Quote: Original post by brent_w

Quote: Original post by phresnel

Quote: Original post by CodaKiller
If only 12% of the people who torrented it bought it for $10 then they would have made more profit. I am pretty sure that at least 12% of them would have been willing to shell out $10 instead of torrenting it.

What gives you the impression that nobody of those who torrented it has actually paid some fee for it after trying it a bit?

That is the most laugable defense of piracy of all.

The infantesimal number of people who actually use the "try then buy" piracy style are statistically insignificant.

"Piracy style" ...

Everytime you mention "statistically" you also must provide sources for this. And no, knowing about friends and neighbours is not statistically representative.



OT: Sidenote regarding main video game market piracy

In germany, most sellers of video games state that games are non-returnable, once buyed. So you have only a single legal choice to try what you buy (trying a game out in the store is, imho, insane, as you won't be able to decide whether you like the game or not within ten minutes), which is video game rental. The problem being: Not every village has a video rental shop (and even then, it might not have what you want). And not everyone is interested in being a member of some remote rental shop, and not everyone is interested in online rental (including me). Then, when I compare market sales of games vs. game-magazines, it seems that many people are not interested in buying game-tests; though I can't say how many people read game tests online. According to all this, you either have the choice of paying up to 60 EUR (roughly 80 USD) for something that is potentially shit (write-only move-semantics that money transfer has), or not buying it at all.

That was the legal way.

I also don't believe people download full versions of games to "Try before they buy". If that were the real reason, they would download the demo (if available).

Don't get me wrong, I've paid for some pretty crappy games and I have been upset about the money I wasted, but that wouldn't justify me pirating the game.

Personally I think the "Try before you buy" attitude with pirated games is just an excuse to legitimize piracy.

The simple fact of all this is that there are people willing to steal our work if it is easy to do so and has no consequences. If the governments of the world started putting more people in jail (including casual pirates) you would see a big change in attitude. I also believe that if pirated software wasn't available, more people would buy games. So yes, piracy does effect sales.

Of course, none of this talk actually answers the original question on how we can prevent our games from being pirated. I don't think there is a positive answer to the original question. Sooner or later, your game will be pirated. It's as simple as that.

John

Quote: Original post by phresnel

Quote: Original post by brent_w

Quote: Original post by phresnel

Quote: Original post by CodaKiller
If only 12% of the people who torrented it bought it for $10 then they would have made more profit. I am pretty sure that at least 12% of them would have been willing to shell out $10 instead of torrenting it.

What gives you the impression that nobody of those who torrented it has actually paid some fee for it after trying it a bit?

That is the most laugable defense of piracy of all.

The infantesimal number of people who actually use the "try then buy" piracy style are statistically insignificant.

"Piracy style" ...

Everytime you mention "statistically" you also must provide sources for this. And no, knowing about friends and neighbours is not statistically representative.

Correct.
I probably should have said ... "I believe the ..." "... to be statistically insignificant".
I, personally, am quite sure that there is not a significant number of people who actually purchase products after pirating.

Quote: OT: Sidenote regarding main video game market piracy

In germany, most sellers of video games state that games are non-returnable, once buyed. So you have only a single legal choice to try what you buy (trying a game out in the store is, imho, insane, as you won't be able to decide whether you like the game or not within ten minutes), which is video game rental. The problem being: Not every village has a video rental shop (and even then, it might not have what you want). And not everyone is interested in being a member of some remote rental shop, and not everyone is interested in online rental (including me). Then, when I compare market sales of games vs. game-magazines, it seems that many people are not interested in buying game-tests; though I can't say how many people read game tests online. According to all this, you either have the choice of paying up to 60 EUR (roughly 80 USD) for something that is potentially shit (write-only move-semantics that money transfer has), or not buying it at all.

That was the legal way.

People being too lazy to read reviews, play demos, and use the internet to find out about a game's reception is not an excuse for piracy.

I really don't think many people would spend a few hours torrenting software only to play it for a couple hours then go out and buy the game.

People are lazy by nature, they are not going to spend their hard eared money on a game that they can play for free that is right at their finger tips.

To date, by far, the best idea I have seen for preventing piracy is pre-orders.

It's worked extremely well in the two cases I've seen: mount & blade, and Zeno Clash.

Mount & blade let users by each level of Beta at incrementing levels. If you bought the first version it was a few dollars, every release the price went up. I bought mine for $15 and I get the rights to the full game at $50 for no extra charge. A truly brilliant system.

Zeno Clash offered half off the retail price if you pre-ordered in advance. This has a huge negation on the piracy effect because people know they are getting a good deal, and there is no assurance that they could get a cracked copy after the release.

I really feel that people don't enjoy pirating games. They want to contribute, they want to play the game, but they want to make sure they are getting a good deal. Make it attractive to the customer to do the right thing.

Quote:
Personally I think the "Try before you buy" attitude with pirated games is just an excuse to legitimize piracy.

Don't understand my post as an excuse why I download unauthorized copies, because I don't. If a game gets high ratings in most magazines, or if I love the type of game and it has an average rating, I would buy it. But if I am unsure, I tend to not buy it and forget about it (btw, the last time I bought a game was something like 4 years ago; personally I don't play at all, at the moment).

It's just that, there is something wrong with the existing principle in general. For every mechanical device I can buy, like a car, a cooker, a fridge, an iPod, even harddisks, Matchbox cars, or just let it be a cheap vibrissae trimmer (wtf did I really say that?), I have a short period where I can try it out, and upon non-satisfaction I can bring it back to where I pulled it from. But I can't do that with a video game (or sometimes even software in general, which can easily cost hundreds of Euros), never mind the way of distribution. Personally, I would make an exception for movies, because they, in general, can't be sanely tried out, but most games I know can, not to mention application or business software.

I don't have a solution on hand, except a good (non-intrusive and non-rights-restricting! guess why I never grabbed a copy of Half Life 2) copy protection and/or a personalized carving.

Quote:
The simple fact of all this is that there are people willing to steal our work if it is easy to do so and has no consequences. If the governments of the world started putting more people in jail (including casual pirates)

Jail? Casual Pirates? --> Jails. "Casual Pirates". Pirates. Hunting Pirates (btw, that is the good old F212 Karlsruhe, callsign DRAV, on which I served during military service).

You forget about puttings things in relation. Assuming an evil person: What does that person feel when he/she/it clicks the "download this" button? I think, he/she/it doesn't feel much, often it's just one of many clicks. He/she/it does feel worse when actually stealing something. Copying or duplicating something is by definition not stealing, and downloading is nothing else then copying. And people already learn in school, often enough from elder teachers, that unauthorized copying is at maximum just a trivial offence (and nobody will tell, shhht); I remember having tens or even hundreds of copies of some book sections, sometimes even including phrases like "Copyright (C) 1992 Pico Paco, No copying permitted".


Surely, we can discuss the physical worth of non-physical "property" (if that can be "owned" at all), but in another thread; but for now, don't you think that putting those "black copying" people in jail is a bit exaggerated, or even ignorant?

And why should they get higher penalties for making unauthorized copies of games (actually, up to 5 yrs. in jail, in germany, afaik; afair that penalty is nearly equal to penalties for pedophilia), than they would get for copying chapters of a book, and maybe even distributing it to a whole school class? Do you know that even if they are not jailed up, their life can easily be ruined for the next couple of years because even the monetary penalties are exaggerated (happened to someone I know), yet all they think what they have done is that they made some black - or unauthorized copies of something that could as well have been a book.

If you steal some mechanical device, it doesn't matter if that device was an iPod, a 10,- EUR cheap mp3 player, or a bunch of apples.

Another example is the cost of driving 85 km/h where 50 km/h is allowed (for a reason, admittedly there are also enough roads here where you could easily drive 120 km/h without endangering anyone, but where 50 km/h is allowed; often very obviously just to trap drivers into penalty sales). If they ever get you here in germany, you pay maybe some 100 EUR and get some penalty points on your drivers license ("Punkte in Flensburg"). But actually, it could be that you endangered a plethora of people many times before. What deserves more penalty, that, or black copying?

Quote:
you would see a big change in attitude.

Change in sales, yes. Change in attitude, probably no.

opyt:tide

[Edited by - phresnel on April 9, 2009 9:07:27 AM]

Quote: Original post by ChurchSkiz
I really feel that people don't enjoy pirating games. They want to contribute, they want to play the game, but they want to make sure they are getting a good deal. Make it attractive to the customer to do the right thing.

I really wish I could be so optimistic about it but such an idea clashes completely with all of my personal experience.

Every pirate I've met seems to fall into one of a few categories:

Oblivious -
These are the: "hey! free game! cool!" type.
They don't even seem to grasp that what they're doing is wrong.
They just see something that they can get for free.

Denial -
These are the type that know exactly what they're doing.
They know that they shouldn't be doing it. But they're not going to stop anytime soon.
So they tend to get defensive about it, toss around excuses, and generally just seek ways to legitimize their behavior.

Anarchist -
This type takes pride in what they are doing.
In their minds: piracy is how they "stick it to the man".


Oddly enough, the third type is the kind I find the least frustrating. Heh.
The Oblivious type's carelessness and cluelessness just infuriates me.
And the Denial type are lying to themselves and to me.
At least the third type know what they're doing and are honest about it.

I stopped buying computer games when one day I bought a game and it refused to run because I had development tools on my computer.


The really ironic thing about it is that I could have gotten the pirated version for free, faster, been able to back it up, and play it with no hassles. I didn't because it's against my principles, but when you think about that, one has to wonder what's the point in ever buying games if the illegal version has so much more to offer?

I just don't play games anymore though. I find better things to do with my time now. I bet the sales they lose due to people like me not buying games anymore get attributed to piracy though.


Publishers: use DRM and I won't buy it. mmkay?

Quote: Original post by brent_w
People being too lazy to read reviews, play demos, and use the internet to find out about a game's reception is not an excuse for piracy.

I feel I must point out that it's very rare when reviews actually mean anything these days. All gaming mags and sites are completely in the pocket of the game industry now and they're just another branch of marketing. Game reviews are crap.

Finding internet opinions is just as useless, because the publishers have caught on and now pay people to spread grass roots good opinion about their crap. This is happening everywhere now, companies actually go out and pay people to write good fake reviews for their stuff on amazon or forums or wherever. You'd think it would almost make more sense to make a good product in the first place than to spend money later tricking people into buying your shit, but who knows what the shitheads on this planet think anymore.

All of these comments about how most pirates lie about being try it and buy it, do you have any statistics? Or are your opinions just biased without any proof?

I know several people who download full games whenever there aren't any demo's available. I used to do it too. I know the majority of you won't believe me when I say I bought the game if I liked it, and thats fine. I stopped after getting a few viruses and now I only buy games that have demo's available, or if I happen to have a friend who lets me try it.

As for the discussion about games on sale and discounts, I tried the world of goo demo and liked it. I never thought that the $20 was worth it, but steam did one of their weekend deals and I picked it up for $5.