How much do you think piracy is affecting the PC Gaming market?

[BoberFett]

Boohoo. Cry more.

 

[ImpulsE69]

If this were my message board I would immidiately ban anyone who admitted to pirating. As it has helped decline the quality of one of the things I enjoy most, pc gaming.

And it'd be in your right, to be on an empty forum, because the #'s are either right or wrong. If they are right, then nearly everyone has pirated so everyone (including the owners) would be gone, and if they are wrong, they are full of crap anyway and it hasn't helped in the decline at all. So take your pick. I have no issues admitting past transgressions, even if the crazy fanatics want to pretend it's the same as terrorism.

Since we're throwing out random %'s, my guess is less than 1% of people who game, watch movies, or listen to music and have access to the internet have never pirated something. (looking at your porn people too).

 

[pcslookout]

And it'd be in your right, to be on an empty forum, because the #'s are either right or wrong. If they are right, then nearly everyone has pirated so everyone (including the owners) would be gone, and if they are wrong, they are full of crap anyway and it hasn't helped in the decline at all. So take your pick. I have no issues admitting past transgressions, even if the crazy fanatics want to pretend it's the same as terrorism.

Since we're throwing out random %'s, my guess is less than 1% of people who game, watch movies, or listen to music and have access to the internet have never pirated something. (looking at your porn people too).

Exactly.

 

[Lonyo]

I have $100.
I pirate 10 games at $50 each.
I buy 2 games at $50 each.

How much has my piracy impacted game sales?
If I hadn't pirated those games, what would I have done? Maybe instead of 2 games at $50 each I would have bought 4 games at $25 each.
How much have I spent? $100. How much did I have? $100. How much more would I have spent without pirating? $0. Because I couldn't. Because I only had $100.

Piracy isn't a zero sum game.

But what if we don't spend it all on games?
If we assume that the net wealth of "people" is below $0, because the average person is in debt, they simply do not have more actual money available to spend.

So what is the impact of piracy on gaming? Well that depends on what other non-piracy things a person spends their money.
They might end up spending $50 on games and $50 on something else if they can pirate games.
Without piracy, they would have spent $100 on games and $0 on the other thing.

What does this mean? This means piracy may reduce overall revenues in the gaming industry because that money goes to an industry that cannot be pirated, but there is only so much money available to spend, so while piracy may impact gaming by the $50 I spend elsewhere, it doesn't impact it by the $500 in games I pirated, because I never had that $500.

 

[Regs]

I have $100.
I pirate 10 games at $50 each.
I buy 2 games at $50 each.

How much has my piracy impacted game sales?
If I hadn't pirated those games, what would I have done? Maybe instead of 2 games at $50 each I would have bought 4 games at $25 each.
How much have I spent? $100. How much did I have? $100. How much more would I have spent without pirating? $0. Because I couldn't. Because I only had $100.

Piracy isn't a zero sum game.

But what if we don't spend it all on games?
If we assume that the net wealth of "people" is below $0, because the average person is in debt, they simply do not have more actual money available to spend.

So what is the impact of piracy on gaming? Well that depends on what other non-piracy things a person spends their money.
They might end up spending $50 on games and $50 on something else if they can pirate games.
Without piracy, they would have spent $100 on games and $0 on the other thing.

What does this mean? This means piracy may reduce overall revenues in the gaming industry because that money goes to an industry that cannot be pirated, but there is only so much money available to spend, so while piracy may impact gaming by the $50 I spend elsewhere, it doesn't impact it by the $500 in games I pirated, because I never had that $500.

I agree.

Opportunity costs is a concept forgotten far too many times in this discussion.

For instance, a person would not have to give up on the luxury of eating out two or three times a week if they did not have to spend that 60 dollars on that one video game. No point pretending that your budget is and always is 100 dollars which is a falsicity.

 

[Craig234]

I have $100.
I pirate 10 games at $50 each.
I buy 2 games at $50 each.

How much has my piracy impacted game sales?
If I hadn't pirated those games, what would I have done? Maybe instead of 2 games at $50 each I would have bought 4 games at $25 each.
How much have I spent? $100. How much did I have? $100. How much more would I have spent without pirating? $0. Because I couldn't. Because I only had $100.

Piracy isn't a zero sum game.

But what if we don't spend it all on games?
If we assume that the net wealth of "people" is below $0, because the average person is in debt, they simply do not have more actual money available to spend.

So what is the impact of piracy on gaming? Well that depends on what other non-piracy things a person spends their money.
They might end up spending $50 on games and $50 on something else if they can pirate games.
Without piracy, they would have spent $100 on games and $0 on the other thing.

What does this mean? This means piracy may reduce overall revenues in the gaming industry because that money goes to an industry that cannot be pirated, but there is only so much money available to spend, so while piracy may impact gaming by the $50 I spend elsewhere, it doesn't impact it by the $500 in games I pirated, because I never had that $500.

That's a false analogy. You don't have '$100 which you spend on games' and that's it.

You have a lot of other money you spend on other things.

If you had 2 of 12 games you wanted you might spend more than $100 on games.

One thing I think there's little question of, a lot of people rationalize they would't have bought the games they pirate even though they spend the time to get and play them.

And the time you spend on pirated games isn't spent wanting and buying games.

It's a little like saying that having an affair doesn't affect your wife if she doesn't know, though you start turning down sex with her more and more and finding excuses.

 

[Childs]

You dont take into account the people that have the $100, but are too cheap to spend it. Why spend the money when you can get it for free. They'll spend the money on video cards, but not the games themselves, because you can't download a GTX 660, but you can download a game for free. Not all the different than people buying an iPod and downloading bootleg mp3s.

Even when I had no problem affording mp3s, I still downloaded them for the longest time. For a while it was faster to pirate than to buy the CD, rip and catalog. It wasnt until I didnt want to spend the time searching for it that I started just buying it. Digital distribution and competitive pricing helped change that, but really its a more money than time deal. With games the tipping point came much sooner, because broadband speeds meant it took a long time to download a game, and it was still a crapshoot as to whether it would work. That and having a valid CD key for multiplayer. So I went from not pirating and only buying games on sale, to not waiting for good sales and just getting the best deal at launch. I will say that most games I did pirate I was almost pirating just because I could. Many times I played them for a only few minutes, or not at all. These days I get burned more by actually buying crappy games, but whatever.

I have no handle on what the actual numbers are, but I know people will do it because I did it, and I know why I did it. The one thing that could be a positive is todays pirates will continue to play games, and will probably grow out of pirating.

 

[T9D]

I had a friend who never bought a damn thing. He literally had thousands and thousands of dollars of pirated games, music, movies, anything he could get. All his friends were the same way. And they had groups of people who they knew. It was a lifestyle for them. Just be leaches the best they can. they think it's funny and like they are part of some great cause or something.

It's very widespread. Companies don't spend massive money on trying to fight it with DRM for no reason. They do in depth analysis of it and weigh the cost/benefit ratio. Obviously they come up with a lot. I'd hate to see the pirate bay numbers. Those places exist for a reason. Because so many people use them.

 

[mindcycle]

The one thing that could be a positive is todays pirates will continue to play games, and will probably grow out of pirating.

This is a great point and one a lot of publishers need to get better at understanding. Pirates may turn into paying customers later on if you give them the incentive to do so. So instead of DRM, single points of distribution on shitty platforms, nickle and diming people for crappy content, instead provide them with extra incentives to actually buy the game and make that a better experience than pirating it. A few ways would be decent multiplayer, free addons with your serial code, the ability to download mods and mod tools, a community setup for customers to share mods, provide a goddam demo! etc..

You aren't going to stop piracy, so your best bet is to accept that reality and cater toward paying customers instead of spending lots of time and effort trying defend against pirates with ridiculous DRM, etc.. All that is going to do is piss of legit customers and turn them toward piracy..

 

[Midwayman]

I worked for a major game studio for quite awhile. I was down in the trenches, not management that got to see the numbers. However from what I understand there are two things happening. 1) conversion rate to actual sales if you 100% stop piracy is actually pretty low. Greater than zero, but less than 10% IIRC. 2) Combating piracy is more about delaying it than stopping it. When a game releases every week you have without a pirate version coming out has significant effect. After a couple months this drops off a lot.

 

[sze5003]

I hate the games that you buy and have limited activations. For example I'm down to 7 deactivations on my dcs games because I've changed hardware, formated , installed a new OS. Once you lose them you can email them for more. I think now you get one every 30 days up to a limit of 10. But things like this probably annoy people.

It's hard to say why people pirate like many stated they do it because they can. Because you can have it now and lose nothing vs pay launch price or xx money and not enjoy it. But the steam and dl sales are helping. Also, people that are busy are more likely to buy games as they can wait until a sale and find the time to put in a game for its value.

 

[blackened23]

I hate the games that you buy and have limited activations. For example I'm down to 7 deactivations on my dcs games because I've changed hardware, formated , installed a new OS. Once you lose them you can email them for more. I think now you get one every 30 days up to a limit of 10. But things like this probably annoy people.

It's hard to say why people pirate like many stated they do it because they can. Because you can have it now and lose nothing vs pay launch price or xx money and not enjoy it. But the steam and dl sales are helping. Also, people that are busy are more likely to buy games as they can wait until a sale and find the time to put in a game for its value.

I never buy SecuROM games for this reason. I'll never buy another Batman franchise game, specifically - they all use secuROM which is the most bullshite DRM in existence.

 

[sze5003]

Well I ran a starforce driver wiper on my system because I uninstalled a10c warthog and wanted to do a clean install along with my saitek drivers but it said it found no securom drivers. I've also heard that when people asked for activations it took kinda long but now dcs keeps your shopping cart history for a long time so it should be easier. I think I'll upgrade to blackshark 2 for $20 bucks I just won't install it for the time being lol.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

I'm guessing the pool of money that goes into video games is probably pretty constant. Doing things to affect how it's spent (suppressing second hand/stopping piracy) probably only shifts around how it's spent.

 

[ThinClient]

I estimate that 5-10% of revenues for a game is lost because of pirates who would choose to buy otherwise.

This is a logical fallacy.

 

[ThinClient]

That's a false analogy. You don't have '$100 which you spend on games' and that's it.

You have a lot of other money you spend on other things.

If you had 2 of 12 games you wanted you might spend more than $100 on games.

One thing I think there's little question of, a lot of people rationalize they would't have bought the games they pirate even though they spend the time to get and play them.

And the time you spend on pirated games isn't spent wanting and buying games.

It's a little like saying that having an affair doesn't affect your wife if she doesn't know, though you start turning down sex with her more and more and finding excuses.

This only applies if the wife charges you more and more for every encounter and then begins charging you full price for individual elements of a single encounter and then continues to do so while the quality of the encounter steadily declines with each new encounter.

Fuck that bitch. Buyers vote with their wallets and only the pussy whipped retards keep paying their wives more and more for shitty poon.

 

[ImpulsE69]

You know that book..everyone poops? Yea.

 

[Craig234]

This is a logical fallacy.

I'm against the piracy, but I don't think he made a logical fallacy.

 

[natto fire]

I know for me personally, I accumulated so many good games that I didn't have time for through steam, that there was no point wasting time figuring out how to steal games I would also rarely play.

 

[Sleepingforest]

@Lonyo: Hmm... that analysis isn't quite right. Let's say every month you have $100 to spend on entertainment, which is more realistic budgeting than a flat "I have $100 for games only." In a world without pirating, if you wanted to get games, you'd have to spend that $100 to get games. Most people want more than 2 games. I know I have a large backlog I'd like to get (Assassin's Creed Revelations, Far Cry 3, Crysis 3, Shogun Total War, and so on). I'd have to spend $200 across two months to get all those games.

But if I pirate, I can now get all those games immediately for $0. Then I can spend it on other forms of entertainment like going out with friends. That's $200 that the gaming industry lost.

Few people budget exclusively for games. Your argument is flawed because you assume that all $100 for gaming MUST be spent on games, which is untrue. It's more like this: in a world without pirating, I would have eventually spent $200 on games this year. But because I can pirate, I spent $0 and put that money somewhere else.

A look at pirating needs to factor in many ideas. Some people pirate as a trial version. Some pirate now and buy later when they have the money for it. Some pirate because it's not available otherwise. And some pirate because they just don't have a strong moral compass and like to save money a bit overmuch.

Only that last category, I would say, really takes away from sales.

 

[ThinClient]

I'm against the piracy, but I don't think he made a logical fallacy.

It is an irrational conclusion to draw that those who pirate would buy the games they pirate if they could not pirate them.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

I don't think that's a fallacy. I think it's a qualifier, and you've misinterpreted it. He's not claiming all pirates would buy the software if piracy was unavailable, but claiming that there is a group who would would, and that that group costs the industry 5-10%.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Probably the most misunderstood and misrepresented issue in all of gaming.

Sure we have piracy numbers showing that piracy is very high, and sales numbers showing us that as a percentage that sales are just a small fraction of people legitimately buying the game.

But like all evidence it needs to be looked at with some careful thought, we could look at the evidence that every galaxy we look at is moving away from us (on average) and come to the conclusion that our galaxy is the center of the universe, but if we use our brain for a few seconds we could also see that maybe the galaxy is expanding uniformly and every galaxy see's the same thing.

Not every pirated copy of the game is a lost sale to the developer, and there's lots of reasons to believe this. Furthermore we don't understand the impact completely of what would happen if we "corrected" piracy, would the money to pay for a pirated game X come out of the money spent on game Y.

It makes more sense to look at the industry as a whole and ask the question, is the industry healthy, is there a decline in profiles and revenue during periods when there has been an uptake in piracy? How much of the reason for piracy is greed on the consumers part and how much is it to do with simply providing a bad service, treating customers like thieves, or simply not keeping up with the times and delivering the content in ways consumers demand? How many of the customers pirating are doing so simply because there is more desireable media than they can possibly afford?

I have no doubt in my mind that piracy exists, and piracy does cause some legitimate lost revenue, but if you consider all of the above I think the evidence points to that being a very small amount of revenue in comparsion to what most game developers estimate, and what anti-piracy groups advocate.

 

[ThinClient]

I don't think that's a fallacy. I think it's a qualifier, and you've misinterpreted it. He's not claiming all pirates would buy the software if piracy was unavailable, but claiming that there is a group who would would, and that that group costs the industry 5-10%.

86% of all statistics are pulled out of the user's ass.

Is there any real, credible evidence or statistics to base this claim on?

 

[Craig234]

It is an irrational conclusion to draw that those who pirate would buy the games they pirate if they could not pirate them.

Well, a few things, one I don't see it as irrational, two that's not exactly a fallacy, and three he said 5-10% would buy, which seems pretty reasonable.