9 ms·

Looking at piratebay, there are 1000+ seeders on most of the recent AAA PC titles. Who knows if those people would actually shell out 60$ for a game, but it sti

Looking at piratebay, there are 1000+ seeders on most of the recent AAA PC titles. Who knows if those people would actually shell out 60$ for a game, but it still is a real issue the PC gaming market faces. With current generation consoles, piracy has so far been impossible. Perhaps in the future this won't be the case, but currently every purchase is legit. I can't see any scenario where going from 0 piracy to who knows how much piracy would be rational

tossedaway334 10y ago
its perfectly rational if it increases sales, there are indications this is the case with PC piracy, especially with titles that would otherwise lack exposure. Its also rational if it allows them to move away from custom designs entirely, and save a truckload of money, more than they lose to the nebulous spectre of "piracy".
- BoorishBears 10y ago
  But the parent post references AAA games. In reality "piracy is organic advertisement" is a tired excuse. Large titles are already spending spending large portions of their budgets on advertising (sometimes more than their development budgets!), and small titles get shafted by petty piracy all the time (see mobile gaming, I've known multiple devs whose games show up on pirated APK sites before their main sites on google). People usually cite narrow cases where an AAA game succeeds in spite of lacking DRM as if piracy helped, or games that didn't spend anything on marketing and get big through marketing, which is an exceedingly rare lottery to win. No one ever cites games like Crysis 3 which had been pirated more times than it ever sold days before release
  - chii 10y ago
    but those pirated copies _would not_ have been sold had there been no piracy. I argue that piracy doesn't decrease sales, just increases the amount of utility that society gets from software.
    - BoorishBears 10y ago
      I hear that all the time and I don't buy it. Denuovo is a DRM being sold on the premise that there are in fact people who will buy a game if it's not cracked at release, and in places dedicated to monitoring games with their DRM plenty of people have admitted they bought games they really wanted. Piracy will obviously cause some non-zero number of people not to buy games because it turns a games cost from a price, to a suggested donation. "I'll pay if I like it" isn't the profit model a publisher who puts out a multimillion dollar game wants to support. Not to mention, paying for something can be a great motivator. It's a lot easier to dismiss a a game saying "I wouldn't have wanted to pay for this" at the slightest flaw when you haven't paid for it.
    - Fnoord 10y ago
      Nevermind a game is quicker to download than install and complete the first level. Games get pirated and then not played. Heck, I got an entire Steam library of unplayed games.
    - prodmerc 10y ago
      I'd say that is not true anymore - it used to be pretty hard to buy games before (with retarded regional restrictions and no Steam, etc). So people couldn't be assed to buy a game if they could not find a cracked one. But today, you can do it with a few clicks, so if someone really wants to play a game because it looks cool/interesting/whatever, I'd say a lot of people will just pay for it if they can't find the crack.
  - izacus 10y ago
    Oh come on, people sell (and have sold) in millions of copies through PC gaming history, even though piracy was "rampant". The major boost in sales was improving the sales process (Steam and similar stores) and dropping prices, not attacking legitimate users with DRM rootkits. People keep repeating this DRM suppor mantra when up until now there STILL hasn't been any good proof that it does any good. If anything, it only damaged sales due to people not buying games that randomly stop working when internet fails.
    - dageshi 10y ago
      It seems to do a pretty good job of protecting the game from piracy when it's at its most expensive. Numerous companies now seem to be implementing DRM for launch and then quietly remove it after 3-6 months once it's fallen in price. That leads me to believe that they think piracy is a real issue at launch and not one later when prices fall.
manmal 10y ago
They could sell an open variant for more money (+40% perhaps?) such that potential losses in games revenue are offset. Or the open variant could require an always-on internet connection to play games, as is already the case for some PC games (or Super Mario Run, even).
- MaulingMonkey 10y ago
  > They could sell an open variant for more money (+40% perhaps?) such that potential losses in games revenue are offset. 1) Developing a second SKU is expensive. 2) It seems that much of the PS4 hacking has been enabled by the minimal "open" surface provided by simply having a browser available on the PS4. The protections of an "open" SKU would likely be a roadbump. 3) Piracy is not the only problem. Hacking undermines multiplayer competition, the value of leaderboards, achievements, ... Frankly, the cheapest option to solve all these problems would be to simply bundle an extra PC to make your "open variant". But of the question is: Why would they? What's the profit in it?
  - izacus 10y ago
    Um, that "open SKU" always exists - it's called the developer unit and can run any binaries so as a developer you can run your own game during the process. They're just locked behind the dev kit licensing costs and NDAs.
    - gambiting 10y ago
      As someone who has both the X1 and PS4 devkits on my desk, it's interesting to me that Sony actually goes through the effort and massive cost of developing a separate SKU, where the devkit is a huge machine with extra cooling, more ram, more ports, and then the X1 is exactly the same as a retail unit, just with a different certificate installed on it. But yes, theoretically, "anyone" can buy a devkit and have access to the full architecture of PS4/X1 is they want to.
      - Nexxxeh 10y ago
notyourwork 10y ago
It seems you skipped the second paragraph where I said "So assuming there is no economic impact". Are you saying piracy has an impact that isn't economic in nature? If so can you clarify?
notyourwork 10y ago
It seems you skipped the second paragraph where I said "So assuming there is no economic impact". Are you saying piracy has an impact that isn't economic in nature? If so can you clarify?
prodmerc 10y ago
Protection for PC games has become really good - Denuvo seems to be sophisticated enough that even 2 year old games have still not been cracked. At the very least, it makes it possible to not lose sales at launch, which is when most of the money is made iirc. Pretty interesting.

tossedaway334 10y ago

its perfectly rational if it increases sales, there are indications this is the case with PC piracy, especially with titles that would otherwise lack exposure. Its also rational if it allows them to move away from custom designs entirely, and save a truckload of money, more than they lose to the nebulous spectre of "piracy".

BoorishBears 10y ago
But the parent post references AAA games. In reality "piracy is organic advertisement" is a tired excuse. Large titles are already spending spending large portions of their budgets on advertising (sometimes more than their development budgets!), and small titles get shafted by petty piracy all the time (see mobile gaming, I've known multiple devs whose games show up on pirated APK sites before their main sites on google). People usually cite narrow cases where an AAA game succeeds in spite of lacking DRM as if piracy helped, or games that didn't spend anything on marketing and get big through marketing, which is an exceedingly rare lottery to win. No one ever cites games like Crysis 3 which had been pirated more times than it ever sold days before release
- chii 10y ago
  but those pirated copies _would not_ have been sold had there been no piracy. I argue that piracy doesn't decrease sales, just increases the amount of utility that society gets from software.
  - BoorishBears 10y ago
    I hear that all the time and I don't buy it. Denuovo is a DRM being sold on the premise that there are in fact people who will buy a game if it's not cracked at release, and in places dedicated to monitoring games with their DRM plenty of people have admitted they bought games they really wanted. Piracy will obviously cause some non-zero number of people not to buy games because it turns a games cost from a price, to a suggested donation. "I'll pay if I like it" isn't the profit model a publisher who puts out a multimillion dollar game wants to support. Not to mention, paying for something can be a great motivator. It's a lot easier to dismiss a a game saying "I wouldn't have wanted to pay for this" at the slightest flaw when you haven't paid for it.
  - Fnoord 10y ago
    Nevermind a game is quicker to download than install and complete the first level. Games get pirated and then not played. Heck, I got an entire Steam library of unplayed games.
  - prodmerc 10y ago
    I'd say that is not true anymore - it used to be pretty hard to buy games before (with retarded regional restrictions and no Steam, etc). So people couldn't be assed to buy a game if they could not find a cracked one. But today, you can do it with a few clicks, so if someone really wants to play a game because it looks cool/interesting/whatever, I'd say a lot of people will just pay for it if they can't find the crack.
- izacus 10y ago
  Oh come on, people sell (and have sold) in millions of copies through PC gaming history, even though piracy was "rampant". The major boost in sales was improving the sales process (Steam and similar stores) and dropping prices, not attacking legitimate users with DRM rootkits. People keep repeating this DRM suppor mantra when up until now there STILL hasn't been any good proof that it does any good. If anything, it only damaged sales due to people not buying games that randomly stop working when internet fails.
  - dageshi 10y ago
    It seems to do a pretty good job of protecting the game from piracy when it's at its most expensive. Numerous companies now seem to be implementing DRM for launch and then quietly remove it after 3-6 months once it's fallen in price. That leads me to believe that they think piracy is a real issue at launch and not one later when prices fall.

manmal 10y ago

They could sell an open variant for more money (+40% perhaps?) such that potential losses in games revenue are offset. Or the open variant could require an always-on internet connection to play games, as is already the case for some PC games (or Super Mario Run, even).

MaulingMonkey 10y ago
> They could sell an open variant for more money (+40% perhaps?) such that potential losses in games revenue are offset. 1) Developing a second SKU is expensive. 2) It seems that much of the PS4 hacking has been enabled by the minimal "open" surface provided by simply having a browser available on the PS4. The protections of an "open" SKU would likely be a roadbump. 3) Piracy is not the only problem. Hacking undermines multiplayer competition, the value of leaderboards, achievements, ... Frankly, the cheapest option to solve all these problems would be to simply bundle an extra PC to make your "open variant". But of the question is: Why would they? What's the profit in it?
- izacus 10y ago
  Um, that "open SKU" always exists - it's called the developer unit and can run any binaries so as a developer you can run your own game during the process. They're just locked behind the dev kit licensing costs and NDAs.
  - gambiting 10y ago
    As someone who has both the X1 and PS4 devkits on my desk, it's interesting to me that Sony actually goes through the effort and massive cost of developing a separate SKU, where the devkit is a huge machine with extra cooling, more ram, more ports, and then the X1 is exactly the same as a retail unit, just with a different certificate installed on it. But yes, theoretically, "anyone" can buy a devkit and have access to the full architecture of PS4/X1 is they want to.
    - Nexxxeh 10y ago

notyourwork 10y ago

It seems you skipped the second paragraph where I said "So assuming there is no economic impact". Are you saying piracy has an impact that isn't economic in nature? If so can you clarify?

notyourwork 10y ago

It seems you skipped the second paragraph where I said "So assuming there is no economic impact". Are you saying piracy has an impact that isn't economic in nature? If so can you clarify?

prodmerc 10y ago

Protection for PC games has become really good - Denuvo seems to be sophisticated enough that even 2 year old games have still not been cracked. At the very least, it makes it possible to not lose sales at launch, which is when most of the money is made iirc. Pretty interesting.