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Forums - Gaming - EU Commission Says Piracy Increases Legitimate Game Sales

 

Agree?

Pirates are scum! 24 24.00%
 
Pirates are sometimes scum! 26 26.00%
 
Emulation is awesome! 50 50.00%
 
Total:100
setsunatenshi on 26 September 2017
Aeolus451 said:
setsunatenshi said:

because most people actually want to support the things they really enjoy.

 

i know it's a crazy concept, but you'll have to take my word for it on this one :)

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



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Leadified on 26 September 2017
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.

It's not perfect (just like my grammar & spelling, and yes I am Canadian) because it's not that simple to adjust for living and income so it will never be 100% "fair" if you want to look at it that way.  I always thought you guys had it good in England, £40-45 for new games? It's more like £55 here after tax.

Anyways, price is always a factor but I don't think it's the sole reason console sales collapsed in Japan. Or maybe price along with culture contributed to the rise of handhelds and mobiles there, who knows. It would be interesting to find out though.



setsunatenshi on 26 September 2017
DonFerrari said:
setsunatenshi said:
it's great to see an actual study corroborate what many people have been arguing for against the emotional argument of the "pirates are always bad" crowd.

not even mentioning the whole emulation being bad argument lol

1- exposure of an interactive media to someone who may not be able to afford that media at any given time. this person may have to resort to pirating for a limited time, but becomes a gamer for life which will mean game sales for years and years to come. Interactive is the key word here, which makes it different from pirating other forms of passive media.

2- trying something new that said person is unsure they should spend their money on. the piracy as demo argument. turns out they like the game, so they buy the game

but yeah... some people will never change their mind even in the face of evidence

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.

Captain_Yuri said:
Can we finally stop with emulation + piracy is bad talk? No? Alright... :T

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.

Mnementh said:

I played Moneky Island, UFO, Doom 2, Indiana Jones, Duke Nukem 3D as a kid. And bought these exact games later.

Console is a different beast, by the time I had money the generation would've. Besides I had no games for monetary reason, why would I have a console?

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.

setsunatenshi said:

because most people actually want to support the things they really enjoy.

i know it's a crazy concept, but you'll have to take my word for it on this one :)

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

archer9234 said:

Agreed. Here's a thing. If companies would allow people an easy and simple way for us to rip DVD's, BD's etc to a digital platform of our choosing. Like what we can do with CD's. With no DRM or some other BS you have to sign into. Physical owners would have best of both worlds. You still got the money of the consumer. But they really want the person to buy the BD, and than the digital copies. Than again on some other digital platform. Not be able to play them on this device, or that device. Without question. That's where they fail. Guess what. I dumped my Daredevil BD copy to my PC. So I can watch it with a few people over skype. They in turn all bought the S1 and 2  BD sets. Are you gonna argue I did something wrong?

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



setsunatenshi on 26 September 2017
Aeolus451 said:
Leadified said:

The price isn't jacked up because it's adjusted to your cost of living and income. They can afford to charge a lower price in a place like Mexico because of instead of one person being able to afford your game, now you could have five or six people being able to afford it.

We're talking about a hobby that is a bonafide luxury. If you can't afford the games or hardware, you don't get to play them. It's fair when everyone has to pay the same (excluding a country's taxes) prices. Forcing others to pay more for a luxury so people with less money can afford it is just asinine and frankly it's the socialist thing to do. If someone wants to play video games, they can make more money to pay for it. 

That is just absurd, your opinion on who gets to play what is completely meaningless.

Literally anyone that wants to play a game and can't afford it, CAN still play it, GETS to play it and DOES play it. and it doesn't even need to be through piracy either. they can simply loan a game from a friend and no game publisher gets paid in that case either

i'm lucky enough that I can afford and enjoy spending a ton of money on my favourite hobby, but if my circumstances in life were such that I couldn't pay for it, I wouldn't bat an eyelash at finding alternative means (even sailing the seven seas)



Aeolus451 on 26 September 2017
Ka-pi96 said:
Aeolus451 said:

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. 

There's a couple of problems with that. Firstly there are other reasons people pirate than just because they're thieves. eg. games literally not being available for them to buy locally. Sure, they could import, but then that adds a lot of extra hassle, possible import costs and of course potentially difficulty getting the game in a language you actually speak. In that case pirating the game can seem like an attractive option. Fortunately the near total (if only 3DS would remove it) removal of region locking and proliferation of online storefronts makes things much easier to buy wherever people are.

Also, stronger DRM protection can (and probably will) inconvenience actual paying customers. And when what ever protection they use is inevitably cracked (no protection will stay secure for ever) you're just giving people more reason to pirate. Download the game free and enjoy it however you want, or pay for it and have us monitor your every move on your computer for ever. Not hard to think that the excessive DRM would push some who otherwise would have bought the game towards the pirating it.

I can understand pirating video games within reason if the games just aren't available in your country for whatever reason but that doesn't mean that I'm cool with them ripping off hundreds of games because of that. It's a luxury and people don't have a right to get it a low price or to get it at all. There's a fine line between a thief who likes things for free/who don't like pay for things and a person just wants to play a game or two but their country is preventing that. If they want to stick with gaming, they should consider moving. 

I didn't suggest any stronger DRM that would inconvenience regular consumers. I'm against stuff like online checks that ms pushed but I would be cool with games having some kind of anti-copying software that would corrupt the game data or put a virus on their hardware or something along those lines. I'm also fine with the big 3/game publishers going after any people who create any of the software that allow people to pirate games.

One of the main problems that's causing this stuff is high taxes or local laws preventing people from getting access to games. In all honesty, it's up to people in those places to get that changed. 



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setsunatenshi on 26 September 2017
Ka-pi96 said:
Leadified said:

How is making a product affordable anti-consumer? I fail to understand how you can even say such a thing.

It isn't. Jacking up the price for other people however is anti-consumer! If they can afford a low price for some people then they can afford it for all people!

game prices are stagnant since the 90's

no one is "jacking up the price" for "other people". if we are lucky enough to live in wealthy countries, then we already won the life lottery. if someone lives in a country with the average salary of $500 a month, then I don't see how having lower prices on software could hurt the industry in such places. 100 sales at $20 each (especially digitally) is better than 10 sales at $60 each.

it's just maths and maximizing profits taking into account basic economic rules for emerging markets



Aeolus451 on 26 September 2017
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

Look, I'm all for you saying your opinion but lay off going after me as a person otherwise leave me the fuck alone. I don't have any reason to converse with anyone who can't debate without resorting to insults. Can you converse like an adult? I guess we'll see in your next reply.

I'll use your example. if you pirated 100 games and bought 20 of those after the fact, you still pirated 80 games. Sure some of those you'd might not have bought if you didn't have the option to pirate them but it doesn't change that you pirated those games. Also, a good portion of those 80 games, you'd probably would have bought if you had no option to pirate. So yes, they're losing money/purchases to pirates. 



Leadified on 26 September 2017
Ka-pi96 said:
Leadified said:

It's not perfect (just like my grammar & spelling, and yes I am Canadian) because it's not that simple to adjust for living and income so it will never be 100% "fair" if you want to look at it that way.  I always thought you guys had it good in England, £40-45 for new games? It's more like £55 here after tax.

Anyways, price is always a factor but I don't think it's the sole reason console sales collapsed in Japan. Or maybe price along with culture contributed to the rise of handhelds and mobiles there, who knows. It would be interesting to find out though.

I always do forget that you guys pay tax after the base price while we have it included. You should move to one of those tax free states, I know the US has some does Canada too? Although new digital games can be £55-60 here. So we're still getting screwed over by publishers. It's just our physical retailers are highly competitive and always sell below RRP. Even Steam (while certainly better than PSN/XBL for digital prices) is sometimes undercut by physical retailers here, even if they're just selling a box with a Steam code in it

I don't know how much of a factor price would have been in Japan, would be interesting though like you said. I also do know however that Japanese used game prices are really cheap (dunno about US prices, but definitely cheaper than UK used game prices). So the huge disparity between used and new prices probably doesn't help either.

And FYI I agree in principle with the sell at a lower price in order to have higher total sales, however I think that should be worldwide rather than restricted to specific regions. Like, if they can afford to sell a game at one price in one country, then surely they should be able to afford to sell it at that price in other countries too.

Alberta has the lowest sales taxes at 5%, so I could probably save a lot of money there. A while ago people were talking about how digital is going to be so much cheaper but it never came to be because people were fine with just spending $60-80 on games. Maybe things will change in the future but I kind of doubt it.

Used games are a bit of a rollercoaster here, last gen games are really cheap but newer games and N64 and before are pretty expensive. Everytime I go out and buy carts for the SNES I just go for the Japanese versions to save money .

At the end of the day, it all depends on how they can maximize profit. In some cases, your only choice is to buy via the US (or whatever the default is) store because I suppose it's not worth it to set up a regional store.



DonFerrari on 26 September 2017
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).



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

DonFerrari on 26 September 2017
setsunatenshi said:
Ka-pi96 said:

It isn't. Jacking up the price for other people however is anti-consumer! If they can afford a low price for some people then they can afford it for all people!

game prices are stagnant since the 90's

no one is "jacking up the price" for "other people". if we are lucky enough to live in wealthy countries, then we already won the life lottery. if someone lives in a country with the average salary of $500 a month, then I don't see how having lower prices on software could hurt the industry in such places. 100 sales at $20 each (especially digitally) is better than 10 sales at $60 each.

it's just maths and maximizing profits taking into account basic economic rules for emerging markets

Sorry but unless you have the full demonstrative of sales, profits, costs, etc then you can't just absolutelly say 100@20 is better than 10@60. If that was the case (that you would even get to sell 10x more by having price at 1/3) then why doesn't any company release the AAA at those prices? Perhaps they saw that they wouldn't have much more profit for lower prices?



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."