A few times over the past couple of days, I’ve been asked to comment on piracy as it relates to games. In large part, this has been due to the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) recent press release stating “Recording Industry To Begin Collecting Evidence And Preparing Lawsuits Against File ‘Sharers’ Who Illegally Offer Music Online”. Be sure to check out the full press release and all of the comments from artists (I particularly like the comments from fellow Montrealer Sam Roberts).

Admittedly, the IGDA has not done much to address the issue of piracy.

Beyond the fact that effective anti-piracy work requires massive resources, it seems that piracy is not of huge concern to many developers (in part due to ignorance, in part due to economic reality).

Certainly, most creative types are less concerned about economic realities of piracy and are “rewarded” by knowing that x many more gamers are enjoying their creation, etc. Further, most developers do not necessarily see the negative repercussions of piracy. That is, it is a long standing truism that developers get paid their advance and never see a penny more. So, as long as they get their advance why do they need to be concerned about what happens after that (ie, it is the publisher’s problem). However, it is important to realize that this just means that publishers will generate less revenue and in turn will have limited funds to advance on new projects, etc…

Anyway, not saying that the IGDA or I agree with these views, and certainly I am oversimplifying/generalizing. But, the IGDA is more than happy to let the various publisher orgs (eg, ELSPA, IDSA, etc) continue to do the work they are doing.

From a developer’s point of view, I’d like to see more creative efforts going into thwarting piracy. A past article at Gamasutra is a good example at this: Keeping the Pirates at Bay: Implementing Crack Protection for Spyro: Year of the Dragon

If developers really saw piracy as an important problem and put their minds to task (the same way that they conquer challenges of poly throughput or memory optimization), I’d wager that we could put a real jam in piracy efforts (more so than scads of lawyers).

Further, I think the industry on the whole needs to look at new models of distribution and payment based on mechanisms that would encourage file-sharing and copying (ie, viral distribution). For an MMO-style game (or one that needs to connect to a server, or pay-per-play style games, etc) you want as many copies of the game out there as possible since you are not making your money on the actual game client…

But, again, it all comes down to where developers see things. And, current reality of the game industry is that it makes more sense for developers to worry about their polycount than their anti-cracking scheme.