12 ms·
Another view of game piracy
- sambeau 16y agoI have to take issue with two points: "relatively few gamers are pirates" : sadly, I don't believe that. I work in the games industry and I am surrounded by people who pirate. They also buy a lot of expensive games too, but they continue to pirate games and movies. "Blizzard is one of the most successful game developers because create games that are designed from the beginning to work well with the mouse and keyboard" : Blizzard are successful because they created the first main-stream, polished MMO. MMOs are the future of games exactly because the server component cannot be pirated.
- devinj 16y ago"can't"? There are private server instances for World of Warcraft, actually.
- derefr 16y agoBut you don't "pirate" the experience of playing with every other person who has purchased the game, being able to run into your real friends in a virtual world by sheer coincidence of numbers. Running your own WoW server is like running your own instance of Facebook—the network effects just aren't there.
- devinj 16y ago"the experience" is hardly the same thing as "the server component". Even so, this breaks down: this effect is (as you have noted) not just limited to MMOs. It actually applies to all games/services that use some kind of centralized network to connect players/friends. This means everything from Team Fortress 2 to Warcraft 3.
- angelbob 16y agoSure. But the argument "it's useless to pirate WoW because you couldn't get on the server anyway" breaks down in this case because you could pirate WoW and run a server. Yes, it's not as good as the real thing. Neither is running Starcraft without Battle.net, which doesn't stop it from being a fun game even in pirateable form.
- MetricMike 16y agoTo your first point: Can you link to anything that would back this up besides anecdotes? I'm unconvinced that "I am surrounded by pirates" is more authoritative than the NPD's report. To your second point: As devinj pointed out, there are a number of private servers that enable playing MMOs without connecting to the servers, albeit with a scale of a few hundred players. A few of them even tweak experience or drop settings for a "more entertaining" experience. In addition, Blizzard was well-known, successful, and loved before World of Warcraft so I'm inclined to lean more towards the notion that there success is because of quality design rather than MMO/DRM implementation.
- ismarc 16y agoI'll provide a second anecdote. The only pirated games that I have/have ever had were ones that were no longer purchasable. The same is true for all but one of my friends. And that one friend who does pirate games never purchases a single one.
- CodeMage 16y agoI believe that MetricMike was trying to point out that your anecdotes are still just anecdotes and don't weigh nearly the same as an official study/report. Remember, the plural of anecdote isn't "data", it's not even "anecdata"...
- sesqu 16y agoRight, it's "experience". Or, if you prefer, "nonrandomly sampled data". That means they aren't representative of high confidence, nor are they imaginary.
- patio11 16y agoMMOs are the future of games exactly because the server component cannot be pirated. The man speaks truth. Look at China's game industry, where it is virtually impossible to buy games because folks stole them so much the industry gave up trying to sell them. Instead, everything is a "free-to-play" online game, with monetization through in-game purchases to get through the heaping helping of sucky grind added to the base game. US gamers are voting for this future every day with their purchasing habits -- namely, stealing anything that isn't nailed down while simultaneously making Blizzard and Zynga rich beyond the dreams of avarice. I'm not in games but I do desktop software and web apps. It seems hilarious to me these days, but I used to actually worry mildly about piracy of my application. Three of the top ten search suggestions Google gives (which are created from popular search terms) for my product's name are incitements to theft, even in my decidedly non-technical niche. Hah, those were the days. Now I sell SaaS. And just like that, poof, piracy vanishes from my radar.
- arch_hunter 16y agoI think that you mean it is virtually impossible to buy non-pirated games. The same goes for movies here: There are lots of them everywhere, but they are all pirated.
- tsally 16y agoBlizzard are successful because they created the first main-stream, polished MMO. Blizzard was already incredibly successful before World of Warcraft. The foundation of World of Warcraft is the brand Blizzard started to build in 1996. MMOs are the future of games exactly because the server component cannot be pirated. I'm not sure what you mean by this. There are tons of private World of Warcraft servers. And you can be sure the same will happen for Starcraft 2. It's the social aspect of the server, not the server itself, that can't be pirated.
- ido 16y agothe brand Blizzard started to build in 1996. The first Warcraft game (Warcraft: Orcs & Humans) was released in 1994.
- dkersten 16y agowork well with the mouse and keyboard Actually, a game being PC exclusive plays a part in my game purchasing decision. Not because of the control, though I have at least two console ports with absolutely HORRENDOUS (un-remappable..) controls (one even tells me to press the green A button to continue...), but rather that I find most (though obviously not all) console games of the kinds of games I like seem to lack depth. I don't know if they cant fit the content into RAM or what (Im sure that cant be it), but for some reaosn a lot of console games feel kinda cheap and lacking to me... I can only assume that its just in my head... Also, some, though again not all, obviously, console games don't let me raise the resolution over the low low HD.
- DrSprout 16y agoI have not bought a game in years. I have pirated several, but I have never pirated a game I didn't already own a license for. (And actually, by 'pirate' I mean downloaded a keygen to get around inserting a disc into the drive.) I now exclusively use Linux at home, which compounds the issue. I suspect I'm not alone, and there's a large market of gamers who were more hardcore in high school and college who don't want to deal with the shit they're shoveling, and are quite content with the games we bought years ago.
- Tichy 16y agoMaybe there even is a correlation between pirating and buying lots of games? As a poor student, I pirated occasionally, and bought games I really liked. I also was much more up to date with respect to new games coming out. These days, I have no idea what games are coming up (except biggies like Starcraft 2 that make it to HN). Since I will only buy one or two games per year, it is not worth the effort of keeping up with the latest developments. What I mean to say is: with the lower cost because of piracy, it is easier to keep an enthusiasm for gaming going, which could ultimately lead to more sales. Also take into account friends talking about games they might have pirated. Not counting 3rd world countries, where people wouldn't be able to afford non-pirated games anyway.
- loup-vaillant 16y ago> […] They also buy a lot of expensive games too, […] That is the interesting point: gamers aren't divided between full pirates and full legit. Many people are both. In the case of the pirates who surround you, I notice that a significant part of their budget is devoted to the legal game market. So, if they suddenly couldn't pirate any more, would they buy more? To what extent? Anyway, the fact that people aren't either full pirates or full legit can't hide the elephant out in the room: pirating behaviour is way more effective at downloading than legit behaviour is at buying. So 20% of piracy behaviour accounting to 80% pirated game doesn't sound odd: it just mean that when legit behaviour buys you one game, pirating behaviour downloads you 16. Also, a gamer which is 80% legit and 20% pirate will download 4 games for each one he buys. And if you turn his pirating behaviour into legit behaviour, he won't give 400% more, but 25%. Significant, but not the catastrophe music majors would like us to believe. Finally, 20% of pirating behaviour doesn't necessarily mean a 20% decrease in legit behaviour (and 20% revenue loss). It could just be a 25% increase of gaming behaviour (and 0% revenue loss). This is not all. Sometimes, games are pirated prior to purchase, to try them. Sometimes, players buy the game when they are finished playing them, because they liked it. And sometimes, not pirating the game would just mean not playing it at all. I won't deny that piracy doesn't cause revenue loss. But we can't deny that the loss is much, much lower than the rate of pirated games. I bet that like in the music industry, the biggest costs are middle men. And the internet makes them less and less useful.
- robryan 16y agoI don't really like though how we justify piracy by saying people wouldn't have brought it anyway. Isn't that how our economy works? You either have the money for something and you buy it or you don't have to money so you don't get it. If someone exchanges 3 hours of pay for a game how is it fair for them that the guy sitting at home doing nothing gets it for nothing and it goes down to he wouldn't have been able to afford it anyway.
- barrkel 16y agoThe article isn't about morality, it's about economics. The article didn't justify piracy in a moral sense by talking about people who wouldn't have bought it. He was trying to build an argument by saying most pirates wouldn't buy the games in any case, so that describing pirates as potential customers is erroneous, and therefore high piracy rates are not necessarily the cause of poor performance in the market. The example of the iPhone was particularly good, I thought. From the numbers, it seems self-evident that app piracy isn't actually a big problem, even when most apps are pirated. And for what it's worth, fairness has little to do with anything outside of childhood; there's no daddy you can go running to saying "it's not fair!", only economics, courts and politics, each with its own dynamics, but mostly coming down to power in bargaining.
- gyardley 16y agoWell, it's a problem when application developers operate a backend server to support their game - which isn't the most common thing to do, but it does happen. I've seen cases where piracy cut the developer's profits considerably because of this.
- sdgdthfd 16y agoGood luck getting Joe Public to get their heads around this - have you seen how they handle anything even remotely like Bayesian maths?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- sdfx 16y agoThe average pirate downloads a lot more games than the average customer buys. This means that even though games see that 80% of their copies are pirated, only 10% of their potential customers are pirates, which means they are losing at most 10% of their sales. This is simply not true: Sales are not distributed evenly amongst customers. It could very well be that people who are pirating would usually buy a lot more apps than the usual customer. Sure, if you don't have to pay for stuff you consume more, but they are probably more likely to spend more than average in the first place.
- DanielStraight 16y agoIf we accept the profile of pirates as typically low-income, then it seems extremely unlikely that pirates would likely spend more than average.
- mrcharles 16y ago"The common industry assumption is that developers are losing 90% of their revenue. That is, pirates would have bought every single game that they downloaded." As a long time game industry veteran, allow me to tell you that this is simply not true. In fact, that is actually the internet's straw man counter argument, which is fueled by a couple poor PR incidents where a few people have made it seem that way. But the reality is that there are a lot of lost sales, and if you can prevent someone from pirating it, there is a nonzero chance that they will go out and buy it instead of waiting. What is that number? Who knows! But it's certainly greater than zero, and there's certainly enough impact of piracy to make it worth it to explore methods of minimizing that impact. I have other issues with the article, such as the assertion that most pirates can't afford the games. Well, my counter anecdote is that I have a bunch of friends who pirate, who make plenty of money and could easily afford the games. They pirate them because they can. I would expect that everyone knows pirates, and I would expect that everyone knows pirates who make enough money to pay for (most of) the games they play. (These are my own personal opinions and not necessarily those of my employer)
- memetichazard 16y agoAs a long time game industry veteran, allow me to tell you that this is simply not true. In fact, that is actually the internet's straw man counter argument, which is fueled by a couple poor PR incidents where a few people have made it seem that way. I thought that was fueled by industry produced reports that blamed losses on piracy and assumed a 100% conversation rate between piracy and sales. (That may be more the music industry than the game industry, though) What is that number? Who knows! But it's certainly greater than zero, and there's certainly enough impact of piracy to make it worth it to explore methods of minimizing that impact. Yes, that number is greater than zero, but just how much greater than zero it is, is not insignificant. All methods used to reduce/eliminate piracy inflicts a cost of some sort. DRM annoys customers and is mostly ineffective in discouraging piracy. For instance, Blizzard removed LAN from Starcraft 2. How many fans did that annoy enough to cause lost sales? How much piracy will that prevent? Especially since it seems there are BNet server emulators on the internet already.
- 16y ago
- pilif 16y agowhile the 10% number of lost sales might be correct, there's one more thing you should factor into the calculation: The cost you need to pay for these 90% illegitimate users. There's support cost (some pirates are for sure dumb enough to call/email support even though they didn't pay), then there's the cost of infrastructure. Depending on the type of your game this can just be hosting a high score list or much more on the server side. So depending on your game, a pirate isn't just lost revenue but it will actually cost you some amount of money - in some cases a significant one. In reverse, that means that honest players are in a way paying for the pirates as the developer of the game has to ask honest players for enough money to run the infrastructure for everyone - including the pirates.
- heyitsnick 16y agoSo depending on your game, a pirate isn't just lost revenue but it will actually cost you some amount of money - in some cases a significant one. But in most cases an insignificant one. I expect a very small number of pirates are dumb enough to contact or email support. And I expect most pirating is distributed over bit torrent, and are hacked so that they are pirated so that they don't ever report back home (that's half the job, right) It would be interesting if wolfire too a look at this aspect but i doubt the result is significant.
- MichaelGG 16y agoSo how much effort is wasted on anti-piracy, and how many lost sales are there because of DRM? As TechDirt says about music, obscurity, not piracy, is the problem for many artists. As someone that enjoys playing games, I find this often to be the case when trying to find good games.