Piracy encourages innovation?

[bloodychimp]

I don't pirate games, but I really don't have a problem with pirates. If you can get away with something, you have carte blanche in my book, our economy is built on corporations screwing over the common man, so I don't really see a problem with the common man getting a few shots in. I do, however, have 2 requests for all the pirates out there:

First, stop pretending like you are noble freedom fighters. What you are doing is stealing, end of story. Its really freaking pathetic to see you people make idiotic excuses because you can't get to sleep at night with the knowledge that you stole something.

Second, stop pretending DRM is the reason you pirate. DRM is there BECAUSE you pirate. You just want free stuff, and you need to come to terms with this fact. The "I'm going to pirate Diablo 3 because I don't want to connect to the internet once every fifteen days" argument was one of the silliest things I have seen in my entire life.

 

[loremazd]

If I understand the pro-pirate argument correctly, it's not you stole (in the example posted earlier) a BMW from a person. You made a replica of the BMW and drove that away. Nothing is lost, just someone gaining.

I don't think that example really works for the idea the anti-pirate people are trying to get across.

Maybe this will work a little better.

Company A spends hundreds of millions of dollars researching a cure for some kind of cancer. They find that if you make a soup with everyday ingredients XYZ and let it ferment for a month it will cure that one particular cancer. A leak happens and the "cure" is made public. Everyone with that particular kind of cancer is cured, and the company goes broke since nobody bothered to pay them back for the investment. Now any company that innovates an inexpensive way to cure cancer will destroy any evidence that said cure existed since it's a death sentence for the company. Less risk taking delays medicines years and increases costs exponentially.

Does this convey the point?

Replace cancer with viagra and everyday ingredients xyz to magic pill copier and the analogy would work better.

 

[JaymesFogarty]

No, Tipsy Giant is right. If you're pirating something, you never intended to buy and there never was a potential sale. It's all on your conscience. There is a potential sale being lost in case someone buys a used copy or rents/borrows a game, thus giving the money to the retailer (boom, sale lost!) and then pirating taking the game/software without a single cent money unit going to the publisher. And there's even no conscience involved - he paid! - hell, he might not even know he got a used copy. But that's a whole other can of worms.

Besides, the developers already got their paychecks. It's the investors who are at risk of not getting their money back. Naturally, it isn't as black and white for indie and small developer crowd, but the "market" there is smaller, prices are lower and piracy risk is thus (theoretically) reduced, which is what the thread originally addressed.

*sighs*

Fine.

You lot win.

Everything will be fine. People should continue to take things and claim ownership/entitlement to products for free. There is nothing on the line. In fact, why don't I just support this Software company that I am working for free? I mean, it's not like I'll the money, I can just take all the entertainment I want and not bother with paying for it. And while I'm at it I will write this novel here and then publish it into the hands of the masses for free as well. Not like my time is worth jack, eh?

Yeh.

Sounds good.

*shakes her head and leaves*

Anah'ya, I completely agree with you! Whether it's an author writing a book, a musician recording a song, or a developer making a game, they all deserve to see the fruits of their labour. Denying them that right is completely wrong.
Plus, if you can afford to pay for a decent internet connection, and buy an up-to-date computer, (several hundreds of pounds right there) I don't see how suddenly you have no money to purchase games.

No one has a "right" to sell anything just because they made something. It's always up to the consumer (except in cases where laws force people to buy a product) to decide if something is worth purchasing.

If you make something yourself, you definitely have the right to market it. Whether the market decides to buy it or not isn't important; it's that you have the chance to sell it.

 

[Pipotchi]

I am too poor to buy movies music and games, I pirate, if anyone thinks that means I shouldn't get to experience the media at no cost to anyone, you only believe so because you want to have what others don't and that is due to your weirdly small member!

What have you heard about my member?

This has to be the worst pro-pirate argument i have ever heard. People who buy games legitimately are snobbing you? It's such a sound argument I can't believe the pirate party hasn't adopted it as a slogan. Do you know how much a game cost? On average $60 brand spanking new... if you saved 2 dollars everyday for a month you could buy that game brand spanking new... or you could wait several months and buy it for significantly cheaper.

No sir! I say it is you pirates who are snobs, you put your fingers in everything and play it until you are bored with it, promising to purchase it if its good, and then cast it away and pirate another game because even though you love that game, and you played 150 hours of it, it still wasn't good enough for you to save up some money to buy it, even at a discount.

Plus I don't know how poor you are if you have a computer that can play the games that come out now, and can afford to pay for an internet subscription, but golly jee willikers... your wallet just happens to be empty when you visit a torrenting site.

And you OP, piracy does not encourage innovation, it encourages more piracy and lost profits. Loss of profits = less risk taking by developers. Less Risk on New IP's seems like exactly the opposite no?

This poster said everything I was going to and much more eloquently.

The "I cant afford it so no-one is losing out" arguement is utter twaddle. I cant afford to eat at Michelin Starred restaurant every night but that doesnt give me the right to run in off the street and steal their stuff.

Try saving up your money and then buying it, this culture of instant gratification is half the reason the Western Worlds economy is in the crapper

But in your example the restaurant lose something physical when you steal whereas with digital distribution you can only argue that they may have lost money if you were to have bought it instead

My arguement isnt against Piracy itself. Its this sense of entitlement that because you cant afford the product you are somehow allowed to have it guilt free. I dont care if you pirate or not but lack of funds is not a reason to do it, at least man up and say I dont want to pay and will therefore leech off the system with little risk of getting caught

 

[IamQ]

No, and don't even try to justify piracy.

 

[Verlander]

End of the day, no money = no industry. Simple. Would you rather have all of you games made by hobbyists, late at night when they aren't at work, or would you rather have a regulated industry, with money to spend in making top quality games, using cutting edge technology?

Niche games are great fun etc, but with no money they wont survive

 

[Atmos Duality]

It might encourage the wrong sort of innovation.
Like highly-restrictive DRM, poorly made/overpriced sucker-punch DLC, and shorter games.

Why shorter games? Because piracy directly influences the shelf-life of games.
Therefore, it makes sense to churn out shorter games more quickly, or withhold content to be resold at a higher price later (cost : content ratio for DLC is different than the core game).

On the other hand, there are other factors that motivate these methods, not just piracy.
Everything isn't in black or white here.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

No. You're wrong. You say the only way for a game not to be pirated is for it to be terrible. You say that innovative games that fail aren't pirated and... nothing else, actually. Piracy and innovation have no connection.

 

[fullbleed]

Oh yes because just look at how piracy really has helped World of Goo, one of the most original and inovative games of recent years. Why I'm sure if it wasn't for piracy they wouldn't be the amazingly successful and well off development studio they are today... Wait a minute?!

No piracy doesn't encourage inovation, in fact it harms it. By thinking outside the box and trying to be truely inovative you risk not finding a core audience and making a solid return investment, and piracy only makes this owrse by making it harder for people to make money. Developers are therefore pressured to make safe tried and tested games that they know will appeal but don't try anything new or imaginative.

 

[fullbleed]

Oh and another thing, why is it that pirates assume that the only way the company loses money is if they lose a physical copy of a game. You do realise, it costs money to make games and films and music. Infact it costs a fucking lot of money to make games and films! Millions in fact! How are they going to make their money back if you aren't buying their product? How much do you think the actual physical copy of a game costs to manufacture? Not that much, the biggest development cost comes from hireing staff and paying salaries and licensing and marketing budgets ect. And what happens when the distributors or publishers don't make enough money back to cover costs? People get laid off.

 

[The Ambrosian]

I am too poor to buy movies music and games, I pirate, if anyone thinks that means I shouldn't get to experience the media at no cost to anyone, you only believe so because you want to have what others don't and that is due to your weirdly small member!

I see what you're saying but you've gone about it wrong...

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

Yes I think that piracy does encourage some innovation. But then of course adversity in general encourages innovation. Whether its trying to avoid being eaten or having your games pirated, obstacles cause you to have too figure out new ways to overcome them.

That being said, that shouldn't excuse piracy. We are trying to overcome it just like trying to overcome being eaten by a predator. We don't allow it to continue just because it will encourage innovation, we try to get beyond it. Now there will always be people trying to pirate, so the battle against them will be long but you're still trying to defeat them.

 

[Jaded Scribe]

I am too poor to buy movies music and games, I pirate, if anyone thinks that means I shouldn't get to experience the media at no cost to anyone, you only believe so because you want to have what others don't and that is due to your weirdly small member!

This is asinine.

I can't afford a Corvette. So I should get to go out and just steal it?

Just because you don't steal a tangible item doesn't mean you aren't a thief. I can't afford all the games and movies I want. You know what I do? I go without. I use cheap services like Netflix or RedBox for movies. I watch for sales on games. I prioritize what I want so when I do get a little money, or birthday/Xmas come around I ask for them.

You are nothing more than a dirty little thief. I truly hope you get caught and prosecuted for it. What you're doing is wrong, and hurts the game industry.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

If you also believe that going on a Deathproof-style vehicular rampage encourages the use of seatbelts, then yes, piracy encourages innovation.

 

[direkiller]

I was reading through some articles about how The PC is concidered to be one of the best platforms for releasing games for new developers due to the low barriers of entry, and that it allows them to be more experimental with their games and a guide about the problems of piracy to the industry, something weird occured to me.

Piracy encourages innovation?

It's a widely know fact that the more popular a game is, the more likely it is that it will be cracked immediately and be pirated by many incredibly rapidly. As such, it seems like it would actually act as something of a leveler in this regard.

'Safe' games tend to succeed through marketing and excitement before anything actually happens, which is also one of the things that increases the rate at which piracy occurs, while experimental games tend to be a lot more polarised. A failed experiment might be a flop, but chances are that crackers are going to overlook it if it truely id terrible, while successful experimental games tends to gather a sort of cult status where the fans want to support the developer.

Looking at it, it seems as though piracy actually discourages mass market appeal, and instead encourages more experimental, niche titles. Looking though it, it seems to make some sort of sense, but it just feels wrong.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/87450-World-of-Goo-Experiences-90-Percent-Piracy-Rate

no pirates do not reward innovation or help create it
They also don't reward DRM free games
or games that you can name your own price on

The only innovation they help create is in the DRM