Poll: Is Piracy Really That Bad?

[Sovereignty]

So I was discussing gaming with a friend when the almost unavoidable topic of pirating games came up.

While I don't support piracy, my friend was adamant that there were exceptions to it being "Bad". He had a few points which had me thinking. I understand that piracy is illegal, I get that it isn't good to support a developer whose game you are enjoying, and I know that stealing is bad mmkay.



Though I am wondering what other main reasons there are. Specifically what reasons there are for people to be so gung ho in terms of how awful it is. Is there a middle ground? Is there a reason people do it? And why is it so hazy (even if it's just to me) on just how bad it is??

I mean if you stole a candy bar from a store, I'd berate you. Yet when I hear about the music downloaders who get caught I don't see the punishment being as fair.

Here were the points for and against piracy that I heard discussed! Add yours @_@


For:
1) Allows a larger group of people to play the game, thus offering them a true sampling of what the developer is offering. (Especially for games without demos)
2) A person who resorts to stealing the game wasn't like to purchase it anyway. Unfair to the people who bought it yes, but not truly taking revenue away from the maker.
3) No DRM
4) Ability to acquire a game in a region you'd otherwise be unable to get said game from.
5) Capability to download your game in another location without need to physically carry game with you.




Against:
1) It's illegal.
2) It takes money away from the company producing the game.
3) Very unfair to the people who purchased the game legally.
4) Could subject minors to content their parents/guardians wouldn't want them exposed too.

 

[TheNewDemoman]

Yes if you purely pirate.

The downloading for demoing purposes is meh, but if you buy it afterwards more power to you.

 

[Bruenin]

I really don't care about the whole piracy thing. Doesn't really bother me.

 

[Qitz]

There is no for. Never is, will be or can be. The main reason people pirate is because they're too cheap to actually buy the game themselves. If money is that tight then they should focus their attention else where

Against is the obvious. Your stealing. Doesn't matter if you really, really, REALLY want to play Skyrim but just don't want to fork out the $60 for it. You either do that and play the game or you don't.

You can't apply any of this "logic" to anything else and still get anywhere near a reasonable reason. If you really want to drive a Mustang but don't want to shell out the, lets say, 35 grand for it is it then ok to go and steal one? No.

The only time I can ever give piracy any grey area, "Well it's still wrong but I can see why you did it" kind of thing is with region locking content. Or just out right banning a game in that country. Is it still illegal to do? Yeah but I could give someone some leeway if there is absolutely zero legitimate ways to get it.

 

[Dogstile]

If it doesn't have a demo, by all means, I say go for the download and buy after if it runs and you like it. Shit, when I had my old computer I was glad I could download a game at night and then see if it runs the next day before buying.

I don't do it anymore though, as lack of demo is more likely to make me ignore the game otherwise. Far to much effort to pirate something just to see if my computer can run it. Also my new computer is bitchin', just saying

Silly PC developers, y u no learn? Put demo's on your shit, its absolutely ridiculous to make people buy something without knowing for sure it'll work.

 

[Hobonicus]

On a large scale basis, piracy is pretty much all bad. It's against the law and the money lost can add up to cause some big dents in a company's profit. That's on a large scale basis.

On a more personal level (ie, a single person), piracy has little to no effect and cannot be considered good or bad. It's still illegal, but hardly enforced and doesn't hurt anyone. The money lost by a single game pirated is negligible.

The reason I make this distinction is that a lot of the time people mix these things up in arguments. Piracy is wholly a bad thing in the big picture, but many decide to aim their points closer to home and attack individuals as the problem. It can't be simply jumbled together.

If you want to argue the large scale affect of piracy, then don't bring individuals into it. They are not a team, they are not an organization, they cannot be generalized. Piracy as a concept cannot be discussed while people get up in arms about specific individuals who download. If you want to argue the moral shortcomings of downloading pirated games, then do that without bringing big business into it. The obvious exception being if the company whose product is being pirated is themselves a part of the moral discussion (such as draconian DRM).

This isn't a criticism of the OP, just my stance on how these arguments usually end up... Actually they usually end up getting locked :/

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

Ben Jackson raises some good points in favor of it; indeed, I think many PC developers would benefit from a "trial" feature where you can download the game to try and after a period be prompted to pay for it. Speaking from experience, it can be easy to not pay for a game you pirated just to try simply because you're not reminded to pay for it, or are simply used to not paying for it.

 

[Erana]

Piracy is bad enough that it fucks with my (and many other peoples') gaming experience.

So instead of trying to justify the kinds of piracy that are making this an issue, why don't we acknowledge that people who are making it a problem (IE: the vast majority who don't give a damn and just want free stuff) and blame them?
I mean, seriously. The people who honestly just pirate current games as demos, or pirate old games aren't what's making these big, scary numbers that are making the money people flip out and do DRM and bullshit like that.

 

[LastHour1]

Piracy is bad. No two ways around it. It's theft, pure and simple.

I get the demo thing, from one perspective, but it's still wrong. To use the Mustang example from Qitz a few posts ago, even if you have the money, stealing a Mustang to see if it might be a good car for you is still stealing even if you did plan to buy it, and it's still wrong.

And maybe, I can see the "If they pirated, they weren't gonna buy anyway" but it's not about the couple people who steal it, it's all the people who could get it from the guy who pirated it. Its not that he pirated it, because you're right, he most likely wouldn't have bought it anyway, it's that he could have given it to multiple people who WOULD have bought the game, but they don't have to because now they got a copy from a "friend" or something. That's where piracy becomes a big deal.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Against:
1) It's illegal.
2) It takes money away from the company producing the game.
3) Very unfair to the people who purchased the game legally.
4) Could subject minors to content their parents/guardians wouldn't want them exposed too.

The biggest damage is one that's very hard to properly quantify.

It's that piracy is making the funding of creative projects (especially games) harder and harder.

The level of investment needed to make high end games is massive, whilst various estimates put the number of (PC) games pirated somewhere between ten and twenty times the number of games actually sold.

Even though that doesn't mean PC game sales are one twentieth what they should be, try telling an investor that the best guess for your project is that ninety percent of the market penetration will be through theft. They'll laugh you right out the door.

The result is that money isn't getting put into PC player's games, as evidenced by the truly awful ports of the last three years. It's also leaving us with increasingly safe bet projects getting published across all platforms. Which is troubling as we're getting more and more brown shooters and annual sports games.

 

[finecrazydud]

i know some dickwad who spent more money on a computer to pirate games with than the cost of the 4 games he got from stealing them.

 

[iseko]

Piracy is theft. I commit piracy, and I admit it. I'm a thief and what I'm doing is wrong and I'll admit it to anyone who asks and anyone who thinks piracy isn't bad is either incredibly thick or in complete denial that what they're doing is wrong.

If you say it to a judge then i'll believe you

On topic: For demo purposses its okay I guess. Some games are just crap. But sadly you won't know untill you play it. We all know those buggy, boring games. But if you play a game all the way through you should buy it.

I thought about an idea. Games should be buyable by the lvl. Like on steam or something. Buy the first lvl. Play it. Want more of that game? Buy more. Sick of it? Then you are out 4 dollars... Or if you just want the multiplayer? Just buy the multiplayer.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Piracy is theft. I commit piracy, and I admit it. I'm a thief and what I'm doing is wrong and I'll admit it to anyone who asks and anyone who thinks piracy isn't bad is either incredibly thick or in complete denial that what they're doing is wrong.

If you say it to a judge then i'll believe you

On topic: For demo purposses its okay I guess. Some games are just crap. But sadly you won't know untill you play it. We all know those buggy, boring games. But if you play a game all the way through you should buy it.

I thought about an idea. Games should be buyable by the lvl. Like on steam or something. Buy the first lvl. Play it. Want more of that game? Buy more. Sick of it? Then you are out 4 dollars... Or if you just want the multiplayer? Just buy the multiplayer.

That idea of yours is exactly what some people are afraid DLC is going to turn into. Online passes, too, but I don't really get how online passes could do that...anywho!

Yeah, I don't think it'll get too much support.

 

[Darkmantle]

I think it's bad, but it's not as bad as the industry makes it out to be, and it is pretty much unavoidable without alienating your paying customers

 

[afroebob]

Piracy is theft. I commit piracy, and I admit it. I'm a thief and what I'm doing is wrong and I'll admit it to anyone who asks and anyone who thinks piracy isn't bad is either incredibly thick or in complete denial that what they're doing is wrong.

If you say it to a judge then i'll believe you

On topic: For demo purposses its okay I guess. Some games are just crap. But sadly you won't know untill you play it. We all know those buggy, boring games. But if you play a game all the way through you should buy it.

I thought about an idea. Games should be buyable by the lvl. Like on steam or something. Buy the first lvl. Play it. Want more of that game? Buy more. Sick of it? Then you are out 4 dollars... Or if you just want the multiplayer? Just buy the multiplayer.

If a judge asks I will.

Further more I see what you mean by that and you make a good point but I still think its immoral. Not saying I'm going to stop, just saying its immoral.

 

[iseko]

Piracy is theft. I commit piracy, and I admit it. I'm a thief and what I'm doing is wrong and I'll admit it to anyone who asks and anyone who thinks piracy isn't bad is either incredibly thick or in complete denial that what they're doing is wrong.

If you say it to a judge then i'll believe you

On topic: For demo purposses its okay I guess. Some games are just crap. But sadly you won't know untill you play it. We all know those buggy, boring games. But if you play a game all the way through you should buy it.

I thought about an idea. Games should be buyable by the lvl. Like on steam or something. Buy the first lvl. Play it. Want more of that game? Buy more. Sick of it? Then you are out 4 dollars... Or if you just want the multiplayer? Just buy the multiplayer.

That idea of yours is exactly what some people are afraid DLC is going to turn into. Online passes, too, but I don't really get how online passes could do that...anywho!

Yeah, I don't think it'll get too much support.

I don't think it is a bad idea. If a game costs 60 bucks and has 10 levels. Charge 6$ per level. If you get bored after 2 levels or run into a deal breaking bug. You are out 12$ instead of 60... Buying the entire game from the start would still be a possibillity. But I think it would really help against piracy.

Well not all of it offcourse. Some people just don't want to buy games. Don't realise that if you don't support good game developers then you won't get any good new games released.

 

[FEichinger]

Interesting how many "it's entirely bad, period" responses pop up.
Especially when combined with the "You don't have the money? Then get a job!" argument.

I won't comment on the question as to what pros and cons one can find (mainly because that's something I am not in the position to judge.) ... But that argument is one I really, really don't want to read anymore. A) It's offensive, rude, short-minded and quite a bunch of other things. B) It implies people refuse to buy a game for 50 bucks because they don't have the money. Wrong. It's because noone wants to spend 50 bucks on something that costs somewhere around ONE to place on the disk inside the box. And literally nothing to upload to a digital distribution platform.
The main cost for those games comes from the money the development studio received to pay their employees. Now, let's think about it ...
The more people work on a game, the more expensive it gets.
The more people work on a game, the more efficiently it is produced.
The more people work on a game, the more specialized a certain worker is, therefore - in theory - quality is increased.
Now ... the funny thing is ... Those are also the games, that - in theory - sell around the 15M times. That means in conclusion, 15M * 50 bucks = 750M revenue. Sorry, but if you spend 500M on the production (implying they're going for a 150% return, which is still insane), you're doing it wrong.
Note how I didn't even consider DLC in this calculation, which should go for another 50% of the revenue when going for a 25-bucks-DLC-bundle as we damn often see it nowadays.
(Here comes the tl;dr, lazy bum So, at this point, for some people ideology kicks in. Why on Earth should one aid this ridiculous system?

Yes, it is theft. Yes, it is illegal. Yes, it is 'oh-so-bad'. But it's protest. To the core it is protest.

 

[Dfskelleton]

Pirating a game that just came out because you don't want to pay for it is bad.
Now, pirating a game that you have a 0% chance of getting any other way, as it's out of production or sold only in another country, that's a different story.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

The above is a nice idea, but unfortunately the publishers are using that idea as:

Sell the first part as a full game for $60, then sell the rest in bits at $10 a time.

What people need to do is educate themselves, give any game a month or so and it'll usually be about 70% of it's launch price, a few months it'll be under half price.

When there's a flurry of big launches, like with Battlefield, Skyrim and MW3, makes sense to buy Skyrim, for its longevity, then pick up the other two in sales after xmas.

I've got a lot of respect for those people who while not condoning piracy, do at least speak out against stupid DRM, when they themselves are losing money to piracy, Stephen Fry, Graham Linehan, and Peter Serafinowicz for starters.

Fry makes the great point that almost all of us have copied a tape, or cd or something like that, and nearly every spreads things around at school. Then you grow up, mature, get a job, and realise you can both own the things you love, and support the artists you love. Even if you haven't stopped being a dirty, evil pirate, you're probably still buying a lot of content at the same time. He makes the point that there's few all out, buy nothing pirates and most people download a bit and buy a lot, and treating customers like criminals is never going to end well.

Linehan just says that in order to win against the pirates, you've firstly got to accept some losses, you'll never stop piracy in full, and secondly, you've gotta make your product 'better than free', by which he means, many people are happy to pay for good things, but they shouldn't be saddled with a ton of restrictions when pirates don't have them, and be forced to sit thru shitty anti piracy ads and trailers for awful movies, when pirates don't have to. It has to be as good, or better than what is available on the Bay.

for many 'customers' it's not about the money, it's about getting what they want, when they want it. This is proved to me by the simple fact that the biggest proportion of piracy from the UK is US TV episodes, because we want to watch good TV, and we really don't mind adverts, but we don't want to wait six months for someone to decide we're allowed to see them.

In an international market, and internation social activity, no-one wants to be a season and a half behind everyone else when talking about the latest big thing on TV. Make the episodes availble, the day they're on TV, for maybe £2 a go on itunes, and we'll pay, else people are going to carry on torrenting.

There's billions to be made, if only the companies will stop locking their shit away from their paying customers and let us give them money for stuff.