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Forums - PC - Piracy Makes CoD4 Devs Sad

NJ5 on 15 January 2008
EliteStance said:
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.

 


So this is about semantics and definitions which got changed to specifically cover something? It seems to me like you were evoking theft as a way to get an emotional response which is traditionally associated with the definition of theft I pasted above.

You even referred to examples such as stealing a TV or food. Correct me if I'm wrong.



My Mario Kart Wii friend code: 2707-1866-0957

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naznatips on 15 January 2008
Sqrl said:
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.


I have both XP and Vista on my PC and Vista runs everything just as well as XP as long as you have 2GB RAM or greater.  As far as overal appearance obviously Vista allows for DirectX 10. 



tmbh on 15 January 2008
Katilian said:
naznatips said:
tmbh said:
@naztips - I'm in full agreement. systemrequiremntslab is a handy little tool.

HL2 was released via steam which is a good system. Once the game was installled it required you to have an internet connection to download a final check to ensure the game was an original then unlocked the game. Its certainly not flawless but a good attempt at combating piracy.

Steam is the best system out right now to combat Piracy.


Yet how much has it reduced piracy? I'm fairly certain every game available on steam can be pirated, most of the game updates are also make available to pirates too. In regards to online play, most people I know who pirate games just ignore games which are online only, or just go without the online content in games (this goes for console gamers too).

 


Yes games on Steam can be pirated and eventualy updates will catch up with the pirates, then they catch up with the update and so it goes on... but at least they tried!!

Onlineplay is increasingly popular especially as this console generation sees all three feature online services. System updates or game patches will be how they try and stay ahead of pirates but the reality is thats its a never ending cycle.

China is the number one pirate nation, especially films/DVDs its a million/billion $ operation. One attempt to reduce this is to offer them DVDs with highly exclusive extra content like the 6 Disc Complete Grindhouse Collection (All three verions of the film) or the 100% uncut versions of Kill Bill.

This wont work with games though.



guigr on 15 January 2008

I was working at a major publisher last year. There was around 5-7 times more pirates than legit users for PC games. Without piracy sales of existing games would increase 50-100% at least, that would mean WAY MORE PC exclusive games (and even more sales).

No surprises then that on NPD studies they find more core gamers on PC than consoles even in the states! (look at PC market share there!)

Anyway since I saw these stats I freaked and bought 8 PC games in as many months (4 full price and 4 budget)



naznatips on 15 January 2008
guigr said:

I was working at a major publisher last year. There was around 5-7 times more pirates than legit users for PC games. Without piracy sales of existing games would increase 50-100% at least, that would mean WAY MORE PC exclusive games (and even more sales).

No surprise then than on NPD studies they find more core gamers on PC than consoles even in the states! (look at PC market share there!)

Anyway since I saw these stats I freaked and bought 8 PC games in as many months (4 full price and 4 budget)


That statistic is unbelievably wrong. You can get a rough idea of how many people are pirating a game by checking torrent trackers, where most are downloaded. The most people you'll ever see pirate a PC game is ~150K, which is a tiny percent of the game's sales. There will also be fake disc sales in China and Korea, but even those won't amount to anywhere near a large percentage of the total sales (Most Chinese and Koreans couldn't have afforded the game anyway).  I don't know where you game up with such a BS stat, but that's completely untrue.



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guigr on 15 January 2008

Hahaha, read first part of message first! It is sadly true and if I told you why I would be sued.

 

Anyway if it helps some PC gamers to realize that they're responsible for this...



naznatips on 15 January 2008
guigr said:

Hahaha, read first part of message first! It is sadly true and if I told you why I would be sued.

 

Anyway if it helps some PC gamers to realize that they're responsible for this...


Yes, thanks, I totally believed you worked at a publisher.  I'm Ghandi.  I said it on the internet so it's true right?  Yeah, no, your full of it, and that is just absolutely false information.  I'm not sure why you felt the need to spread blatant lies in a forum discussion, but I really don't want to deal with that sort of childishness.   



EliteStance on 15 January 2008
NJ5 said:
EliteStance said:
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.

 


So this is about semantics and definitions which got changed to specifically cover something? It seems to me like you were evoking theft as a way to get an emotional response which is traditionally associated with the definition of theft I pasted above.

You even referred to examples such as stealing a TV or food. Correct me if I'm wrong.


I'm not trying to get an emotion response (sounds a but Blade Runner that) - I'm pointing out that downloading and using illegally obtained code is theft - whether its game code or the code for a piece of software for a business (so for example I could open a store and download a stolen code for a POS (point of sale) appliction rather than purchasing one.  Or get a hacked copy of Office rather than buy one.

 

The TV mention was specifically (unless I quoted wrong person in which case appologies) to make a clear point regarding the fact that developers feel the theft of their code as much as anyone would if their property was stolen.  IP and ideas is now seen as much something that can be stolen as physical goods.

 I guess my final point would be for me this isn't about needing a specific law to tell me what to do.  As soon as their was digital media I didn't need legal changes to make it clear that copying it without permission is wrong (effectively stealing) I can see that clearly without being told.

If I did seem emotional it's because I often get depressed at how often people show they are happy to be dishonest rather than honest and will field all manner of excuses to justify their behaviour.

I work in software industry (not games) and if our software was hacked, put on the web and downloaded by others I can assure that I (and everyone in the company) would see everyone involved, from the hackers to the downloaders, as stealing our work.

 



salaminizer on 15 January 2008
tmbh said:
Katilian said:
naznatips said:
tmbh said:
@naztips - I'm in full agreement. systemrequiremntslab is a handy little tool.

HL2 was released via steam which is a good system. Once the game was installled it required you to have an internet connection to download a final check to ensure the game was an original then unlocked the game. Its certainly not flawless but a good attempt at combating piracy.

Steam is the best system out right now to combat Piracy.


Yet how much has it reduced piracy? I'm fairly certain every game available on steam can be pirated, most of the game updates are also make available to pirates too. In regards to online play, most people I know who pirate games just ignore games which are online only, or just go without the online content in games (this goes for console gamers too).

 


Yes games on Steam can be pirated and eventualy updates will catch up with the pirates, then they catch up with the update and so it goes on... but at least they tried!!

Onlineplay is increasingly popular especially as this console generation sees all three feature online services. System updates or game patches will be how they try and stay ahead of pirates but the reality is thats its a never ending cycle.

China is the number one pirate nation, especially films/DVDs its a million/billion $ operation. One attempt to reduce this is to offer them DVDs with highly exclusive extra content like the 6 Disc Complete Grindhouse Collection (All three verions of the film) or the 100% uncut versions of Kill Bill.

This wont work with games though.


I don't know... some goodies such as tech trees are gone from the packages (if you in NA/Europe still get it correct me please). of course, that is not an excuse for piracy, but these days I think that you HAVE to consider extra goodies. at least it will make the fans even happier :P



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guigr on 15 January 2008

It is perfectly your right not to believe me, it's the Internet after all. I would just like to say that even if that was blatant lies as you call it there is no need to almost insult me.

And before ruling out what I said, think about the Activision guy said about the number of pirates online:

"What wasn't fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies... (and that was only people playing online)""the amount of people who pirate PC games is astounding.".

Given that's it's multiplayer, it's not hard to imagine that a lot more pirates played single player only. It is way easier after all.