The Faceless Master
Member
even in a hypothetical world without piracy, a good game can still easily not make a profit.duckroll said:
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Team Meat Talks Piracy.
- Thread starter Saty
- Start date
angular graphics
Banned
soldat7 said:
Good think piracy isn't stealing anything from anyone then?
soldat7 said:
I always wondered why people find it normal to "pirate a game and see if they like" while they don't steal stuff at the store before paying. Sadly, its the exact same thing while they see it different...
angular graphics said:
You steal the piece of software in question. Unless it was given for free of course. What's hard to understand there? Someone creates a piece of entertainment (it's THEIR creation, they own it). Then they decided to sell it you (not giving it for free) but people like you take it away for free. It's stealing. It's their piece of software, not yours and they didn't give it for free therefore you stole it. As simple as that. If you pirate something its because you agree it's ok to steal the item in question.
angular graphics
Banned
Ranger X said:
Because the store will lose the product they paid money to acquire?
The Faceless Master
Member
YOU WOULDN'T TEST DRIVE A CARRanger X said:
The Faceless Master said:
Then non-customers will get very fun product for free. It doesn't matter to most people if it is fun or not. The thought of paying for something if it's free just doesn't cross their mind unless a free product is significantly worse.
The Faceless Master
Member
the matter is already paid for, all you're doing is rearranging the components on the matter.soldat7 said:
I don't agree with these guys at all that there's nothing wrong with pirating. If we could shut it all down overnight I would do it in a heartbeat. But I certainly agree that it's not worth the huge sacrifices some publishers are making to fight it. The ideal solution is to make legitimate purchasers feel like they're getting something that pirates aren't, and to have a small token amount of DRM to deter the most casual pirates. Steam does both of those things.
Whenever I read developers talking about piracy in this way, I figure they just see it as a form as advertising. Put out a $50,000 commercial to air a few times on TV and hope people see it, or have $50,000 worth of copies pirated, and hope that they spread the word that the game is pretty legit.
Without any real knowledge on it, I would assume the word of mouth would get further than a few 15 second spots on TV.
Without any real knowledge on it, I would assume the word of mouth would get further than a few 15 second spots on TV.
The Faceless Master
Member
better than customers getting something that could be better but time and money was spent elsewhere instead.subversus said:
The Faceless Master
Member
the problem here is the theater or concert could be full, and that would inconvenience a paying customer. with DRM, what inconveniences paying customers IS THE DRM!AShep said:
angular graphics said:
After all, people have to pay up for every single TV show that pops up on TV to watch it. Suuuuure....
angular graphics said:
Well, I'm sure I was perfectly clear on my example. I'm talking about people who pretty much want their games for free; whoever is interested - be it slightly or very interested, I don't care - do NOT need to resort to piracy to test the waters first and you know it.
angular graphics
Banned
AShep said:
Answer this question straight up:
True or false: Not a single dollar of revenue is gained due to piracy.
blitzcloud
Banned
I'm gonna be sincere and hope I don't get banned prematurely for being a fool.
When I had a psx, and I was about 12 years old, and knew nothing of the suffering of developers and how damaging it was, I had games burnt. Rather than being me the executor, it was a friend of my parents who convinced them. In a way, i got bad teaching from them in this aspect. The only times I did get from friends "copies" of games it was simply because I had a junk of pc with a woodoo3d that could barely run anything, and to be honest, minimum specs are a lie. A total, lie. Minimum specs should mean i can run it on low fluently, not low at 10 fps... at the time, without internet speeds like today, downloading demos was not something we could do... What i'm trying to say in a way that some of the piracy problem comes from education
I won't judge people that try downloading a game to test if it will at least work on their system. I've had a couple games that i only could play fluently 3 years or so after release. One of them is half life 2. The other jediknight academy. Both were bought (jedi academy twice, one person stole one of my cds). So in that case, I can understand what they mean with "a pirated copy doesn't equal a lost sale"... but I also hate the high-horse defenders of "consumer rights" where they're entitled to get content they didn't pay for (sharing they call it) because it's not a real bulk (aka hardware).
Many times I've seen that people spend a thousand worth on their pc, then pirate everything. Cool, so how does this go... intel/amd deserves your money but the people who worked years on developing a game do not? Is it just a matter of the easiest theft without prosecution?
I know, my argument was quite inconsistent. Well, I wasn't trying to prove anything. As I said I was just being sincere. Hope I don't get banned for it.
PS: And to clarify further, i do NOT pirate. I very well understand the pain they go through, and if I want something but don't have the budget, I wait.
PS2: and to any moderator/administrator that is thinking that I should get banned for this, please contact me first. I'll be happy to provide proof of being a legit consumer of games nowadays, since long ago.
When I had a psx, and I was about 12 years old, and knew nothing of the suffering of developers and how damaging it was, I had games burnt. Rather than being me the executor, it was a friend of my parents who convinced them. In a way, i got bad teaching from them in this aspect. The only times I did get from friends "copies" of games it was simply because I had a junk of pc with a woodoo3d that could barely run anything, and to be honest, minimum specs are a lie. A total, lie. Minimum specs should mean i can run it on low fluently, not low at 10 fps... at the time, without internet speeds like today, downloading demos was not something we could do... What i'm trying to say in a way that some of the piracy problem comes from education
I won't judge people that try downloading a game to test if it will at least work on their system. I've had a couple games that i only could play fluently 3 years or so after release. One of them is half life 2. The other jediknight academy. Both were bought (jedi academy twice, one person stole one of my cds). So in that case, I can understand what they mean with "a pirated copy doesn't equal a lost sale"... but I also hate the high-horse defenders of "consumer rights" where they're entitled to get content they didn't pay for (sharing they call it) because it's not a real bulk (aka hardware).
Many times I've seen that people spend a thousand worth on their pc, then pirate everything. Cool, so how does this go... intel/amd deserves your money but the people who worked years on developing a game do not? Is it just a matter of the easiest theft without prosecution?
I know, my argument was quite inconsistent. Well, I wasn't trying to prove anything. As I said I was just being sincere. Hope I don't get banned for it.
PS: And to clarify further, i do NOT pirate. I very well understand the pain they go through, and if I want something but don't have the budget, I wait.
PS2: and to any moderator/administrator that is thinking that I should get banned for this, please contact me first. I'll be happy to provide proof of being a legit consumer of games nowadays, since long ago.
Easy_D said:
You're mixing things. The logic of supply and demand doesn't work like in the physical world there. You're just making a pointless but convenient comparison trying to make I-don't-no-what-point.
If cereals were working by downloads and that you had to pay for downloading it, pirating it would be stealing. It's very easy to understand. The world doesn't own you anything you know. People are creating stuff for you, in the case of games here, to entertain you. It's THEIR game, not yours, they offer it to you at a price. It's what you have to pay if you want to enjoy it. It's the fee required so you don't have to make such game yourself. This is not hard to understand. They do something for you, it's like a service, you give something back. In the case here its what's written on the price tag. If you enjoy THEIR game for free when they don't want to give to you for free = stealing.
rainking187
Member
Uh...if someone pirates the game and they tell all their friends about it and they all pirate it as well, at what point exactly is there a sale?
Steve Youngblood
Member
When you attack it from this vantage point, one is left with no recourse but to concede that, most likely, revenue is lost as compared to the theoretical parallel universe where nobody pirates anything.AShep said:
But, we could do this all day. True or false: We can accurately estimate precisely how much money is lost to piracy and justify a proposed DRM as a mechanism to save a quantifiable amount of potentially lost revenue.
The Faceless Master said:
I wouldn't steal a car, I would test drive it.
I wouldn't steal a game, I would rent it.
See the difference? Pirating is not renting. People will cry they pirate shit to try but at the end of the day, how many pirated games they end up buying as soon as they like it? Most probably next to none.
Mister Zimbu
Member
subversus said:
If I pay for a game and have fun playing it, I don't give a shit that someone else didn't pay and is still having fun. Why should I?
Especially if, as the above article says, the devs don't care either?
wutwutwut said:
A fair point. I'd say, though, that that's already been shown to not be *enough* of a downside to outweigh the positives of paying no money.
And sometimes the business models that work the best unfortunately trample over creative expression and artistry. It may be a reality, but that doesn't make it any more palatable.
Absolutely. But the critical point is this: are those benefits - and those benefits *alone*, you can't take the *game itself* into account in this argument - worth the asking price of the product as a whole?
Let's take Tetris. Imagine that we're in a world where Tetris is a brand new original game, and you want to release it on Steam. What do you add to it to make it worth a $5 asking price? Or what do you remove from the base version to make it into a "legit copy premium"?
Let's take Zork. What do you add to that? Or what do you remove from the base version to make it into a "legit copy premium"?
Let's take Super Mario Galaxy. What do you add to that? Or what do you remove the base version to make into a "legit copy premium"?
At some point you have to regard the legitimate benefits of owning the product *as* the product itself - since that's what you're actually able to sell - and the actual original *product* should just be regarded as a free sweetener - which is fundamentally ass-backwards and confusing.
At which point, how is a developer meant to budget it? Suddenly they have to pour resources into making a nice 'taster' game to tempt people, which works as a standalone unit, and on *top* of that they need to put development resources into the 'premium' content for a legit copy - when those resources could be put into making the actual *game* better.
I don't claim to have a solution, but I think there's a few more nuances to the problem you're not really considering.
IrishNinja
Member
Steve Youngblood said:
your question is far too pragmatic for this thread.
not that you need me to tell you, but prepare for platitudes where answers should be.
The way you combat piracy is to not treat your consumers like shit. You don't put retarded DRM on your games, you give them demo's or trials and you make them WANT to buy your game.
If anything a lot of publishers are pushing people away from buying games with their antics.
You can't get rid of piracy for good, the best thing companies can do is be pro-consumer.
If anything a lot of publishers are pushing people away from buying games with their antics.
You can't get rid of piracy for good, the best thing companies can do is be pro-consumer.
Steve Youngblood
Member
Not that I would endorse it, but what if you couldn't easily rent a game? What if you couldn't rent it at all?Ranger X said:
angular graphics
Banned
AShep said:
Do you honestly think that you can tell how many sales a game lost due to piracy?
If you do, please share with us, the formula.
snoopeasystreet
Member
They've come out and said this after SMB has been profitable. For the most part, the hype is over and they're looking for a long tail. They don't have a demo on PC so in terms of word of mouth, they're either depending on people who have already bought the game or pirates to evangelise it.
angular graphics said:
You're mixing things. There's no supply and demand logic in digital world. This is used by many people (like you) to justify stealing. People like you are missing the point really. Infinite supply = I can steal, there's no harm. Well, that's not how it works really. Goods are produced because there's people to buy them. What's important is the number of people that buys it, justifying the very making of the item. When people are pirating a game and somehow liking it, they are that much people less to justify the very making of said game. And it's not about measuring damage either (you didn't talk about that but you sound like that type of guy), it's about someone making a product with you and not wanting to give it for free. You take it away for free = stealing. If THEIR product, they made it for you, it's also their way of living. How is it ok to not give them their due? I mean, if they weren't there making games for you, you'd have to make those games yourself. This is obviously not worth any money right?
ashbash159
Member
I don't pirate games at all because I respect game developers so much.
However I have pirated quite a lot of films, and not felt good about it. I normally do it to see if a film is good or not, but hardly ever end up buying them. If the UK had Netflix I would subscribe to that in an instant. Love Film seems shitty to me, and there are not any other options I'd go with.
However I have pirated quite a lot of films, and not felt good about it. I normally do it to see if a film is good or not, but hardly ever end up buying them. If the UK had Netflix I would subscribe to that in an instant. Love Film seems shitty to me, and there are not any other options I'd go with.
Mister Zimbu
Member
subversus said:
And you people are wondering why the $50 million budget games are losing money? It's certainly not due to piracy with that attitude.
BlazeHedgehog
Member
I think that if more publishers put out demos of their products on PC as a mandatory thing, that would lower the percentage of people who pirate their games. For instance, I just upgraded my PC - not to anything spectacular, mind you, but enough that I am curious to see how the "juggernauts" of the platform perform.
Crysis has a demo, and that's great. That being said, GTA4 has earned a pretty notorious reputation for being a resources hog depending on what it's being run on, and I'd like to see how it functions for me. If it runs well, I might consider buying it. There is not, however, a demo for GTA4. So how am I supposed to know how the game will run, short of taking a risk and buying it? I don't want to buy a game that runs like shit, or doesn't run at all.
There's probably a significant percentage of people who pirate games strictly out of curiosity. People who don't want to spend money, but want to see what the game's all about, and aren't provided the luxury of a official trial version. So, the "trial version" they end up acquiring just so happens to have the entire rest of the game with it.
Every big-budget game on the PC needs a demo. Period. A lot of developers don't seem to like making demos. There seems to be a purveying attitude that certain huge franchises don't need demos because they're "known quantities", and they want to force others to buy them sight unseen (because, well, of course it's a good game, take my word for it, you should get it right now).
That line of thinking needs to go away. If you are publishing a top-tier franchise on the PC, and especially if you are pushing graphics technology reasonably well, release a demo. No argument. You may not see a dramatic boost in sales but you will see a reduction in piracy.
Crysis has a demo, and that's great. That being said, GTA4 has earned a pretty notorious reputation for being a resources hog depending on what it's being run on, and I'd like to see how it functions for me. If it runs well, I might consider buying it. There is not, however, a demo for GTA4. So how am I supposed to know how the game will run, short of taking a risk and buying it? I don't want to buy a game that runs like shit, or doesn't run at all.
There's probably a significant percentage of people who pirate games strictly out of curiosity. People who don't want to spend money, but want to see what the game's all about, and aren't provided the luxury of a official trial version. So, the "trial version" they end up acquiring just so happens to have the entire rest of the game with it.
Every big-budget game on the PC needs a demo. Period. A lot of developers don't seem to like making demos. There seems to be a purveying attitude that certain huge franchises don't need demos because they're "known quantities", and they want to force others to buy them sight unseen (because, well, of course it's a good game, take my word for it, you should get it right now).
That line of thinking needs to go away. If you are publishing a top-tier franchise on the PC, and especially if you are pushing graphics technology reasonably well, release a demo. No argument. You may not see a dramatic boost in sales but you will see a reduction in piracy.
Steve Youngblood said:
I would not be able to try it before I buy. I could choose to also not buy. What would you do if you couldn't test drive a car? You would therefore steal it?
In the real world, you're not entitled to benefit from anything that is created out there. Life doesn't work that way. You have to make with the stuff you can't reach, can't afford. --- or steal it. You guys sounds like princesses and the world ows everything to you...
angular graphics
Banned
Ranger X said:
I was very clear, copying isn't stealing anything from anyone.
I never said that if people copy games instead of buying them somehow their makers will make money. But they will definitely not lose money either.
That's going to depend on the person, of course. A 13 year old kid with little disposable income is clearly going to choose to pirate, while a 30 year old professional with not much free time to spare is going to buy the game. That's fine, I think, because for the 13 year old the choice is not between buying and not buying the game: the choice is between playing and not playing it. And all else being equal, more people playing the game is obviously better than fewer people playing it.mclem said:
I'm saddened by that too, but empirically it seems like the content creators who have had the greatest success against piracy are the ones who've appealed to people's rationality, not their morality (or even worse, as with crazy DRM schemes, against people's rationality).
I don't claim to have the solution either, but one solution is to simply rely on the fact that people respond to incentives and just add incentives to buying a game.
blitzcloud
Banned
Sega1991 said:
I want to believe that as well. I want to believe that people are getting educated about piracy and only (nearly) third world countries that only get price extorsion pirate and a few "test" the games. But I totally agree with you, and nowadays demos should come with multiplayer aswell. That's why steam free weekends are so good in this case. Stuff like that needs to be promoted.
Steve Youngblood
Member
I will never understand why people on either side (I could quote who you are responding to as well but am too lazy) of this issue spend so much time engaging in the semantics of establishing whether piracy is equivalent to theft as though reaching a consensus on the definitions will settle anything. I'm not trying to deride people having a conversation, mind you. I just don't understand the end game. Winning the "piracy is a form of theft" argument really isn't going to convince anyone engaging in the practice that it's as bad as physical theft if that's what they believe. Winning with the "piracy is not theft" position is not somehow going to convince people who are against piracy that it's now okay.Ranger X said: