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Valve's Gabe Newell On Piracy: It's Not a Pricing Problem
New submitter silentbrad writes with a followup to our discussion this morning about Ubisoft's claims of overwhelming game piracy. An article at IGN quotes a different point of view from Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve:
"In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the U.S. release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable. Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customers use or by creating uncertainty."
The quote was taken from an interview at The Cambridge Student Online, in which Newell speaks to a few other subjects, such as creating games for multiple platforms and e-sports.
And yet Steam has that USD=Euro conversion and region locked pricing.
I was about to buy a copy of GTA IV on Steam during the sale they've got going. With credit card in hand, I found out in some reviews that the PC version requires Games for Windows Live for saving and installs SecuROM. Dealbreaker right there and I never purchased.
DRM does not stop pirates, they are smart enough to circumvent it, it only annoys legitimate users.
I'd say DRM encourages piracy more than anything. I'd rather a game just work, than having to jump through hoops to make it work. If a game has something like Securom, frankly I'd rather pirate than have to deal with it. DRM never works, it will always be cracked. There's no getting around that fact.
In truth I never like pirating, if a company makes a good game I'm of the opinion that they deserve my money, but sometimes they don't make it easy to take. Dreamfall is a noticeable game I remember, I have the boxed copy which uses a disk check, but thankfully there are loads of DRM-free .exe's the pirates have provided.
Sorry but the only instances of pirated games I have ever seen (and btw didn't download) were cracked versions of a game that could be downloaded for free. I haven't seen a site offering to sell me someone else's game for a fee. I agree its a matter of convenience in a lot of cases - when something cool is out people want access to it now - but I think it must be a much less common thing that people buy the game from a pirate. I have never associated piracy with a separate sale arrangement, just people who want something for free, or simply want it where its not available or (as noted by an Aussie above) its grossly overpriced and people feel ripped off.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
here prices are sky right and population's consumption power is not first world, mainly because of taxes that double the game's cost for the consumer. Prices here are not as bad as Australian's as far as I know, but it's the major player into piracy decision making, besides the growing culture of "only dumb people pay for what you can get for free".
This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.
Except it doesn't discourage piracy at all. It encourages people to break DRM. Sure most people have internet connections, and they are interested in breaking the DRM, they will use that connection to follow the instructions people post online on how to break that DRM.
Honestly, DRM keeps me from spending a single cent on computer games. As a musician and VJ, I need a responsive low-latency system and full control over my hardware. The unwanted crap that almost any game will install is just unacceptable for me. So it's no games for me. And for pretty much anyone who has to rely on his machine it's just the same.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
The problem has never been about price. Piracy is about a need in the market that has not been fulfilled.
Some people see an unfulfilled need in the market as a business opportunity. But unfortunately most of the old media only see it as a threat to their old business business models.
Having a service problem doesn't mean there isn't a pircing problem as well. The three biggest issues IMO are pricing, service, and respect, although I'm sure other issues play a role as well. However, the respect problem isn't the 'pirates don't respect intellectual property' garbage, but rather, the lack of respect for customers from copyright holders. The FBI warnings on DVDs being a good example of disrespect that only affects those that actually BUY the product.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
When the pricing of a software package gets to be too outrageous (not in terms of value but simply compared to how much cash one has on hand), then pricing becomes a significant issue as well. For example, a graphical WYSIWYG HTML editor, a graphics editor, a text layout tool, a math package, etc. each for $400 makes it quite difficult to afford the software. Most people are willing to lay down some sizeable dough for one program but, when you need to lay out $400 for your office package and 10 others each of which will need upgrades for $200 in several years it gets to be an investment that is not very workable.
OTOH, if the same software were available 24/7 for immediate download (with no support unless paid for) for a much reduced price -- say $50, the quantities sold will be much higher and the software company can reduce its costs by eliminating Best Buy and a host of other stores that take 50% off the top anyway. Additionally, there is no packaging, manuals, DVDs, etc. that need to be printed / burned nor shipping. The costs for the software company will go down and their sales will go up. I might be even tempted to try software that I wouldn't ordinarily buy simply because the software is not cost prohibitive.
The Apple Appstore is really a good example of this. Yes, the software is underpriced compared to an office package on your office PC but it does drive home that you don't need to charge $40 for a game and you can do it for a $1.00 instead -- a 40 fold price reduction. Oh, yea, Angry Birds has about 500 Million downloads now .... If Photoshop were $10 - $20 and available for instant download, I suspect that Adobe could make a lot more than they do. Especially when they double charge you by printing the "manual" in book form and then your having to buy it from the Last Bookstore in America.....
Make a reasonable price, make easy to pay (paypal?), make easy to buy/download, do not annoy me with DRM or "you must be on to play" and I will buy the game. Is so difficult?
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Piracy is a natural response to people who want to "CONTROL". The issue is not about IP, its not about getting something for nothing. Time and time again research, the research generated by the very vendors of IP, says people are happy to pay for something of value. That they simply want what they want the way the want it. It is the unbridled need, addiction to, the control of something that has become the crux of the piracy debate.
The irony is, that by punishing consumers for the fear of being robbed, precipitates the actual robbery. People just ask to get their music, movie or game, simply, easily, and accessibly from any technology they possess. It is the draconian measures which now threaten to destroy (SOPA) the very conduit our collective futures rely on (the Internet), that is a clear extension of the avarice and need to control. These people have enjoyed decades of complete control, allowing an infrastructure of suppliers and middlemen to rape artists at one end and consumers at the other. With the advent of growing technology, old paradigms fail. For these people, the answer is not to learn how to leverage the amazing power of the new technology, but strangle it so they can bring back the bad old days. We need to make it clear to our representatives in no uncertain terms, that the future demands that the internet be free, broad and democratic.
... sorry but pricing is a major issue. How this man cannot say that it is't when games go on sale for 75% off on his site frequently seems ludicrous. The big things effecting modern games are:
1) Game quality
2) DRM
3) Buyers avoiding paying more then $15-20 for DRM laden crap they don't own.
Lots of people avoid buying games entirely because of DRM and low game quality. There are those of us who buy games at extremely deep discounts (5-15$ at most) on steam because of DRM we refuse to pay full price for DRM infested games that we don't own but we do want to support PC developers and have few alternatives since many small developers release on steam.
Gabe has done a lot of marketing to brainwash people and get people to thinking he's a good guy but he's not, if he was the good guy games would deprecate their DRM after a year and the exe's unhooked from steam. The purpose of steam is to datamine users for 'business reasons' and he's putting this massive spin his datamining operation. This means more metrics driven game development as if we didn't have this enough of this alread with the constant clones every year.
Standard excuses for not paying for this or any other game (pick any that apply):
1) I will pirate it first and then pay only if it is PERFECT. As in, every thing else in life that I will consume and then not pay for if I decided I didn't like it after the fact.
2) My pirating is good for the software developer (more people playing, even without paying is good, it gives them lots of free publicity). Piracy increases sales! I am doing them a HUGE favor.
3) I am a cheap ass.
4) There is no such thing as copyright (or shouldn't be). Other people should create art, music, games, films, and entertainment for me as a favor and fund it out of their own pocket.
5) Piracy is a fact in the gaming world. Get used to it. It's the developer's own fault because they should have taken it into account in their business model (besides, they should have been working on this full time as an open source program for free anyway).
6) You charge too much. And if it is only $10, or $5, or even $1, then pirating it shouldn't be that much of a burden to the developer.
7) I do not want to try the demo because the only meaningful way to try out a game is to try out the ENTIRE game.
8) Who cares if there is 99.9% piracy, all the developers need is to make just enough money to fund developing another game. They don't need to get rich (after all, I'm not).
9) "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
10) Because I have never had to create, develop and market a game and I don't have a clue as to what it takes to run a business.
11) It is just normal human nature to take the product of others' labor without compensating them.
12) Pirating something NEVER results in a lost sale. Not even when spread over thousands of people.
13) Because copyright law that protects GPL software is no more to be observed than copyright that protects content.
14) Personal honor is such an outmoded concept anyway.
Newell said that the "service problems" are the primary problem. He's right.
I will not buy region locked disks precisely because my family lives and works between 3 regions. Region locking is an absolute ripoff, at least for us.
Anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer
Is anything less ever acceptable in this day and age?
Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customers use or by creating uncertainty."
He's being polite. DRM is mostly a form of defective products and sales fraud.
Price *is* an issue, it needs to be reasonable. But I won't even think about that until *all of the above is out of the way* or your "product" simply doesn't exist to me.
Steam as the only authentification method).
What is his point? That he is a supporter of piracy by making sure the main reasons for it are found on Steam as well?
I don't believe any of these things apply to Valve's own games, other than Steam itself, which is pretty tame as DRM goes. He's only responsible for his own games, not those he sells for others.
I live in Latin America and have the following options for movies/music/games:
1. Get it on DVD from a pirate (approx cost $1) [ILLEGAL]
2. Rent a pirate copy (approx cost $2) [still technically ILLEGAL]
3. Buy it on iTunes (cost $1-$4).. but I can only do this because I've figure out how to get around regional limitations [psuedo-LEGAL]
4. Buying on Netflix/Amazon is not an option [N/A]
5. Going to threater (movies only).. sometimes, when/if it arrives at a timely basis (cost: $4-$5) [LEGAL]
6. Buy the legal DVD (cost: $30-$100) [LEGAL]
As you can see a great option is iTunes/Netflix/Amazon but the industry has systematically cut off those options from us. Also the legal DVDs are sold at much higher prices than in the US.
So do you wonder why there is so much piracy around the world??
There's no viable affordable legal option.
Yeah, it certainly helps me run those games I bought a few years back, especially the DRM that's not Windows 7 compatible.
DRM stops "casual" pirates (pre-crack) and it increases the R&D cost for serious pirates. Take the PS3 for example: it was not cracked until the removal of Other OS. Increasing the cost of legitimate hacking and made the USB solution more attractive to research. I do not say this in support of DRM, but any counter-argument must be honest in order to succeed. DRM works for certain definitions of "works", and that angle must be addressed head-on rather than brushed aside.
Does that logic hold true for home security? Should I do away with locks and alarm systems because all it does is "encourage" people to circumvent these safe guards? DRM serves a similar purpose to locks/alarm systems. It would prevent, or at least discourage, people who don't have the technical savvy to get around it from pirating (most people I know who pirate software are just kids/young adults who don't want to pay for anything).
this is funny because a lot of people pirate steam games because they don't like being treated like thieves first.
a pirated version of a steam game can be played at any time. not when you have a internet connection and for a lot longer then what their off-line mode allows.
a pirated steam game is not forced to update which in turn breaks mods like what happened in skryim.
a pirated steam game will be playable longer to as you will not loose the game when the steam servers disable said game.
One of the main reasons I'll download a cracked game is to try it out. Nobody releases demos anymore, and you can't trust reviews with all the goddamned shills out there. I did it for SC2, because I didn't know if it would be my thing. Well, sure enough I liked it, and bought it online the next day.
Case in point: Need For Speed - The Run. I knew it was coming from EA Black Box, responsible for all the "wigger" installments of the NFS franchise. Installed, played for about 10 minutes, deleted. Had I paid $70 for it, I would have put it in a box, shit on it, and Fedexed it to Trip Hawkins' home address with the note "Fixed it for you".
So, yes, Gabe is right, 'service" aka availability is a primary issue, and while price itself is not the most important factor, VALUE is. A staggering majority of major-brand games today lack value. They cost more than they're worth. In that sense, NFS The Run held very little value for me, because it's a shit game produced by a cut-rate studio and certainly does not belong in the same price bracket as, say, Skyrim, Arkham City or even F1 2011.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Corporate suicide is not in the best interest of the shareholders. And if you read the article, (Asking a lot I know) you will find Gabe saying that actually serving your customers IS in the best interest of the shareholders.
No one prospers unless he renders benefit to others.
-- Tadao Yoshida, founder YKK zippers
I would LOVE to buy Rocksmith.
However, it is not only not for sale in europe - the american version does not run on european XBOXes, unlike most of the XBOX games available.
Conclusion: I will buy it in the us, much cheaper, for sure, than they will sell when (or if) they release it in Europe, and then use a pirated version downloaded from somewhere in order to actually play it on my own console.
Would be much easier it they stopped bitching and just sold the damn thing - either here, or unlocked.
Almost. It's nice to buy games on steam, but unless there is a sale you pay a premium for games. Take MW3 for example, it costs 59,99€ on Steam and I just ordered it for 43€ with shipping included from a brick and mortar store and that is ass backwards. One would assume that digital distribution would have the potential to be so much cheaper than a physical product, but in Gabe's magical lala land prices are higher and they hardly ever drop at all. While I'm already mentioning MW3, lets look at Black Ops, it still costs 59.99€ on Steam but at the same B&M store I can buy it for 27€ with shipping. There are few real perks for buying the games on Steam, unless you have lots of money to burn and you really want a 'genuine' TF2 item.
I agree completely.
Check this out.... I played bf2 so seriously and competitively that my clan has won a world championship (TGL 8v8). My clan, including me, has been awaiting bf3 for years. It recently came out, and I still don't own it.... they require you dl and install EA's clone of steam and run it alongsde the game, and then the server browser uses an external web browser...... uhhhh.. no.
I won't accept that trash. Game looks awesome, and I very highly anticipated it (having spent thousands of hours on the predecessors)..... but they're asking too much of me. I will pay an extra $5 on the price if that mde them happy, but in truth they want more from me than I'm willing to give.
I know I'm not the only one to hold out.
What he says is spot on, but I think pricing is still a problem. $60-80 for a game is simply too much. I won't pay that, and certainly not when I have to put up with onerous DRM, micro payments to make the game worthwhile or allow me to be competitive online, and in game advertisements. You can't have it all; I'm looking at you, EA.
So that's why I take what I want for free. It's too expensive, and there's enough of a disconnect between the legal definition of theft and copyright infringement that I feel it's an ethical choice to make to say I'm not going to support the current copyright model, I'm going to undermine it by making it less profitable.
Eventually when things change maybe I'll start participating in the market again, but copyright, patents, "IP" was meant to be a two way street. Lobbyists and interest groups have thrown up road blocks on the side of the street that flows back to the public good. So I feel no responsibility to hold up my end.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Let me translate that:
Locks on homes prevent people you don't want from coming in
DRM prevents people from accessing the content
Only problem is... the content providers WANT people accessing the content. Locks on homes are like having a firewall, patched software and some sort of AV software on your computer... the house would work just well without the security add-ons, and so would your computer. The add-ons make it more secure.
With DRM, the entire idea is to prevent access.
Now, a real counter argument is that if people are grabbing pirated copies of the content, there is nothing to prove that the content is still secure and hasn't been monkeyed with by the pirates, to, say, add botnet software, a keylogger, or something else nefarious.
Then again, some of the DRM software includes keylogger and/or botnet-like hooks that the Bad Guys can leverage, so it's probably a wash.
If your home security system only worked when you didn't have a cold, and only worked for some members of your household, or otherwise prevented people with the right to access the home from doing so in an accustomed manner, you'd find that security feature hobbled in some manner pretty quickly. Then you get the appearance of security without the benefit... just like with DRM.
If the above service is provided, it has a huge advantage over pirate content to most people
- No need to download using "torrents" from a shady site with shady advertising
- Avoids viruses/trojan from the less reliable file sharing sites ( not a big problem now, but that could be "arranged" by the power-that-be)
I think the price can easily be
$1 a song
$3 a TV episodes (how much does a single viewer bring in in advertising fees? Might add a selection $1,00 with advertising, $3,00 without)
$5 - $6 (50% of a movie ticket seems reasonable, smaller screen, worse sound system). Multiple views allowed.
$1 - $2 for a one-off streaming solution to your whatever-player connected to the TV (Same pricing as renting a redbox DVD).
And a netflix-like streaming service for older movies.
Do not try to limit personal sharing by DRM, but distribute huge, high-quality sites over a really fat internet pipe that can be streamed, so the price you pay is partly for the convenience of not having to copy the file, walk to your friend, copy it to his computer and watch it.
s/don't want/can't afford/
DRM does not stop casual or any type of pirates, from everything the general public has been told/seen from cracking groups Ubisoft with their draconian DRM was just as fast and easy to crack as every other game ever released.
And the PS3 has nothing to do with it, that is all hardware restrictions.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
From my personal experience, I'd say piracy is a pricing AND a service problem. During my student years, I pirated almost every game except a select few I absolutely wanted to have. 50€ was alot of money for me, and downloading something from the internet was more comfortable than getting a copy from a store and sticking the CD in every time I wanted to play. I didn't have Steam back then.
Now I'm using Steam and have a job. I've probably spent around 200-300€ on games this year, taking up many of the special discount offers on Steam, even buying games "legit" that I have pirated CDs lying around. Steam makes it easy, and now that I have the money, I don't think twice about spending 20€ on a game every month or so. From this experience I'd say that piracy has nothing todo with greed, bad intent or trickery. It's just plain lazyness and circumstance. And DRM is a waste of time that only makes things worse for paying customers.
But Jesus was the first pirate. He "copied" bread and fish for tons of people who wanted it. Doesn't that mean that good Christians should advocate sharing and copying, or as you refer to it, "piracy?"
But there are also a number of services that many people find valuable that the pirate can't provide, such as "Not breaking the law" and "Supporting the artists".
If the legal service is as convenient as the illegal service, and the only differences are the price and the legality, a lot of people will choose the legal service rather than the free service, even if the legal service is significantly more expensive. Again, we have evidence for this in the form of Steam, which manages somehow to sell games for $60 that you could pirate for free. If price was the problem, Steam would have failed long ago.
Of course charging for something diminishes it's value. Just look at open source.
Except that DRM isn't in itself about charging for something. I don't mind paying for a product. I mind very much paying for a product and then having to jump through hoops to get it delivered to me. And then finding that some software that's not needed to use my product but required anyway before the product will allow itself to be used causes problems with other software on my machine. And then finding out that I'm not allowed to use my product even though I've paid for it, just because I want to use it somewhere other than the machine I was using when I paid for it. Or that it won't allow itself to be displayed because of the particular I/O channel I want to use (even though, remember, I paid for it and I'm not trying to make illegal copies of it). And of course wondering whether I'll be able to keep using it when the company I bought it from goes out of business or decides to change their DRM scheme and the DRM servers the product wants to talk to aren't there anymore (through no fault of mine), or if my computer breaks and I have to replace it and reload everything and of course I can't reload the product because I only got the one copy and I'm not allowed to make backups (more copies).
Meanwhile, the illegal copy will play anywhere I want to play it. It'll keep playing as long as I have a copy, no matter what happens to anybody else's servers. I can back it up so I don't have to worry about losing my hard drive's contents. And I don't have to worry nearly as much about software conflicts.
By your admission that there exist "cracking groups" my statement is justified. The average person lacks the expertise to break most DRM schemes and therefore relies upon experts, even if the task is dead simple for said experts. Really, stop trying to pretend that it isn't an arms race. Solid arguments against DRM focus on the fact that it's wrong, not that it's ineffective.
punishes honest consumers and doesn't effect real pirates at all
once you realize the truth of that, you stop trying to fight piracy and start thinking of revenue flows in ways that have nothing to do with piracy and controlling digital media access
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I know that. Prior to the removal of OtherOS, the cost to crack the PS3 was higher than the cost to use a supported platform feature. After its removal, cracking became an attractive target (and as you point out, it didn't take long).
What? no.
The average person cannot crack anything, pre, post, or current DRM. You do not even need copy protection to stop the average person.
I guaranty you, the average person that they companies are worried about would not even be able to get around anything ever created to slow or stop pirating.
DRM is not about copy protection, DRM is about restricting the use of a product to paying customers. It is not some fundamental improved technique of copy protection as it is fundamentally the same to crack. and as it has since the dawn of the computer takes interested and technically skilful individual/group to get around.
Not that any programmer cannot learn the ropes in a matter of hours.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Into which of your proposed 14 bins does "The publisher has declined to make the video game available for sale at all in my home country" fall?
Also the legal DVDs are sold at much higher prices than in the US.
That might not be the fault of the studios as much as of national governments. Brazil and several other Latin American countries have prohibitive import duties for home entertainment products. Vote in a government that gets its revenue from things other than imports.
Precisely why I have a computer for each purpose. I mean, this goes both ways - music software and audio drivers can be a nightmare with regards to DRM and instability.
If my recording PC gets fubar'd, I can just format, reinstall, and use my network backups... same with the gaming PC. It's sad, but that's the way it has to be until virtualization is fast enough to run these things. Workstation PC is Linux, which just doesn't get screwed up on the same level as Windows does.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
You mean like how they forced EA to release BF3 to steam without their DRM that bordered on spyware? Oh, right, they never did get BF3, because the publishers are more powerful than you apparently give them credit for.
Heck for the last few years there's been heaps of memory patcher's for steam, at least one of them working with the current version. Copy the game content from someone and you can play it (no multiplayer servers obviously).
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
As long as the business side of content creation continues to load their side of the social bargain, neither side can claim the moral high ground. Piracy is not right, but neither is life of the author+70 years, RETROACTIVELY to save a mouse from entering the public domain. I would also like to remind you that copyright infringement is not stealing from most logical perspectives. Its a COMPLETELY distinct and separate crime from stealing from pretty much any legal standpoint.
Good-bye
Absolutely agree.
There is one more aspect he forgets to mention:
Dear publishers, if you put out all this DRM and copy-protection and basically treat me like a criminal, then who am I to argue with you? I'll use The Pirate Bay, because apparently that's what you expect me to do.
If you treat me like a valued customer, then I will be one. There's a shelf full of boxes right next to me proving that I'm quite willing to spend money on games. But I don't enter into business relationships with people who disrespect me. I'd rather respond by disrespecting them as well.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'm curious what DRM are you talking about? SecuROM just does a simple CD check to make sure the CD is legit. Ofcource it also tries to secure itself and prevent other programs from poking around its code by installing some kernel mode components. AFAIK it does not install any audio components. I've seen DPC latency being affected more by buggy audio/video/wifi drivers than anything else. Just because a DRM solution installs a driver doesn't mean its going to bump up the latency of ALL your audio programs.
DRM does not stop casual or any type of pirates
If somebody attempts to bypass DRM they are no longer a "casual" pirate. A casual pirate is somebody who takes their friend's install disc home for a night, installs the game and starts playing. They may not even realize this is illegal. That's a casual pirate. The moment you start looking for a cracked copy or downloading a keygen or what not, you're not being "casual" anymore, you're determined to do something illegal and by God you're gunna do it.
This guy has identified exactly the issue, which seems to elude almost every software company, and music and video publishers too (and an astonishing amount of executives in other fields too): it is all about putting the customer first. When companies put DRM on their product, and other impediments to product satisfaction, they are putting their customer last. The problem is fundamentally one of mistaken priorities at an executive level: sometimes that manifests itself as DRM, sometimes it manifests itself as not putting a superior product out for fear of "cannibalizing" an existing product, sometimes it shows itself in hidden fees and misleading terms. These are all symptoms of the same mistaken priorities.
To implementors, DRM is about raising the rate of payment-per-user which is essentially copy protection. Onerous restrictions on paying customers are collateral damage. Sadly.
The part you are missing is the part where Ubisoft's DRM servers go down and you CAN'T access the software you paid for. You did not buy a license to use the software whenever you want, you bought a license to use the software whenever they let you. Hence the analogy to an alarm system that locks out both unauthorized and authorized users.
Locks let the legitimate residents in and out, and keep out the intruders.
DRM locks legitimate users out, and does nothing to stop teh ebil piratees.
So yeah, if your home security company works like DRM, then you'd be doing everyone a favor by doing away with them.
Downmodding is a perfectly acceptable response to shilling and astroturfing. And since your post could have been lifted verbatim from any one of a dozen PR dribble pieces from Kotick, Guillaume de Fondaumiere, or any of those other crybabies, it's not an unreasonable conclusion to draw.
Stealing is denying someone just compensation.
I'd say stealing is taking something that someone already owns away from that. Afterwards, they will no longer have it at all. Or, at least, that's what I think the average person thinks when they hear/read the word.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Piracy is not right
What is "right"? What is "wrong"? Seems subjective to me.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Region blocking or other barriers to access are the equivalent of infinite price. I can't tell whether Mr. Newell is mincing words or just doesn't get this. Barriers to access tend to incentivize the very behavior they are supposed to stop, namely black markets, and are therefore often counterproductive. This is true for games, for books, for drugs (legal and otherwise). See Adrian Johns' "Piracy" (http://www.amazon.com/Piracy-Intellectual-Property-Gutenberg-Gates/dp/0226401197/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322280844&sr=8-1).
You do know that Half-Life 2 is available on platforms that don't use Windows or Steam, meaning the PS3 and Xbox360. I run LInux on the PC and game on my PS3 myself.
It is extremely strange that people who will happily pay $30 on going to a movie
Which people? I would do no such thing.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
No. That was GNU/Jesus and those were GPL'd loaves and fishes.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Uh. Pirates have been working on breaking the ps3 open. The first tool shipped with the jb dongle was an hdloader with no provided tool chain.
The fact that the damn thing was 5 bucks in parts that was sold for much more than that should be evidence enough that this whole notion that hackers break consoles first for the good of the gaming community is silly at best, stupid at worst. Every console got broken for piracy first then homebrew.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
yes, I saw that, but your viewpoint is well....silly, because you can't have it both ways.
If you want to play games on PC's that means Windows and in some cases means having that Windows machine connected to the Internet., if you are not willing to put up with windows/Steam, then you either play on consoles or just simply not play games, it's that simple. You want to play HL2 but you are not willing to do what you have to do to play it.
Yo Gabe, you dare come up with this bullshit in the same week in which your code monkeys forced a stealth patch onto skyrim's TESV.exe, disabling the large address aware patch? Seriously? I know it is fixed by now - not by your retard outfit, but by the community, but seriously? Give me one reason why I ever again should buy from your huckster business, just one. I used to like steam, but this week you made it abundantly clear that you are nothing but a shitstain.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
An LLC is absolutely NOT an S-Corp... unless you want it to be (and specifically notify the IRS that you want it to be). There are a LOT of restrictions on S-Corps (no foreign owners, only one class of stock, no more than 75 shareholders, etc) so it's highly unlikely that a corporation the size of Valve is an S-Corp..
The vast majority of LLCs are treated as either sole proprietorships or partnerships for tax purposes.
The important part is that the type of company you incorporate as at the state level doesn't one-to-one map to a kind of taxable entity. Incorporation is a creature of state law, and federal taxes are a creature of federal law.
paintball
Rather than steam, consider this might be age, and wisdom. A few years ago before even steam came up I stopped pirating because it was not worth the hassle. Ah , who am I kidding, in my case it was probably only age.
Can you get the $30 movie experience at home for free? The big screen, 400 gazillion channel surround sound, that same popcorn, the same atmosphere, the same idiots yelling at the screen during horror movies... some people seem to like the experience and are willing to pay for it.
How about the $60 meal? Can you sit at home for free and wait for a meal to magically appear without paying for it?
Games, on the other hand, are played at home in exactly the same way whether you pay for them or pirate them. That's what makes it easy to say "Geee, I'm not paying $20 for a DRM-laden piece of crap!"
Not saying it's right, just that it's different from the movie theater experience or going out to eat.
Honest question. What is region locking supposed to accomplish anyway? Wouldn't it simplify the distribution process by making a universal version? Not to mention make them them more money (due potentially to less piracy, and better viral effects).
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
C'mon, it's not rocket science! Even if people didn't care about the price, even if people didn't care about not having to stay online constantly of insert a CD, it's obvious to choose the cracked over the DRMified product.
What matters to the purchaser of goods or services is its usefulness. If you're offered a TV with and without the ability to connect your media server to it directly, and offered at the same price, which one would you choose? Hell, even if you don't own a media server and don't plan to have one, you'd take the one with the server connection ability, given that all other parameters are the same. Why? Because it's additional value, useful to you or not, but why forgo value if you get it at no additional cost and no drawback?
Now imagine that ability doesn't cost more but less. Yes, you can either buy a TV without a feature you don't use, or get a cheaper TV that's basically identical but has a feature you don't use. Take a wild guess which one most people would choose. Yes, even if they don't benefit from the feature.
Ok, a better example, since the crackers don't "add" value, they remove the reduction of value. Imagine you could get a DVD player with or without region lock. Which one do you choose, if the non-locked one is cheaper?
Oh, legality? Ok, imagine said DVD player in the example above is from some shady, maybe-not-so-quite-certainly-legal import. Think people care about it? They get what they want, that's all that matters to people.
Price is not the issue. It's convenience. Yes, convenience is a value in a product. If they have to jump through hoops to get it to work, people don't really like the product. They want a product that works. If there has ever been a good example, it's the success of Windows compared to the free alternative Linux. Most people chose Windows over Linux in the past, simply for convenience reasons. It was a hassle for the average Joe to get Linux to work, and hence they preferred a product they have to pay for.
Still want to tell me the main reason for copying and cracking is money?
Actually, the main argument against cracking was convenience. Not anymore. The more recent variants of DRM nixed that argument in the eyes of most customers. Until recently, buying content instead of copying and cracking it was the convenient way to get a game. Not anymore. By now, you usually get more hassle from buying than from copying. The game industry killed off its main selling point, all by itself. Today, with invasive DRM that fucks up your computer, that kills your game if you dare to go offline during play (deliberately, because your ISP craps out or because their overloaded authentication server does), that essentially causes you unnecessary trouble, they created the best and strongest incentive to turn to copying themselves!
It took Gabe to tell you that? Really? I dunno, but I'd say that's quite obvious to anyone who ever bought and/or copied a game. Of course, this does not apply to game studios who see their customers as their main enemies rather than their partners, but that's their problem.
I wish for their slow, painful death. And, I guess I'll be granted my wish if they don't catch on soon.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Same here. Actually, a tad bit worse even.
I live in a country that dubs its shows. Everything on TV is dubbed. And often enough, BADLY dubbed. You do not want to watch Simpsons in my country. The jokes are destroyed, almost invariably. So what I'd want is to watch it in its original language. I speak English well enough to understand what's going on, and besides actually finally getting to understand the jokes, the dubbed voices often sound atrocious at best.
So, ok, not on TV, I can understand that. Some people here wouldn't like that and they want their dubbed shows. Ok. Let me buy the DVD box when it gets out.
I cannot. Why? Because it's only available in the US because it hasn't been dubbed yet and hence not shown yet. We're now about to get to see how Charlie Sheen drops out of 2 1/2 men. It's been the talk in the pre-show ads on the networks that carry the show. Don't miss the last show with him! And see how it pans out after him! Yaddayadda... How long ago has he gone bananas and was fired? A year?
We're usually one season behind, give or take. Not to mention that I routinely get to see holiday specials at the most inappropriate times, Christmas specials are usually around September (next year) and Halloween is somewhere in the spring, but you get used to that.
What bothers me most is that often I can't even buy the DVD box without the dubbing AT ALL. Not even after we finally get to buy a DVD box (which happens a few years after nobody can even stomach the reruns anymore), you get the dubbed version (but hey, I could buy it dubbed in a billion languages I don't speak and never heard about) but for some odd reason you simply can't buy the undubbed version without some dimwit monkey screwing with the script and turning it inside out, often enough not only destroying the jokes but sometimes even turning around the entire fucking story (especially often encountered in Anime, you don't want to know how they get butchered sometimes. I don't speak Japanese, but I kid you not when I tell you I sometimes get more of the meaning in an undubbed version than in the dubbed one).
Now, why can't I buy the original? Why not? Aside of having to wait at least a YEAR after its creation to finally see it at all, why can't I simply dare to decide that I do not want to be subjected to atrocious voice acting to a script written by someone who very obviously never saw the show before or has any idea what it's about?
Why the fuck not?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How's that tinfoil hat feel on your head?
There are several ways to connect a windows machine to the Internet in a safe fashion. Run it through a firewall, turn off unneccessary services and use chrome or firefox.
Problem solved. I have several machines that all NAT through an old Linux box. Firewall blocks all incoming ports, allows ports 80, 443 and 22 out. one of those machines is a windows 7 box for playing games. It used to be xp. Ive had it an had it online for over 10 years now without a SINGLE infection ever.
You sound smart so just don't do dumb shit
That's a fallacy. The price of an item does not affect its value. If you sell a pound of butter for a buck it's by no means less valuable than if you sold it for a hundred bucks. The price only determines whether someone deems the value appropriate to the price and whether he will pay the price because he deems the value of the product as appropriate to its price. There are games I won't buy at 50 bucks but I will buy when they get slashed down to 20, because I consider that to be the value of the game.
The value of an item is only affected by itself and its properties. DRM devalues an item because it becomes less useful to the person supposed to be using it. Convenience IS actually a value property of an item. If you don't believe me, please explain the success, especially the initial success before it got cool, of Apple's latest line of iProducts. iPods neither had better sound quality nor more processing power, they also had not more space for music or were more versatile. They were, essentially, more convenient. There was very little you had to know or do to make it work. It's not easy for me to admit it, but that's what made Apple's iCrap the megaseller that they are: Convenience. The stuff works, and it works the way the customer wants. And that's all the customer cares about, in the end!
This is also why you won't convince me that price and the fact that copied content is free is the main reason why people do it. Yes, the hunters and gatherers who 'must' have it all, for them it's a big issue because they couldn't buy it all. But they also wouldn't buy all the movies they collect, who could watch a few hundred hours of movies per day? But if money is the main reason for people to choose something, why didn't free OSS take over the software market years ago? Again, convenience. For the longest time it was quite a bit more convenient to use Windows vs. using Linux. Only now that Linux has become about as convenient to use as Windows, usage numbers start to climb noticeably.
It's convenience. Not price.
And DRM reduces the convenience of content. It's more convenient for me to put a movie on my media server than having to insert that DVD every time I want to watch a movie, something DRM prohibits. It's more convenient to just play a game instead of having to find the DVD to it. Hence the popularity of Steam. It's more convenient to click on "download now" than to go down to the music store for a CD. Hence the success of iTunes.
As you can see, price doesn't play a big role here. It's simply convenience. And DRM takes away from this, and hence devalues a product. Yes, the iTunes DRM is stunning, too, so why do people put up with it? Because it doesn't keep them from using the content the way they want to. Simple as that. If your DRM still lets (most) people do what they want to do, you'll get away with it. If it cuts into what most people want to do, it will render your product devoid of value.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Which will not work with any of my other games?
I was under the impression that it was needless to say, but apparently it wasn't: You'd keep the console for your region and buy an additional U.S. console.
Then I just get the pc version.
Provided they even make one. There are entire genres of games where a PC version is traditionally almost unheard of.
Uh oh, He gave away the secret. So now game companies can charge twice as much, make them available instantly in all regions, and make them available via download, and then piracy will go away. In a pig's eye.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Hate replying to an AC on such a subject, but then really want to get this off me:
I'm a game developer who doesn't want people to pirate my stuff but don't give a fuck about the 70+ years crap
Then will commit to releasing the game to the public domain after (for example) 10 years? A statement to that effect within the "EULA" of your game would have legal effect unless you've drafted it horribly.
which BTW is irrelevant here because that only applies to music/movies/books and such 'literary' stuff and not games specifically. http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html
If I'm not mistaken, computer programs are considered "literary" works. How else are the game companies claiming copyright over the game code?
Stealing is denying someone just compensation.
As others have mentioned, "stealing" is taking away things owned by others. If I own an expensive car because my rich friend gave it to me as a gift, it's not my "just compensation", but you'd still be stealing if you took it away. "compensation" has nothing to do with the concept of stealing.
Don't quote me on this.
Not sure how it is that they simply throw that out. Though I do not pirate games, one of the things that chaps my hide is that a game cost $50-$60 upon release via S.T.E.A.M. or any other digital-only avenue still. Why is it that a digital-only version costs as much as brick-n-mortar version? There is no shipping, packaging, burning, printing, etc. involved yet the pricing is the same. Add to that, a majority of the games are soon in the bargain basement lot on the digital download sites within a few weeks. I refuse to buy a game immediately upon release any long due to this and the initial pricing garbage now. These companies continue to believe that their bottom line must be met through breaking our wallets even though studies to the contrary have shown this to be completely unnecessary. Better pricing along with a better supply channel is how to win the hearts of almost all players. To be sure, some people that pirate will never purchase a legitimate release but then again, they were never the true market anyway. Their road is set in stone, as they say.
There's commercial pirates who make money off pirated games/software. But, as with movies and music, they aren't the ones putting it up for download. They're the ones stamping exact copies of the discs on cheap Asian production lines, duplicating the case art, and selling cheap physical copies into the regular distribution stream. And with multiple tiers of distribution the retailer may not even be aware of it, they may be getting their product through a distributor whose buyer found a really great price from a new wholesaler.
It isn't limited to media, either. We've had cases around here of stuff at big supermarket and retail chains turning out to be counterfeit. It slipped through because it was coming through the store's normal distributor and the price was low enough to be something they couldn't pass up but not so low that it was "too good to be true".
Indeed. Because nobody has ever pirated anything if: it doesn't have DRM and is available for sale on the internet. That stuff never gets pirated. Seriously, when are we going to admit that either: Gabe doesn't actually know what he's talking about, or that Gabe is merely doing an elaborate song and dance to say whatever will make him most adored by the public?
> "As long as the business side of content creation continues to load their side of the social bargain, neither side can claim the moral high ground."
Do you realize how many game companies either release their games for free after ten or fifteen years, or they sell them on GOG for $5? Sorry, you have no argument against the games industry - especially when they're not the ones making or lobbying for those laws.
I doubt i'd really want the $30 movie experience at home...
You touched on the idiots yelling at the screen, but add to that the idiots eating the nosiest possible food in the noisiest way (why do they sell such noisy food for consumption during movies?), or using mobile phones, or talking, or even falling asleep and snoring... The fact that the food and drink on offer is usually extremely poor quality and exceedingly unhealthy.. The seats are generally uncomfortable, excessively cramped and/or dirty, and you can quite often get someone extremely tall sat in front of you.
At home the screen may not be as big, but projectors are widely available these days and you can generally sit close enough to make up the difference... Also you will sit relatively straight to the screen, whereas in a cinema there are only a few seats which are in optimal locations while others will have a very poor view. Similarly you can get a pretty good surround sound system at home, and you can position yourself optimally in relation to it.
And on the other hand, many cinema systems are old and outdated so might not even be as good as what you buy for home use.
Plus don't forget toilet breaks, once you've guzzled the ridiculous size soft drink they sold you, sooner or later you will need the toilet... At home you could pause, in a cinema you can't and will end up missing some of the movie.
As for a $60 meal, well someone actually has to prepare that meal for you, you can't just replicate one like they do in star trek, but you can replicate games and movies.
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Maybe a better analogy would be this. There's a Best Buy, and two doors down an open-air market.
Best buy has the problem that some sketchy sellers from the open-air market shoplift stuff, walk down the street, and sell it to people at a huge discount.
So what they do is attach a big ugly thing to every piece of electronic equipment that uses the 3G network to make sure you've paid for this device. If cell phone coverage goes out, the whole device stops working.
The sketchy sellers from the open-air market do just as much shoplifting; they just remove the big ugly kludge. But now, more people buy from the shoplifters, because what they get is not only cheaper, but better too.
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
I would use such a service, even if an equivalent pirate service was available for free... On the basis that:
The pirates would not be offering a superior product, they would be offering the same product but with the added risk of it being illegal. With prices low enough that its effectively throw-away money there would be no reason to run the risk of using the illegitimate service.
Also the pirate service is likely to be harder to find, likely to be less reliable and likely to have considerably less bandwidth available to it.
As it currently stands the pirates offer a better product, the price is just one part of it.
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Agreed 100% on the cinema crap. Even worse: My girlfriend loves going to the cinema, but doesn't understand a word of English... so I end up being dragged into German-dubbed crap.
The only good thing: They sell pretty decent beer at the snack bars...
But then you're making assumptions about the pirate - just as I am making assumptions in that they wouldn't.
"torrents" is already in common language use in the general public, so I'm not sure why it's in quotes. I also don't know why e.g. The Pirate Bay would be considered shady - perhaps those using it know it operates in a legal grey area of sorts, but shady? Similarly, I haven't even seen an ad there.
Alternatively, there's lots of people who actually pay ($10/month or whatever) for access to a news server, and they visit the so-called shady NZB-indexing type sites to figure out what to actually get from them. If they were truly so shady, I wouldn't think that a random chap would be doing so in order to get content onto their brand name mediaplayer they picked up in a big name electronics store using the very interface that player provides.
Now obviously the argument can be made eliminating all piracy is wishful thinking, just as I'm not suggesting that nobody at all would make use of the legal service.
But all things being equal, the people who would go for the paid variant versus the free one would have very little reason to do so other than moral ones - and if they previously downloaded instead of purchasing DVDs, then their morals on that front are already fairly weak.
Half-life game series was being sold in Russia for 1/10th of the US price. But it came region-locked, if you had an IP address which did not look Russian to Steam - you couldn't play your purchased game. I believe this lock is still in place.
I think Germany is affected too, due to its censorship laws (no human violence in games). I heard they have special editions of Left4Dead and others, and you cannot play other versions.
It is all expectations and the perceived cost of making my copy.
I can understand paying $30 for a movie. After all, the projector uses quite a lot of power, the building itself has to be maintained etc, in short, there are costs associated with each showing. I also get exactly what I expected - the ability to see the movie once.If I want to see the movie again, they will have to show it again.
I can understand paying $60 in a restaurant. The food had to be prepared, the ingredients cost money and the staff needs salaries, that is, I can kind-of see where that money went. Again, I get exactly what I expected - the food, which, of course, I can only eat once, but to me it is worth the money. If I want to eat there again, they will have to prepare the food again.
I can understand paying $a_lot for a vacation because it seems worth it to me, again, I get what I expected. The fact that the vacation does not last forever is not artificial. Also, if I go there again, a lot of the costs will be incurred again.
If I buy a camera, I pay for the R&D costs and the costs of making my camera. The camera is mine forever, well, at least until it wears out (and I hope it is well built, or at least can be repaired) or lost/destroyed (depends on how careful I am). As you see, big part of this depends on me, not the manufacturer. If the manufacturer makes cameras that wear out after 1 year, I will buy a camera from another manufacturer. If I want another camera, it will have to be made again, so the cost of manufacture will be incurred again
Now, we get to games. Games cost a lot to develop, but almost nothing to copy. So, when I buy a copy, I pay for part of the development costs (which were incurred only once per each game, not copy) and the full cost of copying (which is much smaller compared to the development costs, or so everybody says). Also, a game is a finished product, like the camera, so I should not pay for it continuously, because I do not get any continuous service (MMOs are exception). So, I should be able to use it like the camera - buy once, use forever, because it was made only once. Also, if I want to buy another copy of the game,only the small copying costs are incurred, but I can justify it if I really want another copy (to give to a friend perhaps). Also, while I may lose the camera, that depends on me, not some company, as is the case with DRM games. I would not buy a camera that stopped working when the manufacturer went out of business, why should I buy such a game?
I have devices that are 40 years old or older. Not only the factory is out of business, but the entire country that made them (the USSR) no longer exists. The devices still work, there is not reason they should stop working.
So, why should I pay continuously for something you did only once (develop the game)?
The difference is simple - your lock on the house allows you to keep everybody (except you and people who you want to let in or trust enough to give them a copy of the key) out.
DRM is different. It is, if you tried to get some technological solution (that does not need guards) to allow me in, but not allow me to also let my friend in at the same time and make this scalable to thousands of people and hundreds of places.
DRM is designed to prevent people, who paid for the content (and should be allowed access to it), from accessing the content in the wrong way (copying it). For audio, it cannot work, for video, it can work in theory, as long as the bitrate is too high for any recording device, for software it can work, but requires the software to run on a server (always online) and this is something people do not always like.
"Pretty tame as DRM goes" is a very odd sort of apology for it. Frankly, DRM is DRM. I dont mind pay $60 for a good game, but if it comes with DRM you couldnt pay me to install it.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Bread is open source, and God owns the copyright on fish. Try again!
If only, the cinemas around here are alcohol free zones. That said, people are rowdy enough in them without adding alcohol to the mix...
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Yep... I live in Norway and for some dumb ass reason, I am forced by Disney to buy a DVD of the Lego of the Pirates of the Caribbean as opposed to downloading from Steam or elsewhere. Sure this is no big deal... well except that the computer connected to my living room TV is a new Mac Mini without a DVD drive.
... preferably on Steam where I have Lego Harry Potter, Lego Universe, Lego Star Wars, Lego Star Wars III, Lego Indiana Jones and probably another I'm forgetting... but I haven't purchased the Lego Pirates of the Caribbean yet since I can't use the DVD version.
So.... I just downloaded a pirated copy of the game instead and we play that. I'm waiting for an electronic release of it
Up yours Disney... feel free to knock on my door now that you know who I am...
In face publisher compete against pirates about who will offer the better product. People balance the cost and benefit of both and take the best one.
For example.
Pirates :
+ free
+ easy to get
- illegal
- possible broken cracks and malware
Publisher :
- need to pay (even if it is just $0.01, taking out you credit card is not something trivial)
- DRM
- annoyances (like FBI warnings)
+ additional content (online servers for games, bonus for DVD)
+ physical object
+ timely updates
+ sympathy for developers
People will attach a value to every item (a mostly unconscious process). If the total advantage offered by publisher matches the price they ask, people will buy the product.