One day you guys will get around and finally understand that you do not own the IP of others.

It's already accepted in the corporate world and slowly it will sip out to the less educated masses....

As to who I am and what I do, I do create IP and do not take lightly to others trying to make a buck out of reselling my work....

IP? No. We don't own IP except for our own, but we can own media. It's why we've been able to resell books, movies, video games, and music albums since each of these art forms were invented. It's part of the consumer status quo, and the inability to resell these things is going to cause an explosion in piracy.

Frankly, what you do has nothing to do with anything, but your sense of entitlement does explain a lot about these non-arguments that you've been making.

And for the record? Corporations don't dictate to the masses. It's the other way around. If the masses dislike what corporations are doing, we kill the corporations.

And hopefully your company can go bankrupt since you need to bend over for the consumer and take it to make a sale. Not the other way around.

Interesting study. Basically, there appears to be a correlation between the amount of DRM on an item and its popularity on BitTorrent. I guess it's too much to hope that the morons responsible for DRM on games take notice.

BitTorrent census: about 99% of files copyright infringing

Freedom to Tinker

It has never been a secret that the majority of files being shared over BitTorrent are movies and music that are likely being shared illegally. (Sorry, Linux distro nerds.) Princeton senior Sauhard Sahi confirmed this recently after setting out to survey the content available on BitTorrent and, although there are caveats to his findings, they highlight the relationship DRM has with illegal file sharing. As in: the more DRM there is on the legit versions of the content, the more popular it is on P2P.

Sahi chose a random sample of 1,021 files from the trackerless Mainline DHT and classified them by file type, language, and apparent copyright status. He found that nearly half (46 percent) of files were nonpornographic movies and TV shows—the largest single category of content. 14 percent of the files were porn, tied with the 14 percent dedicated to games and software. Just 10 percent of the files were classified as music, and one percent were books and guides.

Sahi also analyzed whether the content was infringement, checking to see if was in the public domain, freely available via legitimate channels, or user-generated content. Based on this study, 100 percent of the movie/TV show sample was found to be infringing, as well as all of the music torrents. Seven of the 148 files in games/software were found to be noninfringing (two were Linux distros), and one of the 145 porn files was given the benefit of the doubt as noninfringing. Overall, about one percent of the total files were categorized as "likely noninfringing."

So, people largely use P2P to pirate stuff—big surprise. It's the types of files and in what ratios that show us why people share media illegally, however. Music was once the only reason to use P2P networks, and the record industry long feared that going DRM-free would only aid in a massive explosion of illegal file sharing. That has obviously not been the case—P2P users can now share their DRM-free MP3s easier than ever, and yet this category is one of the smallest of all files shared. And it makes sense: why would you bother going to BitTorrent, which may have misnamed and poorly encoded MP3s, when you could easily spend less than a dollar, getting exactly what you want from a place that you trust?

Movies and TV shows, on the other hand, are hugely popular on Bit Torrent—a trend that seems to mysteriously coincide with the heavy DRM and restrictions that come with that kind of content. DVD encryption, browser restrictions, DRM on downloads from iTunes or Amazon—there's effectively no way for consumers to buy this content without restrictions, so they're turning to P2P to get it.

XKCD says it best:

Of course, Sahi's results are only from Mainline and may not reflect the entire P2P system as a whole. His data also includes all files being shared, some of which may not be getting any downloads, while others are being downloaded en masse. Still, it's reasonable to assume that most users share what's in demand, and what's in demand right now is heavily-DRMed movies, movies, TV, and movies

"I guess it's too much to hope that the morons responsible for DRM on games take notice"

As this generation has proven innumerable times, a large portion of people who work in the games industry aren't exactly known for logical thinking. =/

Yup. And as this thread shows, there's a sizable portion of people who are more than willing to let them get away with it.

Not true at all. Nobody bends over for the consumer these days. Customer service is a thing of the past. Regardless there still going to make there money;just less of it.

I hope they don't bitch and whine about piracy or try to use any other scapegoat. Most IP companies that are giong under these days deserve to be going under, and a few that are making it honestly deserve to be bankrupt and pirated more, cproblem is consumers are retarded (look at MW2).

you keep bitching about all those practices but you never would have bought any of those games anyway, so really you're not voting against them because in this world you vote with your wallet.

The people that will actually decide the success of this are the consumers that will purchase the product ( and vote with their wallet).

The same way many consumers voted for MW2..

You've got it backwards again, though your half-hearte truisms have made this into a less-than-novel circumstance.

The ones who will decide the success of this are regular buyers who will turn away, and the pirates who will make these among the most pirated games of all.