Which is the bigger problem? Piracy or DRM?

[The Night Shade]

DRM is worst because it punishes the people that pay for the games

Also

Piracy isn't too bad,sometimes is the only option that you have to play a game

Piracy is never an option.

I know but in some countries if you want to play a game and you bought it legally you got a bigger chance that the game won't work or that the game will be pirate

 

[LitleWaffle]

Also, I would guess most people that pirate games can afford to purchase it, they simply choose not to. If they have access to internet and a computer, odds are they have enough of an income to save for a game.

Not necessarily. Take a look at my computer right now; and yet current (and probably for the next few weeks) I cannot afford to buy a single game. Why not? Car payments, car repairs, phone bill, keeping myself fed, etc etc. Just because I've managed to scrimp and save to be able to afford this thing doesn't mean that I have $60 available at any moment's notice. Not to mention other factors like losing a job, maybe the computer was a gift, change in living conditions, and probably a dozen other reasons why someone could have a top-notch computer and still be mostly broke.

Oh, so money is the problem?

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

Piracy - excuses for it are pathetic.

I think i'm just going to throw out that stealing a car is a lot more risky.

I see your point, but with license numbers and a much bigger notice, there isn't much chance of you getting away with stealing that car.

Piracy is a lot more discreet and effective without people knowing that you alone also pirated a game.

Why do you think that DRM has taken such extreme measures and still doesn't work all the time? Because it is only data that is being sent from one place to another, not a physical object that you directly steal from someone, but indirectly steal from a company without the physical evidence to prove it.

Also, money might not be the only problem, a couple years ago, I was not able to get rated M games, and I always got furious at that fact. It got to the point where I was tempted to pirate the games I wanted just so I could play them. Fortunately I didn't, and it all turned out better since now I can get M games.

Many people have tiny tid-bit reasons to pirate, and they aren't all on the fact they can't pay for it. The reason that they do pirate is that it is so easy to get away with that the tid-bit reason is more than satisfactory as opposed to the risk.

 

[fletch_talon]

DRM is worst because it punishes the people that pay for the games

Also

Piracy isn't too bad,sometimes is the only option that you have to play a game

Piracy is never an option.

I'm about as anti-piracy as you can get, but he is right actually.
In the rare case in which a game is no longer in production and is unavailable by any reasonable means, it is somewhat justifiable.

eg. Tombi is a game that was released on the original Playstation. Its no longer in production (duh) and its not available in any other form. If someone wanted to play that game, emulation is the only reasonable means to do so.
Unless of course you're keen enough to pay AU$120+ for a physical copy like I recently did.

However people need to realise that this doesn't count when a game gets a retro re-release like on WiiWare or PSN etc.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Just because someone can't pay for something, doesn't mean they can just steal it. BMW could probably make more profits if they just lowered the price of their cars, but they dont want to. It's the companies choice where o set the price, and you not liking their price isn't a reason for you to steal it. Sure it's odd, but its their choice.

The difference is that it doesn't cost 25¢ to make each new BMW. Again, this is comparing apples and oranges. You can't compare a limited commodity with something that can potentially be reproduced endlessly; it just doesn't work. And yes, I'm aware that it's their choice what to price, the point is that the publishers are being just as bad as the pirates in many many ways. Refusing to meet potential customers half-way is one of them.

Yeah, they did, but again that is no reason to pirate. You shouldn't blame them for creating something bad when it was piracy's fault it was there. The piracy problem ws too big for traditional methods, and publishers saw DRM as their only option. If people had always bought games legaly, there wouldn't be a need for DRM. People continuing to pirate games in the face of harsher DRM just encourages publishers to use more DRM protection.

So it's the old "two wrongs make a right" analogy? It's okay for the publishers to screw-over their customers as long as someone else was doing something wrong in the first place? No, I'm sorry, I'm not buying it. Just like little Jimmy gets in trouble for punching back because the teacher saw him and not the first kid to throw a punch; it's the publishers fault for stooping to a level that dragged the consumer into the fight. You can get off your soapbox with that "if people always bought games legally" crap, because it just doesn't work in the real world. If you find some perfect world where DRM doesn't exist because no one steals anything ever, then please send me an email before you dive-in and never return, because I'd like to go there, too. Until then though we have the real world to deal with. Thievery exists, it isn't going anywhere, any theory that starts with "if people never stole" can just stop right there.

Piracy of games can be stopped, it is just that some people against piracy aren't willing to stoop so low to do what is needed to be done.

As I said before in this thread, but now with great detail here, we first find a way to discover all hackers/distributors of the illegal copies, the people that hacked the game to put it on the Net in the first place.

We work with anti-virus companies to create a virus that can't be killed or quarantined by any anti-virus. Then when we pinpoint the hacker, send the virus to his computer. It wipes the hacker's computer, not just erasing the files, but also destroying the computer hardware. How many times is a hacker going to be willing to buy a whole new computer and keep on doing what he or she is doing?

We then have to preform strategic regulation of torrent sites, they will be closely monitored. The only files that can be shared back and forth are those that are collections of things that have always been free to the public. If it is something that will cause a company to lose money, if it is a pirated game, it will be terminated, as well as the computer that uploaded it. It will be a smart system, which means it will kill the file as it is being uploaded, so that nobody gets to download it in the first place.

Edit: Also, the virus can't spread to other computers, it goes to the offender's computer, kills the computer and dies in the process.

You are either trolling, or seriously need to stop taking piracy so personally.

 

[JordanMillward_1]

If you had no piracy, you wouldn't need DRM.

It's a chicken and egg situation, with Piracy as the egg (Stephen Fry has pointed out it's a pretty easy question, the egg obviously came first) and DRM as the chicken.

 

[furiouspol]

Wow... just WOW

What you're talking about is an Orwellian state I cant even imagine. I guess the ends justify the means?

Actually it wouldn't be. It would be Orwellian if what being stopped was part of a person's rights. People have no right to hack and copy games to give other people for free.

Orwellian means that someone is looking over your shoulder, watching you and dictating what you can and can't do. If someone is, as you said, watching all torrent and filesharing sites and even going so far as to inject viruses in peoples computers than yes I would say it is an Orwellian design.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

If you had no piracy, you wouldn't need DRM.

It's a chicken and egg situation, with Piracy as the egg (Stephen Fry has pointed out it's a pretty easy question, the egg obviously came first) and DRM as the chicken.

So does this mean pirates become DRM when they grow-up?

 

[Lord Honk]

If people who pirate a game can have more fun with it than the law-abiding, paying customers (see Assassins Creed 2 etc.) then DRM is the biggest problem the latter group has. And if your company isn't making money because the DRM prevents people from buying and rather encourages pirating it ("What, 60$ for a game I can't play on my 6h train ride? F*** this!") then that can't be good for ANY company.

 

[Vault101]

Hmmm I've caused a real stir here...

 

[ProfessorLayton]

You know, if there were no pirates, games wouldn't need DRM... I'm just saying...

 

[Gindil]

I actually don't know how bad piracy is

but it must be pretty bad to justtfiy all the hoops us honest consumers have to jump through just to play a game (like assassins creed 2, yeah ubisoft that was real FUCKING brilliant of you)

anyway it just seems that the worst of DRM is more of a problem for gamers and only serves to make us angry, I can cope with entering a cd code (and holding my breathe for that split second before it eather tells me its valid or invalid) and I can even cope with steam

But dose piracey justify all this? has DRM become a bigger problem?

The industry wants to complain about piracy because they can't understant that there are a lot of ways for people to spend their time.

First, people love movies. Second, people love books. Third, people love free games like Vindictus. See where I'm going with this?

I betcha, odds are that the gaming industry has been doing quite well. If you add in all the new types of games that are taking away people's time (Facebook, F2P, Valve in general), I'm sure that Ubisoft's lower numbers is just from the fact that people aren't playing just their games anymore.

 

[DazBurger]

Piracy. Blaming someone else for your misbehavior is the hight of immaturity.

Because it's fun to blindly spend $50-60 only to find out what you just bought is horse crap (or not to your tastes), amirite?

No... Thats just stupid... If its not your taste, don't buy it.

Don't steal it either.

 

[Antari]

Software will always be able to be modified, therefore piracy will ALWAYS exist. Regardless of weather the pirates think its right, or the business thinks its wrong. Piracy isn't anywhere near the problem it was in the mid 80's, because many of these companies have started to release virus ridden pirated versions of their own software. So from my point of view most of these companies are outright lying or fabricating statistics to their own end. Either way I don't pirate anymore, or buy games. Because nothing that being released now a days could possibly hold my interest past 8 hours. The production quality, and talent in the industry just isn't there anymore. Oh and just so you know thats due mostly to Mismanagement, not piracy. Piracy and DRM are big problems, but I'd say its greedy accountants/lawyers that push games to release FAR before they are done are the biggest problem.

 

[thebighead01]

Piracy is the major problem. Just read this article. It's long but very thorough and well worth the read.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

 

[Asehujiko]

I haven't read a single post except the OP, but here's what I call the "reasonable discussion challenge": The first side to claim the other is full of idiots with absolutely zero factual backup hereby looses the discussion.

Edit: People who think DRM is the biggest problem won!

 

[Antari]

Piracy is the major problem. Just read this article. It's long but very thorough and well worth the read.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

Wow someone wrote an article! ... it MUST be true! ... Seriously how old are you?

 

[jultub]

Piracy;

DRM can be a pain.

Piracy can bankrupt a company.

I kinda like how the Pirate Kitty opposes piracy

There is a possibility of compromise between piracy and buying games, though it's up to the individual (most don't).

There is also a possibility of making drm that doesn't screw the paying customer over. I'd say that this is far more common than the pirate who buys games as well.

Thus I'd say that the DRM is being implemented in a far nicer way than the piracy so far. In the end Ubisofts is the only one I've felt has crossed the line so far.

So I consider piracy to be the worst as the world stands right now, simply because it is overused.

 

[incal11]

Drm is their to stop piracy. If piracy disappeared then drm would too. So my vote is that piracy is the bigger problem, and i hope one day piracy can be eliminated so the developers/publishers can just worry about crafting a great experience.

Hello there.

That's some blind faith into the publishers and devs, most being only interested in swapping crappy shovelware with your money. Even if piracy was to go away nothing would change there.
Also, piracy will never go away, you are hoping in vain, for an illusion anyway.
If you still don't want to comment on some of the points I made in our last discussion maybe others in this thread will.

does piracy justify all this? has DRM become a bigger problem?

I've been defending that "piracy" is not the scourge it's trendy to make it to be. On the contrary, it can help good artists. For example, that is one of the reasons Psychonauts became a cult classic around the world, pushing tim schaffer to think about a sequel.
I explain the details at the end of this post, but in short DRMs and piracy are two faces of the same coin, both are equally problematic.

-DRMs discourage the shallow casual players only interested in the new big titles. For the niche players this is a different story, it seems the ones attracted to more sophisticated, unknown or ancient games will always be savy enough to decide if they want to pay, drm or not. In effect DRMs are relevant only in proportion to the genre's popularity, as publishers like Stardock found out.

-More popular games will attract more casual gamers, which are the casual pirates, in direct proportion. So naturally a highly popular game without protection will let them all try it, this can have some bad consequences obviously. This and the poor reviews that may follow because of inbuild DRMs are only due to common stupidity, not on piracy simply being "bad". DRMs fight zero day piracy, but encourage the ongoing file-sharing.

-DRMs are a necessity against casual piracy, piracy is unavoidable and so is the constant arms race between the crackers and the security engineers. I would rather save my anger for the crackers, but piracy can't go on without the crackers, and vice-versa in a lot of cases. In the end this is an unavoidable situation, there is no point in just getting angry about it. More intrusive DRMs fueled by hatred toward freeloaders are only food for the crackers. They may be necessary for popular games but nothing will ever change by seeing them as the one and only thing to do.

 

[Serenegoose]

Companies have lost more of my money through DRM than Piracy. Purely from my viewpoint as an individual then, their DRM costs them more than Piracy. Further, DRM only punishes the legitimate consumer.