Alternative to Piracy

[Darkenwrath]

- Sell sealed consoles.
- Eliminate cd drives (dvd, blu-ray, hd-dvd) The consumer will see an immediate benefit from a reduced price from the removal of packaging, shipping and lowered advertising costs.
- games available for download only (at discounted prices like what steam does)
- if you go to a friends house you can log into your account and download anything you bought so you're not lugging around a console

COuld you explain sealed consoles?

So you would completely remove all games in hard-copy form? essentially making games only marketable on the internet? I don't think this would work, it would eliminate the retailers and not everyone has internet, if I misunderstood what you meant please explain.

Friends house idea seems good though.

 

[AWAR]

It would be nice if we could trade games on steam. And the if the prices dropped a bit...

 

[Chrissyluky]

You could try downloading your pirated dvd's with utorrent instead of bittorrent. I mean steal them from a real store instead.

 

[Darkenwrath]

It would be nice if we could trade games on steam. And the if the prices dropped a bit...

But how? WHY?! Do you have a way? That's the point, suggest something that makes this a plausible thing to say and not just dreaming.

 

[Dommyboy]

Do what Rocksteady did with Batman Arkham Asylum and put glitches within the code that alter gameplay if you pirate it.

Easily fixed though, so still no issue for pirates.

 

[ProfessorLayton]

That's great, but do you an idea or system that would actually allow designers to do this? Would you take a game for free if you didn't mind having adverts popping up throughout it?

I would watch a 30 second ad during the loading screens and have product placement if they didn't affect the game at all as long as it means a free game. But I really don't see that happening any time soon.

 

[AWAR]

It would be nice if we could trade games on steam. And the if the prices dropped a bit...

But how? WHY?! Do you have a way? That's the point, suggest something that makes this a plausible thing to say and not just dreaming.

I dont know put pressure on steam I guess? In any case I think it would be right to kill the middle man (Publisher/distributor) by having companies sponsor developers in return of putting their ads on loading screens and distribute them digitally with most of the money going to the developer. Games would be cheaper and bring more money to the people who actually made the game.

 

[Jfswift]

- Sell sealed consoles.
- Eliminate cd drives (dvd, blu-ray, hd-dvd) The consumer will see an immediate benefit from a reduced price from the removal of packaging, shipping and lowered advertising costs.
- games available for download only (at discounted prices like what steam does)
- if you go to a friends house you can log into your account and download anything you bought so you're not lugging around a console

COuld you explain sealed consoles?

So you would completely remove all games in hard-copy form? essentially making games only marketable on the internet? I don't think this would work, it would eliminate the retailers and not everyone has internet, if I misunderstood what you meant please explain.

Friends house idea seems good though.

I was thinking about that too, what if you don't have internet but I figured game retailers could setup an infrastructure for downloading (for a fee of course) or internet cafes. I'm not concerned if this hurts business for retailers (I suppose retailers could go online and compete). My only goal for this conversation was to eliminate piracy (I know that's a bit jaded but that's the direction I was going.)

The unit would be completely sealed shut with no security locking tab you could remove. If maintenance needed to be done then a special digital lock could be engaged internally (maybe via radio remote control. Something only the repair people would have access too.) Any tampering with the unit will brick it but the warrently would also be extended, no questions asked if it bricks. I think three years is good. I suppose usb ports would be okay but i'd want some kind of watchdog hardware or software to keep an eye on things going into the unit.

I recommend this as a slow transition. I bring up usb ports for disk drives and backwards compatibilty but I really, firmly believe that cd units are a dead technology and need to go away. Blu-ray is nifty but I sincerely hope it's the last generation for these things.

Somewhat offtopic but I don't like how the movie industry wont transition to online usage. I know this because I read an article about Netflix and NF said that they were only allowed to stream so many movies because it would dig into dvd sales. If companies are serious about elminating piracy than they need to upgrade their business model. I realize this will be a painful change but that's my opinion.

 

[The Austin]

Include video games in cereal boxes. That's all I can think of.

BRILLIANT!

Or we could just make them cheaper.....?

Once again, do you have a way to implement this? I'm not trying to be annoying or point out flaws in your logic, but the point was to try and come up with a system that would somehow reduce piracy but also be feasible to put into place, simply saying "make it cheaper" sure does the former, but the latter would require some explanation.

sure.

Remember how back in the days of the PS2 the most expensive a game got to was 49.99?

Yea. Go back to that. $65 is way to fucking much.

 

[pirateninj4]

Until you get rid of the money thing (ie money being the worst thing since we gave up tribal living) you'll always have a black market for everything.

 

[whaleswiththumbs]

Actually buy the game?

Thank you...

My thought on this is that it's much like other forms of internet abusings(i.e. trolling, flaming, etc.) If we would stop making such a goddamn deal out of it there really wouldn't be as many people, which is also true for ANY thing else you believe should be stopped/furthered. If you take the hype of of anything , im tempted to say half, a good chunk of the followers will drop off.

I have an amazingly awesome close female friend(not really like you think, idk why, for later disscussion) who if a pirate. I have even done it a few times. The only reasont he two of us do it is because we can't afford the game in the first place, we are for the most part broke and when were not we choose to spend it on other things we cant get with a free download.

So you really want to stop piracy? You can't. So spread some wealth and stop hyping and i promise atleast 2 of your pirates will hit the stores.

 

[Canus]

Meh I proposed an alternative in the last thread. I guess it got overlooked.

A few measures need to be taken to slow piracy or get rid of it.

- Sell sealed consoles.
- Eliminate cd drives (dvd, blu-ray, hd-dvd) The consumer will see an immediate benefit from a reduced price from the removal of packaging, shipping and lowered advertising costs.
- games available for download only (at discounted prices like what steam does)
- if you go to a friends house you can log into your account and download anything you bought so you're not lugging around a console

Bandwidth ain't free. I'm capped at a very generous 250 GB a month up/down shared, and I always use at least half of it even without any sort of game downloading. I know that in many countries, you'd be lucky to get 20 GB a month. What's the size of a PS3 game? 10 GB? 20? It's only going up.

IMO, there isn't anything you can do to stop pirates, and it isn't as big an issue as it's made out to be. Stealing hard goods is a crime, too, but shoplifting is still problem accounting for over ten BILLION dollars of stolen goods in the US alone. I'll admit, I've pirated games before. But I wasn't about to pay for them no matter how easy things were made. No sale was lost; it was piracy or nothing. And since my copy of the game didn't even cause the loss of revenue that taking something off a shelf would, I don't really feel bad. Haters gonna hate, pirates gonna pirate. Release demos to cut out some pirates, use non-invasive DRM like CD Keys to weed out a few more (yeah it's weak, but it'll stop a couple casual pirates), then deal with it as best you can, like EVERY OTHER INDUSTRY IN THE WORLD.

 

[Wicky_42]

Well alternatives that could work would be programs that allow for both full purchase and single purchase songs for cheap and DRM free. As well as allow buyers to view entire movies for a small fee, make it on demand to. We could also incorporate these two ideas into one smooth program that accepts both credit card and pre-paid cards you can buy pretty much everywhere.

Itunes doesn't just give you the song for free, no DRM attached. They watermark the files with your email and creditcard information.

That would be a problem if it wasn't for the fact you don't need a credit card to buy from itunes.

As well the fact even if it did i don't give everyone and my dog files i download.

That's not destructive DRM. If you don't mind people knowing your personal info you can give it to anyone.

It doesn't matter what you pay with. You need a credit card to get an iTunes account in the first place. Now, you can sign up for iTunes with a prepaid gift credit card, but I'd be pretty sure you didn't.

Still though. It's not a destructive DRM and i don't see a major issue with it. It discourages you from giving out the song without having to limit your ability to use it. While someone can steal my credit information by hacking my account or stealing my ipod they could just as easily pull the info from my computer or just take my wallet.

As well its by far probably one of the least offensive DRM's out there. Its a step. Rather then pinpoint a problem work to make it better.

I'm a bit confused by this DRM - it puts you credit card info into the songs you buy? For what purpose? So that you can only play them on your account or something? What happens if you want to put them on an MP3 player to listen to out and about? Or if you change cards?
Does a program check your details every time you use the song? If not, then what's the point? If it does, is it not conceivable that the program could be told to disable your music collection?

Personally, with music I'd get the CD and rip it - wow, music that I can listen to without worrying about offending some software somewhere. No DRM, no bullshit, just the product I wanted.

Then again, that might just be me.

 

[cappp]

I'm not going to talk about the pirating of games, because I don't know enough about the industry. I will however say this:

Avatar (2009):
Budget: 237 Million USD
Gross Revenue: 2,718 Million USD

Weep for the movie industry, I do not.

It's not as simple as that though. There's an article on Slate that explores the issue in more depth, the <url=http://www.slate.com/id/2118819>relevent portion reads:

"First, the reported "grosses" are not those of the studios but those of the movie houses. The movie houses take these sums and keep their share (or what they claim is their share)-which can amount to more than 50 percent of the original box-office total. Consider, for example, Touchstone's Gone in 60 Seconds, which had a $242 million box-office gross. From this impressive haul, the theaters kept $129.8 million and remitted the balance to Disney's distribution arm, Buena Vista. After paying mandatory trade dues to the MPAA, Buena Vista was left with $101.6 million. From this amount, it repaid the marketing expenses that had been advanced-$13 million for prints so the film could open in thousands of theatres; $10.2 million for the insurance, local taxes, custom clearances, and other logistical expenses; and $67.4 million for advertising. What remained of the nearly quarter-billion-dollar "gross" was a paltry $11 million. (And that figure does not account for the $103.3 million that Disney had paid to make the movie in the first place."

You may also find <url=http://www.boxofficeprophets.com/column/index.cfm?columnID=8359>this discussion interesting.

 

[Wicky_42]

I dont pirate them myself. I use the PC of a family member who lives in the city then burn them to a disk. I cannot use this system with steam as i would need to directly download to the machine i want to play on.

Ah, no you don't. So long as the games are registered to your account, you can copy-paste game files into the Steam folder and all will be well. I backed up my (20Gb or so) Steam folder before a reformat, then reinstalled Steam, ran it so it created the file architecture for my games and began downloading them (just be be on the safe side), then closed it down and pasted everything in. Start it up again and it thinks it's just completed the downloads. Sorted!

 

[Chunko]

Ok in Response to the ridiculous amount of responses to this thread

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.190733-Piracy-lost-money

I've decided to try and stop the flame wars, instead of arguing over the morality of piracy, is it at all possible to create an alternative to it?

If you don't like the prices that the games developers put on their games, what alternatives do you suggest?

Is there a way to make piracy viable? Instead of simply downloading the game could they sponsor the original Developer in some way?

Is it possible to even create an alternative to piracy? Steam seems to be one of the main choices instead of just downloading the game illegally pay for the download.

If we can't find an answer could someone at least suggest an alternative to the DRM?

Once again this is NOT piracy is right or wrong! This is a "OK piracy happens, if you really don't like it or you do do it, is there a way to create a system that makes piracy obsolete?"

Hey maybe a payment plan, or if your gamestation you could just demand peoples souls instead....

You have the right idea, GOOD JOB! I was thinking about this while I was reading that thread. Developers need to think about somehow combining demos with the full game. A possible Idea would be something along the lines of giving away the first third of L4D1 for free for 1 month. Whoever masters this idea will be rich as hell!

 

[DividedUnity]

I dont pirate them myself. I use the PC of a family member who lives in the city then burn them to a disk. I cannot use this system with steam as i would need to directly download to the machine i want to play on.

Ah, no you don't. So long as the games are registered to your account, you can copy-paste game files into the Steam folder and all will be well. I backed up my (20Gb or so) Steam folder before a reformat, then reinstalled Steam, ran it so it created the file architecture for my games and began downloading them (just be be on the safe side), then closed it down and pasted everything in. Start it up again and it thinks it's just completed the downloads. Sorted!

I was under the impression that I could not do so. I was mistaken it seems.

Would I be able to download the games from steam on one computer then transfer them via disk to another computer without any heavy downloads then?

 

[Jfswift]

Meh I proposed an alternative in the last thread. I guess it got overlooked.

A few measures need to be taken to slow piracy or get rid of it.

- Sell sealed consoles.
- Eliminate cd drives (dvd, blu-ray, hd-dvd) The consumer will see an immediate benefit from a reduced price from the removal of packaging, shipping and lowered advertising costs.
- games available for download only (at discounted prices like what steam does)
- if you go to a friends house you can log into your account and download anything you bought so you're not lugging around a console

Bandwidth ain't free. I'm capped at a very generous 250 GB a month up/down shared, and I always use at least half of it even without any sort of game downloading. I know that in many countries, you'd be lucky to get 20 GB a month. What's the size of a PS3 game? 10 GB? 20? It's only going up.

IMO, there isn't anything you can do to stop pirates, and it isn't as big an issue as it's made out to be. Stealing hard goods is a crime, too, but shoplifting is still problem accounting for over ten BILLION dollars of stolen goods in the US alone. I'll admit, I've pirated games before. But I wasn't about to pay for them no matter how easy things were made. No sale was lost; it was piracy or nothing. And since my copy of the game didn't even cause the loss of revenue that taking something off a shelf would, I don't really feel bad. Haters gonna hate, pirates gonna pirate. Release demos to cut out some pirates, use non-invasive DRM like CD Keys to weed out a few more (yeah it's weak, but it'll stop a couple casual pirates), then deal with it as best you can, like EVERY OTHER INDUSTRY IN THE WORLD.

*Nods* Yea, that's a good point and why my plan probably wont work (although my internet company doesn't hassle me for doing massive game downloads from steam all the time). I think my idea might work, but only in the future, after the internet has been overhauled. Right now I agree with you. I don't care too much if people pirate or not, I was just suggesting a creative way to curb it. With music though, there really is no way to do it. You can always intercept the wires. There's just no way to prevent high quality copies. I forget to mention include demos, but I do agree with that, steam does this and it's a great idea. You can actually play the game or a sizeable portion without getting ripped off.

CD keys do work if they rotate them once in a while. I've seen a few companies do this or offer, "upgrades" which break the older versions hehe. It's sneaky but effective. (at least I suspect that's what they're doing).

 

[Wicky_42]

I dont pirate them myself. I use the PC of a family member who lives in the city then burn them to a disk. I cannot use this system with steam as i would need to directly download to the machine i want to play on.

Ah, no you don't. So long as the games are registered to your account, you can copy-paste game files into the Steam folder and all will be well. I backed up my (20Gb or so) Steam folder before a reformat, then reinstalled Steam, ran it so it created the file architecture for my games and began downloading them (just be be on the safe side), then closed it down and pasted everything in. Start it up again and it thinks it's just completed the downloads. Sorted!

I was under the impression that I could not do so. I was mistaken it seems.

Would I be able to download the games from steam on one computer then transfer them via disk to another computer without any heavy downloads then?

Yep. Wouldn't even have to be from your account, in all probability. Basically, so long as you have the license to use the game on Steam, it doesn't matter where those files came from - it's all the same to Steam! The only downloads would be game patches, which obviously vary in size. If you didn't want to download the patches, then you'd probably have to copy the entire game file across from the downloading PC again, backing up your saves as required.

 

[DividedUnity]

I dont pirate them myself. I use the PC of a family member who lives in the city then burn them to a disk. I cannot use this system with steam as i would need to directly download to the machine i want to play on.

Ah, no you don't. So long as the games are registered to your account, you can copy-paste game files into the Steam folder and all will be well. I backed up my (20Gb or so) Steam folder before a reformat, then reinstalled Steam, ran it so it created the file architecture for my games and began downloading them (just be be on the safe side), then closed it down and pasted everything in. Start it up again and it thinks it's just completed the downloads. Sorted!

I was under the impression that I could not do so. I was mistaken it seems.

Would I be able to download the games from steam on one computer then transfer them via disk to another computer without any heavy downloads then?

Yep. Wouldn't even have to be from your account, in all probability. Basically, so long as you have the license to use the game on Steam, it doesn't matter where those files came from - it's all the same to Steam! The only downloads would be game patches, which obviously vary in size. If you didn't want to download the patches, then you'd probably have to copy the entire game file across from the downloading PC again, backing up your saves as required.

Id probably have to download all the patches on another pc though.

I might try steam out again.