Video Game Piracy

[Uther Mortigast]

Originally Posted by Kodiak

If people think there are no consequences for their actions, then they will be more likely to take them.

I have to believe that if there were more severe repercussions for piracy, there would be fewer pirates. Yet, I do not think that stiffer penalties alone would bring about a significant change.

Consider the scoff-laws that zip down the road faster than the posted speed limit. Sure, some of them have rationalized why their reasons for disobedience "this one time" are legitimate, but others just drive that way habitually. Why? Where I live, the legal consequences for speeding are minor, but so are the consequences for shoplifting, and I don't see shoplifting with the frequency that I witness speeding (maybe I'm just not observant enough). The fact is, many people behave like traffic violations aren't a big deal. I suspect that is because they believe they aren't hurting anyone, even though they are. (I'll leave the explanation of why your rates are going up because of the actions of others to the insurance adjusters).

So it is with software piracy. Societally, it's not that big of a deal, so pirates don't get that twinge that they're doing something wrong, something taboo like purse-snatching, even though they are. Maybe they do, I don't know, but the few former friends I had that pirated software were pretty cavalier about it.

Originally Posted by yaustar

...as an added measure to reduce the possibility of finding a pirated copy, they flooded the P2P networks of demos of the game that look/named like the full game.

That reminds me of putting up tank-shaped tents to fool reconnaissance satellites. Cheap, frustrating and genius!


I forgot to add this link that someone in my IGDA chapter forwarded to the group on talking to pirates.

[ridler2013]

Originally Posted by Adrir

Or make them puchase a legitimate version of the game before downloading a no-cd patch. That's another thing that annoys me about anti-piracy; the whole needing a CD to run a game.

I agree with that... The piracy is overwhelming to those countries who belong in Third World... I can't blame them though because their priority is their food and education but they also want to enjoy life like us but it's too expensive for them so they opt to buy the pirated but the fact that lots of websites adheres piracy too...

[desktopartist]

in developed countries, piracy is wrong regardless of the situation...

one of the worst excuses that i have ever heard was that "nintendo (as an example) is still making money because in order to play pirated games they need to buy the console... "

i'm unsure about the nintendo console, but i do know that it costs a lot to build a single console compared to the cost on the price tag (xbox and ps)...

[Moneychug]

I wanted to jump in and add to a few points of ronnoc10's post. The Entertainment Software Association estimates that the video game industry loses about $3.5 billion every year due to hard-goods piracy. Holy @#$%! And these numbers don’t even include the 500-pound gorilla: Internet piracy and peer-to-peer transfers!

I actually think if the audience of people not playing legitimately is growing faster than the people that is, how could we gamers not suffer economically and financially (game companies shutting down because of loss of profit, etc)? As y'all know, a game with all the bells and whistles — cutting-edge tech, deep gameplay, photorealistic graphics — costs a lot of moolah to make. And plus factor in that development periods are longer, teams can number 100 people or more, and the commercial window for the average game is very short Not every game is part of a triple-A franchise. Not every company is Electronic Arts. And if your game is competing against a free copy of itself, it could spell real trouble for the people who made it.

This topic is a big enough concern for me that I'd like to hear ideas of how we could help stop game piracy. . .

[ccontinisio]

Originally Posted by ronnoc10

Also, I just read over my topic-starting post. It's really weird, in some content, and in writing style. It also had paragraphs at one point...

Can you believe it? I read most of the topic, but I didn't read your post because of the formatting. I advice you to give it a re-order, if you want, that'll make the thread even more interesting. (believe me the text block scares people!)

[EvilLlama]

Games, movies and music are where piracy is a problem. I don't really think the amount of money charged for these is really an issue by itself. It's easy for me to ask someone for $1 for a Diet Coke and get it. However, $1 for a song off iTunes is too much. So why is it that $1 for diet coke for someone else is no big deal, but $1 for a song for themselves is too much?

I think it has to do with societal pressure. Entertainment is the definition of culture. Entertainment technology evolves at a rapid pace. The blockbuster of today becomes forgotten by tomorrow. Keeping up with this rapidly evolving culture is time consuming and costly. Piracy provides a cheap and quick solution to this dilemma.

Steam is definitely a great example to look to. The free patches make it more favorable than pirating, since a lot of pirated stuff is not exactly bug/virus free. More importantly, the community aspect gives people a social reason to purchase games. The whole social status aspect is the reason why many people pirate in the first place. Kudos to Valve.

Another commendable example is GameStop's policy for being able to return games after they're played once and being able to buy old games for as little as $10 or less. Amazon.com also has a used feature.

I feel that there should be a way to make this more convenient. Books have libraries, and although technology does complicate things, why shouldn't there be a similar feature online? People pay a small amount for membership, download the game they want, the game appears as checked out on the library database, is somehow encrypted to make it hard to copy, and the user has to return it on time, renew it, or pay a small fee? Maybe this idea won't work, point is convenience and cost of games need to be looked at if you want make a dent in piracy

[yaustar]

Originally Posted by EvilLlama

I feel that there should be a way to make this more convenient. Books have libraries, and although technology does complicate things, why shouldn't there be a similar feature online? People pay a small amount for membership, download the game they want, the game appears as checked out on the library database, is somehow encrypted to make it hard to copy, and the user has to return it on time, renew it, or pay a small fee? Maybe this idea won't work, point is convenience and cost of games need to be looked at if you want make a dent in piracy

So rental copies? The problem with rental for games is that unlike DVDs, we don't have any concept of rental copies (which are more expensive then retail) so the publishers/developers don't get any money beyond the original purchase. This is the argument against second hand games as well.

[Claxon]

MMO's have the ultimate solution to piracy. No subscription, no server to play on.

[ronnoc10]

Originally Posted by yaustar

So rental copies? The problem with rental for games is that unlike DVDs, we don't have any concept of rental copies (which are more expensive then retail) so the publishers/developers don't get any money beyond the original purchase. This is the argument against second hand games as well.

So renting games is more like borrowing books from a library to the publishers?

[yaustar]

If the library just pays for the RRP price of the book and nothing else, yes.