I realize that a large percentage of you read Slashdot, but this link seemed pretty interesting to me. If you comment, please state whether you've read the whole thing or not.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

I haven't read all of it, but I agree with many of the points. It's a very good article.

I read most of it, but despite claiming to take an unbiased view, it clearly does.. especially when you get to the point about the various drm systems (it's okay for them to install unnoticed as Ring 0 kernel level drivers because you use software like Process Explorer or Daemon Tools; and the problems with activation limits aren't really problems; and the issues with securom aren't really that big of an issue). He attributes the hate of DRM to their uncrackable nature (it's only hated when it's not easilly cracked), despite the evidence to the contrary.

Early on, he makes claims about games being released "drm free on steam" yet getting pirated heavilly, but later on claims the exact opposite.. "steam is drm" so why aren't the games being pirated as much?

He brushes off the argument that people who pirate the game (sometiems due to lack of a demo) sometimes buy it, saying they already have it so why would they? Well, there's a multitude of reasons, none of which are so much as uttered, let alone countered. Also extends that into the word-of-mouth argument, that if you tell your friends how good it is, they're more likely to pirate it, not buy it.

I had to stop reading by the time I got to the woes of the poor, misunderstood DRM schemes.

You disagree with the logic used there?

No, I think you are applying your biases against the article. It isn't biased, but it doesn't agree with you and as such you feel that it is biased.

I haven't read it all and all I keep reading is "There is no evidence... blah". Sure there is, but if he actually used any of it people from both sides would flame him off the internet.

Anyone trying to write an unbiased article on something controversial is going to be flamed off the internet, because the ideologues on one side or the other (or both) will note that the article doesn't parrot their personal absolute truth. The only way you can write something that won't get flamed off the internet is to write from the most extreme point on one side, because then at least one set of ideologues will defend you. It's the same problem in RL politics.

I don't see what that has to do with anything. It's incorrect to assume every piece of pirated software is a lost sale, yes.. but what does that have to do with if I buy a game I had originally pirated? Or that the people I talk about the game to will buy it? There are people who buy it despite a free version being available and despite having said free version, regardless of if he personally agrees with the reasons they do or not.

If he said that because it cancels out (ie. some pirating is lost sales and some pirating is gained sales), then I find it terribly ironic that he's still quick to bring up piracy being much more damaging to sales, when he even showed that amongst pirates themselves, people are encouraged to buy. As he said in the article:

But he doesn't use this against the potentially lost sales. People who pirate then buy what they like are statistically insigificant compared to people who pirate and would buy but don't (which, BTW, shouldn't include people who would buy if it wasn't for DRM; another point he fails on, that DRM doesn't significantly increase piracy rates or decrease sales for a given title). He just goes on assuming piracy does much more harm than good, causing companies to use more DRM, and doesn't believe the inverse.

Now.. regardless of if he's right or not, the point is that he builds upon a very shakey foundation. If you're trying to make an unbiased article, you can't do that.

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Yeap, I've read the whole thing, and as I've posted in /., piracy is about access, not value.

People complain about DRM and other measures because it prevents them from unauthorized access to the content.

Finally, people don't recognize authorized access to electronic material as theft due to the content existing "in the ether", i.e. there is no physical evidence to the value of the content.

I have read or quick-read (you know, a bit more than skim read, but not an in depth study) the entire article and my main reaction is that someone needs to throw a decent editor at it. There should probably be a law against "it is important to note" and on this specific day the extremely sloppy use of 'only' kept leaping out at me. Anyway, putting that aside...

"Copyright falls under the banner of a range of laws controversially referred to as Intellectual Property laws." - it's not that controversial to refer to the group of laws that copyright is usually taken to fall under as 'intellectual property laws' and I doubt he meant it was controversial among people who know a proper noun from a common one.

"Usenet for example requires monthly subscription fees to access" - this isn't true without significant bending of the meaning.

Re: World of Goo, it's actually an extremely awful example and not a magical super example worthy of being specifically saved until last. The 90% figure was calculated by the developers by counting the number of unique IPs that contacted their servers while running the game and comparing that to the total sales. So it's 90% in a world where everybody has a static IP and probably nothing like 90% in the world of actual internet users and people with those newfangled laptop things that tend to do a lot of network switching.

"The logic of their argument is quite sound: if the same game has the potential to sell many times more copies on a particular platform because sales are not being undermined by piracy, then ..." - from the quotes given, that doesn't seem to be the argument they are all advancing, which was 'if the game has the potential to sell many times more copies on a particular platform (by the way, piracy may be a factor here)'. Putting words into the mouths of influential developers isn't a convincing way to advance an argument.

The axiomatic assumption that a shift to console gaming is a bad thing is just one area where this article is quite clearly and quite openly biased.

"So really, all locks and keys do 99% of the time is present a constant inconvenience for legitimate users. If we lose them, we're locked out of our own houses or cars. Yet strangely enough, you won't find a groundswell of popular opinion stating firmly around the Internet that "door locks don't work!" and demanding that everyone remove them because of the inherent inconvenience that they impose. Why is that? Probably because everyone is the owner of physical property of some kind, and is willing to endure the constant inconvenience of various locks and keys in their daily lives in the hopes of protecting that property from potential theft, even if in reality it actually provides them with no real protection against most thieves" - an unsupportable conclusion. Is it not much more likely that people are happy about locks being put onto doors, etc, because use of those locks is optional, but unhappy about DRM locks because they're obligatory? If you really require an example, yes people would complain quite heavily if suddenly they started making doors that could not be left unlocked.

Why does the author's willingness to talk in subjective, relative terms when discussing locks and the value of adding to protection even if it can't be absolutely ensured suddenly give way to unreasoned absolutes when the argument is that if you're willing to let any Ring 0 drivers onto your system then obviously you shouldn't have an issue with having arbitrarily many of them?

"The truth is that it works just fine, Microsoft still has an almost 90% market share with their Windows OSes, and users have become completely used to Windows Activation; all the hysteria and lies regarding it were proven completely false in the end." - quick poll, vote now on whether you believe that Microsoft's OS's since 2001 have been succeeding on merits other than being the current version of Windows.

I haven't read the article yet (and I'm at work so it'll be a while before I can), but they do make doors that cannot be left unlocked. Namely, secure doors like in some hotel rooms and secure facilities, such as server rooms or computer labs; which typically require a key (typically a keycard, security code, or combinations of things) to open every time (while there may be a way to disable that feature in many doors, that functionality is typically only available to administrators. End users would have no control over that mechanism). Some people might moan about it when they lock themselves out or have to go in and out repeatedly, but most users don't mind much because the inconvenience is usually minor compared to the protection it offers.

And this is why I need an editor. Just imagine I wrote:

"If you really require an example, yes people would complain quite heavily if they ceased production of any sort of door that can be left unlocked."

Even ordinary locks run into security problems. Make a patch and gain fame & fortune!

http://wizbangtech.com/content/2006/11/30/nearly-every-lo.php

I can think of a modification to the yale lock that would prevent the use of bump keys assuming I've understood how the yale lock and bump keys work (specifically: turn it into a two stage test, have half the driver pins engage on first entry of the key, the others only after 30 degrees of turn or so; not impossible to do from a physical point of view), but it's not really a patch...

True, and False all at the same time. Lots of people complain about DRM because it often prevents them from AUTHORIZED access to content they legally purchased.

Up till a bunch of patches and fixes came out for Vista is was a heaping pile of crap.

For me Vista doesn't offer anything worthwhile to make me want to upgrade (and I need to upgrade my hardware anyway considering how I would use the damn thing... actually, I have XP and I still need to upgrade, even though my hardware would be good enough for a Windows release between XP and Vista...)

As far as piracy and video games goes, I like the way steam handles it's DRM, because there is incentive to buy in. If I buy from steam, my game is tied to my account and I can install it on any machine, as long as I'm only logged in on one machine at a time. There is incentive there since I don't have to worry about losing/breaking disks, or a computer crash since everything is tied to it.

I think the game industry should worry more about adding incentive to buy the game than game piracy itself. For instance, they could worry more about locking game pirates out of online play than making the disks locked down so it can only be run with the disk in the drive, or other forms of DRM that punish the buyers of the game.

Indeed. If they actually make products people would be happy to pay for (and pay their over blown prices for), "piracy" wouldn't be anywhere near as big of a problem, and DRM would be a non starter.

Like an old classic movie once said: "If you build it, they will come." (Its actually "he", but you get my point)

If they actually make products people would want to play, piracy would be increased. Piracy is about access, not price.

Isn't it more about the price/"performance" (fun, whatever) ratio? What if MS sold Windows for $50, quality and features of Windows remaining the same? It seems pretty obvious to me they'd sell more copies. And what would their added expenses be? A CD disk is about $0.10, right? The support calls would increase due to more dummies running windows at a given time. There would be a loss in total gross income if the sales increased, say 100K units a month @ $50.00 vs. 50K units a month @ $120.00.

Thats not how the black market works. Its a well known fact that if people aren't happy with paying the price people are asking, they will get it some other way. Most people are very willing to pay for something, IF they feel its worth it. Its these people you are trying to sell to, not thieves and "pirates".

Up here it was shown very clearly when a bunch of taxes were added to things like cigarettes, people found a way to get cheaper cigarettes from other places like the Native Reserves and from the US (all quite illegal mind you). Taxes went down, most people stopped "pirating" the goods.

This following fact is the only one that matters: Make something some one wants and sell it for a reasonable price and your target market WILL pay for it. Its as simple as that.

Do what the American style media mega corps do and rip people off, and people will happily NOT pay for the goods, either by not ever consuming the product, or by copying it. Do you really think it is necessary to charge $40 for a DVD when it costs $0.40 (at the high end) to make, and the movie has already made tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in pure profit?

I would happily buy TONS of media if it was sold for a price I could live with, but they want $130 for a box set of the old Get Smart show. I was like "Bite me, I'll live without". They did the same with Star Trek TNG, each season set was like $100, which to me is absolutely insane. Great product, and I WILL buy it if they make it affordable for mere mortals. In the mean time, I may or may not make do with copies.

I'm only about half way through the article so far. It sounds well written (not perfect, but good), as balanced as anything could be, and completely correct.

As for the game industry worrying more about quality products than DRM, if a game wasn't worth getting then you wouldn't be pirating it. It's not important how much you're willing to pay for it. What matters is that you have no right to get it without paying for it. Excusing your actions with theirs is just as stupid as excusing a car theft because there are no available jobs that the thief is qualified to do. It's still wrong, even if he can justify it.

If you want the game industry to focus more on quality you should stop getting their games, pirated or otherwise. Pirating it only says that the more in demand their games are the more people will pirate it. As the OP's article explains, there is no hard evidence to suggest that piracy is the result of quality or price. Regardless, piracy continues to be a problem. The problem is people like you with opportunity and no moral value.

Personally, I've seen a handful of very well made games recently so I think that argument is bullshit. There will always be poorly made games, the same as there will always be poorly made cars and sandwiches. So don't get the poorly made games.

Depends on how much they are asking, and if the pirated version is actually a higher quality version (it often is, the DRM tends to hobble a game). Many people I know will buy a game, and then end up running the pirated version because the retail version is broken in some way.

Then they should charge $1,000,000 for each copy. Its not important right?

Only if you assume EVERYONE is a thief (which is obviously not true).

You're going to take his word for it but no one elses? I'm dumb!.

Now you're just being silly. I pay for my cell phone, I pay for my internet, I pay for my food, I pay to go see exceptional movies, I pay for music from sites that don't hobble their product. All of which I could fairly easily get for free, but I don't. I pay for it, because in most cases I think its worth it, to some degree.

Did any one make the argument that all games suck? Also thats a pretty weak argument, only a hand full? How much money is the Games industry pulling in a year now? 10 billion usd? And they continue to only push out a handful of games even you consider good?

Sure its somewhat dishonest, but they are earning whats coming to them if they keep up with their current business model. Much like the banking, recording and automotive industries in the US. All lead by pure greed, and all are crumbling because of it.

Give people what they want and they will buy it. Period. Oh sure theres always the few that are purely dishonest and won't pay for anything, but they have always existed, and will always exist, and ARE NOT these industries target market, never have been, never will. MOST people will pay given the chance. If your product is too expensive, they don't have that chance. You going to pay $80 for a pos game? I'm not, just like I won't pay for MOST movies in a theater (I just wait till its on cable or something, which I pay for by the way).

You know what most "business"s problem is? They think they can milk their product and customers for all they are worth. Oh sure, it works for a time. But then they collapse. So its really a rather stupid idea. You know what large ISPs already do? They charge each end of a connection for the same data, they are already double dipping. Now they want to charge large sites that already pay for their connection to pay MORE for the privilege of not being throttled too much.

Its that mentality that disgusts me. And is what has caused 2 (3 if you count the recording industry, they've been on the brink for a while) major industries in the US to fail, and cause a GLOBAL recession.

Most people don't, but people keep shoveling crap out never the less. Same with movies and tv. Its all crap.

You know the best way to stay in business? Give the consumer what they want, for a price they can afford. If you can't do that, you will fail. And its painfully obvious that many cooperations forgot about that.

Quite the contrary. I have a very limitted income, so anything I buy I have to make darn well sure it'll be worth it. The cheaper something is, the more likely I will be to buy it as the "risk" to me is lessened. A $60 big-budget hyped-up game I can't try first or return later will be much less appealing to purchase than a good $40 game where the first 1/3rd is available as shareware.

That's a different issue. The idea here is to make a product more enticing so that more people are willing to buy it for the asking price. After all, the problem is how to get people "on the fence" to buy it.. that's supposedly the point of DRM, to stop zero- or first-day piracy so that those on-the-fence-ers will pay for it instead of waiting a few days for torrents. The goal is, supposedly, to increase sales by trying to delay piracy, not reduce or stop it.

Which is wrong. If you have a game pirated by 200 people, and 30 would have bought it for $20, is it "more in demand" than a game pirated by 190 people with 25 of those willing to buy for $60? As you say:

It's more a result of popularity. The more your game is known, the more likely someone will be to enter it into a torrent search and check it. That doesn't equate to sales (checking != buying).

Considering right and wrong, the price is unimportant. Stealing is stealing. Infringing is infringing. They could charge $1M for each copy, but odds are nobody would buy it so they wouldn't. They price things at the sweet spot. That is to say, the most profitable price according to projections, estimations, and sales history. If that sweet spot is more than you're willing to pay then you go without. It is NOT an excuse to steal or infringe. IF a price is set too high sales will suffer and the price will be lowered. The fact that game prices continue to be set where they are suggests that it is either most profitable or necessary.

You're likely paying because the quality of products/services you would get without paying aren't good enough for your standards. Satisfied telecommunication customers are few and far between (see your own rant on ISPs), so don't even tell me the prices and services they're giving you are better than the games industry. Either that, or the risk involved (i.e., stealing food) is greater than you're willing to take for those things. Piracy, on the other hand, carries relatively little risk so you feel free to do it.

This may come as a surprise to you, but I have my likes and dislikes like everyone else. Not all games target me. I've already expressed by distaste for pretty much everything Nintendo and Microsoft have done this generation (and numerous past generations...). There are obviously PS3 games that don't interest me as well. Having specific target audiences isn't an excuse for piracy either. And in a free country people are free to make crappy games if they want to. Sales are supposed to be how you decide what stays and what goes. Pirating something is basically saying this is good enough for me, but I can get it for free so I will. It doesn't tell the developers to do better next time. Not playing it at all does.

The way it typically works is a few people with the money and audacity take a risk on a product that looks good based on advertisement. They share their experiences with it to impact the future decisions of other consumers (buy, rent, or neglect). When nobody is playing a game it sends a clear message to developers and publishers that they did something wrong.

Business is about profit. That's the point. If you don't like it move to a purely socialist country. You're high and mighty because natural resources have your part of the world feeling strong, but when that dries up I'm sure you'll shut up quickly. Canada does not do business any better than America. Matter of fact, we're nowhere near as good as they are. From a business point of view, the companies struggling now probably did what they should have. They saw an opportunity to take chances and hand the risks over to a government. Unfortunately, circumstances weren't all in their favors and the shit has now hit the fan. I'm sure they're crying about it in their million dollar mansions with enough money for their grandchildren to raise families on. If a mistake was made it was giving them a scapegoat in the first place. If somebody makes a million dollar bet with you where if you win you get a million dollars and if you lose the money comes from somebody else' pocket; would you turn it down?

If you've ever taken a business class you'd realize that the business world is well aware of that fact. As I said earlier, the price is set for the most profit. It's not about giving Thomas Fjellstrom what he wants. It's about making money. And if Thomas Fjellstrom can't afford it that's his problem. At least, that is how it works in a law-abiding and moral society.

You're going to tell them what they have to charge for their products and services? It's a free country. They can charge whatever people are willing and able to pay. Business has a tendency to take care of itself (particularly when government stays out of it).

No, it's painfully obvious that you don't understand what their goals are. And it's sad that you think moral values only matter when the world revolves around you. That's the disgusting part.

A very limited income suggests you shouldn't be spending money on games. That doesn't excuse piracy though. You go without. Business is about give and get. If you have nothing to give then you don't get. Sorry.

The point of any business transaction is to make a profit. Products and services are worth different things to different individuals. There is no one-price fits all. As a business, your goal is to set the price to the optimal level so the product or service for the price is enticing enough to the most people possible.

DRM is only designed to stop zero- or first-day piracy because those designing it know preventing it all together is infeasible ATM. If you were to offer them a solution to completely end piracy do you think they would turn it down? That's an absurd argument.

Why would more people pirate a game that is less in demand? Your numbers don't add up. More than that, however, the reason it remains wrong for the people who wouldn't have bought a product/service anyway is that it's unfair for them to get it for free while others have to pay. And you can't argue that others could get it for free to because then the business would collapse. Somebody needs to pay for it. And if you don't have to why should I?

The OP's article makes very good logical arguments towards all of this for those of you who actually take the time to read and consider it. Judging by your arguments I doubt that you have.

This too is brought up in the article. Again, more than raw sales, it's also about fairness.

Never said it excuses it. But if I didn't spend it on games, it'd just get spent on something else equally of value.

Precisely. And if the game developers/publishers are having trouble turning a profit, apparently they aren't meeting that goal.

Of course. But they admit such a thing doesn't and will likely never exist, so that is a moot point.

Because they heard about it and want to see it. Just because they want to see it doesn't mean they want to, or even can, buy it.

First, they don't have to pay. Most people can get it easy enough by going to a website and doing a search. They choose to pay, and that's what companies need to focus on; making it so more people choose to pay than not.

Second, this isn't about right or wrong. It's about keeping PC games sales up so that it remains a lucrative market. I bet most businesses wouldn't care if everyone in the world pirated their games, as long as the money kept flowing in.

Because you think it's worth it? You want to reward the creators for their work so they can continue making things?

Maybe if PC gamers didn't feel cheated at almost every PC game purchase..
When was the last time you could try a reasonable demo of a game before buying it? When was the last time you didn't have to worry about if you could return a game you didn't like? When was the last time you didn't have to worry about the DRM it comes with messing up your system or preventing you from even playing the game?
These companies want you to blindly buy their products, with no recourse to get your money back if you don't like it. They want you to buy only from them, no second-hand sales which is supposed to be gauranteed by law. You think that's fair?

It seems that the major point here is that you differ with Thomas on whether moral responsibilities to entities differ based on the conditions or circumstances of the entity. It seems that you are being hypocritical, going after the individuals who pirate games on a small scale while you make excuses for the corporations that parasitize the whole system. When I buy games, I get them from independent developers. Hence, I know the 20-30 dollars I pay are going directly to the small team of people who actually make the game. If I were to buy a game from MS, then the 50-60 dollars I pay will go to MS, and maybe one percent of the revenues if that go towards salaries for people who actually do the work of making the game. It's fairly obvious which system is the more efficient. Also, 'free market' arguments are baseless in this case; in a free market, as opposed to one regulated by a government in the corporations' collective pocket, the corporations would not survive due to their inefficiency. Who is it who wins when the predominant system is the second of those described above? Those who make games lose, because either they try to make an indie game and are doomed to stay on the periphery of the industry forever or they hire on with MS or equivalent, lose the rights to all their work and get <1% of the revenues from the games they make in salaries. Those who buy games lose, because they are paying the extra 30 bucks into MS's pocket. The only winners are those who sit in the middle and parasitize, and those who they bribe into enabling it. That's the system that you are arguing for, against that small proportion of people who pirate games.

That's oversimplified in the case of corporations. If a CEO does the "right thing", the shareholders sell their stock (bad for the company) if they can get a bigger immediate profit in some other company. They can also vote him out.

I don't think so. If it was easier to find it online, why get in the trouble of going to the shop to buy it?

Everything should be measured by the amount of energy required to do said thing.

If people could buy Windows for $150 online, they would do it.

Cigarettes are different than software. People pirate games and applications that are really useful in the price range of $10 or $20. They sit comfortably in their living rooms, wonder what to play next, they spot a nice shareware game that costs $19, and instead of buying it, they search for a pirated version. Why? it's certainly not the $19 price. Even if it cost $9, they would still pirate it. On the other hand, if it was easy and secure to buy it online, they would have bought it, even if it was $49.

I agree with you on that. But that's human nature: people are greedy. When CDs came out, one of the advertised advantages over Vinyls was their lower price, due to lower manufacturing costs. But it never happened. CDs had the same prices as Vinyls.

How much would you pay for TNG? for all the seasons. Asking out of curiosity.

Windows is a whole different ball-game. It's almost a monopoly market, and for such a thing, different rules apply.
Also, if there were a law stating mandating that the OS be sold separately from any hardware, and that anyone selling OSes must offer at least two alternatives from different companies, a lot more people might consider a cheaper OS. As it is now, Windows looks as if it were "free", because "it comes with the computer". People are using Vista now because that's what's on a new computer; this forces software makers to focus on Vista rather than XP, and this in turn leads to people switching to Vista eventually, when the latest version of their software doesn't support XP anymore. I hardly know anyone who actually bought a Vista upgrade because Vista by itself is so much better.

That's because the production cost of a CD is something like 1% of the total price. Even if the production cost were zero, you wouldn't feel the difference.

A lot of shareware games are easy and reasonably secure to buy online.

But the one thing that keeps striking me every time this discussion comes up is this: Copyright infringement is illegal, and the fact that it is, is the result of a more or less democratic process. Few people would agree to get rid of it entirely, and most of us think that creative work deserves pay. Yet I hear all sorts of arguments FOR file sharing, unauthorized copying, pirating, whatever you want to call it, and why it "should" be legal.
Whether or not CI hurts sales, whether or not CI causes any economical damage at all, whether or not DRM is inconvenient or not, it completely irrelevant. Copying software without the copyright holder's permission is illegal, DRM (if done right) is not, at least not by itself.

I'm curious if it's possible to make a DRM scheme that gives no false positives, while still having a high enough success rate to be worth it. DRM is designed to prevent access to the software, and once that happens to a legitimate owner of that software for any reason, there's problems.

You're absolutely right, but I think that if the DRM part is relatively painless, and there is toll-free quality customer support, the problems are manageable.

As long as the company stays around and provides support for the product, and that asking for help doesn't make you feel guilty (yes, this has happened to me; not related to DRM, actually, but having to ask for some kind of support made me feel like I was going to get accused of doing something wrong, and not get helped. the joys of social anxiety..).

I'm willing to give companies the benefit of the doubt when it comes to most DRM schemes, but the moment I have even a smidgen of trouble with it... they've lost my business forever.

But it's still easier to download a pirated copy. There are issues of privacy, and the word 'reasonably' does not make it safe.

How much should shareware games cost for them not to be pirated? $9? why people still hunt for pirated copies of said cheap games?

How much should commercial games cost? $30? they would still be pirated. $20? still pirated. $10? still pirated!in fact, why bother with going to the shop or submitting my credit card number online when I can download the game?

I really don't see a solution to the problem...

I was googling for the additional cost of preinstalled Windows, I couldn't find a link, but did find this (which is partly concerned with piracy)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/04/30/preinstalled_windows_aargh_i_cant/

Just throwing something else into the ring, with the whole valve and steam DRM stuff, because of steam I have purchased lots of games, when they offer them for $9.99 on weekends. I buy them because they are a cheap weekends entertainment. They are not games that I would have considered pirating, or even buying, because I have never heard of them before.

tl;dr, there are lots of games out there that are worth your money, but to actually find them among the POS games, it can be hard.

eg. Eets, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, AudioSurf, Oddworld, Psychonauts.

It wasn't the DRM itself that made me buy these games, but the steam platform allowed me to buy these games at a reasonable price.

It has been made clear before that that I feel, for myself, that the benefits of steam outweigh its usage requirements. Steam isn't the beginning and end for all people, but it is much better than what I got with spore, which is 3 installs, one used just to play the game, another used because the install shat itself, giving me 1 more install. I didn't do anything dodgy, it managed to corrupt its own registry, which I backed up this time.

Ummm, I've been playing reasonable demos of a lot of games on PS3. As for PC, there probably aren't a lot of demos (or games, for that matter) released because piracy is shifting the focus of developers to consoles (for the record, about the only PC games I buy are through Steam. In particular, games developed by VALVe and Rockstar Games; I mostly only play shooters on PC and the rest I enjoy on PlayStation consoles). There are new PS3 demos released every couple of weeks. My PS3 is so full of demos I haven't even played half of them. It's like you're poisoning your own well and crying for government assistance when you have no clean water to drink.

Nobody said you were entitled to play every game ever made. You pick and choose based on previews, reviews, demos, screenshots, gameplay video on YouTube and similar sites, etc. There is PLENTY of information out there for you to make an informed decision about a game. And as with any purchase, there is some risk involved. There always will be. So if you aren't sure if you're willing to risk the money then go without.

The corporations are providing entertainment. It is not required to survive. It's a luxury. You are not entitled to it. And entertainers are free to charge whatever they want (which is again whatever the most consumers are willing to pay). Being unwilling to pay is no excuse to steal or infringe. If it were, stealing would be perfectly acceptable. And it's not.

If you read the OP's article they talk about musicians that sign the rights of their works over to recording companies. They do it because they choose to do it. And it's their work so they're free to do with it what they want. The reason they do it is because the recording company can expose a lot more people to the work than the artist could on his own. So even though the recording company takes a large piece of the pie and owns the rights to the works, the artist still makes a lot more than they would have without the recording company. Why do you think artists continue to sign with recording companies? So yes, when you buy your favorite band's CD you are putting money in the pockets of business people as well as musicians. But it's because of those business people that you even knew your favorite band existed. Thank them for it.

The games industry is probably quite similar. It is expensive to develop, publish, and market a game and there is a lot of risk involved. Why do you think successful independent game developers are so rare (if they even exist...)? It's not because anybody in particular is standing in their way. It's that the market is very competitive and it requires a large investment and a lot of risk to compete. And independent developers can't afford it. Very much like independent music artists can't compete with the signed artists. They need help to get their works exposed to the masses. And unsurprisingly, that help comes with strings attached. Welcome to the wonderful world of business where smart players benefit and suckers lose.

Consumers win from all of this too because with the help of major corporations more people are exposed to the works than otherwise could be and projects that wouldn't have been possible are made possible. My favorite games, movies, TV shows, music, and "books" (if there were one ) are all made possible by these "evil" corporations you speak of. Without them, I would probably never have been exposed to any of that stuff. Much of it wouldn't have even been feasible to create.

Pirates hurt legitimate consumers more than anyone else because they're taking money from our pockets. Do you honestly think the businesses involved are going to take the hit and continue to do business? They're either going to pass the hit onto consumers or stop doing that business all together and find another way to make money. So stop pretending to be righteous people fighting for the little guy. You're just selfish freeloaders on the backs of the people you claim to be fighting for.

When did we start talking about the PS3?

Ironic since the lack of demos is one of the bigger drives of piracy-that-may-be-sales. Hype up a game enough, and people will want to at least try it. Possibly to buy. A good demo would usually provide this, but lately all the demos have been ill-reflective of the actual game, bad/short, or simply non-existant. Combine this with the inability to return games after you buy it..

Maybe game companies should consider that when trying to heap their crap on their customers, then cry when people don't buy it.

Yeah, because screenshots, reviews, previews and (non-existant) demos are reliable..

I think we have here an example of the issue of access.

Would you buy these games in the same price if you couldn't buy them online but instead you had to go to the shop to buy them?

I would pay more to get a non DRM version, but mostly its just not possible, or you need to buy or borrow 2nd hand copies. I don't really care how old/new the game is, as long as its good.

I agree mostly with axilmar. The reasons people give to pirate a game are just excuses; they pirate because it's easy, free, and they won't get caught. So keep blowing your hot air. However, I think most people will draw a line if they feel the developer needs their money to survive.

[And no, I don't count buying a game and then using a 'pirated' copy of it as pirating.]

And as I've said many times, piracy hurts the little guy more than it does the big guy. Sure, Microsoft may lose tons of money (not relative to their total sales) due to piracy, but it prevents other operating systems from gaining a user base. If every illegal copy of Windows were magically replaced with a copy of Linux, I wouldn't be surprised if Linux would have a majority desktop share worldwide.

If every game were an online game, there wouldn't be that much piracy...

Yes, it's wrong, but it's always that if people can get something for free instead of paying for it, it's just the fools who pay. If something's possible, it will be done. That's why I wonder why none of the nukes around the world have been launched so far by some madmen gaining access to the control room.

I'll pay for a game if I think the game is worth the money. I bought Mount&Blade because I liked the game and it wasn't too expensive. I could have very easily pirated it, but I didn't.

If I'm not sure if it's worth the money, then maybe I'll pirate it, play it for 2 seconds and then never touch it again. Mount&Blade has a demo, so there was never any reason to pirate it.

Did I ever say I ever pirated anything? At all? For the record, I don't and I haven't. So, either this statement is based on false assumptions and thereby invalid, or you're somehow making the argument that thinking that media corporations are something less than perfect and altruistic is immoral.

But were all those things really made possible by these "evil" corporations? (I'm assuming you put evil in quotes because you don't actually think they are.) Are these "evil" corporations really necessary? I don't think they should be (they might be necessary, but from what I've been able to come up with so far, they aren't.) Of course, I'm ready for someone to come and prove me wrong.

[quote ]Yes, it's wrong, but it's always that if people can get something for free instead of paying for it, it's just the fools who pay.
</quote>
So according to you, being moral and good is foolish?

I assumed you do because you're defending it. In any case, that statement was implicitly directed to pirates so if you aren't a pirate then it wasn't aimed at you.

How much money do you have for development? With no money coming in, can you afford to fund a many-man development team for months or years (we're talking with a legal salary for each man; and that's being generous because qualified persons typically have expensive educations under their belt and expect more than minimum wage)? And at the end if it flops then what? You do need these major corporations to make it happen. Or alternatively, anybody willing to invest a lot of money in your company. Whether your game sells or not, your employees will want to get paid. Entertainment is a very risky business. It's best if you can find somebody else willing to take the risk. Of course, convincing them that they should is another problem all together.

In the beginning, there was on-disk copy protection, with its various sectors manipulated and tossed about, and everything was fine. Some copies were made, but a bought disk always played in a drive for the system it was made for. For those times when this burden was troublesome, we had archiving programs with parameters. Everything was fine.

Then, more esoteric devices started to rear their heads. Instruction booklets with codes printed in shiny black ink on flat black paper (so as to thwart photocopying) began to appear. We kept our manuals in a desk drawer and played our games as we pleased. Life was good.

Then, manual word checks appeared. We were bidden to look into the tome of ancient secrets (again, a manual) and whisper a word to ye olde gods, usually in the form of "The first word of the third sentence in the second paragraph of page 42." Again, we kept our manuals in a desk drawer, and produced them when it was time to play. This was a minor inconvenience, but it did what it could to stem the tide of piracy, and we understood that. In the instance that this burden was too much to bear, we called upon the almighty NOP, and the problem went away.

Then, code wheels started to crop up. We turned a wheel upon another wheel, which was possibly upon yet another wheel. When the sacred windows lined up in a manner specified by the program, arcane knowledge was provided that allowed the game to run. We blessed the great software gods of California for their bounty, and kept our code wheels in the same drawer that held whatever manuals we still needed. Life was good. Again, in the unlikely instance that this burden was too much to bear, we called upon the almighty NOP.

Many years passed, and gaming evolved from a disk based distribution system to a disc and network distribution system.

Manual codes reappeared, but now they were in alphanumeric gibberish that needed to be typed in once to allow for installation and/or network access. This was largely not a problem, unless you found yourself on the receiving end of a stolen, inaccurate, or otherwise expired code. Code generators were created by the elder gods to allow for copying, but collateral damage existed in that legit codes may be deactivated through illicit use, while the box remains on the shelf, waiting to be purchased. We shook our heads and continued to support PC gaming.

Disc-based copy protection became in vogue once more, and our games started coming with disclaimers (inside the box, no less) that the copy protection might conflict with certain brands of CD-ROMS. This was largely not a problem, unless you found yourself on the receiving end of such horrible affliction, wherein you were placed in the unfortunate position of having a game you could neither return nor play. Those among the damned called upon the elder gods, and they responded with cracks and miniature disc images stripped of the offending protection. We shook our heads once more and continued to support PC gaming.

Rootkit inspired copy protection came upon us like a plague of locusts to the fertile fields, and we began to find our systems and registries cluttered with flotsam and system level drivers that leeched precious CPU cycles and wreaked havoc on overall system stability. The industry's new malediction was again easily foiled by cracks and miniature disc images. We began to arch our eyebrows... collectively, and one at a time. This was turning into an unacceptable experience.

Then, the joy known as internet activation descended from the heavens, yet though it bore wings of purest white, in its heart a ball of malodorous pitch throbbed incessantly. This was usually not a problem, unless you bought a game on launch day and found it locked because the activation servers were swamped, or you decided to sell your game to someone else, or your internet access was interrupted when you wanted to play the game... or the company hosting the DRM activation went belly up. As with every copy protection scheme that had come before it, this one ran afoul of the elder gods, who visited their wrath in the form of activated game rips, spoof server apps, and the familiar executable patch. The situation was becoming too much to bear, having played along with the publishers' copy protection schemes for so many years, and accepting a measure of inconvenience in return for the ability to play the games we surrendered our monetary funds to receive. To purchase a game and go to play it, only to find yourself at the mercy of some other entity whose only concern is revenue, is a slippery slope that I don't care to explore.

I no longer support PC gaming. Give me a manual, or fully compatible disc check without resorting to what is essentially a root kit, and I will return to the fold. Until then, I enjoy console gaming. The elder gods would like to remind you at this time that eventually publishers will totally fuck that up as well, so enjoy it while it lasts.

DRM and the DMCA have gotten enough people's backs up that nobody's going to admit that piracy is morally wrong. I think that, while piracy is a problem, it's the lesser of two evils when compared to what corporations do in terms of DRM--piracy means that you don't have to deal with that, hence people buying a game and then playing the pirated version. (This was the underlying point of my previous very long post; if I made that unsufficiently clear I apologize. I do believe that, other things being equal, it's better to buy a game than pirate it.)

Piracy is wrong, but even more wrong is punishing honest users for it. As long as the DRM works well enough and is non-intrusive (as is the case with Mount & Blade for example, for as far as I can tell), I don't see a problem with it, but when it deprives legit users from rightfully using the software as advertised, I do.
Fortunately, I live in a country that has a law that basically states that:
1. it is illegal to sell goods that do not fulfill any purpose at all;
2. it is illegal to sell goods that do not fulfill the advertised purpose;
3. any purchase can be undone during 3 full working days from the date of purchase, provided the product is intact
Point 1 basically means that the popular "no fitness for any purpose guaranteed" EULA restriction is void here.
Point 2 has the consequence that if a game you purchase doesn't run on a system that fulfills the advertised minimum specs, you are entitled to a full refund, package opened or not.

I've read all but the last few pages (DRM), but I plan to finish those as time permits.

I had wondered why they don't come out with the PC version of most of the titles I'd like to play. It makes a lot of sense to say that piracy is a very large factor for porting the games from a console to the "more accessible" but "less controllable" medium of PC.

I understood that knowing your target hardware specs adds all sorts of levels of complexity and difficulty to the design, especially when deciding which features, levels, modes, controller inputs, etc. to add, remove, or tweak. What was educational for me was learning about the episodic releases.

1. They allow developers to generate a few well-designed worlds quickly, often reusing the same game engine.

2. It allows them to add more anti-piracy measures, essentially double-checking that the version being played isn't a cracked version.

3. Games that may last 40-60 hours can be given to the player in 3-4 "12-15" hours of gameplay.

4. The price of the "base game" with the first Episode's content is often much less than the full-blown all-inclusive retail games sitting on the shelves next to them.

I would like to think that "my game idea" will someday become a world phenomenon that everyone talks about and plays. But we all know that a game will be popular for a short while before being replaced by the next "great game" that comes out. So having different Episodes for the same game, a few years apart, ensures that "my dream lives on".

I also know that "I already like this game" when the expansion packs come out. If it's the same engine (maybe a few additions and tweaks excepting), I don't have to worry that "Oh no; this new expansion pack for Sims 2 totally wrecked everything I've ever worked for! It's terrible! My Sims 2 game now sucks!"

Also, I understand that "the total price" of the Episodic games costs more in the long run, since you have to lay down $10-$15 (or $20-$25 if you get greedy) each time there's another "expansion pack", but I find that taking a $10 hit to to wallet every few years is easier than a big chunk of money all at once. (Would you rather have to pay your bills like rent/loans/medical all at once, or have "I can live with that" installments over an extended period of time?)

The main thing that bugs me about episodic games is that they aren't a "complete" game. Being able to play through a game the first time all the way through would be a rather different experience than playing through one part, another part later, another part later, another later, then finally getting a conclusion. "The whole is more than the sum of its parts," as it were. Would also compound the problem of not ending a series when it should be ended, instead keeping it going to milk more and more money from people.

Of course you could just wait until enough of the episodes are released then get it all at once, but that just adds more time to the already-elongated development time of games these days, and runs greater risks of running across spoilers and other information you don't want to know until you see it yourself.

My opinion is that if you pirate the game after purchasing it, or in some way has problems because of DRM/copy protection. Then you should demand your money back.

No one should ever pirate anything. I think that angry guy in he video who apparently keeps buying games despite being well aware that he's gonna have to crack them is an idiot. He shouldn't support the companies who do this to him. By giving them money he is just enabling them. Is he so addicted to gaming that he can't live without these games?

Considering the number of choices he has of companies that don't do it (very few), then are we supposed to just let PC gaming die because no one's buying and everyone just screams "zOMGPIRaCY!!!1!1"?

Also consider the following.. Oblivion came with nearly no copy protection. People bought it (including myself, and some, like myself, because it had no copy protection) and it became a top-selling PC game. Despite that, it's expansion, Shivering Isle, came with SecuROM. Fallout 3 also comes with SecuROM. I have not and will not buy either of those as long as that's part of the deal. Bethesda lately has been complaining about piracy. See the problem here?

EDIT:
Also pertinent to note that there's been some speculation that Sony (creators of SecuROM) required Bethesda to use it for their PC games to be able to put them on the PS3 (as Oblivion getting the PS3 port is around the time Bethesda started using SecuROM). And given how easilly the SecuROM is gotten around in Fallout 3, it doesn't seem as though they really cared about using it.

Well, as you say there are actually a few actors on the scene that don't do it. They will keep on doing business as usual, maybe a little more... So how do you reckon PC gaming dies? Sure, if the "bad" companies don't adjust, the market will see a big decline in new titles, but I can live with that. I'm sure it'll recover, and be much better, after the revolution.

Read the article. They discuss exactly how the PC market has been changing (in many of the ways you guys are complaining about) to adjust and how they're likely to change in the future. Essentially developing PC games that require Internet access to unlock and/or have online gameplay that would reduce the effectiveness of piracy (the reasoning being that piracy is so bad that the consumers without an Internet connection are fewer than the ones pirating who would otherwise pay -- so STFU about your lost business). One of the side effects of this is that entire PC genres have been disappearing because they don't fit the online model. They are no longer profitable on the PC platform (adventure gaming was an example given by the OP's article). DRM is of course another way in which the PC market has been changing. As the author of the article said, whenever the pirates bitch about forcing the entertainment industry to adjust, they should be careful what they wish for. As mentioned, the industry is adjusting and has been and you haven't liked any of their adjustments. As I said, poisoning your own well.

I appear to have gotten a pirated copy of the Friends series on DVD for Christmas. The gift giver had no way of knowing as they aren't very technically minded and don't know much of anything about copyright infringement. They only saw that they could get the DVD set for less than half price if they ordered from China. The package contains numerous spelling/grammar mistakes, the center ring on the DVDs has some kind of weird wax on it that doesn't look like it would be good for a DVD player, and about 6 or 7 of the DVDs are repeats (meaning 6 or 7 are also missing). And when the gift giver, who thought they were doing something really nice for me, finds out they're going to feel really bad. So now I feel like a jerk for not being satisfied with the gift... Which would cost a fortune to return to China....... It's probably legal under Chinese law for the distributor to reproduce this, and even if it is a "legitimate" operation in line with Warner Bros., the product coming out is still of terrible quality.

The idea of forcing the entertainment industry to adjust generally is meant to be more like forcing them to stop trying to sustain the current IP model by legislative fiat when its time has obviously come and gone.

Because throwing the baby out with the bath water works just so darn well.

I've made my point.. this isn't about "right or wrong", it's about the core issues surround the problems of declining PC game quality and support. You cannot properly fix the problem if you don't even know what the problem that you need to fix is.

Piracy is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.. which, IMO, are people not buying crappy hyped up games as much as they used to, bloating development costs with the expectation to magically make it all back with a good game, and that some games just don't sell for no discernable reason (but who knows what the problem really is; it's not like they're trying to find out).

Of course, having large conglomerates willing and able to buy out anything and anyone showing genuine talent in making PC games, just to force their will upon them and turn them into money vaccuums doesn't help. And really, would the likes of Sony and Microsoft really care if the PC gaming division is bringing in crappy returns? With everything else they're involved in and the money they get from it, keeping PC gaming lucrative probably isn't their highest priority. THey have music, consoles, and OSs to worry about.

So, I'm honestly curious.. how would you fix the problem here?

@Kitty Cat: It seems pretty clear by your remarks that you haven't read the article. If you want to discuss this then read the article first. It's very well written and worth reading. Basically, all the excuses you're making are disputed with data and logic. A lot more sound logic than that of pirates. And many of the problems you claim exist that justify piracy are also disputed with sound logic and data.

Given all the problems involved, to claim that piracy is the only problem and the root of all the others is simplistic and stupid.

I have read (most of) the article, and as I said, I find it flawed. Taking numbers that are just supposed to be "rough estimations" and later herald them as the truth. Brushing off arguments against the companies, and just plain ignoring information.

I mean really.. the guy takes the word of a single torrent site boasting about the accuracy of torrent numbers (which anyone with a brain could tell you is a horribly flawed method) and believes it's as true as the universe existing, but just glosses over how the bigger pirate groups encourage people to buy the games, and conveniently downplays the severity of the problems people have and will have with the DRM schemes he talks about.

On the topic of the DRM mentioned in the article: The letter that he shows a photograph of seems to imply that the DRM that came with the Elder Scrolls game checks if you are running processes that could be used to bypass the DRM, and refuses to run the game otherwise. I don't have any experience with PC game DRM, but if that is the case, then I can see the controversy. It's none of the game seller's business what programs you run while you run their game. If that is not the case, then how does it work, and why would the programs mentioned in the letter cause DRM problems?

The article is in no way unbiased. Because the article is rather long and many of its contentions are very much in dispute, it is unhelpful to simply say 'your points are refuted in the article'. Please at least characterize the argument that you want to advance.

As far as I'm aware, both Morrowind and (originally) Oblivion just did a rather basic CD check. It made sure the drive type was a CD-ROM type, and a specific file was on the CD.

With newer Oblivion and Fallout 3, it uses SecuROM to do the CD check. And even though it's only doing a CD check, SecuROM installs a bunch of hidden stuff without your consent, gives no simple way to uninstall it (Sony finally made a SecuROM removal tool, but last I heard it didn't work all that well), and generally has random problems with specific CD drives, multiple CD drives, certain software (Daemon Tools, even if it's not running and has been uninstalled, and Process Explorer to name a couple), etc. And if you try to uninstall SecuROM, the games will stop working.. so even if you do successfully remove it, you may as well remove all games that use it, too.

And that's not even getting into the other claims that it'll sometimes disable drives, or knocks drives down into PIO mode, which puts added stress on them and wears it out faster.

From what I've read on Wikipedia and its website, what Securom does is it encrypts the application on your HD and checks the key on the CD to decrypt it. How does it work other than that; if that's all it does then why is it controversial; and, since I assume that's not all it does, what else does it do?

According to what I read on wikipedia, it plays around with the disc timings (which is actually how it stores the key), using it's own kernel-level driver. It also installs components which fool around with shell extensions (and would be difficult to actually track as belonging to SecuROM, if you didn't already know) and cause extra stability problems for Explorer, and it creates registry keys which are difficult to remove by purposely encoding it in a way that most registry editors cannot handle.

And personally I wouldn't doubt they put in specific checks to block running while CD virtualization software is running, as opposed to it just being a side-effect of the technique they used.. that is until enough people complained and they "fixed the bug". With all the under-handedness it goes through to keep itself on your system without you knowing, it really wouldn't surprise me at this stage.

If your game idea requires episodes to remain relevant, your game idea sucks. Quake I/II/III are still played and will continue to be played for years on. Baldur's Gate will also endure. This "we all know" business is an excuse not to think, or actually make a good game.

As for the article, yes it is very flawed. It makes a lot of unfounded assumptions, invalidation of any one of which would collapse the house of cards taht the writer built on top of them. Frankly, I can't be responsible for the idiocy of my fellow humans, so it's not my darned fault if their piracy ruins the PC gaming market. I pirate as means of a fair demo, and then I buy the real version if I like it. Otherwise, the piece of excrement gets off my HDD for good. If it has DRM, I either don't buy it, or pirate it with something to remove the DRM. My Vista install is on 40GB, and I need to reinstall any game I want to play. I am not changing my habits due to the whims of the game publishes/developers.

I see how the whole thing is illegal, but as the article writer said, laws are not always just. In this particular case, I think piracy is moral, but illegal... But since morality is oh so relative, that's an irrelevant statement.

Otherwise, I agree with Kitty Cat's points.

How are those not problems?

[EDIT]
Upon reading other googlings of SecuROM, I seen how to spot it, and the Tomb Raider Anniversary demo was mentioned... AND I HAVE IT!!!! AAAUUUUGGGGHHH!!!

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/98241-13-remove-securom-malware-uninstalling-bioshock-demo

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cmdlineext.dll&aq=0&oq=cmdlineext.dll

Took me 6 hours or so, but finished reading it. Commenting about the article:

So true. That is why I buy original games, because if I like a game a lot, I would not be able to wait until I get it (often a month or two to ship it here), and would hate to replay the game losing any saved data. In case of Nintendo DS or Wii games, it would mean a completely new friend code, which makes you lose your list of friends, online records, etc.

Music is different: I sometimes download MP3 songs, and if I like them, I buy the album. In fact, I have several albums here (Avantasia's The Metal Opera I and II, some from Epica, etc) that I never opened after buying because the MP3s are fine enough and don't need to rip the CDs. In this case, I equal downloading and playing a MP3 to listening it in the radio. It is similar to watching a video in YouTube, it is illegal, but allows me to try the music out before buying.

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Woo-hoo! Latin America is up there! Argentina is 37th in the full ranking by country.

Just like the article stated, prices are too high. The average income here is around USD 400, while a original PlayStation 3 is sold between USD 400 (through auction sites) and USD 1000 (though big market chains). This is the main excuse given down here when you discuss about piracy.

Dollar loss is not the term to be used, negative revenue could be better. It is the amount of money the pirated copies could have generated.

If only for this, the used market also damages the industry. For example, Frontier sold 100 copies only in Italy, but the tech support of Frontier Developments were receiving tens of thousands of calls. No way to know if they were all due piracy or second hand market, but this is an extra cost for the developer.

I would suggest reading Casual Games and Piracy: The Truth, where Russell Carroll, director of marketing at Reflexive, explained how many sales they were able to rescue when working around the different piracy attacks (breaking DRM, cracks, keygens and exploits), and was the piece that enforced 2D Boy (World of Goo creators) to write their blog and explanation about why they think their game had a 90% piracy rate.

Here the article has an error: it does not indicate digital distribution matches retail sales, but instead that they do more money out of digital distribution than retail sales. Which is only natural, since retailing needs printed manuals, boxes, media, physical distribution, etc. So, it could be that half the sales from digital distribution matches the money they do from retailers.

They don't mention how World of Warcraft canibalizes other MMORPGs. This is because it is extremely hard to build a business against a established franchise, just like it is very hard to build a business around operative systems with Microsoft Windows around, office packages with Microsoft Office, internet searching around Google, etc.

It is possible, sure, but it takes a lot of time. Google didn't become the most used search engine in a year.

The problem with this model is that much time passes between episodes. They compare it to TV episodes, but you usually wait for a week only, when episodic games could take two years or more (like Half-Life). Your game may be already obsolete by the new tech standards by the time you release a new episode. You force people to replay the original game (especially if it has a dark or complex story) just to keep up with the new episode. And you are competing against newer products. For example, GTA4 was released early this year, and the first episodic content will appear in March 2009. How can someone justify paying for a game that is already a year old when newer games have appeared?

As they point out, advertisement only helps the publisher by increasing their income. However, the final user is still paying the same amount of money as if the game had had no advertisement at all. If you don't translate the benefit to the end user, piracy will continue. This is where extra incentives for original games are needed: for example, getting a code to download extra armours or weapons for a FPS, new maps for multiplaying, even strategy guides for boxed articles, etc. This may not only prevent piracy but also second hand offerings.

Uh?

Not really, those 2 million copies include console and handheld versions.

Somehow, I noticed the author became excited when talking about DRM, putting more emphasis in defending it than examining other piracy methods like cracking and key generating. He seems pretty sad that StarForce was dropped by Ubisoft, and then uses the EULA ("the user is only licensed to use a copy of the game under certain terms and conditions, and does not ever own that game") to say the different measures by DRM are fine. Uh... that should have been at the very first page of the article if he had wanted to take that path... it is like a lawyer presenting a case for 6 hours about how the accused is guilty to end with "according to the law, stealing is a crime".

He keeps mentioning that other application installs at Ring 0 like DRM (using as example SpeedFan). So, he is comparing a freeware that needs to have that low access to get the information it needs to applications that sure cost hudnreds of thousands of dollars?

Then he contradicts himself by assuming good faith in the SecureROM developer but not in the users that complain about it:

This paragraph is questionable:

Uh? So we went from analyzing piracy to "The user got malware? His fault for pirating." That should have been stated at the first page too: cracked version of games may have been modified by the crackers to contain determined functionality not found in the original version (contrary to their mention of developers purposedly removing features or adding game-breaking bugs in early discs to discourage piracy).

Well, it is similar to the unique ID per country citizen. No campaign will request it, but people will surely go against it if implemented, because it turns the table: "you are a potential criminal, and therefore we setup this DRM system in your PC." There are those who say "If you didn't do anything wrong, what do you fear?". But that excuse is basically against common sense in law: you are innocent until proven guilty.

Then they compare Valve to DRM systems, saying that "At the very least it certainly demonstrates that DRM can become accepted, even loved, if presented in the right way." While Valve is a DRM system, the DRM systems are not content delivery systems. That many people got to love Valve does not indicate people will like DRM, ever. Valve is convenient: you get to play games the day they are released without having to leave your home. That is something DRM systems cannot do.

Talking about Valve, they explain why I don't like it:

Aha, here is the deal: what is crappy for you can be priceless for someone else. GameSpot vs. Eidos deal and IGN claim that GTA4 story was Oscar-worthy reduces the credibility of reviewers.

The article was fine until the DRM pages, where the author defended it as the least possible evil. His conclusion was that PC sales are suffering because piracy based on the comparison between sales in consoles and in PC. However, console sales have always been much higher than PC ones. In 1995, when the NES was discontinued, Super Mario Bros 3 had surely sold well over 10 million copies (eventually reaching 18 million). Very few PC games have sold more than 10 million games, before or after SMB3. Maybe not 5:1, but I assume those who know about hardware not only have a powerful PC, but also an Xbox 360 or a PS3 game console, and since players usually buy just one version of the game, PC sales end getting hurt.

Anyways, good article, although tedious. Would not read again.

The patches don't really change it all that much. At least, I haven't installed anything yet that seems to have changed much at all.

The movie Field of Dreams had the exact line you quoted.

when they find out? You're quite the douchebag, aren't you? I wouldn't make someone who went out of their way to buy a gift like that for me feel bad/hassle them like that, I'd just suck it up.

This whole thread is fail.

A little more specific?

Wouldn't it be true that it would also be rare for someone to pirate it who would have also bought (and kept) it otherwise? If you pirate it, you still have the options:
Buy it
Not buy it because you already have it for free
Not buy it because you don't like it
Not buy it because you never cared that much about it in the first place

Given that no one has done good enough studies for video game piracy here, why is it assumed the second option will be a sizeable portion of it? Ironicly, some research was done in Canada about music piracy, and found it had no significant impact on the end sales, and indeed, that it showed a slight increase in sales due to the added exposure.

Obviously I'm not assuming that is the case with video game piracy, but wouldn't it be just as wrong to assume the opposite without proper studies being done?

You also mentioned that you would download music and buy the album if you like it. Given that you can get lossless copies of a good number of music albums (if you don't consider high-bitrate MP3 to be "good enough"), why are you more willing to accept buying-after-pirating for music, but not games?

PS: This isn't a snide or retohrical reponse, I'm honestly curious.

Aren't you one of the proponents for gameplay > graphics? So how can you argue that buying a game made with an "outdated" engine is unreasonable? Personally, I still find Half-Life 2 episodes to be enjoyable (though I haven't really been able to play Episode 2 yet). The games are typically long enough to be considered full games. And anyway, the episodes do get a technological overhaul because I can't even play HL2:EP2 on my existing hardware, but HL2 and HL2:EP1 run fine. I'm not sure Half-Life 2 really fits the "episode" model presented here because developing the whole story in one shot would have taken a long time and the end result would have been a very long game (first-person shooters generally don't last 50+ hours like RPGs can).

There are a lot of "old" games that I love to play again and would be thrilled to get extended gameplay for.

Well as mentioned in the article, there is a lot of risk involved in game development. Would you risk the profits of a project on an experimental advertising strategy or use the money made to keep other projects alive. I'm sure if game companies could they would drop the price of their products. I think it's a little narrow minded to say that the advertising should have immediately meant lower prices for consumers.

In other words, a bad (read: curse) word.

The thought is still there. I appreciate what they did. I'm not going to pretend that it worked out though. The truth is they were cheap and it seems were stung for it (the Chinese copy was half the cost of a domestic purchase, at least before shipping). You get what you pay for. I absolutely appreciate their effort nonetheless, but I didn't even ask for this because I knew it was more expensive than they would go and planned to buy it myself at a later date.

Besides, it's good for them to realize that things can go badly when you blindly make purchases over the Internet (tonight I learned that the distributor charged the gift giver twice and didn't return any correspondence despite many tries to contact them to check on the order status, which apparently took a very long time... The package finally arrived Christmas Eve). Rather than let them buy falsified products again and again, I think it's better to let them know about it.

Personally, if I buy something for somebody I want to know how they really feel about it. If you don't like it then you don't like it. That's not a problem. Dishonesty isn't good for anybody involved. The gift giver is robbed of truly pleasing you (even if they don't know it) and you just end up scrapping their efforts, making the whole thing a worthless and wasteful exchange.

I told the gift givers tonight. Unfortunately, I think they feel bad for it, but they'll get over it I'm sure. It's probably more embarrassment and violation that they're feeling. And hopefully they will be more careful in the future. I still don't know what I'm going to do about it though.

[citation needed]

Everybody that I know that pirate media (90% of the people I know) don't buy it anymore: movies, music, games, etc. If they can pirate it they do and if they can't they usually go without. As a matter of fact, none of them consider it wrong (much like most of you). They don't think they're doing any harm, so why would they buy? And I'm Canadian.

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/eng/h_ip01456.html

Ummm, they're only using 2 months worth of data collected by what sounds like a contracted company....... >_< And it was the Canadian government! Call it biased, but I don't trust that "study"...

Of course. But not everyone thinks like me (you?) So I need to consider this point as possibility, just like they considered many other points.

As pointed by the article, Valve increased the price of their games through the world. What used to be USD 49 in Europe now is €49, even though they don't have to pay import taxes like boxed copies that are sent to Europe. In Australia, a game bought by Steam costs more than the boxed copy. They could, but they won't because they have the monopoly of digital distribution.

Also, software supported by advertisement is usually a free alternative to the paid version (Eudora, FlashGet, etc). The benefit is automatic for the user. Why wouldn't it be the same for games? If advertisement is transparent (for example, Pepsi-sponsored vending machines, PlayBoy-sponsored sex shops, etc), it is one thing. But many times it is not possible (in a Call of Duty game you cannot integrate an Intel advertisement), so it breaks the immersion. Or worse, you are bombarded with loading screens that, instead of narration, show you the latest Pepsi. Or much worse, you get advertisement in the narrative ("Men, disembark faster than a hamburger made at McDonald's", "Our coordinates are Coke-Pepsi-Intel 3, Ati-Nvidia-PlayBoy 13, send reinforcements this way").

There's a difference between pretending it worked fine, and going out of your way to let them know and 'beat some sense into them' as you make it sound like you are going to do. And you do get what you pay for. YOU paid nothing for the gift.

Yes, there is a difference between saying this to them, and kinda rubbing it in and making them feel bad.