Another view of game piracy

[thilanliyan]

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy

 

[JoshGuru7]

I found most of that article poorly thought out. Consider the following excerpt:

Anecdotally and from studies by companies like the BSA, it's clear that pirates for the most part have very little income. They are unemployed students, or live in countries with very low per-capita GDP, where the price of a $60 game is more like $1000 (in terms of purchasing power parity and income percentage).

Anybody older than say 21 remembers how mainstream Napster was a decade ago at every income level. The success of the RIAA since then has been to raise the cost of music piracy by shutting down services, adding a threat of lawsuits, and moving the music piracy scene to sketchier venues that are perceived to be riskier from a security point of view. It is a result of this increased cost of piracy that people who can afford it now often opt just to use iTunes or a subscription service.

Similarly, if as the article states "it's clear that pirates for the most part have very little income" that speaks to the efficacy of DRM in the current marketplace. Rich people like getting things for free as much as poor people do.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Same old tired rhetoric. If they're not adding anything to the debate we haven't heard a million times before, why post it?

 

[AstroManLuca]

Don't see anything new here. He does some number crunching to demonstrate that a small number of people are pirating a large number of games, but that's only based on the assumption that a smallish percentage of PC gamers pirate their games. That's probably right but there are still a lot of assumptions. Then he draws a lot more conclusions based on old arguments like saying pirates wouldn't buy games anyway so they're not really lost sales, and caps it off with the popular assertion that people don't buy PC games because they're too "consolized" or are just low quality in general.

I don't entirely disagree with him but his points certainly don't seem revolutionary or interesting to me either. And there are a lot more factors involved. First off, the decline of PC gaming is at least as much due to a sharp rise in console gaming, making PC gaming look unpopular by comparison. Consoles are the go-to gaming device for anyone who has children or who doesn't have an awesome PC. PCs usually ship with such bad graphics chipsets they can't even start many games, much less run them well.

EDIT: Didn't Valve demonstrate that Steam sales greatly increased not only the number of copies sold, but the amount of revenue? I admit I used to download games... not a ton of them, but some of them here and there. Steam has turned me legit, and I always look forward to the next awesome deal because I like getting a game (or five!) for less than $20. Whereas a $50 or $60 game I'd hesitate to buy even if I knew I would love it.

 

[JoshGuru7]

Didn't Valve demonstrate that Steam sales greatly increased not only the number of copies sold, but the amount of revenue?

Revenue does usually go up for a product during a steam sale and that has been used by people to argue that the average price of PC games is inefficiently high, which I tend to agree with.

The main problem with this argument is that after Valve ends a sale they raise the price right back to what it was before the sale. Valve presumably has superior information so this would indicate that the longterm price is not too high but rather the increase in revenue was due to impulse purchases (and increased advertising during the sale).

That brings me to my source of dissatisfication with articles like this one. Publishers are in business to make money and there are lots of economic consultants out there shopping their services. Given that publishers have superior information as well as a profit motive, the starting assumption should be that they are doing things right (for themselves).

Arguments can obviously made to the contrary, but the burden of proof is on the side arguing that publishers are not acting in their own best interests.

 

[Balt]

Don't see anything new here. He does some number crunching to demonstrate that a small number of people are pirating a large number of games, but that's only based on the assumption that a smallish percentage of PC gamers pirate their games. That's probably right but there are still a lot of assumptions. Then he draws a lot more conclusions based on old arguments like saying pirates wouldn't buy games anyway so they're not really lost sales, and caps it off with the popular assertion that people don't buy PC games because they're too "consolized" or are just low quality in general.

I don't entirely disagree with him but his points certainly don't seem revolutionary or interesting to me either. And there are a lot more factors involved. First off, the decline of PC gaming is at least as much due to a sharp rise in console gaming, making PC gaming look unpopular by comparison. Consoles are the go-to gaming device for anyone who has children or who doesn't have an awesome PC. PCs usually ship with such bad graphics chipsets they can't even start many games, much less run them well.

EDIT: Didn't Valve demonstrate that Steam sales greatly increased not only the number of copies sold, but the amount of revenue? I admit I used to download games... not a ton of them, but some of them here and there. Steam has turned me legit, and I always look forward to the next awesome deal because I like getting a game (or five!) for less than $20. Whereas a $50 or $60 game I'd hesitate to buy even if I knew I would love it.

Agreed on the bolded. I simply can't pay $50-60 for a game these days that I may not even enjoy, but if Steam has a deal that gets one down to $20-30 I will give it a shot. I don't have any pirated software, for the record.

One thing that fascinates me though is how much it used to be claimed that piracy drove PC game prices up drastically. Yet if you compare PC game prices to console game prices today, it seems like the PC versions are consistently at least $10 cheaper than their console counterparts. Admittedly piracy was somewhat easier to accomplish back in the days of 3.5" disks if you knew someone who already had them. Today a person doesn't even have to leave their chair, however.

 

[frozentundra123456]

It always irritates me when pirates blame the developers for piracy because they use drm. (It is OK to pirate, because the developers are using plan a, or plan b or whatever of evil DRM, so I have a right to pirate because the developer is evil.)

If it wasnt for piracy, they would not need DRM.

I also dont agree with the part that sort if implies that piracy is OK for those that cannot afford to buy games. Sorry, but if you cant afford the game, just dont buy it. Dont pirate it either. Just dont play it. Playing a game is not life or death, if you dont get a game it is not the end of the world.

 

[shortylickens]

Same old tired rhetoric. If they're not adding anything to the debate we haven't heard a million times before, why post it?

Yeah the problem with Anandtech is we've heard this shit so many times we are no longer concerned with the old, generic arguments.
Thats what sucks about being a nerd. By the time a product or discussion becomes mainstream we've already become worn out.

 

[Pia]

Revenue does usually go up for a product during a steam sale and that has been used by people to argue that the average price of PC games is inefficiently high, which I tend to agree with.

The main problem with this argument is that after Valve ends a sale they raise the price right back to what it was before the sale. Valve presumably has superior information so this would indicate that the longterm price is not too high but rather the increase in revenue was due to impulse purchases (and increased advertising during the sale).

Periodic sales are classic differential pricing. Some people like me have no problem waiting for the game they want to be on sale, some pay the higher price. I don't doubt that there is a lot of impulse purchasing going on, but the pricing itself doesn't prove anything to that effect.

 

[Pia]

If it wasnt for piracy, they would not need DRM.

You'd have to define "need" properly to argue that. What's obvious about the "need" of DRM against pirates, however:

1) not all developers have such a need - there are developers who do not use DRM
2) for most games which have DRM, for the majority of the game's commercial life, the DRM cannot possibly be there for pirates because pirates already have a fully functional cracked version

I also dont agree with the part that sort if implies that piracy is OK for those that cannot afford to buy games. Sorry, but if you cant afford the game, just dont buy it. Dont pirate it either. Just dont play it. Playing a game is not life or death, if you dont get a game it is not the end of the world.

There is no such part in the article that I can see.

 

[Patrick Wolf]

DRM is about stopping 2nd-hand sales. Piracy is a real problem on the PC, but it's mainly a scapegoat because they can't stop it.

Because of this, PC gaming will become a greater niche with every new generation of consoles. Developers will just stop caring when consoles generate enough revenue (even when considering 2nd-hand sales). Online & subscription-based gaming will still have their place.

Console games are pirated as well, but it's more tedious than most people care to put effort into. 2nd-hand sales would be quite difficult to stop on consoles as it's a huge market.

Even Steam games are pirated, but it's currently the single best platform for combating piracy & generating revenue by providing excellent deals on games and desirable features.

I don't have a problem with any of this. But some developers are at fault too (namely Rockstar & Ubisoft) for creating really poor PC ports for no other reason that I can think of than to deter pirates (and legitimte buyers as well) to just migrate to consoles.

Hopefully they, and all developers, will stop this and make proper ports to just distribute via digital distribution (namely Steam).

 

[lupi]

Love the drm is good because of piracy schmucks. Didn't the government just publish a report that said most piracy figures are baseless crap just made up by the various industries.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

What, you mean the thieves won't just line up to provide the government data on what they've stolen? Certainly, this means there are no thieves.

 

[coloumb]

Yup - I agree - "their games are not fun on the PC". Remember when PC games required a bit more brain thought to play?

I could easily pay the price for pc games - but I refuse to in part to DRM scheme / lack of a demo. Just because a game gets high reviews doesn't necessarily mean *I* will like it. And with PC games lately being biolinked to a unique account [prevents resell] - I'm out $50-$60 if I don't like the game.

 

[mindcycle]

Yeah the problem with Anandtech is we've heard this shit so many times we are no longer concerned with the old, generic arguments.
Thats what sucks about being a nerd. By the time a product or discussion becomes mainstream we've already become worn out.

I agree with that man. Most of us posting in this thread have probably posted about DRM before on these forums.

As an article speaking generally about piracy I think he brings up some good points. The overall point he's attempting to make seems to be that there is a relatively small percentage of pirates (compared to the rest of the market) who generate a large percentage of the overall downloads of pirated games. Which makes sense, because when you are getting something for free you don't have to limit the amount of games you have like you would if you were actually purchasing everything, so you'll most likely take way more than you need (or will ever play).

The high estimate that 20% of PC gamers worldwide are pirates, sums up that conclusion pretty nicely. From his analysis, if you were to make piracy impossible on the PC you would gain at most 20% more sales. Which would assume that every person that pirated the game would have purchased it instead, which is highly unlikely. Which is why we see a 90% piracy rate for games from only 20% of the market. I'd imagine the extra sales gained from pirates would be something like 1-5%, if that.

So it begs the question that I always ask.. is DRM really needed? Do the pros outweigh the cons? If the reality of stopping piracy means a publisher can potentially gain 1-20% more sales, is that worth pissing off and alienating the people who make up the other 80-99%? The actual customers..

 

[xCxStylex]

For most games, you could just pirate them and treat them as a demo. >

Y
I could easily pay the price for pc games - but I refuse to in part to DRM scheme / lack of a demo. Just because a game gets high reviews doesn't necessarily mean *I* will like it. And with PC games lately being biolinked to a unique account [prevents resell] - I'm out $50-$60 if I don't like the game.

 

[AstroManLuca]

There's another angle. I no longer play PC games online. I don't see the point. Assuming I can even find a server that isn't either empty or overcrowded, it's usually laggy, full of cheaters, full of mic spammers, or has a zillion stupid mods. And even if it doesn't have any of those things, I'll still get beaten really badly every single time because everyone else who plays is so much better than me and has 8 hours a day to dedicate solely to playing the game.

Playing online isn't fun anymore. Single player games are fun for me, but they're usually pretty short and are rarely worth more than $20. I buy used ones, or old ones, or ones that are on sale. The game industry is not getting much money from me. So why bother catering to what I like? They make way more money doing MMORPGs, which I have absolutely no interest in.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

DRM isn't a necessity. It only hurts people who actually payed for the game. That being said, I've installed many games that have supposedly "invasive" DRM's and I haven't noticed a thing.

 

[Mopar63]

I love how people try to make this some big debate when it is simple, a thief is a thief....

 

[Soundmanred]

I love how people try to make this some big debate when it is simple, a thief is a thief....

We're having a discussion about piracy, not GameSpot.
Please try to stay on topic.

 

[coloumb]

There's another angle. I no longer play PC games online. I don't see the point. Assuming I can even find a server that isn't either empty or overcrowded, it's usually laggy, full of cheaters, full of mic spammers, or has a zillion stupid mods. And even if it doesn't have any of those things, I'll still get beaten really badly every single time because everyone else who plays is so much better than me and has 8 hours a day to dedicate solely to playing the game.

Playing online isn't fun anymore. Single player games are fun for me, but they're usually pretty short and are rarely worth more than $20. I buy used ones, or old ones, or ones that are on sale. The game industry is not getting much money from me. So why bother catering to what I like? They make way more money doing MMORPGs, which I have absolutely no interest in.

I wonder if that's an untapped section of the gaming industry? Implement a filtering system that restricts what servers you can play on depending upon your level - ie: level 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, etc. Someone who is a level 100 [let's say that's the max level] addict that can play 23 hours a day would be restricted to playing on the level 91-100 server. Similar to how Battlegrounds work in WoW - lvl 50-59, 60-69, 70-79, 80...

 

[AstroManLuca]

I wonder if that's an untapped section of the gaming industry? Implement a filtering system that restricts what servers you can play on depending upon your level - ie: level 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, etc. Someone who is a level 100 [let's say that's the max level] addict that can play 23 hours a day would be restricted to playing on the level 91-100 server. Similar to how Battlegrounds work in WoW - lvl 50-59, 60-69, 70-79, 80...

Things like that have been tried before. A lot of RTS games have ranking systems that try to match you against similarly skillful opponents. And Halo 3 has an online ranking as well (which you can choose to avoid by playing unranked playlists).

The problem is that people get so obsessed with their rankings that they will do all sorts of stupid stuff to either ensure an extremely high rank or to keep their rank low so they are always matched against bad players.

It's not a bad idea, but I'm more bothered by cheating, mic spam, and unsportsmanlike behavior than I am by playing against someone who's just better than me. I'd prefer to be matched against people of my same skill level, but it doesn't change the fact that there are a lot of jerks out there.