EU Commission Says Piracy Increases Legitimate Game Sales

[DonFerrari]

Aeolus451 said:

Leadified said:

You're looking for the red boogeyman in the wrong place, comrade.

I made this suggestion so companies can help fight piracy and turn pirates into potential customers. In other words, make a profit?

i didn't say that you were a socialist but rather that your idea is one. it woudn't work because thieves steal because they take what they want for free. Only way to curb piracy in gaming is to create alot stronger protections into the games like if someone tried to copy it, it would permantly corrupt the game data on the disc or upload virus onto the hardware that is illegally trying to copy it. I'm just giving those as examples btw. 

You know that the origin of the "first" widely distributed virus was a "copyright" prank? Two brothers in pakistan put a code in their medical SW that if someone would copy the content of the disk it would release this code that would say that you were breaking their copyright and if you wanted the message removed from your computer to call they number... but it spread much further than that and started showing overseas for people that never even touched their SW.

Ka-pi96 said:

Leadified said:

It has to be determinal to you to be discrimination. I'm still using less of my income proportionally to buy a game compared to a Mexican, how am I being discriminated?

Steam games (not sure about others) are cheaper in Brazil than they are in the US, so your example doesn't work there. Do you have any evidence to suggest that the decline of Japanese games has anything to do with game prices and not the economic and social situation in the country? Anyways, if you check SteamDB you can see that Japanese games either match, lower or higher than the US price. Again, I'm not sure about consoles but I can't imagine it's much different.

Determinal? You mean detrimental? Well the world's bigger than just Mexico and US and/or Canada? (you're in Canada right?) And I'm in the UK, where average income is lower than the US (and Canada!) while game prices are higher and therefore us Brits are using more of our income proportionally to buy games. So how's that for detrimental?

I'm not sure about Steam, but I know Japanese console game prices are definitely higher than the UK (which is higher than the US). And while I don't have any evidence to suggest higher prices has led to a decline in Japanese game sales, I do remember there was a drop in sales when the tax rate rose (I believe it was only about a 2% increase), so clearly price is a factor even if there are other more important ones.

Unless for very rare inelastic demand products price is always a factor because almost everything will have some sensitivity to price.

Ka-pi96 said:

DonFerrari said:

Those Brazilian would be talking without knowledge.

SW price in Brazil is almost the same than in USA for Sony published (actually lower when dollar is over 3,5). And that is they making the price in dollar a lot less, and making a lot less money because of taxes.

The games that are much more expensive is the ones that are direct import instead of local distribution.

There were times when dollar was close to 4 that the price here was cheaper. And that is with our taxes being like 70% for games... so if taxes were around 15% we could possibly have prices at 20 USD or 30 USD and piracy would be certainly smaller... the problem is with region free that would make people buy here instead of other places.

 

But pretend not, prices are determined based on the purchasing power and demand of the population. The price of gaming in Europe have been higher than in USA since forever.

Oh really? I didn't know that about Brazilian software. Hardware in Brazil is definitely at a crazy high price though right? Perhaps that's what I was thinking of and just assume the same would be true of software.

Although I did notice you only mentioned Sony published software. What about non-Sony published?

Sony when launching PS4 promissed something of more controled SW prices so they all launch around 200 BRL (so discounting the taxes we would pay when buying from USA like 6% iof and 15% local taxes it would be the equivalent to 160 BRL in USA pricing model, which would hover from 64 USD (2,5 USD) to 40 USD (4 USD)).

For non-Sony published I have seem releases go from 160 BRL (like Final Fantasy XV on greyshop, seems like it was printed in Brazil, exported tax free to Paraguay, illegally brought back to Brazil and sold here for profit... against the 200 BRL regular price on normal stores) up to 350 BRL for some Nintendo games like Pokken on WiiU (when Nintendo had left the country).

HW is a little more expensive than USA, but at this moment it is much more to do with taxes (PS4k was probably lack of supply together with Sony fighting the government)... nowadays on grey shop you can find X1 and PS4 around 1000-1200 BRL (which would be lower than 250 USD tag in USA) or 1600-2000 for official suppliers (almost 500 USD), still expensive but not ridiculous anymore.

Just looking now on local regular seller PS4 2k BRL with 3 games https://www.submarino.com.br/produto/132183224?pfm_carac=Console%20Playstation%204&pfm_index=1&pfm_page=category&pfm_pos=grid&pfm_type=vit_product_grid

X1 1300 BRL with one game https://www.submarino.com.br/produto/129680123?pfm_carac=Console%20Xbox%20One&pfm_index=0&pfm_page=category&pfm_pos=grid&pfm_type=vit_product_grid

On non-official 

PS4slim 1268 BRL (saw even 1k offers but from untrusted sellers) no games https://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-810207878-playstation-4-americano-novo-na-caixa-2015a-ps4-slim-hd-500-_JM

X1 950 BRL (Says he can go for 850) https://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-890071485-video-game-x-box-one-500gb-microsoft-caixa-original-nacional-_JM

 

So as normal on release of the gen the HW is scarely high, but then go normal.

setsunatenshi said:

Aeolus451 said:

All of the pirates say that even though the companies who produce the content lose more sales to pirating than they gain from it. 

and you pull that knowledge from which body orifice exactly?

at least present a counter argument to my point, not a supposed factual statement without any justification for it.

in an unsofisticated view of reality a person that pirates 100 games and ends up buying 20 of those, for you is a net loss for the industry. so in your mind, this person "would" have bought actually 100 games, thus representing a net loss of 80 games.

now if you use your brain a little, perhaps you would realize that said person might have a specific budget that can only afford those 20 games, and if no other option would be available only would buy those 20 games. actually, having no way to try out several games before buying, they might just end up playing it safe and only buy the sequels for ips they already know won't disappoint them, never even giving a chance on a new type of game they may or may not end up liking. instead of those 20 games

this is just one example of how the human mind works and exactly why this bullshit of 1 pirated copy = 1 loss sale is just flat out wrong.

another example would be little Timmy, with a very limited budget (maybe can afford 2 or 3 games a year + whatever they get for birthday). if he ends up downloading 100 different games, how are these exactly lost sales? they aren't. how may it benefit the industry that he got to play all these games? well, in a few years little Timmy will have a little job and plenty of disposable income. he grew up a gamer, so chances are he will still be a gamer after his 20's. all those games he couldn't afford from being a kid, he can indulge now and buy all the stuff he always wanted but never was able to. He might end up in a nostalgia trip buying remakes and remasters of the old classics from his youth.

i think this should be enough to get my point across

The study isn't exactly supporting your arguments, even more when you say the guy would buy 20 games doesn't matter if he pirated or not. So the pirated portion is really losses.

setsunatenshi said:

DonFerrari said:

You mean a survey to 1600 people that said that they pirating led them to buy the stuff later? If you call that a study them anything is.

Nope, this study isn't a study, is the answer of measly 1600 people that said they are likely to buy something after they pirate.

And have you bought as much as you had pirated? I doubt so.

Because for several people the lack of money would mean they have the HW and perhaps some legit games or several pirated games. You see that not all money problems are the same and also that some people got the HW as gifts.

And they wanting to support is the reason they pirated? YEs crazy concept.

So if companies would allow piracy to be easier you are sure they would profit more?

About digital version, In Brazil a lot of BDs I bought came with free digital version, I never once used them.

you're under the impression that a survey of 1600 people is by default invalid due to the sample size? i'm not sure you know how such scientific studies are done...

but hey if the EU was confident enough to publicize it, i'd trust their conclusion over your disbelief due to the count of sample size lol

Nope, I'm under the certainty that a self disclosing survey isn't a scientific study. You know people are free to lie or to distort (like I pirate 100 games and buy one, so I can say that pirating those 100 made me buy this single one).