Jereel Hunter said:
I'd like to make sure we're on the same page. My only assertation is that piracy of games generally outweighs their sales. I feel like your statement only confirms this. In many parts of the world there is no penalty for pirating PC games. Very true! That contributes to the vast number of pirated copies. Thus the developers only recourse is not legal action - but rather making their games harder to pirate. Do you disagree? |
Yes, outside of making someone who worked on something rightfully angry that his work is being stolen - Piracy from those who would assuredly not have bought the product has no effect on sales, and no bearing in business decisions. Irritating customers, and paying exhorbitant sums to defeat something that doesnt cost you money is bad business.
Many , especially the purveyors of anti-piracy tech like to put forth every illegal download as a lost sale. Now, when talking about people in the USA \ Western Europe, especially people in demographics that do have a degree of disposable income, this has some weight. Amongst some groups, there is certainly a high percentage of folk who may in fact have bought the game had they not been able to pirate it so easily.... however the numbers of these people are far far lower than, say, the number of Africans eastern Eurasians etc who live in areas where their currency has so little purchasing power in terms of USD$ that the major publishers do not even make serious attempts to serve the market.
At the very least, when trying to make a comparison between number of people who pirate and number of people who buy in either an ethical or a business argument, the numbers used should only include ones relative to the debate. Blaming the "PC community" , as in - the US and maybe Western European PC community for overwhelming piracy is silly if the overwhelming majority of actual pirates are in Russia, or China etc. Ethically, its different groups of people - and businesswise you are assured beyond reasonable debate that the folk overseas were a lost sale from the get go, and no amount of anti-piracy invesment is likely to glean money from them.
This is actually the reason that Microsoft tuned down the anti-piracy lawsuits and rhetoric a good bit a few years back (at least in regards to targeting the individual home consumer). They came to find that this scenario was the case, and their efforts turned to international enforcement of copyright, shuttering true bootleg schemes ( Genuine Windows campaing) etc, and efforts of that nature. Because after the numbers were crunched and the data analyzed, the vast majority of people in the USA were using, or intending to use legit software. The small minority of hobbyists who reinstalled all the time and had many home machines , and the smaller minority of dedicated pirates who never paid for anything were an eyesore, but no threat to their business model.
