"Unbelievably High" Android Piracy Drives Dev to Free-To-Play

[ZippyDSMlee]

Don't you just love it when the times change and business is forced to innovate?

No, because fuck those lazy, cheap-ass pirates who feel that ONE FUCKING DOLLAR is too much to pay for a game.

Usually means the game wasn't worth buying for the price they were asking, if your game is one dollar, that's saying a lot.

More like fuq those lazy, cheap-ass businesses who feel that ONE FUCKING DOLLAR is too little to pay for a game.

Change with the market not against it.

Problem is that for the market to work properly, paying for a product to own it shouldn't be elective

I find this incredibly sad, at just one dollar people would still rather spend the effort to find an illegal download?

Revenue comes from more sources than just the consumers who have little recourse when they are burned from buying crap.

Sorry, but money has to come from somewhere, and 9 times out of 10 it's going to be the person who wants the product.

Yes, there is ads, as the poster just above you mentioned would seriously piss off consumers if they were put into the kind of games you pay for nowadays. I would not like the aspect of being interrupted every little while to have an ad play in the middle of a game. Plus if you haven't noticed games cost quite a bit to make, I doubt you could find enough advertisers to replace hundreds of thousands of customers for triple A games without making it incredibly invasive.

And is the reason why we are slowly moving away from dead dino business models.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

Don't you just love it when the times change and business is forced to innovate?

No, because fuck those lazy, cheap-ass pirates who feel that ONE FUCKING DOLLAR is too much to pay for a game.

Usually means the game wasn't worth buying for the price they were asking, if your game is one dollar, that's saying a lot.

More like fuq those lazy, cheap-ass businesses who feel that ONE FUCKING DOLLAR is too little to pay for a game.

Change with the market not against it.

Problem is that for the market to work properly, paying for a product to own it shouldn't be elective

I find this incredibly sad, at just one dollar people would still rather spend the effort to find an illegal download?

Revenue comes from more sources than just the consumers who have little recourse when they are burned from buying crap.

Sorry, but money has to come from somewhere, and 9 times out of 10 it's going to be the person who wants the product.

Yes, there is ads, as the poster just above you mentioned would seriously piss off consumers if they were put into the kind of games you pay for nowadays. I would not like the aspect of being interrupted every little while to have an ad play in the middle of a game. Plus if you haven't noticed games cost quite a bit to make, I doubt you could find enough advertisers to replace hundreds of thousands of customers for triple A games without making it incredibly invasive.

And is the reason why we are slowly moving away from dead dino business models.

Please go and explain why this is a dead dino business model. If your definition of a broken business model is anything that isn't superior or equal to the consumer getting the product at no expense then you have a very unrealistic definition.

 

[Vegosiux]

But if piracy is the dominant reason that developers can't turn a profit selling games, then that has an effect on all developers - good and bad, large and small.

I agree. But that's an "if". We don't know it to be a fact. At least I don't. I see no concrete evidence to support the claim that piracy indeed is the dominant reason. And the burden of proof isn't on me, it's on the publishers/developers who are making that claim. Evidence provided so far by them? None.

Yes, I'll concede that piracy indeed is a reason for some sales being lost. But I have nothing to go on in order to see just how large that number is, and how large the numbers of sales lost for different reasons are. But I'm also not just going to assume it has to be all because of those damn pirates.

I'm not going to reply further to the "parasite" metaphor, because that would just take us into a semantics debate and I really don't wanna do that.

In the end, piracy can't be rooted out. That's just a fact that needs to be accepted, it simply isn't going to change, just like the fact that staying in the sun too long runs an increased risk of skin cancer - a fact nobody who enjoys sunbathing likes, and with a good reason to be displeased by it, but it still needs to be accepted.

So moves need to be pulled elsewhere. Designing a business model that inconveniences a pirate and doesn't inconvenience a legitimate customer would be a good start. And it seems that for the developer from OP, changing the business model worked, and they are now turning a profit - which kind of points to the fact that it wasn't the piracy that kept them from turning one before.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Don't you just love it when the times change and business is forced to innovate?

No, because fuck those lazy, cheap-ass pirates who feel that ONE FUCKING DOLLAR is too much to pay for a game.

Usually means the game wasn't worth buying for the price they were asking, if your game is one dollar, that's saying a lot.

More like fuq those lazy, cheap-ass businesses who feel that ONE FUCKING DOLLAR is too little to pay for a game.

Change with the market not against it.

Problem is that for the market to work properly, paying for a product to own it shouldn't be elective

I find this incredibly sad, at just one dollar people would still rather spend the effort to find an illegal download?

Revenue comes from more sources than just the consumers who have little recourse when they are burned from buying crap.

Sorry, but money has to come from somewhere, and 9 times out of 10 it's going to be the person who wants the product.

Yes, there is ads, as the poster just above you mentioned would seriously piss off consumers if they were put into the kind of games you pay for nowadays. I would not like the aspect of being interrupted every little while to have an ad play in the middle of a game. Plus if you haven't noticed games cost quite a bit to make, I doubt you could find enough advertisers to replace hundreds of thousands of customers for triple A games without making it incredibly invasive.

And is the reason why we are slowly moving away from dead dino business models.

Please go and explain why this is a dead dino business model. If your definition of a broken business model is anything that isn't superior or equal to the consumer getting the product at no expense then you have a very unrealistic definition.

Simple logic the consumer is always right, this monopolistic one sided cluster fck of a media industry has pretty much made its bed through anti competitive and anti consumer tactics, its no wonder you have a segment of the population that dose not care anymore.

But the part of the population that dose not purchase the media they are told too pirates are part of the consumer spectrum, the trouble is not so much getting them to buy as getting them to spend money.

And the only way to do that is to offer more options like steam(the deep discounts make them very attractive) and Free to play models(while in its infancy still it opens up a new way to get product to the populace).

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

*snip*

And if piracy wasn't an option? Would those people have purchased the game, thus keeping the developer afloat? Or would the developer die, and this time blame something else? Again, this indie developer changed their business model to something else, and is now making money. Would it have been any more successful under the old model if piracy wasn't an option? Who knows.

Considering that they released it for free I'm pretty sure they're not making money from their Android sales.

The business model is also changing to crowd-funded sources, via Kickstarter and other ventures. Only time will tell which form will win out. Something tells me the games that make themselves more inconvenient for people will not do so well...

If you make a quality game, people will give you money for it. The problem comes when you expect everyone to give you money for it, regardless of content or quality. This is where the major publishers have led people with their business model. Since there is relatively little consumer protection vs. these business practices, people have turned to other ventures to give themselves that protection. That a few indies get swept up in the problem is not the fault of the consumers. I entirely blame the current industry for steering us down this path (by industry, I refer to the big players, EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Capcom, et al.), with their anti-consumer parasitic practices, and big media for imposing their "copyright views" upon the world.

You blame the industry for "Steering us down this path"? I blame the people who pirate the games, as well as the people who say that it's acceptable (not saying you're necessarily part of the second category).

However I will agree with you about not wanting to buy a game when you don't know about the quality. Which is why I think that every game should have a demo so you at least know what you're getting before you buy a game

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

*snip*

Simple logic the consumer is always right, this monopolistic one sided cluster fck of a media industry has pretty much made its bed through anti competitive and anti consumer tactics, its no wonder you have a segment of the population that dose not care anymore.

But the part of the population that dose not purchase the media they are told too pirates are part of the consumer spectrum, the trouble is not so much getting them to buy as getting them to spend money.

And the only way to do that is to offer more options like steam(the deep discounts make them very attractive) and Free to play models(while in its infancy still it opens up a new way to get product to the populace).

I completely disagree with the consumer is always right policy. I've seen enough customers completely abuse that "right" by mistreating employees and having completely unrealistic expectations. The problem with piracy is that people are stealing their product (referring to the people releasing the downloads, not the pirates themselves. I think this applies in the sense of stealing someone's idea or work) at little to no expense of their own and releasing a better product, ie: a free one. Which they can afford to do since they're not putting any particular time or effort into it.

It really destroys the business model, and everyone supporting it is guilty of making it into the problem that it is.

When someone steals your product, you don't try and beat them at their own game, you try to make your product more difficult to steal. Which is why DRM and always online games are becoming more and more prevelant.

Your steam argument falls short a bit there. First off, this is a game that was being sold for cheaper than just about every sale on steam will go to and it still got pirated like crazy. So long as it remains that free is better than cheap there will still be a very large population that will go for the former no matter how cheap it is. Remember that humble indie bundle that you could spend whatever you wanted on? It still got pirated at the expense of the developers.

 

[Lil_Rimmy]

Here's a thought you Developers out there; draft a code which tracks the phone numbers of those attaching to your servers. Scan through the list for legitimate purchases. Create a website dedicated to exposing cheap assholes who want to enjoy the content of a 99c game without paying for it. Post their phone numbers on the website. Let the world harass them.

... We need to get on that... right away!
I'm not kidding, that sounds like an awesome idea. Imagine if that worked for PC games as well, for all pirates. Ahhh.... the sweet satisfaction.

But serious and all, someone should make that. It would be awesome.

 

[MonkeyPunch]

Yes, piracy is unlawful. But there is a difference between laws like "Thou shall not steal", and "You shall not violate your neighbour's right to charge you money for digital copies of his creation". The former has been a self-evident moral law since the very concept of "laws" exists, and is the cornerstone of all civilization. The latter is an extension of 17th century printing laws, that were written to make industrial mass publishing possible. It's a product of it's time, and not necessarily needed.
There are many hypothetical ways to profit from work, that don't exist, because there are no laws to guarantee them. You can read a newspaper that someone left on a bench, you can listen to a street fiddler, etc. The only difference between these and downloading an Android game, is that software piracy happens to be illegal.

Are you "stealing" from the street fiddler if you are not choosing to give him money, yet you listen to his song? If you say no, you are basically saying that the legal definition of what is and what isn't allowed, should make the distiction between the moral sin of theft, and your personal rights to enjoy content around you.

You're going totally off topic. In you're first paragraph you're arguing about borrowing stuff/passively catching a form of entertainment etc. I don't see at all how that fits in with this topic.

Secondly, to me it's not really about morals per se and the street fiddler example is too far fetched and not fitting to this whole topic. The Android game doesn't just magically float it's way on to your mobile and by chance you happen to play it whilst passing by.
Not even going to start on the point that the street fiddler plays his music in public through choice and takes in to account that only some people will pay for his music whereas this software developer released this game originally expressly saying "if you want a copy and what to experience this game, give us a dollar please."
You can't go in to a public space and diffuse something that a passer by has no choice in taking in and then charge for it. He can however make a CD which you could buy. I am not, however going to walk past this man and just take his CD without giving him some kind of compensation. (but again, I'm needlessly going way too deep in to your example which is totally unfitting to this topic)
Apple and Oranges in this case.

 

[Alterego-X]

snip

We are going back and forth with the smaller paragraphs. Almost everything that you replied to me is answered in other parts of my post, if you would look at it as a whole, instead of arguing with individual sentences.

There were some paragraphs where you constructively questioned some of my statements about alternate profitability for creators, but I'm going to skip everything else, where you just went back to a basic, exaggerated " artists need to make a living, if everyone would be a parasite then all artists would die of starvation" scenario.

There are studies suggesting that legalized piracy doesn't decrease studio incomes, in countries where it happened, the kind of people who are still buying digital content now when it's easy to pirate are doing it as fans, out of principle, would keep buying anyways just to reward the creators at their own pleasure.

And even ignoring that, if everyone would get used to not paying for raw IP content, there are all the potential alternate revenues. "nothing left" would be a vast overstatement in either case.

Produce the studies, please. I'd like to see them.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114537-File-sharing-Remains-Legal-In-Switzerland

Here is also a more informal one with a writer publishing his e-books for free: http://www.baen.com/library/palaver6.htm

Also, the fact that some fans are honorable enough to pay for things does not justify the actions of those fans who are not.

Yes, some forms of art and entertainment are provided at no direct cost to the end consumer, but those things are still paid for. Piracy, however, does not involve paying for things, by the end consumer or anyone else. You may try to justify it by saying it is a protest of the current pay-for-art system in place, but in the end, were the system different you would still be pirating, because it isn't about the system, it's about getting away with being a parasite.

That sounds like you are saying that even in systems where content distribution is unlimited, the freeloaders are still "pirating", and all the "honorable" fans are paying, for example parasite TV viewers just watch the show, while "honorable fans" buy the content.

I don't need to "justify" the actions of freeloaders, because freeloading is already the norm in many industries, and professions. That's what I tried to point out with all the later analogies. with the bridges, and the game jouralists. Yes, they get paid, but is everyone who doesn't directly coughing up money for their work "dishonourable"?

All the statements about "parasites" and "thiefs" and "selfishness" only make sense as long as you happen to believe that digital media publishing (gaming/music/e-books/movies) is a special snowflake and that it's artists have extra rights to control the result of their work even when it gets impractical and unenforcable, instead of accomodating to the realities of their situation.

Umm, yes, that's what I just said. You brought up that if matter replicators would exist everyone would pirate ponies and Hasbro would go bankrupt, that I countered with proof that even when 3D printers exist, original products are being created by creative people without Hasbro, even now.

But you missed the point of the thought experiment. It wasn't about Bronies using 3D printers to make new MLP figures that haven't been officially released. It was about taking advantage of the ability to copy someone else's creativity with zero input on your part.

And the reason why you said that it would be a bad thing, was that Hasbro would go bankrupt, so there would be no new content. I didn't address this specifically, because it doesn't matter. Even if 3D printer pirates would kill Hasbro in the future by stealing their exact models, EVEN NOW there are enough creative types who are already making Hasbro irrelevant. (in fact, bronies are also working on creating full animated MLP:FIM episodes on their own).

This is not a perfect analogy for gaming, because it assumes free work, which I don't count on for the future of gaming, but it's still a good example that sometimes the old publishers are not as needed in the creative process as we think, and the same technology that enables piracy, also gives us the tools to make producing new content easier.

[on free-to-hear sermons]
Back to the busker - you're providing the content willingly free of charge. The congregation is not pirating because it is freely offered, and donations are freely given. Also, in this particular case, part of the monetary worth of your speeches is eschewed for another kind of worth - that of religious enlightenment, or whathaveyou. In either case, the social contract involved is agreed on by both parties - which is not the case with piracy.

Careful with that "social contract". If people who expect games to be free are "worthless shits" who feel "entitled" to "screw you over", but church congregations, drivers going throuh a bridge, escapist readers, and TV viewers are just following the social norms, and they are all allowed to expect these things to be given away and workers to earn their profits indirectly, because those systems are traditionally done that way, you are moving this all into the realm of subjective morality.

You know, I'm not the only one who thinks that piracy is morally acceptable. There is also a crowd behind me. There pirate parties in Europe getting elected into parliaments. I'm not sure if that crowd is as big as the one behind you, but if the expectation to charge for copies is a "social contract", and society can't agree on it's morality, then what makes either one right, or wrong?

Again, the only objective line is a legal difference, that in most countries, unrestricted digital copying for personal use, or "piracy", is still illegal. And even that is changing in some Europan countries.

If downloading a torrent of Skyrim is legally allowed here where I am in Hungary, thanks to recent copyright reforms, am I still doing something immoral, even if my country's social contract apparently allows it?

 

[Ickorus]

Piracy = Advertisement. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Hey! This game I downloaded is really cool! Let me tell you where you can download it, too"

Yay, advertisement.

Popularity has led the game to make more money free to play than it did by selling it. Seems that the advertising worked.

Just because it was pirated doesn't mean that they would have paid for it provided piracy was not an option. Piracy does not equal a lost sale. Pirates are not, nor were ever, customers. People who buy your product are your customers. Everyone else is a non issue.

In the real world it comes down to ease of access, if a product is as easy to pirate as it is to buy legitimately many potential customers who would have otherwise bought it will instead pirate it because it's cheaper for them, if a game cost a single penny we'd still see piracy if it was easy enough to get a hold of it.

The world is not black and white, many people will take the easier/cheaper route even if they aren't supposed to and when the scales tip and it becomes harder to pirate than to pay they'll pay.

 

[Lord_Jaroh]

*snip*

And if piracy wasn't an option? Would those people have purchased the game, thus keeping the developer afloat? Or would the developer die, and this time blame something else? Again, this indie developer changed their business model to something else, and is now making money. Would it have been any more successful under the old model if piracy wasn't an option? Who knows.

Considering that they released it for free I'm pretty sure they're not making money from their Android sales.

I would guess by them showing "success", I would gather they are making money from it, since that was their intent.

Here's a couple of relevant videos for peoples enjoyment:



What does that say about piracy?

The business model is also changing to crowd-funded sources, via Kickstarter and other ventures. Only time will tell which form will win out. Something tells me the games that make themselves more inconvenient for people will not do so well...

If you make a quality game, people will give you money for it. The problem comes when you expect everyone to give you money for it, regardless of content or quality. This is where the major publishers have led people with their business model. Since there is relatively little consumer protection vs. these business practices, people have turned to other ventures to give themselves that protection. That a few indies get swept up in the problem is not the fault of the consumers. I entirely blame the current industry for steering us down this path (by industry, I refer to the big players, EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Capcom, et al.), with their anti-consumer parasitic practices, and big media for imposing their "copyright views" upon the world.

You blame the industry for "Steering us down this path"? I blame the people who pirate the games, as well as the people who say that it's acceptable (not saying you're necessarily part of the second category).

However I will agree with you about not wanting to buy a game when you don't know about the quality. Which is why I think that every game should have a demo so you at least know what you're getting before you buy a game

Pirates are nothing but a form of advertisement. It is "sharing" on a large scale. Do you blame the kids that were sharing Commodore 64 games before the internet? Or sharing that Nintendo game? What if those people did not go on to buy the games from the developers? Are they leeches? Do you blame eBay for allowing second hand sales of games to bypass developers? Or garage sales? Again, who is to say that ever pirate would have been a sale if piracy was not an option? Hell, studies have shown that pirates spend more money on entertainment then your average consumer, so removing pirates from the equation, developers would seem to make less money!

Piracy = Advertisement. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Hey! This game I downloaded is really cool! Let me tell you where you can download it, too"

Yay, advertisement.

Popularity has led the game to make more money free to play than it did by selling it. Seems that the advertising worked.

Just because it was pirated doesn't mean that they would have paid for it provided piracy was not an option. Piracy does not equal a lost sale. Pirates are not, nor were ever, customers. People who buy your product are your customers. Everyone else is a non issue.

In the real world it comes down to ease of access, if a product is as easy to pirate as it is to buy legitimately many potential customers who would have otherwise bought it will instead pirate it because it's cheaper for them, if a game cost a single penny we'd still see piracy if it was easy enough to get a hold of it.

The world is not black and white, many people will take the easier/cheaper route even if they aren't supposed to and when the scales tip and it becomes harder to pirate than to pay they'll pay.

It's not just ease of access. It's also who has the superior product:

The problem is, that it's just turning into a downward spiral, with companies trying to saddle their product with more and more "loss prevention tools" and making more and more people turn to piracy as an option to get away from it.

*snip*

*snip*

Heh, just wanted to say that I accidentally "reported" you for this instead of hitting "quote". Stupid fat fingers...

"Beating them at their own game" does not mean making your product more intrusive and inconvenient. It means making a superior product that is conveniently available.

 

[Strazdas]

Don't you just love it when the times change and business is forced to innovate?

No, because fuck those lazy, cheap-ass pirates who feel that ONE FUCKING DOLLAR is too much to pay for a game.

Usually means the game wasn't worth buying for the price they were asking, if your game is one dollar, that's saying a lot.

yep, like those mobile sim city games. i am so sorry i bought them. i was playing a mroe complex and interesting sim city back in 1998 on PC, on a 100mhz processor, cant they do anything at least similar ont 1ghz mobile processor? i think the main reason people pirate mobile games is because they are not worth buying, because they are mostly awful.


Also, while i was recently looking for mobile phone games, i stumbled upon the pirate sites as well. and what i saw is 95% are iOS, 2% android, 1% symbian and 2% OLD java based games. and by OLD i mean the games i played on my siemens C50 back in 2003.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

*snip*

Simple logic the consumer is always right, this monopolistic one sided cluster fck of a media industry has pretty much made its bed through anti competitive and anti consumer tactics, its no wonder you have a segment of the population that dose not care anymore.

But the part of the population that dose not purchase the media they are told too pirates are part of the consumer spectrum, the trouble is not so much getting them to buy as getting them to spend money.

And the only way to do that is to offer more options like steam(the deep discounts make them very attractive) and Free to play models(while in its infancy still it opens up a new way to get product to the populace).

I completely disagree with the consumer is always right policy. I've seen enough customers completely abuse that "right" by mistreating employees and having completely unrealistic expectations. The problem with piracy is that people are stealing their product (referring to the people releasing the downloads, not the pirates themselves. I think this applies in the sense of stealing someone's idea or work) at little to no expense of their own and releasing a better product, ie: a free one. Which they can afford to do since they're not putting any particular time or effort into it.

It really destroys the business model, and everyone supporting it is guilty of making it into the problem that it is.

When someone steals your product, you don't try and beat them at their own game, you try to make your product more difficult to steal. Which is why DRM and always online games are becoming more and more prevelant.

Your steam argument falls short a bit there. First off, this is a game that was being sold for cheaper than just about every sale on steam will go to and it still got pirated like crazy. So long as it remains that free is better than cheap there will still be a very large population that will go for the former no matter how cheap it is. Remember that humble indie bundle that you could spend whatever you wanted on? It still got pirated at the expense of the developers.

And I disagree with the ideal that one can steal an infinite resource. Sorry the modern age has invalidated that mindset and is disseminating monopolistic dinosaur business models.

The only thing I can agree with is control of the generation of revenue from the distribution of an IP, meaning if it generates no money in that distribution then it can do no harm.

Tho the powers that be are so butt hurt and obsessed to stop distribution (ignoring all user generated content, human rights issues, public rights issues, freedom of speech issues) that they can't focus and go after sites that generate a profit much less revenue off blatant illicit distribution. If they did that torrent sites would be cut down to 1/4th of what they are now.

At least that's how I see things as an unpublished IP creator.

 

[Ickorus]

Piracy = Advertisement. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Hey! This game I downloaded is really cool! Let me tell you where you can download it, too"

Yay, advertisement.

Popularity has led the game to make more money free to play than it did by selling it. Seems that the advertising worked.

Just because it was pirated doesn't mean that they would have paid for it provided piracy was not an option. Piracy does not equal a lost sale. Pirates are not, nor were ever, customers. People who buy your product are your customers. Everyone else is a non issue.

In the real world it comes down to ease of access, if a product is as easy to pirate as it is to buy legitimately many potential customers who would have otherwise bought it will instead pirate it because it's cheaper for them, if a game cost a single penny we'd still see piracy if it was easy enough to get a hold of it.

The world is not black and white, many people will take the easier/cheaper route even if they aren't supposed to and when the scales tip and it becomes harder to pirate than to pay they'll pay.

It's not just ease of access. It's also who has the superior product:

Spoiler

The problem is, that it's just turning into a downward spiral, with companies trying to saddle their product with more and more "loss prevention tools" and making more and more people turn to piracy as an option to get away from it.

That certainly is a part of the problem though not particularly relevant to the case at hand.

The problem in this case was that the developers made the mistake of thinking of their game as a regular game rather than a mobile game.

The regular gaming market and the phone gaming market are vastly different, games released on mobiles generally have a free to play counterpart that earns it's keep through advertisements with a paid version available if you like the game and don't want adverts/want bonus features, this leads to a mentality that you shouldn't have to pay for games on your mobile.

Due to this mentality what you'll find people probably did was Google "Dead Trigger free" and found a download link with a cracked version of the game then downloaded it probably not even realising that what they were doing was illegal; if Dead Trigger had a free version very few people would have pirated it and you'd probably find more people would've bought the paid version too.

All that's actually a side point in response to the quoted post, what I was getting at in my original post that I don't think was quite understood properly was that the people who pirated it aren't really pirates but instead just people in the mindset that the game should have a free version and if they couldn't find said free version easily they would instead buy it or just move on.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

*snip*

Simple logic the consumer is always right, this monopolistic one sided cluster fck of a media industry has pretty much made its bed through anti competitive and anti consumer tactics, its no wonder you have a segment of the population that dose not care anymore.

But the part of the population that dose not purchase the media they are told too pirates are part of the consumer spectrum, the trouble is not so much getting them to buy as getting them to spend money.

And the only way to do that is to offer more options like steam(the deep discounts make them very attractive) and Free to play models(while in its infancy still it opens up a new way to get product to the populace).

I completely disagree with the consumer is always right policy. I've seen enough customers completely abuse that "right" by mistreating employees and having completely unrealistic expectations. The problem with piracy is that people are stealing their product (referring to the people releasing the downloads, not the pirates themselves. I think this applies in the sense of stealing someone's idea or work) at little to no expense of their own and releasing a better product, ie: a free one. Which they can afford to do since they're not putting any particular time or effort into it.

It really destroys the business model, and everyone supporting it is guilty of making it into the problem that it is.

When someone steals your product, you don't try and beat them at their own game, you try to make your product more difficult to steal. Which is why DRM and always online games are becoming more and more prevelant.

Your steam argument falls short a bit there. First off, this is a game that was being sold for cheaper than just about every sale on steam will go to and it still got pirated like crazy. So long as it remains that free is better than cheap there will still be a very large population that will go for the former no matter how cheap it is. Remember that humble indie bundle that you could spend whatever you wanted on? It still got pirated at the expense of the developers.

And I disagree with the ideal that one can steal an infinite resource. Sorry the modern age has invalidated that mindset and is disseminating monopolistic dinosaur business models.

The only thing I can agree with is control of the generation of revenue from the distribution of an IP, meaning if it generates no money in that distribution then it can do no harm.

Tho the powers that be are so butt hurt and obsessed to stop distribution (ignoring all user generated content, human rights issues, public rights issues, freedom of speech issues) that they can't focus and go after sites that generate a profit much less revenue off blatant illicit distribution. If they did that torrent sites would be cut down to 1/4th of what they are now.

At least that's how I see things as an unpublished IP creator.

If you're an architect and someone finds all of your designs and planning and gives them to someone saying "Don't worry about paying an architect, here are some designs free of charge". I'm pretty damn sure that architect would be pretty pissed. But apparently that wouldn't be stealing because the architect still has his design and the person who "used" them didn't ask for any money for it? Regardless of whether you're going to consider it stealing I hope that you'll agree that the architect was completely fucked over, and if the company accepts the designs free of charge despite knowing that they were stolen from and architect I'd definitely not think much of the company for doing so.