Thu 21 Oct 2004
Piracy is bad, it’s pervasive and is not going to leave us any time soon. Certainly, the recent high profile theft/piracy of Halo2 and GTA: San Andreas only amplify the situation. Not to mention the ever-present/growing fear of BitTorrent and other evolved p2p services.
That said, I’d suggest that our fear and anger over pirates robbing us, clouds our ability (or even willingness) to more fully explore the topic of piracy. Some stuff to consider:
- Even with the ease of getting games off BitTorrent, it doesn’t make it any easier to get the game to play on your console (ie, still need to be a moderate geek to install a mod chip, etc).
- Still no real understanding of (or way to measure) what percentage of “free” copies would actually have been paid copies.
- Similar lack of understanding of the knock on effect of each “free” copy (ie, word-of-mouth buzz, convert to paid, buy the sequel, etc).
- Some p2p tech provides uses/potential to be exploited by the industry (eg, Blizzard using BitTorrent to distribute World of WarCraft content).
- Are anti-piracy efforts best directed toward the physical CD duplication factories in Asia and Eastern Europe? What’s their relation to the casual-piracy via p2p networks, etc?
- Are the hackers really smarter than us? Perhaps if contracts were re-examined, it may be that developers spend more time figuring out smarter
ways to care about piracy (ie, short-term view is that piracy does not effect bottom line of a game for the developer (ie, myth that developers NEVER see royalties)). Contracts should be structured in such a way to motivate/reward developers to work on the problem… - Would doing a worldwide simultaneous release help? Would getting rid of platform/hardware region encoding do away with the grey markets for illegal “imports” (many of which are purchased by otherwise lawful gamers that have no legal recourse to get the game).
- Are there better business models and design approaches that obviate piracy, if not encourage the “viral” distribution of the game content? A good case study would be the growth of MMO/online games in China. MMO subscriptions are one way, but are there others?
- More fundamentally, is the current notion of IPR dated and/or not well suited to games and/or the way netizens view digital assets as a “public good”???
Lots of questions, not a lot of answers. I just don’t buy into the panic that piracy is costing us billions and is 100% pure evil. There’s just more to it…
October 21st, 2004 at 10:36 pm
Piracy Pluses and Minuses
I saw this post today Torrent of Free Bits and it reminded me of something I’d thought about.
First, let me make it clear. Piracy of games pisses me off. It’s my job to make games, it’s damn hard work. 15 to 100 people for two years, 1/4 to 1/2 of …
October 22nd, 2004 at 9:20 am
I’m very glad to read someone in the game industry prepared to think deeper about piracy!
It’s clearly a complex issue.
October 24th, 2004 at 9:37 am
I’d like to give you some real personal feedback on your questions re piracy:
1. You DON’T need to be a geek to get a mod chip. They install them for you. Cost is peanuts. Takes 20 minutes.
2. Very few of my “free” ps2 and pc games would have been bought anyway. I don;t have that kind of money! Sometimes I get more than 10 pirated games a week. (PC and ps2 and GBA)
3. Knock on effect - zero, in fact less than zero. I am advising all my friends to do this. So you lose sales, don’t imagine you gain later ones.
4. Opportunity for p2p to be used FOR the industry - true. BBC now doing this.
5. Are Anti piracy efforts best aimed at asian factories? Wasting your time mate. Good dvd burners can be had in china for 700RMB (About $90 US) and cd burners for about $40 US. IF you ever COULD take out the factories it’s already too late.
6. Are the hackers smarter than you? No. But you have to realise there are 100 of them for each one of you. And because of the globally shareable nature of modern data, most of your games are available even before they are sold.
7. Would a worldwide simultaneous release help? SHit yeah. This is the reason a lot of people get started; anger at a six month wait between a release in another country and one in theirs. And once they’ve tasted the free stuff, you’ve lost them for good.
8. Are there better business models? Yes. The whole problem is, your games are too expensive. Why the hell should we pay $100 for a game we KNOW we can make for $1? The problem is, the industry has an outdated mindset. They want to maintain a complicated multi-level distribution and marketing monolith that is now unneeded. If they cut out all the middlemen, and sold games for $10 each with a simultaneous worldwide release - most of your piracy problems would disappear. (Actually i suggest $9.99 as a price point.)
Whining about how piracy is ripping people off is bullshit. Companies are ripping the public off to maintain outdated marketing monoliths. They’re afraid of change - because they are dinosaurs and change will kill them. If the developers sold direct to the public, with worldwide release, they could make a profit at $9.99. Hell, that’s more than they make NOW per disc. Why don’t they? I don’t know.
So who am I? Well just someone who wants to put you in the picture. I have more than 500 pirated games, ps2, pc, GBA, N64, DC, GC, you name it. How typical am I? Well as a 40+ middle aged white male you can bet your problems aren’t confined to geeky teens.
Best wishes!
October 27th, 2004 at 1:56 am
> Why the hell should we pay $100 for a game we KNOW we can make for $1?
I couldn’t let that slide. You can’t just declare the cost of a game based on the cost of the media it comes on. By that measure your doctor should get paid zero since the cost of the media he gives you (nothing) is zero. What he gives you is labor and his expert opinion. What you are paying for when you buy a game is not a $1 CD. You are paying for 10 to 20 million dollars of development to make the data that’s on that CD. If all you wanted as the $1 CD I’ve got plenty of blank $1 CDs to sell you.
November 14th, 2004 at 4:49 pm
Hail all for piracy
(damn money sucking bastards)
FBI COMe get me
______—-_gwarbot_—-
is what im known as
December 19th, 2004 at 3:27 am
As a student who is preparing to go into the gaming industry(3d modeller/graphics designer), I for one
agree with some of the above points, take the Halflife 2 game for example, The only reason you pay 50 bucks a pop is because of the steam software development, This i have done much research on,
Why should i pay for something that can be bypassed so eaily?
Its like paying 40 billion dollars to put a screen door on a submarine.
I also understand that the makers of the game need to make their money, as you guys have bills to pay just like me, But i must ask, how much a year do you make?
And how much of the money from the game do you see? Like the guys who did halo2, who of them have
gotten a good percentage of the slush it dragged in?
Well these questions will prolly never be answered.But it doesn’t bother me.
My point is, why should I pay THAT MUCH for a game ?
Back 10 years ago when they were chunking out 8bit games for apple 2’s did they ever excede the price of 15 dollars for a game?????
NO, even with the advent of games on CD they still stayed at a good price( 19 dollars tops for a good game if i remember right, look at the origional doom and homeworld, I prolly shelled out around 20 bucks for the both of em’), So i guess the real question is why the sudden price jump?
I mean i realize that Things have gotten more complex and more “pretty” as far as graphics, but why send that cost down to the consumer?
If it takes 30 dollars a CD to burn,Label, Pakage and ship, then the developers need to find another way to get it out.
Maybe start running bittorrent servers and sending
their softwares out over the wires, As stated above they are sticking to them “monolithic” buisness models that are about ready to kill the economy as we know it.
We live in a digital age and era, So its time to be rid of all the old ways(most of em anyways),
Including afore-metioned monoliths…..
They can start by using their own servers to distribute the games, And if they do this it may be easier for them to get copies out and control the distribution of their product(it will also decrease the prices by quite a bit, they could pay for 6 t3 lines for 10 years within the first 2 months of sales.)
And after they get the stuff down then maybe they could put a few copies on CD(only after they stop getting so many hits on the servers), But then you complain, oh what about those without good internet connections???
Well lemme see…..hmmm…. a DSL/Cable plan from sbc(with a 1.5 Mbyte connection and no DL caps)
Is about 15 to 20 dollars a month, shoot, people spend that on cigarettes and beer in a day.
I myself consider myself a pirate…….to an extent, Right now, I have a copy of 3dmax,
But as soon as I go legit i plan to purchase it,
Because i do not have the money to shell out for that, 6 grand for a commercial copy of 3dmax 7 and 12 for maya 6 complete…….
12 grand plus 6 grand equals a new car for me.
I mean i understand that it is a good program to use, and what it is capabl of, but does that mean that you sell gasoline at a price of 20 bucks a gallon because of what it “can” be used for?
Shoot, HL2 is a great game, I love it to death,
But i haven’t bought it yet(and i haven’t downloaded it either).
and mostly, I only download it to preview the game, Like doom 3, I tried it out at a show but didn’t get to do enough on it, I got it “second hand” and still didn’t like it…..well lookie there, i just avoided a 50 dollar mistake.
Now HL2 i will be buying REALLY soon, as the Gravity gun is just to awsome to even speak about :)
But anywho, All i am trying to say is that not everyone has the money to buy the “gold/platinum” edition games…..why not drop the prices a bit.
Much the same can be said about the recording industry, I OPENLY Download music, as well,
those guys are just plain greedy.
And they killed napster.
So as a semi-pirate and a Hacker i say……
Screw you RIAA, you may stop a few of us, but there are 2000 more for everyone you find ;)
X out
December 19th, 2004 at 6:42 am
Mister E has some good points. The overall question that most gamers quote is that “thousads of people already have bought the particular game, why should we buy it, the game companies are already making millions of dollars.” That maybe so, but not for all game companies. But companies like EA make a shoot load of money, so what’s with a portion of the population downloading their game for free.
One point that sucks is, the people that ‘buy’ the original game always buy the game, leaving the gamers that always choose to download always getting their games for free, making it unfair.
January 17th, 2005 at 8:11 am
Interesting articles in current edition of WIRED magazine (Jan 05) exploring Darknets and BitTorrent. Definitely time for new business models!!!