A potentially original take on piracy? Probably not, but interesting.

[Epona]

I think the hate of pirates on this site (and others) is artificial. What consumer puts a mutli-million corporation's finances above their own?

You're missing the point somewhat. Piracy affects the artists, and I'm not just talking about multi-millionaires like Beyonce or Rihanna. I mean real people who toil day after day to produce creative works for you and me to enjoy and then have their work stolen... That's just indefensible I'm afraid. Indie games are heavily pirated. Last time I checked those guys and gals weren't "multi-million corporations"...

Oh yes, of course, play the "poor indie dev" card. Sorry but the "I hate pirates" attitude isn't limited to indies and you know it. Further, why are indie devs special?

I guess my point is this: Surely you have your own problems, why are you making a game companies finances your problem? Were you brainwashed? Are you so addicted that the thought of not getting a COD sequel scares you to death? Why?

 

[Kopikatsu]

I can't fucking stand the pirates.

I don't think it's healthy, especially in this economy, for gamers to be hating on pirates because they care so much about the bottom line of some company that they don't receive a paycheck from. For example, do you hate Wal Mart shoplifters as much as you hate video game pirates? Why not?

I do, since Walmart has explicitly stated that shoplifting is such a problem for them that they had to raise prices to compensate a while back.

So you are worried about Wal Marts bottom line too?

You're missing the part where Walmart raised their prices due to shoplifting. Because of shoplifters, I PERSONALLY have to pay more.

I think the hate of pirates on this site (and others) is artificial. What consumer puts a mutli-million corporation's finances above their own?

You're missing the point somewhat. Piracy affects the artists, and I'm not just talking about multi-millionaires like Beyonce or Rihanna. I mean real people who toil day after day to produce creative works for you and me to enjoy and then have their work stolen... That's just indefensible I'm afraid. Indie games are heavily pirated. Last time I checked those guys and gals weren't "multi-million corporations"...

Oh yes, of course, play the "poor indie dev" card. Sorry but the "I hate pirates" attitude isn't limited to indies and you know it. Further, why are indie devs special?

Because indie devs can't handle piracy and the evidence of that is a bunch of small studios have been shutting down lately. Larger developers like EA and Bioware generally have titles that are pirated more, but they're also so much larger that they can easily absorb that loss. Something like, say, Drinkbox Studios can't.

The real question people should be asking is, is the enforcement required to completely stop 'morally wrong' piracy worth it?

What never seems to be covered in surveys is, the stuff people pirate, would they have purchased it if there was not a pirate copy available. I believe for the most part the answer is no. So even if piracy could be stamped out tomorrow, it would not raise much more revenue for content providers. In fact it may well work out that the cost of completely stopping piracy actually costs more than the extra revenue generated by people not having a piracy option.

I would actually love to see all piracy stop just to see how the content industry etc respond when they only see their revenues jump a small percent, in comparison to what they think they are losing via piracy.

If all piracy stopped, the industry would have to find a new scapegoat to justify intrusive DRM.

If piracy were stopped, DRM would vanish. There wouldn't be any reason to have it.

 

[Atmos Duality]

How about these scenarios:

Producer makes 50 copies of a game.
30 people buy them, 20 people use illegal copies.
Producer loses 20 sales

Producer makes 50 copies of a game.
30 people buy them, 20 people spend their money on something else without getting illegal copies. Producer loses 20 sales.

While the last scenario sounds more moral, the end result for the producer is exactly the same. Thats the difference between physical theft and copyright infringement. There is not a 1:1 relation between the copies used and the loss.

My guess is that if we managed to completely prevent any pirating, we would go from the first scenario to the second.

^This is a good post, and a good point to build upon.

Barring the ability to read minds, we don't know for sure if those 20 illegal copies were guaranteed sales even in the absence of an illicit source. Some of them might be. All of them might be. None of them might be.

Whether you follow the "Guilty until proven innocent" attitude of the Publishers, or the "Innocent until proven guilty" attitude of the customer doesn't matter. Fact is: WE DON'T KNOW FOR SURE.

The second scenario doesn't just LOOK more moral, it's actually correct economic procedure; no illicit supply POTENTIALLY undercutting the legitimate supply, with a legitimate response from the market.

Now, if you equate the two scenarios (which we cannot, because we don't know for sure the motives of those 20 illicit customers, as established above), then by economic law and logic, the Producer actually lost NOTHING to piracy because those games weren't sales under normal market conditions in the first place.

 

[Epona]

I can't fucking stand the pirates.

I don't think it's healthy, especially in this economy, for gamers to be hating on pirates because they care so much about the bottom line of some company that they don't receive a paycheck from. For example, do you hate Wal Mart shoplifters as much as you hate video game pirates? Why not?

I do, since Walmart has explicitly stated that shoplifting is such a problem for them that they had to raise prices to compensate a while back.

So you are worried about Wal Marts bottom line too?

You're missing the part where Walmart raised their prices. Becauase of shoplifters, I PERSONALLY have to pay more.

No, I commented on that. I said there is a difference between caring because prices are going up and caring because EA isn't making as much as they could.

 

[Epona]

I can't fucking stand the pirates.

I don't think it's healthy, especially in this economy, for gamers to be hating on pirates because they care so much about the bottom line of some company that they don't receive a paycheck from. For example, do you hate Wal Mart shoplifters as much as you hate video game pirates? Why not?

I do, since Walmart has explicitly stated that shoplifting is such a problem for them that they had to raise prices to compensate a while back.

So you are worried about Wal Marts bottom line too?

You're missing the part where Walmart raised their prices due to shoplifting. Because of shoplifters, I PERSONALLY have to pay more.

I think the hate of pirates on this site (and others) is artificial. What consumer puts a mutli-million corporation's finances above their own?

You're missing the point somewhat. Piracy affects the artists, and I'm not just talking about multi-millionaires like Beyonce or Rihanna. I mean real people who toil day after day to produce creative works for you and me to enjoy and then have their work stolen... That's just indefensible I'm afraid. Indie games are heavily pirated. Last time I checked those guys and gals weren't "multi-million corporations"...

Oh yes, of course, play the "poor indie dev" card. Sorry but the "I hate pirates" attitude isn't limited to indies and you know it. Further, why are indie devs special?

Because indie devs can't handle piracy and the evidence of that is a bunch of small studios have been shutting down lately. Larger developers like EA and Bioware generally have titles that are pirated more, but they're also so much larger that they can easily absorb that loss. Something like, say, Drinkbox Studios can't.

The real question people should be asking is, is the enforcement required to completely stop 'morally wrong' piracy worth it?

What never seems to be covered in surveys is, the stuff people pirate, would they have purchased it if there was not a pirate copy available. I believe for the most part the answer is no. So even if piracy could be stamped out tomorrow, it would not raise much more revenue for content providers. In fact it may well work out that the cost of completely stopping piracy actually costs more than the extra revenue generated by people not having a piracy option.

I would actually love to see all piracy stop just to see how the content industry etc respond when they only see their revenues jump a small percent, in comparison to what they think they are losing via piracy.

If all piracy stopped, the industry would have to find a new scapegoat to justify intrusive DRM.

If piracy were stopped, DRM would vanish. There wouldn't be any reason to have it.

But the "I hate pirates" attitude includes the multi-million dollar companies too.

LOL, you think DRM would stop without piracy? No, DRM is there to limit what YOU can do with a game. See, game companies don't like fair use. They don't want you to resell your game, the don't want you to loan out your game or even to let your little brother play it and that is the real purpose of DRM. DRM doesn't stop pirates, it stops honest customers from fair use.

 

[Mr_spamamam]

but the store can only exist because people buy the products, if everyone shoplifts then the store goes bust

 

[Epona]

but the store can only exist because people buy the products, if everyone shoplifts then the store goes bust

If the store gets bigger though, in spite of shoplifting, it can be assumed that shoplifting isn't killing the store.

All the while the game industry was growing, there was piracy. I refuse to believe that piracy is killing the industry.

 

[Gearhead mk2]

My stance on piracy is that its being overblown. If you cant get it any other way, go ahead and pirate, but dont pirate if you can buy cos that jst makes companies panic and hurts evrybody.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I think the hate of pirates on this site (and others) is artificial. What consumer puts a mutli-million corporation's finances above their own?

You're missing the point somewhat. Piracy affects the artists, and I'm not just talking about multi-millionaires like Beyonce or Rihanna. I mean real people who toil day after day to produce creative works for you and me to enjoy and then have their work stolen... That's just indefensible I'm afraid. Indie games are heavily pirated. Last time I checked those guys and gals weren't "multi-million corporations"...

I'm not claiming evidence, but I do wonder why that is, when it seems it's the Metallicas of the world who rage about piracy, and it's usually the indie guys who release stuff DRM free, and just accept that piracy does happen, but in the end it's the number of sales that matter.

Jonathon Coulton (yes, the Portal "Still Alive" guy) recently did an interesting piece of piracy himself, not defending it, more just expressing his view after a tweet was taken out of context, as cramming an opinion into 140 can be misunderstood

http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2012/01/21/megaupload/

 

[MasterOfHisOwnDomain]

Oh yes, of course, play the "poor indie dev" card. Sorry but the "I hate pirates" attitude isn't limited to indies and you know it. Further, why are indie devs special?

I guess my point is this: Surely you have your own problems, why are you making a game companies finances your problem? Were you brainwashed? Are you so addicted that the thought of not getting a COD sequel scares you to death? Why?

Because they're real individuals struggling to make money? They produce things that they should rightly receive financial reward for if people want to use them. Yet some people believe they have some divinely ordained right to do whatever the hell they want with this person's work and give them jack shit for it. Sorry, but yes, that does irritate me.

And since when does having my own problems mean I can't stand up for other things? Oh my fridge is broken, I'd better not stand up for women's rights today! And I have never bought a CoD game, so god knows where you pulled that from.

You're obviously irritated that what you thought was harmless and petty actually affects honest, hard-working people...

 

[Snotnarok]

I've said my argument a dozen times already but.

As a person who's been playing more games on the PC lately, companies don't exactly put out demos for every game you want to grab, however console does get a demo nearly every time. And you may say that's not a big deal just go watch a video or something and check the requirements to see if said game will run.

Except that's a load of horse poop, I want to see if playing the game is fun, and the requirements on the box? They're a load of crap, they're 90% of the time wrong. Call of Duty Black Ops- says it supported dual core processors and the like, I played MW2 without a problem so why not BlOps? Well guess what I had to wait 6 months for a patch to play the game I blew 60 bucks on and couldn't return. I 'demo'd MW2 to see if it'd run and after I found out it ran very well I bought it.

Mass Effect 2 same deal except the load times are made 10x worse, it'd take 50 or so seconds to load the quickest room in the game, other maps? 1-2 minutes. Says right on the box dual core processor supported, however there's a 3rd party patch that I dug up that fixes the issue. (bioware to this day has not fixed it)

Point is, it's not black and white as people think it is. I'm not going to take a chance hoping a game will run when a multibillion dollar company can't be bothered to put out a demo, why should someone be expected to just HOPE it works? Sorry I don't have billions they do, I'm going to test the game and play it before I buy it. Have a demo? Sweet,don't? Well I have something to grab online don't I?

Before you go saying "You probably just DL the game and keep that pirated version asshole." well you'd be wrong and a potty mouth. I have over 100 games on steam and probably 200 games on my shelves. I buy my games, I'd just like to know if my device can run it. "But what if you don't like it!?" is another amazing question I get, then I don't buy the game and I get rid of the 'demo' why the hell would I keep a game I don't like?

Do I think piracy is good? No but I sure think there's 1 good behind it, that when devs don't make a demo, it's fine for someone to make their own.

 

[Epona]

Oh yes, of course, play the "poor indie dev" card. Sorry but the "I hate pirates" attitude isn't limited to indies and you know it. Further, why are indie devs special?

I guess my point is this: Surely you have your own problems, why are you making a game companies finances your problem? Were you brainwashed? Are you so addicted that the thought of not getting a COD sequel scares you to death? Why?

Because they're real individuals struggling to make money? They produce things that they should rightly receive financial reward for if people want to use them. Yet some people believe they have some divinely ordained right to do whatever the hell they want with this person's work and give them jack shit for it. Sorry, but yes, that does irritate me.

And since when does having my own problems mean I can't stand up for other things? Oh my fridge is broken, I'd better not stand up for women's rights today! And I have never bought a CoD game, so god knows where you pulled that from.

You're obviously irritated that what you thought was harmless and petty actually affects honest, hard-working people...

COD was an example. Why does it bother you that other people pirate games? It isn't your bank account.

BTW, making a product doesn't mean you are entitled to get money for it. It's what the market can bear and if people don't think your product is worth the asking price, then you will starve. Some will pirate and not buy, other will simply not buy and in both cases, you will starve.

Alot of things affect honest, hard working people. Those same corporations that close studios hurt honest, hardworking people but you are more concerned about their bottom line. One of these days, EA will close Bioware after they ruined them. Of course, piracy will be blamed. Don't pretend you ONLY care about piracy when it happens to Indie devs. In fact, as another poster brought up, it's not the Indie devs whining all the time about piracy, it's the mega corporations and people like you just repeat their whines.

Tell ya what, you just keep on whining about piracy while you watch the mega corporations post bigger profits year after year and I'll continue to tell you how silly it is to care about the bottom line of companies who don't give two shits about you. Companies who support legislation like SOPA. For now, we'll agree to disagree.

If, one day, you decide to stop being a soldier for millionaires, let me know.

 

[Epona]

but the store can only exist because people buy the products, if everyone shoplifts then the store goes bust

If the store gets bigger though, in spite of shoplifting, it can be assumed that shoplifting isn't killing the store.

All the while the game industry was growing, there was piracy. I refuse to believe that piracy is killing the industry.

So, making money means you deserve to have the product of your hard work taken and used without any compensation?

Of course piracy has always been here, but never on the sheer scale as nowadays, and it actively lowers the quality of the games the companies make.

No, I never said I condoned piracy (except in the case of there being no demo), just that I think it's silly for people to waste so much time and effort hating on pirates who never directly affect them. It's like they are afraid EA will go bankrupt. EA is far from bankrupt and not worth your concern even if they weren't. BTW, how do you know how big piracy is today? Do you really trust the publishers numbers? Do you have a chart or something from a reliable source that shows that piracy has grown?


Piracy doesn't lower the quality of games, publishers do that. Publishers decide when to dumb down games, when to apply crippling DRM and when to concentrate on multiplayer instead of single player. Of course, when their decisions are applauded they take credit. When their decision are not applauded, they blame pirates.

 

[Wintermoot]

piracy isn't theft it,s breach of copyright laws
eventually piracy is going to be the only way to get some older games/movies/songs the original storage media is going to degrade and getting the media as soft ware (as in computer only) is going to be the only way to enjoy it.
personally I would never pirate a game unless I want to try it out (developers if you release demo,s you might end up with less piracy.)
I would only pirate if there is no alternative. (IE the game not being on GOG or Steam or the storage medium being unreadable/obsolete like a cassette tape,floppy drive or proprietary media like a game cart granted if I legally own the original system)

 

[MasterOfHisOwnDomain]

COD was an example. Why does it bother you that other people pirate games? It isn't your bank account.

Because I care about things beyond my immediate vicinity? Why is that hard to understand? Do you not care about anything then?

It's what the market can bear and if people don't think your product is worth the asking price, then you will starve.

But there's been evidence of people pirating stuff when the asking price is 0.01 £/$... the market could "bear" a lot more artists if people could be certain their work would be properly rewarded.

Alot of things affect honest, hard working people. Those same corporations that close studios hurt honest, hardworking people but you are more concerned about their bottom line. One of these days, EA will close Bioware after they ruined them. Of course, piracy will be blamed. Don't pretend you ONLY care about piracy when it happens to Indie devs.

Well piracy doesn't really help these companies, but I'm hardly naive enought to think it's the only reason studios are closed. Nevertheless, I care about people losing their jobs, but you're intent on saying I look after their profit margins? You've lost me there.

In fact, as another poster brought up, it's not the Indie devs whining all the time about piracy, it's the mega corporations and people like you just repeat their whines.

I repeated the whines of mega corporations by trying to defend indie developers? Sorry what? I think you've confused my post with someone else's...

Tell ya what, you just keep on whining about piracy while you watch the mega corporations post bigger profits year after year and I'll continue to tell you how silly it is to care about the bottom line of companies who don't give two shits about you. Companies who support legislation like SOPA. For now, we'll agree to disagree.

If, one day, you decide to stop being a soldier for millionaires, let me know.

Wut? Damn the terrible profits those companies are making, it makes me so upset! Theose evil people, how dare anyone ever make money from anything in a capitalist world?

... Look, I don't care how much money they make dude, and I know they don't care about me (unless it means extracting money from me), so what are you trying to say?

 

[Chairman Miaow]

I bought about 10 games this year, 5 of which were new releases. The last time I bought a tv was errrmmmm.... let's seee..... I don't even remember. 3 games adds up to more than a decent TV. Games aren't cheap. and my point was that people will have TV's and computers regardless of whether they play games or not. therefore the can't afford it point is still valid.

I bought about 100 games last year, all this added up to ca 700? (about 8 of them were triple A titles). A decent new TV costs ~1000+?, the console costs about 100-200?.

Yes, gaming is so expensive... if you are an idiot. You can play amazing games on a budget. You can play with a delay, waiting for the price of new titles to drop (Which happens extremly fast) or you can even open your eyes for websites and stores which offer great deals.

You have no need to be rude. You have a good point but you don't have to be an arsehole about it. I got a 32inch full HD TV for £150 and a new release game costs at least £45. Ok, so you can wait. But for the price to drop significantly on most releases can take more than a year. I'm not trying to justify pirating, I can just understand people not being able to afford gaming otherwise.

 

[Epona]

... Look, I don't care how much money they make dude, and I know they don't care about me (unless it means extracting money from me), so what are you trying to

I am trying to say "Get off the piracy hate bandwagon". It's beyond ridiculous. It has a witchhunt smell to it.