4 ms·

The Culture of Piracy

13 points by aw3c2 17y ago

aw3c2 17y ago
I find this a very interesting and important point. Might be the reason why "indiegames" have become so popular.
_delirium 17y ago
I don't think the disappearance of the "made by actual people" team feel is accidental: AAA games these days aren't made by a smallish team of people that you can actually portray to the user. The user thinks they're made by giant faceless corporations because they are; there are literally hundreds of people, with multiple layers of management, who produce most modern AAA games. It's not like the System Shock team, or the mid-90s id team.
patio11 17y ago
You can try to convince pirates to stop stealing stuff... or you can put the stuff in a system which you control and then use technology that essentially worked fine thirty years ago for controlling access to it. I know which one I'm betting on. Client/server means you fear piracy of the client about as much as 37Signals fears someone downloading Firefox.
- DenisM 17y ago
  More broadly there is a set of tools you can use to control piracy: 1. Moving (part of) logic online 2. closed hardware (xbox or iPhone) 3. copy-protection as a way to delay the proliferation of pirated copies 4. Lower prices to decrease the pull 5. Free-ish model (ads, or loss-leader).
kiba 17y ago
I have a deep interest in keeping my competitors hating the pirates and going apeshit on them. Meanwhile, I labor in obscurity hoping to one day prove my entrepeneural theory about copyright. What I see here is pirates indicating market failure created by government intervention. The only way to beat pirates is to destroy the needs for them. That's why you rarely if ever see open source software pirated. If I ever succeeded in my entrepeneural ambition, I have destroy the video game industry and prove to be one of the most evil capitalist on the planet. :)
stse 17y ago
This is somewhat interesting from a "games are losing their soul" perspective, but at least five years late. Also game piracy isn't new and has mostly been "solved" by consoles and online multiplayer. Ps. Calling copyright infringement "stealing" still makes you seem, at best, uneducated.

13 points by aw3c2 17y ago

aw3c2 17y ago

I find this a very interesting and important point. Might be the reason why "indiegames" have become so popular.

I don't think the disappearance of the "made by actual people" team feel is accidental: AAA games these days aren't made by a smallish team of people that you can actually portray to the user. The user thinks they're made by giant faceless corporations because they are; there are literally hundreds of people, with multiple layers of management, who produce most modern AAA games. It's not like the System Shock team, or the mid-90s id team.

patio11 17y ago

You can try to convince pirates to stop stealing stuff... or you can put the stuff in a system which you control and then use technology that essentially worked fine thirty years ago for controlling access to it. I know which one I'm betting on. Client/server means you fear piracy of the client about as much as 37Signals fears someone downloading Firefox.

DenisM 17y ago
More broadly there is a set of tools you can use to control piracy: 1. Moving (part of) logic online 2. closed hardware (xbox or iPhone) 3. copy-protection as a way to delay the proliferation of pirated copies 4. Lower prices to decrease the pull 5. Free-ish model (ads, or loss-leader).

kiba 17y ago

I have a deep interest in keeping my competitors hating the pirates and going apeshit on them. Meanwhile, I labor in obscurity hoping to one day prove my entrepeneural theory about copyright. What I see here is pirates indicating market failure created by government intervention. The only way to beat pirates is to destroy the needs for them. That's why you rarely if ever see open source software pirated. If I ever succeeded in my entrepeneural ambition, I have destroy the video game industry and prove to be one of the most evil capitalist on the planet. :)

stse 17y ago

This is somewhat interesting from a "games are losing their soul" perspective, but at least five years late. Also game piracy isn't new and has mostly been "solved" by consoles and online multiplayer. Ps. Calling copyright infringement "stealing" still makes you seem, at best, uneducated.