Pirating and Games

[Flac00]

Alright, this has been nagging me for a long time. Look, pirating is an issue. It damages the industry constantly, and causes more issues then "used gaming" and rentals ever will. The problem is this, pirating is stealing, and yet there is a whole market focused on stealing products from people who spend there who lives creating a product that people like. This isn't rocket science, you treat developers and publishers badly by stealing their stuff, they are going to react. Originally they put restrictions on games to counter this, DRMs are a good example of this. And people ***** about it. There is a reason they do DRMs, to stop illegal activity. Yes, its inconvenient, but not to much of a degree. In all honesty, I wouldn't be surprised that many of the people who complain about DRMs are doing so because it stops or slows down their ability to pirate. The only real complaint I've seen that is legitimate is the people who lack internet connection, so they cannot run a game the requires internet. Its unfortunate for them, but do you know who they should blame, the pirates.

So now companies are coming up with new ways to stop pirating. We see it all the time now. Whether its Epic or Ubisoft, companies are just not releasing game for the PC because of the huge hassle and real lack of revenues. Even hacking (which follows under the same principal) has caused game makers to take major steps. Call of Duty Elite has been downgraded for PCs for this reason. Some companies just strait out ban you from ever playing the game again if they catch you hacking, like StarCraft 2. But all these extreme measures are warranted. These guys don't like to do it. It costs money to develop anti-cheat software, and not developing for PC eliminates a whole market they would want to take a bite out of. Do you know who can actually fix it, us, we can. As PC users, we should take action to stop this, especially if we want the game industry to accept us now. Because to be honest, we are running out of friends, the last few bastion companies that support the PC are dieing out and loosing traction in the market. Its now or never, otherwise there may not be a PC market other than MMORPGs and flash games soon.

 

[fenrizz]

Install limits and "always online" DRM, I feel, are legitimate things to complain about.
That does not make me a pirate, and I do not appreciate you insinuating that I am.
Or that many people that have similar issues are.

Sorry, but for me that is where I stop taking you seriously.
If you want a healthy, productive discussion on the subject then you should not open with false accusations.

 

[endtherapture]

Why pirate when there is a Steam sale on?

 

[GrandmaFunk]

Do you know who can actually fix it, us, we can. As PC users, we should take action to stop this.

What action do you want us to take?

without suggesting a course of action to fix this situation, your post amounts to..well, nothing.

 

[joe-h2o]

I only ever purchased games, but I pretty much stopped PC gaming because of all the nonsense brought in by DRM, online only play for single player, install limits and other such crap.

Let's not even touch SecuROM.

"You have two optical drives installed?! PIRATE! PIRATE!"

It just got tiresome, so I stopped buying. This doesn't mean I started downloading cracked copies though, the flow of money from me to game developers simply ceased.

The major problem with these draconian schemes is that they demonstrably do not work - they alienate and hassle your legitimate consumers, while pirates are totally unaffected.

Frankly, the publishers' excuse that it's piracy that is causing them to lose interest in PC gaming is just nonsense. It's really a question of money and time. Why spend it doing more than just a crappy console port when you can sink those developers into developing [Same Console Game But With +1 On Name] for next year?

 

[endtherapture]

Why pirate when there is a Steam sale on?

You mean other then because steam is a horrible horrible program? Believe it or not there are people out there who would rather take a sledgehammer to their computer then install steam on it.

Might be a horrible programme, but it's a necessary evil. At this time of year I can get so many games at prices that won't break the bank, and I get to support the development studio too, so I don't have to resort to piracy.

Piracy is too much effort anyway.

 

[ElPatron]

So we basically accept our games to be half-assed console ports, contain draconian DRM, etc etc because of what others did?

No thank you. If it gets to that point I'll buy a console and ditch the Master Race because it won't be the Master Race anymore.




Frankly, my "passive" stance has caused more damage to the industry than the average pirate. Nobody can download games at the same rate I ignore them.

 

[M4t3us]

The way I see it, the people who complain the most are not pirates, but legitimate users. Because more often than not, DRM hurts the legitimate user the most, Ubisoft is the prime example of such a practice, which is evidenced by the number of claims the Pirated version of most PC Ubisoft games work better than the original ones.
I don't support piracy, but I'm not against it either. Especially when Ubisoft comes out and calls PC gamers whiners and bitches because the pirates keep making their games playable and allowing them to reach more and more people, people who couldn't or wouldn't play the game otherwise!

The whole subject is far from black and white, piracy is wrong, but so is the way it is being adressed. As for hackers that's an entirely different thread right there, because cheaters exist and will keep existing regardless of platform.

 

[isometry]

Alright, this has been nagging me for a long time. Look, pirating is an issue. It damages the industry constantly, and causes more issues then "used gaming" and rentals ever will.

Got any decent references for this claim? To me it looks like used games on consoles cause the publishers to lose way more money than pirating on PC.

The reason we don't hear about it as much is just that picking on pirates is safer. Taking on the millions of gamers that by used games is dangerous, that's a huge group of customers that they can't afford to piss off or it will damage their reputation.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Sorry, but I've had DRM issues more than I care to think about. And none of it has to do with piracy. (I did that too once, when I was younger and less concerned with the moral implications.)

Problem with DRM is when it goes wrong, it really goes wrong.

And my last experience with DRM was by far the worst...

(If you're wondering, I was sold a digital download that contained DRM, but wasn't provided with the correct codes to install & activate the game. - Customer services completely failed to listen to what I said, and I kept getinng passed back & forth between sales and technical support.
After 3 weeks of that nonsense I gave up and found a crack.)

Net result:
Trying to do the right thing - 3 weeks of grief with no useful end result.
Resorting to a crack + keygen - Problem solved in about 5 minutes.

People that say DRM doesn't hurt legitimate customers either don't play PC games, or have been incredibly lucky.

I've had everything from that rather extreme, to stuff that messes up my ability to do rather basic things on my PC (try deleting a folder containing starforce or Securom at some point. Even if it's not in use by anything).

Carrying around a collection of CD's heavier than the computer I'm playing them on...

Weird problems with install codes/passwords/account details.

Steam updates doing stupid crap at very awkward moments... (And steam & CD keys even manage to be on the milder end of DRM schemes)

No, sorry. Anyone trying to say that DRM doesn't affect paying customers is just plain wrong.

I don't know what it actually accomplishes, because frankly pirated software has had all the DRM stripped out.

So the only DRM worth anything at all is something that takes a long time to crack. Because once it's cracked the DRM is no longer accomplishing anything other than screwing with legitimate users.

(Even if it's only a minor nuisance, like CD checks, it's still detrimental to legitimate users, but has no effect on pirated copies. - Thus, you'd better be sure the detrimental effects are worth it.)

DRM, unfortunately, is fools gold.

The very principle behind it is logically flawed.

But, piracy is an unending argument.

Nobody has any reliable facts, so everyone just makes stuff up to suit their own cause.

I blame capitalism. ;p

 

[CrystalShadow]

Alright, this has been nagging me for a long time. Look, pirating is an issue. It damages the industry constantly, and causes more issues then "used gaming" and rentals ever will.

Got any decent references for this claim? To me it looks like used games on consoles cause the publishers to lose way more money than pirating on PC.

The reason we don't hear about it as much is just that picking on pirates is safer. Taking on the millions of gamers that by used games is dangerous, that's a huge group of customers that they can't afford to piss off or it will damage their reputation.

No, there's more to it than that.

Second hand sales are legally protected in most countries.
Game developers in Japan for instance have tried, and failed to prevent such sales through various arguments.

The government said they weren't allowed to.

It's usually called 'first sale doctrine'.

The problem is, fighting piracy means you have the law on your side.
Fighting second-hand sales, you are working against the legal system.
So you're not just risking customer goodwill, you're risking being sued by various groups. (or the government).

 

[Vrach]

Alright, this has been nagging me for a long time. Look, pirating is an issue. It damages the industry constantly, and causes more issues then "used gaming" and rentals ever will.

Numbers, if you'd please?

The problem is this, pirating is stealing, and yet there is a whole market focused on stealing products from people who spend there who lives creating a product that people like.

Pirating isn't stealing. Stealing deprives the owner of something physical. Pirating duplicates something someone else already purchased. I go to the market and swipe an apple - I'm stealing. I go to the market, buy an apple, take the seeds, plant my own apple tree and let people grab my apples as they please - isn't stealing.

On a less analogical note, copyright infringement and theft are two very different things.

There is a reason they do DRMs, to stop illegal activity Yes, its inconvenient, but not to much of a degree.

If I go to a shop and the shop lady stands behind me, looking at me the whole time I'm in the store like I'm gonna steal something, it's not too pragmatically inconvenient either. Doesn't mean I'm not well entitled to ***** about it and it doesn't mean she's in the moral right to do it.

In all honesty, I wouldn't be surprised that many of the people who complain about DRMs are doing so because it stops or slows down their ability to pirate.

Excluding Assassin's Creed 2 that was the first game to incorporate such a DRM, always-on DRM releases have usually been up on torrent sites in the usual amount of time, up to a few days, usually even on release date. Even AC2 was pirated in the first few days, it just took some assembly rather than being a simple scene crack. Skidrow (one of the major scene groups) has commented in the past that the online DRM is not at all hard to get rid of and it was harder to crack games back in 80s/90s.

The only real complaint I've seen that is legitimate is the people who lack internet connection, so they cannot run a game the requires internet. Its unfortunate for them, but do you know who they should blame, the pirates.

Bank gets robbed. Robbers drive away, cops right behind them. Cops grab weapons and shoot at robbers (FYI, illegal). Cops kill civilians in the process. In that scenario, do you blame the cops or the robbers for the deaths of civilians? I (and the law for that matter), would blame the cops. That doesn't mean I'd hold the robbers up as saints, but I wouldn't pin something on them they didn't do.

So now companies are coming up with new ways to stop pirating. We see it all the time now. Whether its Epic or Ubisoft, companies are just not releasing game for the PC because of the huge hassle and real lack of revenues.

I guessed this was based on the Ghost Recon article, having just come from there. That title wasn't making any (serious) money to begin with, for a LONG time. When you kill your own work though, you generally don't want to say the words "sorry, it sucked too hard to make anyone want to play it", so you go with "oh, economy, pirates, blah blah blah".

Even hacking (which follows under the same principal) has caused game makers to take major steps. Call of Duty Elite has been downgraded for PCs for this reason. Some companies just strait out ban you from ever playing the game again if they catch you hacking, like StarCraft 2. But all these extreme measures are warranted. These guys don't like to do it. It costs money to develop anti-cheat software, and not developing for PC eliminates a whole market they would want to take a bite out of.

What's hacking got to do with pirating? Anti-cheating software is as much of a reality as antivirus software. It's something you have to have in today's world and trying to wish it away really really hard doesn't work. Bans for online hacking however, are perfectly warranted as they get in the way of someone else's game experience.

Do you know who can actually fix it, us, we can. As PC users, we should take action to stop this, especially if we want the game industry to accept us now.

Ok, why don't you go ahead and fix it, I'll just stand here on the side and watch you do it. I'm incredibly interested in watching you fix it. I don't mean alone either, take as many people as you can and want, I'm still interested.

 

[SmegInThePants]

I make a game w/big publisher

big publisher forces me to release it early/buggy/without all the planned content.

game doesn't sell well.

I don't want to admit the game wasn't very good. publisher doesn't want to admit they pushed it out too early. Must be the pirates. their fault.

3rd party companies w/a product to sell (some sort of DRM scheme), in order to get us (developer/publisher) to buy it and force it upon our customers, come to us w/a bunch of charts and diagrams showing us how our game failed miserably because of pirates. If we buy their drm product and include it w/our next release, then our brilliance will be allowed to shine. Now we realize our game was great and the only reason it failed was dirty pirates. We want to believe this so it must be true.

so we make a new product and this time w/DRM. We again make a game that isn't very good. We again force it out early. Again it doesn't sell well. The DRM people say its because the DRM we used was cracked, its technology too old, and again our failure was due to pirates. If this time we use the new and improved even more intrusive DRM they have to sell us, then this time things will be great. Our game was great, a zillion people pirated it, look at the chart! Charts don't lie. Had they not pirated it we would have had that many more sales and would have even more money than blizzard. Nevermind that blizzard doesn't buy our DRM yet makes blizzard levels of money. So buy this new DRM.

nevermind that some of the biggest moneymakers are on pc despite being easy to pirate. Nevermind that the market is saturated w/a crapton of competition, much of it free to play even these days, reducing the potential profits for any game that isn't good enough to rise above its competition.

Its no suprise some are giving up to sell only on console. But if you make rushed not so great games, you are going to have lackluster performance - pirates or no and someday you'll have to face the possibility that maybe, just maybe, its you and not the pirates that are preventing you from making world of warcraft or minecraft levels of $.

And being console only ain't gonna solve your problems. How many console games come out only 6 months later to no longer be seen on teh shelves anymore except in the bargain bin for 10 bucks?

i don't mind though. there will always be someone who realizes there's money to be made on the pc and who will do so. The big successes make craptons of money then everyone else wants to emulate them and tries to get a piece of the pie. There's plenty of money to be made on the pc market, and there's more games than ever being made for it. I don't see a dire situation at all.

And i'm not exactly surprised. Ubisoft is a publisher, one that often fails and forces out unfinished products or forces crappy annoying DRM into products (making the pirated version a *better* version of the game that actually runs better). If i made a pc game, i could sell it on steam w/out much effort, i could self publish, i could go w/impulse, probably soon origin, why would i pick ubisoft to sell my game, what could they offer me? Perhaps they are going console-only not because they want to, but because they can't keep up w/their competition in the game of publishing and pc developers don't want to sell their games through them anymore.

 

[MammothBlade]

I make a game w/big publisher

big publisher forces me to release it early/buggy/without all the planned content.

game doesn't sell well.

I don't want to admit the game wasn't very good. publisher doesn't want to admit they pushed it out too early. Must be the pirates. their fault.

3rd party companies w/a product to sell (some sort of DRM scheme), in order to get us (developer/publisher) to buy it and force it upon our customers, come to us w/a bunch of charts and diagrams showing us how our game failed miserably because of pirates. If we buy their drm product and include it w/our next release, then our brilliance will be allowed to shine. Now we realize our game was great and the only reason it failed was dirty pirates. We want to believe this so it must be true.

so we make a new product and this time w/DRM. We again make a game that isn't very good. We again force it out early. Again it doesn't sell well. The DRM people say its because the DRM we used was cracked, its technology too old, and again our failure was due to pirates. If this time we use the new and improved even more intrusive DRM they have to sell us, then this time things will be great. Our game was great, a zillion people pirated it, look at the chart! Charts don't lie. Had they not pirated it we would have had that many more sales and would have even more money than blizzard. Nevermind that blizzard doesn't buy our DRM yet makes blizzard levels of money. So buy this new DRM.

Yes, you speak the truth.

Sometimes DRM ends up backfiring and people simply don't buy or play the game at all. There are a fair few I have no intention of buying or even pirating because of the DRM. Yet companies will take this as a sign that people have just been pirating the f**k out of it, ignoring the possibility that DRM both deters honest customers and encourages piracy. It's a lose-lose situation.

I'm definitely in favour of less intrusive measures to discourage piracy.

 

[Flac00]

The problem is this, pirating is stealing,

Yes pirating invovles stealing but only when we are talking about the stuff going on on the high seas. Software piracy on the other hand is all about copyright infringement which is in fact not stealing at all.

Sure it is. Copy-write infringement is completely stealing. That is why it is both illegal and warrants jail time for doing so. Not to mention people should morally have a problem with it. They are taking something that is someone else's, which they have worked hard a long to create, and are using it without they consent. If thats not stealing, I'm not sure what is.

 

[darth.pixie]

DRM doesn't stop nor even slows down piracy. It encourages it. Cracked games work without the intrusive malware-like program. And yes, I consider it malware. You could, say, buy the game and the crack it but why would you do that? You're treated like a criminal for wanting to enjoy your hobby.

Do you know how fast someone can crack DRM-styled programs? Takes somewhere from 5 minutes to a day. That's it. There is no program that is full proof and whatever the companies invent, crackers can take down.

This piracy thing has gone out of control. Consoles are pirated just as much if not more and no one even raises this issue. The games are leaked just as often, just as early and it's even easier to pirate it there.

You want a reliable way to stop piracy? Make developers create games actually worth playing and without any intrusive programs on it.