Piracy in the industry, Your thoughts? Options

[Roland Deschain]

Piracy is a huge deal to creative studios these days, it seems more true today than any previous era of gameing; this is in large part due to peer-to-peer networking services gaining popularity. In Redmond, Washington (a city very close to where I live) there is a game studio HQ by the name of "Gas Powered Games" which you might know from titles such as Dungeon Siege and Supreme Commander. Their most recent game "Demigod" has received a lot of press lately for just how much the game has been pirated. According to their website their game has been pirated at least 120,000 times and of those only 18,000 have actually purchased the game. So in other words for every purchase their is over 6 pirates, which I find quite frankly appalling.

I'm currently in college working towards my degree in computer engineering, and working in the videogame industry always seemed like an interesting and challenging career choice. There are so many video game companies here in my area as Washington is home to some of the largest video game companies in the world. I know a lot of the income for small studios is the returns they get from the amount of sales they make so piracy is obviously going to affect them to some degree.

I think the mentality of pirates extends far beyond that of simply "I rather a have free copy then give my money to X company". That is not to say that mentality exists because everyone knows it does, but some people are afraid of buyer's remorse and that they are unsure of whether or not if they will enjoy the game. It is not unusual to have someone illegaly download a game and then proceed to buy a game, albeit the practice is done rarely. So is there anything that can help elimnate piracy? I believe a short answer to that question would be no, I feel that measures such as digital rights management does nothing if not worsen the problem. The solution may just be to inform the people that have commited the crime as they need to be educated on what they are actually doing and how their actions will affect not only the videogame studio but the industry as a whole.

Seems like a personal rant but I'm sure this topic will be raised for better or worse in the future.

Does anyone think they have a solution to the problem,if so I would be happy to hear it!

[Guest_Guest_*]

shut down the main piracy site by saying that the website should've checked to see if the download was valid and/or had some sort of rights to put the game out on download

[ll_ye]

t is not unusual to have someone illegaly download a game and then proceed to buy a game, albeit the practice is done rarely.

I think this is a rather moot argument since we're all on the internet where we could probably look at hundreds of reviews and hell even check the game out on youtube. There's lots of people on the internet that plays games, and if you're really terribly unsure, wait for the price to go down.

Anyway, to minimize piracy studios should focus on providing easier means to buy and manage games. Hell, even music should be this way. Buy an album now, have it for dl forever. This is what makes me go back to steam, even if steam has its fair share of problems.

And as a last note: DRM is never the solution because the only person who gets hurt by DRM is the paying customer. Surely you must've felt a bit annoyed having to use steam to play some game sometime. However, you also probably thought it was a fair tradeoff as steam offers many convenient and useful features.

[Samuel71]

DRM can be extremely effective for eliminating zero-day piracy in many instances. The very worst case for software developers is when their product has been put up for free on the Internet before the product is even released.

I think the piracy situation is very sad, as it has somewhat ruined PC gaming. There are hardly any great, AAA exclusive games anymore (outside of RTSs and MMOs) - the last one was Crysis - and nowadays, big PC games are usually shoddy-to-decent console ports (BioShock, Far Cry 2, and such).

[tschumann]

I think that something like Steam is the solution. It works pretty well already; sure all games on Steam are pirated, but multiplayer just doesn't work in these pirated versions. Also, these pirated versions can't be updated very easily, and with the frequent patching of games on Steam, it's almost impossible to have a fully updated working pirated game.

[Zero_Ctrl]

The problem with P-2-P networks is that the software is legal, but what is used with it isn't.
So the government can't really do anything about it without violating their rights.
I think they said that though cause they're too busy pirating.

[Guest_Guest_*]

Just a heads up: the OWNERS of Pirate Bay have been put to jail for 1 year for some sort of message on their front page (i got this from Good Game(tv show)).

[KatOne]

Just a heads up: the OWNERS of Pirate Bay have been put to jail for 1 year for some sort of message on their front page (i got this from Good Game(tv show)).

I'm dead tired (04:52 in the morning in sweden) but i'd just like to point out that that is absolutely wrong. I'd write an essay on all this, had i the energy. But seeing as i don't, i'm just going to point out what's actually going on in the TPB case.

The four defendants (Brokep, Anakata and Tiamo + the owner of the ISP) were sentenced to 1 year in prison and 30 million kronor in fines (wich is a freaking joke, by the way) - but here comes the tricky part.

As Brokep has pointed out several times, whoever lost this "round" would still appeal the decision, wich the defendants did. The next hearing on the case will be in 3-6 years time, and the result of that decision will also be appealed. And the judge turned out to be bias, so the case might be reset to page 0, meaning that the new first hearing will be held in 4-6 years time seeing as the "evidence"-gathering and the likes takes years and years, and has taken years and years. Furthermore, I believe that according to swedish law, the appeal limit is 5 or so times. I'm 18 now, when i'm turning 30 maybe we'll have something final going here.

Meanwhile, the pirate bay is up and kicking stronger than ever. Feel the burn, baby.

[Draken]

I believe that a % of people that will never buy the game, whatever you do. They either have no money (kids, students, third world countries with no credit cards, etc) or just dishonest people... those being rare in my opinion, because if someone has a job and has the money, i see no reason for him to steal something. You just feel bad for no reason.

What is left are : people who want a sort of demo (they don't know if they will like the game, they want to see if it runs ok on their computers, etc), people who don't think the game is worth its price (like a 4 hour long FPS sold at 60$, so they don't want to pay the full price and feel burned), etc.

You have cited Demigod.. A game with a legion of technical problems (and poor technical support), so the high piracy numbers are probably explained by most gamers being wary of the game. I did not play it, because of its bad reputation, but many people will download it instead.

The industry can't do anything about the first group. But it can do something about the second. By offering a demo so people can test the game. By giving real value in their games, or at least applying a fair price... If you are selling half a game (content-wise but also the technical aspect and the general value), you should apply half the price too. And so on.

Pirates are a nuisance to the industry. But the industry is no angel either. Many people got into pirating because they felt burned by poor (and expensive) games, and some got into it simply because they didn't want to load the CD/DVDs each time they want to play something. I think piracy will always exist, but the industry can improve on many aspects to reduce the numbers.