Confession...

[Adeno]

Just to add, these days, most games contain the EULA agreement thing where it states that you, the consumer, do not buy the "game". You only buy the "license" to play the game. As we have seen, games being sold have all sorts of security on them that restricts where you can play them, and even the number of times you can install this game on a machine.

There are even times when, I forgot what the security is called, you upgrade a hardware part of your machine, the game suddenly won't load anymore because when you first installed it, the security recorded the information of your machine and now that it's different, it thinks you're trying to pirate it or sell it to another person.

There's also the security type where it loads some type or "rootkit" or whatever spy thing on your machine. Some people are affected by this from a computer resource perspective, while others don't seem to care. The point is that there are people whose machines are affected, and they have no other way of regaining whatever resources they are losing due to the "rootkit" aside from finding a way to uninstall the game and the said "rootkit" which sometimes continue to linger in the machine long after a game has been uninstalled.

One more example would be the security that forces you to play ONLINE, even if the game is a single player game. An example of this is Assassin's Creed 2 by Ubisoft. If you bought the game...erm I mean the license to play the game, and suddenly you lost your internet connection, you're screwed. What if you do have an internet connection, but it's unstable due to your geographical location? You're screwed. What if your computer has been infected by some malware or virus that causes your internet connection to go haywire? You're screwed.

Another factor as to why people "pirate" games is to check if their systems can actually handle them. For some weird reason, demos of games are becoming more overlooked. Sometimes, no demo of the game is released! How can a person who only relies on checking the "Minimum System Requirements" (which barely states if you can ACTUALLY have a PLAYABLE game environment, not just RUN it) would know if they're not wasting their money? Most stores these days won't give you a refund if you try to return a game because YOU might have copied the game and you're just returning it to them.

In my own opinion, these types of security used in games which restrict when, where, and how you play the games is not good for honest gamers who actually pay for the "licenses". All it does is add a lot of irritation in the supposedly enjoyable world of gaming, especially if you own a machine which is negatively affected by one of their rootkits or whatever.

Does piracy affect sales of games? Most likely. Still, they can say that they expect such figures of sales to be met after a certain amount of time, but that's just all speculation. They may hype a game so much that you see commercials of it on tv very often, yet their sales would still fail. They'd often blame piracy for them. What they don't realize is their games failed to sell well because it's just no fun at all. It's bland. It's been done before, it's nothing new.

What a lot of publishers/developers forget these days is that it takes more than advertising to sell a game. No matter how much you try to prevent a person to have a taste of the game you're selling by not having a demo available, those who have been misled by the hype who suddenly experience how crappy the game is will strongly voice out their opinions on the internet. People will readily be able to watch videos of the actual game on youtube and judge to some extent the real quality of your product.

Look at Batman: Arkham Asylum. That was one heavily pirated game, yet it still sold millions! Why is that? It's because people were able to judge for themselves that the gameplay in the Batman demo was great and fun, and actually made them feel like they're The Batman. Does it mean that those who pirated the game also bought the game? Maybe, but some people definitely do the "Try Before You Buy" and "If You Like It, Then Buy It!" principle.

What about Amnesia? Look at the its position in Steam. It really didn't have that much of advertising, but it managed to get very high up there! They had a playable demo, and people liked what they experienced. People will buy a game that is actually fun and works on their computers. Amnesia's so good that I even stopped playing Metroid: Other M just to spend more time with it.

In my opinion, a lot of publishers/developers are scared of letting players try out their games before an actual release date (with the help of demos of course) because of the power of free communication on the internet. It only takes a few bad reviews and some youtube videos that show actual gameplay (and bugs and glitches) to kill your million dollar advertising campaign.

The game industry and the Hollywood movie industry are two different things. Although both of them can hype up their product with the use of trailers, the game industry has the extra ability to make demos of their products available to the players with actual interaction. Some Hollywood movies do well in the opening week due to a movie's hype. The movie could have sold millions of tickets, only to be met by very poor reviews. You can call this the "burst" effect of hyping up a movie.

In the gaming world, people naturally want to know if a game's going to work on their machines and how it actually "feels" like when playing them. Unlike Hollywood movies, players are not just watching the game. The players need to get a feel and interact with it personally. Even well established game franchises will need to make demos available to people, because unlike movies, the computers and requirements change all the time, and just because a game from a different company works well on their machines doesn't mean it will work for what you're selling.

Yes, the gaming industry is definitely a very great place to make lots of money from, but you need to be sure that the quality of the product deserves the expensive price tag for the "license" to play it.