Piracy, Not Consoles, Killed the PC Exclusive

OmegaFenix said:
Games are a luxury item, it is not food or cloths or other "must have" items. It is a Luxury, if you can't afford it then they don't have it. I can't afford the newest Laptop does that mean its ok for me to go take one? I can't afford the newest TV so I'll just find a store and take one. No you don't do that so why does it apply to games or films or music?
Click to expand...

Didn't that happen during the last London riots?
 
czc said:
Didn't that happen during the last London riots?
Click to expand...

Indeed, a bunch of people used the death of a man as a excuse to feed their entitlement and yet we all call it crime, people looked on, livelihoods ruined by the greed of men, women & children. No one stole food or beds, no they stole laptops, mobile phones, gaming consoles, games etc.
 
Ugh, let me start over again.

Person A doesn't want to buy a game. So he pirates it. If he doesn't pirate it, he's still not going to buy it.

People pirate stuff because they DO NOT WANT TO BUY IT. As long as they can pirate, they will, because THEY DO NOT WANT TO BUY IT.

I have no issue with developers looking for solutions to piracy. I just want them to stop the fucking shit they're doing right now. The way they're tackling piracy simply DOES, NOT, WORK.

Until games go Cloud, there is no way to stop piracy. Every new piece of security they implement gets cracked all the same. Why continue fighting something you can't stop, especially if you're doing nothing but harm your client base? Maybe if they stopped focusing on PREVENTING piracy, and started focusing on working WITH their clients, not against them, then they might start seeing better sales again.

Here's another quote that looks at the issue from the 'bigger picture' perspective.

DRM does not stop the pirate from pirating the game. And if they can't pirate it, they don't care - it's not like they're going to go buy the game.

A pirated game is not a lost sale. The idea that every pirated copy is money out of teh mouths of publishers, is a myth, to further the narrative of the publishers who look for any and all excuse for lack of projected growth. Look at the music industry. Did people recording songs off radio kill the industry, like the industry said it would? No. Did people converting their cds to MP3s kill the industry, like they said ti would? No.

Will game piracy kill the gaming industry, like the industry say it will? No.

The real reasons for lack of growth in an industry? Stagnation. Treating your paying customers like shit. Lack of innovation. Competing in a Red Ocean.

I cannot count the number of times my legally purchased game has not worked because of draconian or invasive DRM. As a game reviewer, that buys his own games because I am not given them for free, nothing sours my experience more than a game that crashes, locks up or won't work offline, because of DRM.

And eventually, publishers will realize this, like the music industry did, and find ways to work with customers, instead of against them.

iTunes removed DRM from their MP3s. Did they go bankrupt? No, they saw an increase in sales, because people were now being treated like responsible adults, instead of the theiving little child that is so easy to sell in a greedy narrative that blames everyone but themselves for their perceived lack of infinite revenue growth.
Click to expand...
 
Entitlement is a symptom, not the cause. In the same way that many of the riots we've seen recently, particularly those in the UK, are egged on by people who want to riot regardless of the reason. Entitlement comes as a defence of said action, but it's not the direct cause.

Also, I'm assuming you're missing out the concept of "permission" here. One can easily take something without paying, but it's not a crime if it's being given away, no? Or, to put it another way, when the one in control of a desired item announces that he/she bestows the allowance of free partaking with no penalty.

I completely disagree with any notion of "stopping" piracy, as long as the notion includes ways to look at it from a different perspective. The fact that pirates are also potential customers - simply indulging via the simplest measure. This action, as with everything, is matched up with the cognizant morality complex of the situation. We can all agree that many attempts at DRM have inconvenienced legal purchasers, thus encouraging piracy rather than hindering it. The misconception here is the attempt to prevent piracy from happening initially, rather than an attempt to stem the tide.

Regardless, the fact remains that, as long as there is a more convenient route to achieve something, most people with knowledge of said route will take it. This may be piracy on one hand, with a few people refraining, or it may be legal purchase on the other hand, with a few people refraining. That utmost latter, the people who can comfortably afford to purchase a game, but instead pirate it - they are the main problem. But for many of them, they will refuse to purchase a game legally, often citing some or other bias or protest that drives them to it. I recall chatting to someone who pirated every valve game he was even meagerly interested in, purely because he wanted to "get back at valve" for deleting an account he purchased from someone else. I thought it supremely silly, but you get people who act that way.

Edit: kinda somewhat ninja'd by Graal
 
Maybe if they stopped focusing on PREVENTING piracy, and started focusing on working WITH their clients, not against them, then they might start seeing better sales again.
Click to expand...
You are some how relating being 'against piracy' as being 'for DRM' and that's certainly not the case. There is nothing wrong with trying to prevent piracy, it's the way some people are doing it that is the problem.

DRM does not stop the pirate from pirating the game. And if they can't pirate it, they don't care - it's not like they're going to go buy the game.
Click to expand...
Not sure where you got that quote from but I've have more than enough experience of that statement being false. Let's take multiplayer games for example, plenty of mates who would pirate regular sp games would buy multiplayer games they want purely because if they wanted to play the game they needed to buy it, and so they did. Which is the crux of the matter, when it's a choice between free and paying the pirate will always choose free, but if it's a choice between paying or not playing then there is a decision to be made which can quite often result in a purchase.
 
Multiplayer games =! singleplayer games. If you pirate a multiplayer game, you cannot access the multiplayer section, therefor the product is essentially useless. If you pirate a singleplayer game, you still have full access to all the content. Big difference right there, and it certainly doesn't disprove the statement.

I'll freely admit I've pirated all the Assassin's Creed games that came after the first. I don't feel bad about it in the slightest, because even if there wasn't a pirate option I still would not have bought it, because I'm not about to put up with Ubisoft's DRM. The games just aren't worth that type of hassle.

Pirates do not always pirate because they desire the game. I know a lot of people who mass pirate and end up playing maybe one or two of the games they pirate. Simply taking away the option for piracy is not going to make people suddenly start buying every game that looks vaguely interesting.
 
Graal said:
I'll freely admit I've pirated all the Assassin's Creed games that came after the first. I don't feel bad about it in the slightest, because even if there wasn't a pirate option I still would not have bought it, because I'm not about to put up with Ubisoft's DRM. The games just aren't worth that type of hassle.
Click to expand...


MOnk said:
Arguing about piracy is like running on a treadmill, you're never getting anywhere.
Click to expand...
I should have followed my own advice.
 
MOnk said:
I should have followed my own advice.
Click to expand...

Or you could have taken into consideration the point I was attempting to make? That is that in the current state of the industry, the impact piracy makes on the industry is minimal.
 
Last edited:
OmegaFenix said:
The Industry disagrees.
Click to expand...

Of course they do. What excuses will they have left if they admit that they overexagerate the effect of piracy on them?

Developers/publishers are using piracy as an easy scape-goat for why games are doing bad. They're not focusing on the real issues for why games are doing bad, which is stagnation. The gaming industry is stagnating. And treating valid customers like shit. And nobody in the AAA industry actually has significant competition.

How many of the AAA games that came out last year were not sequels?

Hell, even Skyrim is a testimony to how the industry is stagnating. Everyone was expecting the next big thing, but what we ended up getting was Oblivion with an overhaul mod. It was still a good game, it was just nothing special or anything that we haven't seen countless times before. I actually regret purchasing Skyrim, and I regret that it sold so well in general, because at some point we're going to have to start showing developers that they need to start innovating.
 
In early December, an article was published about a law firm acting on behalf of CD Projekt RED, contacting individuals who had downloaded The Witcher 2 illegally and seeking financial compensation for copyright infringement. The news about our decision to combat piracy directly, instead of with DRM, spread quickly and with it came a number of concerns from the community. Repeatedly, gamers just like you have said that our methods might wrongly accuse people who have never violated our copyright and expressed serious concern about our actions.

Being part of a community is a give-and-take process. We only succeed because you have faith in us, and we have worked hard over the years to build up that trust. We were sorry to see that many gamers felt that our actions didn’t respect the faith that they have put into CD Projekt RED. Our fans always have been and remain our greatest concern, and we pride ourselves on the fact that you all know that we listen to you and take your opinions to heart. While we are confident that no one who legally owns one of our games has been required to compensate us for copyright infringement, we value our fans, our supporters, and our community too highly to take the chance that we might ever falsely accuse even one individual.


So we’ve decided that we will immediately cease identifying and contacting pirates.


Let’s make this clear: we don’t support piracy. It hurts us, the developers. It hurts the industry as a whole. Though we are staunch opponents of DRM because we don’t believe it has any effect on reducing piracy, we still do not condone copying games illegally. We’re doing our part to keep our relationship with you, our gaming audience, a positive one. We’ve heard your concerns, listened to your voices, and we’re responding to them. But you need to help us and do your part: don’t be indifferent to piracy. If you see a friend playing an illegal copy of a game–any game–tell your friend that they’re undermining the possible success of the developer who created the very game that they are enjoying. Unless you support the developers who make the games you play, unless you pay for those games, we won’t be able to produce new excellent titles for you.


Keep on playing,


Marcin Iwinski
co-founder
CD Projekt RED
Click to expand...

Source: http://www.savingcontent.com/2012/0...openly-talks-about-piracy-and-being-drm-free/
 
And did piracy stop them from selling more than 800k copies of The Witcher 2, making a fuckload of money in the process?
 
Graal said:
Of course they do. What excuses will they have left if they admit that they overexagerate the effect of piracy on them?

Developers/publishers are using piracy as an easy scape-goat for why games are doing bad. They're not focusing on the real issues for why games are doing bad, which is stagnation. The gaming industry is stagnating. And treating valid customers like shit. And nobody in the AAA industry actually has significant competition.

How many of the AAA games that came out last year were not sequels?

Hell, even Skyrim is a testimony to how the industry is stagnating. Everyone was expecting the next big thing, but what we ended up getting was Oblivion with an overhaul mod. It was still a good game, it was just nothing special or anything that we haven't seen countless times before. I actually regret purchasing Skyrim, and I regret that it sold so well in general, because at some point we're going to have to start showing developers that they need to start innovating.
Click to expand...

I've heard this argument before as well. Its Circular you are never going to get to a point, you expect the next big thing but even developers who listen to gamers ever growing list demands for a "good game" are being shafted by piracy.

I keep telling myself I wont come back to this argument and yet I keep coming back.

All I have to say about this stagnation argument is summed up perfectly here: Opinion: We've Got it Better Than Ever
 
Graal said:
And did piracy stop them from selling more than 800k copies of The Witcher 2, making a fuckload of money in the process?
Click to expand...

Yet 4.2 Million copies was pirated, thats 5 times the amount sold. I've given you an example from one of the few Studios who maintain that DRM is bad & keeps the player at the heart of it telling you that Piracy hurts them, hurts the industry and you want to tell me the glass is half full? No the glass if half empty and piracy STOLE the other half. Not DRM, there wasn't any, not lack of content, there was plenty of content, not a shitty game, the Witcher 2 is widely considered one of the best titles of 2011. SO WHAT THE FUCK motivated those who STOLE it?

I am now seriously done with this argument, I had given it the benefit of the doubt, but am left, no more than ever, resenting my fellow gamers.
 
Graal said:
And did piracy stop them from selling more than 800k copies of The Witcher 2, making a fuckload of money in the process?
Click to expand...

R800k is NOTHING in comparison the amount of sales of a lot of non-AAA games on consoles.

You know what is going to be the sick irony? If the 360 version's sales eclipses that of the PC version.
 
Last edited:
Strifehart said:
R800k is NOTHING in comparison the amount of sales of a lot of non-AAA games on consoles.

You know what is going to be the sick irony? If the 360 version's sales eclipses that of the PC version.
Click to expand...

I am sure the chance of that happening is what motivated the Xbox release.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top