Pirates as a Marketplace

John Riccitiello, the CEO of Electronic Arts, made some revealing comments in an interview with Kotaku about how the company's attitudes are shifting with regard to software piracy. Quoting: "Some of the people buying this DLC are not people who bought the game in a new shrink-wrapped box. That could be seen as a dark cloud, a mass of gamers who play a game without contributing a penny to EA. But around that cloud Riccitiello identified a silver lining: 'There's a sizable pirate market and a sizable second sale market and we want to try to generate revenue in that marketplace,' he said, pointing to DLC as a way to do it. The EA boss would prefer people bought their games, of course. 'I don't think anybody should pirate anything,' he said. 'I believe in the artistry of the people who build [the games industry.] I profoundly believe that. And when you steal from us, you steal from them. Having said that, there's a lot of people who do.' So encourage those pirates to pay for something, he figures. Riccitiello explained that EA's download services aren't perfect at distinguishing between used copies of games and pirated copies. As a result, he suggested, EA sells DLC to both communities of gamers. And that's how a pirate can turn into a paying customer."

Comments

Half a game?

[Rik Sweeney]

As a result, he suggested, EA sells DLC to both communities of gamers. And that's how a pirate can turn into a paying customer.

So what you're saying is that we should only sell half the game in the shops and make the customer download the rest of it as DLC?

Re:Half a game?

[Thanshin]

Or simply release a skeleton of the game, and then demand payment for the rest.

And you could even release that starting representative little part of the game for free. After all, it's going to be pirated you'll be getting most of your revenue with the DLC, right?

And you could even call that representative little part "demo", and then say that the first DLC is the "full game".

Brilliant! ...

If they start releasing a significative part of the game as DLC, DLC will be cracked as full games are now, anyway.

This is just one more way to use "OMGPIRATES!" as an excuse to get more money for the same game from the paying customers.

Re:Half a game?

[sakdoctor]

And that's how a pirate can turn into a paying customer.

And that's how a paying customer can turn into a "pirate".
I would buy the game in the shop and torrent all the cracked and nicely packaged DLC. Winrar!

Re:Half a game?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would buy the game in the shop and torrent all the cracked and nicely packaged DLC. Winrar!

This is EXACTLY what happened to me.

Re:Half a game?

[dave1791]

They learned this from the MMO model. Piracy is a non-issue for online games. So be prepared for a future with microtranscations in your single player FPS.

Re:Half a game?

[your_neighbor]

Finally they found the right answer: Join the worse of both worlds!

Retail will not work, but you must have it! Download will not work, just if you bought the retail! Very clever answer. Nobody will want to download a simple .torrent with all that you need anymore!

Re:Half a game?

[Grygus]

I think the opposite is true; you need a quality game for this to work. There is a class of pirate who isn't going to buy anything, no matter what. He can be ignored for the purposes of this conversation. There is another class of pirate who regards torrents as a sort of extended demo program. These guys either buy games that turn out to be good, or at least they wouldn't object to that behavior even if they often never seem to get around to buying the game. That's the target here.

If you put out a game that is good enough right out of the box (or the original torrent in this case), and then issue compelling DLC they might well go ahead and purchase the DLC if that's easier than (or just as easy as) getting a torrent. A lot of these people aren't stealing for financial reasons; they're stealing because the pirated version of most games is actually superior in some way(s) to the retail version. DRM is removed, you don't need the CD in the drive, and it's convenient to acquire. If the DLC doesn't introduce any of those inconveniences, and if the button to buy it is right there on the launcher or even in-game (like in Dragon Age,) I bet there are in fact some pirates who are stealing the game but then buying DLC.

I don't think it's a solution; there is no solution to piracy unless your game was free of charge to begin with. However, I think it's a healthy attitude and I think it's a step in the right direction; instead of seeing piracy as this holy war to fight, approach it as a sales problem.

Re:Half a game?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the opposite is true; you need a quality game for this to work. There is a class of pirate who isn't going to buy anything, no matter what. He can be ignored for the purposes of this conversation. There is another class of pirate who regards torrents as a sort of extended demo program. These guys either buy games that turn out to be good, or at least they wouldn't object to that behavior even if they often never seem to get around to buying the game. That's the target here.

That is me, I think that 99.9% of mainstream PC games are total garbage and not worth my money. The latest games tend to be ports of some console game with the same shitty console controls on my PC. On top of that I can not return a game if it sucks.

Look at Assassins Creed for example, good reviews but I it was one boring, repetitive game.... typical console shit. I stopped playing it after the second city or so.
I also downloaded Dragon Age Origins and liked it so much that I went to the store yesterday to purchase it.

I would consider purchasing DLC but would never do it because I would never allow a pirated game to connect to the Internet. Grant me amnesty when purchasing DLC and I may go for it :)

Re:Half a game?

[Kamokazi]

It's that kind of stupid thinking that made me pirate the DLC for Dragon Age. I paid the full $50 and change for the game, then I pirated all the DLC, even the free DLC (Which, IMO, was much better than paid...Soldier's Peak kinda sucked), because to hell if I am going to phone home to EA every time I play the game.

I do this because I think DLC has turned into nothing but greed. I was always a big fan of expansion packs....$20-30 for a nice lump of additional story or content. Then a few DLC-ish things started popping up here and there, which wasn't bad either. A nice string of extra content, priced reasonably. Apparently it was quite popular, as it evolved into the monster system we have now, where DLC is oftentimes content that should have been present from launch.

Also I think DLC is targeted at used much more than pirated...this is just smoke and mirrors to hide their true ambition, in that they want to get paid for every person who uses a copy...and not paid for a single copy that changes hands a few times. Otherwise they wouldn't give out 'free' DLC with every copy of the game...a pirate will just pirate it, but a used buyer may not.

Re:Half a game?

[commodore64_love]

And that will be the end of my modern gaming career. Rather than be nickle-and-dimed to death, I'll just dust-off the old PS2, Nintendo64, Genesis, Amiga, and Atari systems and play them instead. I want to OWN the things I buy, not rent them.

Re:Half a game?

[commodore64_love]

What's a DLC?

Re:Half a game?

[Bakkster]

As a result, he suggested, EA sells DLC to both communities of gamers. And that's how a pirate can turn into a paying customer.

So what you're saying is that we should only sell half the game in the shops and make the customer download the rest of it as DLC?

As long as the game in stores costs half as much, or gives credit to download the other half of the game, that seems acceptable to me.

Some genres of game might even be better because of it. For example racing, sports, and music games.
Racing: a core group of cars from all the classes, then download packs for american muscle, touring cars, exotics, supercars, japanese late-models, etc. You only pay for the cars you want.
Sports: soccer (football) game where you only buy the leagues you want to play. MLS, premier, and national teams, for example.
Music: same idea, buy the disc and get $X to spend on downloadable songs. Never have to play that song you hate, just don't buy them.

Of course, this is predicated on the idea that the initial game would be cheaper (har har), and the DLC of course necessitates DRM (otherwise it all gets pirated, and it's a bunch of extra work for no pay). This would work great in theory, but in practice I imagine nothing good.

Re:Half a game?

[commodore64_love]

>>>There is a class of pirate who isn't going to buy anything, no matter what. He can be ignored for the purposes of this conversation.

Awww.

(walks off)

Re:Half a game?

[Lord Lode]

You mean: Winrarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Re:Half a game?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a DLC?

Take your pick... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLC

Hint: it's related to Computing and technology ;-)

Re:Half a game?

[commodore64_love]

Anon. Coward wrote:
Take your pick... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLC - Hint: it's related to Computing and technology ;-)

Oh the Desktop Linux Consortium. Well then, that makes what EA is doing a-okay. I. Heart. Linux.

Re:Half a game?

[Thanshin]

You're wrong.

It's the Dalian Zhoushuizi International Airport. Not bad, they missed two letters and simply removed the fourth.

By that algorithm, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration could be the NLC.

Re:Half a game?

[icsx]

Seems to me that EA tries to justificate DLC with comments like this and easy money for them. A new game costs atleast 50 bucks, sometimes even 60 on the PC. Naturally the same game is 10 bucks or more expensive on console (whatever is reason for that anyway??). This means that DLC can be 10-30 bucks each so there's around 80 bucks or more spent on _one_ game, that was poorly and too fast made in the first place, thus lacked the content that should have been in the game at the first place. That content is now sold as DLC, but the price is over half higher than it should have been.

What used to be 1 game in the past, is now over a half of 1 game, 1-2 DLC content make it full game and players do the testing for it upon release of the original. Keep the game alive for few years with DLC while making the sequel and then milk out the money again. Nice business model. I wish i had a game company.

Re:Half a game?

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't seem to have a problem with acronym soup related to DLC in the articles:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/21/021244
http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/09/29/0448213/The-Nickel-amp-Dime-Generation

Weird. Hey, waitasecond, are you trolling!? Oh you crazy trolls! You got me! Oh man, I feel duped!

Re:Half a game?

[Anonymous Coward]

instead of seeing piracy as this holy war to fight, approach it as a sales problem.

This is nearly correct. However, ~80% of what I torrent I do so because the industry execs decide to show Program X in the US on date Y and in the UK on date Z where Y is upwards of months before Z. (Like Heroes, Lost, True Blood, 24, etc). Thus because of their desire to screw me over just for living in the UK, I torrent the shows to watch as soon as they hit the trackers a few hours after airing in the US. Thus I have little, if any, incentive to buy the boxsets as I've got the whole season on my machine (or in the case of Lost, they sold the 1st season across TWO boxsets charging ~£25 for *each*).

Games are a different matter. If the studios would put out more demos they'd see more sales.C&C3 sold me on the demo, and I purchased it at full price. However, Mirrors Edge had no PC demo (Thanks EA!) and I've only just picked it up last week because it was on the steam sale for £3.25. EA could've had the asking price for the game if they'd provided a decent PC demo. Thus EA have lost at least £16.75 from me, and I've not even pirated their game!

Re:Half a game?

[Sebilrazen]

You didn't seem to have a problem with acronym soup related to DLC in the articles: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/21/021244 http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/09/29/0448213/The-Nickel-amp-Dime-Generation

Weird. Hey, waitasecond, are you trolling!? Oh you crazy trolls! You got me! Oh man, I feel duped!

Now you are duped.

Re:Half a game?

[Anonymous Coward]

It still doesn't make sense. The legit customers will buy half a game, the pirates will steal the whole game. It sounds like a weak justification to me.

Re:Half a game?

[jgtg32a]

Nicely done both of you.

Re:Half a game?

[Captain Hook]

Downloadable Content

You want a new map in you FPS, you buy it and download it. At least thats how it started, as add-on content smaller than an expansion pack would be.

These days it can be really small trivial stuff, like a new hair style for your characters, or a better weapon. Personaly I have no problem with it when dealing with non-competitive add-ons such as image tweaks. I have a much bigger problem with it for items which offer a competitive advantage over other players - especially in player vs player games such as FPS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downloadable_content

Re:Half a game?

[Thansal]

I wonder if they actually think of this as deriving revenue from pirates. I mean, any decent release will include cracked copies of what ever DLC there was. However some one who prefers to buy used games of piracy will NOT get the DLC that the original purchaser or the pirate gets, so I suspect that the people behind this know they are really only targeting the 2nd hand market with this.

There was an article a while back about DLC packaged with games, and some one (iirc, it was a high up in EA) said that it was aimed directly at the 2nd hand market, and made no mention of piracy.

Re:Half a game?

[VGPowerlord]

If I want new maps in my FPS, I head to FPSBanana and download it. Or just find a server that's already got it and see if I can download it from there.

Oh wait, you meant DLC for consoles (and for the PC version of Modern Warfare 2)?

Re:Half a game?

[cayenne8]

"Downloadable Content"

Thank you, I too was wondering what the hell "DLC" was...the article didn't give anything telling what the TLA (Three Letter Acronym) was...

Actually..."Downloadable Content" is only two words, shouldn't the acronym be DC?

Re:Half a game?

[clone53421]

Too many obvious things that DC already stands for... direct current, District of Columbia, direct connect...

Re:Half a game?

[morari]

FPS for consoles? That's a good one! XD

Re:Half a game?

[eonlabs]

So anyone that doesn't buy the game in the original shrink wrapped packaging is now a pirate? Man, EB Games and Game Stop make half their profits off used games. How about Play and Trade?

Am I missing something here? Is it no longer legal to sell the original copy of something you purchased?

In the same breath, the DLC model still works in this situation as well and, provided the original game is worth playing, can potentially keep a game fresh for a while.

Re:Half a game?

[CronoCloud]

Assassins Creed is a multiplatform game, it's not specifically any platform's shit, just like Dragon Age, which is also multiplatform. Perhaps instead of blaming the console, you should blame the game itself or simply decide that some games aren't to your taste but others are.

Re:Half a game?

[tepples]

Piracy is a non-issue for online games.

But having to pay $720 per year for a mobile data plan for your handheld video game system is an issue.

Re:Half a game?

[Nadaka]

tell me about it. Right now, the only games I am playing are Lords of Magic special edition from the win95 era and dwarf fortress (a modern independent game with ASCII graphics).

Re:Half a game?

[tepples]

As long as the game in stores costs half as much, or gives credit to download the other half of the game, that seems acceptable to me.

So the publisher tries to put a $60 basic edition and a $120 "all DLC included" edition on store shelves. Guess which edition stores are going to carry.

Re:Half a game?

[Anonymous Coward]

That might be the strategy EA tries, but it's not the strategy EA will stay with.

They really screwed up with Spore, a DRM-fest in which they backed off the DRM a little after release through patches. They thought being assholes was good for business, they saw otherwise, and they stopped.

The same will happen here, they might try to take away the actual game and sell it to you in DLC. But, they will stop once they see there is also a brand of paying customers and pirates who will not buy DLC for a crap game OR buy DLC that should have been there in the first place. Ever look at Resident Evil 5? The multiplayer DLC, and everything that added to the game in the form of data, was only ~100 kilobytes. How can ~100 kilobytes add a whole new section to the game with all new netcode? It can't, it was an unlock key for something that was already on the disc. How many people who legally and illegally own the game actually let themselves be ripped off by that?

EA might do that or they might be smart enough to not use unlock keys and actually have necessary gameplay elements for download actually inside the package, but it doesn't matter because they're not going to generate more sales, they're going to lose them. Pirates will take out their burned discs and snap them because it's not worth wasting the physical space in their house on an incomplete, crappy game. Paying customers will return their games, refuse to buy them, or turn to piracy demoing and go the same course of the dissatisfied pirates.

Re:Half a game?

[ultranova]

If they start releasing a significative part of the game as DLC, DLC will be cracked as full games are now, anyway.

It already is. For example, a quick search for "Sims" on Pirate Bay turned up multiple Sims DLC torrents.

Re:Half a game?

[TheLink]

FWIW, my bro bought a pirate version of GTA3 from the local "unauthorized distributor". Yes he didn't download it, it's just more convenient to just buy it.

So after playing many hours of it, he decides that the GTA bunch (Rockstar/Take Two Interactive) deserve some money, so he tries to buy a legit copy of GTA3 but it was banned (in this country) so there was no legit copy around to buy.

So when he was in another country, he tried buy it, but it was banned there too :).

I figure if the GTA bunch had made it easier to pay them, they'd have the money.

We preferably don't want to pay for shipping, distribution, shop's margin and all the other crap - the pirate shop has already done that for us, just let us pay the difference? That's fair right? They get what they'd normally get from the sale, and we get what we want (the game).

It'll be interesting if list price from pirate + GTA bunch's normal cut < list price from legit shop.

Of course that could be because the pirate shop sells more than a legit shop (cheper) and people don't necessarily pay the normal cut to the game makers. BUT, if it turns out to be much cheaper, perhaps the game makers might make more by working better with the pirate shops and other "unauthorized distributors" :).

Many of the "pirates" are already happy users of the software. Just make it easy for them to pay, and don't make it annoying - just have the link present on the main menu - obvious but not annoying. For example have something that says "If this game is a nonlegit copy, but you really like it, click here to pay us a discounted price". Not all will pay, but the more they play the game, the more likely many of them will just go "this game is great, I guess they deserve X bucks (which should be a _lower_ price than RRP).

Years ago, one of the Microsoft bosses in my country scolded subordinates for going hard on people that were using pirated Microsoft Software (reporting them to BSA/courts _immediately_). Told them in effect "These people are already happy Microsoft users, all you have to do is get them to pay". And it's an easy sale - just go to the users and say, pay us "$$$"/copy now or have the court tell you to pay far more per copy. I'm sure they did give some discounts/special payment terms in some cases (many businesses just don't have all that cash available to go legit immediately). But they've already got all the software installed and configured - no cost to Microsoft, get the money, give them the license keys. Pure profit. No need for sales talks, presentations and "expense account spending". In contrast I've heard some cases in USA where Microsoft went hard on companies and those companies just completely stopped using Microsoft as a result (and as long as the CEOs are still around their companies will never buy Microsoft).

Do it right and it's an opportunity for you, do it wrong and it's an opportunity for someone else :).

Re:Half a game?

[ravenshrike]

You don't need to phone home every time you play the DLC. Unless it installs incorrectly, however there's an easy fix which turns authorization off.

Re:Half a game?

[The Archon V2.0]

By that algorithm, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration could be the NLC.

So NASA is selling beer in Newfoundland now? I know their budget has seen better days, but I don't know if alcohol is the answer.

Re:Half a game?

[commodore64_love]

Not really. The first FPS was on a console called the Atari VCS/2600. It was called Starship. 1977

Re:Half a game?

[abigor]

You clearly don't know the Newfies, then.

Re:Half a game?

[hairyfeet]

Well I can say that their anti piracy crap has already made it so I won't buy ANY game on release date anymore. Why? Because I end up needing to crack it more than half the time because I get that "disc not in drive" error. WTF? It IS in the damned drive, you %^$&^%$& DRM POS! And why the hell do we got big honking hard drives if we have to feed the damned thing discs like it is a PS2?

But this guy (warning-language NSFW) sums up my feelings on these large corps and their anti piracy crap better than I ever could. I have to agree that this has nothing to do with piracy though, it is just the greedy swine at EA trying to kill first sale again. And considering how well EA treats customers of launch releases I wouldn't blame anyone if they pirated it first just to see if the POS will even run on their machine before deciding whether to purchase. These companies should be fricking ashamed of the alpha quality code that is pushed through the doors these days.

Re:Half a game?

[DragonWriter]

If you put out a game that is good enough right out of the box (or the original torrent in this case), and then issue compelling DLC they might well go ahead and purchase the DLC if that's easier than (or just as easy as) getting a torrent.

If you start to accept that, why sell the base game, as such, at all? Why not just release a fully-functional base game as a free starter, and sell DLC and services (e.g., access to premium servers) related to it? If you are going to sell something at retail as a box, then, it should really be a package of "passes" for DLC and/or services (sure, the base game can be on a CD in the box, but that shouldn't be what people are paying for.)
 

Re:Half a game?

[G00F]

Or to the sys/net admins out there, Domain Controller. . . .

Re:Half a game?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, remember that's you're not paying half up front. DAO was full priced without the DLC, the DLC was additional. They intend to make pirates paying customers by making actual paying customers pay twice.

Re:Half a game?

[Anonymous Coward]

EA Games has a worse problem, crappy customer service and crappy activation of the DLC.

For example, you buy BF2142 and register it online, then you buy BF2142 Northern Strike expansion, and try to register that and get it linked to your first registration, it's virtually impossible. I have BF2142 for both OS X and Windows, some purchased in the store, some purchased new at discount on eBay (shrink wrapped, never registered), and a couple purchased used. Just to get Northern Strike registered for three out of four accounts (multiple family members play on the same 2 computers, each needs a separate account) I had to repeatedly explain to customer support that the registration system didn't work, the fourth I'm still waiting on. Next the DLC plain didn't work, oh it ran but Punkbluster detected differences and kicked me out. So I bought used BF2142 Deluxe DVDs just so I could get Northern Strike installed with BF2142, then the three accounts worked fine (I didn't need the serial number just the DVD to install what I bought).

Proof they have a problem is the ratio of servers running plain BF2142 versus Northern Strike, at best you find 5 out of 300 running Northern Strike, and only half at best have any people on them, on a good day you have 3 servers with Northern Strike, versus 50-100 for plain BF2142. People are just giving up trying to get Northern Strike DLC to work, people I talk to say they gave theirs away.

Re:Half a game?

[davester666]

Why is he lumping piracy together with 2nd hand sales? I mean, other than EA not getting paid twice for the same product.

Re:Half a game?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think this is far-fetched. Just look what EA did with Dragon Age on the 360.

60$ game turns into a 80$ game pretty much right out the door. with 2 DLC available right at initial game release.

  It's one thing in my mind to have game expansions as DLC, it's another to start this practice of carving up your games before release and still charging full price for said game.

While this article is about "piracy", part of me gets the feeling that this is an incidental aside to the gaming industry's dimmer view of people who buy used console games (from whom EA doesn't receive much profit at all without this scheme in place).

But they can't really call these people "pirates".

Re:Half a game?

[rockNme2349]

Perhaps, but with a pirated copy of the game I wouldn't even think of going online, much less buying additional content through my pirated copy revealing my identity. I think that other pirates will have the same state of mind. Even if they might think the DLC is worth the $5 they'll just pirate it to be safe.

Re:Half a game?

[Bakkster]

That's why it would fail, of course. But, putting out a $30 game and $30 of 'essential' DLC is what would happen in my candy-coated world. It still relies on a working DRM model for the DLC, though.

Re:Half a game?

[DarkMage0707077]

You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.

>N

Thank you for your purchase of Zork! If you wish to continue your adventure, please purchase and install our DLR content "Twisty Passages 2" $5.99!

>buy/install

Downloading.....................Complete.
Installing.....................Complete.

Thank you for your purchase of Zork and Twisty Passages 2! Enjoy your new and amazing Zork experience!

>N

You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.

>N

Thank you for your purchase of Zork and Twisty Passages 2! If you wish to continue your adventure, please purchase and install our DLR content "Twisty Passages 3", only $5.99!

>exit

Thank you for your purchase of Zork and Twisty Passages 2! If you wish to exit the game, please purchase our "Exit Game" DLR, for just $2.99!

>uninstall

Thank you for your purchase of Zork and Twisty Passages 2! If you wish to uninstall the game, please purchase our brand new "Uninstall Pack" DLR, for just $2.99!

>shoot computer

I'm sorry, that is not recogSHOCNOCJAOAIJDHZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Re:Half a game?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they're actually referring to PC gaming, even though the Windows gaming software market is, what, 1/10th the size of the console gaming software market?

Sure, some consoles are modded to allow piracy, but I seriously doubt that "market" is larger than the used game market.

Re:Half a game?

[Seumas]

Ideally, these fuckers would like to charge you for the game and then charge each person you let play the game another $60 all over again and then charge you again for a regular "playing fee". They apparently can't even get "piracy" right. The guy who copied the game to play on his machine isn't a pirate. The dicks fabricating fake copies in packaging all shrink-wrapped and priced at $20 instead of $60 to make a buck are pirates.

Re:Half a game?

[Seumas]

Because, as far as video game publishers are concerned (and book, movie, music, software, hardware, etc) publishers and manufacturers are concerned, anyone who buys a used version of something from a store or online marketplace or a friend is a criminal. In fact, in an ideal world, hey would love permission to prosecute people who buy game and them have the audacity to let someone else play the game, too. If you buy one copy of Modern Warfare 2 and you live in a house with four gamers and the first gamer lets the other three gamers use his copy when they want to play, that house has four criminals living there, as far as they're concerned.

Re:Half a game?

[Narpak]

Personally I buy a lot of computer games, through Steam, when I was younger I used to get pirated versions ; usually because of financial, or simply distribution reasons (ten years ago games would arrive at local stores several weeks after their original release). These days if I feel confident about a game I will preorder, as with Dragon Age or Arkham Asylum, and if it entertains and leaves me wanting more I will buy whatever DLC comes along (if it sounds interesting). However if I am uncertain about the quality of a game I will download a "pirate version", try it, and then either buy it or throw it out.

Over the last few years I have found game reviews to be of declining value to me so in this frequently demo-less age it's either piracy or nothing; and when it comes to buying a game that often costs 49.99€ (that's about 72$ going by a randomly online converter), I really do want to ensure I get something worth paying for. It's not so much the price as that I don't want my list of Steam games cluttered with bullcrap not worth the scrolling. Perhaps this makes me a bad consumer in the eyes of some, but frankly I don't much care about what others think, I have purchased 23 unique games through steam since my account was created in 2007 and will continue to purchase games regularly for the foreseeable future.

Re:Half a game?

[Mongoose Disciple]

My thought is... while what you're saying is true (most cracked releases will include the cracked DLC), the number of people who didn't buy the original game but do buy the DLR is still greater than zero.

Maybe they're looking more for the 'piracy in the form of borrowing the DVD from my friend and installing it' kind of piracy -- I suspect (for games that don't have some kind of online play that makes it problematic) that kind of piracy is a lot more prevalent than the downloading cracked torrents kind. Not among the Slashdot crowd, perhaps, but there's a ton of gamers who aren't tech-savvy enough to rock the online piracy but who are tech-savvy enough to borrow their roommate's copy of a game.

Re:Half a game?

[Kamokazi]

Ah...I was assuming you had to use the EA Download Manager like with Mass Effect's DLC.

Re:Half a game?

[NoobixCube]

As much as they'd like to abolish the idea of the first sale doctrine from our culture (or at least their products), it's not so much that they consider second hand purchasers to be criminals, but more that if the same CD key is used twice, there's no way to tell if that is due to piracy or resale without physically entering the home where it happens. On a semi-related note, if DLC keeps going the way it is, and if the first sale doctrine is rendered redundant, people should start campaigning the FTC (If I remember my acronyms of American overlord organisations right, that's the Federal Trade Commission, isn't it?) to force publishers to create a means of transferring the ownership of DLC. Ideally, any downloadable content you buy should be tied to your CD key, and people should be allowed to either directly pass their CD key on to someone else, or relinquish it for reuse, so a second hand buyer can use the key that came in the box.

Re:Half a game?

[mhajicek]

"If this game is a nonlegit copy, but you really like it, click here to pay us a discounted price"
I see a potential or abuse there. "You clicked the button admitting that you're using pirated software, so we're going to prosecute you." You've even given them payment information that they can use to identify you. Better to simply have a "contribute" button. Some enthusiastic users who actually purchased the software might like to contribute in the hopes it will encourage more free DLC, better support, or future versions of the software.

Re:Half a game?

[kramerd]

Well, in the long run, stores are going to carry things that people will buy. Therefore, if prices on games are raised, people will buy less games. Every game company knows this, every game store knows this, and every consumer knows this.

  Most people already don't buy $60 games, with the exceptions of fantastic blockbuster games or multiplayer online games. Limited editions are ok, because you get the same game, only you get a cooler package or an art book or a costume. Extra purchase items that actually affect gameplay (like more of the story or new characters) are unacceptable, because it means that less than a game is being sold.

Re:Half a game?

[PaganRitual]

I want to OWN the things I buy, not rent them.

Agreed. I'm actually quite happy to make all my future gaming purchases a continuation of my collection of PS2/Xbox games and PC games pre-DLC/DRM bullshit. In fact I'm somewhat like that already, it's much more entertaining browsing Ebay and Gametrader stores for game purchases than to look at which game store between Gamestop/GAME/EB and JB HiFi (in Australia) offer the 'best' pre-order bonus on the latest internet authentication requiring game or console title that will have day 1 DLC and further expansions locked to the (flaky hardware) console.

Of course that involves second hand sales, another thing that all this DRM/DLC related garbage is trying to put a stop to.

ANNO 1404 was the last DRM laden game I will buy, and even then I had to download an entire ISO in addition to paying for it because there wasn't a torrent for the crack alone, and I refused to let it authenticate.

Which reminds me I must find a crack for Flatout Ultimate Carnage, as the authentication/patch servers are down for that game and to play it you have to go through GFWL which requires the latest version of a game if it detects a patch, so as it stands the game is unplayable.

Re:Half a game?

[PaganRitual]

Nah this won't work because it's not their goal. They want everyone to have to pay full for everything. You won't be able to mix and match multiplay because that means that people aren't paying the max amount they can for everything. Everyone will have to pay for everything to play against each other.

Much like in the near future there will be DLC for Modern Warfare 2 that will have to be purchased in order to continue playing on IWNet.

And suggesting the game would cost half as much in stores? Don't make me laught. I thought we'd already established this, it's not about giving the consumer what they want, it's about making the consumer pay as much as possible for as long as possible.

I still try to fantasize about a world in which games hadn't been pirated to hell and back and we could just buy nice games in fancy boxes that looked cool on shelves and that we just owned the game instead of being locked behind shitty DRM and that expansions were released on their own discs that again you weren't purchasing at the mercy of the stability of the publisher or authentication severs because they were purely digital downloads tied to user accounts or console ids on flaky hardware.

Re:Half a game?

[Mex]

This just sounds wrong, honestly. You pirated the DLC because you didn't agree with EA's methods?

Why not just play the regular game, and skip the DLC, if the DLC wasn't worth it to you?

Really, the cries of gamers over a 7 dollar expansion sound so... hollow to me. Just... don't... buy it. But don't pirate it either, because that just nullifies all your arguments.

Besides, Dragon Age seems pretty damn complete to me without the expansions. Isn't it like 80 hours per playthrough? What other entertainment media gives you 80 hours for 50 bucks?

Re:Half a game?

[Mex]

When that happens, when EA sells half a game and demands you pay for the rest of it, gaming nerds will be the first to crucify EA for it, I'm sure. That free BF game isn't doing so hot right now I think.

But so far, no one has given EA a chance for this new model to work. For a nerd site, it's like everyone is so scared of change. Everyone hates the new iPod, everyone hates the new Kindle, etc.

I personally like the idea of DLC. And I've noticed in the past year or so how much EA has changed. I used to really dislike them for basically killing the Ultima series, but this past year alone they've definitely taken some chances on great games. Mirror's Edge and Dragon Age, but also Rock Band was a big risk. I heard Dead Space was cool too. I'm also a fan of Fight Night 4.

I feel they're innovating in new franchises, not just pumping out sequels like Activision.

So, I'm a little torn right now, because I see a lot of slashdot comments complaining about some really lame stuff and then using it as a moral shield to justify their piracy, and I feel like EA is changing (or trying to at least), but maybe there's no change big enough to convince most people to buy more games they like.

I dunno, I wasn't pro-EA but after writing this I feel a lot more sympathy for them.

Re:Half a game?

[eonlabs]

still applies, you can resell a PC game, provided you remove it from your machines and give up the license. Read some of the licenses. They're trying to set a precedent that this is illegal, when it REALLY is not. If enough people think there's something wrong to it, they've made it fact. Nice trick, right.

Re:Half a game?

[Anonymous Coward]

I did the exact same thing. I bought the collector's edition, but shoot me in the foot if I'm going to pay for the DLC, content that really should have been in the game in the first place. Now if you made an expansion with you know, the same amount of playtime, I'd throw in my cash too. But not for a freaking DLC with content (like the storage chest) that should have been in the game in the first place.

Same logic for Borderlands too. I ain't going to be buying the DLC. It's a freaking rip off, that's what it is.

Re:Half a game?

[masterzora]

AC is multiplatform in that it runs on a PC or an Xbox or whatever, but it was distinctly designed with the console in mind and the PC far out of mind. The interface ranges from bad to inane, and many game features clearly exist to compensate for console issues without fixing them for the more capable PC.

Of course, you can't blame AC. It's just part of a growing trend. Sometimes it works out and the PC version seems properly designed, but, more and more these days, it seems that PC isn't even a second thought any more.

Re:Half a game?

[Kamokazi]

It's the fact they cut out a major party member with very strong ties to one of the major plot areas, and pretty major base feature set: storage chest, and character skills. Yes, the game has tons of content and good value, but it's like a fancy seven course meal where everything is exceptional, but you just feel the entree is lacking somehow. I will gladly pay for quality *EXTRA* content, but intentional neutering of fairly central elements is something I will not stand for.

Now, the party member is free DLC, but if you buy the game used, you have to pay $15 for it because it's tied to the previous owner's EA account. That's the kind of crap I really disagree with. Then there is the whole issue of being able to use the content down the road after reinstalls, new computers, etc. You have to rely on the publisher's servers to still be up hosting the content. I frequently play 10 year old games (Total Annihilation, Red Alert, Tribes 2, etc.) and if I had to be reliant on those publishers/developers still being around, I would be SOL.

If they throw all this stuff into a boxed $30 expansion pack, like with the upcoming Return to Ostagar, and some future DLC, I'll be one of the first to buy it. I have no problems with them getting paid for extra content. I do have problems with them crippling the base game and trying to inhibit the used game market.

So that's why I pirated the DLC. Protesting in my own little way. When you break it down, the only thing I actually stole (I have valid Shale and Blood Armor codes, but I didn't consume them) was the Soldier's Peak DLC. The one with storage chest and extra character abilities. Had the chest and those abilities been in the main game, I wouldn't have bothered with it, and just waited to see if they released it in a boxed bundle, or even a game of the year edition down the road. Which I'm hoping for...did the exact same thing with Oblivion...bought Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles when they came out, they included all the DLC up to that point. I'd much rather have a nice box on my shelf than some cracked downloaded files that may not work with future patches.

And you may disagree with my reasoning, but it's my own and I'm not likely to change. I'm not the only one around here with a stubborn view of things...*cough*irrational MS-hating Linux fanboys*cough*.

Re:Half a game?

[Christojojo]

Ideally The publishers would like you to pay by the player minute anyways. They would then complain that they are "loosing" money to players watching others play and call that theft. Thus a new round of watcher pirates versus paying to watch will being with fake lost revenue numbers being bandied about. I hate the crying of lost revenue using projected numbers. Poor people in China wouldn't pay to play the game if they couldn't get it for free. Just like the Windows OS thefts there.

Re:Half a game?

[Voyager529]

I think it really depends on the game, and what the DLC advantages are. Rock Band's DLC is new songs. Given that Rock Band is generally a party game or a string of song plays, it makes some sense in theory. The problem here is the slippery slope. (disclaimer: I don't own rock band, so i'm pulling these numbers out of thin air) Say that Rock Band 1 came with 50 songs, cost $60, and each new song was $3 a pop. Fine. That makes sense; there was a good value with the initial purchase, and anything after that was simply paying extra for extra value. Seeing how lucrative the extra $3/song deal became let's say that Rock Band 2 came with 40 songs, but fewer top 40 hits, the game still debuted at $60, and additional songs were still $3 a pop. Again, a decent value, but more reason to spend some more money to get the songs you really wanna play. Rock Band 3 costs the same $60, comes with 30 songs that were B-side tracks from bands you never heard of, and new songs are now $4 a pop. I'm not being scared of change, I just know a frog boiling in a pot when I see one.

For the first time ever, I pre-ordered a game: Mass Effect 2. The first game was incredible, and if the second one is as good as it looks, then I have no problem whatsoever forking over the $60 for the super-deluxe edition; I even did so at GameStop so that I could get the special armor. That's all well and good. In the first game, the DLC was a single level that took me an extra 90 minutes to complete and got me a few extra XP and Paragon points. I only used it the second time around, and it was a nice expansion, but it wasn't like I had issues completing the game the first time. If Mass Effect 3 costs me $70 up front to get the full game on discs, so be it. But I'd rather walk into a store knowing that I got what essentially amounts to a full product (patches & freebies notwithstanding), then spend $60 and have to pay real money for the armor from the arms dealers in the game. Micropayments are micro-for-now payments, which I guarantee you won't be going away or going down once they become integral parts of games whereby after plunking down $60 for the game, you'll be parting with another $20 to complete the game with any degree of expedience. Personally, I wonder how much of that revenue they could re-obtain simply by ditching SecuROM.

I neither feel bad for EA, nor do I agree with them. I do, however, see a very easy means to improperly maximize revenue. If you trust Electronic Arts, a publicly traded for-profit company, to implement an easy means of maximizing revenue and NOT begin to exploit it at some point in the future, then that's all well and good. Personally, I'll tread VERY lightly and realize that the idea of lending games to my friends (on a they-can-play-it-i-can't basis) or reselling them at some point of the future is a right granted to all gamers by legislation, but taken away by technology.

Re:Half a game?

[Hurricane78]

Lol. What stops me from just downloading the “full game with all DLC packages” torrent, as soon as it’s available? ^^

Re:Half a game?

[Mex]

I agree with you, but what bothers me is that we as gamers aren't even giving EA a chance to develop this new DLC market. So far they haven't screwed anyone, specially with Rock Band. Rock Band 2 had 84 songs and an extra 20 free downloadable songs, along with a crapload of new stuff over the first one (specially like the drum trainer).

And by the way, I think the next big thing to develop in digital sales is indeed lending of content. Maybe erase a game from my hard drive while my friend plays it, hell he can even pay a reduced price or something, and it's temporarily unavailable on my xbox, I'd be fine with that.

Re:Half a game?

[Jessified]

Well that's just it: if EA wants to be able to refer to copyright infringement as "theft" then they want their goods to be considered tangible. That means no EULAs; there are no licenses to use chairs you bought, nor are there restrictions on buying used chairs.

EA, the content industries, pick one. Is your content tangible or not? Stop cherry picking.

Re:Half a game?

[Anonymous Coward]

I completely agree, DLCs aren't hard to pirate. I've gotten them before.

However on great games that I pirate, I end up purchasing them to support the developers, etc. I did this with Fallout, Bioshock, Dragons Age, and others.

If the game is crap, buggy, or what not, they don't get my money.

Thanks buddy

[Jedi Alec]

And that's how a pirate can turn into a paying customer.

And why I, a legitimate customer, can't play Dragon Age if my net connection is down, because the game checks if I'm really entitled to start that savegame with DLC content in it.

In other news, the amount of legitimate Dragon Age + DLC owners planning on getting a pirate copy of Mass Effect just increased by 1.

Re:Thanks buddy

[Grygus]

Disregard above post. I am out of date. Sorry.

Re:Thanks buddy

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the same problem with this. I had to delete all the dlc, then re download it. After that I got an error message about a specific piece of DLC, I then deleted that and downloaded it again and did not have a problem playing offline. Mind you this was on the xbox 360, but it *should* work for the pc version as well :).

Re:Thanks buddy

[vincanis]

And why I, a legitimate customer, can't play Dragon Age if my net connection is down, because the game checks if I'm really entitled to start that savegame with DLC content in it.

I have occasional issues with the game finding the authorization for my DLC as well. Of course, as soon as I log out, there's no remaining issue, and the DLC works perfectly. Give that a try when next you have internet issues. (In case it matters, I have the physical collector's edition, with both DLC packs, CE content, plus preorder bonus items.)

Re:Thanks buddy

[PaganRitual]

Wait, what, so the normal disc release of Dragon Age is (from what I've read) a cd-check only, but the DLC requires internet authentication constantly? Sigh, there goes me playing that game.

Re:Thanks buddy

[R4nneko]

No it doesn't. I had various login troubles whilst playing DAO but even when I was not logged in, it still knew what DLC my account had and I could still play. Whilst trying to log in though, I could not start my game, so I guess it does check if you are online or transitioning to online.

Did they ask why?

[Kman_xth]

Is there any research as to why DLC's are bought more then the actual game? Is it because DLC's are harder to pirate, is it's delivery system preferred above physical discs or is it the low price that drives pirates to a buy? Or perhaps the lack of a decent demo-version?

Re:Did they ask why?

[FictionPimp]

Maybe it's people borrowing the game. Fake example: I beat Dragon Age, my friend wanted to play it. I gave him my copy to use. I can not play while he has my copy, but he made a EA account and got the DLC so he could play. Now we have 2 times DLC for 1 copy.

Re:Did they ask why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pedantic note: it's "DLC". Not "DLC's". Do you really mean to say "downloadable content's" or "downloadable contents"? Of course not. To fix your post for this and other typos (fixed parts in bold):

Is there any research as to why DLC is bought more than the actual game? Is it because DLC is harder to pirate, is its delivery system preferred above physical discs or is it the low price that drives pirates to a buy? Or perhaps the lack of a decent demo-version?

I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[Ynot_82]

'I don't think anybody should pirate anything,' he said. 'I believe in the artistry of the people who build [the games industry.] I profoundly believe that

Really? Funny old world, isn't it
I distinctly remember EA being sued a while ago for copyright infringement.
They used a piece of music in their games without permission from the composer
Anyway...

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[lxs]

EA management pretending to believe in the artistry of their creative staff is the funniest thing I've read in months.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[runyonave]

Ea having a moral business standard is funnier.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[testadicazzo]

And when you steal from us, you steal from them. Having said that, there's a lot of people who do.'

I'm sure the EA lawyers didn't go into court calling their copyright infringement theft either. I would really like to see the press (at least the technical press) conditioned to call the PR assholes on their use of "theft" as a synonym for copyright infringement. The two things are legally and conceptually different. We live in an age where copyright laws, distribution models and our attitudes towards "intellectual property" desperately need to evolve and be rethought. Changes in technology have drastically transformed the cost function for distribution of idea and information distribution, and the old ways of doing things are, simply, harmful and holding us back. When I think that people's lives are being ruined (financially and through prison and social condemnation) i an attempt to keep oligarchs in power and wealth, well, it breaks my heart. At the very least we need to fight against this newspeak conditioning by the PR asshats.

Of course "and when you violate our copyrights, you steal from them..." doesn't carry the same punch does it?

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah, I'm not thief. I'm an infringer.

You got that wrong. You are just a moron.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[gabereiser]

EA actually caring about their developers and artists... That's even funnier!

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[Apatharch]

Sure, if you take something which doesn't belong to you (and without permission of course) you are a thief.

However, making a perfect duplicate of something without diminishing the original is not the same as taking it.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[Urkki]

Sure, if you take something which doesn't belong to you (and without permission of course) you are a thief.

However, making a perfect duplicate of something without diminishing the original is not the same as taking it.

Do you mean, taking a copy is not taking a copy, it's just taking a copy? :-)

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[jcnnghm]

So what is your solution to this problem? You still want these same "oligarch's" to fund the creation of the content you want, right? Why would they do so if there was no possibility of a return on their investment? You are aware that a large percentage of projects fail, right? What would inspire people to take the risk if there was no reward? More government? Magic fairy dust? Bullshit fantasy land?

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[clone53421]

No, he means making a copy is not taking a copy.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[kz45]

"However, making a perfect duplicate of something without diminishing the original is not the same as taking it."

Tell that to the lawyers at the FSF going after people for violating the GNU. Under this same argument, the original author loses nothing when a company decides to use GPLd code in their proprietary app.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[tepples]

Tell that to the lawyers at the FSF going after people for violating the GNU.

Bestiality?

The FSF's philosophy is that as long as we have copyright, we need copyleft and enforcement of copyleft. But once we have no more copyright, it'll be perfectly fine for dedicated hobbyists to disassemble proprietary software, document the crap out of it, make equivalent source code, and share it with the world.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[tepples]

I distinctly remember EA being sued a while ago for copyright infringement.
They used a piece of music in their games without permission from the composer

And I remember a composer being successfully sued a while ago for accidentally using a piece of music by another composer. Is there any surefire way for a composer to avoid this?

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[tepples]

Why does it cost more to develop and publish a video game than to develop and publish a couple books or a couple record albums? Dedicated amateurs seem to have little or no problem doing that.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[jcnnghm]

The same reason there are so few open-source games of a reasonable quality. Time and complexity. Unlike a book, it can take a large team of people years to produce a modern game. The average cost to produce a modern videogame is over $15m. And before you say it wasn't always that way, keep in mind it cost $100,000 to produce Pacman way back in 1982.

And to cut you off again, not many people are going to work on something for your enjoyment full time for years on end. It's a fantasy, nothing more, nothing less.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[ultranova]

Why does it cost more to develop and publish a video game than to develop and publish a couple books or a couple record albums?

A video game has inherently more information than a book or a record. It's closer to a movie, but while a movie lasts two hours and is completely linear, a video game lasts tens of hours and has plenty of interaction with a reactive world, which requires realtime AI of some sort.

Video games can be made very cheaply; 3D action games with photorealistic graphics, voice acting and RPG elements, however, require an enormous amount of work to create, and that translates directly to costs.

Dedicated amateurs seem to have little or no problem doing that.

Amateur games tend to be pretty small, precisely because large games require a lot of work. There are exceptions, but those typically leverage an already-existing game (total conversions).

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[tepples]

A video game has inherently more information than a book or a record.

Super Mario Bros. 3: 393 KB. An Eminem album compressed with Ogg Vorbis or AAC: 70,000 KB.

Amateur games tend to be pretty small, precisely because large games require a lot of work.

That, and there is a powerful oligopoly that opposes amateur or semi-professional outfits self-publishing their games because they're amateur or semi-professional. This oligopoly comprises three companies, none of them named EA.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[tepples]

keep in mind it cost $100,000 to produce Pacman way back in 1982.

How much did it cost to record an album in 1982 using equipment more powerful than a Fostex prosumer deck?

And to cut you off again, not many people are going to work on something for your enjoyment full time for years on end.

Then explain shareware, and explain the whole free software movement.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[The Archon V2.0]

EA actually caring about their developers and artists... That's even funnier!

And the fact that I would have implicitly believed every last word of it if it were said in the days of Caveman Ugh-lympics and Archon? That just makes me want to cry.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[Dutch Gun]

Why does it cost more to develop and publish a video game than to develop and publish a couple books or a couple record albums? Dedicated amateurs seem to have little or no problem doing that.

Books can easily be written by individuals and published with small teams (as can music). Some types of videogames can also be done in this way. My first videogame (many years ago) was created by three programmers and a single part-time artist in just a few months. When I wrote a book, of course the bulk of the work was done by me alone. My publisher did the work of support, contracting a technical editor, marketing, printing, distribution. That all was undoubtedly handled by a fairly small team of people.

The game I'm currently working on, however, has required an absolutely enormous investment by our parent company. Just to give you an example, I've spent over three years working on this one game. Developing the tools alone (with which the artists are much more productive) have taken up the bulk of that time. And, that's just for one narrow slice of the game. There are well over a hundred other individuals, each with important tasks of their own that will come together in the end. The sheer volume of content our artists are creating for this game is astounding. Dozens and dozens of giant maps, thousands of props, hundreds of fully animated creatures to populate the world, and all created with high fidelity. Beyond that, we have dedicated teams to deal with marketing, community relations, producers, office management, IT, QA, etc. These are all ancillary to the actual creation of the game, but are critical full-time tasks as well.

Modern videogames are the electronic equivalent of other large-scale industrial projects. The only ones who have the pockets to fund such a large team are very large companies. Yes, individuals or small teams can create videogames. But not *these* videogames.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[Dutch Gun]

Super Mario Bros. 3: 393 KB. An Eminem album compressed with Ogg Vorbis or AAC: 70,000 KB.

Ok, now you're just being pedantic. If I release a five hour long audio track filled with white noise, do you think that contains more "information" than either of those products?

That, and there is a powerful oligopoly that opposes amateur or semi-professional outfits self-publishing their games because they're amateur or semi-professional. This oligopoly comprises three companies, none of them named EA.

You're looking for a conspiracy where none exists. Large publishers don't care about competition from amateurs for the same reason automobile manufacturers aren't concerned about small shops that create custom cars. They produce entirely different products, and operate in completely different spaces (obligatory car analogy).

Besides, the amateur and indie market is expanding, if anything, thanks to the online presence the major console-makers have, and thanks to digital distribution platforms (Steam), and companies developing games to non-hardcore demographics (like Popcap).

There's no barrier to self-publishing games on the web nowadays if you really want to eschew all these other systems completely either. But just because you publish a game doesn't mean it's worth anyone's time to play it, or that anyone will find it. Again, that's not a conspiracy. That's just reality.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[jcnnghm]

How much did it cost to record an album in 1982 using equipment more powerful than a Fostex prosumer deck?

A hell of a lot more than it does today with a cheap Mac? Quality hasn't exactly gone up with falling costs and more amateurs.

Then explain shareware, and explain the whole free software movement.

How well do shareware games cope with piracy again? What was the last shareware game purchased by over five million people?

The free software movement works well for one and only one type of software, software used by programmers, in particular, library code. This includes things like operating systems, web browsers, programming languages, web servers, and other related code. My company has launched several open source projects, and we contribute code to open source projects that we use. The reason that we do this isn't some greater good bullshit, it's to externalize the continued development and maintenance cost of software that isn't core to our business. In other words, we'll only open source in house projects in the hopes that we'll generate some feature additions and bug fixes from the community. Along those same lines, we don't contribute bugfixes and feature additions back to help out a project. We do it because we want to get our changes merged into the head so we don't have to pay to maintain our own branch. You'll notice that it doesn't translate to entertainment.

You still haven't answered the question. What are you going to replace copyright with so that large projects are still undertaken? You're either stupid, ignorant, or naive if you think the answer is amateurs working for free.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[jabelli]

Yes. Become an accountant instead.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Nintendo, Nintendo, and Nintendo?

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[tepples]

What are you going to replace copyright with so that large projects are still undertaken?

Bounties.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[jcnnghm]

But if the produced material sucks, you're stuck wasting your money on something that isn't any good.

Or in the alternative, you could allow investors to shoulder that risk, and in exchange be allowed the exclusive right to distribute and charge for the produced material. This way, if the game sucks, you don't have to spend any money on it. But if the game is good, you've got to give the investor some money to cover his cost, plus some to cover his risk, plus some to provide a return on his investment to encourage him to take the risk to begin with. Of course, if people could just copy it, the investor wouldn't be able to recoup the investment, so he wouldn't be able to do it. So maybe there could be some kind of law for that. But that kind of brings us full circle doesn't it.

So it looks like you fall into the category of naive. A little more.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[tepples]

But if the produced material sucks, you're stuck wasting your money on something that isn't any good.

Which isn't any better or any worse than the copyright model. That's why there's trademark: so that an author can build a reputation. But the approach of a bounty for publication under free terms has the advantage that it 1. allows for fan works, 2. precludes the possibility of accidental infringement (like the infamous "My Sweet Lord" case, Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music), and 3. reduces legal fees.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[PaganRitual]

Naive is being kinder than you should be. These people live in a magical land where people other than them want to work for free and where things not requiring money directly out of their own pocket to produce don't cost anything. And who will pirate everything the use and bitch and moan about more intrusive DRM and through around catch phrases like 'new business models' and draw comparisons between completely unrelated concepts (WRITING A BOOK IS JUST LIKE DEVELOPING A GAME HURR). You're wasting your time here.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[tepples]

and draw comparisons between completely unrelated concepts (WRITING A BOOK IS JUST LIKE DEVELOPING A GAME HURR)

Under at least U.S. law, both a book and a computer program are "literary works". If you want distinctions to be drawn, bug your legislators.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[metrix007]

Super Mario Bros. 3: 393 KB. An Eminem album compressed with Ogg Vorbis or AAC: 70,000 KB

Seriously? SMB:3?

Modern Warfare 2 is almost 20GB.

So there you go.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[ultranova]

Super Mario Bros. 3: 393 KB. An Eminem album compressed with Ogg Vorbis or AAC: 70,000 KB.

And Witcher Enhanced Edition is 9 gigabytes, while the MOD file War in Middle-Earth is less than a megabyte. However, a typical modern game takes a few gigabytes while a typical record album takes a few hundred megabytes.

Second, according to information theory, it is not sufficient to compare just the input; you also have to take into account the complexity of the device decoding it. An SNES is far more complex than a minimal CD player; take that into account, and SMB3 does indeed contain more information than the Eminem album.

It should also be noted that the information in the Eminem album was far easier to come by than the information in SMB3. If the singer mispronounces a word, or a microphone pics up some static, or a mixer doesn't adjust the levels just right, it's no big deal. The listener will fix small errors automatically upon hearing, and the producer can play it by the ear to get it approximately right. On the other hand, if there's a single erroneous bit on a computer program, it will most likely crash.

That, and there is a powerful oligopoly that opposes amateur or semi-professional outfits self-publishing their games because they're amateur or semi-professional. This oligopoly comprises three companies, none of them named EA.

Given that all major gaming consoles have their own Net stores that mostly sell just such games, and PC has Steam and a number of independent publishers, I'd say that EA isn't doing a very good job at it ;).

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[testadicazzo]

The lawyers at the FSF going after people for violating the GNU aren't going into court charging violators with theft. They are charging them with copyright violation. Since you are using the word "violating", one would think you would see the distinction. My conclusion is you are speaking (typing) without thinking.

I find people who do that tend to have opinions which are poorly thought out. It indicates that the individual in question is not in the habit of thinking critically about their own thought processes.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[testadicazzo]

Nothing in my post indicates that I am against copyright law. I am against equating copyright violation with theft, and I strongly oppose criminal charges and jail time for people engaging in copyright violation. What I have complained about in my post is the dishonest and disingenuous attempt to cast copyright violation as theft. The intent is clear: As a society we have very strong emotional reactions regarding property rights. If the copyright oligarchs succeed in getting the vast majority of us to think of copyright violation as being equivalent to theft, at least at an emotional level, this gives them tremendous power in preserving their financial empires. So this kind of newspeak manipulation should be fought against.

I don't have the answer to the question of the future of copyright. I am convinced however that we (as a society) arrive at better systems when we consider issues factually, based on their costs and benefits. When interested parties use emotional and fallacious arguments and associations to manipulate the public, this results in sub-optimal systems. In some cases it results in extremely harmful systems. This is the case with copyright and patent law in the United States (and elsewhere too of course). Our copyright and patent systems are sick, and if they are going to get better we have to get off of our asses and educate ourselves about the issues and consider and evaluate alternatives. Simplistic, misleading, fallacious, ill-intentioned attempts at manipulation like casting copyright violation as theft impair the process and should be scorned wherever they occur. The costs associated with our system need also to be fairly and completely considered.

Now your rant is pretty poorly thought out and emotional, so it's difficult to know how to respond to your questions per se. But I'll give it a bit of a go, with the understanding that I don't have the final answers, I just understand the issue well enough to know that it isn't simple, and that optimal solution is NOT to maximize copyright and copyright enforcement. It's an optimization problem. Those are complex, and there may not be a unique solution.

1. What is my solution? I discussed that above
2. Do I still want these 'oligarchs' to fund the creation of the content I want? That's a weird question. I find oligarchy to be a bad idea that leads to a lot of problems, so no I don't want these oligarchs to fund the content I want. I personally find that the mass-media mega-money era of cultural promulgation has led to a lot of pretty disappointing art and culture, and that the cultural influence has been by and large harmful. I think we'd see better stuff by self-organized, more small scale projects. In fact, technology is making it easier and easier for small scale projects with less funding to produce really credible and enjoyable films,music and video games. I do think that financial remuneration for creativity is a good idea, however the current reward system is a poor one, particularly in the music industry.
3. Why would they do so if there was no possibility of a return on their investment? This question, and the subsequent ones assume a positive answer to your first question. Since I don't want large commercial interests responsible for my society's culture, I'll answer a different question, which I think is more the question you should be asking: what would motivate people to creative work? Or more to the point, how would any creative work get done if people didn't think that they would get rich doing it? People have, for thousands of years, produced and performed creative works without the promise of obscene wealth, or the machinery of copyright. They are doing so now (see youtube, the creative commons, and any free software project). Why would they do so? Because artists get social recognition, which is a powerful motivator, and because artists get laid, and because they love their work and the act of creation. I don't however want to remove all possibility of financial rewards, and

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[GooberToo]

I'm sure the EA lawyers didn't go into court calling their copyright infringement theft either. I would really like to see the press (at least the technical press) conditioned to call the PR assholes on their use of "theft" as a synonym for copyright infringement.

You're very, very confused in your attempt to push your theft's agenda. The fact is, it is stealing. Period. Its just the law has very specific verbiage which legally classifies it as "copyright infringement." Its legal classification does not change the actions of the criminal. When a thief steals stocks, we legally call that "fraud". When a thief steals money by cooking the books, we call that "embezzlement". When a thief steals copyrighted works, we call that "copyright infringement."

Please stop trying to manipulate mind share by trying to illogically justify theft.

Lies, lies, lies. Perhaps what pirates do best is manipulate others in hopes of finding acceptance of their illegal behavior. Some of the lies which pirates tell are:
o My theft actually helps the game and company.
o I don't like x, so I'm justified in stealing.
o I'm entitled.
o I'm poor - and entitled.
o Artists deserve compensation - just not from me - I'm a hypocrite because I like to get paid for my work, but hope my obfuscation of the terminology helps keep that fact quiet.
o Theft only hurts multi-billion dollar companies - companies smaller than that don't exist.
o The amount of money a companies makes justifies my theft.

So please, if you need acceptance of those around you to do something, chances are you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. It really is that simple. Along those lines, stop trying to convince people that theft is somehow okay. Its not. Its wrong.

At this point I'm sure I'll be modded down or attacked by some illogical fallacy in hopes to further justify theft. Before you respond, unless you can explain why stock/bond theft isn't illegal, you're full of shit. Period. Keep in mind, every illegal theft dilutes the value. In doing so you are directly harming those who have a financial interest in the copyrighted work. What to say bullshit? Then the world is wrong and somehow you're right. Go figure.

The simple fact is, piracy is a form of theft and is directly harming the copyright owners. Period. Disagree? Then you need to learn how the world's economy and even the stock markets work. Like I said, until you can prove the entire basis of most of the world is wrong, you're completely full of shit. Until that time, piracy is theft. Period.

Re:I don't think anybody should pirate anything

[testadicazzo]

My post doesn't discuss whether copyright violation is ok or not. It states that copyright violation is not theft. My post doesn't rely on any of the silly strawman argument you have set up. I find it difficult to believe that you don't understand the difference. For one thing, they are covered by different laws. If I steal your wallet, your keys, your anything, that's theft. I have denied you the use of your property in order to enrich myself.

Copyright violation is fundamentally different. Copyright violation does not deny the original owner the use of their product. If I steal your CD that's theft. If I copy your CD that's the copyright violation. What's the difference? In copyright violation you still have your CD. If I steal your stocks or bonds, you no longer have your stocks or bonds. If I copy your bonds, that's forgery, not theft. If I copy your painting, that's forgery not theft. Get it?

Now it's true that copyright violation has a negative financial impact on the copyright holder. It's also true that Copyright is a restriction of your right to free speech. The civilized world has pretty much reached the uniform conclusion that restricting free speech, in the form of copyright, is a worthwhile trade off in order to encourage creative works and to encourage industry in the distribution of creative works. However, that restriction should not be too onerous, so originally copyright provided certain exceptions for fair-use and was limited in duration 10-20 years.

What has happened however is large corporations have banded together to pervert the original intent of copyright. They have become so powerful, both polically and culturally that they now own the concept of copyright. They have weakened fair-use to the point where it is practically non-existant. They have extended copyright to the point where it is effectively infinite. Every time a major piece of IP is about to enter the public domain, they start lobbying to have the copyright lifetime extended. At the same time they create oligarchist distribution mechanisms that allow them to pressure artists into unfair and exploitive conditions. These insanely long (90 years and climbing!) copyright terms are counter-productive, and they rob from the public domain. Are you familiar with the public domain and the purpose it serves?

In addition, information distribution has changed drastically. We as a culture should be pushing for weaker and shorter copyright laws, not stronger and longer. It's in the best interests of society. Certainly original fair-use doctrine needs to be reinstated, and copyright should probably be shortened down to 10 years, but even 20 would be a good start.

These arguments are a far cry from saying that it's okay to violate copyright. I am not making that argument. I am however making the argument that copyright violation != theft. This is not a statement of opinion, it's a statement of logical and legal fact.

Listen, I'm begging you. Please stop posting knee-jerk, reactionary, bloody stupid posts that just repeat the propaganda being spewed by the RIAA et al. Copyright reform is an important issue that has HUGE effects on our society. We need to talk about these issues like intelligent adults, not like propaganda departments of cold war countries. Copyright is a TRADEOFF between free speech, and providing incentives for creative works. It is not the same thing as property law. While the copyright oligarchists have been sadly successful in their attempts to frame the argument as a property-rights argument, it simply is not the case. When they come to charge me for copying that CD, I'm not being charged with property theft. If that were the case it wouldn't be necessary to create special laws which force jail time for copyright violation. They charge me with copyright violation which is a very different crime.

It's important to frame the discussion in neutral, factual tones, so we can arrive at decisions which benefit society as a whole.

Link?

[giostickninja]

Is it just me, or does this summary not link to the actual article?

Re:Link?

[Rik Sweeney]

It only links to part of the article, you have to purchase the rest as DLC

:)

Re:Link?

[RuBLed]

So that's how you turn a /.er to a RTFA type.

Re:Link?

[kaizokuace]

I wish you could mod with +1 Zing!

Re:Link?

[fran6gagne]

We recognized you, Mr Murdoch. Now please leave...

Way too smart for EA

[YouDoNotWantToKnow]

They will reverse that policy as soon as they miss the next quarterly results or something.

Re:Way too smart for EA

[Anonymous Coward]

Either that or they will blame piracy of DLC and push yet more intrusive DRM.

Article

[Mr_Silver]

The link to the article might be useful: http://kotaku.com/5421466/ea-ceo-i-think-of-pirates-as-a-marketplace

Re:Article

[commodore64_love]

Hmmm.

Still doesn't tell me what a DLC is. People, especially reporters, shouldn't use acronyms without explaining what they mean. I mean, like OMG, WTF? LOL. (shrug). IAAL. TTFN. L8r

Re:Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Your signature confuses me. Could you explain the acronyms you used?

Re:Article

[Sebilrazen]

Honestly? Are you still trolling? This isn't a general population website that has the story it's an informed audience website, a gamer knows what DLC is, a gamer visits Kotaku. The rules for acronym usage clearly state that if the acronym is commonly known it can be used as a word and needs no explanation, however if your audience isn't expected to know the word you must spell out the words first then parenthesize the acronym that will represent the words and then use the acronym.from then on. That is why we can write IQ, FBI, CIA, Washington, D.C. without issue.

Re:Article

[j00r0m4nc3r]

I don't see what the Federation of Bajoran Industrialists has to do with this discussion

Re:Article

[s73v3r]

They were involved in creation of the Acronym rule.

Read the Saboteur article a few threads back?

[RenHoek]

Seeing as EA still treats their customers like crap. (See the Saboteur article even just a few posts back.) I'm _still_ not being anything from EA, so no DLC for me either.

Les'see Last thing I bought was 6 copies of the Zero Hour expansion for me and my friends (Command and Conquer 3). Which turned out to be a fucking piece of crap. Thing was full of bugs. You used to play with your friends, building up your forces for 3 hours, and when you wanted to start moving in for the kill the fucking thing would de-sync and crash.

And EA did _nothing_ to fix the bugs. And this trend continued, and results will be the same for stuff like the Saboteur game.

So fuck you EA. Fuck you.

EA is a pirate!

[CmpEng]

I used to heavily play BF2142 and then decided to take a break. Upon finding the game stashed away in my closest I wanted to try playing it again with some old university friends on my new computer. Needless to say, after contacting EA they would not validate my account ( their server said my account had already been activated )and the game would simply not work for online play anymore ( the vast majority of game and only way to unlock upgrades is online ). So regardless of the that I was the original purchaser, with box and serial in hand, I was out my purchase of BF2142. I have otherwise always purchased my games and respected copyright but this experience has been a turning point for me with EA. If you're going to lock honest people out of their own products you can't be upset that your products get pirated; because you're pirating the funds they paid you.

Re:EA is a pirate!

[Turzyx]

EA uses a store/download app akin to iTunes and Steam.

It is called EA Download Manager, formerly known as EA Link, formerly known as EA Downloader

The activation key included with your BF2142 purchase has most likely been attached to your EA account. I would suggest downloading EA Download Manger and attempting to recover your log in details. Another benefit of this service is that you can also download any purchased games digitally, again, like iTunes and Steam. Good luck.

Re:EA is a pirate!

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine Walmart, or some such, implementing cavity searches at checkouts. Imagine they said it was necessary because of the shoplifters. Would you really blame the shoplifters with a fist up your ass?

Re:EA is a pirate!

[tonycheese]

I don't think he meant that someone stole his serial, I think he meant that a while ago he installed it on a computer, but in trying to reinstall it, possibly on a different computer, EA denied his installation/validation.

Re:EA is a pirate!

[1001011010110101]

Hes mad at the right person. EAs authentication scheme locked him out. Its EAs fault if someone else could "keygen" his serial. As a paying customer, he shouldn't be affected by the pirates. As usual, only paying customers are affected by DRM and copy protection. The pirates just crack the thing and forget about it.

Re:EA is a pirate!

[Sage Gaspar]

I had the same problem with BF2142, or at least a very similar one. Their stupid EA downloader thing kept fucking up until I just threw up my hands and stopped playing eventually, then a year later when I went to try it again I couldn't get my account working right. One of the reasons I only buy games through Steam now.

Re:EA is a pirate!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite simple with BF2142, when you register it the first time you create an account, that serial number is forever locked to that account, you also supply your name, a password, email address (which you can change), your birthday, and your zip code (I'm not joking).

Now to reinstall it on the same computer or any computer for that matter your need the serial number or any valid serial number actually.

However, to play at all, single player or online, you need an activated account, if you lose the account information or password you are screwed unless you happen to have the other information you supplied with the account. If you are stupid you gave them your real name, with your real birthday, with real zip code, otherwise you better have recorded the information you supplied carefully and correctly.

As detailed above getting the Northern Strike DLC installed and working is virtually impossible, EA has no one to blame for that but themselves.

I have four activated BF2142 accounts, 3 with Northern Strike working, we play on OS X and Windows, and I have a lot of experience with EA customer service, mostly barely acceptable. Even if you buy BF2142 Deluxe in the store, it's virtually impossible to get Northern Strike working without crying to EA customer service for weeks.

Re:EA is a pirate!

[Anonymous Coward]

Them not letting you play a game you paid for is theft, right?

Piracy prevents theft!

Re:EA is a pirate!

[Anonymous Coward]

- He gave EA his money.
- EA, after some time, failed to acknowledge the transaction.
- A pirate may or may not have been involved.

The pirate's (alleged) involvement having any effect at all, is due to EA's choice of procedure regarding ownership verification, and nothing but. A transaction was made. He has done nothing wrong. EA are not honoring it. The pirate, if involved at all, doesn't even enter the picture.

Thus, he has all right in the world to get mad at EA:

His money.
+ Their product.
+ Their choice of procedure.
+ Their failure.
= His righteous anger.

Simple.

Stop making excuses for EA.

Re:EA is a pirate!

[Christojojo]

Agreed, that the accounts are tied in. My son, when he was younger created his own secret account in BF2142. He and I were naive enough not to think this was going to be an issue with time. I tried to contact EA and even wanted to send in the original disc to get the account info changed but they would not let it happen. It is a waste of $50 that I paid for it and all the time he spent leveling up and kicking my butt. Anyways there should be some sort of reset. They could try to contact the original owner via account info to see if we are scamming. That might even refresh my sons memory of all the super secret account info he put in there as a 14 year old. They don't do anything but say sorry but we can't help you. (Can't is always a synonym for won't in EA's case.) My little aside is that DLC is killing certain franchises. I will not buy DLC for GTA4 which was stripped and made boring in comparison to the previous super three. When you start making a game with great ideas and history and your second step is answering the question, "which of these can we make into dlc instead?" you are bound for mediocrity.

Wow, Diamon-like carbon can make me rich!

[davidwr]

'There's a sizable pirate market and a sizable second sale market and we want to try to generate revenue in that marketplace,' he said, pointing to DLC as a way to do it.

I had no idea diamond-like carbon could make money in the video game industry!

Or maybe they meant Data Link Control. Anything with the word "control" in it has to be a moneymaker for someone.

Re:Wow, Diamon-like carbon can make me rich!

[LanMan04]

It's called context. Not hard.

Re:Wow, Diamon-like carbon can make me rich!

[selven]

It's called "you spending 5 extra seconds of typing it out fully is better than the audience collectively spending 20 hours looking it up on Wikipedia"

stealing their future

[gringer]

And when you steal from us, you steal from [the people who build]

Really? Do the people who build the games get paid royalties for games that they help create?

If so, I suppose we can get into the 'making a copy of a piece of software' vs 'removing cargo from ships without permission' debate. If not, those builders got their money for the game before anyone was able to take it from them.

Re:stealing their future

[Anonymous Coward]

While it is true that the pay of most people working on a game is not tied to it's performance, their job security is very strongly tied to it. What if nobody bought the game and everybody pirated it? The people who worked on it still would have gotten paid for their work, but it's also pretty likely their studio will get shut down and they'll be out of a job. Even if only 10% of the users pirated the game, the company might not have hit their revenue goals and might lay off some of the people who worked on the game.

So yes, by pirating a game, you are hurting the people who worked on it. Just because the money doesn't come directly out of their pockets doesn't mean they are unaffected by piracy; it can still affect them indirectly.

Re:stealing their future

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not going to keep paying people to make games, if you keep stealing (yes, stealing) them. Getting paid up front doesn't matter.

Re:stealing their future

[Taibhsear]

You know what else affects them indirectly? Working for a douchebag company that treats their customer base like criminals, which leads the customers into being "criminals," which makes the customers "pirates," which leads to their game not being bought, which leads to the studio closing (heresay), which leads to them losing their jobs.

That was fun. I like this game. It's certainly more fun than a lot of the crap EA has been putting out.

Re:stealing their future

[jedidiah]

...something else that affects them indirectly is whether or not the product they have worked on is SO LAME that it won't sell more than a few thousand copies.

A crap game is much more of a threat to the artist or programmer than any pirates. A good game will still sell well and a bad game will "just bomb".

Given that this is EA, it will probably not make one bit of difference to the coder or artist either way. The idea that it would us just nonsense used to prop up someone's agenda. Just like with any other "creative industry", there is a huge disconnect between those doing the actual work and those being rewarded. Creative accounting or works for hire ensure the talent gets stolen from either way.

Re:stealing their future

[Anonymous Coward]

In a related story, the release of the latest EA blockbuster was cancelled after an unidentified individual broke in to the development studio and made off with the game concealed in his jacket...

Re:stealing their future

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm by no means defending EA, I'm not particularly fond of them or many of the games they put out. My intent was merely to point out the fallacy in the statement that pirating a game doesn't affect the people who worked on it. Whether or not they deserve it for working where they do is a completely different question.

Re:stealing their future

[kz45]

"You know what else affects them indirectly? Working for a douchebag company that treats their customer base like criminals"

With all of the download sites on the Internet, is it any wonder that companies "treat customers like criminals"? If they just allowed it to happen, with no protection, I can almost guarantee they would lose a large percentage of the profits, even on a good game.

The more people on the Internet share pirated software, the more protection companies will build into their product.

"which makes the customers "pirates," which leads to their game not being bought, which leads to the studio closing (heresay), which leads to them losing their jobs."

Right. The reason people pirate is because the licensing scheme on software is too difficult. Can you show me an example of a great application with no copyright protection that hasn't been pirated all over the Internet?

"That was fun. I like this game. It's certainly more fun than a lot of the crap EA has been putting out."

EA has trials/demos of most of their games. If it really was "crap" as you say, they wouldn't have a problem with piracy.

Re:stealing their future

[blahplusplus]

"While it is true that the pay of most people working on a game is not tied to it's performance, their job security is very strongly tied to it. What if nobody bought the game and everybody pirated it?"

That means your game as not good enough to buy, blame your managers for underfunding your game or not finding a team with enough talent.

You act as if games developers have been putting out are not filled with bugs or incomplete features, or not downright crap compared to games that have raised the bar. PC games have been particularly burned by really nasty developers who release buggy shit on release. I remember empire total war debacle. Quite frankly the people funding/developing the games do not spend anywhere near enough time making sure their product is QA'd correctly, and release games with broken o unfinished features.

Why do these people deserve job security?

I'll give you a case in point, Supreme commander 1 was completely unfinished on release and the game balance was non-existent, the single player campaign was amateurish and it's like they had not learned anything from Starcraft or Company of Heroes on how to make a great single player RTS. Quite frankly if you are going to make an RTS, you should have learned the lessons of all the other RTS games that your audience has been playing over the last 10 years.

I bought Supreme commander and it's addon Fallen alliance as charity because I know how devs get screwed by their publishers in not getting enough time to finish their game, but lets face it... a lot of dev's just don't care and give into the "pump and dump" model of game development.

Get a game into a state just enough so that it will sell, then drop support and do any bug fixes and release it in an add on.

Re:stealing their future

[Anonymous Coward]

My intent was merely to point out the fallacy in the statement that pirating a game doesn't affect the people who worked on it

Sure, it affects them, it's just not stealing from them, unless you count stealing things that might exist in the future -- hence the subject of that post, "stealing their future".

what about the customer?

[runyonave]

I profoundly believe that. And when you steal from us, you steal from them.

Big words coming from the same people that made people pay for a DLC that SHOULD have been in the game. Seriuosly, when have you heard of an RPG game that requires you to pay extra for a storage system

Winrar for the win, screw EA

So you want the paying customers to pay more?

[Drethon]

Seems to be saying that now the paying customer will buy half a game for full price then pay to complete the game whereas the pirate will only pay for the complete game. Now if they were to make the paying customer pay half first and then the other half for the DLC it would cost the paying customer no more but then again someone will figure out a way to pirate the DLC so why are we discussing this again?

Unbelieveable!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Some of the people buying this DLC are not people who bought the game in a new shrink-wrapped box. That could be seen as a dark cloud, a mass of gamers who play a game without contributing a penny to EA."

"Some of the people buying this DLC..."
"play a game without contributing a penny..."

You STUPID idiot. If they bought DLC then they contributed to EA! (much more than a penny- I've heard about EA's DLC pricing.) EA actually seems to hate its customers- and it shows.

It's sad to say, but whenever I hear about a new game, the FIRST thing I find out is "Did EA publish it"?
Avoid EA games like the plague they are.

Common courtesy...

[thickdiick]

It's standard procedure to first define an acronym (like DLC) before using it throughout one's text.

Re:Common courtesy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Down Loadable Content.

Re:Common courtesy...

[thickdiick]

I used google and the first instance of "downloadable content" was on page FIVE. Please stop posting as a clueless AC.

Notice how they try to cast second sale as pirates

[Anonymous Coward]

See the grouping they're doing with pirates and second-sale customers? In their minds, they're the same, but they aren't. Second sale are legitimate customers, buying used games from previous game owners. They want to stamp this out, because they don't get a second cut, and spinning it into piracy in people's minds is the first step.

I say....

[HideyoshiJP]

Give him the sack! He's being soft on piracy! ...wait... he's not an elected official, so it's okay. He can be soft on things. :D

Cost of a game today?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the true cost to develop and support the average retail game today?

What is the cost of a game at retail?

Why has the cost of games stagnated in spite of inflation?

Expansions

[emkyooess]

I prefer Expansions over DLC. Mostly because I enjoy actually owning (and not downloading/DRMing/activating/etc) what I buy. I can list *many* games for which I pirated the base game and bought all the expansion packs. I did later buy the base game when the price came down, too. Without pirating, I would never have bought any of the related product.

!Piracy

[AP31R0N]

For the 87th Time:

Piracy is ship to ship armed robbery. Calling copyright infringement piracy makes light of murderous thugs, and makes infringement sound worse than it is. It doesn't even work as a metaphor. When we use their misnomer, they win. Then one of two things will happen. Either infringers will be demonized people sharing 1s and 0s or the word piracy will lose its gravity.

Cue the "langwijiz morf, get/it" crowd.

And yeah, get off my lawn, or whatever other dismissiveness you want to conjure. Disagree all you want, but try to do it without dismissing me as pedantic or a grammar nazi. Try some substance.

Language matters; word choice matters. All actions start as thoughts, thoughts happen in words. By calling a government a regime, we can make overthrowing it more palatable. By calling a person a kike, nigger, rag head, witch etc, we can make them not human, so killing them won't be murder. Hacker was a positive term. The "man" (media, law, etc) has corrupted the word hacker to refer to criminals. It's like calling Nazis German over and over until the word German means Nazi. When we blur the distinction between words we lose expressiveness and have to invent awkward ways to regain specificity that we threw away out of laziness and ignorance. Yeah languages change over time, but there is evolution and there is devolution and corruption. Change is not inherently good.

And stand up for yourselves.

Re:!Piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, dude, but you're too late.

This begs the question: are you going to whine about my use of "begs the question"?

Re:!Piracy

[kz45]

"Piracy is ship to ship armed robbery. Calling copyright infringement piracy makes light of murderous thugs, and makes infringement sound worse than it is. It doesn't even work as a metaphor. When we use their misnomer, they win. Then one of two things will happen. Either infringers will be demonized people sharing 1s and 0s or the word piracy will lose its gravity."

you can kick and scream about a word changing over time, but it probably won't work. Words evolve over time and right now, the work pirate has to do with copyright infringement.

Re:!Piracy

[Tim C]

You might want to read this - 'Meaning "one who takes another's work without permission" first recorded 1701'

It was first used in this way 300 years ago. Like it or not, "pirate" has two meanings, and one of them is "copyright infringer".

30k

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former EA Developer, please do steal from us. We don't get any bonus, raise, or anything if our games sell well. They work us long hours in every office and pay us slave wages. I switched to business development and earned 5x the salary. I love making games, but I'm sticking to indie titles with former colleagues for now until we get paid more than call center employees and don't get worked 90+ hours / week on titles that are rushed because we need to raise quarter profits so this guy can collect a bonus.

He can preach all he wants about how he thinks of the devs, but in reality at EA and most other companies you see nothing for your hard work. Rewards for creating a ground breaking title with huge sales is the treat of retaining your job and perhaps a longer title.

Re:30k

[kz45]

"As a former EA Developer, please do steal from us. We don't get any bonus, raise, or anything if our games sell well. They work us long hours in every office and pay us slave wages. I switched to business development and earned 5x the salary. I love making games, but I'm sticking to indie titles with former colleagues for now until we get paid more than call center employees and don't get worked 90+ hours / week on titles that are rushed because we need to raise quarter profits so this guy can collect a bonus."

In this crowd, your pleas will fall on dead ears. Most people here don't even see copyright infringement as stealing or wrong.

I find it a little ironic. When GPL infringement comes up, many open source zealots and slashdotters see this as stealing. When in reality, it's just as wrong or right as piracy.

The original author of the GPLd app loses nothing (the rights to the original code are there

Re:30k

[selven]

I've said this countless times but people keep repeating this fallacy. Personal home piracy is downloading. You downloading something has no consequences that reach beyond your computer - if 5 trillion aliens decide to pirate Call of Duty, the game will still be just as successful.

Now, let's take the case of GPL violation. An author who distributes a GPL program has to have some motive to give it away for free. It could be the satisfaction of having lots of people use your program, it could be you wanting to sell services, there could be lots of reasons for it. If you distribute a program based on GPL software without distributing source, you're competing with compliant distributors and (assuming actual distribution occurs) people are using your program instead of a legitimate one, and you're causing the author to lose out on customers that could otherwise be benefitting him.

For example, imagine OSS startup A released a GPL commercial software product, X, which they intend to support for money. Evil Company B releases a derivative, X++, which includes their proprietary technologies and does not have public source code. People switch to X++. Company A tries to support X++ but can't because of all the proprietary additions. Company A withers and dies.

Re:I hate DLC

[0ld_d0g]

I'm tired of game companies "not getting it" when it comes to pirates. Want to stop the pirates? Make games cheaper and feature complete, assholes.

I think the only thing they can do, is stop investing 10 million per game and hire all those people to make them. If wanting games cheaper was the predicating factor for pirates, I'd love to see pirates pool in and pay game developers and sound engineers and artists to write games for them. I wonder if that would ever happen.

Regardless of your own position on piracy, my experience has been that pirates just want content for free no matter what. Sadly, I only see this ending badly for legitimate consumers. Only when RIAA/MPAA successfully convince (i.e. pay) congress to pass laws requiring DRM on every damn thing, will it be over.

Console game with console controls

[tepples]

Assassins Creed is a multiplatform game, it's not specifically any platform's shit, just like Dragon Age, which is also multiplatform.

I think Anonymous Coward was trying to say that the developers of the PC version of Assassin's Creed did not take advantage of features unique to the PC platform that would have added depth to the PC experience. It'd be like an Xbox 360 fan complaining that the Xbox 360 version of a PS3/Xbox 360 cross-platform game has only bare-minimum Live features.

But sometimes you want arcade-style or console-style controls, such as when you have more people than gaming PCs in your home.

He uis correct on this issue

[geekoid]

Ignoring the logical fallacies in his statement, he is correct.

However you can't sell half a game and them charge for the rest as DLC. You must have a complete game you can finish without DLC.
Otherwise the whole package will be wrapped up and pirated.

As a add on, it will generate revenue from whoever is playing.

It also needs to be added in a manner that isn't too jarring to the story, and the DLC you pay for should never walk off. I'm looking at you, Dragon Age.

Piracy isn;t stealing, and I wish more people would call out the idiots to keep trying to make it the same thing.
As a by product of DLC, you could start to get better numbers on how many copies are pirated.

Re:I hate DLC

[geekoid]

It will be over, but not how you think. There will be a critical mass of intrusiveness at which point everybody will pirate. that will force them to back down on DRM or go out of business.

yeah right...

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe in the artistry of the people who build [the games industry.] I profoundly believe that. And when you steal from us, you steal from them.

As someone who has seen how EA treats the people who build the games, this statement just irks me. EA has shown countless amount of disrespect for their employees. They treat the developers, artists, and designers more like a group of disposible wage slaves than treasured artsits. Look past their bullshit the only thing they are talking about is calculated loss of sales.

Homogenized, hurried, designed for purely profit

[TheRealRainFall]

Homogenized, hurried, designed for purely profit work is not "art' as much as EA likes to claim it is. They are just cogs in the machine of bigger profit. Ask most artists who works for these companies. They hate their work from the corporate side. They would much rather be using their creative vision for something that is truly artistic.

Re:I hate DLC

[geekoid]

Your the one not getting it.

I am unaware of any game that's incomplete and you must have DLC to complete it*.

It's like buying the board game Monopoly for 10 bucks, then having the option to buy different colors for the game pieces for a buck. You don't need it, but some people like having the colors.

There is nothing wrong financially or ethically wrong in doing that.

If someone wants to ahve a game on their network, then there is no problem charging for the use.

SO what do you want them to cut from the game to make it cheaper?
Games are expensive to make. In fact considering the cost of development and length of play, games are a cheap form of entertainment. At the top end they're about 60 bucks, and that drops off pretty sharply. In my experince a 50 dollar game become a 40 dollar game within a week.
I have been paying 34-50 dolalr a game for over 10 years. there price hasn't gone up much.

I don't think pirating is caused by there cost. I think it's cause by lack of availability, and being unwilling to pay ANYTHING. That's pretty much why piracy isn't stealing, it's illegal distribution of copyrighted material. It's also about distributing and not downloading, but that's a separate issue.

*No doubt someone somewhere is doing this, but it's the exception.

Games companies using the Gillette model?

[garg0yle]

Should games companies move to the Gillette model - give away the razor, but sell the blades, in essence? With more and more gamers depending on the "online experience", it seems logical. Of course, the counter-argument is that the traditional model gives you a large influx of cash up-front when people buy the game, versus a series of micro-transactions to get to the same level of profit. But for a more patient company, I think the Gillette model could pay big dividends - you get more people playing the game to start, since it's free, so (assuming the same percentage downloads additional content) your download market is potentially a lot bigger.

Yes it is.

[geekoid]

Incorrect.
Copyright is a form of piracy. As is robbery at high seas and stream capturing.

If they where saying 'rapine', then you would be correct, since nothing is carried off.

Let me give you a clue - look up the word 'Homonym'.

What it is not, is stealing.

Re:DLC??? Don't use acronyms

[clone53421]

Link: http://www.google.com/search?q=define:dlc

Mod parent up!

[Lemming Mark]

I don't usually do this but really the parent has an excellent point. It's bad enough that they have increasingly large amounts of DLC you can't resell or buy on a second hand market. Treating the second hand market as basically piracy is a) bad for consumers and b) stupid. When they find a way to make me pay full price for all games by eliminating second hand sales *I will buy fewer games* and I therefore won't buy the DLC for them. The people who didn't like the games and traded them in so they can afford new games will also be able to afford less. They'll be shooting themselves in the foot but, like the music industry, they'll be doing it in a way which makes themselves *think* they're winning. And if they do that, it'll take ages for sanity to break out, if at all :-(

Maybe I'm being a bit dire but this is the way I imagine stuff going.

WTF is DLC?

[amazeofdeath]

Seriously, using acronyms doesn't work if they aren't explained anywhere. And no, I didn't RTFA, naturally.

Re:WTF is DLC?

[DaTrueDave]

DownLoadable Content

Re:WTF is DLC?

[mrrudge]

What does the acronym RTFA mean ? I read the freaking article, but that didn't explain either ?

Re:WTF is DLC?

[clone53421]

There wasn’t an article, and seriously, who actually knows anything about gaming and yet doesn’t know that DLC stands for downloadable content?

If you didn’t, Google has this handy define: option. Or just search for video games dlc.

What's good for EA is what is good for the artist!

[Lemming Mark]

" I profoundly believe that. And when you steal from us, you steal from them." That's neat. It's literally true in a sense. But I don't like the implied viewpoint that - because EA pays the artists a cut - the artists and EA's interests are perfectly aligned, cutting EA's profits is bad for artists, EA is a purely good force for the artists. Sounds somewhat similar to the music industry's "But you're stealing from the artists!" line. Some of these people may even believe this stuff but we all know it's a bit of a shaky argument.

Re:I hate DLC

[kalirion]

It's like buying the board game Monopoly for 10 bucks, then having the option to buy different colors for the game pieces for a buck. You don't need it, but some people like having the colors.

In many cases it's like buying Monopoly for 10 bucks, but not being able to buy Boardwalk, Parkplace, or half the railroads without paying extra money. Except you'd easily to bypass this in a boardgame by just rewriting the rules.

It works, but at what cost?

[happy_place]

As much as I hate the idea of DLC, I think these guys are right. It is a portal through which they can monitor who is using their game. What's the cost? 1. Crippled/Incomplete game. 2. Internet connection required. 3. Immersive game experience is disrupted by constant nagging connections. 4. Possible performance issues. 5. Customer privacy compromised. 6. Potential liabilities 7. Free Distribution and popularity for game less likely to go viral (if you suscribe to the idea that piracy can help gain customers) 8. Hate mail from Slashdotters. :) Of course there are positive consequences to requiring an internet connection, and not just for the vendor... 1. Free gamepacks and extras available to qualifying customers. 2. Bugfixes, and game evolution/balance can improve over time. 3. Multiplayer experience enhanced by Human interraction. - 4. Company gains key demographic info for direct marketing. 5. Piracy curtailed. 6. Microsoft loves you... Anyhow it's an interesting tradeoff.

Re:I hate DLC

[0ld_d0g]

Yes, that would happen only if DRM became something like a BSOD or some other data loss flaw. IMO, most kinds of DRM - license key checks, CD Checks, etc are not all that intrusive in the minds of gamers.

They wont go out of business either way, they would just move to consoles, where its harder to pirate w/o modding OR convince MS to add DRM to Windows as a core component so that its impossible to pirate w/o installing a cracked OS - both out of reach of casual pirates and non-geeks.

if you like it you buy it - eventually

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes sense...many pirate see the market value of a game artificially inflated - EA was a key driver in this area pushing for $60 dollar games vs. the traditional $50 from the previous couple of generations (when PC gamers have been enjoying HD gaming for over a decade). But I think even pirates like to pay for things, as long as they perceive a legitimate value. So if you average out a pirate pirating a game and buying the cheaper DLC to support the devs, it supports both sides, the pirate doesn't feel ripped off, the pirate acts as word of mouth for said product and EA continues to receive funds they wouldn't have previously. Now, if you like the game...buy it!

I actually don`t know who steals

[Anonymous Coward]

Asking 50-ish $ for a copy of a game and then some for downloadable content...now dude that`s highway robbery

1987 called...

[Dupedupeshakur]

and said they wanted their Shareware model back. I do realize that dlc's are not exactly the same thing, but we're not talking apples to oranges here... http://www.3drealms.com/history2.html

You must be this tall to develop WiiWare

[tepples]

Besides, the amateur and indie market is expanding, if anything, thanks to the online presence the major console-makers have

Nintendo still has rules to the effect that a business must be at least this tall to develop WiiWare: "relevant game industry experience [...] Home offices are not considered secure locations". That sort of shoots down plans for publishing a first or second title on a console.

and thanks to digital distribution platforms (Steam), and companies developing games to non-hardcore demographics (like Popcap).

PCs aren't well suited for every genre. Party games like Bomberman, for instance, typically have four players looking at a single view. The typical PC monitor is big enough for one player with keyboard and mouse or two players holding USB gamepads, but not four. (I know LCD HDTVs have VGA and HDMI inputs, but that doesn't help households with SDTVs or without another PC in the TV room.)

Re:You must be this tall to develop WiiWare

[s73v3r]

Nintendo might, but Microsoft and Xbox Live don't.

Besides, Nintendo got that way by being the first major console to come about after the Great Video Game Crash of the mid-80s. The Atari generation of consoles didn't have any kind of standards/quality checking, and that led to shit like E.T. coming out.

They don't see all of the money anyway.

[WWWWolf]

Some of the people buying this DLC are not people who bought the game in a new shrink-wrapped box. That could be seen as a dark cloud, a mass of gamers who play a game without contributing a penny to EA.

I bought almost every DLC for Oblivion's Xbox360 version, even when Bethesda/2K didn't see a penny from the game purchase.

You see, I bought the game used.

Really grates you, doesn't it?

(And don't worry, Bethesda, I previously bought the PC version at full price. And the Game of the Year edition too. Just figured out I'd grab the 360 version because my PC isn't good enough to run the game at tolerable speed and the Wine support has always been a bit spotty. So yeah. =)

Is it just me?

[geminidomino]

Am I just being cynical, or does it look like that assclown is really trying to conflate copyright infringement with secondhand sales?

What the hell is DLC

[Snaller]

How about explaining that in the post?

XNA has limitations too

[tepples]

Microsoft and Xbox Live don't.

They do if you want to use a text-to-speech engine to voice dialogue in your game (no way to generate and play sampled sound at runtime) or if your game has a fantasy or sci-fi setting and you want to include an elvish or alien language (all languages to which the system menu is not localized are banned from Xbox Live Indie Games).

Re:Notice how they try to cast second sale as pira

[SoftwareArtist]

And of course, it's completely false to claim they don't get any money from second sale customers. Charging $70 for a game is ridiculous. But if you know you can resell it for $30 when you're done, that brings the price down to a much more reasonable $40. If the used game market didn't exist, I suspect there would be a lot fewer people willing to buy new games at their current prices.

Re:Notice how they try to cast second sale as pira

[KyoMamoru]

It's not just that, what about the friends that share games with each other? I've purchased maybe ten games over the past five years, and borrowed over one hundred from friends. We always ask our friends if they have anything that we want to play before we purchase it. Overall, this group of seven friends has probably saved thousands of dollars by avoiding purchasing a copy of each single player games. Maybe we're just cheap, but it's how we grew up: sharing, and waiting your turn.

Bad Car Analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have the money to be a camry legitimately, so you buy one from the neighborhood car thief. Now you're a happy toyota owner. The local car dealership should now come over to you and say "you can pay us a fraction of what the car goes for and we won't report you for purchasing stolen property."

If you can't afford something, don't buy it. You can either be a criminal or use something in your price range. If the game or microsoft word have inflated prices, they will come down in response. If they are priced accurately you shouldn't be paying less because that's how much you can pay. Piracy just companies an excuse to raise the price even more to pay for counter-piracy measures.

They need to look at WHY people pirate

[jonwil]

There ARE people who pirate rather than buying because its easier or because it gets them the content now instead of needing to wait.

Take the recent Ghostbusters game for example. In Europe/Australia, thanks to greed by Sony, Atari and others, it was released on the Playstation in June 2009 but the PC and XBOX 360 versions were delayed until later in the year. By pulling this crap, it encouraged fans to seek other ways to acquire the title. Some people would have imported it from the US where it was already available on PC and 360. But I expect a large number of fans simply pirated it (especially the PC version).

There are plenty of other situations where content (not just games but movies and TV shows too) are available from pirates but are NOT available to purchase legitimately in some part of the world. Or content that is available to download but not purchase anywhere (e.g. content recorded off cable/sattelite/other source and pirated but not made available to buy officially or content that was available at one point but is now out-of-print)

Crap like this (content available to pirate but NOT to purchase) is one big reason why people pirate.

EA still thinks you can't pirite DLC? oh lord

[johncandale]

EA still thinks you can't pirate DLC? oh lord.

for the record I hate pirates.

DLC is as easy to get around as CD in drive locks, game serials, online activation (spore), etc. It's already happening, just wait awhile if you haven't heard about it yet, the DLC is out there for free too.

The only thing that's hard to get around when pirating is online multiplayer on official servers.

Good Bad Bugs

[tepples]

An SNES is far more complex than a minimal CD player

Which is why I compared the game to the "Ogg Vorbis version" rather than the linear-PCM version on a CD.

It should also be noted that the information in the Eminem album was far easier to come by than the information in SMB3. If the singer mispronounces a word, or a microphone pics up some static, or a mixer doesn't adjust the levels just right, it's no big deal.

Likewise, minor errors in map data or texture data or music data might not get noticed as defects, as long as they're not in "sensitive" parts (the program itself or large-scale map objects). TV Tropes has a page about "good bad bugs". World -1 anybody? How about Missingno.?

Given that all major gaming consoles have their own Net stores that mostly sell just such games

Nintendo publishes a notice on its developer support web site to the effect: "You must be this tall to make WiiWare." Individual developers do not qualify ("home offices"), nor apparently do teams on their first or second title ("relevant game industry experience"). Microsoft is significantly more open with the XNA model that Apple copied wholesale for the iPhone's App Store. But Sony Computer Entertainment's web site is silent on developer qualifications.

PC has Steam and a number of independent publishers

As far as I know, Steam and other PC game stores have a distinct lack of "party games", or PC games designed for a TV-sized monitor and four players holding USB gamepads connected through a hub. On whose part is this oversight?

EA boss and artistry??

[Hurricane78]

The EA boss would prefer people bought their games, of course. 'I don't think anybody should pirate anything,' he said. 'I believe in the artistry of the people who build [the games industry.] I profoundly believe that.

Yeah right. EA has as much to do with artistry, as rape has to do with “making love”.
If anyone has perverted that art more than anyone else, it’s EA.

My sources: Two people who worked there, stories about e.g. the Bullfrog team quitting right after being bought, lawsuits because of the illegal sweatshops that they call “programming teams”, and their all-around lack of any love and innovation in all of their games.

As a game maker, I rather turn down $15 million dollar from them, than having to let my ideas being raped by them, to propitiate the money god.