought as a birthday present for myself. On release the game was totally unplayable and was so until THREE MONTHS LATER. I'm supposed to pay for a game that I can't even play because nobody bothered to test it?
The third is DRM. Plain and simple. I want to own a copy of the software I have, and I want to sell that on when I'm done with it. If I can't do that, no deal. I'll just get your game anyway for free and you don't get my money.
The fourth is that I simply can't afford a lot of new games because of the price. Sure, if I saved up and went without a lot of things I could keep up with the latest releases. I probably would do that for some titles. I do buy games I like for multiplayer, and I have in the past bought games because they were part of a good series that I wanted as a collection (like Half Life, Counter Strike, Grand Theft Auto).
But when you think about how useless the hype is about games, and how reviews seem to always give scores higher than 8/10 for even total derivative garbage, and when you consider all my other points above... No. I'm not going to go without because the games industry is untrustworthy and abusive towards its customers. I'll take what I want anyway and you just lost my money. You want to play capitalism? Try competing with something that is both superior and free.
Could I have pirated it? Sure, but then all I would have gotten is the episodes themselves, and not the actor and director commentaries, the "making of" featurettes, the makeup and stunts behind the scenes, etc.
You can pirate that stuff too. The difference is that most people don't WANT that extra crap, and so when most people pirate a movie, they only take the one file that they want: the movie. On the other hand, less popular stuff is a little bit harder to pirate.
The main problem is that you are not allowed to verify the quality of the product you pay for. If you do not like some physical item you bought, you can easily take it back to the store and get your money back.
With software, movies and music you are stuck. For centuries great artists would get their money from sponsors that happen to like their work, now mediocre artists ask a lot of money for their "art". While it works with paintings and books, to some extent, it does not work with software and movies. If you buy a ticket to a movie in a cinema, you cannot walkout of the movie and demand your money back, because the movie is utter crap. Thus you subsidize the mediocre and bad artists.
If we equate watching a movie or playing a computer game to eating(consuming) at a restaurant, you are basically allowed to not pay any money for badly made food in a restaurant, even if you have taken a bite out of it.
You cannot imagine how many games I have bought that were utter crap. Yet their developers got money from me. Yet, if I write bad code at my workplace I am expected to spend my personal time to fix it. Not where is the fairness in that?
Why is it so damned hard to understand? You want folks to buy, yes? Then give them a good value for their dollar!
Why is it so damned hard to understand this position has no validity in the least. If this position were true, piracy for iPhone and Android would simply not exist. The simple truth is, piracy is flat out killing Android and even with the major rooting hoops for iPhone users, piracy is very much alive. Even more insulting, most quality applications on these platform provide extremely high bang for the buck. Hell, even many applications which have many hundreds, if not thousands of man hours still cost $0.99, or not far off.
The simply fact is, according to a recent UK study, 60% feel they are entitled to steal anything IP related they want, if for no other reason then they feel they are entitled to do so. And yet despite this unjustified self entitlement, piracy is killing small developers and FORCING prices to be higher. Which brings us to the second lie often used to justify piracy. High prices, just like every other product, are often a reflection of fraud and theft. Pirates steal and justify it by claiming they do so because prices are so high. In reality, prices are often so high because they steal.
The simple truth is, piracy is seriously destroying the commercial potential of Android. Because of piracy, using the App Store for a scaled basis of comparison, even the largest of Android developers are making, at most, 1/8th what they should be making. Many others are simply not making anything despite having huge pirate install bases. I can't stress it enough, piracy absolutely is hurting developers, deters others from entering the market, and forces costs to remain high.
So next time you hear someone justifying piracy because of high prices, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
The next time you hear someone justifying piracy because no one gets hurt, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
The next time you hear someone justifying piracy because viral is helping, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
The next time you hear someone justifying piracy because of DRM, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
The simply truth is, pirates are nothing more than selfish, self serving, self entitled, idiots, who are hurting everyone.
The next time a pirate goes to work, I hope they don't get paid...after all, no one got hurt and nothing was stolen. That's EXACTLY the same as piracy. That's how piracy makes developers feel because that's what pirates do to developers. And if it were not for these idiots stealing everything they can touch, there wouldn't even be a need for DRM. These douches are creating all the problems which they then use to justify creating these problems. So go on, have you kicked a douche pirate in the nuts lately? If anyone deserves it, they do!
Which percentage is higher?
Another, IMHO, disingenuous, argument.
The sample size is clearly too small - you could use this example to argue either side you want.
So, once all the developers for a game have been laid off, the games publisher will either turn off the advertising, or keep on sending payments to its ex-employees?
I'd like to live in your utopian world.
In this one, costs are kept to a minimum in order to be able to siphon off more off the top.
Fat executive bonuses and golden handshakes, and overpaid subcontracts handed to relatives and buddies. The developers who actually make the game aren't considered worthy of reaping any of the rewards. They don't wear the right golf knickers.
I'd wager that pirated software 16 days before release hurts a lot more than 2.
Anyway, I am simply passing on what I've heard from people developing games.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
You're making a good deal of references without sources, can you please cite some?
While that is partially true, I think the main point is the illusion of control. When a manager or exec, who doesn't fully understand DRM, is approached by two people, one of whom says "This game is impossible to pirate, it has the newest security measures built into the software and the disc." and the second says "DRM doesn't do jack, you're only losing money by assuming a large base of your consumers are criminals, I'd like to treat them with respect, so my title doesn't have any DRM."
Who do you think they are going to listen to? The one who makes them feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
This DRM/security etc stuff that Apple has for the iphone has only been a royal pain in inconviencing me during my development of the games ..... however as soon as any of my games have been released, pirated copies have instantly appeared on the internet/bittorrent. The existence of these hacked copies is not really something that has bothered me at all, but in any case, the point is, that all this DRM only tends to inconvenience the honest user/developer, while not stopping the 'thieves' anyway.
The same logic of DRM only inconvencing honest users without stopping piracy has also applied in my experience with CDs (the last CD I bought in a shop had copy-protection mechanisms preventing me from ripping it, so I had to download it illegally just to put it on my computer+mp3-player, which made me realise there was no point left in legally buying the things), DVD-region-based-restrictions (I live abroad, and I stopped renting DVDs in germany and switched to downloading movies, as I got so sick of the DVDs available in germany mostly not having the original-english audio at all due to licensing crap) etc
Penumbra DOES have DRM last i checked, at least on linux. It is unobtrusive and sane, and i have no issues with it.
It's all well and good for us to say "just don't worry about the pirates", but it's probably not a long term solution.
I don't think that's what we're saying. I think we're saying that DRM is the wrong approach.
as much as we've become accustomed to the idea of free creative works, it's not really a cure-all either.
No, I'm not saying everything should be free, either. And certainly not this:
Yes, some stuff will get created even without any notion of intellectual property,
"Free" does not mean "developer doesn't get paid". Some obvious examples: America's Army was paid for by the US Army. And while it hasn't been tried beyond some flash toys, it's not hard to imagine a game being entirely ad-supported.
I don't have a solution.
I do, and I've been saying it for years: Provide a better product than the pirates. Especially, provide better value.
So: Charge $20, not $60. Provide a demo, and make it easy to upgrade the demo to the full version. Make the full version easier to obtain than the pirated version. And make an MMO, or learn from Steam -- Steam gives me Achievements, a Community, a nice little IM client that I can use to hop into a multiplayer game, all sorts of stupid little things like that, that I'd miss in a pirated version.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
"The online backlash against DRM has gotten a bit excessive, especially since the purpose of DRM is entirely admirable"
No need to read any further. Some corporate lackey making a case for draconian law. I can find a hog pen to clean somewhere, and I'm sure I'll find more wisdom in that pen than I'll find in this article.
"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
I think it would be resources well spent -- that patch would merit at least a small bump in sales, and probably a big one.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Took about three seconds on Google to prove you wrong.
Ok, that's not Arcade, but you see the point.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
DRM coupled with extremely high cost makes it dumb as hell to purchase many things.
Record companies sell millions and millions of copies of a song for $1 with virtually no distribution costs or anything. They just get millions of pure profits to stuff in their wallets. With today's economies of scale in IP copying prices for digital wares should be drastically lower. Yet they are rising. Have you ever considered that prices should be a fraction of what they are today. Imagine if record companies sold songs for $.25 and put them on a server where you could download them if you lost them. In other words 100% DRM free with even assisted recovery of your files. This would be a huge hit and the volume of sales would increase by far more than the loss by the price cut. It would be easier to download the songs than it would be to pirate and you would never have to worry about losing your songs because your HD crashed and you only had 1 copy.
A system like this would cater to a few pirates but guess what; They are the people that would never have bought music to begin with. They are not even in the market for music. On the other hand you would capture millions of people who pirate because they are filling their iPods with every song they like but can't afford to pay the price to fill it up. Times have changed when it comes to digital wares. Spreading your costs over more people at a lower price is the future of how media will be distributed, it is just a matter of who steps up and does it first. There are millions of people just like me, willing to pay for TV series, movies, music and games once the price is cut and they spread the cost over more people. Right now media companies are being greedy and paying the price.
Times have changed from the CD production days when they could charge $1 - $2 a song. It is easier to record, there are more buyers, and the prices are the same. There are less distribution costs. Yet you are telling me to be sorry for these people? It is their own damn fault for being blind to the way society has evolved in the last 10 years.
As for the phone apps that you are quoting. Go read some articles on why that may be. I have read a ton of articles and most of them point to the 'one use' phenomenon: Apps get downloaded used once, then never used again. In other words even if you think the app is amazing, the average user is only using it once then never using it again. When this happens with nearly every app people are going to have a hard time paying for something they know they will never use again.
With my iPhone I only use about 1% of what I have downloaded. Now I will only buy something if I have used a trial version for a few weeks and see if I really use it, or if it is just a gimmick app that sounds great but you never end up using.
Also, don't think I am advocating piracy. I think that all piracy is doing is giving these media companies someone to blame for their issues and they are going to get even more powerful because lawyers are their buddies, and lawyers are in charge of the country. Soon we will be paying a media tax and in the end it is only going to help the big dogs. Not little cell phone devs (that is what you are right?).
Like the parent said: Give me a good value and the money will flow easier than ever.
Take a look at steam and how well they are doing by charging less for games.
And how many make money from giving works away for free? The question isnt whether they were able to give it away, but whether it was commercially viable, which it isnt (in the short term) for those up and coming artists. It may make them money LATER (through publicity) but it makes them nothing now. "Nothing to lose" doesnt mean that the lost sales from giving stuff away will for sure be made up in increased sales later.
Really? I thought it's that Android is not polished enough. And before HTC Hero the devices were so awful.
Top of the list App for iPhone will fetch no more than a few thousand per month to the developers. Without any relation to piracy.
But lets not forget the arrogant, idiot developer, that believes that his application is worth millions and blames his failure on piracy.
I always find this thinking strange... CD Key checks, calling home etc ... why is THAT form of DRM okay? Just because it's been around a while, doesn't make it any less "DRM" than any other strategy used to limit what you can and cannot do with your legally purchased item. (Oh wait, sorry, I forgot, people don't actually purchase software these days... they lease it...)
1. hash original files, remember hash
2. modify files
3. when sever asks, send original hash
4. ?????? (cheating goes here)
5. PROFIT!
(IANAL)
The legal definition of 'Theft' in my country, the UK, and (I believe) America is this:
"Dishonest appropriation of property without the ownerÃ(TM)s consent, with intent to deprive them of its use, either temporarily or permanently."
Anyone else notice that last part?
First, you have the people that will almost certainly buy the product. Currently, these people will probably download the demo in order to try it out, or they may just go to the store and buy the game outright. In either case, their mind is already set. Giving them the full version, and asking for a set donation to remove a nag screen will just make them feel trusted and appreciated.
Actually, it'll make me feel annoyed and nagged. I honestly don't know anyone who buys shareware like that -- for example, who buys WinRAR? Anyone?
A sub group of the above are the impulse buyers. As long as you continue to sell boxed copies, and advertise through all the normal channels (Google, Steam, review sites),
No, for this to work, you have to have digital downloads. That means not just advertising on Steam, it means selling on Steam, or something like it.
Second, you have the people that are not sure whether they want they game or not. They may not find the demo indicative of the full game, or they may want to play more (or all) of the game through before passing judgment.
When I've been in this group is when I've most often missed having a console of some sort, since you can just rent the game. That actually fits really well -- for example, a Final Fantasy game provides so many hours of gameplay that it can't be reasonably rented, and even if I never play it again (and I might anyway), I would call it well worth the price. But I could easily rent it and play as far as I can get in a few days or a week, and decide if I want to buy it.
On the other hand, there are games like Enter the Matrix. This was sort of like having another Matrix movie -- it was maybe five or six hours of gameplay, plus maybe two hours of FMV cutscenes. Cool, but not worth $50 or $60, and I can just rent it and finish it some weekend, then return it.
I think the largest problem here is that no one's tried this with digital distribution. I can think of some reasons why -- most users won't like having to download an entire game, only to have "their" game stop working. And to the developer, it may not be worth it -- the number of additional sales, or revenue from rentals, may not match the number of people who rented a game, played through it, and then let the rental expire until they need it again -- especially if it's a "rent-to-own" thing.
Finally, there are the hardcore pirates. These people don't care in the slightest that you worked hard to make this game. For them, it's a question of free entertainment.
Not quite "hardcore" enough.
they don't feel any qualms with piracy.
I don't either. But it comes down to simple economics.
Let me clarify: Portal is $20. It's also a 1 gig download, which on my connection and with how fast Valve servers are, will take about ten minutes.
$20 really isn't that much. And once I've spent it, I can be playing portal ten minutes from now. That's an experience piracy can't match.
And even if it could, even if it comes down to pure economics... Minimum wage is $7.25 in the US. So $20 is less than three hours of work at minimum wage. So even assuming I never get caught, I'm already spending some extra time finding it, downloading it, and cracking it. And if it fucks up my system, deliberately or otherwise, I'm probably going to spend a few hours cleaning up after it. If I take steps to prevent this, like a virtual machine or a disk image, I may spend some time doing that, too.
If I get it through Steam, I know it'll be well behaved -- well, alright, not all Steam games, but certainly all Valve games. It makes economic sense -- no risk of spending many hours trying to save myself only three hours of work (and really, less than one, for most of us) -- and even if I came out slightly ahead in piracy, I could choose to treat myself to a headache-free experience for, well, $20.
I mean, throw in another $10, and I get the Orange Box.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The online backlash against DRM has gotten a bit excessive,
No, I think it is not enough, as DRM is still common place, and used in ever more subtle and insidious ways. The "on line backlash" needs to get better, and try to educate users as to how widespread this shit is becoming in modern digital products.
especially since the purpose of DRM is entirely admirable: to stop thieves and free riders and to help creators actually get paid for their work.
No, it is about control. It has never been about stopping piracy, it is about controlling a platform. It is about selling the same product multiple times.
It is about the inherent conflict that data is non-tangible, but that businesses want to sell data like it is a physical and limited resource. DRM and legal frameworks enable this bullshit, but ultimately it will break down. There will be cries for people to accept DRM, as if they do there will be good profits to be made in the short term, but sooner or later a critical mass of people will realise how DRM (arbitrary limits) in something they have bought is simply a raw deal.
I don't buy anything with DRM in now as I want to buy products that are as good as technology allows, not as good as some bean counter wants it to be.
This blog entry calls attention to XBox Live, a place where strong DRM is helping to encourage quality games at low prices which make money for their developers. Quoting: 'If I could snap my fingers and give myself the same absolute control over the games I make that XBox Live has over theirs (in return for lower prices), I would.
Games at low prices? Bullshit. XBox games are 40UKP a time, and even though I don't follow computer games closely they seem to have been increasing in cost over time across the various generations of consoles. If DRM helped lower the cost, then the platforms with DRM would have broken the increasing price trend.
And the quality is very debatable. There was an article here on /. not long back about how EA spent something like 4 times the amount on marketing a game than it did developing it. How good could a game be with a EA sized budget, but where most of the money was spent on development to make the game good, rather than most of it being spent to tell us how good the game is?
What I have seen of XBox live it doesn't look great: add ons for games tend to have to be paid for, but on the PC equivalent add ons are free. And isn't there some simple bullshit ruse that MS have going on with their XBox credits? Everything is priced in multiples of x, but XBox credits are sold in multiples of y, and x and y aren't multiples of one another, meaning you'll have credit left over a lot of the time. It is a method to encourage people to buy more credit, and allows MS get to sit on the money that backs those odd credits, earning them interest.
The freedom of the current system is nice, but it comes at too high a cost.
Freedom? I'd imagine that there's plenty of restrictions and pay barriers to over come to be able to publish stuff on an XBox. And there's fuck all freedom for the user - the DRM is meant to stop that. On the XBox the only freedom is to leave it if you don't like Microsoft's methods: take it or leave it is hardly freedom!
Honest people need to pay extra to subsidize thieves. The unfairness is just this side of intolerable, and it's only getting worse. DRM is fair if, for what the corporations take, we get something in return.'
People who use copied games are copyright infringers, not thieves - you need to be more honest in your writing.
But why on earth should pirated games have any bearing on other game players? Oh, you're not a player, you're a publisher trying to change people's views on DRM (or at least, that's what you sound like).
The only time DRM can ever be fair is if the user has the keys to the DRM system. And if they have them, there might as well be no DRM system.
Car analogies break down.
Wanna sample? :
Fallout 3 is
PC: $40, PS3: $45, XBox360:$57, as Amazon.com states
PC: $22, PS3: $30, XBox360:$41, as Amazon.co.uk states
PC: $40, PS3: $51, XBox360:$60, as Amazon.de states
In my own country's stores: PC: $21, PS3: $95, XBox360:$95
Fallout 3 was released a year ago.
... As a game developer, both indy -and- 'working for the man' ... I disagree.
The artificial price inflation "because of piracy" is a load of crock.
The cost for the company for 100% of a product's users to be pirates is an absolute 0. Sure they don't make any money, but they lose NOTHING.
There's this WONDERFUL thing in the "real world" called 'word of mouth', it's amazing how much more effective -that- marketing strategy is than almost any other. If you've 10000 pirates playing your game, then you've likely made a good one, --they will say as much-- and you get sales from those people who aren't cheap pricks.
As for DRM... I completely, 100% disagree with this crap. When someone buys from me, I treat them with the respect they deserve as my customer. I don't punish them for "maybe, possibly, kinda might be a pirate, one day". And the likelyhood is, any drm will be cracked within mere hours of the games release (if not before). Add in the script-kiddy pirates who bag a game out (spreading -very bad- PR) because they pirated it and it didn't work, and you've got an all-around loss for the development team. Not to mention the leeche companies who make this crap for a rediculous price. (Last I checked, a license for SECUROM was on the order of $100k)
(Posting anon for the obvious trolling this post will likely recieve.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm currently looking to get Batman: Arkham Asylum for the PS3, a fairly new game. Here's the current situation courtesy of price-matching engine prisjakt.nu (in local currency): PS3=525SEK, XBox 360=499SEK, PC=329SEK. So it's a staircase from most expensive==best protected down to least protected==cheapest, exactly as predicted.
(That's around 20 McD cheeseburgers between the cost of the PS3-version vs the PC-version)
Belief is the currency of delusion.
'Sup, Jeff? I've pirated nearly every game you've made and you know what? I later paid for them, most at full price. I will admit the fact that key generators are easy to come by was the half the incentive. The fact is that, without having to find the bloody code from your games that I purchased I wouldn't have looked for key generators in the first place. You opened the door to my pirating-before-I-buy policy ...and occasionally finding the game I pirated sucked, hard, leaving me feeling that you didn't deserve a red penny. (Avernum IV, anyone?)
I'm a Windows user, your second tier. While things are a little different nowadays, I remember back when I literally had to reformat my machine on a regular basis to get anything done (long story). I first started technically pirating your games after the inconvenience of getting another key began to get on my nerves--yet I kept paying after having played them. (With the notable exception being Blades of Avernum; bear in mind that I never actually played it* -- merely developed a certain template for other scenario designers to use and which in turn was utilised by at least one scenario designer. Egad, a case of piracy actually helping your bottom line? Will wonders never cease?)
While I may occasionally be suckered in to purchasing a larger company's DRM infested mess due to an impulse buy on my part, that is the last time they see my money; I'm no show animal, and I do not appreciate being treated like one. Despite my harsh tone so far, I still genuinely like you and your company. (The harshness is somewhat similar to disappointment of knowing your errant child is losing their way.) You're one of the few developers still producing such strong single player titles, and the rather weak protection method you use now is one of the few that isn't grating to my sensibilities. Were you to make it harder to reinstall or switch computers, I guarantee that I'd never play another Spiderweb Software game on principle much less pay for one.
For now? I'll see you at the November Sadness sale.
----
* I'm sure you're aware that "Za Khazi Run" sucks, and I'm not paying merely to replay "A small rebellion".
Whoever marked the person above that a Troll failed Economics 101.
See, it's not as simple as that - by that reasoning, it costs money to get people posting to Slashdot, because of the opportunity cost of what they could have been doing instead. Technically that's correct, but people would think it a bit strange to say that, and it's misleading to imply that someone needs to pay thousands of dollars to get people posting to Slashdot.
And since the OP implied what it would cost - what someone would have to pay - I'm not convinced he was talking about opportunity cost, anyway.
Quite right, it's costing me thousands of pounds alone just sitting here posting to Slashdot!
Cory Doctorow had a recent article about this: When he was an unknown artist and released his books for free, critics said it only works because he has nothing to lose; today the same critics say that it only works because he is already famous -- you can't have it both ways!
Cory Doctorow is a bit like Fox News - his reporting is highly selective and his journalistic standards are poor. However he's popular with people because what he says agrees with their preconceptions about the world.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
But lets not forget the arrogant, idiot developer, that believes that his application is worth millions and blames his failure on piracy.
Good thing you don't mean me. Funny how people will go on the attack rather than admit they are themselves the very problem they rail against.
... As a game developer, both indy -and- 'working for the man' ... I disagree.
Provides no credibility. What a brave, brave, anonymous troll you are.
The artificial price inflation "because of piracy" is a load of crock.
In your imagination. Obviously your statement is true because while its true in EVERY other business in existence, piracy is the sole exception, for absolutely no reason what so ever. Brilliant!
The cost for the company for 100% of a product's users to be pirates is an absolute 0. Sure they don't make any money, but they lose NOTHING.
You just blew your own position out of the water. According to you, slavery is alive and well and you fully support it! Your false statement also assumes labor is free. Since work is not free, your statement is false.
The rest of your non-topical post is ignored.
Sorry but you're full of shit.
Before there were CD recorders an album would cost 15-20 euros which was a lot back then.
Of that money the artists would get maybe 2-3 euros. The large slice would go to the greedy bastard labels.
Games were always around 50 euros, even the totally shitty ones.
For the average wage person, piracy was always completely justified and even fair if you ask me.
DRM coupled with extremely high cost makes it dumb as hell to purchase many things.
Interesting note, piracy forces prices higher which forces a reaction to integrate ever changing DRM., which in turn drives prices higher. Nasty cycle pirates have created.
Record companies sell millions and millions of copies of a song for $1 with virtually no distribution costs or anything.
Their distribution cost is completely irrelevant. Its a straw man's argument. Likewise is their profit. For it to be even slightly topical is to argue the free market and capitalism is wrong. Are you saying no one is entitled to make a profit?
Imagine if record companies sold songs for $.25 and put them on a server where you could download them if you lost them. In other words 100% DRM free with even assisted recovery of your files
We can already imagine that with iPhone and Android applications. While not 0.25, piracy is live and well for $0.99 apps which have very real costs associated. People pirate because they feel entitled, not because of price.
They are the people that would never have bought music to begin with.
Yet another lie pirates tell each other. If they would have never bought the song in the first place, they would have listened to it once, deleted it, and never listened to it again. Like stock, they effectively devalued it. Go illegally grab up a bunch of stock and when you get arrested, tell them its all okay because you would have never bought it in the first place.
Apps get downloaded used once, then never used again.
Then you failed to read that issue seems to largely on affect iPhone users. And just the same, that's not true for all applications either. If the application remains installed, they are assigning value to it. If they use the application, they are assigning value to it. If an item has value, and it is obtained without paying for it, the item has been stolen. For IP, we call this piracy. For stock, its called theft, fraud and/or embezzlement.
Like the parent said: Give me a good value and the money will flow easier than ever.
Then that's you and not pirates. By you're own admission, you don't pirate. If you do pirate, by your own admission, you're lying to yourself and everyone else who reads your post.
Yes I very much doubt there are any developers on a place like Slashdot. Obviously people around here don't have a clue what it's like to develop a piece of software.
just look at how they react to gpl infringements....
Okay, put up or shut up: find me a story where either (a) people advocated including DRM in GPL software, or (b) someone was sued $1.92 million for filesharing (i.e., not for profit) 24 GPL software items without source (or similar extortionate amounts), and where the group think was in favour of that?
Alternatively, since the only stories are about companies distributing GPL software in violation of the licence, find me a story where a company was pirating closed source material for profit, and where the group think was against that. In fact, there was one - that recent story where Sony I think it was were found with thousands of CDs ready to distribute, for profit, without a licence. And guess what - people were against Sony doing that, too.
So you can take your straw man elsewhere.
A) Despite the claims to the contrary, most people wouldn't buy the games they pirate anyway (when I did it back in the day it was for the collecting). Also people should be grateful for piracy as they're preserving these titles.
But they're still getting it for free when the others paid.
Sorry but you're full of shit.
To summarize, I'm wrong because you're too busy lying to yourself? And you're justifying this lie because you hate capitalism? WTF? Their profit is completely irrelevant to any discussion of piracy or theft.
Even worse, your position is, because its okay to steal from large companies which make tons of profit, its therefore okay to put tiny companies out of business. WTF?
Pirates will do anything to rationalize their illegal and immoral theft.
He's commenting on Slashdot, not writing a thesis...
Anyway, I googled to try to find some interesting surveys. Unfortunately, the only conclusion that I can come up with is that surveys are almost worthless. They're biased and seem to always support the views of the entity sponsoring the survey. Just searching for the UK survey mentioned by the GP, I found a survey sponsored by the music industry that shows even worse statistics on piracy and a survey from a group that calls themselves "The Leading Question" that state that CD sells are actually up and files sharing by teens are on the way down, which they base on a 1000 interviews from people aged 14-64... Why don't they ask a 1000 teenagers? Do they count file-sharers who counted in the older survey but are no longer a teenager but still file-share in the current survey? Why did they headline the teen statistics that seem to support their argument and gloss over the fact that the number of files-sharers in their survey population grew from 28% in December 2007 to 31% in January 2009.
So my question becomes, does the GP lack of references actually diminish his argument? I think not.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
What the "intent to deprive them of its use" bit? Yes, that's precisely why "theft" does not include acts such as copyright infringement, anymore than any other civil or criminal issue.
I don't disagree with your general point, but:
Sure, but then all I would have gotten is the episodes themselves, and not the actor and director commentaries, the "making of" featurettes, the makeup and stunts behind the scenes, etc. In short they gave me MORE for my dollar, so I bought.
I've seen complete DVD rips on bittorrent, including all the extra features...
I am told that DRM often holds up for 14 days, and that the devs thinks that this is worth it, since a huge amount of the sale is in those 14 days.
And at the same time, industries are still telling us how it's necessary for copyright terms to last for many decades, because most of the sales are in the long tail, and it's required for them to make back their money...
What you say may or may not be true. I don't know and I don't care. I will not willingly purchase anything that supports DRM. Note that this is stronger that anything which requires DRM. I won't buy the Kindle. I wouldn't, even before Amazon showed it's intentions earlier this year, because it supports DRM.
I didn't come to this position naively. Naively I trusted companies to give me fair value for the money I spent. I learned better. It took me over a decade to turn around to my current position. Perhaps you are still trusting the companies to provide fair value. In time you'll learn.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
1. lower prices, since you did not have to spend any money on drm that should be easy.
2. demos. I fully admit to having downloaded games that I could not get demos for, in the past. These days I just realize that a game with no demo must be so bad they don't want me to see it and ignore the game.
http://androidcommunity.com/android-apps-cost-as-much-as-iphone-apps-or-more-20090807/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/31/top-developer-reveals-android-markets-meager-sales/
These links are just the tip of the iceberg. Google isn't hard to use. The question is, do you want to know the truth? If you do, its actually fairly trivial to piece the facts together with just about any search engine and web browser.
Beyond that, just about every lie pirates use to justify their position is easily blown out of the water with trivial research. The only valid questions which pertain to piracy, is how much is it actually inflating consumer goods and how much revenue is actually lost as a result of piracy. Just about everything else I can recall which is commonly thrown around is either a lie, a myth, or a straw man to keep you distracted from the truth.
And to be absolutely clear here, I absolutely hate DRM!!! But at least I'm pragmatic about why it exists - because pirates force it to be so. But I speak with my wallet, as you should too. If it has DRM, I generally don't buy whatever it is - and I don't steal it either.
Perhaps you are still trusting the companies to provide fair value.
Then by your own admission you neither buy nor pirate. If you do pirate, you're lying to yourself and everyone that reads your post.
What I said above is my basic principle. Given that, I'm still willing the put up with some unobtrusive forms of copy protections ON TRIVIAL PRODUCTS!! If I don't really care whether the product stops working, then DRM is acceptable. Only then. In my experience, if it has ANY form of copy protection, it WILL stop working. So I won't even consider it on anything I consider important.
For a game... I guess it's tolerable. Probably. If the game isn't too expensive.
Music is a different matter. The RIAA purchased the DMCA and it's predecessor, the Sony-Bono Copyright act. (Actually, that may have been Disney. I tend to lump RIAA and the MPAA together as incestuously vile corruptors of the government. I am opposed to anything that puts any money in either of their pockets. I don't know of anything that any computer company, including IBM and MS, has done that warrants quite that degree of opprobrium.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Aaawwww, shove it up your ass!! You an all the other citation Nazi's who will not allow a single item or point you disagree with to be made anywhere, anytime without an impeccable peer reviewed source, properly cited and referenced.
A curse on Wikipedia and the [citation needed] meme. It would all be very well if the meme people actually promoted critical thinking, healthy scepticism and proper fact checking. But as it is, the meme just promotes the petty and frankly groundless rebuttals typified by the parent post. Instead of actually bothering to critique specific points in the grandparent, the whole thing is simply tarnished with the [citation needed] brush in a fairly transparent attempt to outright dismiss it.
Considering that the meme originated on Wikipedia, it's not surprising that its purpose has twisted beyond its ostensible meaning. [citation needed] was always just another example of the stonewalling, wiki-lawyering and petty bureaucracy that thrive in that institution. From there, it has moved smoothly into the mainstream as a general purpose discussion terminating cliche. I have never seen actual honest debaters of any kind ask for citations in this way. Its a rhetorical technique, not an honest rebuttal.
There are points in the grandparent which could have done with some justification. Maybe. The one about the 60% feeling entitled to "steal" IP. The Android and iPhone being sunk by piracy was pretty speculative. Android developers (?!) making 1/8 less than iPhone developers. It would be nice to have all these things confirmed, but I'm not going to dismiss the entirety of the post and lower the tone of the debate by jumping up and yelling; "[Citation Needed]!! [Citation Needed]!!! Unless you can prove it to me, it's not true!!!!"
So, take your tricks back to the playground or some other net forum. Adults are talking.
May the Maths Be with you!
Where did I lie? I just stated facts and my opinion.
I was essentially trying to show you that prices were always high and it has nothing to do with piracy. Do you understand this simple fact?
You also need to understand that piracy is not theft. It's copyright infringement which has a completely different meaning.
Here.
I could explain why I pirate and why I buy when I buy but, I think you missed it, I wasn't trying to justify anything.
I was just saying that you're wrong.
"Interesting note, piracy forces prices higher which forces a reaction to integrate ever changing DRM., which in turn drives prices higher. Nasty cycle pirates have created."
Interesting. I can just as easily blame the media companies for driving people to piracy. The increased piracy is forcing them to think they need to raise prices and then they drive more people to piracy.
"Their distribution cost is completely irrelevant. Its a straw man's argument. Likewise is their profit. For it to be even slightly topical is to argue the free market and capitalism is wrong. Are you saying no one is entitled to make a profit?"
Quite opposite. I think these media companies are incompetent at capitalism. I think they would make MORE profit by distributing their media to more people at a lower price. The profit per person they sell to may be lower but the overall profit higher. The end result of lower prices would be more money for the media companies, more media for the consumer, and more people getting to enjoy the artists work.
"We can already imagine that with iPhone and Android applications. While not 0.25, piracy is live and well for $0.99 apps which have very real costs associated. People pirate because they feel entitled, not because of price."
The reduction in price to $.25 is more than 1/5 the price. Saying this system exists currently is a lie. 1/5 is a LOT. Cut the price of a Porsche by 1/5 and it is now the price of a cheap Honda.
"Yet another lie pirates tell each other. If they would have never bought the song in the first place, they would have listened to it once, deleted it, and never listened to it again. Like stock, they effectively devalued it. Go illegally grab up a bunch of stock and when you get arrested, tell them its all okay because you would have never bought it in the first place."
Stock in a company and copyright can not be compared. Copyright is 100% intangible, stock represents something tangible. Stealing stock is equal to stealing money. Copying a song is not equal to stealing money.
It is true that many pirates would have never bought the song if the pirating system didn't exist. A number of reasons can represent why: They don't have the money. They don't value the song at the selling price. They have never heard the music.
Piracy allows for people to download far more then they actually listen to because it doesn't hurt copyright holders to download extra. If I downloaded 1000 albums and never listened to them I do not represent 1000 albums worth of lost sales. This the the most common misconception about piracy: that people listen to all this music they download. I know pirates that have 100GB of music and listen to maybe 30 minutes of music a day, most of it from a handful of artists.
"Then you failed to read that issue seems to largely on affect iPhone users. And just the same, that's not true for all applications either. If the application remains installed, they are assigning value to it. If they use the application, they are assigning value to it. If an item has value, and it is obtained without paying for it, the item has been stolen. For IP, we call this piracy. For stock, its called theft, fraud and/or embezzlement."
First off, piracy is not stealing its copyright infringement. Get your facts straight first. Second, if people get burned by applications that don't generate value then they are going to become skeptical of all applications. Just like you think it is stealing for someone to download an app without paying, users think it is stealing from them to buy an app that doesn't provide any value to them (regardless of if it could create value to them). And once again, using stocks as a comparison here is not correct. Stocks are a security that represents real value. Piracy is not the same thing.
Pirates are not some other breed of human. If things were priced reasonably there would be far less of them. They will never go away 100%, much like regular criminals will never go away. But rig
And how many make money from giving works away for free?
That would be most people who do shows.
DRM usually involves computer code added to music or game files to prevent people copying them (ostentatiously at least). That's not the same as trying to make people pay for them, nor is it what it "means".
Wrong again: the goal is to prevent copyright infringement. That's not the same as stealing because the latter involves a victim who directly loses possession of the item. Just to be clear, I'm not saying copyright infringement is OK, just that it and stealing are simply not the same thing - and while I'm on the subject every time I see "downloading in stealing" my reaction is "no it isn't". This makes me wonder why they are fibbing when "copyright infringement" is a bad thing, and surely they can think up a sexy name for it while still being accurate. When you say something obviously inaccurate people tend to question your entire message.
Preventing copyright infringement is not something I would consider "noble" either. I'm not saying it's shameful or anything but nor is it lofty principles. I rank it somewhere alongside CCTV cameras. This may seem to be rather picky with semantics, but it's not like I'm going to swallow the other side talking about if a person could take five loaves of bread and two fishes and turn them into thousands...
Somehow he arrives at the conclusion that no piracy means cheaper prices. What part of that makes sense? The only effect piracy can logically have on sales is as competition - to lower the price because the sale has to compete against the pirated alternative. That's economic and marketing gospel. The only way it will not hold true is if your products are not priced by the market, in which case that's your problem right there. It is lower prices that means reduced piracy - not the reverse!
Who, exactly, are the "thieves" being referred to here? Are they those who simply pirate the game through a torrent? Are they modders, who infringe on the original IP by modifying it and increasing gameplay value for others? Are they those who buy used games and thus give the original sellers no profit from the sale? Are they those who dare to bring the game over to a friend's house to show them the game and potentially make another sale for you?
Game developers seem to have a lot of "enemies" that don't, in fact, hurt them at all.
They'd likely just have rented it.
Last time I've checked there was no piracy of PS3/X360 downloadable titles and it seems the DRM plays quite a role in this because PSP(hacked DRM) downloadables are pirated left and right.
Contracts are not allowed to override basic legal rights.
Now all I need to know is what you mean by "basic legal rights" - and whether the courts are in agreement.
You realize a recent study found that people who pirate the most also buy the most, right?
Do you honestly believe people with $3,000 worth of music on their iPod or games on their PC would have spent all that money if they couldn't pirate?
Pirating has been commomplace in technologically aadvanced Japan for a very long time, and yet the ones who pirate the most also buy the most. So it's not really an issue.
How do these troll posts keep getting modded as insightful?
I do own about two dozen of original computer games. Most of them cost less then US$30. My only problem is when my 10 year old son scraches the disc, I have to buy new one? O.k. maybe if game cost $10 I will, but if I have to pay about $100 for original Xbox/PS/PC/Wii game - no way I a going to give them my money again. It happened to me with DVD that costs about $20, and after I send them destroyed copy, they gave me new one, but distributor for PC games just said - tough luck. I wonder...
I do not want to hear their reasons, they simply did not make their product available, and that will lead to piracy, one way or the another. Russia is best example. ... and one more thing, do not expect me to connect everything in my house on the internet. That is just plain silly.
Call me crazy, but I've registered WinRAR at both at home, and workplaces I've been at. Everyone uses this utility, might as well send some money to Eugene for his company's hard work in making one of the best archiving utilities on the planet.
If a company doesn't have to pony up for a DRM system, one thing that hasn't been explored that much are price points. For example, look at the success Valve had when they priced some popular but older games under $10 for a weekend. Of course, there is always the perception that cheaper means crappier, but if a bare bones single player scenario is downloadable at no charge, and all it takes is $19.99 to get a patch for multiplayer and the additional content for the full game, I'm sure a lot of people out there will not hesitate to pay the cash. Toss in an expansion, and even a title that wouldn't sell well in a store would still have high ROI.
I think it's important to point out that a lot of the successful indie games out there are 2D, whereas most mainstream games are 3D. Creating the same level of detail in a 3D game requires exponentially greater work. Games like Braid (or even mainstream 2D titles like Odin Sphere and Guilty Gear) can be beautiful without much work - Braid was done by like 5 people, wasn't it? But to get something really beautiful in a 3d setting, you need tens of millions of dollars, and even then it might be like Heavenly Sword - breathtakingly beautiful but tragically short (At least it had Anna Torv - yum).
Can't speak for the iPhone as I've never even held one in my hands. But I do have an Android phone. You know why piracy is problem there? Because the Android Market sucks. Why does it suck? Because of DRM.
Google restricts paid and/or copy protected apps in the market. Remember that story from a while back that ADP1 owners couldn't install their own apps from the market any more? That's copy protection, and it's filtered by device id. So far, after both updates to my Samsung i7500 phone, these apps were unavailable for about two weeks. That's about half of the time I've owned it so far.
And then there's paid apps, which is a distinct (although partially overlapping) set. Access to these is filtered by network operator. That's right, if you buy an unlocked Android phone without a contract, you can't buy apps from the market if your carrier happens not to sell any Android device themselves.
Both problems, of course, can be fixed if you have root access to your device. But it still was a major pain for me to get access to the apps I had already bought. I was ready to send a very unfriendly letter to Google demanding my money back (but I found a workaround in the end). You're witnessing DRM at its best - denying legitimate customers access to the items they have "bought".
Meanwhile, pirated apps continue to work fine. And you wonder why many people prefer them?
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
> So next time you hear someone justifying piracy because of high prices, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
> The next time you hear someone justifying piracy because no one gets hurt, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
> The next time you hear someone justifying piracy because viral is helping, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
> The next time you hear someone justifying piracy because of DRM, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
You're an idiot for only looking as deep as serves your pre-existing mindset, when you came SO CLOSE to the underlying truth. Perhaps you should be kicked in the nuts?
Any one of those four items _is_ a justification of piracy - of the specific item. The problem here is that the greed of the megacorps has created an overall pro-piracy mindset; they've outright _conditioned_ an entire generation to download by default, and _that_ is why even the cheap well-made indy things have trouble selling.
It is not enough for just a few companies to be good while the rest continue being hugely evil; that will not reverse the trend by itself, it will only continue to reinforce it. When you keep hearing those big four excuses you hate so much, it's an indication that the overall state of affairs is still messed up, not that giant media corporations are angels and all private individuals are greedy little punks that need a good ball-kicking to set them straight. Your choice of the latter only demonstrates that the situation is so out of whack that it's even warping your own views.
Fuck off, Objectivist. Go back to your Atlus Shrugged circlejerk and write about the evils of Libertarians or something.
Economics does not work that way. The main reason why someone would expend extra effort to pirate something is simply because they either do not value the product that highly or do not have the money to buy it. In either case, without piracy they will simply not purchase the product. It's a simple consequence of subjective theory of value; people value things differently than YOU.
If someone does not wish to buy something from the official channels, he can either get a copy from other sources, or not get a copy at all. In either case, the publisher does not receive any revenue. What's the difference between piracy and not buying the software? Nothing. They both cause the same amount of "harm". Thus, by your logic, we should be forced to buy these kinds of things. In fact, let's ban all competition! The next guy to improve on a crop yield should be the ONLY person to produce that crop. And so on.
So next time you hear someone justify competition because of high prices, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
The next time you hear someone justify competition because no one gets hurt, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
The next time you hear someone justify competition because it helps everyone, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
The next time you hear someone justify competition because of their rights, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
It's funny, because the surveys I have came up with completely different numbers:
Android is making as much money as Apple when adjusted for user base.
100% beleve you suffer from a social disorder.
But the best part, is I got you to have a little fit for my entertainment.
Could you please explain how is it that somebody gets hurt with piracy?
For me, the situation is quite different. I wouldn't say that piracy is what makes money to move, but technically speaking, I see nobody's assets being lost because of the simple fact that I have copied something he or she has ever created. What is more, this creator might never realize it.
I am truly conscious that there is a problem with digital media related with piracy, though. I don't have a solution that would fill the hole, but I don't see that DRM nor laws such as the DMCA are the way, honestly. In copyright-based income, it has to be taken into account that copying the work has a near-zero cost. That said, it's logical that people try to get it free. There's the problem. Now, would you say that when people do copy it, you actually lose something? I doubt you would. Probably the price of the license has to be so low that copying it illegally simply isn't worth. After all, if the application is good enough it has a big chance of having many sales. This is not the ideal solution but neither is DRM. With DRM, besides the fact that it's often an obstacle to legitimate users, after the way to circumvent it has been found piracy will arise shortly. Therefore, an incentive to copy the software.
I leave the problem open, as I said I had no solution to offer, but I don't agree with your arguments.
Only when you've found the correct idea you'll speak a lot about nothing and you'd be perfect.
Right. I consider pirating foolish, and won't do it. I do, however, consider it *less* unethical than the actions of the companies that promote DRM. If it actually harmed the companies, I might even consider it ethical.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
May I add feeling like a damned idiot for paying, only to get kicked in the nuts? I have 9Gb of RAM, 8 on the CPU and 1Gb on the GPU, so naturally I use a 64bit OS, in this case XP X64. Does the DRM allow me to....oh I don't know....actually USE what I PAID for? Fuck no!
So I have to waste MY time cracking shit I PAID for just to use it, because while even older games run perfectly fine on XP X64, the fucking DRM don't work at all. You get the "insert disc in drive E:" bullshit, just like this guy (warning-language) which is why I use his video on the subject, since he puts my frustration into words better than I can. And does anybody notice the huge fucking pile of game boxes, literally stacked sky high in his gaming room? That is just like me, and just like him game after game AFTER game doesn't actually work. Can I get my money back for being sold a broken product? Nope, because once the box is open tough shit. Oh, and God help you if you install a game without finding the (sometimes non existent) Starforce label, because guess what? The fucking uninstaller for Starforce doesn't actually work in x64, so you get to spend the afternoon dual booting and hacking the reg to get that buggy shit off. Fun, huh?
Does this hurt the pirates? not a God damned bit. They get the game on release day, or sometimes even earlier, and low and behold, it works just fine on x64! Amazing huh? Meanwhile I've had to quit buying at release because I have to wait for all the patches to be cracked just so I can actually pay for a working product. And more and more often I feel like a damned fool for going through all this bullshit just for the "privilege" of giving some gaming corp my hard earned money so they can spit in my face. Now tell me something DRM lovers-why should I give a flying shit about you or your company if you are gonna treat me like dog shit for paying you? Because I didn't spend $700 on this new gaming rig just to run a 32bit OS because you can't be bothered to actually pay for functional DRM, which frankly I have yet to see in 32 OR 64 bit. And I can tell your from experience that DRM "infections" can be nastier than any malware you can pick up. Ever see what Safedisc PLUS SecurROM PLUS Starforce does? I have, and it ain't pretty. All kinds of mysterious crashes, and more burned out drives than I can count, thanks to them being thrown into PIO mode.
Sorry for the length, but this really isn't rocket science-give your customers fair value for their dollar, which does NOT mean charging the absolute maximum you can possibly charge without calling it the "assraping edition" because you think your shit don't stink. Give us a fair value, make us feel like we are getting MORE and not LESS for our money, and enjoy your profits. News Flash-good games make butt loads o' cash, bad games don't. It has always been that way. Screwing your customers in the mistaken belief that handing over 100k to SecuROM will make pirates by your shitty shooter o' the week only hurts guys like me, that are frankly getting sick of getting kicked in the nuts by you when the pirates laugh their asses off. But keep this shit up, and I have no doubt you'll run me straight into the arms of the pirates. Not because I don't want to pay, but because I am sick and tired of spending more time cracking the damned game and removing faulty DRM infections on my machine than actually playing the fucking game. I swear to God one more unannounced Starforce install, just one more, and you can kiss my cash goodbye.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I am an indie game dev and I loath DRM, would never touch it even with a stick. So please do not include me when you paint broad brushes and claim indie game devs is for DRM.
You know why people feel entitled? Because they've been fucked over by the media companies. Constantly. DVD's that won't work in one region or another, released at different times, same with music, price gouging by equating a dollar to the euro or the pound... what sane person doesn't feel taken advantage of by the media companies? People will pay when they feel they're getting a fair deal. They haven't gotten one yet.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Secondly, it's about trying to create artificial scarcity, which seems to me to be all the wrong strategy
The geek conflates production and distribution.
Wall-E took the Hugo this year for best long form drama. The Nebula. The Saturn. Wall-E is an enchanting - almost wordless - romantic comedy with a ferocious satiric bite. It's geek quotient is stratospheric and there only one studio on earth who could have made it.
Wall-E was four years in production and had a budget of $180 million.
Pixar, of course, doesn't have to produce anything for the geek.
It doesn't have to take a chance on a live action John Carter of Mars. The family market for undemanding movies likes Cars is theirs for the asking.
Life is short. Why take on the grief of servicing a non-paying audience who believes in its right to pirate?
That's stupid, to the extent that piracy is "competition" to legitimate sales, the market price is $0, so of course the price rises from 0.
What this does is increases the profit margin per consumer (since there are no 0-profit consumers), which shifts the optimal point on a supply/demand curve toward lower prices since you can then get even more consumers.
The links don't really have anything to do with piracy, just a slow rollout for Android. That's expected, Apple is huge.
I personally think people pirate software because they're cheap, software is expensive, most software is one step above horrible and it's pretty easy to pirate software.
Put simply, both sides suck.
Everyone uses this utility,
Actually, I don't.
When I make archives, I either make zipfiles or tarballs, depending on the application -- zipfiles if I need random access, tarballs if I don't.
When I need to unpack them, I use commandline tools -- unrar is free on Unix, and there's 7zip to handle just about anything on Windows.
I wouldn't mind sending some money to him if it was an open source project, actually. But I'm against proprietary standards, so no, I don't buy it, and I avoid using it.
If a company doesn't have to pony up for a DRM system, one thing that hasn't been explored that much are price points.
I agree. In fact, I'd encourage that irrespective of DRM.
This particular developer makes my point for me -- I might pay $5 for his game. Maybe $10. I will not pay $28 for it. He's blaming piracy for his own inability to either make a compelling enough product, or price his less-than-compelling product appropriately.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
A bit rude, but damn -- that was awesome.
If someone makes a factual claim that seems off, you can provide data to indicate they are wrong. Saying "data please" is lazy minded arguing.
Cheers
It's a negative cost. I enjoy programming games, and would rather do that than, say, see Sector 9 for free. Thus, I'm getting the same amount of "jollies" by programming, but spending less cash.
Tarn Adams makes money from giving Dwarf Fortress away for free.
DRM is all about robbing the consumer it really is nothing more than a con trick. Do Wallmart come to your house and take the products back when they decide they no longer want you to have them?
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
At some point (and it may have arguably already happened with some games) the consumer will be able to a get better game by NOT paying for it, simply because they will be able to find a cracked version that doesn't treat them like a criminal. (ie phoning home regularly for security, getting pissy about being reinstalled, etc.)
This already happens with movies, I always recommend people download if they just want to watch it because the pirate version is superior in that it's easier to transfer from one media player to another, so easy in fact that I never attempt ripping any of my DVDs. If I want to put my movies on the thumb drive and take them with me I just download them.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Which I can't help but find amusing, because regardless of how these posts are modded, the argument I present is logically irrefutable. The responses to my posts that (doubtless sarcastically) suggest that assorted crimes should also be renamed by the same line of reasoning completely miss the point of what I was trying to assert.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I still think the best solution is to put some of the game on a server. For music films and such, I don't think there is a good solution.
Movies and Music are linear, as in they go straight from start to finish. When all else fails we can always record a movie as it plays, although old skool this method is made viable by the emergence of better recording technologies such as recording directly from within the system. a.k.a not holding an external camera to a screen.
Games are always going to be harder to pirate for the simple fact that you cannot observe and record the way you can with Music and Video.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
This claim that "honest people subsidize thieves" is absolute nonsense as:
I am perfectly happy for people to pirate, since I am apparently subsidising piracy it should be my say, and I say it's perfectly ok for people to pirate. I download heaps of Movies but the money I spend on DVDs makes up for that, it also makes up for allot of other people's downloads.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
For me DRM boosts piracy, I will always take the superior pirate version over a crippled retail version any day.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
High prices, just like every other product, are often a reflection of fraud and theft. Pirates steal and justify it by claiming they do so because prices are so high. In reality, prices are often so high because they steal.
This gets brought up in most discussions about piracy but it simply isn't true. Games that are immune to piracy by design (MMOs) are by far the most expensive games available. Games cost what they do because that is how much people are willing to pay for them. If piracy were somehow defeated tomorrow the only thing that would change is profit margins.
You honestly think anyone will listen to you when you are too stupid to use the "Enter/Return" key?
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Interesting note, piracy forces prices higher which forces a reaction to integrate ever changing DRM.
Wait, what? A game company would have to be idiots to raise prices because of piracy. If anything, piracy should lower prices, right? If you aren't selling enough copies of your game at the current price (for whatever reason) then the solution is to lower prices to a more reasonable selling point. If you still can't make enough profit, that's not because of piracy--it's because your game is a piece of shit or run of the mill game that nobody wants. It's very convenient to blame the users for every poor business decision your company makes, but the end result of such stupidity is bankruptcy. You just couldn't cut it. Don't worry though, other companies will adapt to the changing times instead of sitting around whining about their sense of entitlement, and those companies will prosper.
The one about the 60% feeling entitled to "steal" IP. The Android and iPhone being sunk by piracy was pretty speculative.
You do understand how Lying with Statistics has been abused by everyone and you have to provide the raw data ? I'm not going to take your word that you are not bullshitting me, because there's a bridge in Brooklyn for sale...
...truly hard to imagine that such a situation unchecked would have continued for, say, a decade....
Yeah - I would say that it is hard to imagine any situation in the world of tech continuing for a decade. That is the problem. The narrowly focused (money money money) corporate world view doesn't allow them to see the obvious fact that things change fast in our world, and the old money grubbing ways (law suites, patents, copyright etc) are not necessarily the best ways now. Greed is so old fasioned.
and i think this is why i loved quake 1 back in the day, but only managed to be somewhat interested in quake 2 and later...
quake 1 was basically just a engine, but when the quake-c compiler hit the magazine demo disks, things got interesting...
at that point, any kid with a bit of free time and a text editor could rework said engine to do all sorts of things (and there where no hardcoded limits on weapons and similar), and they did.
then i think someone wrote a simple modeling/skinning program, and it started doing the rounds. Soon one had stuff like team fortress, slide (quake "snowboards"), and most impressively, airquake!
for the record, airquake was done by one guy, iirc, and is a mod where one can drive aircrafts and ground vehicles rather then run around shooting at each other.
but then when quake 2 shipped, the mod tools went from quake-c and free/share-ware to visual-c++ and 3d studio.
this basically moved the entry point sky high, and we started getting mods that basically used the same models as all the rest, but tweaked the server code. And the really ambitious original ones never took of as they could not attract the people that could do the modeling more often then not, as they where already doing modeling for mods that had come early and had a following, or variants of those...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
but then economists run their show of accepted "facts" with little or no real world testing...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
this reminds me of the B-17 simulator i bought for amiga back in the day.
it came in a nice heavy box, containing not only the disks of the game, but 2 books and a quick reference guide, one of the books being basically a history book in the tech and people of the bomber force, complete with plenty of photos from the time period, and a company logoed sweater.
if your lucky to find a simulator today, the manual will be pdf only more often then not, maybe they throw in a single page quick reference, maybe not, thats it. And the price is the same or higher (yea yea, inflation and all that, economist voodoo backing up their banker friends that keep messing with the economy by fractional lending).
sure, the ground may be high rez sat photos overlaid a matching 3d model that can handle the smallest pebble, and the faces of the pilots may be modeled so detailed that you can count the hairs of the 3 day beard, and shows realistic fear moments before the missile (detailed to the markings and individual moving parts) blows the vehicle to physically correct parts on physically correct trajectories given speeds and similar.
but the only way to take a look at that is pausing the simulator, jumping to a different camera, then do a step by step advance with closeups.
sorry, but i am playing this to shoot down the enemies and get the mission done, not remake top gun, machinima style.
but then i am one of those calling hogwash on the whole HD push by the entertainment biz, so that more hardware can be sold, and same old content can be sold, but now in HD! see the individual drops of water when some random grizzly grabs some random fish out of the water...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
OOOOOOH! NOW I SEE! I should have been HAPPY about the GREAT DRM, when 3 games, that I bought didn't run and the fucking stores didn't take them back, because they were opened...
THANK YOU for opening my eyes, fuckhead!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
DRM coupled with extremely high cost makes it dumb as hell to purchase many things.
Interesting note, piracy forces prices higher which forces a reaction to integrate ever changing DRM., which in turn drives prices higher. Nasty cycle pirates have created.
I wonder how piracy drives up prices? Is the loss of a potential market that drives up prices?
Record companies sell millions and millions of copies of a song for $1 with virtually no distribution costs or anything.
Their distribution cost is completely irrelevant. Its a straw man's argument. Likewise is their profit. For it to be even slightly topical is to argue the free market and capitalism is wrong. Are you saying no one is entitled to make a profit?
I don't think anyone is entitled to make a profit. That is the risk of capitalism. If someone is entitled to make a profit, someone else should be entitled to get something for free. It's only fair.
I think that the profitability of a venture should be the responsibility of the business behind it, not the market they target. If more fair prices appeal to a wider market, there could be more profit for the business. Also, pirates aren't really a target market (ie paying customers). I think that converting a pirate into a paying customer will take more than just DRM.
Imagine if record companies sold songs for $.25 and put them on a server where you could download them if you lost them. In other words 100% DRM free with even assisted recovery of your files
We can already imagine that with iPhone and Android applications. While not 0.25, piracy is live and well for $0.99 apps which have very real costs associated. People pirate because they feel entitled, not because of price.
I think piracy has more to do with desire than entitlement. People desire these digital media. But, not everyone desires these things enough to pay the asking price. If the asking price was lower, perhaps more people would be willing to pay.
They are the people that would never have bought music to begin with.
Yet another lie pirates tell each other. If they would have never bought the song in the first place, they would have listened to it once, deleted it, and never listened to it again.
Buying a song is not the same as listening to it.
Like stock, they effectively devalued it.
I do agree that pirates have devalued digital media, however I believe that digital media has been, and still sometimes is, overvalued.
Go illegally grab up a bunch of stock and when you get arrested, tell them its all okay because you would have never bought it in the first place.
Apps get downloaded used once, then never used again.
Then you failed to read that issue seems to largely on affect iPhone users. And just the same, that's not true for all applications either. If the application remains installed, they are assigning value to it. If they use the application, they are assigning value to it. If an item has value, and it is obtained without paying for it, the item has been stolen. For IP, we call this piracy. For stock, its called theft, fraud and/or embezzlement.
I am reading your post and I find value in it. I have obtained your post without paying for it, therefore I stole it? Or is that only if you are entitled to make a profit on it? Or maybe if someone else thinks that your post is valuable?
Like the parent said: Give me a good value and the money will flow easier than ever.
Then that's you and not pirates. By you're[sic] own admission, you don't pirate. If you do pirate, by your own admission, you're lying to yourself and everyone else who reads your post.
Funny, I had to read that twice before realizing you are a troll. Sorry, Slashdot, for replying.
Game companies wouldn't have problem with pirates...
If pirates actually paid for the games they play.
That's all. Seems like their demands seem fairly reasonable.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
I recently got Starcraft(*shock* *horror*, i know)
And the game has NO DRM. You don't even need the CD in the drive to play(In fact you are encouraged to run a lan-party off a single copy)
And where did that get Blizzard??? Only 11 million copied sold, making it the 4th highest selling PC game. Proof that if you game is good enough, DRM is not required....
Maybe then you realize that you suck and shouldn't be making music and go on to find something else you are good at?
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Sounds scary! Well, at least piracy is not killing Linux!
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
A prime example why the KISS principle is mandatory when it comes to modding.
Modders are not coders. And coders usually are poor modders. I pride myself in being a good coder. But I have quite awful taste for map layout. I don't even like my own maps when I'm done with them, no matter how much I thought they'd be great while making them.
Making a mod has to be easy. It has to consist of very little coding, if any, and the modder has to be able to concentrate on what's important in a mod: Making it playable and enjoyable.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sloppy work. There is nothing about piracy in the links, the consensus is that android app store and 24 hour money refund policy suck and that Android customers are not excited about paying money for farting sound apps, something the Apple demographics goes for. And that high availability of quality free apps for Android undermines commercial software. One person in the comments section even proposed artificially sticking paid-for apps on top (coz they "get lost" in the midth of free software that provides the same functionality).
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
How about you cram your rant-supporting rant up your own ass?
You've got someone going off on a rant about how evil "pirates" they are. But it could just be a baseless rant - how do we tell?
We use facts to tell us if some guy's rant is justified or not. So his rant has some unsubstantiated "facts":
So, whether this guy has a point or whether he's talking utter bullshit depends on these claims being correct.
It's not up to us to go verify some rant on Slashdot. It's up to the ranter to show he's right.
Let's examine a related "fact" from The Sun newspaper:
Trace that "fact" back to its origins and you'll find little substance.
Another example: 136 actual people became 7 million illegal downloaders.
There are people on both sides of the "piracy" argument with specious reasoning, dubious statistics and unstated biases. Don't let them argue their pet positions. Challenge them each and every time. That's the only way to take the bluster out of their rants.
Does my bum look big in this?
Did you miss every single one of the points that I made? Those are my rights, with a long standing of being upheld by rule of law and the courts. DRM in combination with the unconstitutional DMCA removes those rights by making those rights impossible to use without breaking the DRM (and violating the DMCA in the process).
Most pirates are starving Ethiopians who can barely afford ammo for their AK-47 and gas for their boats, I doubt that they are in the market for video games.
Copyright infringement is not piracy, it is not theft. When you call it that, you lie.
DRM does not prevent copyright infringement, at best it delays the inevitable.
As such, no, the demands of taking away my rights while being completely ineffective at the claimed purpose are by no means reasonable.
Actually, for the graphical capabilities of the day, Lemmings did pretty well.
While the lems themselves weren't all that complicated, the maps and backgrounds were generally quite pretty, and the music (once I got a soundcard instead of PC speaker) was also very nice.
A bit rude, but damn -- that was awesome.
But also bollocks.
If someone makes a factual claim that seems off, you can provide data to indicate they are wrong. Saying "data please" is lazy minded arguing.
Cheers
"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" - Christopher Hitchens.
If you are going to pull some made up fact out of your arse, expect me to call you on it, not do the research you should have done in the first place.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
That an argument relies on (or, a fortiori, is simply a claim of) facts for which no evidence is provided is a legitimate basis for dismissing it. (Its not evidence that it is wrong, just a reason not to grant it further consideration without evidence for the facts it relies on being true.) That is a pretty basic part of critical thinking and healthy skepticism.
The "meme" that fact claims require evidence to be accepted is considerably older than Wikipedia. Sure, the particular "[citation needed]" expression came from Wikipedia, but it isn't different in any substantive way from responses with equivalent meaning like a simple one-word "Evidence?" response one might have seen in response to an unsupported claim in any Usenet discussion group even prior to the invention of the WWW, much less Wikipedia.
Using "[citation needed]", as such, is not even on its face an attempt at rebuttal, in the sense of a counterargument for the falsity of the argument it responds to. It is a dismissal, that is, a simple statement that the argument presented relies on unsupported fact claims and does not warrant further consideration without support given for those fact claims. Where the fact claims are not genuinely controversial (e.g., "the Earth is an oblate spheroid") it may be ingenuous distraction, but at the same time it is fairly easy to address it in those cases (and, further, the attempt at dismissal won't tend to influence readers much.) Where the fact claims are controversial but supportable, attempting to dismiss them with "[citation needed]" won't serve as a "discussion ending" rhetorical device if those making the initial argument are willing and able to support the fact claims at issue.
It only effectively serves as a discussion-ending device when used against people who are blowing smoke in the first place, in which case the effect is quite appropriate.
And if it were not for these idiots stealing everything they can touch, there wouldn't even be a need for DRM.
Copy prevention is just one purpose of DRM. Other purposes include prohibition of legal resale and artificial product phase-out. DRM would exist no matter what.
Your whole post also assumes that I don't have the right to make copies of whatever published data I want, which is simply wrong. The first amendment says I have that right, even if the current unconstitutional copyright laws say otherwise.
If game companies are concerned about the sales figures about the first few days, then they can have their DRM for the first couple weeks.
Then push out a patch that dumps the DRM, about a month after release. This way, legitimate users can still play their game and not have deal with hostile "user experience" after a couple weeks. People who just don't like DRM on principle can buy the game after the patch comes out and not worry about if a video card change out is going to blow out their activation limit.
The problem with this is that the game companies aren't just fighting piracy, they are removing your right to first sale. One of the reasons I switched to console games over PC games is so I can borrow/ loan them out to friends. I could also resell them when I'm done with them. Sure consoles have DRM, but a disk made for the PS3 will play in any PS3. You have encryption on the blurays to prevent piracy, but you still have the right to loan/borrow/resell the disc when you are done. If I buy a downloadable game from the PSN, I don't have any of those rights.
I don't know, you guys are making it sound like anybody could go out and create games. I mean, the big game studios are making money, but they're not making more than other kinds of entertainment companies. And they're certainly not doing anything worse than Hollywood. And just as Hollywood enables indie films to be made and distributed (if all films were arthouse films would there have been VCRs?), the big studios allow the indies to thrive. How else would game schools thrive or engines be refined and distributed? And there wouldn't be a drive for super-realism in games if that didn't sell. Look at the GTA series -it's amazingly well polished but it's also a genre-leader. Go ahead and try to dream up a "new" game, and if you'd like a challenge. DRM at this stage is annoying and troublesome, but the creators have the right to protect their work from theft. In a few years there'll be a less-annoying system and we'll be thankful for it.
I am a indie game designer, and I'd rather die than enforce DRM on any games I do. I could offer my ideas to EA and then get 10-15 millions right on the table when they accept it! But I rather live poor than give them any rights/saying.
Also I don't thing my colleagues like DRM. After all, file sharing is our number one marketing channel!! So I think the survey is bogus and made up. (E.g. by EA.)
Do I even have to mention, that DRM blocks NOT A SINGLE freeloader!
One creates a crack, tenthousands download it, and millions get helped by their friends to get the games running. There no such thing as the guy who can't get it running if he wants it. It's a myth.
How can the editors pass something like that through? Have they lost their mind? One should sue them for that lie alone!
And we creators get paid for a SERVICE! THERE IS NO PRODUCT called "game". It's a service. Just like music.
So you get a specific amount for your service, and you are done. Every copy is free.
If you want to earn money, you have to EARN (as in DESERVE) it! Offer special physical things like collectors packages. Or a multi-player-server plan with a fair price. (If you keep the profit rather small, those prices usually go to ridiculously low values.)
Is it that hard? MAKE. PEOPLE. HAPPY. So they WANT to thank you.
If they do not want to thank you, you don't deserve shit with your soulless crap wannabe "hollywood plastic fantastic" shallow default batch production run-of-the-mill trash game.
Sorry, but this attitude and propaganda makes me angry. They ruin the real artists' business for all of us.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
100% beleve you suffer from a social disorder.
Actually its well publicized that its absolutely NOT! Android, at best, is making between 1/8 to 1/2, depending on whos numbers you believe, when adjusted for its market size.
Sloppy work.
Yes, I agree you're very sloppy. Go read the fucking articles and then the posts and then the links from the links.
Is it really too much to ask people to use their fucking head?!
Sloppy indeed.
A game company would have to be idiots to raise prices because of piracy.
Then in your book, almost all game companies are idiots. Idiots or not, that's the facts.