Jimquisition: Piracy - Trying To Kill It Makes It Stronger

[RDubayoo]

Of course, I picked my quotes. But there is this motion, and it is quite apparent. On the other hand, of course, publishers are still needed in one way or the other. But they have way too much impact as it stands.

Hey, if the developers can stick it out on their own, more power to them. I'm not rooting against them, far from it. But still, Jim's reaction to SOPA and et al. seems disproportionate and childish. Besides, I think you and Jim have missed a really important fact here which I already touched on--the vast majority of pirates don't actually care if a game was released by a big publisher or not. They just want free stuff. Simple as that. Giving developers more control over their IP's won't make a lick of difference over how much their games are pirated. In fact, I'd call Jim's complaint a pointless distraction from the real issues of piracy and should have been addressed as a completely different issue.

As for the anti-piracy measures ... Need to be blunt: Plain wrong. Shutting down torrent sites is just as counter-productive as the shutdown of Mega has proven to be. The files still exist and can easily be moved somewhere else. And it caused a massive amount of collateral damage up to this day already, and will do so even more when the servers can't be paid for anymore to keep the data living for the time being.

Proven to be? What are you smoking? MegaUpload's owners ARE IN PRISON. I can't think of a clearer message to send to anyone who wants to run a website where someone else's copyrighted work is put up for anyone to download. Sure, pirates can shuffle the files elsewhere... until those sites get shut down, too, or their administrators realize that they have to diligently filter out copyrighted material or else they'll also suffer the same fate of MegaUpload. And the more piracy sites that get shut down, the better. Soon, pirating will become too difficult, aggravating, and even dangerous for casual Internet users. Anonymous's little hissy fits may grab headlines but aren't going to stop this from happening. That's your future, chum, hope you're looking forward to it.

So, sorry, but the whole idea that enforcing the law just makes a problem worse doesn't apply here anymore than it does in any other crime. No, you can't stop everyone from prostituting themselves, selling drugs, shoplifting, or vandalizing city streets. However, that's no excuse not to even try, and besides, with no enforcement at all, all of those crimes would be much more prevalent. It's the same idea here. Yes, better enforcement won't stop piracy completely, but it can curtail it, which is the whole point. Honestly, I don't see why this is so hard to understand. There's nothing new about the idea of stopping someone from taking something that doesn't belong to them.

 

[AhumbleKnight]

Ok.... when did we get so ridiculously entitled that a company deserves to burn at the stake and have their property stolen from them... because they made us finger in a code that takes all of 45 seconds of your life to punch in. Really? Fucking really?

You call it 'burning at the stake' and 'entitlement', I call it 'customer feedback' and 'angry and frustrated'.
Also, it takes a fuck load longer than 45 seconds to punch in a code. It took me half an hour to get Batman AA working with that DRM + my shitty internet connection. It took over four fucking hours to get the broken assed shitty DRM in Dragon Age to work properly. And I have it far better (and worse) than a lot of people out there. We, the customers, are not happy. My spare time is short. I don't get that much of it and I would like to spend none of that time on DRM bs!

EA may not have won any favors with enforcing Origin for Battlefield 3... but I haven't seen them abusing their playerbase with it either. Newsflash: EA doesn't give a shit what porn you watch. As if Origin even scans for those kind of files...

If that is what you think people are annoyed with then you have completely missed the point. I don't claim to talk for anybody else, but for me; I don't want anybody to scan my computer for any reason that is outside the fair use of their product. Origin has no opt out options for that level of invasion of privacy.

But if you truly must condemn EA for their use of Origin... there's always the console version. No Origin on that, only a registration code. But apparently that's a crime against humanity as well.

So you're saying that if I don't like Origin I should go out and buy a console so I can play a game I am interested in on a platform I would prefer not to use? Don't be stupid.

And to reply to your points:

1st point: if it takes you 4 hours to get a game to work, I can only wonder how much of that is "user error"... But perhaps that's a natural downfall to PC gaming as a whole. One of the few negative aspects it has. A console normally never has the issue you encounter.

It is not a natural downfall of PC gaming as a whole seeing as this type of thing does not normaly happen. It wasn't 'user error' it was the DRM failing to correctly change the windows service's status in order to be able to authenticate. Once I figured out the issue I had to manualy open up the service and manualy change it's status every time I ran the game. This is not user error. This is buggy DRM.

2nd point: You're making a mountain out of a molehill. You and everyone else. You argue against it on principle, while giving a free pass to just about everything else. Ever had those banner ads that say "Find a car in today!"? Guess what, the fucking banner ad just violated your "privacy". The fact you think privacy exists on the internet at all is a joke in itself. If you want your privacy back, unplug your modem and never look back.

I like my privacy. What I put up on the internet is limited. I don't want any program to scan my computer. Being connected to the internet does not allow people to scan your computer (unless you are an idiot and don't use an effective virus checker etc.). Those banner ads use you IP address to work out your approx location. This is not an invasion of my privacy. This is code that is run from inside your browser and provides nothing more than a web hit from a specific location. I don't think that privacy exists on the internet, but I do think that what is on my computer should not be available without my permission.

3rd point: I'm not telling you to do anything. I'm just listing a perfectly viable alternative to dealing with Origin. A PS3 or 360 is not some uncommon item to find in a household, and it doesn't have to deal with Origin. Perfectly viable solution that haters seem to conveniently forget or scoff at in the name of lolPCelitism so that their incessant whining is justified. If you refuse to own a console, then you get to deal with the shortcomings of your intentionally narrow field of gaming.

There are other viable alternatives:
1) Don't use it, thus voting with your wallet.
2) Complain about it so that the company recieves customer feedback on a product.
Both of these are valid. Neither is PC elitism. I don't know where you pulled that shit from. I don't like to play on consoles as much as I do on the PC. That is not elitism. I am not saying that one is better than the other. I am only stating person preference. I happen to think that people should use whatever platform they prefer for their gaming and that they all have their advantages. It is simply a matter of customer satisfaction. I am not satisfied.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

The simple reason they don't do more stuff like steam is look what happened with origin as soon as it was announced everyone came out and said they hated it and would never use it and just pirate EA games so I can see why publishers would be put off this kind of service.

People would have been fine with Origin if EA hadn't made it into mandatory spyware. With Origin, EA basically tells their consumer base, "You either let us spy on you (to let us look at every inch of your computer), or you don't get to play our games."

Really, they basically made it more convenient to be a console gamer with their games, because they can't spy on consoles, but even if they could there will be nothing to be found, unlike the things they want to look for on people's PCs.

 

[getoffmycloud]

The simple reason they don't do more stuff like steam is look what happened with origin as soon as it was announced everyone came out and said they hated it and would never use it and just pirate EA games so I can see why publishers would be put off this kind of service.

People would have been fine with Origin if EA hadn't made it into mandatory spyware. With Origin, EA basically tells their consumer base, "You either let us spy on you (to let us look at every inch of your computer), or you don't get to play our games."

Really, they basically made it more convenient to be a console gamer with their games, because they can't spy on consoles, but even if they could there will be nothing to be found, unlike the things they want to look for on people's PCs.

I said as soon as origin was announced people bitched not when the spyware thing was uncovered so that just isn't true

 

[WilliamRLBaker]

God another lame diatribe from Jim Sterling and not only that its so flawed its hard to listen too.

One simple method to prove you wrong.

If a company say Valve were to release their entire library for free yet make it so difficult to get it for free say have to send in your birth certificate, drivers license...etc Then at the same time make it easier than reaching down and scratching ones own balls to just purchase it...Which do you think will be more actively pursued by the consumer? thats right the free method Making comments of but not all pirates are in it for the freebies and some are forced into it by certain practices...yep about 0.0001% of them yes the rest are in it to get free games.

Piracy wont ever die theft has been alive and well since well the first microbes were stealing energy from other microbes to survive...that doesn't mean these companies can just sit there and ignore piracy and frankly concepts of make it easier to get ahold of your games, make it cheaper just doesn't work people will always go the free route...There's a reason people come up with concepts that the best things in life are free. In todays morally bankrupt world our children are believing that they deserve the illegally downloaded files and are on masse incapable of seeing the harm they are doing and yes I am a pirate and I fully admit it without making such stupid excuses as but but but the demos there is none, but but if it didn't have this drm...etc..etc I pirate cause I don't have the money to buy all the games I'm interest in and am unwilling to pay prices for older more rare games.

 

[Thoric485]

Thank you for finally grasping the obvious truth.

 

[De_Roll_Le]

I bought Spore pre-release.
The DRM wasn't working...something in my uni accomodation was messing up the DRM and EA and for 2 days I could not play.

On the third day I visited my mate who was laughing her ass off and enjoying a pirated non-drm riddled version. I had to ask her help to crack into a game I bought legally because the legal bollocks piled on top of prevented me from actually playing it.

Spore wasn't all it was cracked up to be either...but without pirates I would have never of been able to play a game that I legally bought. A cruel bloody irony.

 

[Therumancer]

God another lame diatribe from Jim Sterling and not only that its so flawed its hard to listen too.

One simple method to prove you wrong.

If a company say Valve were to release their entire library for free yet make it so difficult to get it for free say have to send in your birth certificate, drivers license...etc Then at the same time make it easier than reaching down and scratching ones own balls to just purchase it...Which do you think will be more actively pursued by the consumer? thats right the free method Making comments of but not all pirates are in it for the freebies and some are forced into it by certain practices...yep about 0.0001% of them yes the rest are in it to get free games.

Piracy wont ever die theft has been alive and well since well the first microbes were stealing energy from other microbes to survive...that doesn't mean these companies can just sit there and ignore piracy and frankly concepts of make it easier to get ahold of your games, make it cheaper just doesn't work people will always go the free route...There's a reason people come up with concepts that the best things in life are free. In todays morally bankrupt world our children are believing that they deserve the illegally downloaded files and are on masse incapable of seeing the harm they are doing and yes I am a pirate and I fully admit it without making such stupid excuses as but but but the demos there is none, but but if it didn't have this drm...etc..etc I pirate cause I don't have the money to buy all the games I'm interest in and am unwilling to pay prices for older more rare games.

Well, the problem here is that the methods being used affect the legitimate purchusers, not the people who are pirating who ignore those things anyway. What's more attempts to do things like destroy the used game industry are direct attacks to prevent consumers from doing what they want to with their own purchused property. The industry is going so far as to insist that you give them money for nothing, and have no rights, they can take your money, and then revoke your right to use the product they are generously providing for any reason they want, including simply feeling like it. That's bloody ridiculous.

The thing about piracy is not a matter of whether it's theft or not, because it is, but the simple fact that it's existed since media has. The gaming industry, music industry, and other media based companies have grown into huge, multi-billion dollar empires despite it's prescence. They show constant growth despite it's existance. Sure, like any business there are companies that fail, layoffs, and everything else, but media is strong.

The issue isn't one where it's wrong for them to want to protect their property, but rather that it's wrong to do it in a way that takes away the rights of their customers, or intrudes on their enjoyment of the product. It would be one thing if the industy as a whole was in some kind of danger, but it's not.

I frequently liken the current battles as being a war betweeen gang bangers and the mafia. Both groups are deplorable, corrupt crooks, neither side being remotely right, with lots of innocent bystanders (the users) getting mowed down in the crossfire.

The thing is that what the gaming industry is doing is acting on behalf of very rich men who want to be even richer, that's their entire stake in this thing. As a result I have no real sympathy when they want to cut into the used game market, cram my system with DRM and Malware, or make me jump through hoops with codes. As things stand now if they can target the pirates without influancing the legitimate consumers, then go for it, otherwise they should just bugger off.

Understand though that my opinion would be differant if the industry as a whole (as opposed to a few companies within it) was not so massive and was in actual danger of dying due to things like used games and piracy... but that's not the case. It's not about them needing to take these kinds of actions to survive and profit, it's all about trying to see how much money they can wring out when they are already wallowing in more money than they could probably spend.

 

[QuadFish]

I used to pirate like a bastard when I was younger. I would just torrent any PC game I wanted, because I had no financial options of my own (all the money locked in a back account) and my parents weren't so keen on lending a credit card for some game over the net. Piracy was the only thing that could work for me, and it worked extremely well. DRM just wasn't that good back then and it hasn't really improved.

Eventually I pirated Half Life and then Half Life 2, and so on until I had the whole Orange Box. Realising HL was amazing, I was lead to download Steam and after a period of downloading only the free demos that were available, starting asking my brother if I could use his PayPal. Suddenly I was buying pretty much every current Valve game and by now, since I've got my own PayPal account, I've got an absurdly large library.

The point is, it wasn't a lack of money or willingness to pay for games that lead me to torrent, it was the fact that retail was far too hard and my cash was effectively inaccessible. Steam solved that problem for me, and now Valve has ALL OF MY MONEY. If you show me a game that has GFWL in it, I won't even bother after going throught the trial that was just signing up for it.

tl;dr For me (and maybe a couple of other people out there like me) it was never a money problem. DRM didn't stop me torrenting. Steam did.

 

[2-part Epoxy]

This issue seems like it might have much to do with the omnipresent "maturity" and "image problem" issues in videogame culture. I wonder if the people at the top of the money-chain in game production really understand that they have customers.
Producers of other media do; maybe they didn't always, maybe back in the fifties, record store owners dreaded stocking any of that newfangled rock-and-roll, afraid some ne'er-do-well would shoplift it. I wonder if that was a step in the process. But now they must know that the people who enjoy their products enough to keep coming back for more are adults, people with jobs and busy lives, people who demand respect.
Despite demographic research, the producers of videogames might be locked into thinking that they're catering to a bunch of kiddies, and kiddies need to be supervised. They need to be given discipline and boundaries, since they have no self-control of their own. And piracy happens when those kids get a little too rowdy. SOPA showed that many powerful people utterly failed to understand piracy as "a regrettable economic issue that can be understood and countered," viewing it instead as "naughty kids that need to be punished."
For a long time, they were probably very right.
When Jim Sterling first appeared on The Escapist, I thought he was a whiny kid who commanded no respect. I don't anymore, and these recent videos really hammer home why. He's changed for the better, and why not. So should we all.
I think the same thing about the way I was even a year ago: what a whiny idiot.
I hope these revelations reach producers; when they realize they're dealing with better people than they think, these misinformed, paranoid and punitive counter-piracy measures may fade away.

 

[Orekoya]

Didn't Steam sales double once again this past christmas sale? [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115085-Steam-Sales-Double-Again-in-2011] Obviously they're doing a good job fighting pirates; so why is this not catching on with publishers? How is seven consecutive years of sale figures doubling not enticing enough? Will all my sentences in this post really be questions?

 

[ezeroast]

"Shitty American broadband." are you for real??

<<<Australian

 

[Furtled]

I'm always mystified as to why games companies don't learn from the mistakes of the film and music industry, for all their huffing, puffing, congress lobbying ways have they managed to eradicate piracy?

It's time companies accepted that some people will always pirate, doesn't matter if you give them a free pony and dancing girls with a game, they'll still nab a free copy. In the meantime, like Jim says, punishing the people who pay to play games and giving them an inferior product experience to the pirated one - then being surprised when more people pirate?

It's not rocket science!

 

[Triality]

Game Publisher Executives aren't going to get it until they get the same front-door protests that the Bank of America execs got 2 years ago during 2010. Hundreds of people stood shoulder to shoulder and griefed the very people's homes that made the decisions and called the shots.

If gamers aren't as committed to doing this as those protesters were, then we really deserve the DRM and online passes they foist on us. If it makes us uncomfortable, then we start making them uncomfortable. Simple as that.

E3 would be the perfect venue to kick start this movement. Mobs rush the stage of the EA and Ubisoft conferences. I can already hear the common shouts:

"D-R-M, go to hell!" or "No-more-D-R-M. NO-MORE-ONLINE-PASS." SOMETHING! Anything to make them acknowledge how pissed off we are! It isn't enough that we choose not to buy their stupid games, because there are too many indifferent gamers to begin with, and those with not enough time to get out the message. They need to sweat and fidget and feel embarrassed and humiliated for getting away with this "100-strings-attached" free market philosophy.

Man I'm angry. It reminds me of some motto that some online show uses on their home page whenever there's a new episode... oh yeah.

 

[winginson]

Just need to rant on this topic. F**k Ubisoft with a rusty spoon.

Bought anno 2070, and their multiple layers of DRM keep breaking so I actually haven't been able to play it. Seems the only way I'll ever get to play it is to crack it. I think piracy because you want free stuff is wrong, but when cracks and piracy become the only way of actually playing a game, you must have less brains than a rock to realise that you are encouraging it.

 

[Saltychipmunk]

God another lame diatribe from Jim Sterling and not only that its so flawed its hard to listen too.

One simple method to prove you wrong.

If a company say Valve were to release their entire library for free yet make it so difficult to get it for free say have to send in your birth certificate, drivers license...etc Then at the same time make it easier than reaching down and scratching ones own balls to just purchase it...Which do you think will be more actively pursued by the consumer? thats right the free method Making comments of but not all pirates are in it for the freebies and some are forced into it by certain practices...yep about 0.0001% of them yes the rest are in it to get free games.

Piracy wont ever die theft has been alive and well since well the first microbes were stealing energy from other microbes to survive...that doesn't mean these companies can just sit there and ignore piracy and frankly concepts of make it easier to get ahold of your games, make it cheaper just doesn't work people will always go the free route...There's a reason people come up with concepts that the best things in life are free. In todays morally bankrupt world our children are believing that they deserve the illegally downloaded files and are on masse incapable of seeing the harm they are doing and yes I am a pirate and I fully admit it without making such stupid excuses as but but but the demos there is none, but but if it didn't have this drm...etc..etc I pirate cause I don't have the money to buy all the games I'm interest in and am unwilling to pay prices for older more rare games.

actually, jim is more correct. I dont doubt there are plenty of people like you. however piracy isnt always as cut and dry as ... click button .... get game ... movie... porn .... whatever you fancy.

maybe you get a virus instead that toasts your computer
maybe no one seeds what you want , in your language or at all
maybe the thing you want is available but is either lower quality or missing features.
maybe you use megaupload ... and are now fucked......

but that is for everything not just games.
my point being is that , yes there are people (YOU) who are willing to accept those flaws to get the free stuff. But they are flaws. And many people (ME) don't feel like spending hours dicking around the internet to find a seeded torrent , or a torrent that is not a virus. For that reason alone is why I buy steam. it is a click of a button or two and bam game installing , things rarely ever get so simple.

 

[Sarge034]

It's a fact of life that some people just like to help themselves to freebies. However, not all pirates are in it for the discount, and some are actively driven to piracy by the very companies attempting to kill it. When you make your product harder to obtain and enjoy, all you do is breed an environment where pirates can thrive.

I am just getting around to watching the pirate episodes you have up and I agree with most of what you are saying, but I do have one question for you. If the best way to eliminate piracy is to remove DRM and the like why was The Witcher 2 pirated so much? They removed the DRM for customer convenience and it ended up that about four copies were pirated to every one sold.

Why do you think this happened if it is indeed the security systems that are making people feel that they can get better service from pirates?

 

[Magmarock]

Ehhh he's on the right track, but a lot of people give Steam a little too much praise I think. MW3 $100 USD for anyone living in Australia... yeah I think I'll pass thank you.

 

[Strazdas]

netflix would reduce piracy if it was freaking available. when netflix states "ahh you fithy pirate country we will not sell you products" that pretty much what forces us to pirate it.

and i agree totally with you for companies encouraging piracy.

P.S. capcha: funny farm