4 ms·

It's also not like house owners reward people that tell them about an open front door with the total value of their house's contents. In Dutch we say "10% finde

by lucb1e 4y ago

It's also not like house owners reward people that tell them about an open front door with the total value of their house's contents. In Dutch we say "10% finder's wages" (10% vindersloon) when someone returns an item they found, say a smartphone. Sometimes you get nothing, sometimes you get 20%, but nobody expects to get 100% (or even half) of the true value of the item you are dutifully returning. That there is a huge market in less-wealthy countries for pirated games is a well-known fact. What strikes me as a leap is that there is some mastermind behind it all that has enough savings (or other liquidity) to buy these exploits for whatever you would consider the true value (if $20k is "ridiculously" low), and then needs to earn all that money back by selling game copies (presumably there is some hardware cost to burn discs) to a population that is large but, indeed, poor.

ShroudedNight 4y ago
If they already have the networks in place to sell stuff like pirated movies, I don't see why they would balk at paying for an exploit to sell pirated games. I could also see them using an advance + royalty model to share the risk with the exploit writer.
- pvg 4y ago
  The movies play on unmodified players. This would be like making it so the only thing your tv can play is stuff you torrented.
akira2501 4y ago
No one is returning something to PlayStation, though. This is independent intellectual property. Property, that if exposed, runs the risk of destroying their entire ecosystem. And this possibly cuts well beyond simple piracy. PlayStation enjoys exclusive control over who does and does not get to publish on their platform. A mechanism that earns them millions in licensing deals, to the extent that they can happily lose money on the sale of the hardware itself. The destruction of that mechanism seems akin to destruction of their entire platform. This isn't a "we found your front door unlocked" situation. This is a "we found a bomb attached to your spine, and we know exactly how to dismantle it."
- Gigachad 4y ago
  What is the actual risk though? Game piracy is almost a solved problem now that most gaming is online gaming. Very few are interested in getting free games if it means permanently being unable to play online.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    Really? It seems like some of the biggest titles for PlayStation are single player games. Multi-player is often tacked on, but I doubt it's the main selling point for most of their titles. Would so many people have played the last of us or red dead redemption if they shipped those games without any single player campaign and had only the strength of their multiplayer experience to go on? Final fantasy, kingdom hearts, Spider-man, God of war, Detroit: Become Human (Quantic Dream titles in general), Persona, Cyberpunk 2077, these all depended heavily (or entirely) on single player content. Plenty of folks would have welcomed a change to play those kinds of games if they were just a download away. Even multiplayer games aren't necessarily off the table if unofficial servers are created and can be used, and piracy aside, it's compelling to be able to run your own software on the devices you own.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      Yes there are good singleplayer games around, but the vast majority of people will at some point want to play a multi player game as well. The group of people who are willing to permanently give up multi player to save money on single player games is quite small. In the modern internet connected era, piracy is almost completely solved. A good example is the Nintendo Switch. There have been several major exploits which have allowed full access to the system and priacy, and yet it has hardly touched their profits since multiplayer has become such a big aspect and network updates allow this stuff to be fixed. Compare this to the Nintendo DS and DSI. You could buy piracy carts at almost every retail store and almost everyone was doing it. There was also no downside to the consumer since it didn't require giving up anything. Piracy was a massive issue for this console.

by lucb1e 4y ago

ShroudedNight 4y ago

If they already have the networks in place to sell stuff like pirated movies, I don't see why they would balk at paying for an exploit to sell pirated games. I could also see them using an advance + royalty model to share the risk with the exploit writer.

pvg 4y ago
The movies play on unmodified players. This would be like making it so the only thing your tv can play is stuff you torrented.

akira2501 4y ago

No one is returning something to PlayStation, though. This is independent intellectual property. Property, that if exposed, runs the risk of destroying their entire ecosystem. And this possibly cuts well beyond simple piracy. PlayStation enjoys exclusive control over who does and does not get to publish on their platform. A mechanism that earns them millions in licensing deals, to the extent that they can happily lose money on the sale of the hardware itself. The destruction of that mechanism seems akin to destruction of their entire platform. This isn't a "we found your front door unlocked" situation. This is a "we found a bomb attached to your spine, and we know exactly how to dismantle it."

Gigachad 4y ago
What is the actual risk though? Game piracy is almost a solved problem now that most gaming is online gaming. Very few are interested in getting free games if it means permanently being unable to play online.
- autoexec 4y ago
  Really? It seems like some of the biggest titles for PlayStation are single player games. Multi-player is often tacked on, but I doubt it's the main selling point for most of their titles. Would so many people have played the last of us or red dead redemption if they shipped those games without any single player campaign and had only the strength of their multiplayer experience to go on? Final fantasy, kingdom hearts, Spider-man, God of war, Detroit: Become Human (Quantic Dream titles in general), Persona, Cyberpunk 2077, these all depended heavily (or entirely) on single player content. Plenty of folks would have welcomed a change to play those kinds of games if they were just a download away. Even multiplayer games aren't necessarily off the table if unofficial servers are created and can be used, and piracy aside, it's compelling to be able to run your own software on the devices you own.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Yes there are good singleplayer games around, but the vast majority of people will at some point want to play a multi player game as well. The group of people who are willing to permanently give up multi player to save money on single player games is quite small. In the modern internet connected era, piracy is almost completely solved. A good example is the Nintendo Switch. There have been several major exploits which have allowed full access to the system and priacy, and yet it has hardly touched their profits since multiplayer has become such a big aspect and network updates allow this stuff to be fixed. Compare this to the Nintendo DS and DSI. You could buy piracy carts at almost every retail store and almost everyone was doing it. There was also no downside to the consumer since it didn't require giving up anything. Piracy was a massive issue for this console.