Piracy Statistics, whats up with that?

[DANEgerous]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZadCj8O1-0

As hilarious as that video is its actually irrelevant to the topic at hand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZadCj8O1-0

I was just about to post this. I think this means that if i had one of the latest iPods it could settle the entire US debt and that said iPod would be by far the most valuable item in the history of time. Seeing as they do view this as actual economic loss and that they know that amount and more song are stolen this means that going by their figures the US would have a massive surplus of money as opposed to a massive debt

 

[Vegosiux]

and facing the "harsh" reality we are the ones causing the problem. No, the publishers are, their corporate bureaucracy and short sightedness are the ones doing the real damage, not the "EVIL PIRRRATTES", who you can't really stop, short of making their games unplayable.

If people didn't pirate games in the first place, DRM and all that shit wouldn't exist. They responded to the problem, and I'm not saying that their response didn't cause other problems, but it's ridiculous to say that publishers deserve what they're getting because they're protecting their products the wrong way.

No; they deserve what they're getting (and by "what they're getting" I mean displeased customers and backlash from the community) because they insist on protecting their products the wrong way instead of investing into figuring out a better way to do it.

 

[Dragonclaw]

When a illegal copy is more convenient than a real copy, what incentive do I have to go and buy the game?

Question. You are in a bakery and the baker goes out back to deal with his family for a minute. You are alone in the shop. There are no cameras. You can take the bread and run and no one will ever know. Not even the baker. He has a poor memory of how much bread he has. Also he likes you, he would NEVER believe you took it. What incentive do you have not to obtain this easier illegal bread?

I'm just nit picking the rest of what you said is good. I too think steam is the obvious step forward. Seriously people. Capitolism requires a few good traits to succeed in:

Try new and better things.
Learn from successful rivals.
Its easier to cater to the market than change it.

Game companies just dont seem to give a shit.

There is a very important psychological element involved in stealing when it's in person. When you've just seen the guy face to face it is harder to simply steal from him than it is to see a big list of files on a computer monitor and simply click.

 

[cerebus23]

securerom can be ok or it can be darkstar 1 where the only way to play that wholly mediocre game was to pirate it until they patched out most of the 1000000 disk checks they put into it. and the pirates managed to do it faster than the official devs.

ubisoft can shove their always on drm up their collective backsides, far as that drm goes.


starforce rightly or wrongly got the reputation of a leper, but all the bad things i heard about that, just meant that i would never install any game at had starforce on the package.

i think most of the number they site is off torrent tracking sites.

problem i have with crysis and crytek, was that crysis sold as well as many console games despite the fact it took a super computer, at the time to run it decently. a million seller on consoles is a minor hit, on pc for the sttep requirements it was damn pirates.

 

[Vegosiux]

Someone tell me what "the right way" to fight piracy is. You know, somewhere between obtrusive DRM and surrendering to asshole pirates?

Step 1: Accept that some people will pirate no matter what. You can't root it out.
Step 2: Make up your frickin' mind if you are selling a product or a license, because you can't have it both ways to pick and choose which one suits you in a given situation.
Step 3: Make your anti-piracy measures inconvenience pirates, not legitimate customers. Make a giant scorpion spawn to insta-kill the player if the game is cracked or something.

That would be a start, I think.

 

[Vegosiux]

Make a giant scorpion spawn to insta-kill the player if the game is cracked or something.

Except that, too, was overcome.

See step 1 then. You can't root out piracy. Rooting out piracy would make Sysiphus and his boulder look like a rather sensible thing.

And see the first half of step 3, of course. It doesn't have to be the scorpion. It just has to be something that's more of an inconvenience to a pirate than it is to a legitimate customer. Not the other way around.

 

[Kinguendo]

The problem being the corporatization of gaming companies... they cant just keep churning out good games, that would be too hard. But they can churn out popular and NEW games that you are expected to buy before you try, that way they have your money and you have... a game that you HOPE is good but likely wont be worth the amount you paid for it brand new so you could actually play the game.

Not to mention people pirating things wouldnt have necessarily bought your product if pirating didnt exist anyway, I have rented games that I wanted to buy and didnt think they were worth buying... I have rented games that I didnt intend to buy and thought "These guys deserve to be paid." and went out and bought their product. I have never gone out and bought a game I had no prior information on, and I dont go by reviews either as thats just some persons opinion (or they have been "convinced" to give it a good review)... it might be a popular opinion but Pop "music" exists soooooo, so much for popular opinion.

 

[theblindedhunter]

Someone tell me what "the right way" to fight piracy is. You know, somewhere between obtrusive DRM and surrendering to asshole pirates?

The chief concern is why people pirate, and by and large a big factor seems to be cost and availability.
$60 is a startling price point, that puts many people right out of the potential consumer audience, especially when expected to buy several games at this price.
If a game is able to be accessed is perhaps an even bigger concern for some. This includes games that are difficult to acquire in easy forms, like over the internet, but now seems more common in the case of games that are difficult to play due to the DRM involved. If you can't access a game because company servers are down, that is lost access. If you can't play a game because you've passed an install limit, that is lost access.
I'd say these things are apparent in the success of Steam. The prices of games are often comparable to retail pricing, but they also frequently have sales that drop the price massively - and have been shown to greatly increase not only the number of people who purchase the game, but the profit overall.
Probably most importantly with Steam, it provides easy access to all of its games. Your entire library is always at most an internet connection and download away. It is certainly a form of DRM, and a very strict one at that, but they tend to keep their servers up, and even used to have an offline mode (which you may still access with some effort, I believe).
It has its problems, but it has been a soaring success for several good reasons.