RPG News - Piracy & PC Viability

It always pisses me off a little when people try to justify their piracy ... *snip* ... I suspect not many here will agree with this post, but this is how I see it...
*stands up and applauses*

Excellent post. I totally agree with everything you said.

I've always "loved" the argument: "But I wouldn't have bought it anyway" ... be that as it may buddy but you just played it anyway didn't you? Try to get away with that train of logic with the local hooker and I'm sure you'll find her pimp just as understanding as the software industry :rolleyes:

I mean, I can understand the whole: "I'm not going to spend x amount on a game without checking it out properly first" when there is no demo available but nobody needs to play through the entire game to find out if it is worth playing or not. If you do anyway then it was apparently good enough for you to play and thus you SHOULD be paying for it. No amount of bad excuses can change that fact: You play, you pay. End of story.

NB! I am of course only speaking of those who CAN afford to buy the games but CHOOSES not to.
 
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I always pay for my games because I know I'm helping the store that sells the game, the publishers and not least the developers who develop the games.

I also know that I'm not paying for my copy of the game, but instead paying for the next copy of the game (to be made, that is).

However, I do feel that thw hole pirate thing has gone a bit too far, not least what the industry will do the get people not to pirathe their games. My main concern is that the industry sets a target point saying that we need to sell xxx amount of games and when game then (only) sell maybe zzz amount of games (well under the target point) the industry goes like: "OMG! --- we didn't sell enough games!
We needed to sell xxx games, but we only sold zzz", and then they subtract the zzz games from the xxx games, and then they came up with a number, let's call it yyy, and then this yyy figure is the pirated games, at least for the industry.

The point is to to say that maybe, just maybe did game P sell xxx amount of games because it was a very bad game or a game that simply wasn't good enough or well done enough (or something like that). On a similar note, today I saw Dreamfall in the bargain bin for about $14,99 or so in one of my local gaming stores. To met his says some about the quality of Dreamfall, that only a year (if it has been a year ??)
after its first release, this game hits the bargain bin. Maybe the game simply wasn't good enough, and maybe that's the reason behind as to why many people didn't buy game - as least not as many as as certain mr. Ragnar wanted.

Good games, like good music, always find an audience.
 
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It always pisses me off a little when people try to justify their piracy - because it's my hard work, my overtime, my love and passion towards a title that they are stealing! But notice that I said that it pisses me off a *little* - I can see how it can be very hard to be able to buy all games legally when they cost you 1/10 of a months salary (in comparison, where I live it's more like 1/50 of a months salary, after tax, for a full-price game which I generally find quite reasonable!)
Fair enough... guess I can understand that you are a little pissed. Guess I would be as well if I were a game developer.

But what pisses me off *a lot* are the reasons some people tend to come up with for why it should be justified to pirate games. The devs are lazy, the devs are incompetent (if only they would listen to me, then their games would be MUCH better, because *I* know exactly how to make a cool game, even if I never tried it, and bla, bla, bla!! PLEASE, it makes me sick!). Let me tell you guys one thing - I'm not getting very rich from making games! In fact I could easily go out and get a higher salary in another area of the IT industry. I also work long hours. I'm not complaining though, because I love what I do - but it's important for me to get rid of that ridiculous notion that all game devs are lazy bastards that just sit on their fat arses and milk a golden cash-cow. We generally love what we do, and we do our best to make the best games possible for you guys. We love it when the fans are happy about our products, and it hurts us when people are not happy and complain. I'm not saying that we do not have a responsibility to put out quality products - but when people starts complaining about products such as, for example, NWN2 then I think they have very unrealistic expectations about games.
I think very few people would claim that game developer are lazy bastards. I think they are in fact hard working people. But that does not change the facts. Look at console gaming. Games for consoles hardly have any bugs (if so they are usually minor ones), because you cannot patch these games afterwards (or better could not, seems like this is about to change with next generation consoles). Now look at PC games, most of them are released in a state where they contain serious bugs. I can't even remember when I bought the last game that I did not have to patch. You can tell me what you want, but this has become a bad habit. It might not always be the fault of game developers (but that of publishers that force game developers to rush the release of a game), but for the customer it makes absolutely NO difference.

I've played NWN2 and I never encountered a bug that I notices - in my eyes NWN2 is a completely fine and well polished game (and if you took off your rose colored glasses you would notice that the old games you seems to always praise were often in a much worse state when released). Always demanding more, and even justifying theft, is just not the way to go!
Mate, what the hell are you smoking? You know, that quite some people were not even able to patch NWN2, even several weeks after the release because the patcher wasn't working properly and Obsidian was not able to deliver a patch version that could be applied manually and not via the patcher? You think that is ok? Do you honestly want to tell me that I have unrealistic expectations if I expect that I'm able to patch a game I just bought?
Have you had a look at the toolset? Hakpacks were not working in the beginning... hakpacks!!! The 2da files have limits that are beyond reasoning, and there were several other problems as well - you think that is a quality product? Mate, just because a game is working for you it doesn't mean it's working for everyone. If not even you, as a game developer are aware of that, then I'm not very surprised that so many crappy PC games are released nowadays.

Financially PC-only games are just becomming near impossible to do - and if you pirate games it is certainly not helping! Neither is your denial of the problem!

I suspect not many here will agree with this post, but this is how I see it...
Mate, have you even read what people here were posting? Most people in this thread, including myself, are against software piracy. You know what's not going to help? Painting black and white pictures, where the software developers are the benevolent human beings that create games just for fun and fans, but not for the money, and rejecting any kind of responsibility for the current crisis concerning pc gaming. I'm sorry to say it, but you have the typical arrogant attitude that seems to be dominant among game developers today. We're delivering quality products, players that say something else are all stupid, and don't know what they are talking about. We do not have to improve our products just because the average player demands it.
Yep, exactely. That's of course an approach that is very helpful. You still seem to think that the player is depending on you, but not vice versa.
 
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Look at console gaming. Games for consoles hardly have any bugs (if so they are usually minor ones), because you cannot patch these games afterwards (or better could not, seems like this is about to change with next generation consoles).

This reasoning is not exactly true. The main, and I do mean MAIN reason that console games have far fewer bugs than PC games is the unified hardware configuration of consoles. When you test your program on the [insert console of choice] in your office it has the EXACT same hardware configuration as every other console of the same model in the world, so if it works on your console, it will work on all of them. This is NOT the case for PC hardware configurations.

Now look at PC games, most of them are released in a state where they contain serious bugs. I can't even remember when I bought the last game that I did not have to patch. You can tell me what you want, but this has become a bad habit. It might not always be the fault of game developers (but that of publishers that force game developers to rush the release of a game), but for the customer it makes absolutely NO difference.

I too haven't had a single problem with NWN2. Not a single crash and not a single problem updating. However, for some reason singleplayer, not multiplayer mind you, games on the Source engine (HL2 and Dark Messiah and possibly Vampire) crashes within the first 2 minutes of playing with my new memory, a memory that causes no problems in other games whatsoever and have passed several 12 hour runs of Memtest without a single error. Does this suck? Absolutely, but that is the name of the game when it comes to PC games. If you want the freedom to install whatever motherboard, CPU, GPU, RAM, storage devices, sound cards and peripherals you want in your PC then you have to accept that it is virtually impossible to cover every hardware combination the first time (and I haven't even mentioned drivers and other software running in the background). Hence the need for patches. I'm not trying to make excuses for games like Dungeon Lords but to expect a totally bugfree release is downright unfair.

Mate, just because a game is working for you it doesn't mean it's working for everyone.
And of course, this train of logic can also be put into reverse: Just because a game doesn't work for you, it doesn't mean that isn't working for everyone else.
 
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Look at console gaming. Games for consoles hardly have any bugs (if so they are usually minor ones), because you cannot patch these games afterwards (or better could not, seems like this is about to change with next generation consoles). Now look at PC games, most of them are released in a state where they contain serious bugs. You can tell me what you want, but this has become a bad habit. It might not always be the fault of game developers, but for the customer it makes absolutely NO difference.

......

I'm sorry to say it, but you have the typical arrogant attitude that seems to be dominant among game developers today. We're delivering quality products, players that say something else are all stupid, and don't know what they are talking about. We do not have to improve our products just because the average player demands it.

Ok, fair enough. You have a number of very valid points. Also please remember that my rant were not directed at you specifically - it's aimed at certain people with much more extreme opinions (and much less argumentation) than you. I'll also agree that I'm probably also a bit biased, although in the oposite direction :) I guess I'm more forgiving when it comes to game releases than I should be because I can understand why the bug/problem can occurs. But you are completely right - we, the industry, are here to serve you guys because you are the customers who are buying the products that we sell. I mentioned NWN2 in my first post - not because I think that is a *perfect* release (in fact, despite not having encounted any bugs I was quite disappointed with its performance) but because I think it is a very decent release. If some people has encounted as serious bugs as the ones you describe that is of course not ok, but from a content point of view, when the game is running, I think it's a fun and quite polished game. In any case, I'm sorry if I appeared arrogant in my post - that was not my intention ;)

Regarding the quality of console games - there is a simple explanation. We cannot patch previous gen console games, and Sony and Microsoft each has a set of very strict rules regarding quality and stability that must be satisfied before a game is even allowed to be released for these platforms. They can be a pain in the neck for us developers (because they are indeed *really really* strict!) and it costs a lot of money to take a game to that level of polish. With PC releases this extra cost is sadly often skipped (as you say, probably from a bad habit of thinking that a game can always be patched later) but with console releases there really are no choice. A consequence of this though is that the PC titles that are also released for consoles will often have benefitted from this extended development and test phase, so those game often have much fewer bugs. In these cases it is not that rare to see a PC game where no patches are ever released...
 
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This reasoning is not exactly true. The main, and I do mean MAIN reason that console games have far fewer bugs than PC games is the unified hardware configuration of consoles. When you test your program on the [insert console of choice] in your office it has the EXACT same hardware configuration as every other console of the same model in the world, so if it works on your console, it will work on all of them. This is NOT the case for PC hardware configurations.
True, but hardly an excuse for bugs. If you sell a product it's your responsibility that it works, not that of the buyer. There is no sticker on PC games that says something like "the game MAY work depending on your configuration."

I too haven't had a single problem with NWN2. Not a single crash and not a single problem updating. However, for some reason singleplayer, not multiplayer mind you, games on the Source engine (HL2 and Dark Messiah and possibly Vampire) crashes within the first 2 minutes of playing with my new memory, a memory that causes no problems in other games whatsoever and have passed several 12 hour runs of Memtest without a single error. Does this suck? Absolutely, but that is the name of the game when it comes to PC games. If you want the freedom to install whatever motherboard, CPU, GPU, RAM, storage devices, sound cards and peripherals you want in your PC then you have to accept that it is virtually impossible to cover every hardware combination the first time (and I haven't even mentioned drivers and other software running in the background). Hence the need for patches. I'm not trying to make excuses for games like Dungeon Lords but to expect a totally bugfree release is downright unfair.
I never said something about a 100% bugfree game. I have a fairly high tolerance when it comes to bugs if the game is worth playing it. I also would never complain about a bug that only concerns me, but I know very few cases where that was actually the case.
We're not talking about a game containing one or two bugs here. We're talking about the fact that many players seem to have the impression that the overall quality of pc games is slowly declining. That is also my impression. And you cannot blame all this on different system configurations, because 10 years ago, people also had different system configurations, and bugs were not such a big topic. No doubt, different system configurations play a role, but you greatly overestimate it. If the different system configurations would play a dominant role when it comes to bugs, then every game would have more or less the same amount of bugs. And that's just not true. There are games that are nearly bug free (not many... I admit that), and there are games that are full of them. Message boards are usually a very good indicator of the quality of a game.

I agree however, that programming a game that is 100% bug free, and that runs on all pcs is probably impossible. But that is certainly not what players demand...


About NWN2: I wasn't the only one who could not patch the game. I wasn't the big exception who had such an unusual system configuration that the patcher could not handle it. There were a lot of people who had the same problem. Check the boards if you like, it was a fairly common problem. It's also safe to say that quite a few people bought NWN2 because of the toolset, and not because of the OC. The bugs in connection with the toolset had absolutely nothing to do with system configuration because they concerned EVERYONE. That is shitty programming and rushed release - nothing else. It's ironic honestly. Obsidian, like so many other game companies, had message boards running looooooong before the release of the game. The developers knew exactely what the community expected from them. They knew that a lot of people were interested in the toolset and its capabilities. Still they decided to release it in a state where it could not fulfill these expectations...

And of course, this train of logic can also be put into reverse: Just because a game doesn't work for you, it doesn't mean that isn't working for everyone else.
Nice bit of logic, but erroneous. The fact that it does work for some players does not make a game a quality product. From my point of view a game should work for significant majority of all customers.
If you buy a car, and the salesman tells you, "Oh, that thing easily overheats, but it works fine in winter!," would you consider that acceptable?
 
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Ok, fair enough. You have a number of very valid points. Also please remember that my rant were not directed at you specifically - it's aimed at certain people with much more extreme opinions (and much less argumentation) than you. I'll also agree that I'm probably also a bit biased, although in the oposite direction :) I guess I'm more forgiving when it comes to game releases than I should be because I can understand why the bug/problem can occurs. But you are completely right - we, the industry, are here to serve you guys because you are the customers who are buying the products that we sell. I mentioned NWN2 in my first post - not because I think that is a *perfect* release (in fact, despite not having encounted any bugs I was quite disappointed with its performance) but because I think it is a very decent release. If some people has encounted as serious bugs as the ones you describe that is of course not ok, but from a content point of view, when the game is running, I think it's a fun and quite polished game. In any case, I'm sorry if I appeared arrogant in my post - that was not my intention ;)
Ok, maybe I was a bit short-tempred too. Mea culpa. I hope no offense was taken.
Don't get me wrong, I can imagine that it isn't easy to create games. I'm also quite sure that a lot of things have to do with publishers putting pressure on game developers (to rush the release of thier game, etc.). But for the customer that hardly changes anything. He cannot say whose fault it is that a game is buggy - even if he could, what difference would it make? He would probably use the same channels to complain that he is using now.

And I'm certainly not defending software piracy. I'm studying information science and property rights (no matter if digital property, print property, etc.) is always a very controverse topic. For me it is obvious that the justification "That game is buggy, therefore I download it illegaly from the internet" does NOT work. But from my point of view it is also quite clear that piracy will always be a problem (or at least until someone comes up with a really good idea). Honestly, I think in 3 or 4 years consoles will be facing exactely the same problem. The average console gamer will open a browser on his console, download the ímage of a console game, and burn it on the console in-build dvd-burner. A PC won't be necessary anymore. Also, the crowd of people that is able to work with computers, and complex programs is growing. Therefore I would guess that we'll see a rise in software piracy, not a decline.
Condemning software pirates is perfectly understandable, but it does not pose a solution to the problem. In my opinion the only solution is to find ways so that buying a game has clear advantages over pirating one.
 
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We love it when the fans are happy about our products, and it hurts us when people are not happy and complain.
I didn't like much of your post, KasperFauerby, and had a hard time choosing what to quote. I selected this, because it seemed sincere, and I did like that.

I spent a lot of years working in high-technology product marketing and development, and you'll pardon me if I don't consider everyone I worked with to be some kind of a saint for doing their jobs. New technology is new, and that makes the work challenging, but not so much that people can't be expected to do their jobs well. Customers should expect reasonable quality. They should expect advertised features to be in the products they buy. They should expect reasonable product support.

Can you imagine if car manufacturers sold cars that didn't include all the advertised features? What if they were un-drivable? What if the customers complained, and the manufacturers responded by saying they were trying their very best and that their feelings were being hurt by the complaints?

There's nothing ambiguous about this. Vice presidents of marketing consider it their job to decide when a product gets shipped. So do vice presidents of product development. So do their product managers (titles vary, of course). It's a decision, and it's made like a lot of other decisions.

I remember the early days, attending a meeting of The Software Council of Southern California, where one VP of marketing stood up, looked his peers in the eye, and challenged them to stop shipping software early. He argued that it was unethical and bad for the PC software business as a whole. Not everyone liked that, but he was right.

That's not to say software piracy is justified. It's not. But I think there would be a lot less piracy if there were less antagonism between software makers and their customers.
 
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The devs are lazy, the devs are incompetent (if only they would listen to me, then their games would be MUCH better, because *I* know exactly how to make a cool game, even if I never tried it, and bla, bla, bla!! PLEASE, it makes me sick!). Let me tell you guys one thing - I'm not getting very rich from making games! In fact I could easily go out and get a higher salary in another area of the IT industry. I also work long hours.
And Kasper's glass ego strikes again. No, Kasper, we know you're not lazy. We know game development is hard work. But if it makes you sick to see customers criticise the products they purchase, then you're probably in the wrong forum. Discussing our likes and dislikes is a good part of the reason we're here, and no matter how nastily you belittle the opinions of non-developers ("bla, bla, bla!!"), you're not going to change that. Please stop using your insider status as a cudgel against the people you disagree with.
 
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And Kasper's glass ego strikes again ... no matter how nastily you belittle the opinions of non-developers ("bla, bla, bla!!"), you're not going to change that. Please stop using your insider status as a cudgel against the people you disagree with.

Ok, I think it's time to clarify my views with some examples. Random quotes from this thread - and if these are not "bla, bla, bla!", then I don't know what they are and yes, then I'm probably in the wrong forum. These quotes are what made me annoyed, not you people discussing the finer details of the problem or those of you with serious opinions on how to solve the problem. End of topic for me ;)

"This is utter bull. If developers weren't so lazy and made their games compatible with old hardware AND produced quality games (unlike the crap that makes up about 95% of today's titles), then people would spend their money..."

"When shitbox users starts to be able to pirate, this moneytrain will hit the dirt. Meaby then we can get some devs. that actually care about gaming quality and not just mainstreaming everything into nobrain kiddie mode."

"Then dont make your game require a fucking $600 video card and people might have spare cash to buy it!"

"No a change in developer attitudes will help combat piracy, NWN2 would have been worth the money if I didnt have to restart my char twice, Gothic 3 would have been worth it if it didnt give me a headache the very first time i played it.... I'll do you a deal right here and now Mr. Hollenshead you do your job and finish the goddamn game and I will buy it, until then you cant complain about people not paying you for the work you haven't completed."
 
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I think the problem is they have economists in the gaming industry who decide the pricing based on supply vs demand. Well guess what? If you have unsatisfied demand people turn to "black markets" to get what they "need". You can't price at a certain point and then bitch and moan about piracy when it is you who created it in the first place. They are already getting their optimal profit after all.

A cd costs less than 50 cents to press. A digital download costs even less provided the game is not an overbloated P.O.S. Maybe if they sold games (and software in general) at a fair price there wouldn't be less piracy. This is especially true in developing countries where software can literally cost more than a months earning for a single CD. For example Windows Vista Home Starter (the absolute worse version that only supports 1.5gig ram I believe) costs 4200 baht which is equivalent to 1/3 of the average monthly salary. A game can cost up to 1000 baht with is about 1/10 of the average salary. Doesn't take a genius to figure out why piracy is so rampant.

I recall reading a quote from some minister(could have been a prime minister) of a Baltic state who said that the software industry of the entire country was built using pirated software.
 
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I still stand by my theory that mostly the publishers are to blame for buggy and - in extreme cases - "unfinished" games. They just don't understand how developing works. They seem only to understand how money works, imho.

There is a safe way, at least here, if you "wouldn't buy a game anyway" at full price : The budget versions. These are fairly cheap, and if I'm not too much convinced of a game, I just wait for the low-price version of it.

On the other hand, I tend to buy full-price games rather when they were made by small studios, because I'm more empathic with them. It's like supporting Ray Wilson (ex singer of Genesis) instead of, let's say, the Rolling Stones or Genesis themselves to me.
(You should read the interviews with Ray Wilson. He is an surely independend artist and tries to get everything made himself as good as possible ! - But that also means that ne actually needs all of the money he can get - because he has almost no great financial back-up. He pays everything himself, if possible, CDs, travels to concerts etc. ...)

This leads me to an interesting point ... Empathy ? Can Empathy play a role in pirating games ?

A robber most certainly doesn't empathise with his or her victim. A person who copies games might do the same, I suspect.
 
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If you have unsatisfied demand people turn to "black markets" to get what they "need". You can't price at a certain point and then bitch and moan about piracy when it is you who created it in the first place.

So you are saying that the game makers are the ones to blame and the people STEALING LUXURY ITEMS are the victims? Nice moral compass ...

Oh, on pricing, I don't debate that games are expensive, but I remember paying $60US for Sega Genesis sports games I got for my brother-in-law nearly 20 years ago, the same price as is paid for 'next gen' games now!
 
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I think piracy is wrong, but the only argument I'd have for this would be just that the creators of commercial software don't want anyone to use it without paying. And that's enough for me.
I have never seen an argument that piracy is theft succeed. Also, I have never seen an argument that a pirated copy means any financial loss on part of the publisher succeed. So, in short: it's one thing to say that piracy is wrong, and that I agree with, but it's a completely different thing to say that publishers are suffering from piracy; that if there was no piracy, they'd earn more.
 
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Reality check: console development is expensive and requires permission of the license holder to develop in the first place, dev kits to do the development, certification before shipping the product and per-unit-sold fees when the title gets sold. That automatically skews development toward bigger funded projects, which in turn increases the likelihood of more polish, which requires a bigger market to pay for all this. You (generally) get a nice, bug-free polished product made with a nice, safe franchise or gameplay model.

The completely open PC market means smaller projects, niche projects, Eastern European and Russian projects get made that otherwise wouldn't be viable for console development. A small developer making a niche project with limited funding is often taking a leap of faith - the polish and QA isn't as tight as desirable but it simply may not have been made in the first place if the QA costs were higher.

Does that describe everything? Nope. Plenty of developments simply screw up or publishers screw the buyer but the PC gaming industry is inherently less QA-driven than the console market. It's a shame but it's inherent in this model and won't really change.

Bugs weren't a problem 10 years ago? Please. Who played Daggerfall or countless other titles? I might even argue the increased complexity of today's games (multi-gigabytes vs a few Mb) shows a lower bug ratio than old games. We just didn't have as many boards where we could all complain about these things and we sortt of just accepted it back then. You were so thrilled to be playing Daggerfall or Wizards & Warriors that you put up with all sorts of crap.

But none of this is relevant.

If quality was really the issue, players could simply read reviews and message boards before leaping in. If quality was the reason people pirated, you wouldn't find thousands of people torrenting a critically-acclaimed major movie: you know the DVD is going to work on your DVD player, you know the movie is "complete" and you can easily get a good idea of the artistic quality. It's hogwash. People pirate because they can - why pay when it's easily available for free?

Car analogies are spurious and inaccurate, by the way. Not only is the process completely different but car manufacturers have plenty of bugs and unfulfilled promises. Ever seen a recall? Ever taken your brand-new car in for service because something broke? Ever had your mechanic say "these models all do that"? Ever heard of a car with a known safety issue but the manufacturer has calculated that the small risk means settling lawsuits is cheaper than fixing the design?

People pirate because they can.
 
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I was going to comment on the ever appearing semantics BS about copyright infringement vs. theft and how if I hit you in the head with a wooden stick with flat piece of metal on the end, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't really care whether I called it a shovel or a spade ... but reading Dhruin's excellent comment put me in a much better mood so I'm going to let it go. :rolleyes:

Well done Dhruin.
 
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Bugs weren't a problem 10 years ago? Please. Who played Daggerfall or countless other titles? I might even argue the increased complexity of today's games (multi-gigabytes vs a few Mb) shows a lower bug ratio than old games. We just didn't have as many boards where we could all complain about these things and we sortt of just accepted it back then. You were so thrilled to be playing Daggerfall or Wizards & Warriors that you put up with all sorts of crap.
Dhruin, no one ever said that games wer not buggy 10 years ago. Games always had bugs. But you cannot ignore that many players have the impression that it's getting worse. I would also imagine that bugs have nothing to do with the amount of gigabytes a game has - or do you honestly believe that it is the program code that is blowing up the size of games? Even if we assume that games are becoming more complex that hardly justifies more bugs in an end-product, it is only an explanation. And honestly, if I look at my shelf and have a look at games that were developed in the beginning of pc gaming I see very few games that had serious bugs.

But none of this is relevant.

If quality was really the issue, players could simply read reviews and message boards before leaping in. If quality was the reason people pirated, you wouldn't find thousands of people torrenting a critically-acclaimed major movie: you know the DVD is going to work on your DVD player, you know the movie is "complete" and you can easily get a good idea of the artistic quality. It's hogwash. People pirate because they can - why pay when it's easily available for free?
Still the movie industry is spending millions of dollars to advertise the fact that original DVDs and movies on the big screen are of better quality than pirated copies.
But well, I agree it is illusory to believe that every single pirate will give up his illegal business just because the quality of games is getting better. But some might. Apart from that it would be nice if those people that actually spend money on a product would get a quality product.

Car analogies are spurious and inaccurate, by the way. Not only is the process completely different but car manufacturers have plenty of bugs and unfulfilled promises. Ever seen a recall? Ever taken your brand-new car in for service because something broke? Ever had your mechanic say "these models all do that"? Ever heard of a car with a known safety issue but the manufacturer has calculated that the small risk means settling lawsuits is cheaper than fixing the design?
All true what you are saying, but then again you shouldn't continue an anology that you describe as erroneous. I would also think that customers have way more rights when it comes to buying a car than buying a game. Also (and here I'm doing the same mistake as you did), if I compare Vanguards state of release with a car, then that would have been a car without tires, and with a motor that stops working every half an hour. I would think that you don't see that all too often with new cars...

People pirate because they can.
I don't see software pirates as one big homogeneous group of people. That seems to be a harsh generalization to me. I'm sure quite a lot of people do as you say - they pirate because they can. But I also think there are people who would be willing to buy more games if they saw their gaming needs and wishes fulfilled. Some might also pirate software because they cannot afford the product.
Also if you think about it - your approach to the topic is fairly pessimistic. It means that there is no solution to the problem (apart from a copy protection that cannot be cracked). I mean, what do you want to do? Dragging every single software pirate to court will most likely not work out.
You mentioned the movie industry. This is an industry that does not have the possibility to just go over to a new field of production (same as the music industry), and they also have to cope with the problem. They also have to try and find ways to sell their product because they have realized that just lamenting the situation won't solve the problem. Of course they know that not everyone will stop pirating movies and songs just because they begin to lower their prices, offer additional services, movie and music flatrates, etc., but their goal is to lower the number of pirated copies.
 
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If quality was the reason people pirated, you wouldn't find thousands of people torrenting a critically-acclaimed major movie: you know the DVD is going to work on your DVD player, you know the movie is "complete" and you can easily get a good idea of the artistic quality.
Don't be ridiculous. Pirates don't watch the DVDs they download. So do they hate the music they steal. Food turns to ash in their mouths. The drink will not satisfy.

I think I've identified the problem: half the participants in this thread believe we're discussing the Pirates of the Caribbean.
 
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You mean we're not!! :) The only issue not discussed in any great depth is the one dealing with delayed releases in many countries. I wonder if there's any research been done on what impact this has. For many, there are 3 choices: wait 3-6 months for local release, order from overseas and pay international shipping and possibly customs charges, or download a pirate copy!! I order from OS, but anyone want to guess what the most popular choice likely is??!!
 
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So you are saying that the game makers are the ones to blame and the people STEALING LUXURY ITEMS are the victims? Nice moral compass ...

The publishers are to blame indirectly, and the people getting pirate copies are not victims of course. It is similar in concept to prohibition in the US when a man couldn't get a drink and organised crime had to step in, the government was clearly to blame.

Another local example for me is fake rolex watches, the difference here is that the companies selling genuine rolex watches don't care about they people selling counterfeit copies because they know people buying the fakes would never even dream of being able to buy a genuine one. Why waste money going after them?

Black markets go hand in hand with free markets it is unavoidable.
 
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