Piracy

Center · March 4, 2010

fatBastard() said:
This is where it gets hairy. How would history have unfolded if Hitler had been successfully assassinated before he came to power. We have no way of knowing because he didn't and WW2 ensued. Since we apparently can't find a way to get rid of piracy we can only look at the sales figures WITH piracy and thus the only thing we can compare is how many people are playing a game vs. how many have actually bought it.

Godwins law

What we can do is look at situations where piracy is not available and then becomes available, and see how that effects sales. Like with games, I'm guessing in the early 2000s? I never heard of a massive drop off in sales. How about movies? Books? Im not sure what else is piratable, but as far as i know, none of these suffered a significant because pirating became possible.

Also, if you're opposed to speculation, how can you say this:
"if piracy was made impossible but it will most likely lead to an average of at least 2-3 times more sold units than today"

fatBastard() said:
The next logical step is then: Is it okay that x number of people are enjoying product A illegally for free while y number of people had to pay Z amount of money to play the same product legally?

If yes, then only sold units w. P vs. sold units w/o P is relevant.

If no, then bought units vs. pirated units is just as relevant as any other comparison because it shows how many freeloaders there are.

That doesn't follow logically :-/

No one has argued that piracy is a good thing, that its okay to pirate software (in this thread)(i think). This isn't about the social justice of having people pay equally for the same pleasure.

I only addressed the assertion that companies would see their sales grow 2 to 3 times (200 to 300%) if piracy was ended. There is no evidence to support it. Easy reasons to think its not true (piracy as a crime of opportunity) , evidence that in other areas piracy has lead to an increase in popularity, and a shortage of evidence suggesting piracy hurts sales in any area. If anyones thinking piracy has hurt the music industry, sorry.

fatBastard() said:
Indeed, but the argument is flawed and meant to dissuade any contradiction to his/hers position. It's like the witch/McCarthy hunts all over again. Refuse to cooperate and you're automatically a witch or a communist even though the initial claim was false.

Fantastic overstatement, nowhere has anyone said that you're inherently wrong for disagreeing. Except that one guy who said were all full of shit i guess. The article points out a couple common arguments about how hypothetical situations will following their model instead of real world examples, and then he posts examples of people actually doing the hypothetical example and having results in line whats happened in the past than the "pirated version = lost sale" model.

fatBastard() said:
When comparing gaming piracy with books, movies or music piracy the article's statement forgets to take the other branches of income into account and thus the comparison is false but if I open my mouth to explain why the comparison is false I'm naturally making excuses. Talk about a rock and a hard place.

Ok, first off, its an approximation. No two situations are ever going to be the same. Its like saying you cant compare piracy of GTA IV and Dragon Age because Dragon Age and fantasy while GTA IV is ... contemporary? I'm not sure what you call it. But! just saying "they're different" misses the point. Piracy of Movies Books and Games is much more similarity than it is different, so why would you expect to get totally different results? (Sorry if it got rushed towards the end, i decided to hurry up and finish the post)

In case anyone interested, piracy and dvd sales

dteowner · March 5, 2010

To borrow a phrase, correlation does not equate to causation. I'm curious that both your pirate defense references come from the same site.

fatBastard() · March 5, 2010

Center said:
Godwins law

What we can do is look at situations where piracy is not available and then becomes available, and see how that effects sales. Like with games, I'm guessing in the early 2000s?

Wait, are you suggesting that game piracy was not an issue in the early 2000s? Piracy in the gaming world has ALWAYS been an issue, from the first time a game left the cartridge and became distributable as software instead of embedded in hardware til this very day.

Center said:
Also, if you're opposed to speculation, how can you say this:
"if piracy was made impossible but it will most likely lead to an average of at least 2-3 times more sold units than today"

I'm not opposed to speculation. I just can't get my head around how anyone can dismiss very logical conclusion that *IF* 4 out of 5 gaming session are performed with pirated copies then at least some of the pirates *WOULD* buy the game if given no other option. There is proof and then there is common sense and while I don't believe that 100 pirated copies equals 100 missed sales, there is ample reason to believe that the number is somewhere around 10-30 and that *IS* missed sales due to piracy.

Center said:
Ok, first off, its an approximation. No two situations are ever going to be the same. Its like saying you cant compare piracy of GTA IV and Dragon Age because Dragon Age and fantasy while GTA IV is … contemporary? I'm not sure what you call it. But! just saying "they're different" misses the point. Piracy of Movies Books and Games is much more similarity than it is different, so why would you expect to get totally different results?

But they're NOT the same. It's like comparing having hot steamy sex with the woman of your dreams to masturbating in a sock. The end result for you is the same but the experience is very VERY different.

I'm not a fast reader so it usually takes me 20-30 hours to read a decent sized book (depending on how captivating it is). I usually read in bed, while on the toilet, slouched on the sofa or when traveling. Not one of those options would be possible with a digital pirated version of a book so my only alternative would be to sit on my office chair staring at the computer screen for 20-30 hours. Not going to happen. EVER!

Consequently a pirated digital copy of a book is NOT the same as the real thing (unless I'm the only one who prefers real books over digital books) and it therefore can NOT be compared to game pirating where the pirated version is exactly the same as the "real" thing.

Tragos · March 5, 2010

If the game comes with a stupid DRM i am always using cracks , also in the latest game i bought Impulse d/l speed was so slow that i 've got the game from a pirate source and just used the key from my account ( it was GalCiv2 , no DRM) .
DRM is NOT an excuse for pirating games .

Now an interesting case: theoretically speaking i am a big fan of Sci-FI series , so i go and for example i d/l "Firefly" , the series are not available in Greece and probably will never be so there is no financial loss for FOX right?
But because i am such a big fan i order and buy the series and FOX makes a sale out of nowhere , so media piracy in this case is good or bad ?

Ubereil · March 5, 2010

fatBastard() said:
I'm not opposed to speculation. I just can't get my head around how anyone can dismiss very logical conclusion that *IF* 4 out of 5 gaming session are performed with pirated copies then at least some of the pirates *WOULD* buy the game if given no other option. There is proof and then there is common sense and while I don't believe that 100 pirated copies equals 100 missed sales, there is ample reason to believe that the number is somewhere around 10-30 and that *IS* missed sales due to piracy.

I believe there are also a number of sales made from piracy that wouldn't have been there if piracy hadn't been possible. The result with books shows that this must be the case. There is a number of lost sales and a number of gained sales and gained sales - lost sales gives us the effect piracy has on a product.

In the case of books the gained sales are more than the lost sales so they earn on it. With games the ratio is different (because paper books are so much handier than e-books). It might be that the gained sales are still more than the lost sales, but I find that hard to believe. We don't know the ratio though. It probably isn't 30 lost sales for every gained sale, but the gaming industry still probably lose out.

I wonder if piracy have acually increased in magnitude though. The way I recall my brother's Amiga he didn't have any bought games for it, and that was the early to mid 90's when we didn't have internet at home. I'm not sure everyone was like my brother, but it feels like most pepole were (most pepole my brother knew were anyway, and those were pretty much the fans of computer games in Sweden at the time).

Übereil

Rithrandil · March 5, 2010

Tragos said:
If the game comes with a stupid DRM i am always using cracks , also in the latest game i bought Impulse d/l speed was so slow that i 've got the game from a pirate source and just used the key from my account ( it was GalCiv2 , no DRM) .
DRM is NOT an excuse for pirating games .

I agree with Tragos here. I've done that sort of thing as well.

Tragos said:
Now an interesting case: theoretically speaking i am a big fan of Sci-FI series , so i go and for example i d/l "Firefly" , the series are not available in Greece and probably will never be so there is no financial loss for FOX right?
But because i am such a big fan i order and buy the series and FOX makes a sale out of nowhere , so media piracy in this case is good or bad ?

Also interesting. You can even move this further, Tragos.

Go look at Mystery Science Theatre 3000. I don't know if that's big anywhere outside of America, but most of that show is completely unavailable on DVD. Yet - if you look - you can find the entire series online to download for free. It's not aired on any TV station any more and most of the episodes will never be released on DVD - let alone as a season set. Is it ethically acceptable at that point to pirate the show?

You can also extend this argument to games that aren't sold anymore. I personally would find pirating Xenogears acceptable (since that game is no longer produced or sold here) and even if you bought a copy off of ebay a whopping 0% of that sale would go to Square Enix. I think, though, that in this age emulators and virtual consoles etc it should be relatively easy for companies to just sell these older games for five bucks online and still eek out some profit for it. On this same subject, I'm pretty pissed it's taken Square so long to release some of these games here in the states. All they have to do - literally - is throw it up on PSN. I mean, god, if I can rip my Xenogears CDs to an image file, convert that image file to run on a PSP, and play said Xenogears on my PSP in about 20 minutes, why has it taken Square Enix over 3 years and counting to make the game available for purchase again!

Center · March 5, 2010

dteowner said:
To borrow a phrase, correlation does not equate to causation. I'm curious that both your pirate defense references come from the same site.

Great phrase that unfortunately does not apply here. These are much closer to being experimental studies, and manipulating an independent variable (price) and seeing how that effects a dependent variable (units sold) does allow you to address causation. There are flaws with these examples that are going to keep them out of a journal, but being correlational studies are not one of them.

Well, the second example came from a link in the first post, so its not too surprising

. If you doubt the information contained in them you can easily find it from other sites around the web.

fatBastard() said:
Wait, are you suggesting that game piracy was not an issue in the early 2000s? Piracy in the gaming world has ALWAYS been an issue, from the first time a game left the cartridge and became distributable as software instead of embedded in hardware til this very day.

I was taking a guess, i always assumed that piracy becoming significant was a result of the internet (and thus torrents) making pirating so easy, I didn't think there would have been a significant amount before that. I'm surprised it existed with the really early games though, I would have thought pirating a cartridge game would have been a giant pain in the ass, I mean, once you get the info you still need to find a case for it.

fatBastard() said:
I'm not opposed to speculation. I just can't get my head around how anyone can dismiss very logical conclusion that *IF* 4 out of 5 gaming session are performed with pirated copies then at least some of the pirates *WOULD* buy the game if given no other option. There is proof and then there is common sense and while I don't believe that 100 pirated copies equals 100 missed sales, there is ample reason to believe that the number is somewhere around 10-30 and that *IS* missed sales due to piracy.

Whoa whoa whoa, no one has disagreed that some pirates would buy the games instead, its the massive increase in sales you were predicting that got me to respond. Now, whats this reason to believe sales would jump to any particular number? I mean actually evidence, not common sense, which is different for everyone. But, a study, or clear logic, that demonstrates 10-30% of pirates would buy retail copies?

fatBastard() said:
I'm not a fast reader so it usually takes me 20-30 hours to read a decent sized book (depending on how captivating it is). I usually read in bed, while on the toilet, slouched on the sofa or when traveling. Not one of those options would be possible with a digital pirated version of a book so my only alternative would be to sit on my office chair staring at the computer screen for 20-30 hours. Not going to happen. EVER!

Ive read ebooks in all of the places you mentioned

fatBastard() said:
Consequently a pirated digital copy of a book is NOT the same as the real thing (unless I'm the only one who prefers real books over digital books) and it therefore can NOT be compared to game pirating where the pirated version is exactly the same as the "real" thing.

But it often isnt, most games include some sort of multiplayer on official servers which you cant do with a pirated game.
Even if something is different in some aspects it can be compared. That what all comparisons are

Also: Libraries present a situation quite close to video games. You can get a book from a library in the exact same format as you would from a book store. Yet I rarely (never?) hear people suggest that they hurt the literature industry.

Corwin · March 6, 2010

I get books from the library every week as books are very expensive here and I read a lot. However, if I really like a book, or series, I WILL go out and buy them once I know how really great they are!!

fatBastard() · March 6, 2010

Center said:
I was taking a guess, i always assumed that piracy becoming significant was a result of the internet (and thus torrents) making pirating so easy, I didn't think there would have been a significant amount before that. I'm surprised it existed with the really early games though, I would have thought pirating a cartridge game would have been a giant pain in the ass, I mean, once you get the info you still need to find a case for it.

I'm not sure that it actually was possible to pirate cartridge games but with the C-64 (my own entry point in the world of games), Amiga and later the PC the games was no longer distributed on cartridges and piracy was actually close to shutting down the entire gaming scene in the 80'ies.

Back in the C-64 days piracy was done by copying cassette tapes at your friend's house and thus mostly on a "I know a guy who knows a guy" basis. On the Amiga where diskettes had replaced the cassette player and the sensitivity of the cassette player, which meant you had to record the tape on your own player or you wouldn't be able to read the content, was no longer an issue the subscription based "you get what I get for xx amount each month" kind of deals with your local games pusher was more common. These "bundles" was often packages deals with one cracker group or another and more closely resembled a black market rather than "file sharing".

When games started to arrive on CDs the ripping market was hot in the beginning. The idea was to remove all but the actual game to make it take up as little space as possible, which usually meant removing music, sound/speech, cutscenes (they were mostly pre-rendered in those days), etc. The end result was virtually unplayable in my opinion.

Then came the internet and the rest is history.

Center said:
Whoa whoa whoa, no one has disagreed that some pirates would buy the games instead, its the massive increase in sales you were predicting that got me to respond. Now, whats this reason to believe sales would jump to any particular number? I mean actually evidence, not common sense, which is different for everyone. But, a study, or clear logic, that demonstrates 10-30% of pirates would buy retail copies?

No. No study. You are of course right that common sense differs from person to person and I may indeed be completely off on my deductions. I'm basing them on the vast number of pirated copies of software that is totally useless unless you actually run it. I'm therefore assuming that most of the people who download games play them as well. Once you get into playing games I'm again assuming that if you do it more than once in a while you get hooked to some degree (I know I am) and if the possibility to get the games for free is suddenly removed I'm certain that a certain percentage of the freeloaders still need to feed their habit and thus will be "forced" to actually pay for their games.

If the initial assumption that 80% of the units in play are pirate versions and the above mentioned assumptions hold true then IMO it is common sense that the number of sold units would at least double if piracy become impossible tomorrow … but no, I don't have a study I can point to.

Center said:
Ive read ebooks in all of the places you mentioned

Okay, then it makes more sense to me how you can compare digital books to physical books. :idea:

Center said:
But it often isnt, most games include some sort of multiplayer on official servers which you cant do with a pirated game.
Even if something is different in some aspects it can be compared. That what all comparisons are

True. It wouldn't surprise me if the whole global experience levels/statistics with unlockable upgrades and/or new weapons that we have seen in recent online titles (e.g. Battle Field 2, the latest Call of Duty games) are at least in part made as an incentive to have a legit copy of the game so you can use these features.

Of course if a game gets big enough, even servers for pirates could be numerous enough to make the experience similar to the legit players.

However, I think it is food for thought that often these kinds of games are selling a lot more than for instance pure singleplayer games. Is that because they are more popular or because singleplayer games are more easily pirated?

Center said:
Also: Libraries present a situation quite close to video games. You can get a book from a library in the exact same format as you would from a book store. Yet I rarely (never?) hear people suggest that they hurt the literature industry.

But authors are compensated by the libraries just like musicians (or at least the record label) are compensated when a song is played on the radio. I'm not sure how much they get compared to a sold book but at least they get something. When a game is pirated the developers/publisher gets nothing at all.

Ubereil · March 6, 2010

Corwin said:
I get books from the library every week as books are very expensive here and I read a lot. However, if I really like a book, or series, I WILL go out and buy them once I know how really great they are!!

Most pepole won't do that.

…therefore libraries are evil.

(And in Sweden Swedish authors are compensated.)

Übereil

Dhruin · March 6, 2010

Center said:
I'm not aware of any evidence that pirating leads to a decrease in sales…while this provides evidence that pirating can lead to an increase in sales.

Arguing piracy is complete waste of time but I couldn't help noticing this post.

Where exactly is this evidence you point to? That a Russian translation of a book that has apparently sold 30M copies worldwide sold some copies? There's absolutely no causation proven. And that doesn't address fatbastard's valid points: a .pdf of a book ain't the same thing as an actual book.

booboo · March 6, 2010

my 2c (since I haven't waded through all of the above): piracy will always be here, no DRM or platform shift will ever destroy it. The only way you can address piracy is to educate young people (when they're settling on what's right/wrong) and convince them that it is bad - good luck on that. HOWEVER, *DRM* can lead to lost sales from long-time legitimate customers. Point in case- Ubisoft. I will not buy a single game from them while they insist on a 'permanent internet connection'. That will equate to real losses, and quite frankly they deserve it with such a hare-brained scheme. AND it's already been cracked - it was supposedly uncrackable. Human ingenuity knows no bounds: if someone can develop a scheme, someone can thwart it. Kind of obvious really. I always buy the games I'm really keen on, and I'm sure that a great many other people do to. If they did not, the industry would have collapsed. It manifestly has not. So, people are making money, just not as much as they want to. boo hoo.

Alrik Fassbauer · March 6, 2010

Interestingly, one aspect that almost never occurs in these piracy discussion is : In how far do people care ?

This is how I mean it : In the recent thing with the "World Of Goo Experiment", people were asked to pay whatever they saw fit.

The astonishing result was a horde of people only paying a few cents for that game.

Let me try it the other way round : If I as a fan was asked to support a local or otherwise developing studio, I would pay (like with Grotesque) rather more money because I believe in them, than I think non-fans would do, which would be so to say the entire world, except the (compared to that) tiny fraction of fans - of the whole world population.

That exaggeration was just used to show ho small the group of fans actually is - compared to the sheer mass of customers locally or world-ide.

Assumed that this small group of fans is willing to pay more than the average customer, or even the pirate, then we have here a group of people who do care about this developing studio.

The sheer rest doesn't. They are either indifferent, or don't want at all.

Now pirates - why actually don't they care ?

Why don't they want to support developers ? They could think, "okay, let's spend some money for them, because this game is so good, they might even develop more of that stuff".

I do know - or rather did, because it's quite a while ago now - a few "pirates" who acted exactly like that. They pirated, but spend some money just for developers they believed in.

What I'm interested in is the social component : Why do pirates not believe in developers ? Why don't they take care of them ? Do they have no emotional "bonding" or simple connection to them ? Or whatever ?

Because this social aspect is never discused in these piracy discussions. Everything's about money. It's to me almost like the "devil fears the holy water", as we say here. Pirates never talk about things - hey don't even appear to have them ! - according to the course of these discussions - like "social responsibility".

They just go back to the completely materialistic point of view. Why ?

And then, people - and often pirates themselves, as far as they show themselves - appear to manipulate these piracy discissions so that ONLY the money aspect is discussed. NEVER the social aspect.

Something's rotten in the state of piracy.

Edit : Just in case there are some letters missing : My keyboard is new.

Tragos · March 6, 2010

The big question is when games are affordable why people pirate them ?
I mean that 20€ is what i spend going out for a coffee with my friends ( the Greek coffee lasts about 3 hours

) , if i am getting 30 hours of gameplay for the same money i will definitely prefer a game over a coffee …

1. Stupid DRM , ok i covered this in my previous post, use a stupid crack.
2. It takes too long to open an account and legal download speeds are crap , yes this needs to be fixed, click add your credit card number d/l with at least 1mb/sec .
3." Interactive advertisement " in games ( FM2009) crap too, needs to be fixed (SI did fixed that).
4. "Windows live" crap, needs to be fixed too, i couldn't give shit about DAO's achievements
5. Bad reputation of Devs , release a couple of games for free and fix DRM, problem will be solved (EA)
6. Ideology , i know i am an idealist too but think of it , you are not making the big difference by pirating , get in the streets and do your think against the enemies .
7. Not having a credit card , easily solved, your ATM card will do
8. Not having a paypal account, give me a break, it only takes 5'

Center · March 8, 2010

someone said:
No. No study. You are of course right that common sense differs from person to person and I may indeed be completely off on my deductions. I'm basing them on the vast number of pirated copies of software that is totally useless unless you actually run it. I'm therefore assuming that most of the people who download games play them as well. Once you get into playing games I'm again assuming that if you do it more than once in a while you get hooked to some degree (I know I am) and if the possibility to get the games for free is suddenly removed I'm certain that a certain percentage of the freeloaders still need to feed their habit and thus will be "forced" to actually pay for their games.

This is an explanation of how pirating can lead to someone buying the game, not how a pirate. Any result in sales after pirating was banned would be a direct result of pirating, and short lived.

someone said:
True. It wouldn't surprise me if the whole global experience levels/statistics with unlockable upgrades and/or new weapons that we have seen in recent online titles (e.g. Battle Field 2, the latest Call of Duty games) are at least in part made as an incentive to have a legit copy of the game so you can use these features.

Of course if a game gets big enough, even servers for pirates could be numerous enough to make the experience similar to the legit players.

Ive never heard of servers nearly as big as official ones, and I doubt they attract as many players, considering so much of the appeal of multiplayer games seems to come from getting other people to admit youre better than them, why play away from the major population?

someone said:
However, I think it is food for thought that often these kinds of games are selling a lot more than for instance pure singleplayer games. Is that because they are more popular or because singleplayer games are more easily pirated?

compare how much money is being spent on these games. Now look at a single player game.

Multiplayer games tend to have much more re-playability (and thus appeal) than single player games.
Look at dragon age units sold, no multi-player, i think, but big budget and lots of sales.

someone said:
But authors are compensated by the libraries just like musicians (or at least the record label) are compensated when a song is played on the radio. I'm not sure how much they get compared to a sold book but at least they get something. When a game is pirated the developers/publisher gets nothing at all.

Irrelevant, the point is that people have access to books without paying, the same books they get from stores, and they still buy copies. Someone actually posted in here about his behavior with regards to that.

Dhruin said:
Arguing piracy is complete waste of time but I couldn't help noticing this post.

Where exactly is this evidence you point to? That a Russian translation of a book that has apparently sold 30M copies worldwide sold some copies? There's absolutely no causation proven. And that doesn't address fatbastard's valid points: a .pdf of a book ain't the same thing as an actual book.

Yeah, the problem is that you dont understand this. Proof is never going to be found. If tomorrow pirating became illegal and revenue exploded, that would not be proof that piracy is hurting sales, just evidence.

Now, in this situation a highly successful book was translated into Russian. And didn't sell, in six or seven years he sold like 10k copies. Then he made it digitally available and poof, 1 million sold in two years. So yeah, that could be a coincidence, but the odds are small, its very likely his sales increased as a result of making it available online.

Alrik Fassbauer · March 8, 2010

Center said:
Then he made it digitally available and poof, 1 million sold in two years.

For which price ? The same as the printed one ?

For if he charges less money - just an idea - for the digital version of it, he might earn less, actually, per book.

As I have written before, as shown in the German magazine called "c't", there was that bizarre meeting between Russian and West-European ISPs :
"Now let's talk about spam ..."
"What's wrong with it ? It's our business !"
Since the magazine writing this is a serious one, I have not the slightest doubt this report could have been faken.

Center · March 8, 2010

Alrik Fassbauer said:
For which price ? The same as the printed one ?

For if he charges less money - just an idea - for the digital version of it, he might earn less, actually, per book.

As I have written before, as shown in the German magazine called "c't", there was that bizarre meeting between Russian and West-European ISPs :
"Now let's talk about spam …"
"What's wrong with it ? It's our business !"
Since the magazine writing this is a serious one, I have not the slightest doubt this report could have been faken.

Digital versions are free, the entire book for no money. The jump in versions sold was with the printed version.

Dasale · March 17, 2010

Center said:
Digital versions are free, the entire book for no money. The jump in versions sold was with the printed version.

You seems quite a fanatic supporter of piracy, I wonder how many games, music, books you bought during 2009 and why you have been the idiot who bought them when you could have them easily and with your full morale agreement to get them for free?

Center · March 20, 2010

Dasale said:
You seems quite a fanatic supporter of piracy, I wonder how many games, music, books you bought during 2009 and why you have been the idiot who bought them when you could have them easily and with your full morale agreement to get them for free?

hiss hiss :lol:

At no point in this thread have i discussed the morality of pirating

I have discussed the impact pirating has on the gaming (and other) industry, and in the example you quoted, whether it helps.

Dasale · March 20, 2010

Center said:
hiss hiss :lol:

At no point in this thread have i discussed the morality of pirating

I have discussed the impact pirating has on the gaming (and other) industry, and in the example you quoted, whether it helps.

The example you quoted is ridiculous I'm surprised you don't quote the non sense it is. So pirate to make stuff sell better... :roll:

Ask yourself just one second why it could work... because some people won't pirate the stuff. There's no morale stuff only very basic logic.

But I quote you didn't answer my question, I'm not surprised at all.

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