migo said:
Jaded Scribe said:
This is a load of bull. Stealing is not noble. You aren't Robin Hood. You're a common petty crook. Piracy hurts the companies, making it harder for them to pay for prime talent and make the games you love so much.
You've obviously never heard of shareware games. It hardly exists anymore, but it used to be a way to try the full version of a game, distributing it however you like, and then purchasing it if you liked it. It worked quite well, but at some point big publishing companies got in the way.
Yeah, I remember shareware games. I also have talked to many who worked at companies that operated that way. There's a reason it doesn't exist anymore: It didn't bring in any money.
There are better, law-abiding, ways to do this. Like, just don't buy PC games with crazy DRMs. If you don't pay for it, whether it's through a publisher or not, you don't get to play it, plain and simple.
If people weren't pirating music, online music services like iTunes would have never happened. Being able to buy a single song that you like for $1 is a far better option than buying an album. Services like Jamendo would have also not come about. It's a necessary driver of evolution, because the big record companies wouldn't give up the vice grip they had on the industry. They're obsolete and deserve to go out of business, as musicians and consumers don't need them anymore.
iTunes still would have happened. And what giving up their vice grip? Most bands that actually tour and make money doing what they love to do are signed to big record companies. Go check the artist lists for companies like Capitol Records.
They also make a ton of money off concerts, for which video games don't really have a similar venue.
Artists that aren't signed have it very rough. They have to do grueling tours at small venues with the hope of making enough to break even. Word of mouth is slow, fickle, and often overlooks some very good product.
And you're ignoring what publisher's do, especially for smaller companies. They can bring better marketing to bear, have brand-recognition, and better selling contracts.
The fact is they're not needed at all. Musicians, authors, game designers, they're all being discovered by means other than advertising. The marketing isn't necessary, all that's needed is word of mouth.
I'm sorry. But I live in the real world, not a fantasy one where awesome talent gets discovered by the populace and given their fair due. Getting popular without a publisher at your back is an even longer shot than making it with one. Many of these companies who are going it alone tend to run out of money before they pick up steam in the market.
Yeah, you can publish games yourself. And you can hope you get noticed in the sea of games we have.
Which is the way it should be, rather than having crappy games pushed forward by marketing, all games succeed or fail on equal footing, and the best ones are the most successful, rather than the ones pushed by the large publishing companies like Activision. Piracy is necessary to drive the publishers out of business so that everything can be on equal footing and games succeed on their own merits.
Again, I live in the real world, not a fantasy one with rainbows and where everything works out right for the right people.
Even without the publishers, larger game houses would still be pushing crappy games with marketing. It wouldn't change anything. There would be no equal footing. Indie companies would still struggle.
The biggest difference is there would be games would decline in quality as game houses have to foot the full cost of marketing without having a parent corporation to help foot the bill.
I've talked with people in the industry, and smaller companies are struggling. They can make enough to get by, but big publisher's are a huge bonus.
The reason smaller companies are struggling is because the publishers are swamping the industry. The need to find a publisher is stifling. I also know people in the industry - music and writing industry in this case - and the new, publisher free, business models are far better for them.
Music and writing aren't the industries we're talking about. We're talking about the gaming industry. There's a big difference. But I also know writers and musicians, all of whom would give an arm and a leg for a publisher/contract.
Even without publishers, indie companies would STILL have to fight titans like Blizzard, BioWare, etc etc.
Under your magical rainbow world of no publishers, they would have no hope. No chance of being picked up by a company that could help fund them while they took off.
Your arguments against piracy are faulty, and fail to look at the whole picture. Piracy is stealing, no ifs, ands or buts. Stealing hurts the publishers you are trying to "liberate", and that in turn hurts the consumer.
It's
supposed to hurt the publishers that's the point. Steam and Good Old Games have already come about as a result, and they're great. Steam has the new mainstream games, Good Old Games has the old ones, and Impulse has the less popular ones. Each serves a good purpose and is far better to deal with than a mainstream publisher and a brick and mortar store.
I meant to say it hurts the game companies that you're trying to liberate. Steam and Good Old Games would still have been developed eventually. And yes, they're great, but they aren't cutting out publishers. Publishers still take their cut. They sell the right to provide the game to Steam. I really fail to see how they're going to take down the publishers any more than iTunes has stiffled the recording industry (which it hasn't).
People like you are the problem: those that don't fully understand the issues at hand before trying to play Robin Hood like an Errol Finn wannabe.
No, the publishers are the problem. They always have been. They have the money to start with, but no talent, and very, very, few artists ever end up making that kind of money. It's the people with the talent who should be making the money.
Welcome to Capitalism. You must be new here. They provide an important and necessary service to the artists. You may find the starving artist struggle awesome and view it with a romanticized slant. But it's not. It's hell. Getting a publisher provides the company with more customers than they could get alone, and they make more money, which allows them to make better games.
In music, all that's needed is the artists to pay a small recording studio to do the recordings, and then they can put the music up however they like, making 90% of the profits and having a small cut go to whichever website hosts their music.
Right, and they make next to nothing because no one has heard of them. I'd rather have 50% of a $1,000,000 record sale than 90% of a $100,000 record sale.
In books, all that's needed is for the author to write the book, and have it up on a website like Lulu, which does print on demand, or offer it as a PDF, ePub or the like for people with eReaders. They can pick the price they like, cost of printing for a physical book goes to the PoD service, everything else goes to them.
And again, very few buy it because no one has heard of them. I'm far more likely to go to a bookstore and pick up a book by an author I've never heard of than dreg through the crap on the internet.
Look at Youtube. There are webshows and such on there that are excellent! But they are nearly impossible to find in the overwhelming amounts of crap put up by anyone with a camera and an internet connection.
In games, it just has to go back to the shareware model that was doing fine years ago, before CD keys on purchased games and crappy DRM came about.
Yes, let's go back to a clearly failed model. That will really work out well. /sarcasm
The publishers need to die, they need to be forced to give up and quit so there's no middle man, and it's just game developers and gamers. If more financial backing is necessary, that's what Kickstarter is for.
Yes, money will just fall out of the sky for every game developer that wants it. /sarcasm
I do understand what's going on, and the new model is better than the old one. Piracy is a necessary interim until everything makes the shift.
Clearly you don't know the first thing. Grow up and go live in the real world with the rest of us for a few years. Then maybe you'll be able to have an intelligent conversation on the subject.
Piracy does nothing but hurt. It hurts the game companies. It hurts the consumers. You aren't Robin Hood, so take off your tights already.
