Thieves are indeed a “diverse” group of people.
They are all, however, deadbeats.
It’s unfortunate that the term “piracy” ever even came into vogue to refer to what is in fact simple theft. Particularly odd since the proper punishment for piracy is death, and the proper punishment for theft is rather less severe 
.
The whole point of me discussing this is because pirates have been around for ever, it’s like prostitution, you are not going to get rid of it. The point is that information is not rivalrous or scarce, therefore it has negligable distribution costs.
We’re dealing with
I’ve had discussions with brad wardell on this very topic and he says focus on your paying customers and don’t worry, nor complain about pirates, it’s a waste of energy and he’s right. Focus on the reality of the business and who your customers actually are, and pay attention.
I understand the pragmatism of finding a model that works in spite of them, I’d just prefer to be rid of them. Like real pirates–slaughtering all of them is not possible .
But it does matter.
Let’s have a look at the most common reasons/excuses for piracy:
So, here is a 99 cent game, independently developed by a few guys (or even just one?) and when he politley asked pirates to pay for their game everyone said “no”. That is what worries me, and that is one of the reasons why have copyright laws in the first place. Pirates almost never pay for themselves (no offense) and if we let this movement grow this will lead to some pretty ugly tings.
My point is, very few people will pay for something they can have for free, no matter how much they enjoy using it. Therefore we need a system to force people to pay for the things they consume. Before we find a better system to do this, no serious ‘creator’ will accept piracy. You are basicly asking them to live on donations and no worker will accept that.
If we are going to move forward, we need to look realisticly and not think that people are somhow good and will pay for themselves even though they don’t have to. We need a system to pay people, not an anarchy where anyone can consume everything without giving anything back.
I have to say this, and I don’t care if I get banned because it has to be said:
Foo3333 is an idiot.
What I get when I read his posts are that if someone likes a game enough, they will buy it. This is the stupidest thing I have read in a long time, really.
PonW gave him a great example of this situation, and Foo3333 tries to make an excuse. Plain and simple, if people can get something for free, even if it takes away sales from someone else, they will do it. They are not being affected by the situation, only benefiting from it. I hear how someone could not afford a game, so they just pirated it. Then they say they would not have bought it anyways. So, when I grew up, if I could not afford something, I did not get it. People today are spoiled and expect to get everything, usually at the cost of others, like through welfare, which I will get to later. If I wanted something bad enough, I would save my money up to buy it. If I had the money, and I decided I no longer wanted it, I would buy something else. People are just too spoiled.
If you take the time to download a game, movie, or music, you have shown an interest in it. If you keep it, you should pay for it, plain and simple. To say that game companies are recouping their costs from the game should put an end to the negative piracy talk is just as idiotic. More and more people are pirating games. What is going to happen is that more people are going to be pirating games, rather than buying them, and companies will no longer be recouping their costs.
More and more people are saying screw paying for not just games anymore. I have friends who have quit their jobs to go on welfare, no lie at all. Why work when you can get free food, housing, and everything paid? Now they sit at home playing their Xboxs and PS3s all day, pirated games of course because they are modded, while we pay for it.
Who cares if someone else loses out if you benefit. The one not benefiting needs to change because it must be their fault that their highly rated game is not selling, but many people are pirating it.
Foo3333, what happens when government steps up to tackle this issue? You know it will happen one day. Or if you get a letter in the mail that you are being sued for piracy? I hope you post on here for all of us to read.
Also, are you on welfare? You sound like because you expect everything to be given to you. I have an idea, lets not pay for anything, and see how much work actually gets down. Developers, like any worker, perform a job expecting payment, usually in the form of money. If they are not being paid, just like any other worker, they will quit, and find work elsewhere.
We are in tough times with jobs, and the only way to keep more jobs from being let go is by paying. What happens if nobody buys from a certain store? It closes. Workers are let go, and have to find new work. Well, if nobody is buying, no work is going to be available. The key is buying.
I guess we could all be like you and join the welfare line.
So shoe1985, out of all the pirates out there, do you think just every one of them is pirating cause they are lazy, greedy bastards?
No. Sure, most pirates are young people who obviously can’t wait to be able to buy a game. Young people know no patience. Also, young people are quite fond of finding ways to abuse the system, you know, rebeling. Is it wrong? Sure it is. Who can blame them? Nobody, just any one of us has been (or is, as I guess there are lots of young people around here) behaving like that. Pirates eventually grow into adults. And then, they start to earn their own money, and start to realize the value of work. They may not stop pirating ,but they start buying the games they deem worth it, and they get rid of the crap. Is this wrong? It’s not, as long as people play fair and actually buy games they like. And don’t tell me people don’t play fair, as I know for a fact, being one of those young adults, former pirates, that they do.
So, the one people hurting the economy are those young people who would rather pirate than beg their parents for money. Obviously there’s something wrong there, and we should jail both the pirates for pirating, and their parents for having impatient, lazy, greedy children.
Btw Shoe (though that’s also directed at Cliff), if you were, say, selling apples(people ranting about piracy like this analogy), and suddenly you found a way to duplicate apples at no cost, would you agree to give poor people all the apples they need if you got enough money to comfortably live from those who can actually buy some?
I don’t know about you, but I sure would.
See what I did there?
Do I get to pay my mortgage with these infinitely free and thus worthless apples?
See what I did there?
Software costs nothing to duplicate, does it make it worthless? You sell it at whatever price you think it’s worth, since you (as in, you Cliff) have exclusive ownership on it.
What I’m saying is, why not stop raging about lost sales when lots of those weren’t sales to begin with and would never be untill those people pirating get a regular income, which could take several years? Whether they’re pirating or not, you sell just as much copies.
I do realize that as an Indie developer, you have to squeeze just every few cents out of your games, as they’re your primary (only?) source of income, but then I do not support pirating indie titles, as they usually feature good demos, and either they’re good, and you can afford to support them by buying them (most indie games cost in the range of 5-20€ which I can afford easily), either they’re bad and you just throw the demo away.
Big compagnies, on the other hand, complain when they lack a few hundred thousands though they makes millions, largely compensating for developent and adverstising costs. People certainly deserve to be paid, but they’re largely going over the board. Of course, who am I to say some big CEO shouldn’t be allowed to drive a ferrari and own a yacht? He has every right to force over priced games down my throat. Now I consider I also have the right to delay my purchase untill I can afford the game, and usually I’ll just play the pirated version.
Wouldn’t the piracy issue be gone for you Cliff if you earned a fixed income every month, regardless of how many games you sold (as long as you still make some of course) ? Would you care much about piracy then? Sure, this isn’t happening anytime soon in our capitalist countries where politics are like worshiping privatization, but you get my point.
Jukelo, I would like to see some proof that mostly only young people, or people without a steady income downloads games without paying for them. I’m sure when people matures more people start pirating responsably, but is it realy to such an extent?
And if Cliffsk would earn a fixed income every month, who would decide how much he would make? Would that person make a fair decision, or abuse his powers? Would you give someone else exclusive rights to decide how big your paycheck would be?
It’s easier and better to give workers a system where they can make their own choices, like the free market, then it is to let others decide how much the work is worth. Copyright makes it possible for creative works to exists in the same free market system as physical works, i.e. if you need something, you have to buy it.
If we replace copyright and gives someone the power to decide exactly how much theese people are worth I think we will find that that power will be abused, similar to how communism was abused.
You want me to give up running a business and go get a day job?
Why don’t I have the same right to run a business and make money as the guy who cooks food for you in a restaurant? or the people who sell you holidays? or shoes?
Why do I lose the right to earn a variable amount just because people have found an anonymous way to take what I make without paying?
This is just an attempt to make piracy seem ok. It doesn’t work.
Because pirates don’t want you to run a buisness, they want you to run a donation based (or “pay as much as you want to”, as they would say) charity, and pirates are in the majority.
Well they can want things all they like. I don’t give a damn what pirates ‘want’. They arent paying me, so they are irrelevant. I care about my paying customers and what they want. If people don’t buy the product, they are totally and utterly irrelevant in terms of trying to dictate anything whatsoever about what kind of product gets made, how and for how much.
I want ferraris to be $1. I doubt the ferrari corporation cares about that.
i think managing piracy is about the balancing the percentages of idiots/kids/scocialist gamers vs the consumers who like and pay for your products or that can be ‘tempted’ to. Control (DRM) and access should be increased or decreased depending on what sort of age and gameplay type demographic the game is likely to attract.
cos lets face it demand outstripping supply/support is a big reason for this. Yes there are other social/monetary reasons for copying etc. For me, I heard what a steaming big turd COD2 was and frankly refuse to pay for all the advertising splurged to net as many console players possible, cos as a PC gamer, the game was a let-down.
SOASE and Supreme Commander on the other hand were a try before I buy, partly down to not having the money, but also unsure on how they run on my PC and in SOASE case I wanted to see if it was worth the hype before Buying it.
I brought both after playing them no more than a couple of days.
Piracy has increased due to how we manage media and how ‘big’ media are still far behind the times in living upto consumer expectation, yet alone living in the ‘real’ world (EA a Prime example).
Much though I dislike some of the big developers and their shoody i’ll thought out releases to satisfy the dumbed down console market, I dislike the childish ranting displayed by most of the pro-pirates even more
anti-copying software, anybody?
no, unless you can gurantee quick and painless replacement if disks become faulty (in x years time etc)
which just isn’t feasable.
Didn’t SOASE and Supreme Commander both have PC demos? I know SupCom did, because I tried it.
I’ll put piracy and game development in perspective:
Why should anyone buy space battles for $20 when they can rent and finish 4 console games for $5 or less from a rental?
I really think game developers have no idea the kind of competition they are up against. You’re not just competing on the PC you’re competing with other things gamers could be doing, I doubt most PC gamers are exclusive gamers, I know I am certainly not. I have owned NES, SNES, Genesis, Ps1, PS2, etc…
When I am gaming I am looking for value for money and the quality bar on a AAA game like say mass effect 1 which you can get for 10 or less today, vs say space battles which full price is $24, why should an a independent game developer hope to compete with all of yesterdays games that million dollar budgets and huge teams? I’m just saying that’s your competition for entertainment dollars, and on top of that piracy, that means you have - 1) Balls the size of the moon and 2) you’re just slightly crazy in that you like huge world defying challenges.
This is the real world logic that is often fundamentally broken inside the head of game developers, if you are making games - you should know what you’re up against before hand in terms of other games and things that persons time and money is competing against - and the competition is brutal.
That’s what it comes down to in the end. Mass effect 2 and Call of duty Modern warfare 2 sold into the millions, to say piracy is the end of everything is nonsense. Piracy is completely irrelevant. Supreme commander 1 sold over 1 million units on the PC.
Other games that get pirated a lot deserve to get pirated because they are the 1000th rehash of a genre over played - take Unreal tournament for instance, 2003, 2004, then UT3 didn’t do that well and epic got all nasty - epic had been making the same fucking game for YEARS, it’s called brand fatigue, this is why I have little respect for many game developers, you release the same game over time sales are going to drop-off sooner or later when you wear out a concept - it’s called being played out.
If startrek replicators were invented EVERYONE would be pirating the designs of a ferrari, and much more then that. The internet and the PC IS the startrek replicator for information.
Information’s costs is near zero and it’s not just you who is feeling it. Book authors and the publishing industry are scared stiff, they hate google news, digg, places like slashdot.org, etc, aggregators because it denies them advertising money, should we shut all those sites down to save the news industry and those reporters jobs, etc? The movie and game industry are also somewhat worried, but they still haul in shit tonnes of money regardless.
The real problem with making games is they cost too much to make today because hardware has advanted so much and peoples expectations are so high and there’s no programs (really yet) to auto-generate and/or pseudo-autogenerate good looking art assets which reduces art production costs and time by huge factor for those making the game, the truth is game developers need a quantum leap in tools development and asset production pipeline that are years away to cut development costs.
Information can be copied unlimited times.
But skilled men and women who create the information are still a finite resource. As long as games,movies etc are created by people, thoose people will need rights over what they make.
Let’s say a machine that could copy cars was created shortly after the car industry took off. People would copy and copy cars and the car companies would be pissed, they still need money to make new designs, after all. Would the car companies have invented things like the seatbelt or the airbag? I doubt so.
They would still have to charge their costumers somehow, and prevent people from avoiding the payment = they would do everything in their power to stop car piracy. We would have the same exact thing that is happening to the entertainment industries today.
I just want to say here that I became a customer because my attention was drawn because of the publicity around your NoDRM stance, and then I could download a demo and it was fun.
Same thing with iTunes, I only started buying there once they removed the DRM. DRM and copy/viewing restrictions annoy me to no end, and I try to vote with my money on those that take a sensible position on it. Thanks for at least trying, I hope it pays off.