Piracy in the gaming industry: Am I the only one seeing a pattern here?
[Warning] This blog post contains massive amounts of truth based on reality laced with sarcasm and humor. If you dont have any of the last mentioned dont bother reading. But if you insist reading might I suggest you go buy a sense of humor and some sarcasm online. If people can sell there virginity online I am sure you would be able to find some sarcasm and a sense of humor for sale online.
Am I the only one who is currently seeing a recurring pattern when it comes to piracy and DRM? What bought on this epiphany you may ask? Well the latest DRM versus general gaming public debacle. And for those of you who have been living under a rock the past week, what it boils down too is the fact that when playing Assasins Creed 2 for the PC you need to be online while playing if not you get kicked out of your game. Now before I start discussing this pattern I have been seeing lately, lets just forget about the legal and moral issues regarding piracy for a moment because that horse is dead and beaten already. And just for the record I dont agree with this type of DRM for a single player game if it was for a multiplayer game then yes that would be understandable. But I can see were the developers and publishers are coming from in trying to protect their work from piracy on a platform, that to be honest is diseased with it like a crack whore is with AIDS.
Sir Isaac Newtons law of motion describes this pattern in the gaming industry perfectly: "To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Simply put the reaction in this endless pattern is piracy and the people who pirate. And the equal and opposite reaction to this is DRM protection that is implemented by the developers and publishers. Then the reaction on the DRM by "some" of the angry and discontent raises is by raising the god damned Jolly Roger flag and say they'll pirate the game as a gesture consistent with some comprehensive ur-morality they've ginned up, one where stealing things is alright provided they were very angry when they did it making to okay. The gaming industries reaction too all of this? They start focusing on platforms that are less piracy prone, and you guessed it some of the gamers start complaining that they are receiving dumbed down console ports. And so the cycle continues....
Source: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/2/19/Visit any thread regarding the topic, and I mean any thread, and it won't be three posts until someone raises the Goddamned Jolly Roger and says they'll pirate the game as a gesture consistent with some comprehensive ur-morality they've ginned up, one where stealing things is alright provided they were very angry when they did it. It's entirely possible that you don't like being spoken to in this way, but somebody has to get this done. What Ubisoft is doing here is Draconian - I don't mean those lizard dudes, I'm talking about laws which are characterized by their severity. Before they eventually dismantle it, and it will be dismantled, it will have achieved exactly the opposite of their intention. But what I won't tolerate from rational beings is the idea that you don't understand why they're doing it. The trouble is that this dialogue between pirates and publishers, one which was always characterized by falsehood and ill-will, has ceased to exist in this case. A maneuver this extreme means that they're finished talking altogether: this mechanism is their response, the final word
