The Games Industry: Piracy, Used Games and Countermeasures

[Deathwolf]

The Games Industry: Piracy, Used Games and Countermeasures

The co-founder of Valve, Gabe Newell said a few months back that piracy could easily be avoided with top quality games. This is a pretty big statement from a pretty big man - No weight jokes here, sadly; I was referring to his impact on the game industry. All unintended jokes aside, the man does raise a great point indeed. A lot of people out there feel some game developer efforts just aren’t up to standards, so these people pirate games in order to “test” the game out.

I’m not going to act like I haven’t pirated anything in my life; I think we all have, whether it was music, videos or games. Fact is, I do not do it anymore and probably won’t ever again â€" Why? Because it harms the industry and makes the game industry very unstable in terms of productivity and consistency with releases.

Consider it this way; game companies invest a lot in game making; for the most part, a lot of things are outsourced and licensing/ publishing must be paid for and this partly why companies come to a loss with piracy. To put it simply; for each game that is pirated, the company loses profit for that one game and that game only - The phrase “companies lose millions through piracy” is little white lie. These companies only lose millions because piracy has gotten to a stage where it is widely distributed across the internet - So one leaked copy could mean that a million people are downloading it â€" Evidently not giving the developers or publishers a penny for each download. The company in this sense would have still technically not profited from one game only, but it literally means that 1 million game sales just won’t happen.

What can the public do?
I’ll start with the obvious â€" Buy a game if you want it and don’t pirate it if you don’t want to buy it. Piracy isn’t cool and if you value gaming then you really shouldn't be siding with pirates. Have you ever wondered why the PlayStation Portable wasn’t supported that well? Yes, Pirates. Even if Sony barely supported its own system, third-party developers were more than happy to until piracy plagued the system - Now that’s just the PlayStation portable, imagine that one a bigger platform like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

What can the developers and console manufacturers do?
Albeit, I come from a hacking scene and I am a former developer, I know all about modding consoles â€" Funny thing is; I don’t pirate games and even when I can, I am aware that modded consoles can run pirated games, but no one should judge what a small part of the community does. A lot of good has come from the community, e.g. bug fixes, better security, innovative homebrew games and applications which boost a systems features and capabilities.

I think developers need to take a back-seat role on the modding scene across all platforms and not get it confused with the piracy scene. Someday, I’d like to see console modding approved with the only downside being that it voids warranty. I still think pirates should be banned instantly. In this sense, it’d be easy to identify the people actually harming the industry capitally.

Modders aside, what about those legit gamers and why are they being punished because of pirates? It irritates me knowing that every time I buy a game, I have to use an online pass in-order to play online. Technically, the online pass was introduced for profit for the developers on used game sales, but theoretically speaking; it also goes for those pirates that are sitting on hacked Xboxes/PS3 somehow with online access playing games they haven’t purchased.

Speaking of online, why is it that digital copies of games cost more than in-store? Come on - Developers are always insisting that digital games are the way forward and will be made available quite regularly and I look forward to that, but not when the digital games are £50 ($80). Considering the fact that players aren't getting any artwork, a box, a manual or a disc, it seems like a pretty bogus deal buying digital copies of games for more than what they cost in-stores.

Going back to Gabe Newell's statement about the quality of games and how it will prevent piracy, I will explain why he actually has a valid point. How is it that games prior to this generation were near enough perfect and bug-free. I do not respect developers that just rely on patches to fix their games, it is a major killjoy for the user who spent their hard-earned money on their desired game only to have it patched every week.

Multiplayer game creators often try to convince users, that patches prevent exploits - Well, what stopped the developers doing this during the beta testing phase? Games actually had to be perfect prior to this generation because patching wasn't possible. In my eyes, this has made a lot of developers lazy - By all means, I don't mean every single one of them, but at least 40% aren't putting as much effort as these developers did last generation - Which is another reason why consumers just don't have faith in products and why some people won't buy half-assed games.

Used game sales or not, how can consumers’ value game developers and manufacturers if consumer rights are slowly being taken away? Although, I don’t pirate games myself; I just think the situation goes both ways and developers being the people that provide us with games, should make sure these games are worth the costly retail prices with no extra requirements killing the experience.

We as gamers keep this industry alive as much as they do, some mutual respect would be nice. By all means, I'm not calling developers lazy or saying their jobs are easy, because I can relate to that. I want to see developers profit and I wrote this because I am against piracy.

I truly respect developers for their games, whether the games are successful or not and without doubt, a lot of effort is visible in games. Remember guys, say no to pirates!


http://ps3.dashhacks.com/2011/12/26/games-industry-piracy-used-games-and-countermeasures

[daijoda]

On the whole, though, I have to question whether or not the financial situations of developers are actually worse than they were in the pre-piracy era -- as their income seems to be the bottom line of the argument against piracy.