142 Responses to “An ill-advised raving rant on PC piracy”

1. Jonathan Says:
   August 2nd, 2008 at 5:17 pm

   What I’d like to know is what Capcom expected would happen. I’d like someone to ask them how many copies they’d hoped to sell, how copies they did sell and if they’d known how many copies they sold would they have still released it and if so what level of sales would they have considered acceptable.

   Of course no one will and Capcom probably wouldn’t answer but I can dream.

2. ScSi_Transfer Says:
   August 4th, 2008 at 1:07 am

   Hey Capcom, how many of those thousands of pirates already bought/played the game on a console? There’s not enough new stuff in the PC version to warrant a second purchase at $39.99 but since the opportunity is there to experience it without a purchase then yeah, it get’s pirated but it’s not lost sales it’s not even that they wouldn’t have bought it they already did buy the game just on a different system.

3. Bill Says:
   August 4th, 2008 at 7:19 pm

   Great post, there Chris. Loved it on Shacknews and I love it here; just got yourself a subscriber.

4. elizabeth Says:
   August 5th, 2008 at 6:15 pm

   “Hey Capcom, how many of those thousands of pirates already bought/played the game on a console? There’s not enough new stuff in the PC version to warrant a second purchase at $39.99 but since the opportunity is there to experience it without a purchase then yeah, it get’s pirated but it’s not lost sales it’s not even that they wouldn’t have bought it they already did buy the game just on a different system.”

   This is exactly the kind of sentiment that makes me want to do bodily harm. “There is not enough new stuff on the PC version to warrant a purchase, but there is an opportunity to experience it without purchase, but that’s not lost sales because they wouldn’t have bought it anyway.”

   You experience game X on 360. then game X comes out with minor changes to PC. To experience that game, you have to pay to play, why? Because it TOOK TIME AND EFFORT to make that game for the PC.

   You may call it a port and poo-poo the game based on that fact. You may say that because the game is a “port” that it is shovelware, or crappy, or whatever, but in reality, good ports are not actually just grabbing code and transferring it to a different system. It takes quite a bit of work to make that switch. And people, who need to be paid. And extra content, or a redone interface, and testing, is CONSIDERABLE WORK.

   So yes, when you go and pirate that game because you deem that new experience or content unworthy, all you are doing is justifying theft. Because there are people out there — developers, actual people designing and coding and testing — who made that new experience that you want enough to steal it. They created that completely apart from the first version you bought. The one you are stealing is NOT the one you bought. They are separate, which is why, in fact, they are separate products. But perhaps because you don’t understand the way things are made, or simply because you just don’t value that work, you find a way to make yourself believe your theft is justified and say that this new product is “not new enough” for you to pay money.

   Developers spend months creating PC ports. There are actual live human beings making that happen — it isn’t an automatic and easy transition. here is no legitimate reason to ever pirate a game. If a game exists, you pay for it, because it took work to create it, and if you value and want that work enough, you buy it, just like any other good or service.

   Your attitude, sir, is the epitome of the problem.

5. David Says:
   August 7th, 2008 at 10:54 pm

   You are not justifying theft, Elizabeth, you are justifying copyright infringement. Say what you will about copyright infringement, but it is not theft. Two separate actions. If I steal something, the person I took it from does not have it anymore. If I infringe on a copyright, the only loss in a possibility of a potential sale.

   Remo, you say, “how can any reasonable person not accept that there were lost sales?” I say, how can any reasonable person accept that there were not gained sales? I know plenty of people who download games to try them out, and later purchase them if they enjoyed it. I’m not sure of the case for this game, but plenty are released without demos, or with insubstantial demos, and some people do not want to risk spending money on something they hate.

   I can also imagine that there are people out there who don’t want to spend full price on a game that is in the consoles bargain bins, and was not designed with the PC in mind. I’ve seen DMC4 going for under $20 bucks for the PS3 and 360, and it is more then twice that on the PC.

   Sure fire method for preventing (although you can never totally eliminate) illegal downloading? Release it on Steam, with a substantial demo. As it stands, there are many benefits to downloading it illegally over buying a box copy, even ignoring the price. It can be played without a disk in the drive, you do not need to go through the hassle of entering an activation key, you can get it from the comfort of your own home. Let people have those benefits, and I am sure more people will buy it.

6. PacoDG Says:
   August 16th, 2008 at 3:20 am

   Above poster named David is slightly crazy and lies. People download games to try them out and then purchase them… unrealistic.

   I read two things off of digg today that are related:

   http://www.gamesradar.com/f/do-the-right-thing/a-20080811155433366083 (extremely basic thoughts, still ring true though)

   http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080814-you-want-to-know-why-pirates-give-indie-game-dev-an-earful.html (I like this one, as it does point out the annoyance that is DRM, and that can be avoided by downloading cracked copies over purchased ones, as though the people actually buying the game are being hassled over the people who don’t buy)

7. Bernie Says:
   September 8th, 2008 at 12:31 pm

   I bought a copy of COD4 and I could not make it run on my system. After 5 WEEKS of tech support not resolving the issue, I got a no-cd crack and the game player fine. Months later, I found a forum entry that said that the copy protection on COD4 did not like SATA drives. As I have two drives, my old CD and my new SATA DVD I disconnected my old CD and the game ran fine. It turns out that if COD4 sees an ATA and a SATA drive, it assumes that one is a virtual drive and won’t run.

   Yeah, I download a crack. So I could get a game a bought that I can’t return, to run. After this waste of time, I have stopped impulse buying games. It’s not just $40 or $50 anymore, it’s the money plus the time I might have to waste to get it to run.

   For me to buy a DRM’d game now, it has to be absolutely great. It has to be worth the money and the risk that DRM will not let it run. In the past, I’d buy a couple of games a month. Aside from Steam games, the last game I bought was Supreme Commander: Forged Alliances. DRM has cost game developers hundreds of dollars from me alone. How many millions of gamers have cut back on there buying due to the risks caused by DRM?

   Developers are going to lose sales with or without DRM to pirates. I know of no independent study that quantifies the amount in both cases. Developers who use DRM also lose sells from impulse shopping, so that is a double whammy.

   If companies insist on using DRM, the rules need to be changed to force companies to give refunds on software. After all, if it has DRM, it can’t be copied. Right? :)

   Note to editor: I have the emails for COD tech support. I’d be happy to show you. B

8. Cirno Says:
   September 26th, 2008 at 1:19 am

   First problem with DRM: Pirates will always exist.

   Second problem: They will always crack your game.

   These aren’t opinions, they are facts that have been proven TIME and TIME again. People ANGST a lot about the gaming industry, but how much crying do you see software developers doing? Are you going to suggest they somehow aren’t pirated as often? Instead, they focus on treating their customers as just that - CUSTOMERS. They focus on the groups that ARE buying the game, instead of ignoring them to try and target people who don’t buy it.

   “Pirates” have become a VERY easy scapegoat to point at when things go wrong, and yet pirates have always been around, and these problem are just now cropping up. Can you honestly say it’s the pirates causing the problems? Where were these problems when everyone and their dad was passing around a copy of Civilization 2? I don’t recall a big outrage and cryfest over pirates then.

   Guys, piracy isn’t going to go away, no matter how much DRM you put on the games. The SecureROM bull does one thing and *only* one thing - it harms the people who want to buy your game in the first place. Hell, Spore was cracked before it was even RELEASED! If PC gaming needs to be brought back to life, then the last thing you want to do is try and make people feel guilty about piracy, because, hey, it won’t work. Nor can you target pirates and try to “make them pay,” because that also won’t work.

   if you want to revive PC gaming, make some damn PC games. Sure, not every company can be the next Blizzard or Valve, but how will ANYONE do that if they make games for consoles first, PCs as leftovers? How will they do that when, even when making the PC game, they still stick to the mindset used to create a console game instead of a PC game? We’ve seen games that should have been good turn out to be complete crap, and nine out of ten times, it came from the game being ADAPTED to the PC instead of being made for it.

   But hey, PC exclusives don’t sell, right? I’m sure Blizzard finds that HILARIOUS.

9. Memyself Says:
   September 26th, 2008 at 1:37 am

   David: “If I steal something, the person I took it from does not have it anymore. If I infringe on a copyright, the only loss in a possibility of a potential sale.”

   Absurd semantic myths. Many forms of (legally defined) theft occur without the transfer (or loss) of a physical item.

   Even if that were not the case, welcome to the evolving world. It’s amusing that anyone tech savvy enough to argue the particulars of digital piracy yet still clings to (their misinterpretations of) archaic definitions of theft designed before said technologies came into existence.

   And even then: Copyright infringement holds higher penalties than garden variety theft.

   “The possibility of a potential sale”? It doesn’t matter how many convoluted and redundant weasel words you wrap around it. It’s simply not yours to take for free.

10. Amun Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 1:50 am

    When the day comes that DRM means it’s easier to use the authentic copy of the game than the pirated one, and I come across a PC title that is made by someone who views their craft as an art form. I don’t think that anything could stop me from buying it.

    Pirates are mostly just unserved customers — we need a way to download a game without drawbacks and a way to back them up on physical media so that we can keep playing them in 10 years. And we need privacy. I don’t like even the *idea* of SecuROM checking in with the master server when I play a game.
    Cherio.

11. Chris Remo Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 1:53 am

    Amun,

    To be fair, the people who would even be the ones seeing their craft as an art form would be the actual developers, and they aren’t the ones who tend to have anything to do with DRM solutions. There are certainly plenty of PC devs who fall into that category but have no control over that.

12. Higashi Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 2:48 am

    Memyself: Not necessarily a semantic myth, keep in mind that different legal systems have slightly different definitions of theft. For example here in Sweden the definition is (my own translation from the law, BrB 8:1 if you need to know that:P) “Taking without permission from someone else with intent to keep and if that causes damage (to someone)” In this context, according to the current interpretation, damage means economic damage, and that in turn only means that the person being taken from should have less money than before, loss of a future profit doesn’t count. Also “taking” means that there has to be a change of possession which doesn’t occur when a copy is made (again, in the Swedish system) On a side note the first point means that here you can’t steal illegal drugs since they have no legal value, same for passports. Of course that, as well as piracy, is made illegal in different laws, but the fact remains, piracy isn’t technically stealing in all legal systems even if criminalized.

13. Rollin Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 4:25 am

    Memyself: “Absurd semantic myths. Many forms of (legally defined) theft occur without the transfer (or loss) of a physical item.”

    Yes, they do; but software piracy is not one of them. In 1985 the US Supreme Court ruled that copyright infringement is not stealing. Given your self-righteous assurance it’s amusing that you’re completely wrong. Bootleg recordings aren’t all that different to bootleg games.

    “It’s amusing that anyone tech savvy enough to argue the particulars of digital piracy yet still clings to (their misinterpretations of) archaic definitions of theft designed before said technologies came into existence.”

    The internet doesn’t change the fundamental differences between copyright infringement vs theft; it just alters the methods and scale of distribution.

    You can educate yourself further here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(1985)
    http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/175

    ‘ So “copying” is not “stealing” but can be “infringing.” ‘

14. Maverynthia Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 4:27 am

    I think the biggest thing against these companies that have all this DRM is that they violate the First Sale rule, meaning you have the right to RE-SELL the game to whomever you want used.

    Not only that they are taking away your ownership of the game. You have to play “mother may I” with the company to get a new code to play something you dropped $60 on.

15. matty Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 4:40 am

    i’m sorry, i’m symapthetic to game publishers, especially those with the balls to make a game designed for the pc, but drm is just wrong, not morally, not ethically, but economically. there is a system in place where people can, for little work, download games for free. and there is a system in place where people can by those games. those are competing systems. believe it or not, it is possible to compete with free, by giving greater value. cloth maps of the worlds you are exploring, posters, a cdkey that lets you get onto a forum if you want to, exclusively for buyers of the game. drm, and a later release date does the opposite of that, it makes the free version better.

    You can’t compete with free if the free version is a superior product. and it is. they need to start looking at pirates not as lawbreakers, but as competition. you can’t ever stop hackers from getting copies of your games after they release(but seriously, how hard is it to protect the source code until it ships?), and hacking them and the copy protection. so you need to offer a superior product.

16. Andrew Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 4:47 am

    The big problem with DRM: It doesn’t stop Piracy.

    Its often easier to queue a game up with utorrent and download it, crack it and save the original exe (for patching after a crack is released).

    then ordering it on amazon/going to the store and then dealing with the DRM, especially since HD space is cheaper than shelf space, CDs get scratched, and internet connections go down. (sometimes frequently).

    I have a pile of game boxes still sealed in plastic because the pirated version was simply more convenient. Only reason to break the plastic is for multiplayer. (unique CD-key).

    To truly combat piracy, they need to provide product outside the game to make you want to buy it. Something they can control more. See for example Stardock and Gal Civ 2. Game is easy to pirate, patches ARE available on bit torrent, but theres still plenty of encouragement to buy the game.

17. Thomas B. Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 4:47 am

    “Absurd semantic myths. Many forms of (legally defined) theft occur without the transfer (or loss) of a physical item. ”

    I didn’t find them absurd.

    I find it absurd when someone presents any attack against piracy that could just as easily condemn the public library system.

    Why do we share books in a library? Because the more widely we share ideas and culture and content, the more intelligent and interconnected our society becomes, and the benefits are reaped by all. There are positive externalities to getting those around you to think more deeply about the world. And before someone tries to draw a distinction between books and games, visit the trashy romance novel aisle of your local library, and tell me where we should start drawing lines.

    The reason libraries are so accepting of different works is because ALL creative works have the potential to shake the foundations of your understanding about the world. Chaplin’s slapstick can end up making a plea to rise up against fascism, a skinny white kid’s folk music can tip off a firestorm of political rock that culminates in social revolution.

    Just because we haven’t seen games change the world in an explicit way doesn’t mean we should kick them out of the party.

    Now, sure, we hope a lot of people buy books and support the creation of that culture explicitly, but we know some people won’t, so we say, “ok, you can have them for free.”

    And if someone who might buy a book anyway checks it out from the library? Turns out we don’t hassle them.

    Why not? Why aren’t there cops in our libraries checking your income level? Because sharing culture is something we value so profoundly, we’re willing to let the occasional lost sale slide.

    What’s really absurd is the notion that an industry will die because it competes with free. HBO competes with free network television. Music publishers compete with free radio. Book publishers compete with free libraries. Industries compete with free all the time, but they only whine about it when there’s a huge slump in sales.

    And that brings us to the author’s initial point: “There must be some lost sales that are non-negligible, there simply must be!” I’m not the sort of person to think we can divine all matters of a complex industry a priori, I just don’t feel we have that far reaching of an intuition.

    I’d like someone to look into it.

    Guess what? Someone has.

    Strumpf and Oberholzer-Gee looked at the decline in sales cited by the RIAA due to piracy during 1999-2001, and they found it to be a myth. They actually did research on the topic, they broke out stats and looked at the data, rather than just scratching their heads and thinking “surely there were lost sales, I mean, right?”

    Sometimes the world’s a counterintuitive place, so please, use science.

18. Tridus Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 4:57 am

    Well, my father in law was an avid PC gamer. Now he owns a 360. Why?

    He bought several games in a row that all refused to work due to DRM. He’s not computer savvy enough to be able to figure out why things don’t work (like the ATA/SATA thing mentioned above). He isn’t doing anything terribly odd on his computer that would make this expected. In Canada, no store will give you a refund on open software (they claim its by law). So he’s stuck with several games that don’t work due entirely to DRM.

    DRM flat out breaks games. It doesn’t do anything to stop piracy (Spore is the #1 pirated game this year, and it was cracked before release). Few other industries on the planet come up with nonsense that breaks their product for their paying customers and actually manage to stay in business.

    So, if he goes out and grabs one of the pirate copies of a game that he already bought which is completely broken, is he doing something wrong? If he abandons the platform entirely (which he did), who is to blame? I can tell you: its not the pirates. They’re the only ones who make it possible for him to actually use his paid for software.

    After trying to help him with his problems, I simply refuse to buy any game that has SecuROM on it, because I don’t want to deal with that nonsense myself. You can call that what ever you want, but its capitalism in action. These companies are not providing what I (the customer) demand. If they want to look at why they’re having problems with sales, they should start by looking in a mirror.

    I’m giving you money. You should not punish me for doing the right thing by giving me an inferior version of the game then the one the pirates are getting. You don’t have to be Blizzard (or even Stardock) to figure that out.

19. Tom Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 5:41 am

    It just seems to me that the “piracy” issue has no end. Publishers will continue adding DRM to PC games to combat piracy, DRM will continue to be broken extremely quickly before/after a game has been released. There is simply no way to compete, as a company, with an army of 15-19 year old kids who crack copy protection for fun.

    I also laugh at the notion that making a game available on steam will curb potential pirates. In my experience the most voracious pirates are minors without credit cards. How would adding a game to an online service that requires a bank account/credit card do anything to dissuade these people?

    In my opinion, piracy has always been around with digital media, and will not go away any time soon. DRM needs to be there in some form, but it should be as invisible and unobtrusive as possible. Making paying customers jump through hoops and installing rootkits on their systems will not win any company fans.

20. Adam Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 5:59 am

    I personally think that if gaming companies put out games with the only protection being good ol’ CD keys, everyone would be much better off.

    EA lost money from me on the PC version of Mass Effect, Spore, and will be losing their money from me over Crysis: Warhead.

    I didn’t pirate the games, because I don’t think that is “right”…I just didn’t buy it. I played them at a friend’s house. Had they NOT included the DRM, that’s $150 more that EA would have earned.

    I doubt that I am the only person like this out there.

    http://longshotpolitics.wordpress.com

21. Jeff Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 6:12 am

    Just wanted to rectify a line:
    [quote]regardless of those factors, if PC software is consistently pirated more than console software, and it obviously is[/quote]

    This is not true. The amount of downloads on Xbox360 torrents compared to PC torrents is ridiculously more. I actually download all demos on my Xbox360 to test the game out before going out and buying it. (Perhaps the PC industry should consider doing the same).

    To give you an idea, a site where I go to on a regular basis to download backups of my bought copies has the current numbers listed as top downloaded games

    [b]Xbox 360[/b]
    Bioshock: 7432
    Assassin’s Creed: 6422
    Call of Duty 4: 6040
    And there’s at least 10 more games above the 3000+ mark

    [b]PC[/b]
    Bioshock: 4000
    Assassin’s Creed: 2740
    Call of Duty 4: 6589
    There’s only 2 games above 3000+ downloads.

    Now of course, the PC exclusives (Crysis, Spore, Stalkers, for exemple) have a ton of downloads on them, mainly due to the fact that it’s PC exclusive. However, all Xbox 360 games who score a decent review (7+/10) are all usualy downloaded 3k+ times everytime.

    To say that the PC industry is “consistently pirated more than consoles” is silly. Considering how wide the PC industry is in comparision to Xboxes (And that’s only Xboxes, if I pulled the Wii numbers out, it’d make it even worse), perhaps companies would think twice about putting their games on consoles before PC.

    No matter where you release your games, no matter on which consoles, no matter what anti-crack softwares you add with games, people will keep pirating and you will only make honest customers even more displeased.

22. William Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 6:44 am

    Memyself: How can you consider what David said to be wrapped in weasel words? It’s a perfectly valid statement. IP is not physical property. There is a big difference here.
    Let’s say you make a game and you show me a screenshot. I say “That looks decent, I’ll think about buying that from you.” As in, you know, I might, if I think your work is worth how much you want for it. This is is maybe-kinda chance for the to be money in your pocket in the future.
    But instead, my buddy Tim gives me his copy, for whatever reason; as it turns out, I end up liking the game enough that I would’ve bought it. Did I walk up, take $50 out of your pocket, and walk off? No, that would be theft.
    I didn’t take anything away from you except a chance that you will make money. If I like your game, I may buy another copy of it from you anyway. I’ve personally bought Total Annihilation, Command and Conquer, and Halo (one and two!) two to three times each, so don’t think this doesn’t ever happen.

    To put this in other terms, trying so hard to persecute* pirates would be sort of like suing people who make advertisements warning people against gambling. You’re taking away part of the casino’s chance to make money, but you’re not directly taking anything from them, and the difference is not vague, nor is it unimportant.
    *And prosecute. Both.

23. Cybrosis Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 7:00 am

    Cirno has won this argument, completely so please shut your holes you have no other way to discuss this

24. Feldjager Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 7:09 am

    I for one, have no problem purchasing PC games. I usually don’t purchase many single player only games (last one I think was Oblivion) and stick mostly to multiplayer games. I personally find all this nonsense about anti piracy software laughable. All anti piracy software does is annoy the people that actually intend to buy the game. It doesn’t actually stop anyone from pirating these games. If you think it does, I have a copy of SPORE and BIOSHOCK you might be interested in. Pirates will always be able to circumvent even the most anal retentive protection these people can think up. So I ask you, what good is it? You’re wasting time, money, and resources developing and maintaining these programs for no reason what so ever. The only way to stop people from pirating a game is to make it good enough that people are willing to pay for it, or make it multiplayer. I know pirating of multiplayer games exists, but it is far less common.

    Anti Piracy software hurts the gaming industry, it doesn’t help it in anyway.

25. Josh Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 7:09 am

    I will pirate games I’ve heard seriously mixed reviews about.

    If it’s garbage I delete it.

    If it’s good I delete it but keep my saves. And then I buy it.

    A-typical, I know, but I’d really like it if the industry gave more substantial trial downloads. Enough to get the feel of the game, but not, y’know, more than an hour or two of play. I’d like to play about 5% of a game before buying it, honestly.

    Not that industry or game-pirates are going to like that solution.

26. Calviin Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 7:13 am

    If there are people who download the game that might have otherwise bought it (which I agree is likely), then the question needs to be asked about why they choose to steal it instead. If they steal it because they don’t want to buy it at all, then I don’t think that’s a lost sale because they probably would not buy it if they couldn’t steal it. If there is another reason, like DRM is too awful, they don’t sell it in a certain region or the price is too high (that last reason which is different than not buying it at all). If the case is the latter, then there may be other areas that businesses can look into that would stem the tide of pirating.

27. Michael Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 7:20 am

    It’s the PC Game industry’s own fault. At the beginning, copy protections were weak. The target audience got used to freely exchanging the product between friends/family, and the industry had no real knowledge of lost sales. New PC gamers got introduced into the “piracy” lifestyle, as their friends wanted to share with them the games they loved. There were no real restrictions or repercussions in place. Music was the same.

    It is only now that technology has moved far enough communication-wise that the companies can try to capture these second-hand consumers that market resistance is being seen. It probably doesn’t help that the industry can see the secondary market they created, and the potential revenue that resides there.

    I understand the reasons why the industry is annoyed that pirates are stealing their art and product. I just can’t see any method security wise that can be done that won’t alienate the buying market. Beyond the obvious MMO, heavy infrastructure solution. Which doesn’t really care about piracy anyways. What’s $20 bucks before distributor markup when you are charging $15 a month. You only have to hunt them down if they make their own infrastructure, and then you have them over a legal barrel.

    The solution to piracy is rather obvious. One way is to accept the possible loss of sales and allow the piracy. They can’t be pirates if the company won’t pursue them. You might actually lose a good portion of the “thrill” pirates that way. The other solution is to find or grow a new market, as you can pretty much write off this one. The median PC gamer knows how to use the internet, what a torrent is, and what a key-gen/cd-crack is. Every security system that isn’t annoying to the buying consumer can be bypassed, and all the ones that are secure yet aggravating alienates the buying consumer that tiny bit. The second-hand consumer isn’t going to buy your game at full price…ever. Simple as that. Should have had the game developers/producers two decades ago training their market the right way.

    The last time I played a computer game that wasn’t heavy infrastructure based (ie subscription) the CD wouldn’t let me install it on my laptop as I had already installed it on my desktop. The general PC industry lost me as a consumer that day to consoles and MMOs. Stardock might bring me back with Demigod, but that is really iffy. Same with Diablo III, iffy.

    Though at least with Blizz I know they won’t pull what EA is pulling. If they did, they would find some way to make me like it. That is why they are the most successful PC gaming company period. The rest of the industry better copy them fast, rather than doing this stupid differentiation service strategy everyone seems to be trying. The industry needs to wake the hell up. The market cares about the game, and that is it. All these frills detract from game or remove a portion of the market from even accessing the game.

    Either sell your game to the market, create your own market that will buy the game happily, or shut the hell up and lose quietly. Because the consumers are getting fed up with the production companies whining and they are finding substitutes.

28. the_grim Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 7:23 am

    First of all, a very interesting rant on piracy. ;) Thank you.

    Second, users Amun, Cirno and Bernie have some very good points. Copy protection software, as it currently is, only targets the LEGAL CUSTOMERS. They are the ones having problems with installing and running their purchased product. They are the ones having to circumvent hardware conflictions with DRM and lose time and effort trying to play the game they bought. These annoyances do not touch the pirates, who simply download a cracked copy and run it. This is not how it should be; if you want people to buy your game, make it EASIER to purchase and install a legal version, than a bootleg version. Currently, in most cases, installing the legal one is more difficult.

    Games will get cracked, no matter what security measures you put on the disc. If the content is there, it can be extracted and released as a pirate version with the DRM removed. No need for online registration, CD-keys or limited installs. The only effect of more sophisticated DRM methods is, that it might take a week longer to crack the game. It will get cracked nevertheless.

    PacoDG said:
    “Above poster named David is slightly crazy and lies. People download games to try them out and then purchase them… unrealistic.”

    I find this statement hilarious, seeing as I personally have purchased many games after trying out a warez version of them first. :) Some of the titles are still sealed in their plastic wraps on my shelf. If I find the game worth my money after trying a cracked version, I buy it to support the developers for making an enjoyable title. I think this method is justifiable, as I’m in no way contributing to the “lost sales”.

    An opposite example is the hyped Spore. I downloaded a cracked version (no problem there whatsoever, I wonder what the DRM was supposed to do), played it once, then never touched it. Didn’t end up buying it. Someone might think this is wrong, but I don’t feel like paying 60€ for two hours play versus 60€ for 100 hours play with some other game. As I experienced very little of the game content, I feel it’s unfair for me to have to pay the full price.

    An online game rental system would possibly be a good solution. Download a full game, play it, and pay based on the time it spends on your hard drive. If you don’t like the game, you can uninstall it instantly. The problems with cheating the system would of course be inherent with this kind of a service, but let’s face it; we’re not going to beat piracy by making more efficient copy protection. We will have to make the service so appealing that people pay for the games voluntarily. Some people, like myself, already do pay voluntarily, even after installing a pirate copy. If a legal tryout version was available as easily, I personally would no doubt be using that instead, thus reducing piracy.

29. Malixu Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 7:27 am

    It’s come to the point where my stance on the whole thing is: Game developers, stop bothering. There are better paid jobs with shorter hours out there, tell the gaming market you’ve had enough and just leave. When they’re finished whining over the semantics of how you define theft, maybe they’ll notice they don’t have anything to play any more.

    On the subject of “theft”: I am a developer available for subcontracting through my work. Pay me, and I’ll deliver code & source code, the whole works, with rights to do whatever the heck you like with it. Copy it, keep it, fold bend and spindle it, I don’t care. However, you don’t want to pay the $50/hour that is a developer plus overheads (admin staff, building, desk, computer, heating, light, insurance, pension scheme), so you don’t get the full rights to the work, you get rights to a single copy of the work.

30. Marc Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 7:56 am

    To me, it’s simple. If I purchase a game, it’s a PURCHASE. Not a lease, not a rental, I want to own it. I want to be able to play that game for as long as it interests me. I want to be able to replay that game 10, 20 years from now when I get another bout of nostalgia. Many types of DRM prevent that. Time and time again companies have proven that they are more than willing to shut down DRM servers or stop doing any sort of DRM authentication, making peoples purchases null and void. If those companies want to charge pirates with theft, then those companies should themselves be charged with theft. I can’t legally make backups, I can’t archive, I can’t do anything with some of the games I’ve purchased. I’ve lost several games because of those policies.

    So I don’t buy games much anymore. Nor do I pirate them, I’m just not buying new games. Fighting the DRM has become too time consuming. From Sony’s rootkit to SecureROM, they show utter contempt for the consumer. Why then, if the company is showing such utter contempt for its potential clients, do they expect anyone to show respect for their company and their product?

    DRM is insulting to the customer, it is theft from the public domain (since a DRM version of a game can’t become part of that public domain if and when the time comes), and it is provably ineffective against the very people they want to protect the game from. Online DRM is even worse, since it actively penalises those who purchase the game when they shut the authentication servers down, while rewarding those who pirate the games. Why companies persist, I don’t know, other than thinking that they have “RIAA vision” and count everyone who doesn’t buy their game as a “pirate”.

    Me, I refuse to be scammed by buying a product only to find that the company can then take my right to use that product away at any time. I refuse to deal with broken DRM schemes that screw up my system. I refuse to deal with companies that hold me, as a paying customer, in such contempt. I used to spend a couple hundred pounds (at 2.5 US$ per pound) on games each year. Having been burned by a couple DRM schemes, I now refuse to buy ANY games, because I know that companies are not being up-front and honest about the DRM they are placing on their products. I have enough games I can keep playing to keep me happy.

    All I can say now is “let them all go to hell”, because I’m having real trouble these days telling the real, moral difference between the scumbag thieving pirates and the lying, scumbag, thieving companies they are pirating from.

31. no Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 8:03 am

    “First problem with DRM: Pirates will always exist.

    Second problem: They will always crack your game.”

    That’s clearly a logical fallacy. So far, games (maybe even all games) have been cracked, but that doesn’t mean that that can continue.

    “when everyone and their dad was passing around a copy of Civilization 2″

    I do remember that - the software industry was a lot smaller and had much smaller costs, but pre-internet-based piracy, there were geographical and social limitations. It’s different, and without the numbers it’s pointless to argue that back then it was ok so nowadays developers need to just suck it up.

    “But hey, PC exclusives don’t sell, right? I’m sure Blizzard finds that HILARIOUS.”
    Blizzard is the obvious exception. Blizzard isn’t enough to sustain the entire industry.

    David: Copyright infringement illegitimately takes away sources of income. The person infringed will likely make less money; you are, effectively, taking money away from them.

    (@Bernie especially, but also in general:) No matter how crappy it is to buy games compared to pirating them, and it often is, that does not change the fact that it makes game development a less viable industry by the effective theft of their income and that it is legally and morally questionable or wrong.
    It seems to me to be the same as theft (by the income-loss argument as earlier); it really sucks to have to work for my money. It’s much more convenient for me to just take someone else’s. Do you object to the police force?

32. Patrick Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 8:03 am

    Copyright infringement, theft, piracy. None of these are positive things. How could anyone seriously say otherwise?

33. Jeff Day Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 8:04 am

    I will tell you honestly that I pirated Rome: Total War because I thought the first Medieval was one of the greatest games I’d ever played. After 3 hours of playing Rome, I bought the game for full retail (around $50 or $60). I did the same with Dawn of War and Civilization. If I don’t end up buying the game, I delete it within a few days. Without exception.

    With the way that PC games have been abused by publishers up to this point, it’s hard to justify shelling out money for any game at all. Neverwinter Nights 2 came out so buggy it was unplayable, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. For me, pirating a game is a defensive move, something to keep me from losing $50 on something that’s unplayable and unreturnable. If they made it so that unplayable or just downright awful games could be returned, then I wouldn’t pirate.

    I believe that Stardock’s example emphasize this point rather well. Good games will make money, no matter what. Their games are consistently in the top ten for a long time in spite of the fact that they have no copy protection.

    Say what you will about pirates, and I can tell you that there are a lot of people out there that will pirate games and feel no remorse, but they’re not stealing money from good games, and piracy itself can help the better games get sales they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Stardock’s games fight piracy with excellence, while the bigger publishers want to fight piracy with draconian rules that ruin the experience and make the legitimate copy worth less than the pirated one. Which strategy sounds more likely to work to you?

34. Clumpy Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 8:06 am

    I don’t oppose DRM because piracy isn’t a problem or because games aren’t good enough to warrant it, but because it limits the functionality of something that you have bought with your own money. Sure, solutions will exist (and, as Chris Remo pointed out, crackers will support the game long after the DRM servers go down), but why support DRM on the basis that it’s incomplete and can be bypassed if you really, really want to?

    I’m sure piracy costs sales in the long run; popular titles and popular artists will always lose money from piracy - only up-and-comers stand to gain from it and how many of those are in the gaming industry? But I oppose DRM on principle. It’s just another aspect of the completing corporate control over our private lives and it’s damn near immoral.

35. Rathanel Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 8:24 am

    There’s another point operating as a sort of implicit assumption among pirates. Pirates think that they /deserve/ to play the game, that it is their right to experience the game. Thus if anyone makes it less convenient for them to exercise their “right”, then they are fully justified in going to any lengths and employing any means to rectify the situation. Oddly enough, this includes not having to pay for the games you want to play. Funny, that.

    I find Cirno’s contention that piracy isn’t a problem to be absurd, frankly. The advent of internet as a widespread (nigh ubiquitous, at this point) medium coupled with increased hard drive space and technologies like BitTorrent have made pirating any game you desire a matter of a broadband connection and a few mouse clicks. If you think this convenience hasn’t increased the number of pirates exponentially, you are dreaming. And as to your points on PC games being afterthoughts, if anything, people are using their newfound “second class citizen of the gaming world” status to justify their piracy.

    That said, the hackers and crackers are actually providing a service to the community, to both legitimate buyers and pirates. I can’t remember the number of games I’ve had that required the CD to be in the slot. An annoyance at best, and god forbid you lose the CD. A quick trip to a cracking site and you can now play your legally purchased game without the CD in the drive. Rejoice! Hackers are actually improving the quality and convenience of your game for free, Game Company X!

    Not to mention that crack sites are hands-down more reliable when you are trying to find patches for old games. Even companies still in business rarely host files for games more than five years old, and if the company went out of business there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of actually finding the files you want.

    The problems PC companies need to address aren’t DRM related, but customer satisfaction related. When most companies publishing games actually appear more reliable and trustworthy than xx1337HAXXOR42, we’ll be making progress.

36. Chris Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 8:26 am

    I am a pirate. I download probably 4 games a week. I also play each one for about 10 minutes. If i find a game I like, i buy it so I can play it online, and get patches for it. Its that simple. Its easier to download a game and try it than it is even to read a review these days. But i still buy MORE games today that I have in the past, just no shitty ones. And I do not buy games with DRM ever since Battlefield2142 would not work under Vista64. There is no excuse to sell a product that might not work, and not accept refunds or replacements or EVEN SUPPORT YOUR CUSTOMER.

    There is a problem with DRM, and that is that the developers pay for it. DRM has never stopped one single instance of piracy i would imagine, as the only times it has ever given me, or anyone i know, grief is with a product that they own. Thats a ridiculous situation, and one that does not make any fiscal sense.

    And to those that think copyright infringement is theft, it is not. Denying someone a sale of their product through whatever means is not theft. Copy something is not theft. We have been brainwashed to view this as theft, but in reality it is simply the sharing of information. The industry likes to compare Copyright infringement to stealing a DVD, or a game. But if you steal a DVD or Game, then the establishment in which you stole that from has lost something that they paid money for, and will now be unable to recoup. But copyright infringement does not deny the owner the ability to sell or make money with the original. It simply doesnt. Copyright infringement is more in line with hearing a joke that a professional comedian has told and repeating it to your friends (a practice everyone does, and is not “wrong”). The comedian has created a bit of information with his very valuable time and money, and uses it to fund his lifestyle. That joke might even be copywritten. Is retelling that joke illegal? No. And it is exactly the same situation. If you tell that joke to a million people does that harm his career? Not in the slightest, he will be more popular than ever. No one has lost anything, but you have “stolen” his joke, and retold it to your own benefit. Should you be fined $225,000 for this? No you should not. And that is the same thing, because underlying this entire argument is the fact that these games are nothing more than information. And when the government beguns punishing people for passing information around, that is a trend that does not stop without bloodshed.

37. Colin Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 8:58 am

    There are several people on here who think they’re arguing, but are really not even having the same conversation. Half the people are talking about “what piracy costs a publisher”, and then they get rebutted by people who talk about “what pirates are getting, unjustly.”.

    Is game piracy theft? Doesn’t really matter! Legally, it’s copyright infringement, morally it’s getting something for nothing. Pirates may argue that they deserve to get something for nothing, or something for “less than $50″, because it’s crippleware, or because the PC version has very little added content, or because information “wants to be free.” Fine, whatever.

    Does game piracy really hurt publishers? A hell of a lot less than all you apologists whine. Look at those thousands of thousands of pirates leeching a torrent and ask yourself, what ratio of those people are unemployed? Seriously, most people I know who pirate games would not have bought them, and most people I know who have both money and games, don’t pirate.

    Yes, I’m sure there are some lost sales. (but quit pretending that a statistically significant fraction would have bought it anyway. Their crime is in getting something for nothing, NOT in depriving a publisher of money he would have otherwise received.) I’m sure a few people use piracy as an “extended free trial” before they decide to buy (but they’re statistically insignificant and you know it. Quit pretending otherwise.)

38. TangoDigital Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 9:03 am

    A reply from a true hardcore gamer:
    Those people who would b*tch about PC games and use that as an excuse for piracy aren’t gamers, they’re idiots. What a real gamer does to titles that suck in his mind is quite simple: He ignores them. It’s really as simple as that. Whoever doesn’t handle it this way and calls himself “gamer” isn’t a gamer but an idiot. Period.

    On the other hand a true gamer must sometimes be thankful that the “scene” actually exists. Because in recent days it happens more often than not that one actually goes and buys a title to find out that he simply can’t play it due to a copyprot mechanism messing with the system.
    During the last 9 months I’ve bought two titles that I literally had to crack for them to work on my machine. When that happens you really start to question a publishers number of actually intelligent employees. You can’t help but think that the average IQ in those companies must be pretty damn low.

    DRM is useless. The people who want to buy your stuff will. The rest won’t. If you put DRM systems on your media what will happen is the scene will develop cracks and put them on the web. They are better than you, more nerd than you’ll ever be, they will simply pwn whatever copyprot you’ll put on your stuff. So just let it go. You will sell more and pay less.

    So in the end it’s all really freaking simple: If you like a game, buy it. If you don’t, ignore it. This is *only* way you can have fun playing PC games. Trust someone who’s been playing since he was a little kid. I grew up on Double Dragon and Monkey Island. I know what the hell I’m talking about.

39. Dmitry Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 9:14 am

    Part of the problem is that individuals pirate for widely different reasons. From the 12 year old whose allowance doesn’t quite cover the cost, or parent supervision prevents the purchase of a game deemed violent, to the definitive pirate downloading and making cracks as part of the subculture, the scope of people this covers varies greatly. My own demographic here has been essentially overlooked by both developers and DRM haters alike.

    I pirate games for the sake of convenience. Arriving home from work, I may get the urge for an RPG or a shooter the same way one might crave the delicious vestibule that is the Chipotle burrito. Consequently, my options here are limited. My work generally keeps me at the office to the mid 7s at night if not later, and following the adventure that is big city traffic, I rarely make the hours at my local Game Stop. The game selection at Wal-Mart is laughable, so I simply hop on a torrent site and within an hour have the game to squelch my fix. The game is permanently on my harddrive, it is there without jumbling of CD keys and the dodging of DRM tools. If I don’t enjoy the game, I can have another just as easily.

    If developers want my money, its as simple as creating a service like Steam for their game. I want a fast download and a spot to put my debit card number so I can have the game at 2am on a Thursday morning when I can’t sleep, or Sunday afternoon when I’m too tired from the gym to go to the store.

    And finally, compounding all of this, is simply put, most developers today can’t be trusted to make a good game. Gaming to me is not a premeditated act. I don’t research, pre-order, or anticipate. I don’t scour GameSpy or IGN and see what rating my potential purchase has scored with single white women between the ages of 37 and 45. So when a shiny box and a nifty title catches my eye, I cannot trust the game to be worth the effort to leave work early enough to catch GameSpot when its open.

40. Mathew Walls Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 9:26 am

    I never buy anything with that copy protection bullshit. When you deliberately make it less convenient for me to buy it than pirate it, I don’t even consider buying it. If you want me to pay for it, make that the easiest option.

    I’m lazy. I’ll pay money if it makes things more convenient. But if it’s a choice between convenient and free and annoying and costly, there’s no contest, I’ll go straight for the free one.

    And it’s not just the convenience. When you start out by assuming I’m going to try to steal it, it doesn’t make me think “Hey these guys are cool and I should support them.” It makes me think “These guys are a pack of wankers.”

    In short, for me at least, they’re doing this to themselves. Every aspect of the way they try to do business makes me less likely to pay them.

41. Umm Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 9:26 am

    What abut your wallet? What if you’re dirt poor when your requirements are met and need the exact cost of the game to pay your rent or you’re out? What will you do? Didn’t think of that, which is why you didn’t make your comment with total conviction and belief in what you were telling us.

42. BKT Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 9:34 am

    Here is the problem with the DRM,

    As has already been pointed out, pirating happens, no matter what, no matter what form or version of DRM is used, people find a way around it. DRM doesn’t stop pirating, it hurts legitimate customers. Why am I being slapped with secureRom when I install Spore? I’m not the one who pirated the game, yet the people who actually do pirate the game aren’t bogged down by any of the restrictions or problems with DRM, and they get it for free! So for less money, they get fewer restrictions and no problems with DRM. Pirates pirate regardless of the DRM, it only affects legit consumers, and we shouldn’t be treated like pirates.

    Granted I probably won’t install Spore on 5 different computers, but I don’t like the idea that I can’t use a game that I PURCHASED, not RENTED, as much as I want to. I also don’t like the idea that this DRM installs itself in the background on my system without prompting me, again treating a legitimate customer like some untrustworthy software peddler.

43. Parker Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 9:40 am

    I think one should also look at the economic pricing of video games. Any economist can tell you that each consumer is willing to pay a certain price(there demand) compared to the supply of a video game (The supply). Not all pirates are the evil monsters they are made out to be, some individuals are simply unhappy with the economically arbitrary (don’t even go off on this unless you understand an economic supply and demand graph, which if you anything about would show that not every game should cost 50$) price tag, which is not necessarily a proper price. A look at Xbox live games shows a healthy supply and demand market, as the games are usually reasonable priced when brought into perspective of a consumers wants and what they are willing to pay.

44. Andrew Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 10:05 am

    If every game is going to be cracked and available for piracy as soon as it is available to the actual legitimate customer then there is absolutely no reason for the DRM to be there in the first place. It will only slow down or hurt an *actual paying customer* rather than anyone who pirates it. The only person who has to get around the drm is the original pirater and they are usually people or groups who do this all the time and view each one as a fun little puzzle to solve.

    DRM does not stop piracy and never will. The only games able to get around this are things like WOW and that already has plenty of hacking tools available for while you’re playing, although the sale/subscription fee is still being collected.

    The solution is to make a good game, help the customer by providing easy stress free install and support, and relax and forget about the sector of gamers who weren’t going to pay for your stuff anyways.

    I understand your anger and piracy may lose you some sales (and gain you a few as well, PacoDG can go shove it, David was right, I know many people who pirate to test games and buy the ones that they actually enjoy, so as not to lose a bunch of money on something that might or might not be good) but it’s not going anywhere and to lose sleep over it is just plain retarded.

    @Memyself: “Absurd semantic myths”? I won’t go into your own weaseling of the english language, but theft is an actual concept, not just a legal definition so your argument falls flat. In the real world, theft is when you take something which then deprives the original owner of *that particular thing you took*. With “piracy” you are leaving that person in the same exact shape they were before, same assets, everything. You have not actually stolen anything, you’ve got a copy. Yes, you have not paid the creators for their hard work and dedication but you’ve not deprived them of anything. A lost sale is only a lost sale when someone was going to buy it in the first place, and just because someone creates something does not mean they even deserve a sale (this point is not indicating that they don’t deserve to be paid for someone using their work, they do, i mean that they shouldn’t be expecting sales just because of pirating).

    “It’s simply not yours to take for free.” Sure it is, isn’t that what this discussion is all about? It’s right there on the interwebs.

    I’m trying not to be “snarky” and I’m not an “apologist”. I’m just saying deal with it. As they say all the time on /. “Your business model is not my problem”

45. Andrew Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 10:10 am

    I forgot to say great article here and on pa :)

46. Dragonsbane Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 10:14 am

    This is a pretty amusing argument going on in this here comments section.

    I gotta be fair, I have pirated before, but I can only think of one game that I’ve pirated that I didn’t go out and buy. That being the case, you can call me a hypocrite all you like, but I have ANSWERS. Real answers, not excuses.

    To all pirates out there: REJOICE! By rejoice I of course mean cry, because aside from the obvious laws being broken by the tens of thousands of you out there, there are perfectly legitimate ways to get games without pirating them.

    NUMBAH ONE: have people forgotten what it’s like to maybe go back to depending on demos? I mean seriously. That’s what they’re for. The excuse ‘they’re just trying it out before they buy it’ isn’t rolling with me. There’s absolutely no reason to do that if a game has a demo available. Regardless, you’re STILL breaking the law.

    Nuuuumbah TWO: I know this solution wouldn’t work for PCs BECAUSE of pirates, and the general dishonesty of the entire human race, but what about, oh I dunno, going to a store and renting games? I mean that’s what I still do all the time, with consoles anyway. Gamefly, the Blockbuster near my house, ET-CETERA.

    On either console or PC, there’s absolutely no excuse. None at all. There are various different ways to play a game before you buy it. Also, as I said, regardless of YOUR reasons, you’re still breaking the set laws, so don’t bring that infringement vs. stealing argument to my table. But, gasp, if you can’t rent the game or find a demo for it, what do you do? Oh man, I know this is hard to wrap your head around, but uh, try waiting. I’ve heard it’s healthy for everyone involved in making the game you want.

47. Jon Noel Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 10:34 am

    Their efforts to stop pirating seem to actually make pirates out of frustrated (previous) customers.

    .. all the legal blah blah etc won’t change people .. customers who feel mistreated or ripped off will act up whatever the media

    music is a simple example. you can:
    -pay for itunes album download.. you get dmr (annoying)
    -go to HMV it’s 20$+taxes for a cd (ripoff)
    -dowload from torrent or a blog (fast and free)

    Everyone has a limit of how annoyed or ripped off they can be…

48. Ye Olde Pimp Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 10:51 am

    “Copyright infringement, theft, piracy. None of these are positive things. How could anyone seriously say otherwise?”

    People will perform amazing mental gymnastics to justify their immoral behavior.

49. Ye Olde Pimp Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 10:57 am

    “-go to HMV it’s 20$+taxes for a cd (ripoff)”

    This argument has consistently been put forth as an argument for pirating music… “CDs cost $20 - it’s too expensive!!!11″

    I have bought dozens of *new* CDs this year, and I seriously do not recall paying more than $10-11 for a disc. Outside of the rare import, I have *never*, in my 20+ years of buying CDs, paid anything approaching $20 for a single CD. Unless you are a pathetically lousy shopper, that argument holds no water.

50. Jon Noel Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 11:02 am

    death magnetic 16$ plus tax
    http://www.hmv.ca/hmvcaweb/en_CA/displayProductDetails.do?sku=1247092

51. Nathan Gentzen Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 11:09 am

    The Fake Steve Jobs already said it: “Yea, I know DRM sucks, but the record companies are assholes.”

    Replace ‘record companies’ with ‘publishers who see every game house as a way to make money.’

    No one who cares about DRM (read: protecting their investment) cares about your experience as a gamer. It’s a disconnect. Developers make games because they want to shock/inspire/tell a story to - the world. They get _PAID_ by people who invest in them and want MONEY. They dont want a huge fan base (Guild Wars = free to play!). They want MONEY (selling millions of copies of Guild Wars). They dont want the game of the year. They want the best _SELLING_ game of the year. They have PR reps who ‘care’ about that other (useless) stuff.

    Recent restructuring of EA: Diversifying the investment portfolio.

    Protecting your investments is standard operating procedure.

    —-
    What happens when an unstoppable force (hacking teams who compete in a world-wide game of release-to-crack coding triathlons) meets an immovable object (people who will try anything to wring every cent they can out of the process) ?

    The DRM (or a variation) and cracks continue.

    What it can lead to should scare you:
    College students across America are getting sued for downloading mp3s. Maybe next time you download a No-CD crack for COD4 you’ll get hit for a $3000 settlement.

52. Dharmansible Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 11:24 am

    Amen brother. You took the words right out of my mouth. Think it’s time to give you a new subscriber.

53. Autocracy Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 11:43 am

    Ah, piracy, another issue that brings out the extremes. The “deserving” versus the “oppressive”. Me, personally, I like to take a neutral stance and shrug my shoulders. Mainly because I don’t see it as a major probelm that some publishers claim it to be. Oh, of course money in potential sales is likely lost but money is still made and perhaps if companies were a little more efficient and understanding of what gamers want then this certainly wouldn’t be a problem.

    Pretty graphics are nice and everything but gamers need to be able to run it and want substance. Story is cool but if it’s ugly as sin, it’s hard to play through. Functionality and game mechanics are great but if there’s little point and nothing to look at you can only go so far. Right now it’s not the piracy that is the huge problem, it’s the lack of quality in many titles. Bring that up in an efficient manner and you’ll convince the true believers to buy instead of pirate.

    But back to the pirate issue itself. As far as I know, Sins of a Solar Empire has no DRM or anything like that. All you need is a CD code which you don’t even need to play (just patch and play online). It’s a game easy to pirate, I’m sure, and I bet they do but they’ve already sold a substantial amount and made generous amounts of money! Why is that? It is a good game, after all. Because they are efficient and because their theories are sound. They appear to avoid distributing games in areas widely known for gaming piracy and they count on the people who do care enough to purchase, doing things to please and entice them. Among other things.

    This isn’t the first time that Stardock basically said “pirates? so what” and carried on with successful business. The industry is for the fan, not the pirate so don’t worry about the pirate.

54. Autocracy Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 11:54 am

    And while I agree that pirating can be annoying (like gold farmers and other ‘nuisances’), I find even more annoying the people who look down on them from their magical high horses of morality and justice. You can get off it now; no one cares that you pirate a game but then go out and buy it (you’re still pirating). No one cares about your scolding and won’t stop doing it because you said “it was wrong”. You don’t have to understand why people are doing it unless you plan to try and stop it.

    Should that be your decision in life, let me warn you that the road is confusing as hell and very bumpy. There aren’t any one specific reason why people break the law. There are all different factors that lead a person to that conclusion and some are better than others. Maybe it is because they can’t afford even paying $10 dollars or $20 dollars or however much it is to pay for something these days (I wouldn’t be surprised considering how the economy is doing) or maybe it really is just because they don’t care.

    And in all honesty, I don’t care. I don’t care what my neighbor does (good for him if he pirates and great if he doesn’t). I’ll buy what I want to buy and I’ll get what I want to get through alternative means if that’s what I’m really feeling. I’m not going to step onto a soap box and kiss the ass of publishers while at the same time condemning my fellow gamers after forcing my ideals and morality on them.

    It’s my firm belief that piracy cannot be stopped but if the necessary steps are taken, it can be minimized. Like I said, Stardock and Sins of a Solar Empire have no real copyright protection programs and is easy as sin to pirate but it still has sold thousands and has made thousands more. Its profits have already passed the cost it made to make the game (it was in the millions, I think).

55. Memyself Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 1:17 pm

    @Higashi:

    I’m speaking of US laws, of course. You are certainly correct that the legal definitions vary.

    Rollin: “Given your self-righteous assurance it’s amusing that you’re completely wrong. Bootleg recordings aren’t all that different to bootleg games.”

    Incorrect. Court Justice Stephen Breyer: “Deliberate unlawful copying is no less an unlawful taking of property than garden-variety theft.” Furthermore, the illegal downloading of material, in excess of a specific amount (around 250 gigs, as I recall) over 6 months time, is legally held as a form of theft in the US. Take heed of alterations in the law, and don’t cling to archaic interpretations that are considered legally out of date.

    Rollin: “The internet doesn’t change the fundamental differences between copyright infringement vs theft; it just alters the methods and scale of distribution.”

    Incorrect. The existence of intangible media alters the definition of what can and cannot constitute property. If the law is written at a time before cheese existed, should the theft of cheese not be protected by the law?

    William: “IP is not physical property.”

    It does not matter. Tell me, before the existence of intangible media, what did you buy a record or a book for? The tangible properties? The value has ALWAYS been in the intangible aspects of any given media. That is fact. So if you acquire a book without the paper or music without the CD, you’ve acquired the aspect that had value. And regardless of whether you would decide to buy it or not, it’s not yours to take without offering compensation.

    Andrew: “but theft is an actual concept, not just a legal definition so your argument falls flat.”

    No it isn’t. Theft is a legal term, enforced by law.

    Andrew: “and just because someone creates something does not mean they even deserve a sale”

    And just because it’s on “the interwebs” doesn’t mean you can take it for free without it being theft. It’s stealing, whether you take it from a store or download it. You are taking the aspect that has monetary value without offering the legally required compensation.

    And please see the interpretation of Court Justice Stephen Breyer. His legal opinion certainly trumps yours.

    This apologist nonsense is ridiculous. That people struggle to define the illegal taking of something as other than theft is absurd. I know people want something to rail against and I know people want everything for free. But the mass attempts to justify theft with such absurd nonsense has become sickening.

56. Scott Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

    It’s a pretty simple problem to me. The DRM was meant to stop the game from being pirated. It was pirated and on torrent sites 5 days before release. What EA and other companies don’t realize is that NOTHING they come up with will stop some pirate from cracking the game. In this day and age it takes one cracked copy and after that everyone has it. I’ve heard the “we want to make it harder for pirates to…” yada yada yada. They have failed. And miserably at that. Making a game harder to crack implies that each individual has to crack their game, which is wrong. Pirates often crack games just to show that they can. Pretty much the only system that works is Steam, and I only use that for multi-player games.

    This is the digital age, so when one person cracks the game we all cracked the game. EA will never stop that one person, EVER (don’t argue, they never will), so why try?

    Oh, and since I just saw someone mention CD sales, I have this comment. CD technology is coming up on 30 years old. In the 80’s, I bought a CD for about $16-20, now that it’s 2008, I still buy one for between $12-16. No technology has EVER stayed at nearly the same price for so long, especially since it costs about 1 cent to make a CD. In fact, factoring in inflation, CD prices have probably gone up. Plus, since hardly a cent of CD sales goes to the band, the musics creators, where is the moral disincentive to download for free? And when people say downloading cuts into their sales, I call shenanigans. The amount of good music coming out has just gone down. I can’t even remember the last time I heard a song on the radio that was good enough for me to put out the effort to download the album for free let alone paying for it.

57. Deadsayer Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 2:06 pm

    I would like to point out that not all pirates pirate because a game “sucks” or is “too buggy” or whatever. I will willingly admit that I downloaded Mass Effect and pirated it. Why did I do that? Because of the very fact that EA and Bioware put SecuROM in it. I was 100% ready to run down to the game shop and buy it the day it was released on PC, but when I heard it had SecuROM in it, I quashed that idea and downloaded it instead. I will not support a company that treats it’s customers like criminals.

58. Silas Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    >Tell me, before the existence of intangible media, what did you buy a record or a book for? The tangible properties? The value has ALWAYS been in the intangible aspects of any given media. That is fact. So if you acquire a book without the paper or music without the CD, you’ve acquired the aspect that had value.

    I disagree on this point. Books are available at the library for free, music is available on the radio. When you pick up these media sources at these locations, you are receiving the intellectual essence of the material, but not receiving the portion with perceived value.

    People buy cds, not just because they want the music, but because they want the physical property of the cd: they want the cd art, the liner notes, they want to be able to look at it sitting on their cd shelf. When you buy a book, you want to be able to hold the book itself, not just be able to access the words.

59. Jimmy Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 2:55 pm

    If you are making a game, are you making it for the buyer or for the pirate? If you are making it for the buyer, you shouldn’t really bother with the pirate, because that isn’t your target demographic. Trying to make pirates buy games is like trying to make football players all buy pink dresses. It’s really not that hard to understand.

60. PF Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 3:34 pm

    All piracy really comes down to for me is the fact that games simply aren’t a necessity. They obviously aren’t food, water, or shelter, and you can argue up and down a million ways about how it’s okay, but the fact remains that you don’t even need to be doing it in the first place.

    If you’re that bored, play an old game, get a book from a library, or visit your local gamestore bargain bin.

    There’s no excuse, really. Game piracy is stealing to a degree. No matter how slight you think that degree might be, it’s there. And there’s no reason to do it.

    Could I mention, though, as one reason why people are quite righteously fuming about Spore’s DRM and one thing that DOES affect thousands of consumers who don’t even know what DRM is? One of Spore’s “limitations” is that a registered copy can only be played with one individual Sporepedia online account. I’ve heard quite a lot of everyday parents and couples posting about how their children or spouse or whatever are plain disenfranchised with the game because they simply can’t play it the way it was meant to be played (with your own little database of things you’ve made and a simple account to manage/communication with the community,) because somebody else registered their account first.

    It’s not an MMO, and it is the type of game families want to play together, so frankly, there’s no excuse why people should have to buy multiple copies just to have their own accounts.

61. matt Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 4:11 pm

    “If people genuinely didn’t want to play it or already played it on consoles, they wouldn’t need to pirate it. If they feel PC software is too buggy across the board, they shouldn’t be playing PC games.”

    I think you’re making it too black and white - in my own case, there’s a scale of worth I apply to games, lets say 0 - 2: the amount that I’d be willing to pay is the default price multiplied by where it falls on that scale. So some games (like half life 2, or braid) fall above 1, in which case I’d be willing to buy them for even more then their normal price. Others (like fable, or lego star wars) I don’t think are worth (were worth) their going price. This doesn’t mean I’m not willing to play them - not willing to play and not willing to pay are two very different things. There are plenty of bad games I’d try if they cost a couple dollars - and I’d try almost anything if it were free. But I’d only pay for things that I feel confident are going to be worth my money.

62. Edgerunner Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 6:24 pm

    Amazing.

    Simply amazing, really.

    As I sit here reading through reams of text trying to formulate an argument that will show the folks who advocate piracy as legitimate, neccesary, or god forbid, a blow against “the man”. I’ve come to realize the futility of the exercise.

    It’s not so much your debate of the judicial terms of theft vs. copyright infringement, testing before buying, or even the inevitable verbal lashing of DRM. I can live with that.

    What makes the bile creep up my throat is the underlying theme of all your defending and protestation. It is in a nutshell:

    Your incredibly well developed sense of entitlement.

    Your sensitivity to YOUR needs, YOUR wants, how the industry should try to help YOU, the hardcore gamer. After all, you just want a game worthy of all that is YOU.

    In order to reach that goal you can legitimize just about anything. I know, I can hear the recoil coming from this post a mile off, the hautiness, the “what you fail to grasp…”, the “DRM is the reason…”, and my favorite “the industry exagerates piracy to such a huge degree… (thereby making it ok for you to steal. Love that logic)”

    Hide behind the words, semantics and indifference (feigned or real).

    At the end of the day, no abstract logic, no turn of phrase, no vigilante mentality will change one thing.

    You are a thief.

63. Jester Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 7:06 pm

    What some people here and in corporate towers really need to see is that piracy is a war that is fought in the hearts and mind of everyone involved be they pirates, developers or legitimate consumers. To say simply that they should in some way “leave the pirates alone, they wouldn’t have payed for it anyways” is to say that they should fire themselves now and file for bankruptcy while they can still settle their debts.

    That being said, I do not believe DRM is a good thing. I would go as far as to say that it is worse then useless for the developers and publishers because it has been creating contempt among legitimate consumers. It is unlikely that a copy protection method that is truly uncrackable will be invented so the best alternatives are to win over the hearts and minds of the consumers at the same time you as someone else mentioned add value to their product. Case in point being Blizzard’s world of Warcraft (wow). I do not care if you hate It or love it its an excellent example of added value. Anyone who steals this game to play it on a private server is either 1) doing so as a technical project for the enjoyment of setting up said server or 2) Not getting anything close to the full value of the game.

    To those of you who have player wow, can you imagine stealing it? I could but I do not see how long it would last, I would eventually buckle and pay for it out of convenience. In return I see that the dollars I spend each month are at east on some level put back into the game. Added value.

    As people become less afraid of the Pay-to-Play model (which in my mind has many superior qualities for both the consumer and the developer) perhaps a resolution can be found for some of these problems.

    Some games however do not have the liberties of being able to store peoples data on their servers and constantly add content (though maybe they could anc chose NOT TO). I would not have stole starcraft, I spent 90% of the time I spent playing that game playing it online. Same with Diablo II.

    They are all 1’s and 0’s get used to it publishers. Your only hope it to realize this and that the traditional form of make the game as a one off, release it and wash your hands of it cannot last. If you alienate your consumers, frustrate them and treat them like criminals you will reap what you sow.

    Selling things for reasonable prices would also go a far way here. Video game prices have risen way faster than inflation. When I saw how much spore was selling for I laughed. I remember how much I used to buy games for, it is ridicules. Overpricing also has create contempt in consumers.

64. chode Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 8:33 pm

    My friend and I both wanted to play half life 2 on launch day. Both of us started at home, he went to best buy ~20 minutes away from his house, I went to pirate bay.

    He got home about the same time I finished downloading. He installed, tried to authenticate….oh know, steam was down!

    Guess who was playing the game first?
    ————–
    I downloaded stalker to test it out, loved it so much I bought it and convinced two other friends to buy it. If I couldn’t test the FULL game first I wouldn’t have bothered. I guess “piracy” caused three sales that wouldn’t otherwise have happened.
    —————
    I downloaded doom3 and played a couple of levels, realized it was 10 (or whatever) levels of of monsters jumping out of closets in dark rooms. I didn’t buy it.
    —————
    I downloaded aliens vs predator from some warez site in ‘99. Fell in love with it and bought 3 copies just to have lan mutiplayer with my friends. Bought AVP Gold later when it came out. Bought another bargain bin copy a few years ago just to play it again on my new computer.

    I’m a real gamer and I want the developers to know, you make a good game I will support you whether or not it is on pirate bay. If you make a crap game I won’t.

65. Robb Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 8:53 pm

    Someone mentioned X game on 360 then getting X game for free on PC having cost that person money. The closer PCs get to being mainly gaming rigs and the more powerful Consoles get the more they move into each other and the easier it is to develop for both a console and a PC. 360 and PC are the prime example since the 360 and PCs around the world are both running on a Microsoft OS…there’s very little issue with developing a game for both PC and 360 (more so I imagine for PC an PS3 or Wii but if it’s just on one or the other of those they don’t typically move to PC anyway). In fact I’ve tested games that were in development for 360 and PC at the same time…you know what they did to test the 360 version? They had PC users plug in a USB 360 controller :p. That’s it. There’s almost no additional cost associated with developing 360 vs PC games. If anything having a 360 copy or vice-versa should allow you to link up with your PC while the disc is in the console/PC and unlock the ability to D/L the version you don’t own (be it PC or 360) to that location.

66. Jerms Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 9:17 pm

    I think we’ve learned a lot of things from this discussion:

    1) There are stupid people on both sides of the fence, as well as smart ones.

    2) DRM doesn’t work? So far no one has said it does work…

    3) A good way to keep/gain customers is with excellent customer support, exclusive content sold with the game (I can’t download a Spartan Helmet, but I CAN download an artbook–food for thought), free demos, and also if you’re selling an awesome game, that really helps. I love the coin sold with the collector’s edition of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I can’t download that! If you can show me a pirate that has downloaded his own copy of that Imperial coin, I’ll change my religion and gender!

    4) Valve and Blizzard have a pretty good system. The Good Lord knows that I would gladly pay a 20 dollar WoW membership fee if I could live without Tuesday maintenance….(10 million amens follow). But Blizzard is comprised of mortals, not Demigods, therefore I expect and lament not upon their imperfection.

    5) Maybe they ARE Demigods over at Blizzard…

    6) “Piracy” is wrong, no matter how you cut that cake. But due to the structure of the industry, the lack of demos, all the bugs, and the $&#%ing c o n v e n i e n c e of piracy, I think I would hang that word up there with “politicians” and “donuts” under the “necessary evils” category.

    7) Honest customers exist.

    8) Said honest customers should not be punished by making them pay for “legal spyware” (DRM).

    9) The Videogame Industry is not decreasing its profits no matter how piracy may seem to be increasing. When a company sells a game…is there some kind of projected number of sales that isn’t reached due to piracy? Is this failure repeated over and over as the company pushes games out over several years? Is there documented proof showing the demise of the gaming industry due to piracy? Well, no, Gamestop is still up and running…there’s more games released in a week than I have time to play them all that week…somehow, somewhere, people are making grade C games and somehow, somewhere there are enough yokels buying those games to keep those publishers afloat.

    10) A real man would ninja a good game before he would ever pirate it. (Pre-ordering a game and paying for it in full like I did with Silent Hill: Homecoming is ninjaing a game)

67. Izzo Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 10:48 pm

    I’ve quite a few experiences similar to Bernie’s (problems with games I PAID for working properly, and having to download CRACKS for those games to work). I too have stopped impulse buying. I was a “regular” at the EB in my town - and then GameStop after they bought EB.

    Eventually I grew sick and tired of games that wouldn’t install or run properly. It became normal to wait four days for a response from a “ticket” based tech support system. I was tired of “no open PC software” policy if the damn game wouldn’t run on my system - not due to lacking hardware, but due to wanting to buy games when they come out, not AFTER they’ve been patched, four times in the first month after release.

    I’m sick of companies putting out rubbish and calling it a “quality product that we worked hard on”, and charging good money for it. I’m tired of games being rushed out the door with the thought of “we can patch it later”.

    I’m going to be dead honest - I’m one of those people you hear about that I will download the FULL version of a game from a torrent, plays it a bit, and if it works, actually buys the game.

    Oh, this is impossible, right Memyself? “Absurd semantic myths”, to quote you more exactly.

    I won’t pay for a game unless I’ve tried the full version. If it installs on my system cleanly and plays fine, I’ll buy the retail version without hesitation.

    I’m sick of flushing my money into this goddamn toilet called the gaming industry and getting nothing in return. This is the only industry which can get away with this kind of crap.

    Imagine a book which slams it self shut any time you read five pages. That’s the kind of book the PC game industry would publish, hoping to “patch” it later.

    Better yet - how great would it be if the movie in the theater shut off at the forty minute mark? What if the movie never came back on. If you tried to talk to someone who works at the theater, what if they put you in a queue with other frustrated buyers. Imagine that you’d be forced to wait four days, and you then get a response which doesn’t resolve the situation, and you have to start at the back of the line again to ask a question. Each time the answer they give you is a copy-and-paste from a training manual, with painfully obvious solutions which still don’t get things going again. A few times through the line - each time describing the problem exactly, and you MIGHT get to finish your movie that you paid to see. PERHAPS.

    Oh, and this is a $50 movie.

    That, sir, would surely be a product of the video game industry.

    I have absolutely no problems with piracy, I sleep well at night. Make a good game, I will buy it. Make crap, and I will find out before having paid for it.

68. Etienne Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 11:31 pm

    Piracy can be justified, in certain circumstances.
    When Half Life 2 was released in South Africa, I bought it on launch day. I took it home, giddy with excitement. Only to realise that the game was completely unplayable, since I did not have an internet connection (in SA only about six percent of the population has an internet connection, the great majority at the time was still using dail up). I drove all the way to pretoria (100 +kms) to my cousin’s house, and hooked my pc up to his internet connection. But seeing the size of the download from steam, we realised that it would cost more to activate the game than it did to buy it. Unacceptable.
    So I took the game back to the shop, stood in the que of people that was also returning it, got my money back, walked across the road to the flea-market, and bought the pirated version (the first pirate I ever bought). it worked first time, no hassles. Was this wrong of me?
    In the USA everybody and their grandmothers apparently has a broadband connection. So I guess it makes sense for valve to use that fact when planning their DRM strategy. Obviously they can’t be bothered with the brute realities of technological limitations in darkest Africa, since this demographic must surely be at most only one percent of total sales. I understand and respect this.
    But Half-life 2 at the time was billed as the future of gaming, a fantastic spectacle that must be experienced if you are to call yourself a gamer. there was no way I was missing out on it. And if Valve thought so little of my money that they couldn’t provide a working solution, then obviously they can’t complain if I pirate their game. They didn’t expect to make money of me, and they didn’t.
    The anger I felt at being force to become a pirate is still with me today. I have broadband now, and don’t buy pirates at all. Except for Valve games. I will buy pirated Valve games till the day I die, just to make my point.

69. Cirno Says:
    September 27th, 2008 at 1:00 am

    First and foremost, I’m not celebrating piracy or claiming that it’s right. You can dislike DRM without running your own private server for torrents, so, sorry, it’s not that simple. I’m a PC gamer first and foremost, and I want what’s good for PC games. And that means you stop with the retarded DRMs that HURT the PC gaming industry and community.

    You can say “Sure, DRMs can’t stop the pirates yet, but they could in the future!” And I could just as easily say “In the future, pirates will invade our virtual reality internet as actual pirates and go around plundering the hillside.” That’s the wonderful thing about random guess statements about the future - they can be ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING!

    The funny thing is, not all games give two craps about pirates. The Witcher sold very well, and CD Project’s statement regarding pirates has been “Hahaha, you Americans think you have piracy bad? Good lord!” And yet I don’t recall the big invasive DRM on The Witcher. Gee, maybe it was because they realized that piracy, quite frankly, cannot be stopped? And I don’t just refer to game pirates. Hell, real life pirates recently stole TANKS, and you think you’re going to stop internet ones?

    When cds first came out, we were told the entire music industry was going to collapse. And it didn’t. When music sharing first got into full swing, we were told that, no, really, THIS time, the music industry was TOTALLY going to collapse. And look at that - it didn’t. I’m sorry, but now you’re telling me that the video game industry is going to collapse from piracy? Forgive me if I don’t run around and scream in a panic.

    I’ll close with me stressing this once again - I’m not gung-ho pro-piracy, “TAKE IT TO THE MAN!” I’m a PC gamer. I want PC games to be awesome. I want the industry to support awesome PC games, but quite frankly, it’s not happening, and it’s not going to happen so long as we keep trying to put all the blame on piracy. And while I’m not a pirate, and while I don’t support them, I can easily understand why people WOULD choose to pirate games. How many poor saps bought Hellgate: London? How many others bought countless numbers of games that they realized shortly after buying them sucked? We don’t have demos anymore to gauge these things. All we have is endless, ENDLESS hype, not just from the companies, but from the magazines and reviewers too. An 8 out of 10 is considered a bad score these days - what the hell is that?

    PC games have declined, and sharply. And PC gamers have NO WAY to see which games are going to rock, and which are going to blow. You can’t trust the reviewers, and you can’t play the game before hand, so in a situation where you know many games aren’t going to be good, you have two options - close your eyes and hope for the best, or grab it online first. But wait, with DRMs, it gets even worse - now, not only can you not trust reviews, not only can you not play it before hand, but you don’t even know if the game will work in the first place once it’s on your machine. You can’t even be a casual PC gamer, because god help you if your machine isn’t built correctly to play the game. Is it really any wonder people turn to downloading the game instead of buying it?

    if you want piracy to go away, then you have to stop making shovelware games that are mediocre console ports, and you have to start treating the customers as just that - customers! Haven’t you worked BASIC retail? If you sneer and look down on and treat all your customers as thieves, you’re going to run out of customers very fast.

70. Talia Says:
    September 27th, 2008 at 5:57 am

    This discussion will go on for ever. And i am suprised that if it is correct that games on the X360 get hacked as much as PC-games.

    But in the end numbers of times a game gets illegally downloaded does not matter.
    What matters is the number of sales. And we see console-games outselling PC-games to an extent it becomes harder and harder to come up with valid reasons why that is besides piracy(personnaly i think it is piracy)

    But in the end we the gaming community must listen to facts and reality.
    Luckily the PC-industry will have 3 new games out to test our theories.

    1 Battlefield Heroes: A first change since Mythos got canned to give us information if a micro-payment system is workable and profitable.

    2) Red Alert 3: If this game sells better on consoles than PC, it will be used as a fait accompli that no matter wat genre, consoles will always outsell PC. This will probably make it that other compagnies will follow the Lucas Art way and stop making some of their games on PC(like the Force Unleashed)

    3) Starcraft 2: This will be the biggest test. If SC2 doesnt sell as it should sell( And i mean a minimum of 7 million units going to 10 million), it will mean that PC can not compete with consoles. Because i have played SC2 in Paris and it is an excellent game. And every other frakking reason that people have come up with to somehow justify illegal downloading doesnt apply to SC2 or Blizzard.
    It doesnt have DRM, it has low systemspecs and it is a good game.

    If it does sell well, then there is your proof that DRM has no use wat so ever. It will prove that people( because Blizzard-employees are not demi-gods) can make a PC-only game and sell enough to compete with consoles.

    And Cirno, I played Hellgate for 5 minutes on the demo and didnt buy because it was crap. And The Witcher was a multi-platform. It sold well because it sold well on the consoles and PC-gamers had to wait for a couple of months because they released it later for the PC( a system that does seem to have influence on sales figures).

    If you really cant make a valid opinion of a game after playing the demo, reading the reviews, playing the game at internetcafes, playing the game at friends, listening to opinions of friends, seeing the game in action and using your god-given brain, honestly i ask myself, how the frell do you make it through real life when you go shopping or buy a car or decide wat movie you want to see?

71. graphicartist2k5 Says:
    September 27th, 2008 at 7:43 am

    you know what? most games that come out nowadays aren’t even WORTH buying, much less downloading for free. the ONLY game i would want to play on pc is crysis, and that’s mainly because the graphics look AMAZING, and the gameplay looks freaking AWESOME. i personally think the whole drm crap is just that: a HUGE pile of elephant crap that will inevitably wind up screwing the companies that put it in their games. personally, i prefer to play old school games, such as nes, snes, genesis, gameboy advanced, and so on, and i do so on EMULATORS. remember when THOSE were considered to be “illegal”? i do, and after awhile, game companies wised up and realized that it didn’t matter what they said concerning emulators, because people were STILL going to download them, along with the necessary game roms, and there wasn’t ANYTHING they could do about it. my advice to ea and every other game company that puts drm in their games: STOP IT, AND STOP IT NOW, before you wind up alienating your customers. as tyler durden said in fight club: we are the ones that do your dry cleaning, wait your tables, take out your garbage. don’t f*** with us.

72. David Says:
    September 27th, 2008 at 8:03 am

    Remember back in school, when some jerk in the class misbehaved? And the teacher couldn’t figure out who did it, so the whole class got to skip their recess? That’s what we’re complaining about here. Well, what I’m complaining about, anyway. It’s true, the ultimate cause of my problems are the pirates. The ones directly hurting me, though, are the publishers. Here I was, sitting in the back of the room being good, and now I don’t get my recess!

    What’s more annoying about this situation, though, is that at least the teacher’s approach often worked - someone would tattle, or the perpetrator would be upset and his friends would be upset with him, and the problem would go away. It wasn’t fair, but it was effective, so they didn’t have to do it much. Here, I don’t see how that’s going to happen, so I just have to get used to games that are steadily harder to install, more expensive, and fewer.

    All I wanted to do was buy and play cool games, and you pirates and publishers are making me get punished for that. I don’t get to return a defective product, I have to read an ever-increasing EULA (or worry that I’m signing away my first born), I have to type in a long random password, have an internet connection, have my computer set up in a standard way, and who knows what they’ll think up tomorrow to add to that!

    Now, if and when I give up, I won’t start pirating - I’ll find some other hobby. Fact is, if I can’t trust a company with a real reputation and money on the line to play nice with me, I don’t think I can trust some random pirate to do the same. But - I don’t need any of the above to go into a bookstore, or buy a model train set, or get a membership at a gym - pretty much any other hobby will find people happy to sell me stuff with a smile.

73. Memyself Says:
    September 27th, 2008 at 8:03 am

    Silas: “I disagree on this point. Books are available at the library for free, music is available on the radio. When you pick up these media sources at these locations, you are receiving the intellectual essence of the material, but not receiving the portion with perceived value.”

    Both are very commonly used false analogies. The existing business model certainly accounts for the structure you mention. Those copies are paid for, and often include a royalty system or some other financial incentive for the creator. Just because you don’t have to pay does not mean a financial transaction isn’t occurring.

    Silas: “People buy cds, not just because they want the music, but because they want the physical property of the cd: they want the cd art, the liner notes, they want to be able to look at it sitting on their cd shelf. When you buy a book, you want to be able to hold the book itself, not just be able to access the words.”

    How important is the physical item to the average buyer right now? How important will it be in ten years, as a generation enters the consumer world with less attachment to physicality? iTunes shows us quite well that a large section of the populace is accepting of digital media. Piracy is making a dent in the sales of many forms of media. As more people become tech savvy enough to steal the work, and as technology allows for more reliable digital storage and faster download rates, the scale will increase.

74. Mark Says:
    September 27th, 2008 at 8:03 am

    Cirno - first off, the music industry is an industry with only a couple of outlets, so it’s not an appropriate comparison for the gaming industry. Companies can stop releasing PC games in a heartbeat and release their games for the PS or Xbox, still make money and reduce piracy.

    To the main article - just because lots of people are pirating something doesn’t mean that arguments such as “it’s too buggy, the game sucks, it’s not right for the PC platform, etc.” are meaningless. Take for example a car that is known to have lots of problems (hypothetical), it’ll only run for about 10,000 miles, gets terrible gas milage has a top speed of 35 miles per hour and the worst safety record ever. Nobody is going to pay the $20,000 they charge for the car. Now, for whatever reason, the car is available for free. Will not thousands of desperate people take the car for free? Heck, non-desperate people might grab the car just to have an extra clunker for their kids or whatever. When the price approaches or reaches zero the demand goes up (simple economics) regardless of why the price is approaching zero (with the exceptions of things that kill you like rotten and old food). Consider, as a real life example, dumpster divers. A company has thrown out an item because it is in some way defective. Somebody else comes along, jumps in the dumpster and grabs it. The product IS defective, but people still took it. Piracy of a bad game doesn’t imply that it’s a good game, rather that it’s free and, heck, why not?

75. Chris Says:
    September 27th, 2008 at 8:12 am

    Listen people, look into the origins of copyright and the French Buccaneers. It was originally a form of social control to prevent people from sharing information.

    Look it it today? Form of social control? I would say so. Your (americans) first amendment actually could cover this, as copyright to me seems to ‘abridge the freedom of speech.’ That might just be me, but it really does seem that way. Link of the USSR and how their government liked to control which information you could pass to your friends and which you couldnt. Same with the chinese. And same with the US.

76. Chris Says:
    September 27th, 2008 at 9:24 am

    Also, the arguments here forget the fact that our modern copyright laws are designed to protect a content creator from having his stuff sold by someone else as their work, not to prevent joe schmo from downloading an mp3 or a copy of Crysis. Our culture, top to bottom, was not prepared for the the sudden accessibility of information and it is blurring the lines between right and wrong. Suing a single mother for 225 000 dollars is FAR more wrong than downloading a couple of songs, however thats the law. Makes you wonder if the law might be wrong, hmmm?

77. talia Says:
    September 27th, 2008 at 9:35 am

    “Link of the USSR and how their government liked to control which information you could pass to your friends and which you couldnt. Same with the chinese. And same with the US.”

    Seriously, trying to prevent piracy is not, will not and has never been on the same level as living in the USSR. Anybody who even tries to compare getting fined for any amount of money for illegal downloading and living in a system here you FEAR YOU WILL ONE DAY DISAPPEAR needs to have their head rescrewed on.

    I visited the Eastblok in the eighties, and i can tell you that any simmilarities are so out of shape it isnt even funny.

    Have you ever been in a conversation where you needed to pay attention to every word, every joke, every tone of voice you used, because the person you were talking to could be informing the secret police?

    Have you ever seen people waiting in a line for 2 hours for bread without complaining because any complaint was seen as dissention?

    Have you ever people being refused to visit conventions in the West because they didnt have relatives in the East and therefor a risk fo defect?

    I have seen those things and have seen the joy when that system died a quick death.

    I can follow some of the reasons of piracy to an extent and am willing to discuss the logic ad/or illogic behind them.
    Im willing to admit that DRM does not work and will probably never work.

    But i need a certain degree of sanity in the discussion, and anybody even trying to compare piracy with a fight for freedom.
    You are not fighting for justice and freedom when you are downloading a hacked version of COD4.

    You are simply taking a product without payment.
    If it falls under the legal definition of theft is debatable, and it seems that the rule 1 illigal download = 1 less legal sale can be debated, but there line and saying that the IRAA is a version of the STASI is an insult to all the peoplewho lived under the communist system.

78. Jamie Says:
    September 27th, 2008 at 10:50 am

    “…and I come across a PC title that is made by someone who views their craft as an art form.”

    Since when does the developer’s attitude have anything to do with the legality of stealing? You don’t get to decide when it is or isn’t theft, and the developer doesn’t have to prove itself to you.

    If you don’t like the developer, then avoid the product. Try telling the court judge it wasn’t stealing because you don’t like the company. I’m sure that’ll go over real well. Besides, most of the time it’s the publisher that mandates DRM, not the developer.

    That being said, it’s pretty obvious that DRM doesn’t do its job. Yes, DRM screws with the user experience, and sometimes eliminates it, but even then it doesn’t justify stealing. It might make piracy seem more appealing, but it *doesn’t* justify it. So enough with the ridiculous rationalizations. You’re taking something you didn’t buy, and that is theft. Even if you don’t like what the company’s doing.

79. talia Says:
    September 27th, 2008 at 10:51 am

    “Suing a single mother for 225 000 dollars is FAR more wrong than downloading a couple of songs, however thats the law. Makes you wonder if the law might be wrong, hmmm?”

    Fine. If you think the law is wrong try to change it. Write your congressman. Write to papers. Try to explain the situation to your every person you know on this planet. Make it heard that you refuse to be treated in such a way as a consumer and make it heared that you refuse to buy that product.
    You have that power in your wallet and in your right of freedom of speech.
    EA will learn that wat they are doing is bad for their own profits soon enough and we can only watch in sheer amazement as they cling to their stupid belief that their DRM is helpfull.

    Wat you dont have is the right to decide wat laws are right and wat laws are wrong and choose to follow that law and refuse to folow another.
    There are childmolesters using the argument that the law is wrong to support their crimes( not that i am putting child-molestation on the same level as illegal downloading)

    In order for society to work we need laws and need people to follow those laws and a system that punishes people when they dont follow those laws.
    Is the 225000 dollars punishment usefull? Absolutely not.
    Targeting only a few people who commit the act( i dont know if i can call it a crime) and punishing them to a level that can only be called over-the-top does not work.

    The romans had a line for this:

    Dura lex, sed lex

80. kevlarcardhouse Says:
    September 27th, 2008 at 11:12 am

    I think what you brought up in this article includes an important point. Developers can’t just ignore piracy because even if you truly believe they don’t effect sales at all, it’s costing them money as well. As mentioned, when the majority of your tech support calls are from people with pirated copies, that costs money. Of course, when developers try implementing some system to make sure only people with valid CD-keys can get tech support, they instantly get ransacked with the usual cry of “Stop making paying customers feel like criminals!” Also, companies like Crytek, Relic and Gas Powered Games have come out publicly and said a huge cost to them is in servers because the rampant piracy means patches for their games are downloaded in exponentially higher amounts then the actual copies they sold. This of course also dispels the typical excuses like “I just downloaded it to see if it works”.

    Cirno: The Witcher contained TAGES copy protection, and a lot of people complained about it. Also, it could be easily argued that the music industry is collapsing. Even including itunes and similar services, it’s making a fraction of what it made in music sales just a few years ago. Regardless, contrary to your claims, you’re celebrating piracy. You start off by saying you don’t agree with piracy, then provide the typical justifications for doing so. Which is pretty much the point of the article: you can’t just say piracy is understandable, even justified, and then have a fit when developers resort to DRM, or make lazy ports, or focus on the consoles. There’s a bit of chicken/egg thing doing on there.

81. Chris Drost Says:
    September 27th, 2008 at 1:27 pm

    So I’ve taken some time to read through the posts here, and I guess this comment risks being lost in the obscurity. Still, I feel some sympathy with that line from Troubled Hubble — “There were old ladies laughin’ / and fat men dancin’ / so we took our chances and joined in the madness,” and so I feel like I should join in the madness here, too. My thoughts:

    (I) There is a lot of anti-DRM talk that’s being conflated with a pro-piracy viewpoint, and those need to be distinguished. Moreover, we need to distinguish between being “anti-modern-DRM” and being “anti-DRM-in-principle.” So let’s start talking about those distinctions.

    (II) Modern DRM is technically unsophisticated (hence the swift availability of cracks) and tends to break a game for legitimate users. So, presumably, everybody here (on every side) is anti-modern-DRM, because it sucks ass. The game *is* getting broken for legitimate users in the here-and-now, and the prevention mechanism is *not* preventing much if any piracy.

    (III) The arguments that are “anti-DRM-in-principle” are much more sparse, with the leading one being implicit: people are anti-DRM-in-principle often because they are anti-modern-DRM. There is a tacit premise here: that DRM will not, in principle, get much better than it is now. That may or may not be true; I don’t know.

    If you wanted a decent anti-DRM-in-principle argument, it might go something like this: modern distribution mechanisms ensure that the typical pirate doesn’t need to crack DRM him/herself; so the moment that *one* person cracks it, everybody on The Pirate Bay gets access to the crack. It follows that DRM must be so secure that nobody in the cracking community can crack it. But maybe you can argue that this latter point is too unrealistic, or would require a DRM which is much worse than modern DRM is in terms of user-rights, or something like that. (I’ve stolen the general pattern of this argument from various transportation-security arguments, of course — airport security versus terrorists hijacking aircrafts, and the like.)

    (IV) The arguments that are “pro-piracy” are surprisingly intricate (at least to my view), and shouldn’t just be waved away as a “sense of entitlement” or what have you.

    I’d propose this: take the pro-piracy discussion away from something like software torrents — with all of the complications of DRM and customer support and the like — and just start talking about, say, torrenting TV shows.

    For example, one of the pro-piracy arguments seems to sound something like this: suppose that I am, simply put, not going to watch a show on television directly. Maybe I just hate my television; or perhaps I don’t own one, or perhaps I am in the Netherlands (which I am) and the show will not air here; or whatever other reason you have. The reason doesn’t matter much: suppose that I want to watch show X, but I refuse or am unable to watch X by television.

    The pro-piracy argument seems to go this way: “listen, this person is firstly a sunk cost: you just can’t get revenue out of him/her, so there’s little point in trying. And secondly, we could make somebody better off (namely, this person), without making anybody worse off, if we specifically allow him to pirate this show. Since worrying about sunk costs is a waste and making someone better off without making anybody worse off is a good thing, we should be all for this person’s personal piracy.”

    I’m, naturally, putting this into my own words. Probably, those of you on the pro-piracy side have never heard of “sunk costs” or “Pareto optimality” (which is what the second idea is), but I see this as sort of an underlying theme to your arguments.

    I’m not sure how I feel about that sort of argument yet, but I wanted to comment that it’s surprisingly more nuanced than I thought it would be.

    (V) Maybe it’s just my status as somebody who’s walking into this with an anti-pirate mind, but if the pro-pirate side was refreshingly nuanced, the anti-pirate side that I have seen is surprisingly crude. “Memyself” starts off by getting surprisingly legalistic on what should be an ethical issue; and then (amazingly) goes on to make the statement that “Just because you don’t have to pay does not mean a financial transaction isn’t occurring.” Doesn’t that premise seem like the pro-piracy side can, y’know, co-opt it? If you tell the pirate, “well, you didn’t pay for the game,” why doesn’t the pirate say, “listen, just because I didn’t pay for a game, it doesn’t mean that a financial transaction isn’t occurring; so leave me alone”…?

    On the other hand, “talia,” in the recent “10:51am” comment, in fact advocates a sort of ethical nihilism in the presence of the law: in other words, that the laws /are/ right, and if you think they are wrong, you will yourself be wrong until those laws are changed to suit your position. Guys. Ethical nihilism (or, more appropriately, ethical relativism relativised to the local laws) is shooting yourself in the foot. If you want to argue that piracy is unethical, you’ll need to first believe that “ethics” means something.

    And “Edgerunner” avoids presenting any particular arguments about why piracy is unethical, just deciding to leave it down to the assertion “you are a thief.” I don’t think that will convince any pirates out there; and I think it’s an error to automatically use that particular term in this case. (A thief is a certain class of person with a certain kind of mindset, not just a certain class of person who has, at some point, done a particular act. I have engaged in the petty larceny of pens and copier paper; but to equate me with a professional burglar is to make a serious error. Perhaps the term is justified; but you’ve got to *show* and *persuade* that that’s true: not just assert it and run off.)

    Guys, it seems like there has to be some better basis to condemn software and television piracy. The pirates apparently don’t accept that it hurts the developers, since they tend to think of themselves as “eventual buyers” or something like that: “I’ll buy it if I like it,” et cetera. And I doubt that we can pull up the sorts of statistics that would convince them that it really does hurt, since they’re convinced that it might help enough to offset the hurt.

    Would the pro-pirate side, for example, accept that an artist should have the rights to determine what groups are allowed to be supported by their music? (This came up in this year’s US presidential campaign: the McCain camp apparently was using songs by some liberal musician who didn’t like it too much. Does that musician have a right to complain?)

82. Chris Says:
    September 27th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    Chris Drost is correct, that the argument on this site has been quite reasoned on both sides (i guess, linking from Penny-Arcade brings a certain class of people)

    The main point though is that modern society has changed to where the business models of these vast corporations have to change significantly regardless of whether or not piracy is wrong. It wont be stopped, and it will continue to accelerate unless the content providers can create an acceptible substitute. Napster wasnt huge because it was free, radio is free, borrowing CDs is free. It was huge because it was easy, the easiest way to access music in human history, and it changed the world. That mindset is beyond the studio execs apparently because they see pirates as evil, when really they are just lazy.

    If NBC offered a service that rivaled my private tracker site (or exceeded it) i would gladly pay money for it. In fact, I support my tracker site financially. Because its the best way presented to me to receive content. Instead of defending an archaic business model, and using their wealth to co-opt the government into helping them defend that business model, they should be looking into alternatives to actually compete with the pirates. They feel they dont have to compete, but thats not a very capalist attitude, is it?

83. Wel Says:
    September 27th, 2008 at 10:41 pm

    DRM’s only show up on legal copies of software.

    Illegal copies of software do not contain them, or have workarounds.

    Thus your entire debate is moot, you’re trying to stop people who already bought the game from stealing what they already bought. In the meantime, those who stole it and had no intention of paying for it have less of a hassle AND got it for free.

    You can DRM every piece of software you want, it will only make people like me who would actually buy it walk away from your company as you insist upon treating me like a criminal.

    I understand your ranting. You want money, we all do. But those who will ignore your DRM’s aren’t going to give it to you anyway. Focus on making software less of a pain in the butt to those of us who are actually paying you, and treat us with some respect and maybe, just maybe, our recommendations of your product will increase your sales.

    So sure, you may win a moral victory for a few moments with this DRM silliness, and you’d have foiled those nasty hackers for the ten minutes it takes them to figure out how to beat you, but you’re wasting time and money better spent on making those of us who actually willing pay for your software not feel as if we are thieves.

    This ranting just REEKS of someone who spends the vast majority of their time wanting to be “right” instead of wanting to ensure a good customer experience.

    Customer service, use it.

    And while we’re at it. Imagine walking into a bakery and having the man behind the counter ask you to sign a contract stating that you won’t steal his muffin THAT YOU ALREADY BOUGHT AND PAID FOR, or share any with their friend. Then you put an unbreakable plastic seal around the muffin “just in case” the customer decided to do anything with it that the bakery didn’t want. I imagine that bakery going out of business very quickly due to such horrible customer treatment.

    Now imagine some poorly paid flunky going on the interwebs and trying to convince hard working, honest muffin buyers that the real reason muffins are coated in hard plastic is not because of the paranoid rantings of some accountant in the back of the bakery basement, but that the reason it’s such a pain to buy from that bakery is because there are muffin thieves out there, thieves who are the REAL main concern of that bakery, NOT the honest, paying customers.

    So figure out what your goal is, to sell muffins to honest folk or to become Muffin Sheriff. Because you ain’t got the time to do both. The honest muffin buying community doesn’t appreciate your shennanigans, and the few muffin thieves out there wont be stopped.

    Who do you care more about?

84. talia Says:
    September 28th, 2008 at 9:46 am

    “On the other hand, “talia,” in the recent “10:51am” comment, in fact advocates a sort of ethical nihilism in the presence of the law: in other words, that the laws /are/ right, and if you think they are wrong, you will yourself be wrong until those laws are changed to suit your position. Guys. Ethical nihilism (or, more appropriately, ethical relativism relativised to the local laws) is shooting yourself in the foot. If you want to argue that piracy is unethical, you’ll need to first believe that “ethics” means something.”

    I do not believe in ethical nihilism. I believe that laws should reflect the ethics and morals of a society. I believe that for instance the 3-strike rule made by the EU is an un-ethical and unsound law. The law that allowed a person to be sued for 22500 dollars is unethical.
    But i also believe that breaking a law(illegal downloading), when you have the option not to break it( not buy the product) is unethical as well.

    My point is that a lot of people who say they feel mistreaded by compagnies are choosing the easy way out.
    If they really believed that they were being treated like crap they should at least have the willpower to write a simple letter to their congressmen or party.
    If you have done so; if you had let your voice be heared besides on weblogs and sites, then i appologise.
    But how many people here advocating that DRM is bad have send a simple note to EA saying that?
    How many people here have tried to reason with people totaly unaware of this problem?

    EA and other companies is geeting away with their DRM because the pro-pirate side “who is refreshingly nuanced” is comparing anti-piracy measurements with communist Russia. The sane voices advocating that the currect system is flawed are being overshouted by people comparing the RIAA to the Nazi-party.
    A internet-radiostation a while back said in their show that buying a copy of Red Alert 3 was the same as selling your soul.

    Chris,you said it yourself that the pro-pirate side really needs to stop turning every inconvenience into the plight of Sisyphus.

    Make no mistake about it, when it comes to the PR-campagne we are losing. We the gaming-community are being perceived as people unwilling to pay for our products.

    And i fear that if this keeps getting worse either the PC-gaming industry will go under or stay alive under a system that makes DRM look like a picnic.

    Because we can all talk nicely about ethics and standards and customer service, but here is a funny thing. Try to make the top 10 games for PC-only that you are excited about. For some reason i cant make it past 7.

85. Memyself Says:
    September 28th, 2008 at 12:52 pm

    Chris Drost: ““Memyself” starts off by getting surprisingly legalistic on what should be an ethical issue”

    I was responding to someone who was addressing the issue in a legalistic manner. This isn’t exactly a chicken and the egg scenario here. David made the argument that piracy is not theft, but instead copyright violation. Pay attention,

    Chris Drost: “and then (amazingly) goes on to make the statement that “Just because you don’t have to pay does not mean a financial transaction isn’t occurring.” Doesn’t that premise seem like the pro-piracy side can, y’know, co-opt it? If you tell the pirate, “well, you didn’t pay for the game,” why doesn’t the pirate say, “listen, just because I didn’t pay for a game, it doesn’t mean that a financial transaction isn’t occurring; so leave me alone”…?”

    Again, please try to pay attention. I was clearly saying that the pay system was in place for libraries and radio play. the same pay structure does not apply to piracy, which allows for far more distribution than the library and lacks any royalty system whatsoever. The scenarios are not analogous, as you would know if you delved into the realities of this topic even fractionally.

    Chris Drost “(amazingly)”

    Not really. please pay attention to the particulars rather than jumping at a topic based off your own pre-conceptions. What else could be said about someone who doesn’t even seem to be able to comprehend who introduced a topic and who was responding to the topic.

86. Joe Says:
    September 28th, 2008 at 1:09 pm

    Just put advertisements in my game to recoup lost revenue from piracy. If your game is good, I’ll buy it and give you revenue. If your game sucks, I’ll pirate it, look at the ads placed in the game’s world and give you revenue.

87. Memyself Says:
    September 28th, 2008 at 2:21 pm

    Joe: “Just put advertisements in my game”

    There is a limited amount of advertising dollars to be spent in the world. If all forms of media that are pirated attempted to adopt the model you suggest, we would see a greatly diminished output as competition for advertising dollars became spread to thin.

88. Captain Jack Says:
    September 28th, 2008 at 3:05 pm

    I’d join in this discussion, but my torrent just finished.

89. Port Says:
    September 28th, 2008 at 6:30 pm

    Lot of good discussions with not a lot of internet tough guy attitude. Who are you and what have you done with my internet?

    My one-liner take: DRM sucks for everyone but what can you do?

    Piracy can’t be stopped and the PC publishers have to do something to appease a stockholder who finds out what software piracy might do (or not do) to their stock value. It’s better than RIAA-style lawsuits or some of the gag concepts PA put up on the 26th.

    Everyone can be (understandably) anti-corporation, but they will do what they have to do. I’m not crazy about it and I’m sure this kind of complacency would upset some, but what can I do? Not buy the game, speaking to the publisher with my wallet, but potentially choking a developer capable of many more great titles and I can’t play the game period? The latter seems more of a greater loss to me.

    So my feeling is… deal with it. As you may have guessed, I haven’t run into a DRM issue with games I have purchased. Had I had such an issue, I’d probably feel the same way but be more negative in typing this post. At least I think I would. Only time will tell, etc, etc.

    Oh and software piracy is taking something you didn’t pay for that you weren’t supposed to unless you paid. That’s theft at the most basic level, legal precedence or not, technology aside. Please put all lawyer-style arguments aside.

90. ravenshrike Says:
    September 28th, 2008 at 8:13 pm

    Justice Steven Breyer has been brought up as an appeal to authority. Unfortunately for the person doing the appealing Justice Steven Breyer is an idiot, shown by his recent dissent in the Heller case. The amount of mental gymnastics required to come to the decision he did was bloody well astounding. Justice Stevens was not much better, and Ginsberg’s joining of the dissent was a direct reversal of a position she held previously.

91. Ted Says:
    September 28th, 2008 at 8:24 pm

    Why do games need to come on CDs? Why not SD Cards? The SD Cards have secure areas, and mfg registers and stuff. You could tie the game to a physical object sort of the way consoles do it. Nothing stops you from installing the game to an HD and patching it when bugs get worked out or new content released. Plus you can resell it.

92. devilsadvocate Says:
    September 28th, 2008 at 8:56 pm

    I used to pirate games until I got a job I cared about. The first time I saw my work being used for free by others I realized why I had been wrong.

    It’s probably due to the fact that, until my late 20’s, the jobs I held were service jobs. Bag groceries, deliver pizza, bank teller. As soon as I started producing my own product (software) instead of sitting around doing something with no output I realized I was taking someone’s hard work. Whether or not you care about the ethical implications of your act is another matter….but it’s the main reason that I personally don’t pirate anymore (that, and the PC HIV you can catch on warez sites and torrents).

    Which isn’t to say I pay for everything I use. I use a ton of open source software and public domain art, and am very thankful to the people who produce it and choose to distribute their content free of charge. I work on projects that produce open source products as well, in my own effort to give back.

    I just do not feel entitled to take that which I would not have, were it not for someone else’s 60 hour work week.

    People miss the nuance, probably because they lack the life experience, to realize that the games industry is very cutthroat for those people who make the games. Developers are like artists in the Renaissance days - Publishers are their rich patrons. Developers make the art ( much of it coudl be described as derivative and marginal in creative value) but Publishers own it. So the person questioning the intelligence of the developers when its the DRM selection you have a problem with is absurd…that’s not their domain.

    Different publishers have different philosophies. Choose to reward them by buying their product, or express your displeasure by writing them to let them know they lost a sale or by not buying their games…but if you take something don’t pretend to man the ramparts of freedom. I know many developers who bust their backs doing 60+ hour weeks, sometimes they are even put out of business by publishers playing games & poaching their talent. You stealing their work only adds insult to injury. Unless, of course, it’s the developers pirating their games in revenge :P (two wrongs don’t make a right. Just go look at your local divorce court to confirm that)

    DRM is an exercise in futility - but try making an argument that ‘this is going to happen anyway’ when you’re standing in a board room talking to people who are responsible for the bottom line and choosing what next project to invest in. The smart executives don’t dwell on a point that nobody wants to hear (i.e. they operate in a medium that is easily pilfered) - instead they focus on the positives and give examples of successful solutions that were significantly less intrusive, or nonexistent. These are the publishers you reward.

    One thing I’ve noticed in life: people’s propensity for waxing philosophical or doing ethical gymnastics increases in direct proportion to the amount the personally stand to gain.

    Says the mortgage officer: “Putting people into homes is a really good thing and gives lower income families pride of ownership, so what if I give them a variable rate mortgage that will eat up all their income in 5 years to do it? Who knows…..they might get a better job before then, or win the lottery….or just be forced to sell their house. I’m sure its value will be way up by then anyway.” $700 Billion later…..

93. Shaun Says:
    September 28th, 2008 at 9:15 pm

    I just have to add a couple notes here.. cause most of everything I’ve read here is BS. If you want to play a game, buy it. A lot of people put a PILE of hard work into it and deserve to be reimbursed. If they don’t make money, they can’t make the next game you want .. etc.. etc.. As far as the “I won’t buy it cause the DRM is buggered”.. yeah.. right.. you won’t buy it when you can download it for free. I have also had a few run-ins with varying copy protection systems for games I’ve purchased, but a quick zip over to my favorite copy protection killing website gets rid of that in a hurry. Did I have to pirate a copy to get it? Nope. I’m still running the game a baught, have my own legit CD Key, and a sales receipt, the only thing that didn’t come off the CD I purchased is usually just an EXE file. And now I buy most of my stuff from Steam anyways… no CDs, no keys, no problems as of yet, and usually you can get a good deal on games. I’m sure mentioning Steam is going to open another can…

    from the Pirates!

94. Sami Says:
    September 29th, 2008 at 8:18 am

    I used to buy several PC games, even if not as many as console games. But these days, even though I’m interested in like Mass Effect’s PC version over the 360 version, I wouldn’t even dream of buying the PC DRM version. Now, I know there is that Sins of a Solar Empire game, and some other non-DRM games on PC, but that’s no help when a game I would be interested in is riddled with DRM. Unless loads and loads of people buy the games with no DRM and DRM gets abandoned, I guess?

95. Phelios Says:
    September 29th, 2008 at 9:18 am

    Saying that someone who purchased a game on a console should have the right to play the game on the PC is ludicrous — the amount of programming it takes to even adapt a game from one platform to another is intense. Those programmers have to get paid. Every discovered bug beyond release date costs exponentially more than bugs discovered before release.

    That being said, I do understand the pain of having to purchase a game multiple times. I personally bought Diablo II three times over my lifetime simply because of misplaced CD Keys or play discs (although thankfully they have a system in place for preventing that now). If it bothers you…don’t? Decide which system you want to play things on and play them on it. If the PC version didn’t release extra content, why bother? It is merely there for the folks who don’t own a console. I’m a pc gamer. I don’t experience a lot of games anymore because many are made solely for the console. If I purchase a pc game, should they send me a copy for the console as well? That wouldn’t make much sense.

96. Memyself Says:
    September 29th, 2008 at 10:31 am

    Ravenshrike: “Justice Steven Breyer is an idiot”

    Strangely enough, his interpretation of legal terminology and it’s applications holds more weight than your own.

97. AlexC Says:
    September 29th, 2008 at 10:38 am

    MeMyself says:

    “Again, please try to pay attention. I was clearly saying that the pay system was in place for libraries and radio play. the same pay structure does not apply to piracy, which allows for far more distribution than the library and lacks any royalty system whatsoever. The scenarios are not analogous, as you would know if you delved into the realities of this topic even fractionally.”

    Ironically, RIAA does not agree with that anymore : http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/recording-indus.html - they now feel that broadcast radio is piracy.

    I suggest that whatever you may think, the ethical considerations are as moot as they are for pirating music - right or wrong, good or bad, you can’t stop it. Short of blowing up the series of tubes (which is, in practice, very difficult), piracy will continue to occur. The whys and hows are completely, utterly irrelevant.

    So the real question isn’t how we should berate or attempt to punish these pirates. The real question is how we should react.

    Do we pull a RIAA/MPAA/CRIA? Start suing our customers, raising our prices, and making DRM more and more of a hassle?

    Seems to me that their technique doesn’t work.

    Or do we embrace the fact that the world has changed and like it or not, piracy is a fact of life? If we do that, we can focus our efforts on making better games that people like more, and thus expand our legitimate market share?

    Spend money to lose more money or spend less to make more? What’s SecuROM cost these days? How much could that money help the developers budget, or improve customer service times, or provide support for patching?

    Look, in the end, I leave the moral disambiguation to the rest of you. I am a pragmatist, and as such, I realize that no matter what you FEEL about it, it’s happening. Pandora’s box has been opened, and we can either adapt our business or die. Me? Well, I like breathing, so I’ll let you figure it out.

98. Abba Bryant Says:
    September 29th, 2008 at 12:26 pm

    There are a few points I would like to add to the end of this conversation where nobody will read them anyways.

    It needs to be brought up that for legitimate purchasers of PC games the cost of the game includes some amount of compensation for the time and invested energy required to protect the game from illegitimate acquisition. If I buy game x from the store I am paying the publisher of game x a nominal quantity of money to prevent people who aren’t myself from getting the game from a ‘pirate’.

    So, in effect, I am being punished for being a loyal customer of the games publisher. I myself do not advocate any form of DRM that impedes on my rights as a purchaser of a commodity yet I am being FORCED to pay some percentage of the overall cost of ownership of the product towards DRM.

    If the DRM was removed, the cost of the game would go down. There is no way to argue against that. With the DRM in place publishers are spending money at failing to prevent piracy while abusing and charging the legal purchasers of the games they claim to be protecting.

    This practice of off-loading the cost of protecting the game from one illegitimate source onto the legitimate source of the publishers profits is appalling to me.

    Given the choice of being shafted by the publisher in order to protect games from anyone that isn’t myself - or another purchaser - while paying an inflated cost to offset some perceived possible loss of sales or ‘pirating’ the game; I will always take the pirated copy. I used to turn around and buy the ones I liked, but at this point - except for a few specific exceptions - I will ’steal’ the game just to poke a stick in their eye. When you treat your customers like shit you should expect to get the same treatment in return.

    When I buy a book there isn’t some invisible watchdog making sure I don’t use the book to prop up my coffee table leg, or making sure my friends don’t read it when I am not looking. When a game company / publisher allows me to do what I want with my copy of their software then I will again start paying money for it.

99. Joe Mamma Says:
    September 29th, 2008 at 2:06 pm

    I bought 5 PC games in the last year (3 of them RTS just so I could use a mouse) and probably 30 consoles games.

    Is it because I pirate them? Because I like consoles better? Nope. There just aren’t as many great games on PC these days compared to the consoles.

    Good job PC pirates! All your bluster can’t hide the damage you’ve done.

100. Memyself Says:
     September 29th, 2008 at 11:11 pm

     Abba Bryant: “The real question is how we should react.”

     Change the business model. Rampant theft and a culture of entitlement leaves no other option. But thieves should still be called thieves, regardless.

101. Memyself Says:
     September 30th, 2008 at 2:43 am

     I’m curious, I’ve pirated games before. The cracked copies are often buggy. I spend a fair bit of time around gaming website and download sites. People constantly are seeking solutions to buggy cracked copies of games.

     So somehow, something is preventing smooth transition for the majority (more casual) PC users.

     So why do many people insist that these attempts to thwart piracy are ineffective?

102. Timmay! Says:
     September 30th, 2008 at 9:03 am

     Nice writeup, but it feels like a major reason for piracy was ignored, and while it doesn’t excuse piracy, it does prove that part of the drive of piracy itself is caused by the current business model for PC gaming.

     The current business model is to just put the game down on a disc, or available for purchase and direct download, in it’s entirety, charge the same price either way for a license to play the game, and try to stop piracy after the fact. This leaves the game easily open to piracy in the current environment. The problem is that there’s no real reason to purchase the game.

     Yes, it’s illegal, and it takes money away from the developers who need it to finance future games, but it’s free, it’s fairly simple, if you’re not distributing games en mass for months on end there’s a pretty big chance you won’t get caught, and if you get with the right group of people, there isn’t much risk of getting a virus or spyware. Yes, there will probably be bugs, but those eventually get worked out. And there’s always somebody who’s willing to crack the game just to make it available to everyone.

     Take Spore for instance. You can play online with people if you buy a legit copy, but that’s only a fraction of the game, the single player game is the real meat, and you don’t need to be online for that. On top of that, the current attitude towards EA’s use of DRM on Spore actually creates a turn-off that could drive normally legit PC gamers to pirate the game. If you don’t care about online play, and don’t care for the DRM scheme, then downloading a cracked version of Spore becomes a more viable solution, even though it’s illegal.

     The problem doesn’t sit on the developer’s end either, their job is to make a good, quality game that’s worth buying. The problem is solely on the publisher’s end. The current take on “battling piracy”, DRM and attacking individual pirates directly with massive lawsuits, has soured the public’s opinion, and the more their actions get reported on by the press, especially outside of the gaming community, the more negative the general public’s view of the publisher will be. And while it not make piracy any more right or legal, it will make them more sympathetic towards the pirates.

     Publishers need to create a real reason for people to spend $40 or more on a single game. Stardock created an incentive simply by completely removing DRM. Valve’s Steam creates an incentive because once you’ve registered your game on Steam, you can go back and download the game itself from any PC with Steam installed. There’s countless other ways to create an incentive for people to buy the game, either because they’ll get more content and gameplay out of a legit copy, or because the publisher and developer are doing the right thing.

     In short, the whole system is broken. Publishers need to step up and either make a massive update to the business model, or just scrap it and start over. Either way, continuing on as is will only make the piracy issue bigger.

103. Timmay! Says:
     September 30th, 2008 at 9:28 am

     Forgot to mention the problem with EULA’s, which are a whole other novel on their own.

104. Frijolito Says:
     September 30th, 2008 at 1:01 pm

     Stances for or against piracy notwithstanding, there are a lot of PC gamers with a disposable income, and a good portion of that goes to the gaming industry. That being said, it’s not a stretch to imagine that those same gamers have more game time allotted than they have money to pay for it. In these cases (though unquantifiable, are arguably significant), these gamers will fill that time with downloaded games, regardless of the games’ quality or merits.

     My point is, there are a lot of responsible PC gamers out there who contribute to the revenues of the industry, yet still play downloaded games. The only people who would decry the practices of this segment of the customer base are developers of lackluster games looking to point a finger somewhere other than themselves, or industry giant accountants looking for excuses other than bloated mismanagement to justify declining profits.

105. ravenshrike Says:
     September 30th, 2008 at 4:44 pm

     Memyself, if that’s the best you can come up with, ’tis truly sad indeed. Leaving aside the issue that Appeal to Authority is rarely a valid way to argue unless they are truly a relevant authority(which Justice Breyer is not in this particular instance) his argument that unlawful copying is the same as theft is, just like his Heller dissent, trivial to deconstruct. With copyright infringement, absolutely nothing is being taken. Something is being reproduced for effectively free. Ergo, it IS NOT THEFT. This is why pirates who SELL software are not prosecuted for theft but for their selling of the software illegally. If copying was theft, they would be prosecuted for it. Now, morally it may be similar to theft, but that is an entirely different argument, and one which would take too long to get into here.

106. Memyself Says:
     September 30th, 2008 at 8:10 pm

     Ravenshrike: “Memyself, if that’s the best you can come up with, ’tis truly sad indeed. ”

     Yeah, let’s see: On one hand, we have a person whose job it is to interpret and enforce the law. On the other hand we have people like you who claim to have a deeper understanding of law than said professional. Whether you agree or disagree with a Justice Breyer’s opinion, his opinion is still the legally enforceable one.

     Ravenshrike: “Leaving aside the issue that Appeal to Authority is rarely a valid way to argue unless they are truly a relevant authority(which Justice Breyer is not in this particular instance)”

     Actually, he is. He is a Judge, who was giving his professional interpretation on the matter. That’s about as valid as it gets.

     Ravenshrike: “With copyright infringement, absolutely nothing is being taken.”

     That’s fine. I happen to not be talking about copyright infringement.

     Ravenshrike: “Something is being reproduced for effectively free.”

     Sure.

     Ravenshrike: “Ergo, it IS NOT THEFT.”

     Sure. Copyright infringement is not theft. Which covers distribution. But we’re not specifically limited to distribution in this conversation, are we? Uploading is distribution. Downloading is not. Downloading (which is the act of making an illegal copy) can be considered theft in the US. This isn’t your opinion versus my opinion. this isn’t a debate. There are myriad laws in place that allow the courts to prosecute the acquiring of digital media without payment as theft. That’s the law, whether you agree with it or not.

     Ravenshrike: “This is why pirates who SELL software are not prosecuted for theft but for their selling of the software illegally.”

     That is absurd. Pirates who sell software are engaging in illegal distribution. Illegal distribution IS copyright infringement and is not theft. I never claimed otherwise. Furthermore, those seeking punitive measures traditionally seek the highest claim possible. And copyright infringement carries a higher penalty.

     Ravenshrike: “If copying was theft, they would be prosecuted for it.”

     You’re all over the map here. Uploading content and downloading content are two different things. Illegally copying content by downloading can be considered theft, and can be punished appropriately. That’s the law in the US.

     Ravenshrike: “Now, morally it may be similar to theft, but that is an entirely different argument, and one which would take too long to get into here.”

     Morally, downloading is identical to theft. Morally, uploading is identical to copyright infringement. It’s not a long topic at all. Especially if you don’t conflate the two subjects and dismiss the actual law in favor of your preferred version.

107. Daren Says:
     October 1st, 2008 at 11:37 am

     I think that there have been a lot of excellent points made by both the poster and the commentators.

     In my own experience, I have probably bought anywhere from 5-10 PC games a year until about 2006. But DRM has honestly driven me away from the PC games market. The last (and only) PC game I’ve bought since then was Sins of a Solar Empire (Stardock). All game developers have done with that is turn me away from a market of which I was formerly a very enthusiastic client. I’d rather not waste my time with software that will cause nothing but headaches. Pirates didn’t draw me away, anti-piracy pushed me away. Now I stick to my Xbox 360 because at least I know the games will work… usually. (Tiger Woods PGA Tour, I’m looking at you.) If PC game Companies want my business again, I’d better be convinced that I’ll be able to play their games without feeling like I have to surgically alter my OS.

     Just my 2-cents.

108. Night10194 Says:
     October 1st, 2008 at 4:40 pm

     You know, I hate CD-Keys. I hate them so much. I own Homeworld, and I haven’t been able to play it for three years due to losing the original jewel case with CD-key (I was foolish and did not copy it elsewhere). They annoy the heck out of me, and add a layer to the gaming experience that is intensely frustrating, and in some cases, stops me from being able to play.

     You know what, though? You know whose fault this is? Is it the companies, who seek to protect the massive financial investment (not to mention time and creativity) they put into that excellent game? No. It’s the pirates. The root cause for any anti-piracy action is…well, piracy. If you weren’t stealing these games from companies, there would be no need to protect their investment in increasingly draconian fashion.

     Yes, they are overzealous, and perhaps even ineffective, but if thieves were not stealing their products, there would be no need for the impedements that plague the industry.

     In addition, infringing someone’s copyright, whether it’s normal theft or no, is still wrong. I write for fun, not for profit, but I still recall how much it hurt the first time I saw my work stolen and claimed as someone else’s. Whether you deprive them of a physical property or not, taking the product of someone’s hard work without renumeration is akin to spitting on their efforts.

     Therefore, what I am trying to say is this. Pirates, You are parasitizing the creative efforts of other people. Even if you aren’t destroying their business, you are harming it, and you are harming the legal consumer as well with the escalating arms race of software protection efforts vs. your ability to crack a game. You can tell yourself whatever you like, but in the end, you are breaking the law and you are harming both the industry and the lawful consumer. You take the work of others, and you do not pay them respect or money for the privelage. YOU are the root cause of the problems you are complaining about.

     And that’s terrible.

109. ravenshrike Says:
     October 2nd, 2008 at 11:17 am

     Memyself - While downloading can in certain instances be considered theft, I am almost completely certain that all such cases require unauthorized access to the information of the host machine. In which case it is theft, but that is not what we’re discussing and you know it. As for the laws you purport are present that strictly refer to the copying of a program with the authorization of the owner of the program creating a situation of theft, links please. I have never seen such a law, although I admittedly haven’t gone looking. But even then I seriously doubt that such laws would codify the actual activity as theft, and arguably are not constitutional in any case. Moreover, I would like to see such a law has been successfully prosecuted since I seriously doubt it would survive the appeals process assuming is makes it through the original court case.

     As for Justice Breyer, he’s an old judge who is almost certainly not intimately familiar with what computers do and what software is. Which means that using him as a source on whether P2P constitutes theft is shaky at best. Using him as a weathervane is a bit like using Ninth Circuit court decisions, chancy until SCOTUS has denied cert on the issue.

110. Memyself Says:
     October 2nd, 2008 at 2:15 pm

     Ravenshrike: “I am almost completely certain that all such cases require unauthorized access to the information of the host machine. In which case it is theft, but that is not what we’re discussing and you know it”

     I certainly was not speaking in regards to unauthorized access. And you know it.

     Ravenshrike: “I have never seen such a law, although I admittedly haven’t gone looking. But even then I seriously doubt that such laws would codify the actual activity as theft”

     The US Supreme Court determined years ago that conversion law (theft) was designed to protect content, rather than the delivery method. Conversion law is the relevant section of law and precedent exists to apply it to intangible media.

     Ravenshrike: “As for Justice Breyer, he’s an old judge who is almost certainly not intimately familiar with what computers do and what software is.”

     Of course. Old people certainly couldn’t understand all this new-fangled technology and it’s electric powered ways. Nevermind that Breyer is held up as an authority on the topic of digital media and speaks regularly on how digital media has impacted state and federal courts. He’s soooooo old! He can’t possible understand, right? Why, he was 40 when computers became commonplace in many households. 40! That’s practically dead!

     Obviously, I have little interest in your above dismissal.

     But lets play with the notion. You advance the idea that outdated thinking cannot deal with modern technologies and the applicable laws. Okay. So why cling to archaic definitions of property? Conversion laws were written in a time before computers. They weren’t designed by people who were intimately familiar with what computers do and what software is. Not at all. So what do you think would have happened if US law was written with such technology in mind?

     Regardless, the law was written at a time when such technologies did not exist. Therefore, we elect officials who appoint judges who interpret the intent of the law. You may not agree with their interpretation, but that does not change the fact that their interpretation is enforceable. And in the case of multiple appointed officials, downloading is theft. Plain and simple.

111. Jim9137 Says:
     October 2nd, 2008 at 10:55 pm

     Soo… let me get this straight, it’s a smaller offense for me to steal a physical game from the shop than it is for me to pirate from the internet?

     This whole discussion is absurd.

     To comment the original blog post: The problem with your statement “if they all download it, there must be something worthwhile” is invalid. The modern day internet supports random downloading as modern day malls support random shopping. Not to all people quality becomes a question, but rather, a got to catch’em all attitude. They might want to try a ‘cool’ sounding title, without even knowing a thing about it - or wasting a penny in a title that 80% cases is mediocre.

     Call it what you like, but I personally see that having 40,000 users downloading random game Y to try it out is just good advertising (oh, how I long for the days of proper demos…).

112. Memyself Says:
     October 2nd, 2008 at 11:30 pm

     “Soo… let me get this straight, it’s a smaller offense for me to steal a physical game from the shop than it is for me to pirate from the internet?”

     No. It’s a greater offense to copy and distribute the game. That’s infringement. It carrying a higher penalty makes a great deal of sense.

113. William Says:
     October 4th, 2008 at 4:47 am

     Memyself: “It does not matter. Tell me, before the existence of intangible media, what did you buy a record or a book for? The tangible properties? The value has ALWAYS been in the intangible aspects of any given media.”

     I’ve never bought books that weren’t either required for class, or that I had previously read and wanted to have a permanent copy of. The rest I checked out from libraries and borrowed from friends and family. And yes, a book is much tangible in that it can be used without anything else. At worst, it requires light to use. It has inherent value. It has physical mass and volume. So I’ll pay for it. I’m more than happy to pay for eBooks, if I feel like the author is doing a good job in general and I’ve seen samples that show it’s a good work. I’m thinking of GURPS books in particular here.
     Usually, we (my gaming group) buy the books in physical form to pay for the convenience of it being completely self-contained and usable pretty much whenever we want. I’m not going to pay for data that doesn’t cost the author anything to give to me.

114. Memyself Says:
     October 4th, 2008 at 10:57 am

     William: “It has inherent value. It has physical mass and volume.”

     So you contend that a fully printed book is of equal value to a blank book? If the physical aspect of the book, the mass and volume, is where you derive the value, than a blank book must be of equal valu, as it can hold the exact same properties.

     William: “I’m not going to pay for data that doesn’t cost the author anything to give to me.”

     It takes a few seconds to print a book. It takes much longer to write one. Do you believe that a persons time and effort holds no value? How did the book come to be? Magic? It is a product of labor, and refusing to acknowledge that labor by stating that delivery of the book costs nothing of the author if the book is not bound in a physical form, makes zero sense.

     William: “And yes, a book is much tangible in that it can be used without anything else.”

     Paper or screen, the words are displayed. The paper version of a book is simply the delivery method for the concepts created by the writer. The value is in the intangible properties. If not, all you would need are blank books/cds/dvds.

     I cannot stress this enough. These physical items are given the majority of their value by the intangible properties. Intangible properties that require time and effort to create. The widespread belief that these items are valueless without being bound to physical media is, at best, archaic thinking. Which is particularly baffling when you see the argument made by people who are supposedly thinking in terms of new media.

     Digital download or physical media. No notable difference other than delivery method. Is digital delivery a more practical and cheaper delivery solution? Of course. And prices should reflect this. But that does not equate to a lack of value. Not in the slightest.

115. Austin W. Dunham V Says:
     October 4th, 2008 at 10:45 pm

     On piracy, pc gaming vs. console gaming, morality, legality, etc.

     First, I’d like to say that I view piracy as similar in spirit to stealing, ignoring the legal definitions.

     One hasn’t deprived another of a physical piece of property. One did get something for nothing without the publisher’s consent., even if used as a means to try before buying, even if it ultimately increases the number of games one buys. For every one person that tries before buying, there are probably dozens who download and never pay for the game. (And we’ll ignore, for now, the fact that one got some use of the game, for some amount of time, without paying for it, and without the “legitimate” forms of try before buy, like playing on a friend’s system, or what happens to those games that one doesn’t buy.)

     I don’t like the perception that one’s entitled to play the game for free if one doesn’t like the publisher’s pricing model, DRM scheme, or choice of breakfast cereal. If something is priced to high, or has too many restrictions on how it may be used, one isn’t obligated to purchase it, but neither is one entitled to play it for free should the publisher not release it that way. (Renting PC games in many areas is nigh on impossible, so I’m ignoring this venue. Even where it is possible, many of the legitimate, online portions of the game aren’t really available in a rental scheme, assuming the rental wasn’t directly from the publisher.)

     On the other hand, I think the publishers, in general, are wrong on the whole DRM front. It does create insoluble problems for some PAYING customers, who often have no way of even obtaining a refund if said customer can’t get the game to work on one’s PC. As far as DRM that has a chance of stopping working in the future? Unless it adds a truly compelling service - ala iTunes and Steam - I think it’s best done away with altogether. And I’m sorry, but if all it does is allow you access to one publisher’s list of games, that DRM isn’t a compelling service. It doesn’t really mean I should go download the game instantly, but it’s good to set some expectations.

     Both services, I believe, will allow you to play most games or music offline - assuming they’re not online games. That said, since there is usually no physical media distributed to the end user, should I need to re-install a game at a date after the service has gone offline, I may find myself out of luck. Because the services in question or typically so easy to use, I may choose to purchase games or music this way despite the possibility of not using them in the future because: A - my faith that the service will last a long time, and B - the wide variety of games or music I can purchase from this one vendor.

     And DRM as a means to get one to purchase the same product multiple times? I think that’s truly despicable. One sees this more in the media industry than in the video game industry - pay per view and can’t record, not allowing one to take a legally purchased DVD and use one’s own time and effort to get it to play on a video iPod, etc. It does; however, exist in both worlds. Porting is sort of a gray area to me. The vendor has gone to the trouble to get the game to work in another environment, but usually there’s no way of purchasing that game at a discount considering I’ve purchased it already in a different environment.

     With most DRM I feel like I’m being treated as a criminal for purchasing the work. Weather it’s the can’t skip past the FBI warning and Disney adds on a DVD, or the inability to re-install a game should I lose the CD Key - not the CD itself, just the little slip of paper on something other than the physical game I purchased. Let’s not get into Sony’s rootkit or EA’s rent a game system.

     Then there’s the murky gray areas. Where I download a crack - which is usually illegal weather I purchased the game or not - to get around some problem with the game be it a lost CD key - which is ultimately my fault, but damnably annoying when I actually still have the install media, DRM that’s unusable on my system, or so that I can play my legally purchased DVDs on a Linux system - a federal crime.

     Unfortunately the burden for how to proceed lies largely with the publisher, and though their decisions affect the purchaser, there are less ways of communicating with the decision makers at the publishing houses then there are ways of communicating with our legal representatives in congress. An aside, I believe they have passed some very questionable laws in favor of the “Intelectual Property” industry. (DMCA, Life +70 years copyright extension…)

     It’s all fine and dandy to say “Talk with your wallet.” But one’s wallet is a yes/no black and white thing where it’s clear the whole piracy and DRM debacle is a lot more shades of gray then this.

     If I haven’t purchased a game, is it because I wasn’t interested in the game, because the game was buggy, because the DRM was too restrictive, the price was too high? I don’t really have any good way of telling the publishers of said game why I didn’t make the purchase, just that I’m not 1 of X who did.

     Conversely if I did buy a game despite my reservations about it, I can’t really let them know that either. I wish there were better ways of opening lines of communication between the publishers and the purchasers, or potential purchasers of games.

     On a final note I think it’s unfortunate that PC games with a multilayer component, outside of MMOs that offer a 10-30 day free trial, don’t work harder to support their fan base. (And the Heros sidekick system is one of the better MMO systems for making a new person able to play with somebody who has a much higher leveled character.)

     If I have Red Alert X, and maybe one of my other friends does, but 2 of them don’t, I can’t get together for a weekend and play with them without dropping an extra $30-$130 (depending on the age of the game), often involving a trip to a brick and mortar store, and a lot of hassle to install and patch to get everybody to a point where we can play together. This for a game where the only time those other 2 may play is when we’re lanning together that one weekend. I think PC vendors really need to look closely at how they distribute games, at making temporary keys available for little or no money, and at truly supporting the PC playing populace. And make patching easier. I think it’s sad that more vendors don’t have universal updaters.

     Piracy is going to happen. I don’t think it’s wise to punish the paying customers because of it. I think the time would be better spent making it easier for more people to become paying customers. I applaud those gaming houses that do this.

116. Galdon Says:
     October 5th, 2008 at 5:09 pm

     I hate it when people try to excuse themselves when they are pirating. The only one excuse i did accept was “i cannot find the game anywhere TO buy it” in relation to old NES games and the such. That excuse does not work any more with introduction of the virtual console, now you just have to wait for it to come out.

     To be simple, purchasing a game means you are buying the right to play the game, as is, on the system it was sold on. buying game X does not give you the ‘right’ to pirate game X collectors edition, or game X PC version. its not rocket science, its exactly like hooking up your house to receive your neighbor’s cable TV, you are stealing a service.

117. Cristian Remy Says:
     October 8th, 2008 at 8:52 am

     Well, i’m a PC gamer for all my life, and i always found PC pirated games for maybe 700 games that i already played i pirated 99% of them, until i start to see that the PC games sales are too bad, (and really outside are people losing their jobs by the piracy, so i start to buy games). So there aren’t excuses about PC piracy, if the game suck don’t buy it, if you liked without excuse BUY IT. All PC gamers (myself included) sucks because we never bought games, so if you really want continue playing games we need to buy it.

     There are not excuses for all of we ..ing free loaders

118. the_grim Says:
     October 10th, 2008 at 5:12 am

     Night10194: Of course pirates are the main reason there needs to exist some form of anti-piracy. What we’re discussing here, though, is that to date such countermeasures have been largely ineffective, and in some cases may even cause the problem to escalate. Because of current anti-piracy policy, legit customers such as yourself are suffering the consequences, not being able to play your legally purchased game because of a missing CD-key.

     And THAT’S terrible.

     Some would at this point resort to piracy, justifying the download of a crack with the fact that they already paid for the game and are entitled to playing it. This means that the DRM has literally increased piracy. Legally it’s theft, but whether or not it is MORALLY acceptable, is open to debate.

     Memyself: Law is not necessarily the ultimate authority. Laws have changed throughout the history, and there are still several I think are not reasonable and should be changed… The morality of pirating is a tricky debate, and cannot be dismissed by simply stating that it’s illegal. Jaywalking is illegal, but I personally trust my own perception when determining if it’s reasonable to cross a street with no cars anywhere to be seen.

119. the_grim Says:
     October 10th, 2008 at 6:39 am

     I might as well expand a little on the problematics of music, movie and TV series pirating. Unlike a video game, a movie lasts for a couple of hours. You’re not likely to watch it again tomorrow. That said, it takes proportionally more effort to drive to a movie store and buy a DVD instead of downloading a torrent, compared to buying a video game which you play every evening for the next couple months or so. In the former case you spend as much time acquiring the media, as you spend actually enjoying the entertainment. That’s where the laziness threshold of a “convenience pirate” kicks in. It’s not just that they don’t want to pay a frigging $20 for a DVD, that’s like one hour’s worth of salary for someone with a day job. It’s simply that they’re too lazy to bother, and use an instant, free download service known as the “warez scene” instead.

     This applies to music and games as well. After I got a credit card the amount of my purchased music albums and games has literally multiplied. Now it’s finally just as easy to log on EA store or an mp3 service, and download the stuff you want, as it is to log onto a torrent site and download it for free. Personally, that’s the main reason I’m buying more games and albums than before; Earlier it was just too easy to pirate compared to the legal purchase.

     I’m not saying that laziness justifies theft. I’m only saying that currently it’s so trivial to pirate an mp3 song, that some people (especially teenagers) don’t even see it as a crime. The risk of getting caught as a casual torrent/peer-to-peer user is so low, that almost nobody quits pirating out of fear of going to jail. It’s just a matter of convenience, and, for many pirates, convenience matters more than legality or morality. Companies need to focus more on easy-to-use online services, if they want to get these casual pirates to buy their products. Often it’s not about the price, but the ease of use. I was happy to pay 30 euros for Crysis Warhead, as the downloading and installing from EA store was just as quick and easy as getting a cracked version from some warez network.

     TV series, on the other hand, have some additional problems in them. If you live outside US, and want to follow your favourite TV programme, you have to wait months, even years for the latest season to be broadcast in your country. Even then you get poor quality digital TV version of the series (in Finland we don’t have HDTV), and have to check your evening schedule every Tuesday to not miss the show. In some cases it’s simply not possible to watch a show legally. It will not be broadcast for another year, the DVD collection can’t be sold outside the North-American region until after it’s been broadcast, and online TV services offering the show for download only work within the US. That leaves you two options: Either download a HD quality version of the latest episode 90 minutes after it’s aired in the US… or not watch the show at all. Both options give the broadcasting and production companies zero income. Where are the lost sales?

     Now you’ll say that “you just have to wait for the DVD collection, you still have no right to watch the show for free”. And that is correct, perhaps I have no legal or moral right to do that. But if I missed a show when everyone’s talking about it, I wouldn’t bother buying it on DVD 12 months after the hype has died and I’ve already heard all plot spoilers. The income for the production company is, also in this case, zero.

     But the strongest factor in pirating a TV show is, again, convenience. Why wait months to see a crappy, artifacted TV broadcast, when you can download a HD version instantly? Or download the entire previous season and watch it anytime you like, instead of waiting for weekly reruns? If the broadcast companies offered a worldwide, HD quality downloading service for a few bucks an episode, I’d be the first in line to use it. But since my only option additional to waiting several months is to be a lazy, impatient prick and enjoy a HD broadcast from my 24″ computer screen instantly after the show’s been aired, I usually choose that.

120. Memyself Says:
     October 10th, 2008 at 1:25 pm

     @the_grim: As I’ve already clarified once in this discussion, I’m not the one who introduced legal terminology. And I certainly did not dismiss the debate with an appeal to legality. I’ve simply responded to an erroneous understanding of what is and is not legal. I’ve also not limited my argument to the adherence of what is or is not legal.

     So yeah, you can jaywalk. You know it isn’t legal but you know when it’s reasonable to do. Agreed. But you’re not claiming that jaywalking is actually legal when it is not. Unless you are, the analogy does not hold.

     Why does no one ever examine the genesis of a discussion and instead only respond to the most recent comments made, as if they exist in a vacuum? It’s annoying. If you’re going to criticize a person’s argument, take the time to understand what the argument in question is, and why it is being made.

121. the_grim Says:
     October 11th, 2008 at 3:44 am

     Memyself: Well, your very first reply to this thread was dismissing David’s argument about the differences between physical theft and copyright infringement by labeling them “absurd semantic myths”, followed by a bunch of legal definitions. So yeah, legally it is theft, we all get that. I even acknowledge your view about pirating being theft in spirit, because you’re getting something for free that isn’t yours to take.

     But there are varying degrees of piracy that are arguably less “bad”. A recent example: Yesterday I was at a friend’s home watching “Mad Max 2″ when it was aired on local TV. But instead of watching the broadcast, my friend downloaded a superior quality DVD rip, and we watched that.

     Was that theft? Legally, of course. Morally, we were getting something for free, something not for us to take (better quality, ability to pause the movie at will). But was it a “lost sale” to the movie company? Hardly.

     Were piracy not possible, or even a bit harder (so it took more than one hour to find and download a movie), would I have gone to a video store instead and bought the movie on DVD (assuming I could even FIND a DVD of Mad Max 2 anywhere)? No, I would not. I would have watched it on the TV and suffered the slightly worse quality.

122. Memyself Says:
     October 11th, 2008 at 11:19 am

     Yes. My very first post was in response to someone who insisted that copyright violation is NOT theft. So you saying that we are all in agreement that what is under discussion IS theft doesn’t really hold up.

     I’m not in disagreement with your assessment of scale and circumstance. If the entire thread had been filled with individuals making the argument you are making, I would not have commented at all. But it isn’t. A quick read of the posts above will show you that not everyone agrees with your definition of theft.

     Let’s take a quick look:

     David: “You are not justifying theft, Elizabeth, you are justifying copyright infringement. Say what you will about copyright infringement, but it is not theft. Two separate actions. If I steal something, the person I took it from does not have it anymore. If I infringe on a copyright, the only loss in a possibility of a potential sale.”

     Rollin: “The internet doesn’t change the fundamental differences between copyright infringement vs theft; it just alters the methods and scale of distribution.”

     Andrew: “You have not actually stolen anything, you’ve got a copy.”

     Ravenshrike: “With copyright infringement, absolutely nothing is being taken. Something is being reproduced for effectively free. Ergo, it IS NOT THEFT.”

     So again, no. Not everyone is in accord here. David introduced the argument that the downloading of protected materials is not theft. I responded. And so on. Again, I do agree with your stance. But your stance is not the one that was being advanced by any of the individuals I was in discussion with. Are there degrees of theft? Yes. That’s why we don’t punish all thieves equally. There are ethical and moral considerations to each and every crime. There are degrees of harm inflicted on the victim.

     But theft is still theft. Regardless of scale. What changes isn’t the definition, but the reciprocal action.

123. Cheshire Cat Says:
     October 14th, 2008 at 4:59 am

     Is piracy THEFT….. I don’t personally think so in classical terms because you have deprived the original owner of nothing…. Its semantics…who cares what you call it. ‘A rose by any other name’. The real crux is ‘is it wrong?’ and here I think it starts to get grey for reasons detailed below.

     Memyself you seem to have confused and inflated the value of media in our society today. Media only has a value associated with the value you can extract from it, how much you can sell it to people for. The pirate ISN’T someone you can sell it to so its value to you as a sale to the pirate is ZERO. Because it is merely media and not a physical thing it has no real value in and of itself. 1s and 0s, copy six times or copy once. It makes no difference to the value of the original item. If the pirate eats my apple the apple is gone.

     What value does a picture of a painting in a gallery have when I take that it and display that picture at home (a gallery which I might add is free in most countries around the world) ZERO. The painting might be worth millions but my COPY of that painting is worthless to the owner of said painting. I have obtained a digital copy of the painting and I now gain full benefit of that copy and the owner can’t sue me for theft. So digital still pictures that are copies of an original aren’t piracy.

     What about music as that is an industry that so often is compared to computer games? The value of that product is next to zero as well. I can hear it for free on the radio. I can visit a hundred sites on the web where I can listen to it for free. I can even set up my own web radio station to play exactly what I want to listen to every minute of the day (and no there’s no royalty being PAID when I visit official record companies youtube video of song X and listen to it ad nausea) They have determined that there is ZERO value placed on the music for the general public in an attempt to make you a fan and thus have you become a paying customer. I can even LEGALLY tape it off the radio and listen to it. Once again I have made a copy and am not a pirate (It’s legal in Australia thanks to a 2006 amendment to the archaic copyright act) how is that in reality any different to downloading it from somewhere?

     What about television? TV is available for free on almost every stations website minutes after the show has aired in the USA. So the TV show now has ZERO value to the owner minutes after it has first aired as every single person can now watch an often uninterrupted free digital version. Why do they do this, again to ensure the FANS, the PAYING customers don’t miss an episode, as free publicity to entice and create new fans etc. Where this falls over is that this free episode does not extend beyond the US borders (the world is a global environment now and companies will need to realise this). Everyone else has to wait for their local distributor to purchase and air the episode some times years later and then they too often make it available for free on their web site. Once again I am allowed to legally copy it off the TV or off their web site so me having a free digital copy is obviously OK.

     It all starts to really fall apart when you consider where to draw the line. If my brother lives with me only on weekends is he allowed to view my personal copy? Am I allowed to lend it to him to watch at home? I could with my bought copy on DVD or my book. What about if I visit the USA every week on business and legally download the episodes off the companies web site? Am I allowed to show it to my friends back home in another country that won’t get to see it for weeks maybe years? If not why not? I can show them the pictures I took in the Smithsonian. Those other digital copies I obtained legally. I can show them the youtube video of a music song.

     Its only value is the value I can gain from it by those WILLING to pay for it. It holds absolutely ZERO value to the copyright owner to those unwilling to pay for it.
     The TV show is only worth as much as they can sell it to station X. After that it’s almost worthless. Its only value is what I can make off DVD sales from serious fans. PAYING customers, that prize which everyone is seeking. Someone isn’t going to buy a TV series a year after it airs just on a whim. So yes piracy is wrong …. sometimes…. kinda. Is it theft…. certainly arguable in many many circumstances both for and against. Since it is such an ambiguous argument without any clear cut boundaries how about the companies get with the program and start properly dealing with their customers rather than attempt to control something they cannot and something which probably isn’t in their interest to anyway. Look at Microsoft. It got where it is today because everyone pirated windows and stuck it on every pc in the world till it became the dominant OS. I have never burnt as many cds as I did while at university and I also have never bought as many, or attended as many concerts or bought band shirts etc.

     A few other points you and others raised. ‘Therefore, we elect officials who appoint judges who interpret the intent of the law. You may not agree with their interpretation, but that does not change the fact that their interpretation is enforceable.’
     That’s no entirely correct because you then challenge the interpretation. The case gets thrown out and to fill the hole they create new laws. A law has to be strictly defined. Once it can be challenged it will be cast aside and a new law passed to cover the hole.

     Another poster above said we must obey it because it’s the law. Well that’s not exactly correct either. We certainly decide every day which laws we will obey and which we will not because they are stupid. Jaywalking was a prime example. It is your duty to challenge an unjust or stupid law and they will ALWAYS be beaten (salt laws in India, prohibition etc. Stupid laws that were never going to work because the general public didn’t accept them) they also said we should campaign our politicians to get the law changed. Well that just doesn’t work unless you have 90% of the population screaming about it (like India with salt and USA with prohibition) or if you have lots of money like big business. In Australia we have been campaigning very heavily with rational arguments, massive campaigns, letters to every politician under the sun and even raising on political analyst shows the desire to have a R18 adult games classification and it has slowly gone nowhere because of one idiotic pig headed attorney general in South Australia (may he die a horrible horrible death for being so stupid and having such power… kind of akin to a certain global leader about to leave office thankfully)

     In short piracy and the definition of it is too grey to be defined. So the companies should adjust to the modern world, develop proper distribution methods for a digital age and ignore the pirates that will NEVER give you their money anyway, however some people who trial your wares will certainly become paying customers (if you don’t attempt to slap a $200 thousand dollar law suits on them or use stupid DRM to make their life so painful they STOP being paying customers)

     And for all those who say you cant make money when competing against a free product I say tell that to all the companies selling bottled water.

124. Memyself Says:
     October 14th, 2008 at 1:02 pm

     Since when is water free? It costs money in the US.

     I’ll say it once more. Most forms of “free” media you cite have a built in payment structure. Just because the user is not paying for the music on the radio doesn’t mean that music is free. It IS being paid for. Additionally, even the example you site with Youtube is a flawed analogy. Youtube broadcasts are tax deductible as a form of advertising. Youtube offers definitive tracking (number of viewers equals rate of tax deduction) and localized marketing. Yes, it operates at a loss. But it’s not free. Not at all. It’s called advertising. And you don’t get to decide to take an album, duplicate it and distribute it as you choose just because it might advertise the music. If for no other reason than you are doing so in a way that does not allow the company in question to recoup their losses.

     TV on websites free? You must have missed that many of those sites have a form of advertising built in. Let’s look at Hulu.com. Advertsing. There ya go. That’s not free, no matter how much you twist and turn. And again, deductible. The same can’t be said when you download a show through Bitorrent. Value is gone after broadcast? Since when? Are you arguing both the modern era of technology or the pre-digital age? These shows sell on pay per view and iTunes and other places. Plus,the creator of media don’t just sell a show once and walk away. Royalties are paid on every broadcast. I’m sorry, but in so many ways here, you have no idea what you are taking about.

     Deprivation is not required in the definition of theft. Not in the US. That’s an internet myth. So returning again and again to that argument will not make it correct. Can you appeal a court decision? Of course. But that does not make the decision any less binding. Until you successfully appeal, the ruling stands.

     Media is only worth what people will pay for it? Sure. But just because you won’t pay does not entitle you to it for free. I won’t pay to see movies in theaters. So If I sneak in to a low attendance show, they have lost nothing. I should be free to do this, right? Why even sneak? I’m costing the theater nothing.

     Wrong. It doesn’t matter if you don’t represent a lost sale. Anyone can make that claim. Everyone will make that claim. It is impossible to separate the people who are lying. Therefore you DON’T have two separate rules for paying customers and freeloaders. Furthermore, if a company wants to price themselves out of business, that is there choice to make. Music/movies/tv/games are not a necessity. They are a commodity. there are no pricing restriction in place, nor should there be.

     And finally, I reiterate: You claim that intangible products hold no value? Since when? That’s another happy myth of the internet spread by those who seek to justify their actions. It’s always the same: “I would never have paid anyway. It holds no real value. Copyright laws are oppressive. Radio and libraries are free.”

     It all boils down to the same thing: “I want it for free”. Well, that’s against the law. Yes, the masses can change the law. But the masses have never been known for their stunning intelligence. Do you think that piracy isn’t affecting media availability? Do you think that companies will continue to produce their products at a loss? Remember, piracy created DRM. Not the other way around.

125. Cheshire Cat Says:
     October 15th, 2008 at 3:07 am

     It seems you have either ignored, misinterpreted or twisted my intended meaning. I’m highlighting that there are plenty of instances where I can get things for free. I am allowed to copy them and view them so where does that actually stop and suddenly become something illegal?

     You know that stuff that falls from the sky? It’s called water and funnily enough you aren’t charged by Gaia for it. You also aren’t charged to use a public fountain found ALL over Europe and Australia and water costs a LOT more bottled in Europe and oz compared to the USA. I’m sorry your country is retarded and thinks social benefit is a stupid concept. Flagrant capitalism is working really well for you right now isn’t it (my sister living in the USA is stoked that her house is now worth less than what she owes and she hasn’t taken out a sub prime loan or done anything wrong)

     So you say it again MOST forms not all. And therefore the exception proves the rule right? The rule that copyright, copying and right to view are a grey area in which all aren’t created equal.

     Perhaps I didn’t explain the youtube example well enough. I am attempting to point out that my personal repeat use and sharing with others is indeed free in many many situations and youtube is certainly an example. You state that they monitor usage and receive tax write offs etc (I don’t really see how that works but I’m not an expert in stupid US laws where zero costs times millions of viewers somehow equals major tax break). But if I have 10 songs open in new tabs and disconnect after the first viewing I can now listen to them constantly. I can also show them to any of my friends. If I am legally allowed to copy radio or TV why not youtube (there are plenty of pieces of software that can do this) and then I can view it as many times as I like with no recorded repeat usage.

     Maybe American shows are littered with advertising on download (we can’t access it outside the US so I have to take your word for it) But I can promise you most here aren’t. Even if they were I could easily skip the ad or cut it out. You have Tivo, we don’t even have that yet, but we can still manipulate the digital copy all we like once it’s sitting on our hard drive. I can copy it off TV to my digital set top box and remove all the ads to watch at my leisure. Can I show it to a friend? Can I lend my set top box to a friend? Where do you draw the line? My point is that it’s stupid to even attempt to. The TV show producer only made money off their initial sale to my local TV station. After that whether he gets 16 people to watch it or 6 million it makes no difference (apart from for that TV stations advertising revenue). Pay TV isn’t like in the states. We all have free television paid for by advertising which you can now easily remove or skip if you have the right equipment. How about those royalties on repeat broadcast? I can tell you for a fact that my local TV station (they are region based for advertising with a state in Australia) makes a few thousand dollars tops an hour during non prime time. So after wages and distribution how much is left over to purchase that episode of MASH? 10 cents? Maybe $1. I’d say that is pretty valueless. Especially when you divide it by the number of viewers.

     You say these shows still sell…. That’s my point exactly. They sell to FANS. People who WANT to pay for them. They don’t sell to magpies collecting everything whether they like it or not. They don’t sell to children with $5 a week pocket money they certainly don’t sell to the guy who only ever watches everything for free on free to air TV etc etc. I’m not saying these people are ENTITLED to it as you seem to believe everyone is saying. I am however saying that if it’s available for free somewhere then it’s silly to attempt draw a line in the sand when others are getting it for free. This is exactly the type of business model media companies need to embrace. Fast, secure, SAFE digital delivery will always find a market. I would LOVE to be able to buy LOST or something from itunes for $1 just after it airs. But you decided because I’m not in the USA I can’t. I can however buy it when visiting and then bring it back to Australia and show all my friends before it airs here. The arbitrary lines on a map don’t exist in a modern world where me, communicating on a TV show forum will be discussing episodes I haven’t seen. Why am I going to tolerate that.

     And the short answer is we didn’t tolerate it.
     Australia used to be the number one television downloader in the world. We were the torrent KINGS. Why? Because our local stations brought shows out here often THREE YEARS after they were aired in the states. Since the mass download the stations started ‘fast tracking’ episodes from the USA generally showing them within one week after they are aired in the states. The public decided they didn’t like a law. They broke it and business listened.

     You can reference all the US law you like. But thanks to our wonderful free trade agreement the US law means squat to us Aussies (unless our government feels it’s a big enough crime and we get extradited) So while random judge in the USA might determine everything under the sun is theft thankfully our legal system has FAR more common sense built into it and stupid cases are thrown out (you know all those ones we get sent in emails detailing the stupidity of the US legal system).

     Heres another example where their attempt to control usage has gotten out of hand. I remember one the Penny Arcade guys commenting how they had to purchase two copies of a downloadable game because they had a console at work and one at home. Why the hell do they have to do that? If they had a hard copy (which isn’t available) they would be able to take that copy with them to work. Stupid control system screwing over the consumer. Or what about Michael Moore wanting to deliver a free movie to his fans and some random company crying fowl when people outside the USA try and get it for free?

     So I say again. Ignore the pirates you can’t beat them and it only costs you money. Change the business model and appeal to your customer base and attempt to grow said customer base.

126. Memyself Says:
     October 17th, 2008 at 10:03 am

     Most of your last post is pointless, as you would know if you were taking my comments into consideration contextually. I clarified from the onset that I was speaking specifically about the US. How things are where you live are 100% irrelevant. Of course my statements do not stand where your country is concerned. I’m not speaking of your country.

     Yes, rain falls from the sky. But it doesn’t flow from my tap for free. That’s reality. Sure, I could set up a complicated system and distribute rainwater throughout my house. I can also write and produce my own television shows if I’m so inclined. That doesn’t change the fact that not all water is free and neither is the labor of another person.

     And the public drinking fountains here are paid for with tax money. So again, I have to say that your point is irrelevant.

     Though actually, the drinking fountain is a good example. You think it’s free because you don’t have to pay. Does no one pay? Ever? Do the fountains fall from the sky with the rain? Seriously? Yes, you can acquire something that seems “free”. But it isn’t free. Not really. Just because you are not paying does not mean that the existing business model is not skewed to support certain forms of distribution that you perceive as “free”. It’s not an arbitrary line in the sand. It’s an important distinction between accessing material within a set infrastructure designed to support the pre-existing business model and acquiring something outside the business model and cutting out any form of compensation from the creator.

     Is the business model flawed? Does it need to change? Yes. I already said this before you entered into the conversation. But just because you disagree with the business model does not mean you are allowed to bypass it.

     By the way, your jackassed comments about the state of my country are noted and determined to be pure jackassery. I’m hardly responsible for yous sisters stupid decisions to purchase a house during the artificial rise in prices. Nor do I support many of the practices that have led my country to the point it is in, and am in fact in favor of a much more socialist direction. Taking pot shots at the sad state of things here is a poor form of discussion and undermines what little credibility you have. It would be like me pointing that of course your nation was the “torrent kings”. It’s a nation founded by criminals.

127. orbis_tertius Says:
     October 17th, 2008 at 2:27 pm

     Without getting into any of the discussion on the comment thread, I was passing by and had something to say about the original rant:

     Well written, and you make some good points. However, saying that continued piracy proves that even “bad” games are worth something to large amounts of people might have been more effective if you used a more current example than “SiN Episodes.” Actually, I was really curious about which games are being pirated well after release and/or commercial/critical failure, or which are the most pirated games. I guess I can predict some of them - they’d be the most successful ones - but what about others that didn’t achieve mainstream success yet are still being pirated steadily?

     Links to other sources of information regarding these factors would have been appreciated, and might have bolstered your point.

     Thanks for the interesting read.

128. Cheshire Cat Says:
     October 18th, 2008 at 9:41 pm

     You can speak specifically about the USA all you want but as much as it would like to believe it does not exist in a vacuum. When it attempts to enforce its laws upon the rest of the world then my arguments or points become VERY relevant. When they try to shut down ‘the pirate bay’ and can’t because that country has a different definition of theft and copyright breaching then it holds as relevant to consider their opinions and laws and perhaps review your own.

     When they also completely disregard their own laws and business systems when it suits them then it becomes more relevant. Wireless technology as is currently in use was developed by the CSIRO as Australian government science organisation that incidentally produces a very large number of beneficial discoveries punching well above its weight compared to funding. It is currently embroiled in a legal battle with a large number of companies who stole its discovery and don’t wish to pay the price set by the CSIRO. Companies’ disregarding the very laws which they then attempt to bring to bear against others. Isn’t that EXACTLY the same as people stealing their intellectual property? I mean technically no physical property was stolen yet in this instance business has decided it does not wish to pay the price set by the owner of the product. Why are they allowed to bypass it when it suits them yet enforce it at other times?

     Or how about another example of idiotic US law upholding an obviously wrong trademark. A company manufacturing ugg boots was taken to court in the USA by the trademark holder of the word Ugg a company founded in the 70s. They successfully shut down the ugg boot business for infringing upon their trademark. They then turned their attention to a number of Australian businesses who were selling over the internet into the USA. They of course had their case thrown out under our judicial system for it was obvious from mountains of evidence the word UGG was in common use since at least the 1920s well before this company registered the trademark.

     These two examples highlight the faulty legal system in the USA. Someone pirating a good is VERY different to someone profiting from another’s work (which is how most of the rest of the world views illegal copyright infringement). As I have pointed out many times there ARE legal ways to copy and share these products, there ARE legal ways to obtain those products for free. The internet has simply made it easier for us to do it and businesses rather than attempt to modify to meet the new system are trying to stifle it and hold on to their old ways. (that did the typewriter manufacturer a lot of good didn’t it =P) You keep saying that in many instances where I get something for free that it was paid for somewhere along the line. How is that at all relevant? Of course it was paid for. By the producer of the product. The advertising dollars giving it to me for free did NOT pay for me to copy it legally and view it at another time LEGALLY. Don’t you understand? By having legal methods of obtaining something, legal methods of copying that product and legal methods of viewing it again I have circumvented their business model already. Piracy is just a larger scale occurrence of what has occurred forever in our history. People sharing something isn’t illegal no matter how hard they may try. When I buy a book I can do what I like with it. It may say no one is allowed to borrow it but they can’t stop me lending it to a friend. The internet just made this easier, bigger and of a higher quality and that’s where they are getting upset. It’s because people no longer lose quality when they copy things. SO they therefore need to adjust their business models to accommodate the new technology not cling to outdated ideas.

     You do really know how to twist an argument until it no longer resembles the original argument don’t you. Let’s redress my original statement about water. ‘And for all those who say you cant make money when competing against a free product I say tell that to all the companies selling bottled water.’ What does that have to do with HOW the water is free? My point was that piracy doesn’t stop people earning money from a product they are trying to sell when there is a free alternative. So companies blaming piracy for their lack of profit is a furphy.

     As to my so called jackassed comments I didn’t say you were responsible but rather that your government and its approach to business and relationship with big business was responsible for the ills of your country. Also that your appalling legal system should NEVER be used as a supportive argument to determine how or why things should work in a certain manner. The US legal system is in direct contradiction of itself on sooooooo many levels. Maybe you should fact check my countries criminal history compared to your own. The USA was a penal colony of Britain for almost as long as Australia yet every American always calls us a country of criminals. The USA also has a far higher rate of crime and imprisonment than the rest of the western world. Purported jackass comments against the US government and legal system aren’t something to be derided as they are often true. Yanks are great people, shame about their government. (Much like ours for the previous 11 years thank god that’s over).

129. Memyself Says:
     October 19th, 2008 at 11:13 am

     Of course the US doesn’t exist in a vacuum. But you seem to have forgotten that it was you who addressed me. Not the other way around. My argument stems from another individual arguing that piracy does not equal theft. That;s how the specific US law entered into the discussion. Why should I have to take other countries into consideration when discussing US law? To do so would be pointless. I absolutely agree that US law is not relevant outside US borders. So how is that akin to approaching this topic in “a vacuum”? In US law. illegal distribution = copyright violation. Regardless of profit. How the rest of the world views this is irrelevant when discussing the specifics of US law.

     As for the rest, I stated long before our exchange began that copyright holders are the ones who need to adapt, not the consumer. As for your dismissal of my argument that legally free products have a built in pay structure that pirated versions lack, you’re failing to account for th advertising dollar end. That’s advertising dollars paid for from outside the company in question. In the US, the most successful form of free distribution relies on advertising revenue. You remove that from the equation and you cut out the support for the creator of the material.

     I don’t know why you find the water analogy (that you introduced) complicated. Of course water is free. But distribution of water is not free. If I tap into my neighbors water supply, the one they pay the government for, I am stealing the water. It doesn’t matter that I could wait for rain and get the same product for free.

     There is nothing wrong with criticizing the US government. I do it often enough that I am typically painted as unAmerican. But your snide comment about the state of our economy here was nothing but uncivil as rude and not entirely accurate. Which is why I used the criminal example in regards to your country. I am well aware of the history of both our countries and am obviously pointing out that the asinine approach of your one post does more harm than good to a dialog.

130. Cheshire Cat Says:
     October 20th, 2008 at 2:27 am

     Well it seems that coming together under different terms we could easily agree.

     I know there are lots of apparent free media sources that are paid for by other means but there are still also plenty of examples where this isn’t true. If it’s available for free anywhere then the copyright arguments fall flat. It makes the whole piracy debate somewhat moot. You can only have it for free in the way I specifically state even in this wonderful world of new technology which you are not allowed to enjoy or use to it’s full potential…. sounds kind of stupid doesn’t it?

     I still think you have missed my point about water too. Its one of the big arguments of media holders. That they can’t possibly compete against a free product (piracy). While things such as water are an obvious example of why this isn’t so as people buy an enormous amount of bottled water when they can get it for free all over the place.

131. memyself Says:
     October 21st, 2008 at 12:39 am

     I’m certain that on many aspects of the issue, we agree fully.

     However, I don’t agree that a single instance of product X for free equals moot copyright laws. I believe that a business has a right to control the distribution of their product fully. Even if their failure to distribute in a manner the general public would support causes them to go out of business. If I create a comic book, and I decide to release that comic book as a limited time only, copy protected, embedded slideshow on my website to promote the release of the physical copy, you scanning the comic and converting it to a .CBR file and uploading it to ZCult is a violation of my rights. It’s simply not yours to distribute freely, even if your distribution benefits me. That’s not your decision to make. The fact that I made it available for free first is irrelevant.

     I get the water analogy, I’ve simply been trying to point out how the analogy is flawed. Water is a limited resource, as people in my drought ridden state can attest to. Even if it weren’t, people pay for bottled water because of a perception that it is cleaner than any other source. I for one don’t agree with the water bottle companies preying on the masses like that, and don’t think that we should support an example that suggests that corporations can still profit from their intangible media by preying on their customers.

     Sure, you could put the fear of whoever into the general public that file sharing will destroy your computer. It’s already a popular tactic used to discourage. A percentage of people will buy the official versions, simply because they’ve been made afraid. So yeah, the copyright holders get paid. But for all the wrong reasons.

132. Phuckas Says:
     October 23rd, 2008 at 6:03 pm

     Im gonna continue to pirate games like never before, game developers put out turds of a game, half finished crocks of $HIT and then expect you to pay full 60$ on it. KEEEP DREAMING MORONS.Spore was an utter failure of a game and if I didn’t pirate it, I wouldnt of known it and wouldve had to have bought it. There are COUNTLESS examples where I downloaded games only to delete them 2-3 days later cause they sucked. I dont care if you children cant face it but games are not made with the same caliber they used to even just a decade ago. the graphics may be shiny and polished, true but the stories, the gameplay have ALL gone downhill.

133. memyself Says:
     October 23rd, 2008 at 10:24 pm

     Phuckas: “pore was an utter failure of a game and if I didn’t pirate it, I wouldnt of known it and wouldve had to have bought it. ”

     Yeah… if only there were some sort of active community where people could share their personal experiences with products and warn/educate potential customers about products. Perhaps some kind of massive electronic bulletin board accessible to anyone and everyone. A forum of a sort, where games and their quality (or lack thereof) could be discussed.

     If only such a thing existed. But since there obviously is no such thing, you were forced, yes FORCED, to pirate the game. Otherwise, who knows what nightmares might have ensued. You might have been FORCED to purchase the game.

     Idiot.

134. Ian Williams Says:
     November 8th, 2008 at 2:26 pm

     I don’t know too much personally about the recent piracy debacles(or whatever they’re called). And I did find this through a PA link. But still, I can see where you’re coming from. I don’t think massively pirating things right when they come out for salem or especially pirating ten times more things than you will ever play/watch/use, is anything but hurtful to the industry’s economy. That said, there are also people out there , probably about one for every 3 who pirates more than he buys, who buy ten times more than they can play, and are literally blindly feeding the industry, as they will buy any game they can get their hands on. Also, I find a lot of times that reviews, be they reviews by other gamers or by professional sites, dont really give me a feel for the game, and most games out there have no demos of any kind. This leaves us with either a)buy any game we’re interested in, and risk taking the hit and reselling for a fraction of the cost the majority we hate(example: Unreal 2 for Xbox, two days after release, in near mint, resold to EB games for $2), or pirate, try, and then buy and delete pirated copy or just delete pirated copy if it sucks.

     Another thing, is that a fair number of “pirated” games are ones we are denied– ones that were never shipped to the U.S. market, which we would otherwise have to spend as much as ten times normal price to ship here overseas, and possibly learn another language, to play otherwise.
     For example, Nintendo, idiots that they are, after shunting mother 3 to postponement for 13 years, only released it in a limited run gba cart in Japan. That shouldn’t be considered piracy.

     Still a good post, and I do see where you’re coming from, but as to DRM, it only impedes paying customers anyway–pirates just look for the cracked versions and avoid the whole fiasco.

135. Christo Says:
     January 9th, 2009 at 2:05 am

     hmmm. to me it comes down to this. im ok with using friends stuff. what about ppl with few friends? or no friends that have particular games? do these ppl deserve the short end? or lets say theres a 50 dollar game but a person is poor. cannot afford it. does this person not deserve to be entertained? especially when no one will be harmed in any REAL way? (rather than virtually or idealogically). this comes down to a major philosophical question to me: do the haves deserve better entertainment than the have-nots? in my mind everyone deserves to be entertained, especially since entertainment doesnt actually HURT anyone. does the rich person deserve to hear good music, see good movies, play good games any more than a poor person?

     i remember when a 50dollar game lasted 50-100 hours. next gen your lucky to get 10 hours on a single player. i for one just dont have the money for that kind of pursuit. does that mean i give up my lifelong love of video games? ha. i really believe in karma here. and if i was doing something ethically wrong, i will receive my comeuppance. funny that i havent yet…. know why? where theres smoke there is fire, and possibly someone burning. guess what? no one has seen any smoke…. if smoke rises in a distant wood, but no one sees/smells it, is anything burning down out of control?

     nope. doing dandy.

     makers will continue to make. the demand with a dollar sign is still more than enough to motivate and employ these ppl. ha we pirates are even making jobs for ppl. without us, many programmers would not have a job!

136. Christo Says:
     January 9th, 2009 at 2:11 am

     an addendum: all i feel i got in life is my wife, my doggie and my pc. i cant afford any more, not even kids. thankfully competent use of my pc has allowed me to enjoy things beyond my means. im not robbing a bank here, i am just looking at the money in the bank. they can keep it. The real pirates are the ones who PROFIT from others work, and even though friends have offered to pay me for burned stuff cus i have the know how- i just give it to them in the spirit of sharing something free. That would be wrong to profit from it. but to merely enjoy it? i dunno.

137. Christo Says:
     January 9th, 2009 at 2:13 am

     come on let the less able members of society enjoy the perks everyone else does.

138. Christo Says:
     January 9th, 2009 at 2:26 am

     another point maybe slightly off topic-
     movies go to theatre. ………………………………………………
     movies go to pay per view…………………………………………
     movies go to cable/dvd…………………………………………………..
     ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..movies get shown for free eventually 5 years after they come out on network tv.

     SCAM to make money at several points. if movies just came straight to internet, we wouldnt be lining numerous entities bank accounts with increasingly higher costs to us.

     personally i would pay to download a brand new movie to my pc and watch it at home on my 30-something inch monitor. big screen theater is nice, but sitting at home watching, able to pause and go to the bathroom when i want, and eat a STEAK while doing so (or if nostalgic for losing my money, eating 20cent popcorn) is actually preferable to leaving the house.

     ….waiting for the day i can see a brand new movie at home……………………………… pirating screeners every day till then! im er…saving the environment. less gas used, after all…

     ok so to bring this all back to the topic of games….. uh well it takes gas to transport myself to the game store too. but these cable lines we all have can really help us here… Why leave the house for something we call INTELLECTUAL property? i leave the house for what i wear and eat. lets get the industry to change already.

     i was being glib a moment ago, but now that i think about it, what if movies did go straight to download? how much gas would be saved? i bet it would be quite significant. even data on disc is becoming antiquated.

     i challenge anyone to calculate the carbon footprint left my merely going to buy these sort of things. i alone have hundreds of discs of “gone out and bought” 1’s and 0’s.

     we need to modernize. pirates are the only ppl who embrace this change of thinking. well ok radiohead too :)

139. mike3 Says:
     February 14th, 2009 at 11:16 pm

     “Wat you dont have is the right to decide wat laws are right and wat laws are wrong”

     Nobody can arrest me for my OPINIONS as to what laws are right/wrong, so yes I do have that “right”

     “and choose to follow that law and refuse to folow another.”

     No, I wouldn’t have THAT “right”, which is totally DIFFERENT. I purchase full games, not pirate them off the Internet.

140. mike3 Says:
     February 14th, 2009 at 11:18 pm

     I.e. one can still _follow_ a law that one has decided is “wrong”.

141. Corebel Says:
     February 17th, 2009 at 2:34 pm

     You have to learn about mathematical game theory. Most people are selfish, they will only do what maximizes the benefit to themselves. If you want those people to buy your game, the only way that will happen is if the laws against piracy are actually enforced. As long as a selfish person can do the calculation that the benefit of pirating minus the risk of getting caught is a net positive, that is what they will do. Copy protection doesn’t work, it is always broken. If the laws were widely enforced, people would do the risk analysis and would not pirate. Hint: the laws will never be enforced, so you might as well suck it up, piracy will never go away.

     If you can’t get enough buyers with your current business model, do like all other media industries will have to do, move to an ad-supported model. Hardly anyone will buy a PC game that they can pirate, but if you provide games for free with ads, only a very small portion of people will be annoyed enough by the ads to block them.

142. Digital Utopia Says:
     February 22nd, 2009 at 10:50 pm

     “You can point to Blizzard and Valve all you want. Not every developer is, or can be, a Blizzard or a Valve. In the real world, that’s just how it is. Other companies can’t really afford to sit around and generate twelve years of goodwill while they hope that their games turn out to be some of the best-selling titles of all time.”

     This statement, along with the “Beethoven or The Who” paragraph below it almost makes me laugh out of the absurdity of the concept. As PC gamers, we don’t require a company to have an epic track record, or even exclusively create the best game ever made for PC to want to buy their games. All we ask is whatever you crank out of your studio, whether it’s your parent’s basement or a company that makes more money than the GDP of small countries - is that your game doesn’t suck.

     The very reason why Valve, Blizzard, Rockstar and in the past id Software, get so much PC gamer love - is because they make great games. It’s not an exclusive club though. If Parent’s Basement Ltd. releases a game, we may pirate that game at first; but if it’s a great game we’ll go out and buy a copy. In return, if they continue making great games, this fictitious company very well might be the next Valve Software. After all, Valve wouldn’t be where it is without Half-Life, which in turn was built off a modified Quake engine, which in turn was built by id.

     No, it’s not an exclusive club; however, game companies - no matter how large they are (*cough* EA *cough*) should be held to a standard that does not require them to make “Beethoven or The Who” quality games, but does require them to at least come up with something better than K-Fed.

     That’s the issue here. Piracy is the one and only consumer tool to tell which game is worth the $50 they have to spend. Say all you want about demos, and they do help to an extent, but a demo is just an interactive commercial. Some game companies use the demo to give you an accurate feel for the game, while some just show all the “good stuff”, leaving you to experience the bad after they separate you from your money.

     No, the number of pirated games will never accurately depict lost sales, because not a single person who pirates a game has any intention at that point to purchase said game. Instead, the game industry should look at those numbers as potential customers who have judged their game and look at their sales figures to determine how many people thought it was worth paying for. Were your sales worse than expected? Then try making a better game.

     One last thing I’d like to comment on is this idea that the selection of PC games is less than consoles because console developers don’t want to lose sales to piracy. That’s a great concept, even if it’s logically flawed. Why? Well let’s start off by comparing the number of Xbox 360s or PS3s that were sold to the number of PCs out there that can run games to the quality that those consoles can.

     Now, keeping those numbers into consideration, realize that a game created for a console will run exactly the same way and the same speed for everybody that has that console. When you get into PC gaming, not only does a developer have to handle the various hardware/Operating system issues that can come up (i.e Vista, quirky Nvidia drivers), but also create scalable detail levels to handle the wide range of system specs.

     If you’re a console developer, and you don’t have money flowing out of every orifice, it is simply cost prohibitive to “port” your game to PC, let alone modify it so it would feel at home on the PC. Sure, piracy may be an additional deterrent, but nowhere near as much as the effort and cost required for a console developer to translate their product to the PC.

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