Some personal thoughts on piracy (warning - long post)

[Whinis]

After reading through this thread and peoples attempt to discern what is and is not piracy I find it all funny.

Do I pirate game, Yes as does everyone else whether they realize it or not. As long is there is the ability to copy something piracy will be around in some form or fashion. By copying or moving the files on your computer according to the law you are pirating. Now I do not believe that Piracy hurts the companies as I don't believe the numbers that the studies put out of 90-95% piracy in games. Especially games like MW2 which sold over 20 million copies and claiming a 200 million pirates. While I can understand a developer wanting to get all the money that they can out of a product that they create ( I design websites so easily pirated), The truth of the matter is pirates fall into one of 3 categories
1. Too poor to purchase
2. Pirating it just to Pirate
3. Testing the game

While 1 and 2 you will never get money out of so its a net loss of $0 and net gain of $0. You can bend the numbers and reasons as you will but the fact is if they don't have the money or the initiative to buy the game you will not get the money out of them. It would be like claiming since we have 7 billion people on the earth and only 1 million bought a product the other 99% are doing an illegal action. While you can argue all day long whether its right or wrong you can't claim the people who will never buy are a loss. Any attempts to do so cause you to lose more money, you have to accept that X number will purchase and Y won't

The third group is the wildcard. If they pirate the game but don't like it you could tally that up to a lose as they were considering buying the game in the first place. They must have the money to be in group 3 and the heart that they will buy if they like it. At the same time you can not accurately measure that group as how can you decide that both have the money and were going to buy if it meet their requirements.

You can do multiple things to make this group happier such as give demos, allow multiple review, and posting videos of the game in action so that people know what they are getting. You will never make everyone happy and as shown by recent studies the attempt to prevent piracy no matter by what means actually hurts the developers in the long run. Examples of this are the GFWL DRM, Ubisoft DRM, Online Activation, and Limited installs. While each are an attempt to prevent piracy the pirates in these cases by removing the anti-piracy software actually have a better experience than the legal users.

This all boils down to how you treat your customers. If you are like the big publishers and treat them as a number then slowly you will need to eat smaller companies to stay afloat. If you use intrusive and restrictive DRM you are treating your customers like criminals and in respect turning most of them to crime to play your game. If you force your customers to sign terms and conditions in order to use your product you are saying I want your money but I don't want you to have the product. In the end if you remove the DRM, set the price right, create a good game, and give the customers all the tools they need evaluate your game your will succeed in the long run. However people trying to saying piracy is good/bad for the industry is like complaining whether buying from Company A or B is right or wrong. Sure both can have their ups and downs but you can't really throw a broad blanket over the entire group and say Wrong or Right.

I bought amnesia, I thought it was a great game. Kudos to the developers for sticking their neck out there. however you can't pin piracy to the fall/ rise of companies, you can't decide whether its wrong or right as with every other ethical issue, and you can't use it as an excuse.

As far as consoles go, developers are switching to consoles as its easier, quicker, and all the support is provided by the console maker allowing them to save money and create more games. However while not all console games are bad it is turning the PC market into a bad market as gamers now wanter controllers rather than keyboard and mouse. One of the arguments for GFWL vs Steam is that GFWL is controller friendly.

[Yuhaney]

Don't bump old threads.