Which is the bigger problem? Piracy or DRM?

[chaos order]

sort of a silly excuse though. i mean by that logic i should steal a car so that i dont blow thousands on a car that could break down.

Car dealers don't do test drives in your country, I take it?

so pirating a game is taking out for a test drive? i mean demos work too

 

[CrimsonStrife]

sort of a silly excuse though. i mean by that logic i should steal a car so that i dont blow thousands on a car that could break down.

Car dealers don't do test drives in your country, I take it?

so pirating a game is taking out for a test drive? i mean demos work too

that is assuming the developers release a demo....
of course i am also going to restate what i said earlier in that odds are if someone pirates the game they still are not likely to go pay for it because they already have it.

 

[cerebus23]

well piracy was around long before the digital age.

i mean what was piracy back in the day of vcrs and cassettes/records. it was taping a album for your buddy. granted that copy would be a tad degraded by the copy process. wanted a movie? just wait for it to show up on hbo or something and tape it.

and going way back ever since the invention of movable type counterfits were made of books and literature since the days of guttenburgh.

modern argument goes that since we live in a digital age where all data is a simple combination of 1s and 0s and you can get a perfect or darn near perfect copy of anything, added to that this beast that is the world wide web and high speed internet it is a literal pandoras box that seems real hard to stuff the genie back in.

but there are some people that benefit form piracy to a degree if your a small time band that gets exposure via torrents and filesharing that can boost album sales, or small budget independent movies a few good stories come out of the pirate world on occasion. granted if your a big time publisher or producer then you will be hard pressed to see any help form that scene since your spending 10s or 100s of millions of dollars in advertising to move a product.

still comes down to price when cds were 13 bucks years and years ago i sure took more chances and more impulse purchases bought some good stuff and some awful stuff tho since they were cheap it was not a huge loss if i made a few bad buys here and there. but when cds came down to 18 and 20 some dollars then i sure did not take many risks in my purchases. and did not expand my music library nearly as much.

same goes for games if games were cheaper people would buy more games, they would take more chances. but at 60 dollars it is a real hard sell to just walk into a store and roll the dice on a random purchase, so we wait for the big name titles or wait for the good reviews and skip the no name and the the unknown.

 

[chaos order]

sort of a silly excuse though. i mean by that logic i should steal a car so that i dont blow thousands on a car that could break down.

Car dealers don't do test drives in your country, I take it?

so pirating a game is taking out for a test drive? i mean demos work too

that is assuming the developers release a demo....
of course i am also going to restate what i said earlier in that odds are if someone pirates the game they still are not likely to go pay for it because they already have it.

and so therefore they r entitled to a free copy?

 

[CrimsonStrife]

sort of a silly excuse though. i mean by that logic i should steal a car so that i dont blow thousands on a car that could break down.

Car dealers don't do test drives in your country, I take it?

so pirating a game is taking out for a test drive? i mean demos work too

that is assuming the developers release a demo....
of course i am also going to restate what i said earlier in that odds are if someone pirates the game they still are not likely to go pay for it because they already have it.

and so therefore they r entitled to a free copy?

not what i said...
i did argue that not all games release demos...but i was also pointing out that just because some one pirates it claiming to be "trying it out" it doesnt make it right...it is a theory that makes sense, but it cannot work because it requires people to have moral judgement. once someone has something for free...why would they go pay for it

 

[Piorn]

I don't know why people hate Steam, I love having an account for my games, so I can download them again.
The problem is, there are so many accounts to ceep track of. I use Steam frequently, and I'm feeling lucky remembering my Bioware password, but don't get me started about my Ubisoft, EA or whatever account I need to play a game.

 

[Mr. In-between]

I really don't give a shit about either. I'm poor. I have to choose between gas for a car I don't own and the cheapest game a platform has, most of which I wouldn't waste my time playing. This means I have to carefully read reviews and save money for games... If I can even justify buying any.

As of right now, I have Rogue Galaxy, Radiata Stories, Okami, and ToSoTNW on my plate alongside finishing my file on SMG. Developers that waste a lot of energy on DRM/pay2play/etc don't even hit my radar because their games lack appeal to me for reasons that I can't really explain. Piracy doesn't matter to me either because I have so much bullshit on my plate that I don't have the time to play anymore.

Skyword Sword: Yeah, I'm interested in Skyward Sword but since it's Nintendo it isn't coming out until fuckeverwhen, so I'll figure it out once they do.

Kirby's Epic Yarn: Whenever I get the money, but it does look cool.

The fucking Donkey Kong game: I haven't played DCK2 in a while, I'll check it out.

Kid Icarus Uprising: I'm reserving a 3DS.

Other M: Hopefully for xmas.

SMG2: eventually

Virtual console: as soon as all of this goddamn internet shit is settled.

 

[Fenring]

Seeing how for some games are pirated more than they sell, and DRM would not exist if it were not for piracy, piracy is the problem. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a pirate, wrong, lying, or an idiot.

...And claiming anyone who would argue against you is wrong makes you a fool, and an imbecile. Everyone has an opinion and the right to express it.

Indeed they do, but that does not make them right. I could say it is my opinion that France is not a country, but that does not make my opinion correct or really worth anything. It's just an opinion.

piracy apparently does not cause too much damage to companies on average or we would have seen this kind of action long ago.

We have. Like this. Until recently, infrastructure had not progressed to a point where it was economically viable to assume customers would have a continuous internet connection which allows Ubisoft's anti-pirating measure. And it worked, for a very long time compared to other piracy solutions.

and to be honest if prices were not so high on games it is unlikely we would see as much pirating.

I seriously doubt that. Having more than a few friends who pirate media, they do it because they can, not because a legal copy costs too much. Lowering the prices would just necessitate more copies sold to break even. There may be a slight reduction in piracy, but I'm pretty damn sure the vast majority would still go about pirating as much as they do. Take music for example, it costs $.99 to buy a song on most services, yet music piracy is quite frequent.

there is simply no real need to charge $60 a copy..that more than recoops the production cost in the short term.

Since you mention a $60 price point, I'm going to assume you primarily play on a console. PC games do not cost $60 per title on average. The vast majority is actually $50, or less as in Dead Rising 2's case. You seem like the kind of person who assumes all $60 of your money for a new game goes to the publisher and developer, and that's just wrong. Publishers (who would be the "big suits" here) get very little off of one sale of a game. Here's a breakdown.

but DRM is making piracy worse.

May I please partake in some of what you are burning and subsequently inhaling? How is DRM making piracy worse? Piracy would be more prevalent without DRM, and DRM does not encourage piracy.

For all future reference, an ellipses (three periods in a row) does not substitute to for an actual, single period.

 

[chaos order]

sort of a silly excuse though. i mean by that logic i should steal a car so that i dont blow thousands on a car that could break down.

Car dealers don't do test drives in your country, I take it?

so pirating a game is taking out for a test drive? i mean demos work too

that is assuming the developers release a demo....
of course i am also going to restate what i said earlier in that odds are if someone pirates the game they still are not likely to go pay for it because they already have it.

and so therefore they r entitled to a free copy?

not what i said...
i did argue that not all games release demos...but i was also pointing out that just because some one pirates it claiming to be "trying it out" it doesnt make it right...it is a theory that makes sense, but it cannot work because it requires people to have moral judgement. once someone has something for free...why would they go pay for it

Oh, so money is the problem?

Why not just steal a car instead of paying for it?

Piracy - excuses for it are pathetic.

Such a tired and erroneous analogy. The big difference between a car and a pirated copy of a game is that the car is a physical product where the game is a digital product. If a physical product is taken then the car is just gone; meanwhile the digital product could be copied endlessly. In short, the car dealer actually loses something, the game publisher doesn't. A better comparison would be to say that I'm going to build my own Mustang rather than buying one from Ford.

Also, what makes you think that I'm in favor of piracy?

the mustang analogy doesnt really work either. i mean ya that person got his own car by making from the design of a company but its unlikely he'll have the means to mass produce that car and give it away for free to other people. With games one has the means to easily produce multiple copies so that a lot of ppl can get it for free.

 

[PeePantz]

Oh, so money is the problem?

Why not just steal a car instead of paying for it?

Piracy - excuses for it are pathetic.

Such a tired and erroneous analogy. The big difference between a car and a pirated copy of a game is that the car is a physical product where the game is a digital product. If a physical product is taken then the car is just gone; meanwhile the digital product could be copied endlessly. In short, the car dealer actually loses something, the game publisher doesn't. A better comparison would be to say that I'm going to build my own Mustang rather than buying one from Ford.

Also, what makes you think that I'm in favor of piracy?

Your statement implies that the value of the game is the cd itself and not the information on the cd, which is absurd.

Your comparison would be if you made your own game yourself rather than buying one.

I believe pirate kitty has the more accurate comparison.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

the mustang analogy doesnt really work either. i mean ya that person got his own car by making from the design of a company but its unlikely he'll have the means to mass produce that car and give it away for free to other people. With games one has the means to easily produce multiple copies so that a lot of ppl can get it for free.

My analogy being flawed doesn't make yours more apt. We're still comparing apples and oranges, here. The point is; you can't compare the theft of a physical object to making copies of a digital product.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Also, what makes you think that I'm in favor of piracy?

beacuse you are fighting for it like the thief you are.

I'm not fighting for piracy, I'm fighting against (intrusive) DRM. There's a difference. Don't believe me? Have a nice chat with my Steam profile [http://steamcommunity.com/id/whitetigershiro]. Yeah, I pirated the heck out of those 80 games that I bought.

 

[Flying Pilgrim]

If they really thought something like DRM was a good idea then I guess piracy really is a big issue; Yet again most of these companies are controlled by greedy bastards who really want that extra penny...

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

The only time that piracy is not a really stupid idea is when the dev no longer gets money from it. AKA system shock 2, fallout, other greats like that.

So if I pirate a copy of System Shock 2 now it's okay, but if I pirated it 10 years ago it wouldn't have been? What's the difference? Either way I haven't bought the game. Oh, and you can still buy Fallout [http://store.steampowered.com/sub/2008/], wouldn't be shocked if there was a way to buy System Shock 2. So really now, how do you determine what's "okay" to pirate?

 

[chaos order]

the mustang analogy doesnt really work either. i mean ya that person got his own car by making from the design of a company but its unlikely he'll have the means to mass produce that car and give it away for free to other people. With games one has the means to easily produce multiple copies so that a lot of ppl can get it for free.

My analogy being flawed doesn't make yours more apt. We're still comparing apples and oranges, here. The point is; you can't compare the theft of a physical object to making copies of a digital product.

but its not simply "making copies" its the production of copies in order to allow ppl to get something so that they dont need to pay for it

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

If they really thought something like DRM was a good idea then I guess piracy really is a big issue; Yet again most of these companies are controlled by greedy bastards who really want that extra penny...

Just because they're greedy penny-pinchers doesn't mean that they're smart. The kind of logic they use to determine that DRM nets higher profit is the same kind of research you could use to prove that drinking milk leads to violence. That is to say, they do Thing A and Thing B happens, therefore they assume that A was the cause when B was going to happen anyway.

 

[Lacsapix]

Drm
no matter how well protected a game is (AC2.....), pirates can still crack it.