Slashdot Mirror
Estimating Game Piracy More Accurately
An anonymous reader tips a post up at the Wolfire blog that attempts to pin down a reasonable figure for the amount of sales a game company loses due to piracy. We've commonly heard claims of piracy rates as high as 80-90%, but that clearly doesn't translate directly into lost sales. The article explains a better metric: going on a per-pirate basis rather than a per-download basis. Quoting:
"iPhone game developers have also found that around 80% of their users are running pirated copies of their game (using jailbroken phones). This immediately struck me as odd — I suspected that most iPhone users had never even heard of 'jailbreaking.' I did a bit more research and found that my intuition was correct — only 5% of iPhones in the US are jailbroken. World-wide, the jailbreak statistics are highest in poor countries — but, unsurprisingly, iPhones are also much less common there. The highest estimate I've seen is that 10% of worldwide iPhones are jailbroken. Given that there are so few jailbroken phones, how can we explain that 80% of game copies are pirated? The answer is simple — the average pirate downloads a lot more games than the average customer buys. This means that even though games see that 80% of their copies are pirated, only 10% of their potential customers are pirates, which means they are losing at most 10% of their sales."
No one is arguing it's right to pirate games. What's being said here is that the methods used to get the numbers in the statistics published are wrong, and the actual numbers are much, much lower. Whether this is on purpose or simply honest mistakes is left to be seen.
Is killing people wrong? Certainly. Shouldn't we call out people that say that there are x murders per year, when the actual number is much lower? Bloody hell yes. It makes your country (or state, or wherever the numbers came from) look bad, and portrays an inaccurate reality, which is the opposite of what statistics are about.
The more interesting question is, why do these people think they're somehow obligated to take something that doesn't belong to them and without pay?
Why is it more interesting?
I find the difference between the imagined and real economic impacts on gaming industry much more interesting than a debate about why people would rather not pay for things.
That's the second post from that blog in as many days - they were the ones that did the Humble Indie Games Bundle, weren't they?
Slashvertisement?
No, Slashvertisement would be me saying: "I bought the bundle yesterday, Gish alone is worth half the 15$ I decided to pay, and having played gish and WoG I'm pretty sure the rest of the pack will easily be worth the other half."
For example.
Blizzard isn't more successful because they are better games developers, it's successful because they require use of a subscription service for the game to be interesting at all.
Please elaborate about how are Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft not interesting at all without paying a subscription service.
I find the discussions about which part of the mental masturbation is more "real" interesting.
Hint: if it costs you nothing that I copy your game, you didn't lose jack shit. If you don't like it, make your game more entertaining than the pirated version.
You can play World of Warcraft on a nearly unlimited number of free private servers with the client you download from Blizzard for free; you can even roll your own. But in terms of quality, they're at most marketing for the real thing.
If Blizzard wanted, they could make it impossible for the private server developers to keep up. Nobody would bother to reverse engineer an encrypted protocol that changes with every patch. What do they do instead? They add content to their own and swim in the money it generates.
These that don't want to buy something, don't need to.
Yesterday "Pay what you want" 5 games pack has made to the authors $342.000.
The money is not on the people that don't have money (students that piracy his games), the money is on the people 35 years old, with childrens, and a love for gaming. Tryiing to extract more money from these students is stupid. Is like tryiing to extract juice from rocks, having a river nearby. GO AND FUCKING FORGET THESE ROCKS, AND GO TO THE RIVER!.
The river is fucking awesome, or maybe I am stupid and $342.000 is nothing. Also, the owners of Steam must be stupids too, and seriusly, It a system that is probably losing a lot of money. Sure? nope. It just don't work that way. Steam is good for these that want to pay for his games. Hence, is making money. All these systems like SecuROM, Ubisoft cracked DRM, and GFWL ... are misguided and stupid,.. "don't get it".
You will not make money from the pirates, these people is not your public. Is a public, but one that don't want to pay for stuff. Your public is the people that have money and want to use it to buy nicenies things. Give the awesome to then, and forget the pirates.
-Woof woof woof!
The highest estimate I've seen is that 10% of worldwide iPhones are jailbroken. Given that there are so few jailbroken phones, how can we explain that 80% of game copies are pirated? The answer is simple -- the average pirate downloads a lot more games than the average customer buys. This means that even though games see that 80% of their copies are pirated, only 10% of their potential customers are pirates, which means they are losing at most 10% of their sales."
This is only true if there's no connection between wanting to game and having a jailbroken iPhone, which I assume is very false. Very many people don't care about jailbreaking because they use it with no, free or few applications, the value of jailbreaking to them is very low. On the other hand, if you want to play lots of games (where lots of games * money = lots of money) then jailbreaking has a high value. The data presented doesn't preclude the possibility that 80% of your market is within the 10% that are jailbroken.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Is killing people wrong?
I'm sure we could debate that one all day.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
PIRACY involves the true (not imaginary)loss of actual monies specifically spent on the the stolen product, with cash from a real customer that goes to the PIRATE in exchange for stolen treasure, thus PIRACY.
Downloading media that is not generating revenue, nor taking actual cash dollars in exchange for stolen or counterfeit inventory, is just listening to tunes, like last century "hearing the music on the radio" was free bandwidth with copyright material that could be recorded off the air, sold the license or suggested piracy. It was Fair Use.
I have heard zillions of "stolen" songs on the radio and paid for zero - it never cost anyone a sale. However, I have spent many tens of thousands on music and concerts and media and swag and fashion, audio gear, etc... Nowadays, no more "old style" radio worth hearing, I use the streaming web, or mp3s or rip off ipods, which function like 20th century radio..like the free radio. I don't make disks, or duplicate and sell it, and it ain't piracy no matter how many times the greedy corporate scum executives of the entertainment industry rape and pillage, and have been robbing artists and customers revenue for years. Its their only skill. This is why nobody believes the whining of rich assholes anymore - they never cry when they grab the cash, only when they can't get everything from a supersaturated market.
I think you just described steam :). The number of games i pirate has fallen dramatically since i started using steam, and i have even bought titles i pirated in the past at their awesome sales.
Of particular concern to the GAO was the “substitution rate,” the rate at which an illegal copy would have been otherwise legally purchased had it not been available. The MPAA and RIAA always use a 1:1 ratio to boost their figures and make the problem seem far worse than it actually is.
Okay, so that's music and film. Still, they are claiming that every download is a lost sale. In fact, more than that, they have claimed in court that every download is several thousand lost sales. Oh crap, I accidentally used matters of record instead of just stating my (incorrect) opinion as fact. Oops.
Be smart, help people!
Steam made me find out I wasn't cheap, but lazy.
And some people buy the game but have to download the RAZOR1911 crack to make the game work properly or to avoid having to install some toxic DRM software.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I bought several DVDs from the USA a few years ago. 2 of the items I bought have STILL not been made available in Australia (and one of them, Young Einstein is an Aussie cult classic and one of the funniest Aussie films of all time IMO)
I also have a large number of items in my music collection that I downloaded from various sources simply because there was/is no other way to acquire that particular content.
The number of people who pirate because the content they want is unavailable for them to legally purchase is likely a significant part of piracy, one that the copyright holders need to recognize (and reduce/eliminate by making content available to the entire world in a timely manner and by keeping content available for longer)
Just ask many Australian TV viewers with tech skills about "Channel BT" (i.e. BitTorrent downloads) and how many shows they have downloaded simply because they have given up waiting for the local network to show that particular episode.
I have been legally entitled to 3 versions of autodesk inventor, not to mention several different games and other software. The DRM has always been so terrible and messed up that it would destroy itself, and all the files I made using it after a couple weeks or so. So now I have just stopped buying software, it just isn't worth losing all of my data. If I feel a game is worth paying for, I buy it to support the developers, but install a pirated copy so that I can be guaranteed it will actually work.
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
Hold on there. Lending a game to a friend is not piracy. That may be what the media companies want you to think, but the first sale doctrine supports the right of the owner of the game to lend or sell his own property.
Unauthorized copying (remember: "Piracy" is that thing done on sea where people get killed) has been around forever, and will be around forever. Consider that a fact.
How you act with regards to facts of the outside world says a lot about your personality. Basically, you can accept them, you can cry and whine about how unfair it all is, or you can try to change things. Usually, you don't fall into one extreme but a mixture with one dominant trait.
The music, movie and computer games industry largely falls into the second, with a slight bit of the third. The problem with people like this is that the feeling of "the world is soooo unfair" is close to "I am entitled to be treated better". Which leads to irrational and counterproductive actions (the 3rd trait).
For example, copy protection has long since left acceptable territory and entered ridiculous. And in many parts, has already crossed ridiculous and entered offensive. If you hit Google with "SecuROM" and a few terms of your choice, you'll find it fucks up people's machines, causes crashes and sometimes makes the entire system unbootable.
As a legitimate customer, I've long tired of being treated like at the airport in the privacy of my own home. No, your stupid game is not important enough that I'd give up the confidentiality or integrity of my entire work environment. No, you can't have root access. You want to be sure I am a legitimate customer, fine. But I want to be sure that this is still my computer, which means not handing you the keys. I don't give the TV people access to my fusebox either, just because I watch their program. I don't give my car keys to the guy washing the windows. Know your place, then we can have a business relationship.
As it is, there's a good number of games that I would buy, but don't, because I'm not putting up with this shit.
And, quite frankly, there's a lot of times where I'm happy the crackers got it done, just because maybe, just maybe, the stupid fucks who put money into pointless, evil DRM schemes may learn that it's not worth it.
Use some customer-friendly, easy copy protection, that's ok with me. Unique key, ok. Some CD checks on the installer, fine.
Having to have the CD in the drive to play? Have you idiots heard of notebooks?
SecuROM, Starforce, any-other-DRM-crap? See above.
Limited number of activations? I'm sorry, if the doctors don't consider you insane, the doctors should hand back their licenses
Most importantly: Make good games. There is still a short list of companies out there where I know I'll buy their next game for sure. Because they've never let me down, and they don't fuck with their customers, they please them. And you other stupid gits in the industry better learn that fucking and pleasing are only the same thing in a different "business".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Oh drinky...you know I'm not an astroturfer...or an idiot. Over the time we've both been on here, you've tagged me as a fan and then later as a foe...and I really haven't been inconsistent with my beliefs.
I probably object to some of your beliefs, and not others. Becoming someone's fan brings more of their comments to my attention and gives me opportunity to decide that someone is stupid, or morally bankrupt. I don't know if either or both of these apply to you in general, but right now, I'm pretty sure one of them applies to this particular conversation. You might simply have the particular kind of stupid that makes you adopt views contrary to reality and then defend them at all costs to prevent having to admit that you're wrong. People change their views all the time. I used to be pro-death penalty, for example. Now I'm not; that's a pretty big shift.
I never said that this wasn't copyright infringement...but copyright infringement IS considered a form of theft (theft of services) by most law professors.
It's easy to sit in an ivory tower of tenure and make pronouncements, but since law does not consider it to be a form of theft (including theft of services, since no service is performed it's quite irrelevant what some very seriously misguided individuals think. Whether you want the legal definition or the dictionary definition, copyright infringement is not theft, because no one is deprived of anything. It really is as simple as that. The question then becomes whether you are naturally or deliberately obtuse, and why.
As I've said, I am much more gray on the actual implementation of all of this...if I borrow something from a neighbors shed and return it before he notices, well...the police will just laugh it off (and I do just this)...however, if I borrow something and the police get there BEFORE I return it...different matter. Why? I don't know...maybe the first situation is proof that you weren't planning on stealing it, where as the second, one has to make an informed decision on your motives based upon past experience of others in a similar vein.
Wow, you are so far off base that you're not even vaguely close. If you return it then there's no evidence, and there's no point in the police doing anything. Unless you're one of their targets, in which case they'll run you through the system as a convenient form of legal harassment.
I look at copyright infringement and think...do I want to put up with the bullshit when there is so much other awesome stuff out there? And sometimes I say yes, and sometimes say no...but I always assume there is value in others works and I'm not going to demean them by saying that it should be any less than they believe it should be.
Disagreeing with the valuation of a work doesn't demean the creator.
That's about respect for the person, not about any law...
But it still doesn't address or change the question of whether copyright infringement is theft, and it is not. We have a whole separate body of law because it is not! Trying to prove theft when no one is denied anything became impossible, so new laws were created to punish a class of [ostensibly] undesirable behavior; further, the laws were designed not just to control the behavior, which never really works, but also to provide for remedies. So the law does include an inherent statement that copyright infringement affects income — just not in the way you describe. If it were a theft of services, then we wouldn't need copyright law; you'd prosecute copyright violators for theft of services. And this is where your obtuseness becomes offensive to the point of being flamebait. Everything about copyright infringement is different from theft, even the law.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The image that immediatelly came to my mind was that of a painter selling a painting.
Note that copyright was not required or involved in any way and yet the creator of the artwork got rewarded for that work.
In fact, the only way copyright would be involved would be if someone made a copy of the painting. Even in that situation one could argue that the work of making the copy (say it's one of those painting making shops in China) is the one deserving of a reward.
Here's another one: do you know that if you whistle a tune on the street it can be considered as an unauthorised public performance?
The natural law is that people freely exchange ideas. That includes telling others about ways of making things, singing, whisteling and playing music, telling stories and jokes that you read/heard-from-others and more.
Copyright actually goes against the natural law of free exchange of ideas - it assigns ownership to ideas and restricts exchanges of ideas to require (often paid) authorization from third-parties.
In fact, even though it's perfectly possible for a copyright owner to do so, they won't charge someone for whisteling the tune they own the copyright for in the street because:
a) They can't catch you easilly enough to make it worth the trouble.
b) The public outcry on such heavy handed uses of copyright might very well kill it.
The only reason Copyright exists is because some thinkers in the 17th century decided that a time-limited mechanism to reward the makers of new ideas would promote creation and exchange of ideas more than it would hinder it. This fine balance (assuming it ever worked) has been thoroughly broken in the last century.
You are under the impression you own the game; you do not. You own the, very limited, rights to play that game. These rights are not transferable to friends.