I believe piracy is a matter of education.

In some places, people throws their garbage on the street. In other places people don't do that because they get fined. And in the more civilized ones, the idea of throwing garbage on the street do not even cross peoples minds as they would never intentionaly harm the place they live in just for a matter of personal convenience (or common sense).

Replace "throwing garbage on the street" with "pirating software" and you get my point. "Personal convenience" and "common sense" are relative terms anyway.

Quote: Original post by owl
I believe piracy is a matter of education.

In some places, people throws their garbage on the street. In other places people don't do that because they get fined. And in the more civilized ones, the idea of throwing garbage on the street do not even cross peoples minds as they would never intentionaly harm the place they live in just for a matter of personal convenience (or common sense).

Replace "throwing garbage on the street" with "pirating software" and you get my point. "Personal convenience" and "common sense" are relative terms anyway.

Pirating something does not make you stupid, in fact it's the opposite because logically why would you wast your time and money but it is bad, especially for indie game developers.

Quote: Original post by CodaKiller
Pirating something does not make you stupid, in fact it's the opposite because logically why would you wast your time and money but it is bad, especially for indie game developers.

Um, I think you might have phrased that a little inelegantly. I'm hoping you're not implying that people who pay for games are chumps.

owl's point is that while pirating might give you a short term benefit, much like dumping your garbage in the street, it has a long term detriment. It's a tragedy of the commons problem. If one individual person doesn't support their favourite game, then that doesn't hurt so much. But if enough people don't support the game, the developers will start doing something more profitable or go bust.

Notice how PC games are steadily going cross-platform with consoles? Also notice how they're picking more console friendly designs? Admittedly I haven't much, but that's because I haven't been playing enough, but I have noticed the steady rise of complaints. The reason why games are doing this is dead simple - it just makes plain economic sense. If there were enough paying PC gamers who wanted games designed to the strengths of the PC, publishers would put more money into them. But as things are, it makes more sense to develop for consoles or dual console/PC. Now I don't know how big piracy is a factor in that decision as I don't have the stats at my fingertips, but I dare say it's part of it.

Indie developers, in my opinion, actually can get off lighter from piracy. The main problem for an indie developer is exposure, as the indie has a shoestring marketing budget -basically, it's whatever the indie developer can do themselves to drive publicity. Now I'm not going to make the argument that piracy is actually beneficial because it leads to indies being better known, because while I've seen that I've never, ever seen it backed up by anything other than conjecture. But my (admittedly equally unfounded) opinion is that, for an indie, you'll get better mileage on sales by attracting new customers than cracking the heads of pirates. There's vast hordes of gamers out there who won't have heard of your title that you can sell to.

That said, I know some indies do spend a significant amount of time fighting piracy and say it is worth it financially (as well as ethically, as a morale booster). It's probably wise to do a limited amount of pirate protecting and fighting, shutting down torrents etc.. But I wouldn't fuss too much about it, otherwise you'll spend more time worrying about pirates than you do about customers.

Quote: Original post by CodaKiller
Pirating something does not make you stupid, in fact it's the opposite because logically why would you wast your time and money but it is bad, especially for indie game developers.

Ok, let's assume for a moment that piracy is the major cause for games not making money. How is it worse for indie developers, who have to support themselves and their families (if they don't have a dayjob or trustfund or other sources of income anyways) than for a major publisher who has to support hundreds pr thousands of employees, which, in turn, have to support themselves and their families?

Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid
Now I don't know how big piracy is a factor in that decision as I don't have the stats at my fingertips, but I dare say it's part of it.

It's also why we often release pc version of games significantly later than the console version.

Quote: Original post by Drazgal
It's also why we often release pc version of games significantly later than the console version.

I was wondering about that, especially with things like Xbox games where it shouldn't be super difficult to develop in tandem. I wasn't sure if it was more to do with exclusivity licenses with Microsoft over piracy mitigation.

Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid
I was wondering about that, especially with things like Xbox games where it shouldn't be super difficult to develop in tandem. I wasn't sure if it was more to do with exclusivity licenses with Microsoft over piracy mitigation.

I doubt it's due to piracy mitigation.
For "exclusive" titles it's definitely written in the contract when or if a PC version may be released.

In all other cases, the PC version usally generates the smallest chunk of revenue and is therefor treated with the lowest priority.

Secondly, the PC version needs to be compatibility tested with zillions of hard- and softwarecombos to ensure it runs on as many computers as possible without problems. Different rendering paths may need to be written for different graphics cards, Games for Windows or Steam integration may need to be added. Finally, the copy protection mechanisms needs to be added.

All of these tasks are not necessary for the console version and can be quite time consuming.

Quote: Original post by phresnel
So, the last time you bought a car (an object you only buy every few years, for a price that you can afford only every few years) or another expensive device, did you buy proper magazines or solely relied on reports in the internet, or did you drive that car / try out the device before finally deciding to keep it?

And here we go with the car analogies again. Cars and software are two very different things. Take for example GTA IV which is currently at its third patch and still doesn't run very well. It also has limited activations by the way. And I can't return it, simply because of the "you can't return software" policies.

If I buy car and it would occasionally stop working I can go back to the dealer and demand repairs. If the dealer would refuse to repair it I could get my money back, one way or the other. I am fully protected in this case by consumer laws. Strangely enough I am out of luck though when I buy flawed software. Am I the only one who thinks this is unfair?

Quote: Original post by kanzler
And here we go with the car analogies again. Cars and software are two very different things. Take for example GTA IV which is currently at its third patch and still doesn't run very well. It also has limited activations by the way. And I can't return it, simply because of the "you can't return software" policies.

If I buy car and it would occasionally stop working I can go back to the dealer and demand repairs. If the dealer would refuse to repair it I could get my money back, one way or the other. I am fully protected in this case by consumer laws. Strangely enough I am out of luck though when I buy flawed software. Am I the only one who thinks this is unfair?

As you pointed out, cars and software are two very different things. You can't (yet) make a copy of your car before returning it. Besides, nobody makes you agree that you buy the car AS IS, WHITOUT WARRANTIES :)

Quote: Original post by borngamer
Why is it that people (including programmers) have come to accept that programmers should bust their asses for months and years to give their work away for free in hopes of getting paid to support their work?

Maybe there are just too many hippies in this field because I expect to get paid for every hour of my work.

I don't think anyone really believes that except the freetards, and they're in a world of their own anyway.


My chief observation in the entire topic is the observation of practicality. Copyright protection isn't really a practical solution to the problem of piracy.

I fully agree that developers deserve to be paid for their efforts, as does anyone who performs any kind of work. But practically, the products that developers produce are intangible. They are infinitely replicatable, and thus do not adhere to the physical law of supply and demand. Once the work is produced it is inherently worthless in a free market because of the unlimited supply.

So people attempt to turn an infinitely-replicatable product into one with a limited supply by introducing copy protection. The problem with copy protection is that it actually devalues the product. If I have to fight to install or play a game, it's not worth it for many people, they'll go find something else that gives them a better user experience. To make matters worse is the fact that there are thousands and thousands of people out there who take pleasure in their ability to circumvent these protections, and then distribute the product themselves. Ironically these cracked versions are usually superior to the originals because they're faster and easier to obtain, easier to install, and easier to play.

So now you have a brown market offering the same product with vastly superior appeal to the original. The only thing copy protection did was annoy the honest users and create an environment of disgruntled people who are now more likely to either A) not buy your products in the future, or B) even go as far as pirating them to avoid the horrible experience you provided them with in the first place.

You've effectively cut off your nose to spite your face. People can stamp their feet and yell "but that's illegal!!", but practically speaking, that's not going to accomplish anything. People will still crack your software no matter how many laws are passed, and the only thing you're doing is annoying the people who want to pay for your software.


The game industry suffers from some fairly serious issues.

Their chief market is younger people, people who typically cannot afford to buy games because they have no jobs or are in school. If games were cheaper I'm certain more people would be inclined to pay for them. They are an infinitely-replicatable product after all, so supplying extra copies digitally is no longer an issue.

Their products are shoddy. The last 5 or 6 games I have purchased right after release were buggy and basically unplayable until the first one or two patches were out. Where in my motivation to purchase new games in the future if this has become expected behaviour?

Their products have an artificially short shelf life. For some odd reason I can find any game in the $10 bin less than a year after it's released. Why would I buy it on release if I can wait a few months and get a 80%+ discount?

Their products for some inexplicable reason are aimed at bleeding edge hardware. Hardware that almost no one has. So right off the bat they're cutting the available market space down by orders of magnitude. When you have a practically infinite supply of a product, it is completely ludicrous to cut back on the potential demand as well. Sure maybe you can have marketing fudge the requirements so that it looks like other people can play as well, but what has Vista taught us in this regard? That's right. People were promised the full experience, and instead got either sub-par performance or were forced to remove features they thought they were getting, leaving them disillusioned and far more likely to have a bad taste in their mouths about your future products.

Their products now completely lack anything physical. I remember the days when you got a nice big box and an instruction manual to read through. Nowadays you get a CD and if you're lucky you get the manual in PDF form. Human psychology plays a big part in people's feeling of satisfaction for a product. When you get an actual physical object, you can hold it and feel like you've just purchased something. If you don't have that, most people tend to feel like they've overpaid.

Their products have become mostly shovelware. Granted there's always a few diamonds in the rough. I would pay $200 if I could buy Portal 2 right now. But by and large, the vast majority of games are just endless unoriginal clones of other games. They've even completely stopped making the Adventure Game Genre because other dumbed-down games supposedly sell better. Hey here's an idea, why don't you guys make products for individual niches, instead of endlessly shoveling out formulaic games because last years #1 hit was in that genre? Not everyone can be #1, so it's really kind of silly to all strive to be #1 all the time. Try taking your time to make something quality and profitable, instead of trying to trick people into buying crap. Sooner or later they tire of buying your crap and altogether stop buying games.

I know I have.