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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."
Indeed! I absolutely would have bought The Adventures of Mark Twain had it been available in the UK, but it's Region 1 encoded only! BADOING! one lost sale there, and it's not even my fault!
Stick that in your empirically proven facts (I know you were being facetious).
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Except it is also easy as hell to get PC gamers to buy, it is called giving them a good value instead of squeezing them for that last penny, duh! I'll use myself for a couple of examples: 1.-I bought MoH:10th anniversary, even though I heard the latest game in the series sucked (which it did BTW) so why did I buy? Because they gave me extras that made it worth buying like the original MoH:AA plus the expansions, Moh:PA Directors Cut, plus a couple of CDs worth of soundtracks and making of behind the scenes.
Another example is Good Old Games which has gotten me to buy plenty of games I normally wouldn't have, simply by offering x64 compatibility along with no DRM and plenty of extras like soundtracks and strategy guides. They make the purchase so easy and painless that it is literally easier to buy from them than it would be to pirate the game. After all with a pirated version I couldn't be sure it would run on W7 x64, nor would I get any expansion packs, all the extras, and have it as simple as 1 click and I'm done.
So if you want PC gamers to buy it really isn't that hard. Don't try to get us to pay $50 for a 5 hour long badly ported x360 game, if you really think your game is worth $50 then throw in a couple of your older titles you aren't selling any more so we don't feel like we are getting ripped off, and make it easy to buy from you without making us jump through bullshit DRM hoops (I'm looking at you, Ubisoft!) that simply make the pirated version a better value. If you find the right price or incentives you CAN convert pirates to customers. Hell I can't even count how many guys I know that ran formerly pirated XP Pro that are now running W7 thanks to the $50 HP offer. MSFT hit the right price and many decided it was just easier and less hassle to buy the new OS than pirate it.
Ultimately though, I have to wonder if all this "evil piratez" bullshit isn't actually a cover for the fact that certain big game companies want their PC games to fail so they can stick with the consoles. Lets face it, since the days of code wheels many of the big companies have been more about control than anything else. The x360 for the first time gives them "black box computing" where they can nickel and dime the living hell out of the players and kill multiplayer for game A when sequel B comes out. Of course if they simply dropped their currently profitable PC games division the shareholders would have a shitfit, so instead they purposely go out of their way to treat their customers like absolute dogshit. When the PC gamers avoid them like the clap they can say "See? PC gaming is dead" and stick with the 360 without shareholder screaming.
So I have to wonder how much of the "evil piratez!" is bullshit seeing how companies like Valve can make money hand over fist even on old games that were probably the most pirated in history. Plus piracy makes a damn fine excuse for when your game sucks, like the company that made Titan Quest which one of the developers tried to argue with me in the forums that the fricking demo I was playing "Had to be pirated" because the shitty code would CTD after less than 20 minutes. And sorry about the length, but as a PC gamer that has watched PC gaming go from one of the greats to a bunch of shitty 360 ports for frankly crazy money with worse nastiness than most viruses I really don't feel much sympathy for the game companies ATM.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Android market supposedly suffers badly from piracy. Boo hoo hoo evil pirates, not giving money to developers who deserve them.
I downloaded Maverick Lite recently. I decided it's a cool app and wanted to buy the full version.
Until then I was puzzled by lack of paid apps in the market. Now I saw "Maverick Pro" not found.
I checked, double checked and found:
Only 12 countries support paid apps and mine is not one of them. I checked, Maverick Pro was only available through Android Market, not any other online store of Android apps.
I faced two options: .apk from SD card.
1. download a torrent of paid apps for Android, and install the
2. root the phone (voiding warranty), install "market-enabler", back-up the current SIM Id, spoof it with ID of one of providers that offer paid apps, then purchase the app from app store.
Guess which one I choose...
The second one. Yep, I hacked my phone and purchased the app legally.
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to take something
You've never test driven a car I take it? You've never heard a song on the radio, then bough the CD? Rather you always go to the record store and by CD's of artists you have never heard before? You always pick your doctor at random out of the phone book and never ask family/friends for a recommendation?
Let me put it to you another way: Why do software companies think that they can fork out buggy, shoddy games and expect their customers to fork over $40-50 without the possibility of complaining (or even reselling the game)?
I admit that I have "pirated". The games that I like, I later bought. However there are a hell of a lot more games that have been deleted from my hard drive, and here I consider that I have saved myself from being ripped off. For example, I OWN a copy of Silent Hunter III. I OWN a copy of Silent Hunter IV which, IMO, was not as good as Silent Hunter III. So I downloaded a copy of Silent Hunter V. After 10 minutes, I wiped it from my hard drive and thank goodness I didn't pay for that piece of crap. Had it been a good game, I would have bought it. Just like I bought every other game I like.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'm going to stick my neck out and say that I pirate games I don't want to pay for because generally too expensive to purchase. If I could pay $10 for each of a dozen games that I've pirated in the past year instead of $120 for two, I probably would.
In my case, they are losing a sale to fixing the price too high for too long, especially in this age of Price != Quality. On the flipside, I'll buy titles on Steam for $9 on-sale and secondary to that reason never have to worry about losing access to it because of some shady DRM scheme.
I think a lot of pirating of games is for the same reason as pirating of movies still in theatres: They simply cost too f*cking much to access legitimately on a regular basis.
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Copyright isn't a moral issue, it's a legal one
Nonsense. Law is simply morality that's been codified. We believe killing people is wrong, so we make a law to reflect our shared morality. We have also decided that it's right that the people who create artworks deserve some reward for that work. The system to make that reward possible is copyright. Saying the system is not working properly, and that you want to change it, is a very different statement from saying that breaking copyright isn't about morality. This is, at its core, *completely* about morality...the question is only whether the law reflects your moral view (or, better, society's overall moral view).
Your "private transaction" argument is also legally questionable. For physical things, (and in US law) if you buy something you have reasonable reason to believe is stolen you will also have committed a crime: Receiving Stolen Goods. It's designed to allow the state to punish fences as well as the thieves themselves, but laws like this will be cited in any discussion of similar behavior online. If you have reasonable reason to conclude that the person you're dealing with is selling you an illegitimate copy of a game, you are not free from liability. Your liability is certainly less than the person selling the thing, but you're not completely innocent in the exchange.
Then why does the law actually call it theft in many of its passages:
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#507
Several instances of theft in there...and most intellectual properties professors consider this as such as my university (I took a few grad law classes before deciding on psychology). The idea that copyrighted materials were codifed as 'intellectual properties' was done so that it could be looked upon as a property under the eyes of the law. Now, I will grant you, quite a few court cases have said their weren't...but many have said they were.
Still, regardless of the pendancy of getting bent out of shape over the word 'theft'...lets just get rid of it for the conversation and I'll let you have that point.
What part of my belief that an artist / programmer / writer / whatever has a moral right to control their works under a legally given monopoly where others agree that there is value in the work -- what part of this is negated by the fact that it isn't theft -- but something else.
It just seems like your entire argument is surrounded by the fact that I use the word theft as opposed to copyright infringement.
As for copyright? I believe it is overly broad. I think Life Of Author + 70 Years is MORONIC. I think 30 years is moronic. I believe there should be different copyrights for different types of media...though I don't know how this could be implemented...but I do believe this. Pop songs? Give them a year...when I was an artist, I got to the point I didn't give a fuck about my work and was only writing what I thought would sell (and saving the good stuff for my friends and family)...the last few songs I've written for others, I signed away all rights and got paid up front...I got paid for the work, and I was done with it. A year for this sort of crap (or at least a year after publication) is more than enough...
I have a lot of beliefs that copyright is overly broad. It needs serious reform. At the same time, the very items people are rebelling against in their quest for copyright reforms are almost ALWAYS throw away crap...they aren't arguing for the next War and Peace. They are looking for the latest Summerset Maughm or Gabriel García Márquez work...they want pop bullshit. The same shit that was INTENDED to be a consumable, and not art...maybe in a sense, if something is considered that insipid, a group of judges could get together and say This Sucks...Infinite Copyright Granted...We Hope That The Companies Lock This Down So Tight We Never Hear It Again...and yet, the people clamoring for copyright reform are the ones most likely to have piles and piles of consumable bullshit on their hard drives that was never intended to be a part of the popular culture -- because it would require some sort of culture in the first place. Great works? Give the author a lifetime stipend and say You Sit Back And Do As You Will...We Are Taking Your Works And Giving Them To The People...I would LOVE this...
Honestly, I really don't care for copyright...and I don't care about the details...I care about the artists involved. I just see too many people looking at these works as commodity products and nothing more. I don't want commodity products...I think this society needs to move beyond that crap.
And yeah, thats me sitting in an ivory tower passing judgments upon the peasants that don't know any better...
That would only be the case if I had agreed to such a limited license at the point of transfer. It would also be false advertising in that we are constantly asked to "buy" and almost never to "license" a game. These words have meaning, you can't get around that without some serious chicanery.
DRM as a whole is a waste. You're hurting honest people, and mildly inconveniencing dishonest people.
I think the "best" way to go about such things is to go about it like Blizzard tends to: hardly any DRM, but good luck playing multiplayer without a valid key (the bnet-only multiplayer thing is an obvious extension of this).
I think that sort of thing strikes a balance between people who want to try it out, and people who are playing it to the point where they ought to have paid. The situation with the Demigod launch was terrible (the pirate's argument that more players adds value to the game breaks down when the excess of players kills the server.)
People complaining about the price of games, etc, I have no sympathy for. They get cheap, if you wait. You want it early? It's going to cost more. You don't get to pirate it just because you can't afford to pay for it.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Then there is no piracy because the only thing being sold is the limited license which ISN'T being P2P'd.