http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/11/games.piracy1
For the past three years I've been running a one-man games company from home, programming games and selling them direct to gamers all over the world. Over that three years I discovered that all of my games were being pirated and 'shared' online. It's pretty hard to describe the feeling of finding your work pirated. The worst cases are where the person copying and posting your game on the internet insists other pirates 'thank them for their work'. They mean their work copying the game, not my work actually making it. I had long been a fierce opponent of internet piracy, arguing endlessly and aggressively on web forums against the pirates. I'd actively fought against piracy of my games, getting copies of them removed as soon as they were found, in a never-ending battle. A while ago I realised that although I thought I knew what the causes of people pirating my games were, I really had no idea. The only people who could really explain why so many people pirate games is the pirates themselves. So, rather innocently, I asked them to email me and tell me why they did it. I promised to read all of them and to keep an open mind. They replied in their thousands and it became a major topic on gaming news sites. My website crashed as a result and people who couldn't contact me or email me had to post their responses on other sites. It seems nobody had ever bothered to ask this question before. The big games companies had occasionally reached for their lawyers, and the music companies are constantly issuing legal threats, combined with vast efforts to engineer technical methods to prevent piracy, but nobody had ever asked them why they did it. Some of the responses ran to several pages, a few put Tolstoy to shame. It seems there are a lot of people who have waited a long time to tell the entertainment industry what they thought, and they had a lot to say. The top reasons seemed to be the high price of games, the copy-protection used on them, and the quality of the games themselves. Many of the pirates said they found the majority of games not worth the money, others were resentful of the way copy-protection treated honest customers as criminals. Time and time again people claimed they were happy to buy good games, at sensible prices. As a result of what I found, I'm changing the way I make and sell my games. I already dropped some prices, and will keep future games cheaper, I abandoned copy-protection on all my games the next day, and resolved to work harder than ever before to make the best games that I can. I went from being demoralised and depressed by pirates to being motivated and encouraged by them. I asked them what they thought, then listened. Given the inability of big media companies to do either, I think I suddenly found my competitive advantage. Cliff Harris is the founder of Positech Games
Over that three years I discovered that all of my games were being pirated and 'shared' online. It's pretty hard to describe the feeling of finding your work pirated. The worst cases are where the person copying and posting your game on the internet insists other pirates 'thank them for their work'.
They mean their work copying the game, not my work actually making it. I had long been a fierce opponent of internet piracy, arguing endlessly and aggressively on web forums against the pirates. I'd actively fought against piracy of my games, getting copies of them removed as soon as they were found, in a never-ending battle.
A while ago I realised that although I thought I knew what the causes of people pirating my games were, I really had no idea. The only people who could really explain why so many people pirate games is the pirates themselves. So, rather innocently, I asked them to email me and tell me why they did it. I promised to read all of them and to keep an open mind. They replied in their thousands and it became a major topic on gaming news sites.
My website crashed as a result and people who couldn't contact me or email me had to post their responses on other sites. It seems nobody had ever bothered to ask this question before. The big games companies had occasionally reached for their lawyers, and the music companies are constantly issuing legal threats, combined with vast efforts to engineer technical methods to prevent piracy, but nobody had ever asked them why they did it.
Some of the responses ran to several pages, a few put Tolstoy to shame. It seems there are a lot of people who have waited a long time to tell the entertainment industry what they thought, and they had a lot to say. The top reasons seemed to be the high price of games, the copy-protection used on them, and the quality of the games themselves. Many of the pirates said they found the majority of games not worth the money, others were resentful of the way copy-protection treated honest customers as criminals. Time and time again people claimed they were happy to buy good games, at sensible prices.
As a result of what I found, I'm changing the way I make and sell my games. I already dropped some prices, and will keep future games cheaper, I abandoned copy-protection on all my games the next day, and resolved to work harder than ever before to make the best games that I can. I went from being demoralised and depressed by pirates to being motivated and encouraged by them. I asked them what they thought, then listened. Given the inability of big media companies to do either, I think I suddenly found my competitive advantage.
Cliff Harris is the founder of Positech Games
"The power of liberty going forward is in decentralization. Not in leaders, but in decentralized activism. In a market process." -- liberty student
Perhaps Electronic Arts will wake up to that fact. Already "Spore" is becoming one of the most pirated games, as people do not want the what-amounts-to-a-rootkit being installed on their computers as DRM. The negative reviews on Amazon.com attest to that.
Good on this guy, but let me get this straight: these people feel the games are too expensive so they think they have the right to access them regardless? Now I know IP is invalid as a form of property, but I am certain this is just part of a more general trend towards condoning aggression against property owners by greedy little thieves. So whilst I do not condemn piracy, I question the rationale behind it. Overpriced games? Does one steal food they deem "overpriced"?
-Jon
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
I think the DRM argument is BS and a poor attempt to take the moral high ground. So you don't like copy protection. That doesn't make you some kind of freedom fighter by distributing games to people who might have paid for them otherwise.
Disclaimer: I own two games by this company.
Actually, the DRM is a very good argument, as there have been several DRM schemes which will break the OS if uninstalled. And there was the Sony Rootkit problem.
Trust me: rootkit-like DRM is abhorrent to all computer techs.
Zlatko: I think the DRM argument is BS and a poor attempt to take the moral high ground. So you don't like copy protection. That doesn't make you some kind of freedom fighter by distributing games to people who might have paid for them otherwise. Disclaimer: I own two games by this company.
If nobody argued DRM, or protested it in any form, would DRM be sucessful by now? Maybe? Maybe not? The establishment is already churning out newer, less obvious named DRM in response to older, draconian forms of DRM. Should one just settle for lesser of evils, and give up? I really don't think the argument against DRM is bs, nor a cop-out concerning piracy. To take a long term view, DRM is an early push at controlling access to information & charging for the use & portabiltiy of it, even if it's just audio. ISP's are in a position (and already are) of abusing their roles as "gateways" to the Internet. If one controls code / data / information, one can utilize a certain amount of control over the Internet. This also gives further relevance to the objections to DRM & the Open-Source movement (I'd recommend Lawerence Lessig's "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace")If anything, I believe the change in views concerning "what is an acceptable amount to pay for an entertainment product?", such as video games, is a response to the typical quality of games in a skewed market (overpriced games of questionable value either winning due outnumbering certain good quality games on influenced popularity, or via companies, such as EA, having the pockets to manufacture hype & poopularity, gamers paying just for a brand based on previous quality titles in a given series, etc., etc.), as well as a shift in views on whether one should be spending more money than needed on something that some may not consider as a "need", so much as a "want" or an "optional need". Afterall, not everyone requires and/or desires the same amounts of escapism or entertainment. Since the inception of the Internet, where communication for a long time initally, involved vast amounts of reading information, this doesn't really surprise me, especially when later, the Internet today becomes a more efficient model of delivering content than older models (ala TV to Radio, & now Internet to TV; next, Internet to ????) While the price of a game being sold may go down, more people may buy it due to a lower, reasonable price, methinks. Many bands in the music industry, specifically Nine Inch Nails, have been experimenting (NIN however has reaped measurable sucess from a newer model based on the changed perceptions of how much one should pay for music) with this. I don't think Mr.Harris will see immedate success in his new approach, but he is adapting for long term profit & relevance. For instance, he could make his next game in an episodic format (similar to what Penny Arcade is doing), which allow people to buy, say, Part 1 of 5 of his game, at say, between 0.99 - 5.99 per download per episode. I;d imagine he would make a good profit, assuming his game is considering worthwhile or a quality experience. Marketing via the internet, as it is now at least (while it is not overtly controlled, but obviously that will happen at some point), with this type of model for selling his games, would probably yield a good amount of success & easy press coverage for doing so while the trend is still being talked about. Disclaimer: I own many games, & have only "pirated" (downloaded for free) a few to date. Ironically, the ones I downloaded are the ones I rarley played, versus the amount of games I carefully considered in purchasing, and kept due to my perception that they were quality. To this date, when I purchase games, I largley due to in online while online has discounted prices versus offline prices (even used games; Gamestop is a terrible rip-off most of the time considering their online competition).
"Look at me, I'm quoting another user to show how wrong I think they are, out of arrogance of my own position. Wait, this is my own quote, oh shi-" ~ Nitroadict
Jon Irenicus: Good on this guy, but let me get this straight: these people feel the games are too expensive so they think they have the right to access them regardless? Now I know IP is invalid as a form of property, but I am certain this is just part of a more general trend towards condoning aggression against property owners by greedy little thieves. So whilst I do not condemn piracy, I question the rationale behind it. Overpriced games? Does one steal food they deem "overpriced"? -Jon
It's the whole artificial scarcity issue.
It is a virtually zero cost to reproduce a bit for bit copy of a game. I know this, you know this, the pirates know this, the consumers know this.
The whole piracy thing is people pushing the prices of these goods down to their true market price, IMHO, while the producers use IP to keep them artificially high in a vain attempt at rent seeking.
I would have thought that everyone realized that software has become a service as opposed to a good these days and would act accordingly like the MMORPGs have found out is a serious cash cow.
A software engineer can become a market entrepreneur or a political entrepreneur...are people still crying about the fate of the buggy whip makers?
---edit and requisite disclaimer---
I have never pirated nor played a non-free online game. I do not pay for software as a general rule since the Free Software Cabal provides everything I need to go about my daily business...except of course for the Microsoft Tax on new hardware that is unaviodable in certain cases.
I agree with everyone here in respect to each general point made. Jon's point about the general loathsome attitude of entitlement toward games and other forms of software is what often even drives some F/OSS developers to give up as it isn't the lack of funds that go toward their projects, but rather the assholish attitude that some folks [be it minority or majority] seem to exhibit toward software developers.
In regards to DRM, it isn't as much as the software that is used to make DRM is invasive, but that the laws surrounding the circumvention (be it for the fact that a given piece of DRM software actually does harm to your system or not) make it a crime to even consider such circumvention (as it isn't the actual pirating that is prosecuted, but simply circumvention of a so-called 'protection' scheme).
Also, the point of artificial scarcity is quite true, but the real scarcity isn't software in general, but good software and good software developers as both are rare as good writers and good books, but neither authors of software or books should be given a special class or exemption from market forces as the current copyright schemes allow (basically you just write once and sit on thine *** if it is quite successful as yielding some share of the market). So, even if tomorrow the copyright and other IP laws were struck down, I still think it would be profitable to be an "IP" creator simply because like anything people want, they want the good stuff. And if you're good at making the good stuff in regards to IP, then folks will buy it.
Anonymous Coward: Jon Irenicus: Good on this guy, but let me get this straight: these people feel the games are too expensive so they think they have the right to access them regardless? Now I know IP is invalid as a form of property, but I am certain this is just part of a more general trend towards condoning aggression against property owners by greedy little thieves. So whilst I do not condemn piracy, I question the rationale behind it. Overpriced games? Does one steal food they deem "overpriced"? -Jon It's the whole artificial scarcity issue. It is a virtually zero cost to reproduce a bit for bit copy of a game. I know this, you know this, the pirates know this, the consumers know this. The whole piracy thing is people pushing the prices of these goods down to their true market price, IMHO, while the producers use IP to keep them artificially high in a vain attempt at rent seeking. I would have thought that everyone realized that software has become a service as opposed to a good these days and would act accordingly like the MMORPGs have found out is a serious cash cow.
All I will say is that producers have to find different ways of getting money for their product, and will definitely have to do so without IP socialism. I still find the attitude of some reprehensible, as they are by no means entitled to the product in question. Are the prices too high? Then don't buy it, if that's your excuse. My point is that it's a bad rationalization for piracy, and given the reasons offered in favour of it it is the mentality of a thief. I accept that IP is utterly illegitimate (except if reconstructed through voluntary contracts), I just do not accept the reason most people give for pirating. The producer is entitled to charge whatever price they so wish for their product. An argument grounded on the illegitimacy of the notion of IP, OTOH, is a good one for piracy.
Jon Irenicus:Are the prices too high? Then don't buy it, if that's your excuse.
I agree. I tend to buy my games through Steam because they do offer competitive pricing for many titles even after six months, or add to the value with packages of similar first release price (like a game plus its expansion). And technically Steam is a form of DRM.
I usually try getting the games off Amazon's marketplace or eBay, and sometimes d2d.
Jon Irenicus: I accept that IP is utterly illegitimate (except if reconstructed through voluntary contracts), I just do not accept the reason most people give for pirating.
If IP is illegitimate then piracy != theft.
The fundamental basis of the argument is flawed no matter what people use to justify their alleged thievery.
Does something like opposing taxation because the government uses the money to fund birth control programs somehow legitimize the underlying act of taxation?
I am saying their reasons are utterly mistaken. It is not theft, but if someone considers it a form of property yet thinks they're entitled to the product because it's "too expensive" it betrays a criminal mindset. I never said it invalidates the argument...
DRM is terrible. Much worse than piracy since many users of pirated material do not even know they are using it. I spent some time this week trying to fix my girlfriend's parents computer that they inherited from a friend of theirs and it only contained pirated software and because of that it worked just well enough to malfunction all the time.
They had no idea what I was talking about either..I could have been speaking Swahili to them. They viewed software like a carberator on a car except they had no clue as to what was meant by "software". Its bad enough when people are prosecuted for pirated software but punishing people like my girlfriends parents would be a crime and a half.
As a certified fuddy duddy computer nerd (the exam for that certification was pretty easy) I always have to recommend that people not use pirated games or any other software simply because it is sometimes compromised by Russian bot herders or it is compromised by weird protection schemes that can cause what we IT professionals call "a really screwed up computer".
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I love getting games off of Steam because I can play them anywhere.