Piracy and Games.

[the_god_father_87]

This morning when I was browsing the forums I found this article. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.84575 It got me thinking on how I would reduce piracy ??so here are some ideas:-

Lower prices

New realises always have the problem of being too expensive. An example of this is the game Oblivion at the time of release it was $135NZD today it is closer to $45NZD why don't the publishers just release the game at a reduced and affordable price in the first place. Video games depreciate in value so much so why cant you start the prices at $45NZD so that more people buy it at this price. In the end don?t they want to destribute more copies and reduce piracy.

Worldwide release dates

This is a major problem with distribution because if you put out a PC game for example Will Wright's Spore. According to Gamespot.(http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/spore/similar.html?mode=versions) spore was realised in Australia spore got released on 1st September 2008 and then released in North America on the 7th September 2008. This is asking for the game to be pirated. In fact the Spore toped the 2008 piracy chart according to this article http://www.gamespot.com/news/6202081.html . If the publishes are determined to build up the hype and then not distribute the game at he same time? expect the consequences. The reason for this is that the internet has taught us to expect information and content to be at our finger tips. So when you don?t distribute on time your audience will have found another way of getting the content.

Quality

When I got oblivion for my Xbox 360 I was absolutely gob smacked at the graphics and the game play to the point that when I got my new laptop I bought the game again. I was also the reason why I got Fallout 3 for my Xbox 360. The reason for all this is Quality. Quality will ensure your audience come back regardless of the content. Pixar is a great example of this because I will go to any movies that have been produced by Pixar. Same goes with video games I will buy any thing by Valve, Bethesda softworks and Remedy Entertainment. As these companies constantly set a high bar for their work and for the most part I find that they meet that goal. By having quality you will get an audience which will want to pay rather than pirate the products.

What do you think of these ideas and have you any ways that you would suggest to reduce piracy?

 

[squid5580]

Ok lowering prices won't help much since piracy is free. Unless devs plan on paying us to buy thier games it won't help much.

Making better games isn't going to help much either. The better the game the more likely people will pirate it.

The only way I can see ending piracy is for the Governments to really crack down on them (both uploaders and downloaders). It isn't hard to find these sites so there really ought to be more that can be done about them.

If I was a publisher I would stop putting out games for a year. I would release a crapload of trailers and sweet in game footage and simply say hey as long as you guys keep pirating these other games I will never release these games. Bring the industry to a stand still and say "hey everyone pays or no one plays". Then lets see how many still support piracy with thier "I can't afford to buy all the games I want yet I am still entitled to own them" BS stance.

 

[neoman10]

Get rid of the PAL/NTSC system

try having an American console living in Norway

on an off-note, thank god for Libyans

 

[squid5580]

That wouldn't work though, because they can hardly afford to stop business for a year just to get a bit more money. The loss would be higher than the gain. (Don't quote me on that.)

You really can't stop piracy. You can make sure the people who are on the fence about it don't go over, though.
DRM DOES NOT work. This much is obvious. It only hurts paying customers and entices them to steal. Bad idea. It can and will be cracked. Pirates will never become paying customers, but if you treat paying customers like pirates, they'll become pirates.
It is as simple as that. (But probably not.)

Ya I realize that it would kill the companies and what is that saying "cutting off your nose inspite your face" or something like that. Still they could band together and threaten us. The threat of an act can be far more effective than the actual action.

You do relize though that other than some increase of cyber police tracking all these sites the only way to truly stop piracy is to stop making games. Everything else has been proven ineffective and any new tricks will suffer the same fate.

 

[squid5580]

Yes, humans are remarkably good at getting into things they shouldn't, not unlike rats...
Also, the quote is "Cutting off your nose to spite your face." But you were close.

Ahh thanks. I have heard it just never seen it written before.

 

[Knight Templar]

Make people want, and be able, to buy the game.

 

[Calax]

It's amazing that people think pirating is something new. Piracy was a given back in the day.

 

[sirsolo]

About lower prices.. there's a curve that exists somewhere (that I wont really bother to find) that basically plays on peoples wants that says that people will but a game a high price early on, and others will buy it at a lower price later. Why would they lower the price if it'll still sell early on?

 

[Incompl te]

play this over and over and over...you get the point.

Play wherever possible, maybe even replace pirate games with loops of that video that destroys their computer...I dunno...

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=iPcHhOBd-hI

 

[pha kin su pah]

That wouldn't work though, because they can hardly afford to stop business for a year just to get a bit more money. The loss would be higher than the gain. (Don't quote me on that.)

You really can't stop piracy. You can make sure the people who are on the fence about it don't go over, though.
DRM DOES NOT work. This much is obvious. It only hurts paying customers and entices them to steal. Bad idea. It can and will be cracked. Pirates will never become paying customers, but if you treat paying customers like pirates, they'll become pirates.
It is as simple as that. (But probably not.)

What is said here pretty well sums it up. you can't say you won't produce games because that would be financial suicide, and im more likely going to say "so what" and just play something else anyway.

People have to realise that piracy won't ever wiped out entirely, the best you can do use some protective programs, or as said before, produce quality games so that people won't want to steal it.

Piracy needs to be accounted for like doubtful/bad debts, its going to happen, like it or not, you just have to cut your losses and move on, kinda like damaged goods that will be returned as well, its like a corner shop, kids/people are going to steal, and you can only do so much. Companies should be happy if they make a significant profit compared to the value of the stolen goods.

 

[Jandau]

The only way to stop piracy is to remove internet freedom, have ISPs report anyone downloading suspicious content and having local police track and apprehend hardcopy distributers on a daily basis.

Other than that, it'll always be there. Barring the Orwellian measures mentioned above, all you can do is to encourage people to buy the original game by providing higher-quality service than what they'd get with the pirated version. Granted, with the EA taking over the gaming industry, the level of service is going down, not up, so we're screwed on that account...

 

[geldonyetich]

Just had to start yet another topic on piracy eh. As if we haven't had dozens of those already.

Fast forwarding, software piracy is pretty much something that needs to be dealt with as any other crime: prevention and enforcement.

All this DRM nonsense is basically an attempt at prevention. Unfortunately, it's been pretty much moot so far. Copy protection specialists are no match for the combined brainpower of all the pirates in the world.

Prevention isn't necessarily impossible - it's looking like what we're going to end up facing is a situation where the software simply isn't stored on our computers anymore and must be accessed by proxy through a gateway. Basically, every game ends up being treated like a MMORPG, you got the client files but none of the game logic that makes it run - the pirates would need to essentially code a server emulator that runs the game for them to pirate it.

Prevention aside, there's the matter of enforcement. The trouble there is that piracy often occurs over international boundaries and all the red tape involved in that gives pirates more than enough time to operate before law enforcement gets leave to clamp down on them.

However, a lot of this is simply because politicians don't know how to deal with legislating the Internet - it wasn't all that mainstream until about the mid-90s or so. This, too, is something that will eventually be dealt with.

In the meanwhile, bootleg copies are a major drain on the game industry, in particular the PC platform which has piracy figures ranging somewhere from 33% - 90% of sales lost depending on whose statistics you're reading. If you really want to support the industry, don't pirate. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy as the latest and greatest games continue to end up on consoles.

 

[Signa]

There is nothing that will keep me from downloading the latest games, but only the game's quality will keep me from purchasing it later. Devs need to do two things.

1) Quality. Games are just getting so shitty these days that I've stopped playing all the new games that come out and just play old ones, from the time when they cared about the product they were producing.

2) Educate the masses. Piracy can not be stopped. It's been around as long as software has been around (Don't copy that floppy!). People need to be educated that as awesome as getting free stuff is, they need to buy the games when their free stuff is awesome. Too often I hear of people who won't buy something because they pirated it, and that is wrong. I shudder to think how much money is being thrown at DRM restrictions and yet none of them are effective. If the same money could be thrown at some sort of campaign to make sure people know they need to buy good games, then the companies stand to make a lot more money. All it takes is just an extra logo screen when the game is loading that says "like it? Buy it!"

 

[Flour]

Ok lowering prices won't help much since piracy is free. Unless devs plan on paying us to buy thier games it won't help much.

Making better games isn't going to help much either. The better the game the more likely people will pirate it.

Price has everything to do with it. Games in Europe(most countries) have the dollar signs replaced with euro signs.(almost every pc game is 50 or 60 euros, 360 and PS3 games are usually 60 or 70 euros) There are very few games that are worth that price, especially when most games are completed in 8 bug-filled hours without any replay value.

Valve games are rarely pirated because they deliver a good product for the price that is asked.(see: Orange Box and later versions of HL2 which came with CSS, HL2M and Lost Coast)

 

[BreakingEZRA]

Argh, me mateys, Ye best be off with this topic or ill Av' ya walk the plank

 

[bkd69]

I'll simply C&P what I wrote in the last thread:

First, let's assume that every game is widely and readily available in illicit form, by which I mean, that every game player knows at least one individual who can download a game for them (I'm willing to wager that we Escapist readers are that someone, so we probably don't know anybody that's two degrees out who can't find someone to download for them, or teach them).

Now, let's say that x% of a game's players are playing from illegal copies. That means that (100-x)% of a game's players are suckers/upstanding citizens who paid for legitimate copies (less a few points for renters, borrowers, secondhanders, etc).

Any technical countermeasures are only going to (negatively) effect that (100-x)% who paid for legitimate copies, which means, illegal copies provide a better product at a better price. So no DRM, or other technical countermeasures.

So the first, most important thing, and I'm going to shout here, because it's just that important: DON'T SPEND MORE TO DEVELOP A GAME THAN YOU'RE GOING TO EARN BACK IN REVENUE FROM THAT (100-x)% OF LEGITIMATE SALES!!!!!!! As a developer, that (100-x)% is the ONLY thing that matters, because that represents income from people who bought your game in spite of having free copies readily available. And the Imaginary Pirate Revenue from that x% who are playing from illegal copies? You can't account for that anywhere. Not to the taxman, not the insurance company. And the company that you licensed your DRM from certainly isn't offering to cover it. Now, to be fair, a game like Gish, World of Goo, any of Cliffski's games, they're not necessarily going to have a really long track record to make a really solid sales projection, EA has no such excuse.

Second, value adds, such as physical gewgaws and DLC, to reward that upstanding (100-x)%. Who doesn't love a cloth map of the realm, or a plastic model of their flagship, or othe knickknackery.

Third, pass-along keys. The way game pricing works is that titles are launched with a high price, and as time goes on, the price drops. How about rewarding those who preorder, or who buy on launch day, with a second install code they can pass along to a friend if they register their game, in say, the first month, or first week after launch day. An especially valuable ploy for games offering multiplayer.

Finally, and this going to be more than a bit controversial, I feel that developers should accept some level of piracy, simply on the basis, that if nobody thinks your game is even worth free, then that counts as Epic Fail.