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Forums - PC - Piracy Makes CoD4 Devs Sad

johntonsoup on 15 January 2008
NJ5 said:
johntonsoup said:
NJ5 said:

The real question is, how many of those pirated copies belong to people who would have bought the game if they didn't pirate it? Piracy is not a problem unless it actually reduces the sales of the game.

 


Disagree strongly. If you do not believe that there is such a thing as intellectual property, and therefore you think "stealing" intellectual property is a victimless crime, great for you. Unfortunately, you are incorrect. It harms every one of us here who want good games. The more profit a company or industry makes, the better the diversity of product.


Economically speaking, I am not incorrect. My point is that the two following actions are the same, in regards to profitability:

- pirating a game

- not buying it

Either way, the company is not going to get any money from that person. I was thinking about the economical perspective only.

 


Unfortunately, that is only true in an economic model, not economics as a whole. It does not take into account externalities like the perception of piracy on a device (which affects development).



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johntonsoup on 15 January 2008

Anyway, does anyone think piracy is responsible for the MMO boom? From a developers standpoint, these are far easier to police for privacy because it requires a connection to a developer controlled central server which makes it much more difficult to pirate.



Mummelmann on 15 January 2008
Katilian said:
Mummelmann said:
naznatips said:
It's worth noting that the vast majority of piraters are not in North America. Most of them come from Korea.

No matter what dev's come up with, pirates are rarely more than a small step behind. The longest it has ever taken to crack a game is either Half-Life 2 or Bioshock, can't remember which.


Splinter Cell 3 took over a year to crack. Those two games don't even come close to the longest (both within a week).


 A week?!?! Are you crazy? No, no. Bioshock took nearly three weeks, and (thanks to Steam) Half-Life 2 nearly a month or so. How do I know? I waited for them... I ended up buying HL2 though, but Bioshock is not worth the purchase imo.



EliteStance on 15 January 2008

It's simple. Piracy is theft.

If you buy your games (like I do and I presume most people using this site do) it does affect us. Consider:

1) Piracy is one of the factors pushing up price of games

2) Piracy hurts game developers and can affect the industry - look at the undeniable negative impact its had on PC gaming

3) Piracy is one of the major factors behind DRM and copy protection. Now, we all (and I include myself) complan about measures such as those taken with PC Bioshock - but can you really blame the developers for trying to protect their IP?

The simple fact is all the excuses 'I wanted to try it', 'it hurts no-one', 'I wouldn't have bought it anyway', 'games are always cracked and its too tempting', etc. are just that - excuses for doing the wrong thing.

You make a choice to pirate something - and the moment you do you're a thief just as if you'd broken into someone's house and stole something.



Bark on 15 January 2008
naznatips said:
Bark said:
The problem with PC games is that you won't know for sure that your PC can handle a game until you try it. Yes, there are minimum requirements, but sometimes a game is unplayable even if you are above the minimums. If a game seems too slow or you don't like it for any other reason, you can't take it back. Most stores won't allow you to return opened PC software. This is due to piracy of course. This also LEADS to more piracy as you can't try games that don't have demos before you buy them.

That's bullshit.  http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

That will check minimum and recommended. It will show you how far above minimum your system is.  It's even more bullshit an excuse because CoD4 (like most PC games today) has a freaking demo!  There is no excuse for stealing a game.  Maybe if it didn't have a demo and you just wanted to see if it ran, but how many people actually do that?  Certainly none of the ones playing online.  


I didn't know about that site, thanks for the link!

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naznatips on 15 January 2008

I knew Razor1911 was from Sweden, but the majority of the people downloading his files are not. America gets a lot of flak for piracy on PCs, but in total volume Europe is actually worse (very bad considering it's a smaller game market) and Korea is much worse.

As far as this "killing" the PC game market, that's a vast exaggeration.  PC software sales are much higher now than they were 4 or 5 years ago thanks to the rise of digital distribution.  PC software sales are actually on the rise according to Gabe Newell.  The issue is that they are rising in a way that tracking firms can't check: Downloads.  This is all good on the piracy front.  The stronger digital distrubtion like Steam gets the weaker piracy gets.  Again, I'm pissed at Microsoft for adding a system to slow down that process.  



NJ5 on 15 January 2008
EliteStance said:
It's simple. Piracy is theft.

I don't want to defend pirates here, but let's discuss things as they are, not as they aren't:

theft 1 a: the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b: an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property

Piracy may be many things, including some bad ones, but it doesn't imply theft.

As an example, theft would be breaking into a company's facilities and stealing all their source code and developed assets (models, textures, etc). In that case, you would have actually deprived them of their property.

 



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EliteStance on 15 January 2008
StanGable said:
Troll_Monster said:
most people pirate because they can, the tech is their and can be easily done.

It's quite easy in my opinion to stop or at least reduce piracy, just remove all technologies that facilitate piracy, such as DVD burners and the like, but of course people want something to use to back up their data, and this is where 2 formats would be best, take for example the following:-
-Have the blu-ray format for movies and games only, with only console and dedicated players on the market, no blu-day drives for PC's at all.
-for the PC market have only HD DVD format, no blu-ray drives at all.

yeah it a very drastic measure and one that is good on paper but probably not in practice, and yeah their will still be piracy of PC games, but it would at least be reduced because films and console games are on a format no supported by PC's.

the only problem with my idea is that everyone just wants 1 standard format for everything.

Why don't we just become a dictatorship country while we're at it and have the companies rule the world?? That way we can make the big industries happy campers! In all seriousness, I'm pro free-enterprise but I believe those people doing those illegal copies help serve as check and balances to these companies.


How about I come around and steal your TV and console and give them to someone who is homeless as a 'balancing factor' to redistribute wealth?  Give me a break.  A game is IP that people work hard on.  Piracy is theft of that IP and robbing said individuals (whether for a large company like EA or a much smaller company like Infinity Ward) of their earnings.

We're talking about theft here, not civil liberties.  Someone stealing food becuase they're damn hungry, sure, I can understand that.  Stealing a game - give me a break.

I don't want to be rude but your response is really naive.

 



EliteStance on 15 January 2008
NJ5 said:
EliteStance said:
It's simple. Piracy is theft.

I don't want to defend pirates here, but let's discuss things as they are, not as they aren't:

theft 1 a: the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b: an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property

Piracy may be many things, including some bad ones, but it doesn't imply theft.

As an example, theft would be breaking into a company's facilities and stealing all their source code and developed assets (models, textures, etc). In that case, you would have actually deprived them of their property.  In the context of a game the theft is considered to be from the developer and publisher who own the game.

 


Theft now covers IP and intangible assets.  When you pirate you are stealing the code.  So let's be clear here - pirating a game is theft and is legally seen as such.

 



Sqrl on 15 January 2008
naznatips said:
Bark said:
The problem with PC games is that you won't know for sure that your PC can handle a game until you try it. Yes, there are minimum requirements, but sometimes a game is unplayable even if you are above the minimums. If a game seems too slow or you don't like it for any other reason, you can't take it back. Most stores won't allow you to return opened PC software. This is due to piracy of course. This also LEADS to more piracy as you can't try games that don't have demos before you buy them.

That's bullshit. http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

That will check minimum and recommended. It will show you how far above minimum your system is. It's even more bullshit an excuse because CoD4 (like most PC games today) has a freaking demo! There is no excuse for stealing a game. Maybe if it didn't have a demo and you just wanted to see if it ran, but how many people actually do that? Certainly none of the ones playing online.


 As much as I agree about the negative effects of piracy on the PC gaming market I have to point out that that systemrequirements tool isn't that great.  

Aside from the fact that it marks you down for using XP (when it is actually a noticeble boost to performance) It also has issues with varying VRAM and Processors.  Its far from completely useless but it really has a hard time when it comes to precisly categorizing.  It will get you in the ballpark and thats about all its good for.



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