Lionhead: "Piracy these days on PC is probably less problematic than second-hand sales on the Xbox"

[FallenTraveler]

but there was an original purchase on the console, there isn't an original sale on the pc necessarily.

at least you get the 60 dollars from the original purchase.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Illegal != Immoral
Legal != Moral

Now that that's cleared up...

Which is worse? Morally? I suppose piracy, since nobody at all benefits from it except the person stealing the software.

Which is worse for the industry? I dunno, and I doubt anybody does for certain.

 

[Ranorak]

Morally, they are exactly the same as far as I'm concerned. Either way you're getting the game without having to pay the publisher. You can say that second hand sales are better overall for the industry because someone bought the game originally, but the actual act of buying a game used has the exact same effect on developers as pirating one.

Saying "Someone else has already bought this, so it doesn't matter." when buying a used game is no better than any of excuses pirates have. Yes, someone else paid the developer for the game, but you did not. Yet you still get to play the game.

The way I see it,
If there is a game collecting dust on my shelf because I don't play it anymore and I give it away for free, I'm robbing the developers too, right?
In your eyes it's morally wrong to give something away that you don't use.
Because the person I give it too will no longer buy that item from a store.
You know, the store that ALREADY paid to developer for the product.

Lets take a hypothetical here.
A gameshop buys 100 copies of Halo Scrolls: Call of Warcraft.
They have to pay the Publisher say 5000 Euro. That's 10 euro less then each individual game sells for.
So for every sale, the store gets to keep 10 euro profit while the other 50 has already been used to buy the games in the first place.

Now, I buy a game, for 60 Euro. The store gets their 60 euro and they have money to buy more stocks in the future. More people do this, and they sell about 80 copes of the game.
They still have 20 unsold copies in their shop. Already paid for. A few months pass and they lower the price. 50 Euro's for a game. No profit, but at least we'll run even. and Yes, all other copies get sold.

meanwhile I finished Halo Scrolls: Call of Warcraft and sold it back to The Gameshop for a neat 20 Euro's. They sell the game for 25 Euro's as a sold copy. Making a 5 euro profit.

In the end, they made a cool 15 euro profit on 1 game.
There were also 3 other people that did the same thing as me.

Now, it's next year, Halo Scrolls: Fable of Zelda comes out, and because of the extra profit made with the sale of used games, they now buy 101 copies of it to sell in their store.

See, this is how the actual trade goes.
When you buy a game, the store already paid for it. Your 60 Euro doesn't get split into 10 for the store and 50 goes in a neat envelope to Nintenvison. More store profit means more games can be bought by the store to sell.

 

[David Bray]

Think of it their way.

Them getting no money and someone playing their game.
vs.
Them getting no money and someone playing their game, plus £25 in retailers pockets.

I think the latter is worse, don't you?

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Watch the video kids, educate yourselves:


Also I'm not a lawyer but as far as I know non-commercial copyright infringement isn't a criminal offense. It is a civil tort again the copyright holder.

And in some countries it isn't even that.

 

[Ranorak]

Think of it their way.

Them getting no money and someone playing their game.
vs.
Them getting no money and someone playing their game, plus £25 in retailers pockets.

I think the latter is worse, don't you?

No, because the 25 Euro the retailer makes doesn't go in their pockets all together.
It goes into buying more games from the Publishers (Not developers damnit) to sell in their store.

Increased income for stores doesn't translated into profit.
They use that increased income to buy more stock from Publishers to sell!

 

[mirasiel]

What the user does with it isn't their problem. Many games need to keep servers running to maintain the multiplayer element. That costs money. If a second hand user comes along, they are costing the company money rather that just enjoying the product.

and the person whom they bought the game from (IE the first owner) is no longer placing a burden on the servers. Thus the companies outgoings are unchanged...

Now if you are telling me that the company did not originaly factor server support costs into their budgeting well....thats not the fault of the second hand market is it?

 

[Kathinka]

aaaallrigh

since i live in a country where downloading copyrighted material (games, music, films) is perfectly LEGAL, i guess i can write this lines without getting banhammered into the ground mercylessly within a matter of seconds. short disclaimer for the sake of my ban status: don't do anything that violates the laws where you live! don't! allright? good.

now, i have downloaded a ton of games in the course of my life. some of those i have downloaded i later bought. not all of them, but several. the thing about those i did NOT buy later is this: i would not have bought them, even if i would not have had the possibility to obtain them for free. the vast majority of people who download games think and act this way. i did not cause a single cent of damage to any gaming company! my downloading did NOT make me buy any less games in any way.

this whole "huge losses due to piracy" blabla is very obviously just something they want us to believe, so they can cram increasingly restrictive drm's and control mechanisms down our throats (which coincidentaly also prevent used sales. yes, i'm looking at you, steam[ing pile of shit] .

i'm not saying that there are no losses due to downloading of games, legal or in other places ilegal. but it's getting blown waaay out of proportion with this "every download is a lost sale"-scam. and as someone said before, they are counting every STARTED download, not even every completed one. and even of the completed ones only a tiny percentage actually replaces a bought unit.

again, i didn't do anything ilegal, nor am i encouraging anyone to break any laws. so admins plz no ban me, kk thx bye?

 

[Vivace-Vivian]

"Worse"? No.

More costly?

Perhaps.

 

[quantumsoul]

What I get out of this is developers moving to consoles over pc's because of piracy are misleading themselves.

Piracy is bad but it's impact on sales is less than 2nd hand sales. So more pc games please.
(I own all consoles but prefer pc gaming)

 

[Valdus]

Maybe when if you sell your games for less we might not look to second hand ones. I can pay £50 for a new game that's come out or wait a week and find someone unhappy enough with it to sell it for £30 instead. Happens all the time with me (in fact probably about 70-90% of games I own I buy in that way).

 

[Projo]

most pirates probably wouldnt have bought the game anyway

This certainly is not always the case. In fact, people who pirate games quite often do so to "test the water" before actually making a legitimate purchase. Hell, after that atrocity that was Phantasy Star Universe, a friend of mine put Phantasy Star Zero on my flashcart. Played it for a bit, "this shit is awesome!", and she went out and bought it new.

Alternatively, if she bought PS0 used for $5(instead of testing it on download), the publisher would've never gotten her money.

At least piracy, in some noble cases, can lead to a real sale. Buying used, does not.

And "oh but piracy is illegal!!" is dumb. Piracy is the same as sharing a movie with someone or teaching someone a recipe you got out of book. Someone had to pay for the original game, and now they're sharing their product.

Secondhand is certainly better than new for prices, but don't bring up legality. It's just as worthless to the games devs as a download is. That's why they've taken the move towards product codes to play online - so people who buy it used have to pay to activate it for multiplayer as well.




also, fuck capitalism

 

[Azmael Silverlance]

Yes it is worse.
Because actually involved money that a customer was willing to pay for the game.
While in case of piracy in most countries outside of the G7 that is not just a pirate issue its more of a .....our country cannot afford to buy those games as that is 40% of my monthly salary.

But when people buy 2nd hand games they are willing to get the dev product but any income goes to the shops and nothing to the designer studious. So yeah 100% worse than piracy.

 

[The Rockerfly]

What I don't understand is why developers haven't tried to set up game shops, they'd have demos in store, could make the money back with used sales and would lower game prices

 

[AudienceOfOne1]

Pirating is illegal - simple. However if the extra profit from second hand games can keep the high-street shops open then I'm all for it, because the internet and the supermarkets are brutally efficient at killing the competition.

 

[hazard99]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/8040-Experienced-Points-Bargains-Are-for-Cheaters

 

[auronvi]

I am surprised at the low level thinking in this thread. The question posed by the OP is not one of legality, but which one is worse for the company. I am sure that is what the lead designer in the OP's quote meant.

I don't pirate anymore. I used to, I played through Mass Effect, Crysis, UT3 and some others. Guess what though. I own all those games now and bought them through Steam where I know some of the money goes to the developers. I basically just rented the games for free before buying them. I know what I did was wrong but I know I won't be doing it in the future.

I also will no longer be buying used because I believe that it IS just as damaging as pirating a game. Ignoring legality I believe that the used market is more damaging to the game industry than pirating.

First of all, if you track the big torrents for the big games, there are usually only a couple of thousand downloads for any big title. Ya, these are like stealing the game but are they really lost sales? I don't think so. I pirated games I didn't even want to play. Downloading illegal games is sort of an addiction when you do it. You just download and play games just because you can sometimes. So I wouldn't put it on a 1-1 lost sale to download ratio because they may never had considered buying the game in the first place.

Now lets look at used sales. People buy used because it's cheaper and they can return the game if they don't like it. Now if there was no used market and the purchaser wanted the game the only choice they would have would be a new copy. Granted this copy would probably be more expensive and may result in the buyer changing his mind based on the price but there is a safe bet a lot of the people would still buy the game. I won't get into the fact the used market is a big contributer to rising cost of games.

If I were to wave a wand and remove one of these two things from the world, it would be the used game market. If that happened, I know the cost of games would lower and the developers would be more profitable than ever which means MORE GAMES!

 

[Pakkie]

How to solve problem of second hand games on consoles:
Add cdkeys
Kgo, problem solved.

Problem was fixed by PC's eons ago

 

[Killertje]

If you really like a game most people would probably feel like they owe whoever makes it money. You usually don't know if you like a game before you play it, which is why piracy is so awesome. It's like a free singleplayer demo on (or before) release day. If you really like the game you buy it.

If, however, you buy it second hand, the guilt of not having paid for it goes away and you feel good for getting it cheap. The people who made the game get 0 money this way, just like if the game was pirated and not bought afterward. However the buyer doesn't feel bad about it if it's a really good game, because he has paid for it.

So yes, second hand sales are worse than piracy in some situations (those where most people pay up for the games they enjoy eventually). You can argue that piracy is evil, and I will argue to you that marketing is evil too. I don't want to have to pay full price for a game I might not like and demo's nowadays suck, and usually come after the game is released or not at all. Piracy helps me buy games I might not have considered buying in the first place.

Of course there are people who use piracy to just play games for free and never pay even if they play for weeks, but second hand sales are ALWAYS bad for the developers.

TLDR:
Piracy FTW
Second hand sales FTL