 |
 |
|
If you enjoy reading this site, you might also want to check out these Think Services sites:
 Game Career Guide (for student game developers.)
 Indie Games (for independent game players/developers.)
 Finger Gaming (news, reviews, and analysis on iPhone and iPod Touch games.)
 GamerBytes (for the latest console digital download news.)
 Worlds In Motion (discussing the business of online worlds.)
 Game Set Watch (the Group's alt.game weblog.) |
|
|
|
| |
Opinion: No More Excuses On PC Piracy
by Chris Remo
|
|
| |
|
August 6, 2008
|
| |
[PC game developers and publishers often cite piracy as a primary reason why the format generally enjoys less success than console titles -- in this opinion piece, Gamasutra's Chris Remo passionately deconstructs the usual gamer arguments that aim to minimize piracy's impact.]
Every time a developer brings up the reality of extensive game piracy on the PC -- and recent examples include not only console-heavy Capcom but also PC-slanted Crytek -- there is a huge contingent of gamers that angrily responds with derision, citing any number of excuses ranging from the general ("those people wouldn't be spending money on games anyway") to the specific ("that game was buggy and didn't deserve to be purchased").
Before getting into the meat of those arguments, it should be noted that there are indeed a wealth of factors that contribute to the PC being a difficult platform for developers, completely aside from piracy.
Compatibility and other development issues, the lack of a true central platform-holder marketing role, the perception of the PC as more utilitarian than a dedicated entertainment console, and other such stumbling blocks present their own challenges.
(There are, of course, related benefits, such as the freedom of an open platform, the lack of royalty rates or the need for concept approval and certification, a more direct line of communication to the player base, a wealth of distribution options, and so on.)
Back to the topic at hand, while there is certainly some truth to the notion that not everybody who pirates a game would have purchased it -- "free" is an attractive price point -- it is preposterous to suggest that this axiom can be extended to the full body of pirates.
No Data Doesn't Mean No Impact
No, not everyone who pirates a game would have bought it. But when you can go to any torrent site at any given moment and see thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people downloading a game, even weeks after it came out, how can any reasonable person not accept that there were lost sales?
We don’t know what specific percentage of those pirated copies are lost sales, but a lack of that data does not make those potential sales negligible.
After all, we know from firsthand statements that now-defunct Ritual, just as one example, saw considerably more technical support requests from pirates than from legitimate customers on Sin Episodes. The tailored excuse for that game was that it was too short, or not good enough.
But if those support-seeking pirates actually cared enough about the game working properly to call up tech support and deal with real people (people who are paid by revenue of game sales), they must have thought it was good enough.
Tech Support And "Deserving"
SiN Episodes is just one example. Every time the topic is raised -- be it by a top-shelf developer, or a less prominent one -- a million reasons appear as to why that particular game or that particular developer just don’t deserve the support of the discerning PC gaming community.
It happens every time, with the excuses tuned for each game. At that point, they stop being isolated examples, and they become part of a very clear trend.
Even developers who have done amazing things for the PC community have been ridiculed for daring to point out the obvious -- that piracy is a problem on the platform. In their particular cases, often their games are pinned as being too old and tired, or not innovative enough, or too targeted and demanding.
It isn't that such criticisms are invalid on their own merits, but the reality is that non-innovative games sell well all the time in this industry, and if people do in fact want to play them, developers have a right to take issue with piracy.
Some arguments are more general. ”Nobody wants to play this on PC” or “PC software is buggy and not worth the money” are common. If people genuinely didn’t want to play it or already played it on consoles, they wouldn’t need to pirate it. If they feel PC software is too buggy across the board, they shouldn’t be playing PC games.
The Cultural Environment
The sad and frustrating part is that the main effect this has is that more and more developers and publishers are simply going to stop bringing their games to the PC. Why even bother, if the system has so many challenges to begin with, and the community they are overcoming those challenges for is full of so many stubborn idealogues?
I don’t even accuse the apologists of being pirates, although doubtless some are. But many PC gamers do have an incredibly quick-tempered reaction as soon as piracy comes up, citing numerous potential factors, always the same ones: it’s too buggy, the game sucks, it’s not right for the PC platform, etc.
At the end of the day, if lots of people are still pirating those games, those arguments are basically meaningless, because in those games the pirates see something there worthwhile enough.
There is also the oft-made observation that PC piracy is a platform-specific cultural thing -- that many people pirate dozens of games and don’t even play them. If so, that's hardly a defensible culture. That huge base of potential pirates, whether players or not, only makes it easier and more likely pirated games will be available and accessible for people who actually plan on pirating the game rather than buying it.
Console piracy exists as well, obviously. But I would bet real dollars (the kind you buy games with) that it’s not remotely as much of a problem on home consoles as it is on PC. Take the PSP. There’s a system where piracy is known to be considerably more widespread, and unlike the home consoles it’s much easier to see the effect -- game sales languish, while the hardware itself sells extremely briskly.
Maybe it’s that piracy is less convenient harder on home consoles, or maybe it’s a psychological thing, in which people don’t associate those systems with piracy.
When it comes down to it, if PC software is consistently pirated more than console software, and it obviously is, it’s going to continue to be a disincentive for full-scale game developers to put their games on the system.
We Can't All Be Blizzard And Valve
You can point to Blizzard and Valve all you want, and many do, with good reason. Those PC-oriented developers have clearly not been crippled by piracy. But not every developer is, or can be, a Blizzard or a Valve.
In the real world, that’s just how it works. Other companies can’t afford to sit around and generate twelve years of goodwill while they hope their games turn out to be some of the best-selling titles of all time.
Not all studios are necessarily capable of that, and they shouldn’t have to be stacked up against two of the top few companies in the entire industry every time this topic comes up. It’s utterly unrealistic. If, every time I wrote an article, I was told, “Well, this sure sucks compared to Tolstoy or Vonnegut,” I don’t know if I’d find that very constructive.
PC gamers can be self-righteous and smug about PC games until the cows come home, but it’s not going to be doing anything good for the platform long-term.
For the record, I love the smaller, more niche, lower-budget PC titles, the ones like Stardock’s that eschew DRM and are less affected by this phenomenon. Those are great games, and it’s proper that their developers be praised for them. But I also enjoy the bigger-budget titles that, just by virtue of reality, need to sell more to make it worthwhile to put them on PC.
I like being able to use my PC for a wide range of gaming. I like that companies are starting to take more chances on the PC again these days. I don’t like that when they do, and they run into the sad reality of rampant piracy, they’re met with nonstop snarkiness.
I’m not even going to get into arguing against people who defend the piracy itself (rather than just attacking the developers who cite piracy), because those arguments seem self-evident. I am sure our readers can be trusted to fill in those blanks.
The PC is currently going through a great period of support, with a number of high-quality exclusives and multiplatform games coming to the system. But in many cases, those games are the result of companies seeing bigger market opportunities on the PC than they had previously thought.
If those opportunities are nullified by unchecked piracy -- with salt poured on the wound by the jeers of PC gamers -- those companies will see little reason to stick around, and PC gamers (myself included) won’t have much to feel superior about.
|
| |
|
|
I used to pirate when I was younger and I stopped for one simple reason. Someone honestly challenged me on the moral ethics of the matter and when I got truly HONEST with myself I couldn't justify my actions on a moral ground so I stopped. My reason for pirating was simple. I didn't have the money to pay for the software I was using and my friends response was "what's that matter and how does that make pirating it ok?"
It's simple but with me that's what literally happened and I stopped pirating software, game, music and movies. If I don't have the money to buy what I want I either live without it or I find a free alternative. Contrary to popular belief you can try out a game demo to see what a game's like.
The reality is people are going to pirate. Part of me hates the piracy but an even bigger part of me hates the excuses. I just wish they were honest with themselves about why they are doing it. They simply don't want to pay so they steal it. If people were truly "trying before they buy" then we'd see more sales and piracy would be seen as just as a way of trying an extended demo. We know that despite excuses people are making people ARE playing these games. They just aren't buying them.
Secondly, more on the side, but in the beginning, the author suggests that there is no "true central platform-holder marketing role" on the PC. I think this is where Microsoft should really push its "Games for Windows" campaign. With the new changes its bringing, hopefully it will step up and really help the PC scene (maybe even come up with new ways to stop piracy?)
A man can dream...a man can dream... :D
Alas, as we all know, Apple's game-related initiatives for their desktop platforms have been historically haphazard or just plain bad (Pippin, anyone?).
But if Apple can get people to buy videos, music and iPhone/iPod apps through iTunes and App Store, they might be able to extend that business model to Mac OS PC games.
Naturally, it will help if they can convince developers to come up with compelling content that takes advantage of their hardware/OS platform.
Morality tales boil down to money. It's convenient to think piracy is wrong when you're a developer. Conversely when you're a consumer. Neither is "right", they just both like to delude themselves of it. That's why the war is waged between both sides. The fact is this: if consumers pirate too much, devs stop making games. If devs charge too much, consumers pirate. That's what piracy boils down to, to me. Somewhere in the middle is the equilibrium point where both forces counter-balance.
The concept of objective morality stems from thousands of years of religious/social teaching across civilizations and cultures. We're at the point where technology has outpaced social pressures: that's why most view stealing from a supermarket as morally worse than ripping an mp3.
The economic factor: It's no more morally right for developers to overcharge consumers (as evidenced by the wealth of some developers) than it is for consumers to pirate. Take a step back and you'll see that it's merely a battle of one side trying to take more than the other -- a tug of war.
The solution: if you want to stop piracy, implement practical counter-measures (like a subscription service model) rather than going around, trying to convince people of the "rightness" of your personal moral preferences -- every idiot already supplies his own justification.
Developers and publishers are the ones whose policies are increasing piracy. And when they cry that piracy is killing the PC market all I can say is BULL-SHIT. I won't give my money to them if they're not even able to give me the service I paid for. And the fault is theirs, not the pirates'.
PS.- The fact that some games are badly programmed ports, buggy or simply uninteresting is not a excuse for the fact that they are pirated. It's the reason they are not bought.
Demos, what a great idea. Too bad last time I checked publishers were trying to find any excuse to get rid of demos as they supposedly decrease sales.
I would love to have easily accessible and quality demos, but that doesn't happen too often.
But if they were readily available, that would remove one excuse for piracy.
DRM is anotehr common excuse for piracy. People don't want the game breaking their computer and installing rootkits and other such junk on their PCs. Remove DRM and you have removed yet another excuse for piracy.
High prices are another excuse. Lower the price a bit and you have removed yet another excuse for piracy.
High system requirements is yet another common excuse for piracy. Lower the system requirements and you can remove that excuse.
If you can remove all the most common excuses for piracy and your game is still being pirated "to hell and back" then you have room to complain and jump ship.
It's even more convenient to think the people who work two and three years in crap conditions for crap pay are comparable to the spoiled brat kid who searches out a game on a torrent site so he doesn't have to ask mommy and daddy for $60.
Over here, we have a developer. He has spent years educating himself so he can write a game. He has turned down the opportunity to work in a secure and reliable career path, so he can make something he cares about; something other people care about. He gives up much of his time at home, with his family, so he can produce a higher-quality product. He borrows money from investors, from family, from his own credit cards, so he can continue building his game - having faith in the market and the eventual demand for his awesome product.
And then here comes someone like you, who types "gimme gimme" in a search engine and double-clicks. That's not even remotely the same thing.
But it's certainly CONVENIENT to claim "I want" is no different than "I believe", isn't it?
Now, organisations like the BSA would count that as 1000 lost sales, regardless of the fact that a) he was a student and couldn't afford even 10 of these applications at retail and b) he was an obsessive/compulsive software collector and had never used any of these applications, nor had any real intention of doing so.
A similar issue applies here. How many of the pirates would have actually bought the game? The average teenager can probably only afford 1-2 games a month at retail prices, and there's a lot of other competition for their money. Secondly, how many pirates actually play the games they download?
Piracy is an issue: there's no doubt about that, and the wealth of free content that's available (including demos for gameplay sampling) mean that there's no justification for it. However, it's one thing to note that "game X was pirated by 10'000 people" and another thing to claim "game X lost 10'000 sales due to pirates": the two statements are not equivalent.
Past there, there was an article on Gamasutra which detailed the impact improved anti-piracy measures had on sales:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350
This indicates that for every 1000 pirates blocked, they gained 1 sale. It'd be nice to have some other studies to back this up, but those numbers don't surprise me in the least.
Piracy is an issue, but it's not going to go away, and it's questionable whether blocking it actually makes any significant difference for anything other than major "must-have" blockbuster titles. As with the music industry, developers need to innovate and provide something more than a simple digital copy can provide, whether that's a monthly gaming fee, additional content or physical elements (e.g. manuals, posters, etc).
There's also the question as to whether piracy can work as a form of advertising (though I suspect this works better for music than games), but that's a study for another day...
"But wait!" one might say. "How is it ultimately the developer's decision? The developer isn't the one doing the pirating!"
The developer is the entity that has the most influence on how expensive a game will be to develop, publish, and market. If a developer chooses to create a AAA, 3D, multi-super-shader-rific title, the developer also chooses to increase its development costs, which increases the minimum number of sales required to make a profit. The higher the minimum number of sales required, the higher the required marketing expense becomes, because the developer and publisher need to convince a higher population of consumers to buy the game. Of course, manufacturing costs also have to increase as volume increases... in other words, the more a developer wants to make a fantastic, cutting-edge game with all the bells and whistles, the more risk of loss a developer assumes. It's natural business; unit cost versus potential sales.
On the other hand, if developers can learn to rein in their ambitions, reduce development costs, and cut more features, they will require fewer sales to make a profit. If developers and publishers require fewer sales, they don't need to worry about piracy as much.
It all comes down to two factors: the break-even point and the profit per unit after breaking even. If a developer's break-even point is so high that the developer needs to worry about piracy, then their game is too expensive to develop or it is priced too high.
Example #1 (typical hardcore): A developer develops a game for $10 million. The game sells at $50 retail. The game generates $10 per unit of revenue per sale (assuming 60% cut taken by the publisher and 50% markup for retail). It will take one million sales to break even. This game's profitability will be heavily affected by piracy. It would require two million sales to make $10 million in profit.
Example #2 (Stardock-esque): A developer develops a game for $10 million. The game sells as a $40 DRM-free download or a $50 DRM-free retail product. The downloadable version is self-published by the developer, so it generates revenue of $40 per unit (no publisher cut and no retailer cut). The retail version generates $10 per unit. Assuming 50/50 sales between downloadable and retail, the developer only needs to sell 400,000 copies to break even! This game's profitability will be less affected by piracy. It would reach $10 million in profit with just 1.2 million sales.
Example #3 (casual): A developer develops a game for $1 million. It is self-published, but also sells through major portals and through retail. The game sells as $20 through all sale points. Let's say 10% of sales are from the developer's own site, 70% are from portals, and the last 20% are from retail. Let's also assume that the portals give only a 25% cut to the developer. That's $20 revenue from self-publication, $5 from portals, and $4 from retail. The developer breaks even at 159,000 sales and makes $10 million profit with 1.59 million sales. (This developer should have negotiated with portals for a better cut! Even with just a 33% cut, only 133,000 sales would be required to break even.)
Sure, these are rough, barely-real-world examples, but it's been pretty clear that the main whiners about piracy (such as Epic and Crytek) are the developers with the huge, bloated budgets who require large volumes of sales just to break even, while more frugal developers are being quite successful despite piracy because they can afford the loss of sales volume.
On the other side of the coin, you've got companies like Stardock, and while it might not work for all companies, the sole fact that they stand up and say "we hate DRM as much as you do and won't do it" has earned them a rabid, loyal fanbase in a relatively short amount of time... and their games sell extremely well, as far as I know.
All that said, piracy is still wrong, and still a problem. But one has to question, I think, whether the preoccupation with it is helping, or just making it several times worse than it already is.
I'm not arguing that developers don't have to find ways around piracy. I'm not arguing that piracy is something that can be wished away. I'm not arguing that some developers clearly have business plans that weather it better.
I'm making a moral argument here, not a business one. I'm saying people really shouldn't be doing this, and from my standpoint the apologist reactions to piracy are weak and not particularly defensible.
Obviously, simply me arguing for something isn't going to happen. But I've pirated games on the PC before, and at a certain point I realized I really shouldn't be doing that. I now haven't in many years. It saddens me that it's so widespread and pervasive, and I wanted to address that aspect.
Again, yes, at the end of the day, developers have to find ways to make their business work. But I'm saying a lot of them are simply going to give up on the platform instead, and understandably so. If they can ALREADY make a profit on consoles, why not just do that? As indicated in my piece, PC gamers often meet those decisions with scorn, but I think that's the wrong response.
I'll leave the creative solutions for the people whose job it is to conceive them, and I hope they do conceive them. But when it comes to DRM, not every solution is going to be perfect, and people are going to have to accept that. Until somebody comes up with some kind of silver bullet, a perfect scheme that isn't only applicable to online games, piracy prevention methods are going to be flawed, or developers are just going to leave.
Piracy is an rampant issue on every platform. It is just because games sales poorly on PC that there's a lot of fuss about it.
I think the real issue is that the market for shooters (at least in North America) was shifted from PC to console. You just can not deny it.
Among all the person I know owning a console, 75% of them has a chipped/hacked one.
Even more funny: http://kotaku.com/357402/r4-cartridge-discovered-in-gamestop-ad
Stop blaming the gamers and blame the developers. No Blizzard game has ever really been hurt by piracy...because they use their brains and avoid the issue by designing online games.
Also there are so many B and C quality developers out there who spend a fraction of what Blizzard and Valve spend on development yet charge the same retail price for their games and wonder why they never reach the same sales numbers. Pathetic.
The anonymous poster above said it best when he said this...
"PS.- The fact that some games are badly programmed ports, buggy or simply uninteresting is not a excuse for the fact that they are pirated. It's the reason they are not bought. "
A pirated game is not a lost sale. There's a huge difference between clicking a download button and shoveling out $50.
What advantage does a player have by buying your games over just pirating them Chris? None. Look in the mirror and ask yourself why your company doesn't have the intelligence to realize that this simple fact is just as important as the quality of the game itself.
Either way I am not going to waste my time on you. It would just be a lot of wasted effort. Soon these companies will no longer be making games on the PC and this won't be an issue anymore. We can all thank the pirates for that. Cheers!
I'm not sure what you mean when you say "your company."
That aside, you're basically saying in order to make PC games you must make heavily-supported online games? You're saying the PC can only support one specific type of game? I play maybe one online game at a time, and usually not even that. I don't have time to be playing all sorts of online games. I like single-player experiences I can play at my own pace, and I like developers who make those.
And on consoles, the $60 price point (higher than the standard PC price point) is pretty universal--games of all quality use it. If, as you say, PC developers can't adhere to that, what's the incentive not to just drop PC and go to console?
Your arguments have some merit, but they sure aren't encouraging, and your derisive attitude is exactly what I talk about in my article. What kind of developer wants to provide for a community with that kind of scorn for any product that doesn't exactly line up with your ideal vision of the PC gaming market? I sure wouldn't.
And yes, as I basically led the article by saying, obviously not all pirated copies are lost sales. But it's truly, truly absurd to say that applies to all piracy.
I have the answer. The advantage is you won't be a scumbag if you buy it instead of stealing it. Their is no advantage to buying anything in the world if you can just steal it. That is common sense. But that's where your conscience and morals come in. Which is something you sorely lack.
the best part about this is the article already said all the arguments that the pirates are using right now. Which is kind of funny. But it shows you how they have no real argument
One that wants to make money?
Instead of attacking my attitude how about you look at my point. Yea, I have an attitude because I'm sick of developers BLAMING others. No one ever takes any responsibility. Blizzard, Valve, Stardock, have realized this and stepped up to the plate with new solutions. I applaud them for that and their sales success does as well.
Chris, when I said your company, I was referring to the Sam and Max games, which having played them I can recall offer no incentive for purchase over piracy.
Please think outside the box and defeat pirates in creative ways, stop being a whiner.
I'm not a game developer, I work for Gamasutra.
"No one ever takes any responsibility"? How about pirates? Do they not have any responsibility as citizens? Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you have the RIGHT to do so.
I realize that's a naive thing to say, but it's the truth. As I've stated, my article is not an attempt to find ways to solve this problem. It's a direct response to arguments brushing away piracy. I'm responding to the moral and personal issue in those arguments, not the practical economic one.
Now, this may not be an angle you're particularly interested in. You may even think it's childish. That's fine. But it's the one I chose to address today.
PC gamers are not doing themselves any favors by tendering lame rationalizations for "because I want it now but I don't want to pay for it." All they're doing is further convincing developers that this market is a lost cause.
No one *HAS TO* download cracks because no one *HAS TO* play these games. If you don't like the DRM, or you think a game is too expensive, then don't buy it. There is no fault of any developer's that entitles you to appropriate their property.
The "they charge too much" excuse is particularly poor. From a consumer's point of view, there is no such thing as "overcharging" for non-utility products because people are free not to buy them. A product is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it; there's no "over"-charging possible regardless of whether some people can't or don't want to pay what others are willing and able to pay.
I want to see these people who think that such a thing as "overcharging" for games justifies taking them go to their nearest BMW or Porsche dealership and simply take a car. If "overcharging" is a valid justification for taking a product without paying, then no doubt the local authorities will nod and say, "Well, he's got a point there. $250,000 is way too much for a car."
Or maybe car manufacturers -- and game developers -- can charge whatever they want, and the people who take these products without paying the requested price can go to jail as the thieves they are, regardless of whether modern technology makes ones and zeros easier to steal than a ton of metal and glass.
Good luck to the PC Gaming Alliance -- not just in persuading developers that developing for PCs is a viable business strategy, but in educating consumers that making "overcharging" and "DRM" and similar excuses for software theft is counterproductive.
As a dedicated PC gamer (I haven't owned a console since the Atari 2600), I don't like DRM or paying $60 for a AAA game, either. But it's depressing to see so many people complaining about those things as though they justified stealing software. They don't.
Here's hoping this Gamasutra opinion piece helps persuade at least a few people to stop making excuses for PC game thieves.
I am a aspiring game dev, I have pirated games (several), as I have original games, that I buy when I have money, including games that I had pirate copies before, the last one being Age of Empires 1, and its expansion (that I did not have before), that Ubisoft released here for 7USD, below the price of a pirated game (usually 9 or 10USD)
But I do not pirate games because huh... They suck, or something like that, I buy pirate games because I do not have money to buy a legal copy of the game.
So you say: Get a work and then buy it!
Indeed, I had a work, I received a HIGH salary when working in a bank repairing their computers, and A SINGLE GAME was valued like half of my salary, I would NEVER buy a game expensive like that (as I said, I had a HIGH salary, people with my salary or above are about 20% of the population)
So, the point is: People pirate games because they are REALLY expensive, even piracy is expensive (internet connections here are expensive, as are the pirated games, 10USD is still a lot for most people, some people get 30USD to live a entire month).
The games that sparked that discussion: Crysis and DMC 4, what their fate here?
I NEVER saw a pirate copy of DMC 4, neither a legal one... Maybe that is why it do not sell?
And Crysis: Once I asked a pirate game seller about it, he told me that Crysis was making him lose money so he decided to stop selling it... What? How? It is simple, the game had a SO HIGH system requeriment, that EVERYONE that bought it, wanted their money back (and the pirate game seller could not refuse, since the cop station is more or less nearby, he know that angry costumers can bring in the cops)
Observation: The EVERYONE that bought Crysis, is FAAAAAAR below the number of people that bought anything else (in fact, I never played Crysis myself, it does not run on my computer, is expensive, I am avoding buying pirated games, and people told me that the game itself suck, and I saw someone running Crysis only twice, both times running on a computer being showcased as "ultimate-power", so not a real costumer)
BTW: There are games that I still pirate right away sometimes, even when they are free (yes, there are free games, that I still pirate), why? Because they have stupid DRM that make my computer go mad...
Example? I installed Mass Effect here (a legal borrowed copy), my windows got so instable after that, that I needed to format windows...
But I liked the game itself... So I bought a pirated (I spent money, since the legal copy is owned by my roomate, I could play it for free) copy, without the stupid DRM, and now I am happy (I already finished the game).
If I would buy Mass Effect 2 if it does not have DRM? Sure! If I will even play Mass Effect 2 if it does have DRM? No, no way, even getting a pirated copy to run does not worth the trouble, altough the game is really nice, it flaws (that are few), do not make it worth if it has DRM.
So, stardock strategy? It is perfect! Steam? It works well (a game bought on steam is cheaper than on the store), altough the games on steam are still expensive, and broadband here is still somewhat rare (70% of the end-users here still use dial-up).
Btw: Ubisoft here (they just opened a studio here! niiiice) is having profit, since they even made a studio here, how? As I said, they released Age of Empires for 7USD, and they also released the first splinter cell, and several other games, I am going to buy them all :)
Btw 2: I am happy that my Need for Speed Pro Street and Rainbow Six vegas were pirates, both suck (really).
Btw 3: I am not happy in being a pirate game owner, but I can say proudly that all other Rainbow Six games (not vegas and onward, that I will not even play anyway), I have original copies (all bought after the game got cheaper), and one game that really make me happy is Total Annihilation, here it arrived at 6USD (yes, it arrived here at 6USD!) and I NEVER saw a pirated copy of it, and that game rock, and everyone on my university still plays it, they even bring their CDs from home to play at the university labs (it is allowed to play in one lab), the only game that is going better than TotalA is Warcraft III (that here is sold for 10USD, another game that is not much pirated here)
Oh yeah, noone can be Blizzard? Why you do not sell your games for 10USD like Warcraft III? It is selling well here....
Another comment: Here the console piracy is MUCH bigger than PC piracy, because console games a MUCH more expensive, a XBOX (the orignal one) itself costs a entire year of salary, a XBOX game (still the original one) costs one month of salary. But there are a notable expection: Mega Drive... What??? That old video game still exists? Yes, a company here still manufactures it, and sells it cheap, as its games, the video game sell really well, and even when it was still new, there are not much piracy on it... You are probably thinking: Of course, it uses cartridges that are hard to copy! But no, the reason why noone pirate Mega Drive games, is because they are cheap.
I typed a lot!
I don't understand why you're angry about my point about budgets. Yes, Gears of War and Crysis require millions of dollars in development. The developers knew that when they got into it. And yes, they need to make their money back. What's your point? They need to have budgets. They need to have sales projections. They need all sorts of numbers in order to judge whether they will make money or not. If certain developers are NOT doing these tasks, those developers are just asking for trouble.
Furthermore, it is extremely irresponsible for a developer to assume that the console systems are free of piracy. If high-spending, low-profit developers jump to consoles in order to increase sales through low piracy, pirates will eventually increase their activity on consoles as well and nullify the gains. It's inevitable. In the meantime, more agile, leaner developers will make big profits on the PC and other platforms. I have enough faith in the human race and market forces to believe that demand will allow capable developers to supply consumers who want PC games.
Finally, Brandon, do you seriously think everybody who is pointing out problems with the developers and the market is a pirate? Why are so many pirates posting here with our real names? Are we idiots? No, it's not because we're pirates. It's because many of us are in the business, and we have seen what happens within the system. This is Gamasutra, after all, not Joystiq or Kotaku! Many of us have seen developer after developer go down in flames, sometimes from within... not because of piracy, but because of bad financial management, poor quality control, outrageous demands upon consumers for system requirements or DRM, and more. With the size of the PC market as it is now, piracy is often just an excuse to cover up bad financial planning, or at worst, to cover up greed.
"Piracy is theft and stealing is bad. Consequently people who steal are bad people "
You are generalizing a humongous amount of people right now. Yes, downloading/copying games without buying them is stealing and that act is considered bad. It IS bad when people lose their jobs because of it. But this is not the case every-time someone downloads a game. When i drive through a red sign I get a ticket because it's a bad thing to do. Why? Because someone might get hurt when I drive through a red sign. But what if I knew that me driving through this particular red sign would NOT put anyone in danger. I would still get a ticket. Why? Because there are rules made for people who can't always think ahead about what kind of consequences their actions might have. Therefor there is 1 simple rule thats for everyone: Don't do it.
You said that if someone breaks the rule he/she is a bad person. That's just wrong. You are a bad person when you risk hurting someone for your own personal gain.
And no. I'm not condoning piracy. I'm just a bit annoyed that this person calls people "bad" because they pirate games.
Piracy is a very complex topic, yet I think it can be eased when developers and publishers try to debilitate the pirates' arguments. Sadly pirates are right when they argue with quality issues. A game with obvious and severe bugs just deserves rotting on the shelves. When developing/financing a game you should also try to provide a working product. There is no excuse for a buggy game.
Another argument often used by pirates is the copy protection. I did not believe in stories of games not running because of copy protection issues for a long time. But when I purchased the Bioshock CE I had to repeat the installation process for four(!) times only because the authentication server did reject the connection so my system blue-screened every time (???). This way you really can drive away your customer.
Actually I hope that piracy decreases with the increase of network interconnectedness. When you can expect your customers to be online from nearly everywhere, you can finally realize broad digital distribution ála Steam. Then you can even validate single-player games online.
Though, what really intrigues me the most, is the notion of in-game advertisement and micro-transactions as new ways to create cash flows back to the developers and publishers. Yet the best way to sell your game is making a really good one and putting some money into marketing.
1) A large install base of 70 million+ systems. If you expect 2% of the install base to be interested in your game, and if you expect 50% (yes, FIFTY PERCENT) of that group to be pirates, you'll still have expected sales of 700,000 units.
2) Low development cost. A DS game usually requires a smaller dev team, requires less time to develop, and less resources to market.
How can PC developers learn from this? I won't go into the development cost subject again, as I've already talked about it before. PC developers also need to broaden their consumer base. As others have said, Crytek made their requirements so high that few people could run the game well. Those who failed to run the game are most likely less interested in a future Crytek game. They also developed a game in a genre that is very narrow, so their potential customer base shrank even more. Yet they STILL sold over one million copies despite piracy! (And let's face it... a lot of people pirated Crysis just to see if it would run on their system before spending money on it.) If the revenue is there, then the only people to blame for a loss are themselves. They chose to run up their costs, and they chose to restrict the user base.
Look at it this way: games like The Sims (50 million sold, not including expansions) sell well because the system requirements aren't very high and the gameplay is engaging to a wide variety of people. That widened its potential customer base to HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of PCs around the world. There is no way in the current generation that a console could have that much potential in sales. It's one reason why many games make more money on the PC than on consoles: if just 0.05% of a platform's population buys your game, you're still looking at 10,000 sales out of 20 million consoles, or 100,000 sales out of 200 million PCs that fit a casual game's system requirements. Sure, you might be getting 60-80% less revenue per unit because of a lower price point, but you're getting more units sold, so the overall revenue is better than spending a development cost 500-2000% higher than for the simpler game.
I'm not calling people who pirate games bad. I'm calling thieves bad. Again no one wants to be considered a bad person (and thieves are generally considered "bad people") so they marginalize game piracy by calling it something other than theft (it's not stealing it's sharing).
Answer me this. What WOULD you call piracy and pirates? They have something in their possession that they are legally obligated to pay for that they did not. Regardless of reason people are legally obligated to buy that product but they have not. Again I ask you what would you call that? People tend to call that theft. Doesn't society in general call people who steal things based on desire and not need "bad people"? So what would you call these people who pirate games?
I know these arguments probably wouldn't hold up in a philosophy class and I admit they ARE pretty general but you get my point.
No one wants to be considered a thief so they redefine what they are doing so that it's not theft.
@ Anonymous 6 Aug 2008 at 7:54 am PST
Your arguments have not shown why anyone has the right to obtain material they are legally obligated to buy for free regardless of the reason. Regardless of rather it's a single MP3, a game, a diamond ring or a banana. I was legally obligated to buy what I was obtaining but I wasn't. That got to me thinking about what I was doing and I eventually stopped because I couldn't defend it on a moral OR legal level.
Downloading games is not piracy. Piracy is when you sell an illegal copy of a game as if it was a legal copy of a game.
Downloading games (well, actually just the uploading) is called "copyright infringement". You are distributing something you do not have the right for to distribute.
Get your terms correct.
That is such BULL and you know it. That is just another lame excuse. You have something in your possession that you are legally obligated to buy. Regardless of your reasons, regardless of your terms, regardless of excuses you are bound to purchase that product yet you do not.
What are people as human beings in an "advanced" society supposed to realistically call that?
On a side note it's been said here before. Why do so many people who support piracy or offer up excuses for piracy post Anonymously?
People won't stop making PC games just because PC gamers pirate them. People will just develop new and better business models that will succeed in spite of piracy. The key words in that statement being "in spite of" because fighting piracy itself is ultimately futile, and often detrimental to the bottom line.
The issue carries over to all download-able media really. The problem rest not only in the *FREE* price tag, but the fact that torrents are far superior to most legitimate distribution models.
This is why systems like Steam have a lot of success. Models like this provide services that carry a value that deters piracy because people would just rather own a Steam game because of the perks that come with that.
When developers start thinking more about what they can offer to enhance the paying customers experience, instead of throwing money down the DRM hole they will meet much success.
Secondly, If I WERE to address the morality issue, just out of simple philosophical curiosity, I would submit that there are many legitimate and ethical beliefs that support the view that piracy itself is not inherently wrong, but in order to embrace such philosophies you must be open to ideas that may be a few thousand years old, or originate in a culture entirely different from your own, and are probably not ideas you were indoctrinated with since birth about ownership and a code of ethics tied to the concept.
But this is not the appropriate venue for such long winded and un-looked-for digression, so I will conclude with the simple point that I disagree that just because a person has a belief that piracy is not wrong, makes that person devoid of any moral sensibilities or social responsibility.
Of course all that being equal, I am sure the grand majority of pirates are just in to instant gratification and are unlikely to have exercised a level of introspection deep enough to tackle such philosophical debates.
Regardless of motives however, the unstoppable force of this century will be and is the free exchange of information, and these grand debates on the ethics of how we address the ownership of ideas, when soon almost everyone on the planet will have to ability to make a copy of your idea, share it, change it, or make it their own; will become more and more necessary. So it would do us all well to accept the reality of that future and and start think about what that means to each of us on an ethical level.
I was discussing this very same issue with a fellow student recently. We were noting the fact that we were both brought up with the idea that if you got some information, you had to pay somehow for it. That comes simply from the fact that information came from books, television, newspapers, movies and possibly video games; all physical items you had to purchase in order to be able to enjoy fully. With the advent of the ubiquitous and accessible internet in people's lives these days (especially young people's lives), that sense of a physical object representing the information is not as prevalent as it once was. Information on the internet is widely available and nearly always completely free of charge. To many of my younger friends, the leap to the conclusion that entertainment ought to be just as free of charge is a very natural one.
I think what is going on right now is a shift to the paradigm that is already in full persuasion in the minds of many younger computer users: If it's information that's available in electronic format, I should be able to get it for free. After all, with the incredible imaging and audio capabilities of most computers today, there is almost no benefit to actually owning the real copy of any movie or game. The electronic form can be reproduced at equal or better quality on the computer monitor, or even on your living room HDTV via the magic of the HDMI cables and computer monitor-compatible inputs. Consequently, if it can be gotten in electronic format without paying, I think it's simple to see why some users would argue that they shouldn't have to pay.
Note please that I don't support or condone piracy at all. However, that's because of my particular moral beliefs and the fact that I grew up having to pay for physical copies of my information. Even so, I believe that the game has changed. Information is now easily accessible, easily reproducible, easily modifiable and therefore so much more easily misappropriated. The challenge now, I think, will be to come up with creative distribution models like Steam that give the users added benefits that justify the costs in their eyes. The simple reality is that information is free now, whether we like it or not, and at the basic level entertainment is just another type of information. The thing to sell to people is the experience and the service, because in the modern age, the content will always be available for free somewhere.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/economy.ideas_pr.html
^^ Best write up on PC piracy that I've seen and should be required reading for all developers.
It's a problem we're not going to solve.
The fact is that these companies are spending millions and millions of dollars for graphical enhancements, fancy pools in their offices, and the works, and attempting to round this all out by charging $60 for a game that is incredibly sub par. Unimaginative drivel that the likes of the world shouldn't even have to bare witness to.
The target demographic however does not have the money to pay these prices. Their incomes cannot handle the cost of entertainment. With the cost of living rising, the cost of entertainment and relaxation seems to sky rocket.
Now that we have that covered, let us move on to a different realm of the piracy story.
Sins of a Solar Empire was an excellent game. I bought it the minute a write up popped on my browser. I like that, in depth strategy that will take me away from real life for 12 hours. Something, that without being subjected to the mindless hordes of games such as World of Warcraft (a subject I'll touch on next), I can be completely immersed in. I loved it.
Why didn't it sell well though? A lot of journalists played the piracy card.
Wrong.
The reason it didn't sell well was the game itself. It is not a game for everyone. A lot of gamers just can't get into that, a game that is like it is. A space management game. Those of us who remember the style of game from our youth, combined with the intensity of space combat gameplay from recent years, bought the shit out of the game. It was monumental. But for the regular player? Boring. They wouldn't want to touch it with a 30 foot pole. "A game in which I must invest time to not full of mindless killing? GIVE ME A BREAK!"
And then... there is WoW.
Not exactly limited to WoW, but WoW is the best example of how mmorpg's are hurting the computer gaming market. Millions of people play this game, and have been for years. They have a commitment to this game, and to a large chunk of PC gamers, it is their game. They won't do anything but. Before the MMO boom, things were a lot better in sales land, but with the addiction to mmo's in PC gaming society today, these people are left without the time (or money) to handle any other games. They must play WoW. Their friends are on right now, they have a raid to do, it is their second life (no pun intended). There is no time for other games, no time to purchase them, just time for WoW.
As I said, that can be applied to many MMO's in the market at the moment, but WoW is easily the best example of this.
To summarize: PC gaming's lack of sales over the past few years, while piracy has a little bit of a hand in it, is not entirely piracy's fault. The age old justification attempted to be disproven in the article above, "It wasn't a sale anyway", is still in effect. The same people who rabidly download games are the same ones who used to borrow their friends games before DRM came into effect. The same guy's who borrow their friends DVD's. The same guys who burn them.
What is really killing PC gaming? The games themselves. They're not targeted to everyone, but instead games come out targeted to niche markets, or if they do attempt to target all markets, they're felt not innovative enough and not worth the investment.
Dude, what do you mean Sins of a Solar Empire didn't sell well? SoaSE is the highest rated and best selling strategy game so far this year. Go look up the numbers before talking out of your ass.
I've downloaded my share of games from torrent sites and I'll continue to do so. Why? Because I like to try games prior to buying them. I'm not going to pay for a lackluster product or a product I personally might not enjoy but I do buy games I enjoy during my little "trials." Among the games I can remember downloading Crysis, Europa Universalis: Rome, & Oblivion stand out as three I didn't purchase because I didn't enjoy them. I do have purchased copies of The Witcher, World in Conflict, Sins of a Solar Empire, as well as nearly every game by Paradox Interactive though. Whenever I buy a game for the PC or any console I make sure to buy it new from a retailer that doesn't sell used games. This is intentional as unless the game is older I see used games as lost sales for developers/publishers.
My views are almost assuredly in the minority among gamers that pirate software but that doesn't change the fact that I'm lumped in among them. The OP doesn't seem to understand that some folks want to TRY a game before they lay down $60 to PLAY the game. Yes some games do have a demo available but for many of them those are so pared down they might as well be a different game entirely.
Knights of the Old Republic 2 from Obsidian
CM 5 (I believe that was the version) from, at the time, Eidos (developer is Sports Interactive, the current line is FM instead of CM, as SI split from Eidos, and Eidos owns the rights to the name Championship Manager, so SI started using Football Manager instead)
One of EA's Fifa games (2004, I think, though it's been a while).
In all three instances, I feel justified, personally, with my choice to pirate, due to having no recourse as a consumer if I purchase and install a "bad" game - no returns policy for open games at most, if not all, game outlets locally.
In the case the Fifa game from EA I pirated, I had purchesed the prior year's release, and it was crap. It was a downgrade from the year before that, and I simply felt like I was ripped off. The version I pirated was much improved over the previous year's release (which I had paid for, but felt like I had wasted my cash). Since I pirated that one year's copy, I have purchased one more Fifa for PC, and then another for Xbox 360. My choice of pirating did not lead me to become a serial pirate.
The Championship Manager was a similar situation, except I was in the beta for CM 4, and there were obvious problems that we discussed with the devs. This version came out later than usual, and it was a pretty drastic change from the previous year's release. I knew there were some issues, and the devs constantly informed us of things they were working on changing for release, and also things that would be fixed in the first patch. In the end, most things promised to be fixed simply weren't (at least in CM 4), but I had purchased it anyway. CM 5 DID contain the fixes that had been promised (to us beta testers only, not to the general public) for CM 4, and I simply felt both cheated out of money on CM 4, as well as, if not outright lied to, at least deceived. Since CM 5, I have purchased 2 versions of SI's franchise (now Football Manager instead of Championship manager), with the latest being FM 07 (I skipped FM 08 based on reviews, but plan on getting FM 09 if it seems well done).
With KOTOR II, I had read some bad reports prior to release, and quite a few negative reviews just after. Being a Bioware fanboy, I was cautious that a different company could produce a decent sequel to a Bioware game. And it seemed I was right (based on initial reviews of the story). I decided to pirate it, and if I felt otherwise, I would purchase the game. After playing for about 5 hours, I realized I agreed with many of the negative reviews, and stopped. I've not finished that game, and don't have any intention of doing so, unless a KOTOR 3 comes out and it's a continuation of both 1 and 2 (which it likely would be). I've read loads about the story, and how much was cut, and hard deadlines, etc, and do not regret not paying for that game. But I have since purchased NWN 2 from Obsidian, as well as Mask of the Betrayer (though I have not played any of Mask).
Strangely enough, the instance that lead me to even realize how prevalant piracy was occured with a game I had purchased - Bioware's NWN. One of the patches upgraded the Secure Rom anti-piracy detection, and unfortunately my CD drive was from a little known manufacturer that was not included however it needed to be for Secure Rom to recognize the disc, so I was suddenly unable to play. It wasn't until something like 2 months later that I would have been able to play I game I had PURCHASED, but it didn't take me that long to get back up and running, as a "friendly" Atari rep subtley directed me to a no-CD crack for the game.
That really opened my eyes to what was out there, and even today, for every game that I own and am able to, I download the no-CD crack. It just makes gaming so much easier - no worries about hardware incompatibilities with discs and drives, and no disc switching.
I suspect I am not your typical pirate, since I have pirated 3 games for PC (and none for consoles), yet have purchased over 60 over the years (plus at least that many more for various consoles), but I also don't feel bad at all about the three that I pirated (or about the no-CD cracks I have downloaded).
For the 2 soccer games I pirated, I would have gladly sent back the previous versions I purchased for a refund, and purchased the next versions, but in gaming that's just not an option. The devs/publishers can put out crap, and if you don't know it before hand, and buy it, you're out your money. With KOTOR 2, since I didn't finish the game because it wasn't all that interesting, all I did was "make my own demo", and saved myself the hassle of feeling like I wasted my money.
All that doesn't change the fact that I did pirate those 3 games, though. And doesn't change the fact that I'm sure my "style" of piracy is in the minority, and that piracy IS a huge problem. But I consider myself a pretty honest person, and I don't have a problem when people feel screwed out of their money by a bad game.
When people pirate a game they don't pirate the original game because if they did the DRM would kick in and they still wouldn't be able to play it. When people pirate a game they pirate an illegally modified version of the game that has a violated copyright. Someone has infringed on the developers original IP and taken what was theirs, modified it without their permission and then used and distributed the product without compensating the creator. All of this was done without the permission of the original creator who owns the IP. If it's my idea where does that give you the right to infringe on my IP. I created it so why does that give you the right to modify and distribute my IP without my permission?
Next if you truly do buy the games you pirate then fine because piracy is just like trying an extended demo. However once you've determined that a game isn't worth your time do you keep it around or do you delete it and never download it again? If you do keep it around why do you, since you've determined it's not worth your time or money? If it's not worth your money then why is still on your hard drive?
Finally what if you guys decided to become indie game developers and made this awesome game and sold it for $19.99 and couldn't sustain your business simply because everyone was playing your game but no one was buying your game?
A much more productive use of anyone in the games business's time these days is to figure how they CAN make money. There are no rules about technology, needing to work through retail, or anything else any more.
The world has changed. Sooner or later game developers will have to realise that the halcyon days of how it used to be are gone, and most of the players out there couldn't care less what you want.
http://friendfeed.com/rooms/theplayroom
Game Pirate here again. When I do one of my "trials" and find a game lacking I delete it off my hard drive. Why would I bother keeping a game that I didn't find worth my time? Heck, I think after the download completed Crysis might have been on my computer a total of 3 or 4 hours and that includes the install time as well as time spent doing other things.
My last pc title I was forced to include protection (securom). I didn't want it, my publisher didn't want it. So who wanted it?
Walmart.
The retailers in their grand ignorance require some form of copy protection, even though it does absolutely nothing to stop piracy and only ends up angering the end user.
People download full games for the same reason they download demos - to try the game out.. to see if it's worth buying or if it's all just hype. All too frequently the case is the latter.
I'm just speculating here - but I'd say that the majority of un-paid-for copies that are downloaded are not lost sales.. they're complete demos that failed to inspire people to pay for or even continue playing. Many try unauthorized copies specifically because no demo was made. And a lot of people download cracked versions who have already bought the game because they don't like the copy protection!
It also says something about the state of retail sales. If you buy a game in a store and it turns out you don't like it - too bad, it's yours. If it's a console game you can still sell it for pennies at a game shop but if it's a PC title you can't even do that anymore. You've just wasted $20 to $60 on a crappy game.
So just because a game sells, that doesn't mean most customers liked it. It just means it garnered the same interest of potential that compels people to try out a demo or unauthorized copy.
This was not a fully thought-out or researched article. It was obviously written by someone who is angry enough to treat all statements of downloaders as organized lies and disregard large aspects of the situation.
Downloading games is not piracy. Piracy is when you sell an illegal copy of a game as if it was a legal copy of a game.
Uploading games is called "copyright infringement". You are distributing something you do not have the right for to distribute.
Get your terms correct."
Thank you.
And Downloading Unauthorized Copies is what is being discussed here.
Interesting.. and pertinent.
I guess there are quite a few possibilities to use piracy for your own advantage, you just have to think out of the box. And at the end of the day it may pay off for you.
But consoles are a different matter. I think game developers have gotten greedy by putting $60.00+ price tags on a console title, and the price may not go down for YEARS if the title is popular enough (Halo 2, for example). Still the hassle isn't worth it anymore. I support emulation of older console systems like the Dreamcast, PS2, Nintendo 64, etc. because otherwise you have to hunt for this stuff at Ebay and pay exorbitant prices for everything. In my opinion if you can't buy it in a store any more, the developers have no right to any further profit on the item. But who would want to spend HOURS to download a game for a modern console AND HOURS as well as HUNDREDS of dollars modding a console just to play a game once it has been finally downloaded? That too, in my opinion, is just stupid. Get a crappy job and when you cash your first check buy your game then quit!
One area in whihc I do fully support video game piracy though is MMOs. I don't think game companies should control the game and your character data. I don't think they should be able to charge you $50.00 for a game, AND $20.00 to $50.00 per month to play it. So anyone that can hack into the servers for these games, zip up the files, share it, and help users create accounts to play it for free is fully supported by me.
Keeping this in mind, I was not against downloading Oblivion, as I had purchased the Collector's Edition of Morrowind only to be disappointed with the game and all the promises the developers had broken. If a game developer makes promises but do not deliver, or gets too greedy, or makes stupid decisions on a game, then their games should be pirated to hurt them where it counts - their pocketbook.
To sum up... Piracy should only be used as a tool to keep game companies in line. It should only be used as an illegal, but very effective, alternative to boycotting. But those who pirate must accept that if they get caught, they are responsible for their actions.
- Deathbliss
Are you really serious with your comment on pirating MMO titles? Maybe you should do some research and get an idea about what it costs to support a MMO after release. First of all you cannot think about MMO servers being like Counter-Strike or Battlefield servers. Running a server park for MMO games is way more expensive than running a rented server for 10$ a month. It drains way more electicity than you can ever imagine, it takes a lot of maintenance effort and last but not least the equipment itself costs way more than your average home computer. Furthermore you have a whole development team working on additional content for the game after release. How do you think these people are being paid? The 50$ you buy the game for may hardly cover the expenses for initial development.
Aside from that, why do you think pirating a game may serve as an instrument to boycot developers? You know, developers don't care if you do not buy their game or pirate it, it actually is the same for them since they do not get any money from you. So why would you even bother taking the risk of being caught doing something illegal? On the other hand if you enjoy the pirated game, then the devs deserve their share even if they did not deliver to you what they promised.
Maybe you should think a little bit more about your arguments before you try to defend something that is clearly wrong - especially when posting a comment on an article that deals with exactly this topic.