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Kristophe
Obi-Wan Kermobi
Joined: 26 Apr 2004
Posts: 4
Location: The Outer Banks of NC, USA |
| Article - PC Gamers Admit To Piracy @ GameSpot |
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I found this rather interesting report over at the GameSpot <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/06/11/news_6100456.html" target="_blank">website</a> concerning a survey of PC gamers who admitted to the nefarious practice of committing software piracy...
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<br><blockquote><em>Copy protection experts Macrovision have recently conducted a software piracy survey across a number of popular gaming Web sites. Of the 2,219 PC gamers who responded, 52 percent admitted to having obtained cracked software, and 33 percent of those had acquired "ISO" files--essentially full CD images with the copy protection hacked out. A worrying 15 percent of the respondents owned up to having acquired 15 or more pirated games within the last two years.
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<br>The Electronic Software Association (ESA) currently estimates the impact of packaged software piracy on the games industry to be around $3 billion worldwide. Taking into account the rise in high-speed Internet file sharing, though, Macrovision believes that figure is actually much higher.
<br></em></blockquote>
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<br>Software piracy is still stealing...no matter what label you place upon it. |
Sat Jun 12, 2004 7:18 pm |
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sealight4
City Guard
Joined: 02 Sep 2002
Posts: 130
Location: Massachussets, USA |
No one hated buying that P.O.S. Halo more than me. 50 bucks down the crapper. I fear no more original PC games so I buy everything. Maybe downloading because there's no store or postal service on your deserted island with that solar powered computer, otherwise I take the bad with the good. No do gooder rant here. I get paid for my work so should game makers. Make your choice. |
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Sat Jun 12, 2004 7:27 pm |
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deiland
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 10 Nov 2002
Posts: 42
Location: Florida |
That is why some of them are closing shop. If that 52% would just buy the game instead of pirating it. I'm a programmer and I know what kind of hard work goes into creating software. They need to get paid for all the hard work they do.
_________________
God Bless You! |
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Sat Jun 12, 2004 8:19 pm |
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Guest
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There must be some balance:
1. Do you think that computers would be as widespread if there would not be piracy? I bought my first PC as a student - I would not have done it if I had to buy all software. IMHO many people would act similarly. The computer industry would develop much slower (because there would be far less people buying computers).
I buy most of my games now - because now I earn enough money (unlike the time when I was a student). Without starting as a pirat, I would never became customer.
2. The software development must pay off. It is necessary to combat piracy. I work as a programmer, so I would be probably unemployed if there was very high piracy.
IMHO it is necessary to have certain "healthy" level of piracy. No piracy (unachievable goal organizations like BSA) or widespread piracy (e.g. as in Ukraine etc.) both hurt industry.
I do not like whining about piracy destroying game industry. Piracy existed always. And it is not worse today (floppies were pirated as well). Blaming business failures on it is like blaming weather for it. Every normal business must count with it. IMHO it is just convenient excuse (it was not our problem, bad pirates destroyed us ...).
BSA statistics are misleading, the losses are counted as sum of prices of all pirated copies. I really doubt that 100% pirates would buy legal copies if there were unable to use pirated versions.
Disclaimer: I am talking about situation in normal western countries, not about wild east (former Soviet Union, Vietman, China etc.).
Mirek |
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Sat Jun 12, 2004 8:45 pm |
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Everclearules20
Head Merchant
Joined: 21 Feb 2004
Posts: 58
Location: Texas |
quote:
Originally posted by Mirek (Guest)
BSA statistics are misleading, the losses are counted as sum of prices of all pirated copies. I really doubt that 100% pirates would buy legal copies if there were unable to use pirated versions.
I agree, a very small percent of those who pirate would buy legal copies. There's a third option consumers have called 'Not buying the product' that businesses tend to overlook when calculating income. I'm studying to be a programmer as well, and know how much works it takes too; that's why I'll never steal games, but I'm getting tired of hearing people making up figures of how much money they lose.
As for the two thirds not having the patience to wait six weeks for a pirated copy, I find it a litte suspicious since I can wait months to a couple of years untill the price of the game is around 10 - 20 bucks. I'm not going to shell out 50 bucks for every new game that comes out, many of which are not even worth 50 bucks. I don't particularly like EA, but they make decent games that drop in price FAST. I'm much more inclined to buy a game that's a couple months old and only 20 bucks over a game that's 6 months old and still 40 - 50 bucks.
I especially like at the end of that article where the company starts claiming how, if game developers use their product they'll make much more money. Now we see Macrovisions true concern... their own money, they need people to pirate so they can survive...
Regardless, companies who use cd protection and whatnot makes me think even less of them than how many pirated copies of their game have been downloaded. I hate games that require a cd key, I always end up losing the cd casing where the cd key was located and having to find another on the internet. Then there's always the fact that game developers like making games that can't recognize your cd key even though you have a legal copy (The last two games my brother and I bought, Sacred and Unreal Tournament 2004, both had this problem). Or having to find another cd key when you want to play a LAN game with a friend (No, I'm not buying the same game just so I can play it with a friend (Both computers are mine, so it's not like I'm giving the game to my friend)) It truly is fun spending hours upon hours trying to find out how to play your game when you get caught in the middle of a firefight between game companies and pirates.
If it can be made, it can be destroyed. Game protection may last a few months, but in the end pirates will get their free games, and people who buy legal copies are the ones made to suffer.
[Ok, I'm done with my rant, sorry to whoever reads it] |
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Sat Jun 12, 2004 9:32 pm |
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TheMadGamer
High Emperor
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 487
Location: Southern California |
quote:
Originally posted by Anonymous
IMHO it is necessary to have certain "healthy" level of piracy.
Should there also be a 'healthy' level of car jacking? How about a 'healthy' level of bank robbing? Afterall, those greedy banks make too much off our money as it is. Or how about a 'healthy' level of convenience store hold ups... those snow cones are waaaaay over priced and a few stolen snow cones will show everyone else how cool snow cones are so regular folks will buy more and then the snow cone machine makers can make more snow cone machines.
Your logic fails me. And the fact that you're a programmer and you feel this way is, well, startling.
Stealing is stealing. This is a simple hard cold fact that seems to escape western culture these days. Stealing food because you're going to starve to death is at least understandable. But there is no justification for stealing digital data.
But I suppose it's a lot more entertaining to accuse music publishers of charging too much money for music thus justifying stealing MP3s over the internent than it is to say, simply NOT buy that too expensive music as your form of protest.
_________________
The Poster Previously Known As NeptiOfPovar |
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Sat Jun 12, 2004 9:44 pm |
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Guest
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This is a joke right, how can an industry claim loss of 3 billion in revenue which there is no evidence it actually existed?
If the fact of the matter is that those that get software cause they CANT afford it in the first place, which is the most probable explination or that a game was falsly advertising about the quality/features of the game which someone wanted to verify instead of paying $50 before getting software they CANT return if opened.
Not to mention the POOR quality of games being RUSHED out before they are not much more than BETA causing UNTOLD loss of time for comsumers.
Then the 3 billion NEVER existed, yet they are claiming right/loss of it.
Copy protection it self COST the industry sells because of it adds cost of about $10 US per game driving the price BEYond many people ability to afford more than a game or two a year, just like the music industry. |
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Sat Jun 12, 2004 10:33 pm |
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Acleacius
King of the Realms
Joined: 24 Dec 2002
Posts: 453
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Appoligies on the post above the autologin didnt work and I cant edit it, for some reason 0_O |
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Sat Jun 12, 2004 11:32 pm |
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Guest
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quote:
Originally posted by Anonymous
This is a joke right, how can an industry claim loss of 3 billion in revenue which there is no evidence it actually existed?
If the fact of the matter is that those that get software cause they CANT afford it in the first place, ...
While the 3 billion figure is certainly inflated, I see so many "students" with the latest & greatest cpu's and graphics cards and hundreds of gigabytes of harddisk space who suddenly "can't afford" to buy games. Make no mistake: for *most* pirates it's all about convenience. All those justifications are just make-up. As others have noted: a theft is a theft. |
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Sun Jun 13, 2004 12:14 am |
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SandyG
Guest
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One doesn't trust the survey written by the fox for the sheep. |
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Sun Jun 13, 2004 12:48 am |
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Priest4hire
Head Merchant
Joined: 08 May 2002
Posts: 52
Location: Slocan, BC |
quote:
Should there also be a 'healthy' level of car jacking? How about a 'healthy' level of bank robbing? Afterall, those greedy banks make too much off our money as it is. Or how about a 'healthy' level of convenience store hold ups... those snow cones are waaaaay over priced and a few stolen snow cones will show everyone else how cool snow cones are so regular folks will buy more and then the snow cone machine makers can make more snow cone machines.
Your logic fails me. And the fact that you're a programmer and you feel this way is, well, startling.
Stealing is stealing. This is a simple hard cold fact that seems to escape western culture these days. Stealing food because you're going to starve to death is at least understandable. But there is no justification for stealing digital data.
Every single example you've given are cases of classic theft. Something is taken and the victim is deprived of the same. A car is jacked and the victim left standing, money is stolen and the bank no longer has that money, snow cones are absconded and thus the store has fewer snow for snow cones.
It is not as though there is only x amount of digital data and when someone steals that data there is less. Just the opposite. There is actually more. It's as though a guy walked into the store and used some device to make a duplicate of a snow cone and then walked out. Or copied your car, leaving you with your wheels even as he drives off.
That's why it seems to escape Western culture. Though it's not new exactly. Take novels and other such writing. They flourished because of their easy to duplicate nature. It also made them all but impossible to control or censor. Do you think everyone who learned to play the latest music had paid for it? There's nothing new about 'unauthorized' copies.
This is also what makes the losses so hard to figure. The company who makes the games only losses when someone pirates instead of buying. Otherwise since the game isn't physically removed or otherwise separated from the victim, there is no calculatable loss. The criminals aren't taking or stealing the data they are duplicating it, and it's the much murkier intellectual property that's being stolen.
I believe it's that murkiness that keeps the people who pirate games feeling as though they aren't really doing something bad. Of course, the games are the result of a great deal of hard work and it's not right to be taking them without compensating the people who created them. People who pirate are still in the wrong even if it's much murkier than stealing someone's snow cone. And yet, if you could duplicate the snow cones from the local corner store would you think of it as stealing? You might tell yourself that no one is losing anything in the deal, and as long as the store doesn't know they won't feel as if they are being hurt.
One last note, as several have noted this is a study and report done by a company that makes money by selling software to stop pirates. Thus it is in their best interest to make the situation as dire as possible. The worse it looks the more they make. Thus, it should be taken with a large grain of salt.
PS. I meant none of the above as a justification for pirating. Just an attempt to look at the situation as it is from a more or less unbiased viewpoint.
_________________
Watch your back. Shoot straight. Conserve ammo. And never, ever, cut a deal with a dragon.
Grammaton Dragon
-==(UDIC)==- |
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Sun Jun 13, 2004 7:58 am |
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Telemachos
Guest
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"It is not as though there is only x amount of digital data and when someone steals that data there is less. Just the opposite. There is actually more. It's as though a guy walked into the store and used some device to make a duplicate of a snow cone and then walked out. Or copied your car, leaving you with your wheels even as he drives off."
So you're saying that if you spent millions of dollars on designing a car, creating the prototype, building a showroom and hiring a staff to sell it - then if everybody just stepped up with their magic duplications wands, said "Thank you" and drove off in a copy of your new car... then you wouldn't be mad or feel cheated??
Pirating *does* hurt the game industry and with the development cost of modern 3d games going sky-high (you all want lots of fancy graphics right? Created by larger and larger staffs!) it is even more important to stop piracy now than in the days of the floppies.
- Telemachos |
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Sun Jun 13, 2004 11:46 am |
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GhanBuriGhan
Noble Knight
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 208
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Stopping piracy will remain a dream. You can and should keep it under some control (and that is of course in the interest of the industry) but you will never stop it. So it IS about finding a modus vivendi, if you want to be at all realistic.
As to the morality of it - well, I did copy games too when I was younger. When I really liked them, I bought them, when I didn't like them, I didn't, but I also didn't play them anymore. So I basically illegally declared every software as shareware for myself. With shareware I did not have to do this - I like the shareware idea, and wish it would have become more commonplace.
Now I am fully aware that what I did was illegal, but its still a fact that I would not have bought all these games, that I bought the ones that were actually good (as many as I could afford), and now, as I have the money, I buy all my games (but actually fewer - less time). I don't see where I hurt the industry in the process, and so I don't feel particularly quilty about it. |
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Sun Jun 13, 2004 5:26 pm |
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Guest
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quote:
Originally posted by TheMadGamer
Should there also be a 'healthy' level of car jacking? How about a 'healthy' level of bank robbing? Afterall, those greedy banks make too much off our money as it is. Or how about a 'healthy' level of convenience store hold ups... those snow cones are waaaaay over priced and a few stolen snow cones will show everyone else how cool snow cones are so regular folks will buy more and then the snow cone machine makers can make more snow cone machines.
Your logic fails me. And the fact that you're a programmer and you feel this way is, well, startling.
Stealing is stealing. This is a simple hard cold fact that seems to escape western culture these days. Stealing food because you're going to starve to death is at least understandable. But there is no justification for stealing digital data.
But I suppose it's a lot more entertaining to accuse music publishers of charging too much money for music thus justifying stealing MP3s over the internent than it is to say, simply NOT buy that too expensive music as your form of protest.
Your reaction is a bit demagogic. You are also attributing me opinions I never expressed.
1. Software theft as car theft analogy: Rather crude, proved to inefficient, having logical problems. Suppose some idiot tells you: "I would not have anything against somebody copying my car as long as I will have the original".
This is NOT to justify it - software piracy is and should be a crime - I know the amount of resources needed for software devepment - I just think that this analogy will not help combating piracy.
I wonder when somebody comes with the analogy that because piracy is a crime, it is therefore as bad as a child molestation (which is clearly crime).... The crime is the crime. Then the absurdity will be clearly visible.
2. I never told that I think high prices justify piracy. Businesses must earn many. I never told that if I do not have money on something, I can steal it. NO, NO, NO !!!! I am neither communist, nor somebody who sees future in Open Source. Yes, Linux/Apache etc. are good but it would be disaster if open source prevailed over commerciall software. It would not work in long term. Human enthusiasm for unpaid work is limited.
3. "Healthy" level of piracy - I wonder how many people would decide not to buy computers if they could not get any pirated software. IMHO many. The industry would suffer. I am just one example. I would not be programmer either - I start my work with computers as hobby. I would do something completely different now and did not buy any games.
With exception of some very old titles which I could not get, I have bought legal copies of many RPGs (e.g. all Infinity Engine games, all Wizardry games, all MM games, Ultima 9, NWN, Morrowind and many others).
Yes, in the ideal word all pirates would buy legal versions and all would be happy. It is perhaps hard to admit that there exists some "healthy" level of negative behaviour, but I think it is so in the case of computer industry and piracy. Of course IT MUST BE KEPT IN LIMITS, the high amount of it would destroy the industry.
You have analogy in medicine: strong poison can be medicine in small quantities (in big quantities it is just a poison which kills everything).
Mirek |
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Sun Jun 13, 2004 5:35 pm |
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Guest
Guest
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I personally find it amusing to listen to the entertainment industry cry about how much money they are losing. I am not only talking about the gaming industry but the industry as a whole. I listen to the pros and cons arguement with equal amusement. The public decrys "theft" in their outrage at the people pirating software, music and games. How many of these same people could say that they have never used a copy machine, recorded music for playback or recorded a movie or TV series for viewing? You are a thief, a pirate every time you do this so get off the bandwagon and look at reality.
We allow manufacturing to make the tools necessary for the public to "pirate" entertainment. These tools ie. copy machines, tape recorders, cd burners, computers and the newest dvd copying devices. We do not condemn the companies for making these products or try to stop their production. How many billions of dollars, how many jobs would we lose if these products were not made? What would happen to the economy? Products made specifically to "pirate" illegal entertainment are in every home in America. Make goverment introduce legislation to make it illegal to manufcture this type of product or restrict their use. Sure, uh-huh, dream on. Keep on rocking in the free world. |
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Sun Jun 13, 2004 10:38 pm |
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