Dammit! Piracy is dying because of PC Gaming. FUUUUU:fffuuu:
Just because something doesn’t lead to a direct loss doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt an industry. While pirating a game may not cost the developers any existing money (as physically stealing a copy would) it DOES harm potential revenue, thus hurting profits just as stealing a physical copy would.
The two aren’t necessarily equal, but they still have a similar effect on profits.
We’d have to see some numbers to determine how much of a threat piracy really is; but I think we can both agree that piracy is definitely on the rise. If it’s allowed to continue unchecked, I don’t doubt that it’ll become a major hindrance to the industry.
My God, who are you to determine whether a product you’ve acquired “deserves” your money or not? If you’ve acquired a product that’s for sale, you must pay for it - those are the rules, and they’re not open to interpretation.
Can you go to a hotel, stay for five nights, and then refuse to pay because you didn’t like your stay? You can certainly ask for your money back, but the decision is the manager’s - not yours. Unless you’re the one selling the product, you have no right to try to dictate what the price is. Your only options are to buy it, or not acquire it at all.
It’s your money, so it’s your full right to decide if something deserves it or not.
Your analogy is faulty, as staying in a hotel for a few days uses up someone else’s resources, whereas downloading a game does not.
My 2 eurocents:
I hate being treated as a felon before I commit a felony. Imagine for a second coming to a restaurant and being greeted by a waitress that tells you: “Listen, you! If you so much as spit around here, I’ll have you escorted outside, you understand?!!”
What would you do if that happened? You’d undoubtedly turn around and leave, and you would be right to do so. They just don’t respect their customer, they don’t treat them the way they should, so you’d try to give them a “signal” that you don’t like their attitude by leaving immediately.
However, imagine that all restaurants in your city and in the vicinity would behave in the same way. Including McD and KFC and every imaginable source of meals. What would you do then? You’d have to eat somewhere, so as much as you’d hate it, you’d have to “bite the bullet” and go to the one restaurant that is least annoying with these “advance warnings”.
But imagine further, that a cook from one of the restaurants would approach and whisper in your ear: “Psst! If you go around the block to the back door, I’ll give you a good meal for free!” You’d know that he’s probably robbing his employer by doing that, but you’d feel somehow good for taking revenge on the restaurant that mistreats you by talking to you the way they do. And so, even if you knew that you “should” pay for meals, you’d agree and do it.
And this is actually what is happening with the movie industry. You go to a store, you buy a DVD of a movie for quite a lot of money (considering the entertainment-time-provided (hours) / price paid ratio), and when you place it in your DVD player, the first thing that you get is “Listen, scumbag, if you so much as think about copying this thing, we’ll sue your ass!”
Normally, you’d boycott a DVD company that treats the customers like that, but alas! All of them do it. No matter which one you buy, they all come with unskippable copyright notices.
And guess what? There are these “cooks” who make movie versions WITHOUT these annoying warnings. And even though you feel it’s not exactly right, you’re still upset about the way the DVD makers treat you, and so you take revenge on them.
- Revenge for accusing you of piracy when you actually bought it.
- Revenge for adding unskippable commercials before the main movie (valid for cheaper re-editions of movies)
- Revenge for not filling the DVD to the top with bonus materials
- Revenge for giving you a DVD with incorrect dubbing or subtitles (where applicable*)
- Revenge for taking their sweet time to actually produce the DVD, thus forcing you to either go see it in a noisy theatre filled with morons with popcorn, or to lease it in DVD lending store.
If they start treating customers as they should, they might get the customers back. Until then, it’s aXXo and others.
It’s difficult to say if it has any real impact on revenue. Just because someone pirates a game doesn’t mean they will buy it if they can’t pirate it.
I’m not so sure we can assume that piracy is on the rise. As the gaming industry grows ( and it IS growing ) game development companies make concerns about piracy more public and more of an issue. I’m not sure the ratio of legit copies versus pirated copies in use has changed all that much.
Unfortunately it’s not really a fair playing field. Because policies of game vendors is that of ‘no refunds’ for opened products, simply returning the game is not a possibility. Because of the money backing given to reviewers, it is difficult to tell if you will be getting what is claimed in the sale. This was the big draw of demo software. Get an idea of what you are getting, then decide if you want to pay for it. Unfortunately, it’s not exactly a perfect system anymore as many games do no release a demo, while others release a demo that doesn’t represent the actual game. Now I’m not saying this to justify what pirates do. I’m simply saying that game companies sometimes play a bigger part in creating piracy than they seem to realize. If you can’t trust that a game will meet it’s claims, and there is no trustworthy source to check and see you are getting what you think you are paying for, many people will resort to alternative methods. Once you have the full version of a game you wanted to try, the type of person to pirate a game to try, isn’t often the type of person who will then go buy it if it is something they like.
Companies that provide honest and quality products HAVE been shown to have lower piracy rates with their products. This is not a coincidence. Companies that pump out mediocre games, or use untrustworthy tactics generally end up having piracy issues.
I pay for all my games, but I would have been some pissed if I bought Demigod for the multiplayer only to find it didn’t work for about 6 months.
So you’re saying you frequently have sexual relations with bands at their concerts?
I find that sentence funny coming from you, you yourself said that you played the L4D2 demo and judged the game based on that. bleh oh well.
But who are you to decide to give money if you weren’t satisfied with the game? This is not like deciding whether or not to give someone a tip or not, this is deciding whether you will pay for the full product at all, and I don’t think that’s even close to fair for the people who make these games.
Although a system like that would be nice, it is easily abused by the likes of you since “I don’t have money!” excuse is used and there is no sure way to make people pay for products they like.
In other words, it’s not your place to decide whether to pay for the full product even though you have it.
No, piracy is dying because of the new obligation to be connected to the cloud that detects a legitimate software key (with cloud servers like steam and gamespy) to be able to run the software. That and people are realizing that they can get into real trouble. Just recently (in January I think) a mother of three working minimum wage was charged 1,000,000$US in damages for using a peer to peer software to download music.
Yeah, I agree that Spore was pirated like hell when it came out.
Not to be too off-subject but, Maxis made a BIG mistake when they dropped the SimCity line just because they wanted to advertise “The Sims 2” and “Spore” when the games were hits when they came out anyways. (The Sims 2 was pretty obvious, because of it’s predecessor, The Sims.) I never even seen an ad for them but I still bought the dang things.
That is total shit, my friend.
They should have kept the SimCity line. The game was fucking amazing. One of my first games I ever got.
Good riddance to Mininova. When they started pruning torrents earlier this year, I stopped using it. But I miss Demonoid.
I can see where many people get annoyed with people who “pirate” games, but for software and music (and even movies), I don’t get it. They usually price their products so ridiculously high, and even then those who produce the material don’t really see much money for it. If the developers/directors/musicians sold their work directly for an affordable price, and got most of the profits, then I’d probably buy much more then I download.
Why buy a CD for $20 (yes, it’s reaching that. REM’s latest album was selling for that much at some shops) when you can download it for free? To support the artist? Most of that $20 is going to go to the label. Really, I’d rather make a donation to the artist instead, a la Radiohead.
Actually that is NOT what I said at all.
I said I played the demo, and thought it wasn’t a great deal different. I went on to say, several times, that I tried out the full version to get a better idea and was not convinced of enough originality to make it worth it to me. Don’t fucking spread Lies about me.
Also, you have missed the point of what I was saying entirely. There is no reliable way to determine if the product you are getting actually IS what it claims to be. I even provided an example. The game Demigod was released and had high initial sales based on claims that it was going to have a way to play online with it’s unique style of gameplay. However, soon after release, it was announced that the multiplayer did not work. Not for anyone. There was no refunds offered, and there was no planned date for it to be corrected. After some months the multiplayer portion of the game was patched to work. But this time it was too late and there is really no demigod online community to speak of.
While this is an extreme example, and some things promised within a game are less tangible, it is still related to the lack of consumer rights. This, again, isn’t an excuse to pirate games. It does contribute to the problem though.
Ideally there would be more safeguards for consumers against underhanded methods used by game companies. Playing a full version of a game is NOT the ideal form of confirming a product for yourself. However, it is a way that people use, and when you can’t trust anyone but yourself and you have no other options I would hardly call these people ‘hardened criminals’.
The ONLY excuse I find total BS is the ‘games cost too much’ argument. We don’t get to decide how much something costs. Games often go on sale, or deals can be found. I want to drive an expensive racecar, but I can’t afford the insurance. You know what? I don’t get to drive the fucking car! It’s not right, and it shouldn’t be legal for me to just forge or copy insurance papers that will fool cops and the company enough to let me use their insurance services. Just because you WANT something, doesn’t mean you are entitled to it. If I want a corvette because it’s a fast car that doesn’t cost 100 grand, I should be able to find out if it is what it says it is. Would it be fair to a consumer to have reviewers who are supposed to be trustworthy make claims about this corvette, and the dealer to make claims about a corvette, but not allow me to open up the hood until after I buy. Then, after I do buy it based on these claims I head to the car, pop the hood, only to realize that the engine was replaced with a sewing machine. I try to return it citing that I didn’t get what was advertised and promised, and am told no, I cannot return it. That would be wrong, and there is similar stuff going on with many games these days.
Ok, yes reviewers are often bought out, but the thing is that even if you read an honest review you still won’t be getting an actual “review” since it is based on another person’s opinions and tastes.
So let’s take reviews out of the equation since they aren’t even close to being the best way to find out if you’ll like a game.
But yes, I am pissed off at people who say that “I don’t have money so I pirate it”, since wanting things doesn’t give them any right to have them.
I work in retail so whenever I see product that’s been stolen, in our store, from our store, I get a little pissed off B/C there’s another item my company Won’t make a profit from (also it screws up re-stocking info)
this scenario is the probably same with game developers.
I should have made myself clearer. You have the right to decide whether something deserves it or not, until you actually acquire the PRODUCT. Once you’ve done that, you don’t get to decide whether the product deserves your money based on how much you enjoyed it. You’ve got to pay for it, period.
A product is a product regardless of if it uses up immediate resources or not. In the end, you’re still trading money for someone’s work.
You make a good point. This being said, piracy shouldn’t be the answer to this problem; that’d be like stealing a car from a factory in order to test how it drives.
Thinking about this makes me wonder: I’ve never had to return a game I downloaded over Steam. Does Steam have some kind of process for refunds if you don’t like a game you bought from them?
Actually opinion is only part of what a reviewers job. It’s also their duty to inspect the function of the game. Do all features work? Does it work with the claimed supported hardware? Is there bugs? They can also discuss technical aspects. Like support, load times, and stuff that can be assigned concrete metrics. This is stuff I wish more reviewers deemed worthy of inclusion in the game.
No.
So you must choose… wisely.
Well, they don’t include that type of stuff. And when they give their final score, it’s based on their tastes so it isn’t a reliable source in the end. It can only tell you what the game has, but not if you’ll like it.
Could you explain that please?
How can you even say this? Why would anyone pay money for something they don’t like in the first place?
I’m not saying this to justify piracy, but that particular argument of yours is just total bullshit.
If something costs €60, I want to make damn sure I’m going to like it before I buy it. Unfortunately, at the moment the only way to do that is by playing the full game first in most cases.
They shouldn’t - but that doesn’t mean that after utilizing a product you don’t like, that you don’t have to pay for it!
This is why, as Johnkiller said, you’ve got to choose wisely. This is also why reviews are important. Once you’ve bought a product, you’ve got to pay for it - unless you can return it.
If you can’t, then you’re SOL. Hopefully you’ll choose better next time.
This is what happens when you BUY a bad PC game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGFuHC75aY
So you must choose… wisely.
Edit: Also
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LkWKvMCzqA