Game piracy killing PC gaming

leninbenjamin

PeakOutput wrote: »

the simple fact of the matter is that if you download copyrighted material for free you are stealing money from someones pocket.

not necessarily the case. people have a fixed budget, that they can't go beyond. so say my income allows me to spend €200 a year,say i buy 2 but i download 10 games. it's theft of the copyrighted material, but the most the gaming industry will have lost out on is €100 (2 games roughtly), the others cannot be considered a loss of income to the industry (unless of course i host them and make them available to others).

i've never seen this simple fact alluded to in any of the literature, so the losses to the industry are always overestimated. Something like a subscription service where you can play a fixed number of games for a fixed length of time for example is needed i feel. at face value the the revenue per game sold would fall but overall i believe a service like this has a lot more of a chance of competing with the illegal downloads. game are getting shorter anyway, and more generic as the publishers pressurise the developers into churning them out as fast as possible. The result of ths I feel has meant that in real terms the average game has fallen in quality over the past few years which i feel is more than part of the reason that we've seen such a rise in illegal activites. music, movies and games are such falling standards that people are much less willing to hand over their money for them regardless, so when you throw in the illegal availability the indstry is just increasing the rate of it's demise.

it's the same in the music industry. losses are overestimated, and the only neutral studies i've seen on the issue have said that at most only 10% of lost revenue is from illegal downlaods, the rest can be attributed to falling product standards and failure to cater towards the market. of course this is hotly contested but i believe it to be the case.

Edit: there is a real tendency in these industries that whenever a highly marketed game/film/record flops they just run to the media blaming piracy while blatantly ignoring any possible shortcomings within the product itself. until they cop onto this it will be their own incompetency that will kill them.

Kiith

I've tried using some of the above justifications for downloading games/music/films before, but in the end it doesnt matter. I break the law by doing it, and it damages the industry. No arguments can be made for doing it, other then it doesnt cost me anything. I've since stopped downloading games (although i still get movies and music).

thelordofcheese

L31mr0d wrote: »

Heck I wouldn't even mind if games started using actually brands within the game. Like a soldier drinking coca cola, or civies driving nissans as long as they didn't make it camp and obvious like in the Truman show, like a soldier saying something like "Ah, do you want a cool, crisp, refreshing can of coca cola" or a civie saying "OMFG!!! ALIENS ARE INVADING, OH AND DID YOU KNOW MY NISSAN GETS 40 MILES TO THE GALLON... NOW RUUUUUNNNNN!!!!"

I dunno the games industry seems to be completly incapable of doing subtilty in any way,shape or form.
If we had brands in games like that, i guarentee you it'd be just as bad as the truman show if not worse, somehow.

Maximilian

Asbad wrote: »

I basically download the majority of my games now. (ESPECIALLY if its an EA game )

Hope EA's lawyers don't happen to browse this thread.

PeakOutput

leninbenjamin wrote: »

not necessarily the case. people have a fixed budget, that they can't go beyond. so say my income allows me to spend €200 a year,say i buy 2 but i download 10 games. it's theft of the copyrighted material, but the most the gaming industry will have lost out on is €100 (2 games roughtly), the others cannot be considered a loss of income to the industry (unless of course i host them and make them available to others).

[snip]

Edit: there is a real tendency in these industries that whenever a highly marketed game/film/record flops they just run to the media blaming piracy while blatantly ignoring any possible shortcomings within the product itself. until they cop onto this it will be their own incompetency that will kill them.

the "i wouldnt have paid for it anyway" argument is irrelevant if you use the service the person/company is entitled to their money. if you cannot afford it you are not entitled to it simple as that. you can try and justify it to yourself all you like but you are stealing. they spent money developing it you have no right to take it.

dont get me wrong i download films all the time and i know im doing wrong but i also go to the cinema usualy twice a week so i am still contributing to the industry. the difference is i know the damage i am doing an accept it you are trying to justify your actions to make yourself feel better

Maximilian

I think the industry has itself to blame for a lot of it, particularly these days.

If a game costs 50 euro in the shop, how much does the publisher/developer actually get out of that? After, tax, transport, wholesaler's cut, retailers cut, packaging, manufacturing etc?

Buy it off Steam for example and the price is exactly the same, yet with significantly reduced overheads. The savings are not passed on. I think that really annoys some people. If the publishers try to screw their customers, theior customers will screw them right back.

At the end of the day, its price that drives people to piracy.

kowloon

Don't see any of the more cerebral games for grown ups making it to the consoles any time soon.
The PC is still the holder of the crown for strategy games and proper simulators.

super_furry

kowloon wrote: »

Don't see any of the more cerebral games for grown ups making it to the consoles any time soon.
The PC is still the holder of the crown for strategy games and proper simulators.

But where's the incentive for this to continue? The developers of the games you mention need only to compare game sales on a console to game sales on a PC to work out that it might not be worth their effort anymore.

B00MSTICK

thelordofcheese wrote:

Double terrible idea, there should never be a stiupulation of having an internet connection to play a single player offline game. It's wrong, i've payed for the product, i shouldn't be expected to have an internet connection too just so i can play what i've bought, doubly so when it's an offline game.

Pretty sure It's on the back of Hl2 "An internet connection is required" Could easily be wrong though. Seriously how many people have decent rigs to play modern games yet no net connection? The most popular games seem to be multiplayer anyway; WOW,CSS etc How many people do you know running cracked versions of these?

thelordofcheese wrote:

Also, i think you underestimate exactly how much people will download.
by a magnitued of "a fcukload"

If companys enforce download caps (do they?)that would be most of it gone in a day (I have 20gig/month) If I downloaded games I'd certainly be put off by a huge filesize anyway. Days without playing games due to the lag my ping would suffer? No thanks.

thelordofcheese wrote:

PeerGuardian makes a fool of your idea.

Sorry for being ignorant but what is this? Blocks certain IPs? What good will that do if the file is seeded by hundreds of different/changing IPs?
Ive never heard of it, quite a few people that download games are no good with PCs anyway, think of the number of people that ask how to mount and install a game using daemon tools or similar. They have no clue.

Im sticking with the Internet required option. It works for steam. I know we've had terrible trouble getting into offline mode for midlans etc but its not like anyone has said "screw it im never using steam again", if they have they still probably went and got TF2 anyway.

Like I said what percentage of people would you be excluding?

Cardinal

PeakOutput wrote: »

the death of both those industries is not inevitable but unless major changes take place in both industries they are on a slippery slope to non existence. it wont happen this year or next year but imo it will take 15-20 years at the current rate.

As long as there is a section of the market willing to pay for these products, they will be produced. Piracy can only have so much of an impact in markets where the product being sold is reproduceable at a negligable cost. At worst, piracy will cause less to be spent on development, but it will never cause it to stop completely.

yoyo

Once AMD/Intel, NVidia/ATI are creating high end hardware these companies are not going to let pc games "die" and they will and have supported developers to develop for this platform, look at it this way, already the Xbox 360, PS3 are outdated due to the fact most games only rendered output is 720p (1280x720) (less in some cases like halo 3) and they dont support DX10. There well upscaled yes, but theres quite a big difference playing on a pc at 1680 x 1050 res or higher), I was also suprised with how many of the 360 games i own lag a little, think saints row is the worst for that, pc gaming is a different market than consoles, devs know this, and while people still keep buying pc games over years console games are more buy now the week its out, then after a few weeks only a few buys it new, sure theres more console sales, but thats always been the way...

Nick

Kiith

B00MSTICK wrote: »

If companys enforce download caps (do they?)that would be most of it gone in a day (I have 20gig/month) If I downloaded games I'd certainly be put off by a huge filesize anyway. Days without playing games due to the lag my ping would suffer? No thanks.

Keeping the broadband technology at a bad level (i.e. Ireland) is not the answer. I still think Steam is the best method. Yes, it was a pain at first, especially on pre-broadband connections, but companies can't be worried that a small (and getting smaller) minority wont be able to download/update their games. And for all the problems it had, it is a fantastic service now.

thelordofcheese

B00MSTICK wrote: »

Pretty sure It's on the back of Hl2 "An internet connection is required" Could easily be wrong though. Seriously how many people have decent rigs to play modern games yet no net connection? The most popular games seem to be multiplayer anyway; WOW,CSS etc How many people do you know running cracked versions of these?

Thats not the point, the point is that it HL2 is not a multiplayer online game like WoW or Counterstrike, therefore why should i be expected to have an internet connection to play a game that has no online components?
Why?

B00MSTICK wrote: »

If companys enforce download caps (do they?)that would be most of it gone in a day (I have 20gig/month) If I downloaded games I'd certainly be put off by a huge filesize anyway. Days without playing games due to the lag my ping would suffer? No thanks.

This is wrong for two reasons, first keeping the internet service provided in this country at the level it is at currently is at is a terrible idea. Second i'm assuming you sleep from time to time, have a job, maybe? All these are times when you're not gaming online. Torrent then.

besides if you wanted something really badly, i do believe that companies do make single player offline games as well, and there are a number of rather good ones. You could play that in the mean time.

B00MSTICK wrote: »

Sorry for being ignorant but what is this? Blocks certain IPs? What good will that do if the file is seeded by hundreds of different/changing IPs?
Ive never heard of it, quite a few people that download games are no good with PCs anyway, think of the number of people that ask how to mount and install a game using daemon tools or similar. They have no clue.

I'm not going to explain peerguardian to you, but it was originally created because the RIAA adopted an idea similar to yours for music P2P and torrents. PeerGuardian makes that strategy null and void.
feel free to google it, it's a nice piece of software.

B00MSTICK wrote: »

Im sticking with the Internet required option. It works for steam. I know we've had terrible trouble getting into offline mode for midlans etc but its not like anyone has said "screw it im never using steam again", if they have they still probably went and got TF2 anyway.

I did.
It's too much hassle for what it does.
I gave it another go when a free copy of episode one landed in my lap and then i remember why i hated it, and i'm never using it again.

super_furry

thelordofcheese wrote: »

I did.
It's too much hassle for what it does.
I gave it another go when a free copy of episode one landed in my lap and then i remember why i hated it, and i'm never using it again.

What's so bad about it?

PeakOutput

Cardinal wrote: »

As long as there is a section of the market willing to pay for these products, they will be produced. Piracy can only have so much of an impact in markets where the product being sold is reproduceable at a negligable cost. At worst, piracy will cause less to be spent on development, but it will never cause it to stop completely.

as i said as long as the industry changes it will survive.

weather it changes for the better is not a guarantee

and your right the hardware companies will do their best to keep the industry going but again having people with vested interests in selling hardware rather than being dedicated to selling good quality computer games running the computer game industry is arguably a terrible solution to the problem

zilog_jones

Steam can be pretty annoying - I have yet to get it working offline in a LAN party, which usually ends up in us relying on good ol' CS 1.5 - but God knows what we'll do now TF2 is out (haven't done a LAN in a while lol). Also, the fact only one profile is allowed per game is a bit ghey - my brother's always playing my TF2 and doing all the damn achievements! :mad: I'm sure there's other annoying things I've forgot about.

I still don't see where people are getting this idea there's some sort of epidemic regarding game piracy. It's no worse than it was - BBSes, Usenet and IRC have been meccas of illegal software for as long as they've existed, and back in the days of micros all you needed was a twin tape deck to copy games with ease.

Piracy has been "killing" the game/music/movie industries for 30+ years now - it's not doing a very good job...

PeakOutput

zilog_jones wrote: »

Piracy has been "killing" the game/music/movie industries for 30+ years now - it's not doing a very good job...

efficiently mass producing pirated copies is a relatively new phenomenon tho

zilog_jones

Erm, not really. I guess you've never heard of Famiclones and related pirate video game industries that have been mass producing dodgy cartridges, CD-ROMs and whatever for decades...

Cardinal

PeakOutput wrote: »

efficiently mass producing pirated copies is a relatively new phenomenon tho

In Ireland maybe, but in less well off countries it is and always has been easier to buy pirated versions of games than it is to buy genuine versions. This was as much the case with floppy disk games as it is with DVD games.

PeakOutput

ok sorry i should have said efficiently mass producing and distributing to a global market is new, in fact it is so efficient now that people do it for free.

providing pirated material and selling it is very different and much less of a threat than people being able to get the material for free.

given a choice between paying less for something that may not work properly and paying a bit more for something with a guarantee most people will pay more. given a choice between getting it for free and taking the risk(the risk of it not workin is practically zero now anyway) and paying people will pick free.

thelordofcheese

super_furry wrote: »

What's so bad about it?

It gets in the dammed way, i really don't see why i have to wait for this piece of software that sits infront of the game i payed for, blocking my access to it, finishes updating itself before i can play a game i've just bought.
I mean where is the goddamn sense in that?

Couple that with the resources it hogs just by being on, and it's nasty habit of auto updating without asking you. Call me paranoid if you want but i prefer to be incharge of whats added to my machine.

basically i've uninstalled the damn thing from my machine and i hope never to see it ever again.

Maximilian

thelordofcheese wrote: »

It gets in the dammed way, i really don't see why i have to wait for this piece of software that sits infront of the game i payed for, blocking my access to it, finishes updating itself before i can play a game i've just bought.
I mean where is the goddamn sense in that?

Couple that with the resources it hogs just by being on, and it's nasty habit of auto updating without asking you. Call me paranoid if you want but i prefer to be incharge of whats added to my machine.

basically i've uninstalled the damn thing from my machine and i hope never to see it ever again.

You're paranoid. srsly. Uninstalled Steam becuase it auto-updates and what not? srsly. You must be paranoid. Still that's your choice. Assuming thats what the cats living in the ceiling want you to believe.

The updating is one of the benefits of Steam. I've never had an issue with it. Its easy to use.

thelordofcheese

Maximilian wrote: »

You're paranoid. srsly. Uninstalled Steam becuase it auto-updates and what not? srsly. You must be paranoid. Still that's your choice. Assuming thats what the cats living in the ceiling want you to believe.

The updating is one of the benefits of Steam. I've never had an issue with it. Its easy to use.

nice one, you're funny , are you here all week?
I'd like to catch the entire show.

I notice you skip over the entire issue of steam preventing me playing the single player offline game because it wants to update itself in favour of a pithy remark and missing the point....

Stephen

I wasn't too keen on steam when it came out first but I'm all for it now. It does what it does very well. Can't you remember back when you had to manually go and download patches to update your games? You'd end up with different people and servers running different incompatible versions, thus fragmenting multiplayer communities.

Sure if you're still stuck in dial up land it sucks but, well... tough.

thelordofcheese

Stephen wrote: »

I wasn't too keen on steam when it came out first but I'm all for it now. It does what it does very well. Can't you remember back when you had to manually go and download patches to update your games? You'd end up with different people and servers running different incompatible versions, thus fragmenting multiplayer communities.

I'm pretty sure i can seeing as 99% of games still get patched that way, and it doesn't seem to have sundered the multiplaying community into a thousand tiny pieces.

Also, still no reason why i've got to wait for steam to update so i can play single player half-life.

Maximilian

thelordofcheese wrote: »

nice one, you're funny , are you here all week?
I'd like to catch the entire show.

I notice you skip over the entire issue of steam preventing me playing the single player offline game because it wants to update itself in favour of a pithy remark and missing the point....

I am here all week as it happens. Can't seem to sell any tickets for the show though....

I've never had any problems playing games on steam offline. Never once, although I have heard it happening like with you. On the whole though, I don't think its a serious problem. Honestly, if you went so far as to remove Steam entirely for the reasons stated, it does genuinely seem over the top.

tHE vAGGABOND

I still don't see where people are getting this idea there's some sort of epidemic regarding game piracy. It's no worse than it was - BBSes, Usenet and IRC have been meccas of illegal software for as long as they've existed

Every single person in the developed world has broadband [to some degree or another] and a large percventage of them can access one of the *millions* of torrent sites and get an entire game in an evening..

Its a *long* way from 28.8 modems taking a week to download a game from a BBS [This BBS can only hold 20 or 30 connections at once anyway, getting stuff from IRC is slow and a right pain - where a torrent can have millions of people on the same one and its quick and dead easy]

So broadband, the WWW and bit torrent are the reasons why piracy have gone mental

leninbenjamin

kiith wrote:

I've tried using some of the above justifications for downloading games/music/films before, but in the end it doesnt matter. I break the law by doing it, and it damages the industry. No arguments can be made for doing it, other then it doesnt cost me anything. I've since stopped downloading games (although i still get movies and music).

there is no reliable quantification as to the extent illegal activity supposedly damages the industries. indeed it's argued that if the publishers knew what they were doing they might actually be able to boost sales by making certain content freely available. Radiohead would never had made it big in the states if it weren't for Napster. their record company virtually abandoned them, yet despite this maltreatment they made millions off them. how is this justifiable? clearly there are huge inefficiencies in these industries, and i believe illegal downloads are as much symptomatic as they are a cause.

PeakOutput wrote: »

the "i wouldnt have paid for it anyway" argument is irrelevant if you use the service the person/company is entitled to their money.

morally that is undeniably the case, i'm not trying to argue otherwise, but in practise, illegal downloads are a fact of life. you can't just expect people to stop because you say so. developers and publishers alike have to recognise that they will have to compete directly with free downloads if they are to survive, which is difficult but they do have the moral and legal upper hand. all the need to do is supply the appropriate service... which they are from doing.

PeakOutput wrote: »

dont get me wrong i download films all the time and i know im doing wrong but i also go to the cinema usualy twice a week so i am still contributing to the industry. the difference is i know the damage i am doing an accept it you are trying to justify your actions to make yourself feel better

ehh.. where did you get that little gem out of? all movies i watch are rented legally, all games i play i legally own, and I'd be like yourself when it comes to music. i think you've misunderstood my original post somewhat.

and on the Steam thing: great idea, horrible implementation. Valve need to invest a lot more into their Steam servers, bug fixes and well everything else. i downloaded TF2 at an average of 15kbps, might as well have had dialup. it's no good targeting all these publishers and developers to utilize them if they haven't the product to sell. im firmly convinced one of these days some company is going to come along with the same thing, but better and when that happens Valve will cease to exist.

PeakOutput

you can't just expect people to stop because you say so

i dont expect people to stop, as i might have said already i do it myself, i only wish people werent so naieve/ignorant about the effect that piracy is having

if you take individual cases out of the mass's you can prove almost anything you like but in general piracy is a bad thing. there is massive room / need for the industry to change (indeed if its not implemented by the time i finish college i fully intend to implement a business idea of my own that would to a certain extent change the distribution methods and profit sources of the music industry )its making sure its changing for the better that is the issue. of course we can say all music / games / movies should be free to everybody and its convenient to say you believe that when you can illegally get it for free now. in reality however this dosnt work.

hh.. where did you get that little gem out of?

generally when i use the word you on a forum its the "royal" usage of the word regardless of weather or not iv used a quote but regardless i apologise for any insult caused

leninbenjamin

PeakOutput wrote: »

i dont expect people to stop, as i might have said already i do it myself, i only wish people werent so naieve/ignorant about the effect that piracy is having

it's hard to be ignorant about something there isn't reliable information on. honestly, i've tried to do some research on this before, i found studies that estimate anywhere between 6% and 90% of the decline in the (music and movie) industries is due to piracy, oh and almost all of the studies towards the upper end of the scale were funded by the industry themselves, so they can't exactly be considered impartial. if you can provide me reliable information otherwise i would be happy to see it.

PeakOutput wrote: »

if you take individual cases out of the mass's you can prove almost anything you like but in general piracy is a bad thing.

it's also called inductive reasoning (think Newton and the apple). Until someone does some proper research into it that isn't guided by industry objectives, all we will have is our rhetoric and anecdotes to rely on.

PeakOutput wrote: »

there is massive room / need for the industry to change (indeed if its not implemented by the time i finish college i fully intend to implement a business idea of my own that would to a certain extent change the distribution methods and profit sources of the music industry )its making sure its changing for the better that is the issue. of course we can say all music / games / movies should be free to everybody and its convenient to say you believe that when you can illegally get it for free now. in reality however this dosnt work.

was that directed at me? i didn't say that. I said the industry needs to change it's business model in order to attract a greater proportion of my income. however they only way they are going to do that is if they seriously increase the return i get for my cash. let's call it the Tesco? model, whereby you allow your margins to fall in order to increase total revenue and thus increase profits. Because of the nature of their product, the main players in these industries have effectively held a monopoly over niches in the market (like the half life series over me for example). what's happening now is a reality check that the industry needs to overcome if they are to survive.