Simple answer: Stop asking "How do we combat Piracy" and instead ask the question that SHOULD be asked: "How do we maximize profits." Because in the end, that's what matters more.
The plain and simple fact is that combating piracy is impossible, so instead of wasting all of those huge chunks of money and time in a futile attempt to do it (when you might as well just use a simple DRM scheme which is broken just as fast but is much cheaper anyway and annoys the customer less), start doing other things that either increases sales or lowers expenses.
Examples on how to improve profits:
1) Make games more affordable to attract customers on a lower budget (more digital sales, lower price faster after release). This DOES yield profits, with Valve's data being proof of that.
2) Stop solely focusing on super-mass AAA titles on huge budgets that you want to sell for 50-60 dollars. It's not rocket science that when everyone and their dogs make titles that sell for those prices, then customers can't afford them all (and remember: The customers goal is to get as many games as possible as cheaply as possible and with as little waiting as possible). It floods the market with expensive titles that customers can't afford. Game companies just don't get this. Instead they bet everything on outperforming the competition, hoping that their game will steal sales from the other guy (emphasis here being on 'bet'. When you bet, you tend to lose sometimes) instead of focusing on on the gaming markets where demand is actually higher than supply. While the current approach is better for the consumer (more choices between AAA titles), it's bad for the companies themself, and if i were starting up a game company, i wouldn't take that route at all. I'd go for a lower budget niche-market instead. A market that actually has a lot of unexplored potential. At the end of the day, the only guys laughing is the pirates, because they get to play all of those AAA titles.
3) Put emphasis on features that the pirated versions typically won't be able to get (multi-player), increasing the value of the legally bought product.
4) Make better games. Or more importantly: Maximize your budget-to-game-quality ratio as much as possible.
Core part of the 'piracy problem' is that game companies simply spend too much money to make games, and we as customers simply don't have the money to finance it (which, in short, means that the 'piracy problem' has nothing to do with piracy, and everything to do with "Not enough minerals"). So the only way for the companies to increase profits is to lower their budgets = I.E. make games that cost less to produce (and sell them cheaper). Yes, this will cause a degrade in high-end titles with state-of-the-art graphics which is ultimately bad from the consumer standpoint because we get less high grade games to choose from. But it's the only way to increase profits for companies, because we simply just don't have the money to feed them if they want bigger turnover rates.
The plain and simple fact is that combating piracy is impossible, so instead of wasting all of those huge chunks of money and time in a futile attempt to do it (when you might as well just use a simple DRM scheme which is broken just as fast but is much cheaper anyway and annoys the customer less), start doing other things that either increases sales or lowers expenses.
Examples on how to improve profits:
1) Make games more affordable to attract customers on a lower budget (more digital sales, lower price faster after release). This DOES yield profits, with Valve's data being proof of that.
2) Stop solely focusing on super-mass AAA titles on huge budgets that you want to sell for 50-60 dollars. It's not rocket science that when everyone and their dogs make titles that sell for those prices, then customers can't afford them all (and remember: The customers goal is to get as many games as possible as cheaply as possible and with as little waiting as possible). It floods the market with expensive titles that customers can't afford. Game companies just don't get this. Instead they bet everything on outperforming the competition, hoping that their game will steal sales from the other guy (emphasis here being on 'bet'. When you bet, you tend to lose sometimes) instead of focusing on on the gaming markets where demand is actually higher than supply. While the current approach is better for the consumer (more choices between AAA titles), it's bad for the companies themself, and if i were starting up a game company, i wouldn't take that route at all. I'd go for a lower budget niche-market instead. A market that actually has a lot of unexplored potential. At the end of the day, the only guys laughing is the pirates, because they get to play all of those AAA titles.
3) Put emphasis on features that the pirated versions typically won't be able to get (multi-player), increasing the value of the legally bought product.
4) Make better games. Or more importantly: Maximize your budget-to-game-quality ratio as much as possible.
Core part of the 'piracy problem' is that game companies simply spend too much money to make games, and we as customers simply don't have the money to finance it (which, in short, means that the 'piracy problem' has nothing to do with piracy, and everything to do with "Not enough minerals"). So the only way for the companies to increase profits is to lower their budgets = I.E. make games that cost less to produce (and sell them cheaper). Yes, this will cause a degrade in high-end titles with state-of-the-art graphics which is ultimately bad from the consumer standpoint because we get less high grade games to choose from. But it's the only way to increase profits for companies, because we simply just don't have the money to feed them if they want bigger turnover rates.
