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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."
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.
However that still doesn't change the fact that they are using a product they have no right to. It's not even the old "they just download it for the sake of it, they don't actually play them", since these are measured by submitting high scores to the game's server.
If the average pirate downloads a lot more games than an average customer buys, it just means that they're hardcore players and techies. You know, the group that here on slashdot is mad about casual games taking over more interesting games. Maybe it wouldn't if everyone would buy them? Casual people don't go pirating so easily.
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? Even if it isn't a lost sale, they haven't paid the author for the right to use it. That isn't right.
Every. Download. Is. A. Lost. Sale.
It's an empirically proven fact.
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?
But this doesn't hold water for PC games, where getting a pirated copy of the game is much simpler (googling for a torrent of the game) than jailbreaking your phone.
So yeah, the estimates are still probably really high, but I bet they are higher for PC games than for iPhone games.
still no sig
Jailbreak detection?
Are they admitting that they spy on their users phones outside their running apps?
In some countries that might get them jail without possibility of jailbreaking.
"only 10% of their potential customers are pirates, which means they are losing at most 10% of their sales."
That's just as wrong as claiming that every pirated copy is a lost sale. 10% of potential customers isn't the same as 10% of the sales.
Lost sales are impossible to measure accurately because they are a hypothetical scenario: "What if the game couldn't be pirated, what would have happened?" Nobody can answer that question. Maybe it would have sold a lot more copies, maybe it would even have sold less as it would have remained largely unknown. We just don't know.
Most people without jailbroken phones won't bother with your crappy app.
Most people who jailbroke purely for piracy are eager to try anything they can get working on it. (Those who jailbroke for any other purposes not included)
I could see a 1:4 ratio between the two groups, depending on the app.
So let's apply this to PC-Games
100% of the PCs are jailbroken, so at most 100% of their customers are potential pirates, which means they lose at most 100% of their potential sales to piracy.
because I stopped playing video games. I love the old keyboard and mouse. I love the PS3. I love the Xbox. I don't love how ham-fisted the publishers are getting with DRM and all the rest. If popularizing a game increases the chances it'll be pirated, I won't participate any more.
Sig not found.
How much of their potential customers are ninjas?
I was with them until the cited Blizzard...
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. In other words, it's because they are tied to external content that remains under their control.
-- Terry
PS3 is so far warez free, stop bitching and develop only for this platform.
What? You like even less Sony then pirates? Bad luck.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Living in one of those not so "rich" countries (but with real broadband) I can definitely tell you that I'm less inclined on spending money on games that people around me can play for free without any sort of consequences before they even hit any retail store.
Nowadays I only buy PS3 exclusives.
Lost sales are impossible to measure accurately because they are a hypothetical scenario: "What if the game couldn't be pirated, what would have happened?"
It's not so hypothetical when you consider video games for the PLAYSTATION 3 console. It just got cracked, and the crack hasn't yet been weaponized for mass infringement.
I love the old keyboard and mouse.
But do your friends and family who visit your house love having to wait their turn to use the keyboard and mouse instead of hooking up controllers 2, 3, and 4 and playing immediately?
I love the PS3. I love the Xbox.
But do you love the consoles' entry barriers against small developers?
Okay, iPhone, whatever... sure.
But PC games? I'm sorry, when we can see 2 million copies of the game reporting to our stats service the day after launch, and know that only 150,000 copies had been sold by that sime, then its pretty damn obvious that more than 10% of the players are pirating it. Piracy rates of 80-90 % are an unfortunate reality for AAA games, and have been for many years.
Why else would companies be willing to risk offending their paying customers with things like DRM that requires a constant Internet connection? Its because converting even 1/10th of the pirates into paying customers would give their sales a huge boost. I just hope they don't fall into the same trap that Star Wars Galaxies fell into (knowingly pissed off all of their existing customers in order to change their game to something they hoped more new people would pay to join... but they lost more players than they gained).
Say my indie developer team has a feature-complete PC game. How do I get in touch with Sony in order to start porting the game to PS3 for release on PSN? Do I have to start a company, get a dedicated office, and publish an unrelated PC or iPhone title first, like I would with Nintendo's WiiWare (source)?
Even though I don't believe piracy to be a large problem, that sentence is completely illogical. A single customer is not limited to buying a single game.
Especially the model you can slip in your pocket and make phone call with.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
It's interesting that this particular platform enables measuring piracy with something resembling statistical certainity. While not the figures, the logic also works for music and films, for example. Next thing is go tell the politicians: Listen, guys, you are taking a couple cents off everything that can store a bit as a compensation for music and/or films piracy (in Spain; your mileage will vary by country). Of course they don't call it compensation for piracy, but they still take the money. Now, dear politicians, look at this example and tell me that its logic doesn't apply and that your argument stands as it is. Say it loudly and publicly if you dare.
I'm assuming only jailbroken iphones can run pirated games, according to the estimates at most 10% of the phones are jailbroken. The article seems to assume that the other 90% are all paying customers for a specific app. Not true of course, no app/game has 100% market share. For example if an game is installed on 11% of the iphones, of which only 1% are non-jailbroken, then they could be losing as much as 91% of their sales to piracy. I say "could" because not everyone would buy it....but it is by no means limited to 10%.
i will NEVER EVER buy another game that i do not pirate first.
you bastards have just burnt me way too many times to be trusted ever again without heavy investigation on my part.
now, if you change the policys that say i can not return a game that i've bought. well, i'll think about it.
you lost my trust long ago. if you want it back you'll have to EARN it.
and if by some chance you come up with the unpiratable game. i guess i'm just done being a gamer.
i'm getting kinda old anyway. and theres lots of other crap i can try and waste money on. from industrys that have not fucked me over every chance they got.
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.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
</Morbo>
Magic 8 Ball says: Just a different aroma of bullshit.
"Potential" customer are not equal. Someone who has expended effort to get your product is a lot closer to being a purchaser than someone who's never heard of you. That's why demos exist. That's why marketeers aren't all out on the street giving handjobs for crack.
10% lost "customers" is just as ridiculous a metric as 80% lost "sales". Adding another bad metric doesn't inform the debate, it just gives the other side mud to sling as well.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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!
I think it's a fairly good assumption that iPhone users are not a representative sampling of the whole "gamer" universe, since it is a closed platform. It seems obvious to me that being a iPhone user should be somewhat correlated with "don't mind paying for stuff as long as they are quality stuff". This correlation is not perfect, of course (hence, the 5% jailbreaks). The fact that you have to jailbreak your phone to "pirate" stuff on the iPhone "garden" (i.e. illegal, not trivial for non-technical people and may void your warranty and whatnot) probably means that one isn't going to bother with it unless you're going to pirate a lot of stuff (or, put another way, "since you took the time/work necessary to jailbreak your phone, you might as well reap the rewards"). This closedness basically splits the continuum of (payers / try-before-buypeople / casual pirates / heavy pirates) that you see across the PC "gamer" population into two sub-populations (payers / heavy pirates), which is a phenomenon that had already showed its face with the consoles (i.e. people who modify their PS/Xbox ARE going to pirate like crazy simply to "make their investment worthwhile"; it's a psychological thing). So, I say you would probably see different numbers if the chosen platform for the analysis was "PC" or "Android phones".
In the end, it may be beneficial (from Apple's point of view) to do this if most of the borderline people end up becoming "payers"; not so much if they decide to become heavy pirates or simply ditch the product/platform.
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
Those who can't pirate, won't. Somehow claiming those who can't pirate, 90% of the "world" (since when do iphones even count?) has never seen a pirate copy of ... what exactly? ... is sort of like the Greeks saying they aren't bankrupt, not so long as Germany is paying its bills. Well, yeah, okay.
Exposed. Cleavage. And. Titties. Are. Making. The. Earthquakes. Happen.
It are true, because of my learnings.
If 100% iPhone users are divided in 10% jailbreakers and 90% regular users and we assume that 100% of those jailbreakers actually pirate software (which is not given for sure) and pirating aswell as buying a software means you have a general interest in the software then we have a total of 12,5% iPhone users interested in a software which is divided into 10% (pirating iPhone users aka jailbreakers) plus 10% (jailbreakers) / 80% (pirates in software-interested users) * 20% (non-pirates in software-interested users) = 2,5% (amount of non-pirate iPhone users interested in software). But if you think about it most of the pirates would actually lose interest (aka not buy) the software if they couldn't pirate it and thus propably equalize with the amount of interest from non-pirate users. So what is the total amount of interest for software from iPhone users if they cannot pirate: 2,5% (non-pirate users interested in software) / 90% (non-pirate users) = 2,0% (users interested in software) That means only 2% of the total iPhone users are actually interested in the software if they couldn't / wouldn't pirate it. But if only 2% of the 10% pirates would actually buy software if they couldn't pirate it, then that would mean, that only 10% (jailbreakers) * 2% (users interested in software if they couldn't pirate) = 0.2% of all users currently pirate software that they otherwise would buy. That is like - nothing? And it is exactly 10% of the current number of users buying software. So instead of increasing sales by 400% software developers would increase their sales by a "whopping" 10%. What a pitty.
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 wish the RIAA, MPAA and BSA all had magic, unbreakable DRM that made it impossible to use their products at all with paying. I want to see their reactions when their revenues go down as people just DO WITHOUT their unnecessary crap.
FOSS software and CC media would go thru the roof.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I pirated Farmville.
I run the NOCD cracks for all the games I buy. It's just more convenient that way. Who wants to keep dozens of CDs floating around their desk getting scratched up? I've got C&C4 on my laptop running the crack patch so I don't have to be online to play it. And I wasn't even considering buying Assassin's Creed 2 until the crack came out - now it has, and now I have. Are all of those considered pirated copies?
Jealously hoarding mod points since 2007.
I've apparently been pirating games since it was hard to find Commodore 64 games in stores. I don't think it was even called pirating back then. The simple fact of the matter is that you do buy when you can, especially from smaller publishers. But the vast majority of games that get traded end up being effectively "demos" because you don't play them much. That REALLY doesn't translate to direct sales.
If they want real numbers and real sales based on the same sort of effect you get from pirating game companies would have to offer a free or low cost subscription that lets people freely try any of their games for a set period. Demos work fine too but you'd probably require a forum or something to get the kind of "culture" effect you can get from places like Pirate Bay where people stop by and share info about their experiences with a piece of software. And you're kind of working against lousy street cred at that point too, which makes it more difficult. So many companies have spent so much time and energy alienating their audiences with bad advertising and lies about their privacy practices that it sometimes seems like the norm from the consumer point of view. It's really not but the companies that do make such a huge mess of it that it's noticeable.
Oh and lastly... If I've been a pirate all these years, damnit where do I pick up my hat? Yarr!
This is funny, and reminds me that something can be a fact while still being untrue.
Empirically proven, with a *slight* nod towards the inclusion of spurious and vacuous opportunity costs.
It creates the same difference here as it does with climate data:
The people in charge only care to calculate those factors that will make their case and line their coffers.
As an aside, I feared this would happen one day.
And here I am, watching the real-life unfolding of both Huxley's Brave New World, and Idiocracy, simultaneously.
Wow.
Per download is definitely a flawed system.
I have personally downloaded the same game or movie many times over, downloading is simpler then searching though your collection or saving space on your computer.
And I download many things all the time that I never actually use.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
That is a lucid, intelligent, well thought-out analysis. Too bad it's bullshit; Congress knows they're really losing 230% of their profits to pirates, the media company has shown them the pie charts.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
The other side of the coin is that a person is not going to buy the application or game in the first place so in fact they have actually lost nothing. This would have never been a sale to start with.
don't be bringing facts into the story
Basing pirating on jailbroken iPhones is ridiculous. About half the people I know who have iPhones have jailbroken their iPhones, but they did this so they could get functionality that SHOULD be built into the stupid thing to begin with. Basically, they use it as a way around Job's bureaucracy, not as a way to pirate games.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
2. Not every game pirated is still for sale by the publisher. The older the game, the higher chance it is being frequently downloaded as part of a collection/bundle. You could argue that devaluing the resale market hurts new game sales, but the publishers seem more than happy to devalue used game sales themselves.
3. Just because someone plays a game, doesn't mean they would have paid to play it. Specifically, I mean that games without free demos available will be tried out by pirates for a short time. There are way too many awful games out there. I won't buy a game unless I am somewhat familiar with it already or have read glowing reviews. If someone lends me a game i never heard of, I will probably try it. This would distort pirating figures for less known games more than for the blockbuster titles.
4. Pirates download games as soon as they come out, or rather without regard to pricing trends. Consumers purchase games with price as a major consideration. I will make a few preorders each year, but almost every other game I wait until it has dropped to at least 1/2 price.
5. There's only so much time in a day. I have bought dozens of games I've never played...stretching back as far as PSX (in the NES and SNES days I had much more free time). If a pireate downloads FFXIII, Oblivion, Fallout 3, etc...how is he going to have time to actually play all those? People posting high scores just means they are playing some of a game. if you limit yourself to games you buy, you'll be much more likely to finish each game...which means you'll have to choose only a few out of the dozen 50+ hour-to-complete games you could have pirated.
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 so bad it ain't even lies and statistics. It assumes a random slice of the users jailbreak their iPhone, that there are no correlation between jailbreaking and playing games.
This is like saying that Gerber controls 20% of the baby food market, but because babies represent 10% of the population, they cannot increase their sales by more than 10%.
To use a car analogy, Toyota has 10% of the market and therefore only 10% of their cars have accelerator problems. Thank His Noodly Appendage they don't control 100% of the market, or we'd suffer a continuous stream of accidents!
Am I making sense? I hope not.
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
Games where cool back in the 80's, 90's, but now they're not. The game market, I'd say, died with the ps2 xbox gamecube market. Many different computer and software companies died in the 90's and 00's; its just that the video game tech companies refuse to die.
I don't care about pirating!
It hasn't changed from the very beginning!
No one cared about it back then because they where a small business that made enough to pay everyone.
Games suck anyways because they have HUGE dev teams with an equally large dev team that makes lockout shit.
THE GAME MARKET IS NOT HOLLYWOOD AND NEVER WAS DAMN IT!
Sure, people play the game. But Piracy only basis this on the Story of the game if there is one.
Most publishers release a patch, one that cannot be downloaded easily, only to users who register their purchased game allowing for multiplayer versions or server logins to be possible.
Console systems may seem to be the best line against piracy, but that's not true, because your LIVE account doesn't keep track of CD keys. If you modded your system to play a copied game, then your home free, and the servers know none the wiser.
Call of Duty, no 2 keys can be online at the same time when playing multiplayer, so the only way to obtain one is to purchase the game or play when the other user is not online at the same time.
But here's where piracy works. One PC copy that is used for a multplayer is not hindered for LAN games, because there is no check other then the game initiation. But this entails coordination from friends and playing time.
So, what does piracy boil down to? Playing a game that you only want to try for a period of time that extends Demo or trial time? Or does it mean that a bunch of friends want to play at the same time but all cannot or don't want to pay for the game?
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
Boo bad articles/internet postings!
Hooray, Beer!
(This would be the Red Stripe way of looking at it, at least...)
This whole story reeks of bad juju...
--Stak
Holy happy hippy crap!
Arguing about the terminology is missing the point. A lot. Yes we all know that Copyright Infringment != Theft and that Piracy == (Sailing ships && Cannons && Cutlasses). The morality and legality of piracy/copyright infringement are the points that should be discussed.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
Well, that's exaggerating a little, but they would most certainly have an impact. Think about it for a minute, think about all the time that gets invested into an MMO. Most console games have a total play time of maybe, 10-20 hours? For an MMO we're taking at least 10 hours a week for months on end. That's -one- game that is taking up the time that could have been spent playing dozens of other games. I know that when I had played MMOs I had stopped playing most other PC games and certainly stopped buying them. There is a certain obligation that comes with MMO gaming. The financial one: the fact that you're making monthly payments to play this game so when given the choice between the mmo and playing another game, you should probably spend your time in the game you've already invested in. And the social obligation: When other guild members are expecting you to contribute your time and the requirement to keep leveling to stay on par with your friends or risk playing alone when they start outlevelling you.
So while the gaming industry grows, so do MMOs as a portion of PC game sales (they're not really going to affect console game sales, relatively speaking). And consequently as MMO popularity grows within that PC games sector, other game sales are bound to suffer on a factor more than what is going into the growing MMO portion.
And with so many game companies trying to jump onto the mmo bandwagon, it's only going to get worse. It's a chain reaction that will make MMOs the only financially sensible type of PC game to make (other than browser based, ad-fueled game market that target casual and non-gamers)
No one is claiming that ALL of those people would buy it if they couldn't pirate, of course that is ridiculous.
But suppose I can convert even 5 % of those "non-paying" customers into paying customers, by making it too difficult / inconvenient for them to just pirate it, so that getting the legitimate one is easier for them?
5% of 1,850,000 is 92,500. So actual sold copies would increase by up to 61% from that. Now in the real world, you'll lose some fraction of your original customers by pissing them off with DRM. No one is sure what fraction of them you will lose (yet), but if its less than 10% then the whole exercise was still hugely worthwhile. If we could somehow convert 10% of the pirates, it would be even more worthwhile -- sales would be doubled, or more. (I don't believe they will ever be able to convert more than 10% of the pirates into paying customers, most of them are either broke teens or university students, or else they are so used to freeloading after 10+ years of being pirates that they are not about to start paying full price for their games).
Disclaimer: I personally disapprove of the stronger DRM measures that the publishers are imposing on PC titles these days, and I refuse to buy any PC game with such anti-customer stuff built into it. However, customers like you and I are currently in the minority. The majority does not care much about the DRM as long as it doesn't prevent them from playing the copy they paid for.
actually it's not piracy until you pull up beside them and board them.
Q: What does the ethical relativist think about *insert ethical question here*
A: Who gives a shit?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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
...only 10% of their potential customers are pirates, which means they are losing at most 10% of their sales.
What??? No!
Comparing pirates to all iPhone users by calling them "potential" customers is meaningless at worst, deliberately misleading understatement at best.
Simply put, you can't sell FUD with "only 10%".
Here is a demonstration of where your logic fails:
No, you didn't hear 'zillions of "stolen" songs on the radio'. The broadcast of those songs were paid for by the radio station. The radio station got the money to pay for the broadcasting of those songs from "advertisers" who paid for these things called "commercials" that are played between the songs.
To recap: The songs you hear on the radio are paid for by those commercials you hear between the songs. They are not free.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Back in 2003 I worked for a little independent games outfit. We made a one-off puzzle / action game that sold for $10 in stores or $2.50 online. It had an online high-score system that counted IP's so we had an idea of how many people were playing any given day.
We sold around 30,000 copies total, but our average unique visitors per day on the high score system was around 500,000.
Now the game had no DRM, and there was a free online version that you could play as much as you wanted to that didn't let you access the high score system. This strikes me as being about as nice as you can get for a paid-for product, and we still had a 94% "piracy" rate. Even if you allow that some legitimate users may have been on dynamic IP addresses, there's no way that game wasn't being primarily played by pirates.
Since then I've had trouble believing anyone who claimed software piracy didn't cause game makers to lose money.
"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."
Unless, of course, fifty percent of the demographic that they're going for is amongst those 10%. It's a bit dishonest to draw this kind of conclusion.
Yes, some laws are codifying morality, like laws against theft and murder, but copyright isn't one of them. Receiving stolen good codifies the morality that you shouldn't knowingly purchase stolen property.
Copyright and patents were historically merely a practical means to ensure that larger publishing houses and manufacturers didn't exploit authors, smaller publishing houses, manufacturers etc. Trademarks are also not codified morality, they just let consumers easily identify the manufacturer, merchant, etc.
In fact, intellectual property laws simply cannot be said to codify morality even in the modern world since they don't truly take intention into account like receiving stolen goods. For example :
(1) We all accept there is nothing wrong morally or legally with downloading mp3s, movies, etc. but there are legal issues once you upload content, which bittorrent requires during downloading. Yes, seeds are juicier targets of course, but even leeches who never knowingly seed have broken the law, which places the law on a purely practical footing.
(2) Asset forfeiture drug laws are similarly purely practical from a legal perspective, well you don't even get a trial there.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Radio stations, at least in the US, don't pay anything to recording companies. They only pay a relatively small fee to songwriters. Money from commercials supports the station itself, not performers.
Copyright only ever needed to control the main stream distribution channel. I'd say the best approach to copyright would be :
(1) creators get a five year "prior restrain" on mass reproduction, meaing they may sue anyone who distributes the work.
(2) creators get a subsequent 5 year right to issue entity-wide reproduction restraint orders.
If you don't like Disney or YouTube publishing your video, you may order them to cease distribution, and they must comply. In fact, the order applies to all companies present and future under the same overall managerial control, although you may need to prove that control for damages if you sue a different company than the one you ordered to cease distribution. You may not however issue an across-the-board restrain on distribution.
Any distributor like youtube that doesn't control their distribution channel should have be permitted temporary violations provided they remove offending content promptly, ala DMCA takedown notices.
(3) creators get additional subsequent years to issue entity-wide reproduction restraint orders if the copyright has never been sold or only minimal work for hire was involved in the work.
In other words, all copyright enforcement after 5 years should require DMCA takedown notices, but these notices have more teeth for distributors that actually control their channels like Disney.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Oh, the poor victimized game publishers. Weep for them! Pity them! Because of rampant, unstoppable, evil piracy, they're only making billions and billions of dollars every year!
Start blaming the actual perpetrators—the smug rich bastards with all the power to do something about this rather than just trying harder and harder to control everything and rake in more money! MORE!
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Please provide a source for your claim.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
My iPhone is jailbroken, and yet I do not have a single "pirated"[sic] app on it. All my apps are either freeware, open source, or paid for.
Why the jailbreak then?
* Backgrounder
* Winterboard and the endless tweaking/skinning it allows
* sbsettings
* bash, crond, openssh
* ability to use my iPhone as a mass storage device through sshfs (manage the phone via Linux)
* extended context menus
5x4 springboard and 6 icon wide dock
I doubt most phones are broken for piracy; in fact you do not even need to jailbreak to "pirate" apps (I've taken free apps and installed them on friends' phones - NEVER copied paid apps though). I think most are jailbroken to free the phone from Steve Jobs' control, and to make the springboard look how the OWNER likes it, not how Steve Jobs likes it.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I'm sorry, but I wasn't very impressed with this article.
First of all, it starts by misrepresenting the "lost sales" argument. The piracy argument isn't that every pirated copy is a lost sale - it's that the piracy rate represents a significant number of lost sales. In essence, you can divide the market into hard-core (those who will buy the game no matter what) and a much larger casual market. The piracy takes a chunk out of the casual market, where if people can download a game instead of buying it, they will. And, it's not a 1:1 ratio of pirated copy to lost sale, but, besides there being an argument to be made that the game would not have been downloaded if there wasn't at least SOME interest, the sooner the protection is cracked, the more people who would have bought the game otherwise will have just downloaded it.
Second, the article completely ignores using authentication servers to track the percentage of games being played that are legitimate vs. percentage being pirated. This isn't necessarily a complicated calculation. If you've sold 200,000 copies, and you get 800,000 games trying to authenticate, well, it's basic math to figure out how many are pirated copies.
Third, although I haven't had a chance to take a look at these numbers yet, and so I can't really comment in detail on them, Assassin's Creed II held off the pirates for a very long time, as opposed to Assassin's Creed I (which was heavily pirated from the outset), and so it is possible to compare the PC sales figures between the two to get at least a rough sense of how many lost sales there might have actually been.
All of this is more accurate than the poll cited by the original article, which, I might add, basically takes the people polled at their word. It reminds me a bit of those employment tests where they ask you if you've ever stolen anything - if you HAD stolen something, you're not exactly likely to reply with "yes"...
There is a much better and more detailed article on the subject here: http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
This is one of the worst flamebaiting articles I've seen in awhile. The title is
Estimating Game Piracy More Accurately
But then they go on to prove something completely unrelated:
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.
How exactly does this make the piracy number any easier for developers to swallow? They put their hard work into a game and 80% of people using their work have not paid for it. The only thing we really learn from this article is that people will do anything to spin piracy into a positive action.
only 10% of their potential customers are pirates, which means they are losing at most 10% of their sales
10% of iPhones are jailbroken != 10% of potential customers are pirates.
To establish that you would have to show:
1) ALL owners of jailbroken phones are also pirates - rather obviously not necessarily true. This might still leave the second part of the statement true - where you qualify with the phrase "at most", except for:
2) ALL iPhone owners would also have to be potential game sales as well. It seems likely - though I have no evidence to back it up at all - that jailbreakers would be more likely to be game-players (more technologically saavy, therefore more likely to use it for other things than a phone) which would _allow_ but not force your piracy rates up.
The fact that you are countering someone else's bollocks science is not an excuse to use bollocks science yourself - rather it is a mandate to get it right.
Dear Software Pirate Brothers and Sisters,
Please reply with your address.
I would like to try out your TV, nap in your bed, and sample your fridge. If they are to my liking then I may choose to purchase them. More than likely I'll just use them for a while until I get tired of them.
Don't worry - soon I'll move over to one of your friends house and try out all of their hard earned stuff without paying them either. Screw rent - goods were designed to be "free". At least that's how I understand the essence of commerce.
Thanks,
Your Fellow Software Pirate
This is so painfully obvious I wonder why the industry doesn't see it. If you can get something for free, you'll grab a lot more than if you would have to pay for it. Also, there are a lot of 'pirates' who download games they come across "just in case" but never end up installing. I even knew a guy would download and burn games to disks just to collect them, even though he rarely got around to installing or playing even a quarter of the # he downloaded.
Of course, most people really are too ignorant to understand that art is a desirable quantity for reasons other than simple entertainment.
It's a good thing video games aren't considered art. ...wait, what?
Yes it is moral to do so. Is it moral for someone to take the fruits of someone's labour and not only garnish the entire revenue of selling it (more labour) but also punish them (by incarceration) just because you did some work on another thing?
The copier did work. You want their money. Why is that moral to demand it AND punish them for their efforts?
Then there is no piracy because the only thing being sold is the limited license which ISN'T being P2P'd.
Best friend during Cricket season.
I don't see the article as saying that the figure *is* 10%, but rather *is at most* 10%.
In other words, it's not saying that all jailbreakers are pirates, but rather that the number of pirates is less than or equal to the number of jailbreakers, which seems to be a valid statement.
In other words, if the application were somehow completely copy-protected, the largest number of new customers that you'd get is limited by the 10% that are potentially affected by this change.
Of course, the potential new sales from this change depends upon the correlation between jailbreakers/non-jailbreakers and who actually wants the app. If these are independent, then it's valid to say that overall sales wouldn't increase by 10% based upon this change alone.
Languages change and evolve, even within a generation. Fighting the colloquial use of piracy as 'copyright infringement' or 'drm removal' is a losing battle.
Dictionary.com:
piracy
2.
the unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.: 'The record industry is beset with piracy.'
http://blog.slaingod.com
The constant 'public service' messages about the death of radio I hear on my local stations if congress passes a law requiring them to pay performers for the airing of their works.
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h848/show
is the bill that would provide performers compensation parity.
http://blog.slaingod.com
I stand corrected, though the correct citation is USC17 110(5)
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Heck, in my case I've bought games on Steam that I already owned, just because it was worth spending the $2.50 to not have to dig through my old CD stack to find the install disc.
I don't read AC A human right
I've thought for a long time that they should put this on their tax returns. If they are experiencing an 80-90% loss on piracy, claim it and let the IRS sort it out.
Not every copy download would be bought. That's a simple fact of life, you don't even need statistics to understand that. If they want that statement to be true, prices would at least have to be halved and then still it wouldnt reflect the situation accurately. I myself sometimes just download something, just to see how my computer holds up against it, only to delete it after 'testing' or maybe 1 day later. I shit you not, and if i do this, maybe other people do this too. Piracy is not the real problem here, not the base of the problem at least
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
Maybe so, but I'd wager the bank that 10% is a HELLUVA LOT CLOSER to the truth than 80%!
To recap: The songs you hear on the radio are paid for by those commercials you hear between the songs. They are not free.
I understand your point, but let me point out an important distinction here. They don't pay a cent more if I turn on the radio and listen. Or if a million people do. That "paid for" song is exactly that, in the old paradigm: IT WAS PAID FOR. They didn't make you pay for it over and over again, or monitor who was listening, or whether they taped the "king biscuit flower hour" on KLOS. That fee agreement was an extortion settlement with broadcasters since they generate advertising revenues from others. It was lawsuit insurance protection payoff. But don't delude yourself into thinking that it "pays" for the song in the same way that it is in digital domains. What payed for music then was record sales - and that only happens if WE HEAR THE SONGS. That is why the record companies were giving PAYOLA that was 1000 times the ASCAP/BMI licensing agreements. When radio broadcast that song for 3 cents, it made NO DIFFERENCE to the cost, and it made NO ACCOUNTING if I or anyone had the radio on or off. It was a FLAT FEE. It also had no adjustment to the cost if I record it to a cassette tape. Copyright laws pertain to that situation in analog technology where ONE copy of a broadcast was ruled FAIR USE after Sony Beta arrived. BUT THE TERMS OFFERED TODAY ARE BY NO MEANS FAIR WHEN DRM ACCOUNTS FOR EVERY EAR AND DEVICE AD NAUSIUM and restricts your media and devices, and mines your market data. You can argue the moral relevance of apples and oranges, but bottom line is that the "piracy" that occurs is a direct response to the "rip off" greed that knows no bounds in the Corporate meat grinder. If the price for listening to the song is priced like it was in radio days - in other words, a flat nominal 3 cent fee PAID FOR the broadcast - no matter how many ears were tuned in or tape decks rolling, then there would be no need to "pirate". But the licensing arrangement proposed at this point of technology is preposterous, and I ain't paying, and nobody is going to buy if its not worth it. I am not stealing it either, I am just not a customer - not like I was when I felt I got what I paid for ONCE. Today, I'll occasionally buy tunes directly from the artists, at the concert, or on their web, but Sony and Universal Thorn EMI and Warner's Polydor, Apple, whatever can kiss my ass goodbye. Ultimately, a marketing plan that works will be the one that offers the bast value in the current social economic and cultural landscape. I've outgrown that demographic, I'm over that hill. But I really believe that the rip off is a two way street. "Pirates" are the "customers" once they decide they want to buy the product. These twits want to charge for the commercial, and only lend a license you intend to own. If it ain't worth stealing, it ain't worth paying for either, and nobody is hearing it at all. Given the choice of selling 1000 $1 tunes or a million pennies, the latter is always preferable, especially when its made out of a download of digital bandwidth. Its frigging electrons - and its prolific distribution is exactly what they want no matter how much they piss and moan about not getting paid enough. If that were really true, they would be dentists.
On your second point - or my second point; they appear to be the same - we agree. Not all jailbreakers necessarily want the app. But its possibly (I'd even venture probably) a larger percentage than for non-jailbreakers. As an extreme example, if 10% of people are pirates, and 10% of non-pirates are potential sales, but 50% of pirates are potential sales, then stopping all of the pirates would raise your sales by more than 50% (For a million people, thats 90k sales with piracy and 140k sales without; 140/90 = 155%.) I'm not saying those numbers are correct, of course, but I am saying that without knowing what they are you can't say that there is a 10% cap.
But for your first point, I'll just quote the original article again:
only 10% of their potential customers are pirates
Not "at most 10% of their customers are pirates". Only. Perhaps it was just a slip of the tongue, but round Slashdot stating that all jailbreakers are pirates is flame-bait extrordinaire...