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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Piracy on the rise everywhere

twesterm on 23 October 2008
ssj12 said:
Barozi said:
Senlis said:
I never said that PC had less piracy, but rather developers have more options on the PC to stop it.

And what options are these ?

DRM ? Bioshock, Spore   -   hacked

Steam games ? HL2      -    hacked

StarForce ? Colin McRae Rally 2005, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory    -      it wasn't easy, but hacked

 

Steam has only been partically hacked. Any multiplayer elements are basically screwed over due to Valve's anti-cheat client. If you pirated a steam game you can play non-VAC servers but there aren't many.

Couldn't they just host their own servers?  I don't play online much anymore so I have no idea if people would actually join those servers, just curious.

 



 

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Ail on 23 October 2008
schattenwolf86 said:
Soleron said:
The best way to end piracy is by making games free and seeking alternative sources of revenue, such as in-game content stores or in-game advertising.

I really don't think that will give people the incentive to be game developers then.  You can't assume people will be willing to buy in game content or that companies will want to advertise in game (especially if economic times are tight).  You will get the hardcore crowd that will be willing to do it, but will developement cycles be shorter, longer, or the same as current developement times? Nintendo, M$, and Sony would not make any consoles, and there would be no point in pushing technology for games.

All the open source projects you listed are great examples of free software that have worked, but if games were free,  we would not see the same amount of games that we have right now and the same quality.

 

 

Most of these open sources work for either of the 3 following reasons :

- developed by people on their free time while they have a real job on the side

- free service provided by a company that sells others products on the size

- business pay the cost and we end up getting it for free ( Linux might seem free but every business running it actually uses copies they pay for like Red Hat and so on, mainly for maintenance/support reasons...)

- most of these survive by selling service around the free software.

 

Now if you want to get games for free and are willing to pay for service related to gaming, that's up to you....

 



PS3-Xbox360 gap : 1.5 millions and going up in PS3 favor !

PS3-Wii gap : 20 millions and going down !

schattenwolf86 on 23 October 2008
Ail said:
schattenwolf86 said:
Soleron said:
The best way to end piracy is by making games free and seeking alternative sources of revenue, such as in-game content stores or in-game advertising.

I really don't think that will give people the incentive to be game developers then.  You can't assume people will be willing to buy in game content or that companies will want to advertise in game (especially if economic times are tight).  You will get the hardcore crowd that will be willing to do it, but will developement cycles be shorter, longer, or the same as current developement times? Nintendo, M$, and Sony would not make any consoles, and there would be no point in pushing technology for games.

All the open source projects you listed are great examples of free software that have worked, but if games were free,  we would not see the same amount of games that we have right now and the same quality.

 

 

Most of these open sources work for either of the 3 following reasons :

- developed by people on their free time while they have a real job on the side

- free service provided by a company that sells others products on the size

- business pay the cost and we end up getting it for free ( Linux might seem free but every business running it actually uses copies they pay for like Red Hat and so on, mainly for maintenance/support reasons...)

- most of these survive by selling service around the free software.

 

Now if you want to get games for free and are willing to pay for service related to gaming, that's up to you....

 

I just don't see how that would work on the game development side.  Do you know any big games that follow a model similar to this and are doing well?

 



.jayderyu on 23 October 2008

ecurbj said:
The market is still healthy right?
We are still gaming right?

So whats the point of piracy? The majority of the ones that piracy a game is the hardcore base. The casuals make up the market so they don't know anything about piracy.

^^^

This is it man. This is the answer. Piracy has ALWAYS been around. Piracy is done by a portion of the hardcore base. Since before gaming became accessible to the large market it was just in the domain of that hardcore. This means that piracy was far more rampant. My years of the old dos gaming I saw piracy way more often than I see it today.

YET after the massive focused hardcore piracy the companies are still around and doing well.  Outside of copyprotection system to annoy only the mass market purchasers of games. Piracy isn't everywhere more than before and as the market expands the percentage of piracy will decrease.

If you make games that apeal to less to that hardcore it will get pirated less.

 



Squilliam: On Vgcharts its a commonly accepted practice to twist the bounds of plausibility in order to support your argument or agenda so I think its pretty cool that this gives me the precedent to say whatever I damn well please.

Senlis on 23 October 2008

One thing pirates don't realise is that they are hurting themselves. Now, most developers are probably not going to stop making games because of pirates. There is another consideration tho.

To make my point, I will paraphrase an article I read about piracy between two people, one of them the author. The first one tends to pirate quite a bit, and said that he didn't like a certain program that changes the visual style of windows because the borders are too thick. The author asked if he would buy the software if they did make the style to his liking. He replied probably not. The author then said that the software will never be geared towards people who steal it.

If there is a demographic of players who tend to pirate games, it is in the designer's interest not to gear thier games toward them. They are going to make their games for the people who buy them




 

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shanbcn on 23 October 2008

At least MS should have found a way to block pirates from playing online.