Combating piracy - Page 30

On December 01 2011 17:20 Liquid`Drone wrote:


firstly the restaurant analogy or whatever is obviously somewhat faulty and yes intended as a slight joke - for it to be a valid comparison to piracy they'd have to supply full meals for free in the convenience of my home, and that would indeed kill their business. but if technology allowed restaurants to somehow, without losing any ingredients of their own, magically create and teleport a small portion of food to a plate right in front of me, before I was making my decision on where to go eat my food, then that would be something all good restaurants would immediately jump onto.

anyway though, the reason why food is different from "cultural material" in this discussion is that food is something everyone has to eat at least a couple times every day, whereas culture is something that is part of "excess spending". essentially, people spend money on culture only after they've spent money for all necessities, and thus, how much money people spend on culture is limited, and for people with a budget, usually a reasonably fixed amount per month. thus, piracy does not necessarily hurt producers and distributors at all, because if I'm spending $150 per month on culture, piracy merely allows me to spend that money on the game/music/movie/tv production I feel deserves it the most, while still allowing me to enjoy a full spectrum of cultural activities, rather than having to make educated guesses with regards to what I like the most, still spend $150 per month, and probably have a less enjoyable experience. if anything, my appreciation of different cultural mediums ends up growing as my exposure to them grows, and it becomes more important for me to support the industry..

On November 30 2011 22:16 LilClinkin wrote:
The Witcher 2, a single-player action-RPG (and fantastic game) developed by CD Projeckt, was estimated to have been illegally downloaded over 4.5 million times.

http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/121/1213607p1.html#disqus_thread

This is disheartening news. For those not familiar, The Witcher 2 is a single-player action-RPG with extremely high production values: Plenty of unique high-resolution art assets, voice acting available in multiple languages, a diverse range of quests and alternative endings. Essentially, TW2 provides the gamut of features that you'd want from a hardcore single-player role-playing experience. Unfortunately, the cost of producing such experiences has skyrocketed compared to 10 years ago, and costs are only going to continue to increase. If pirates continue to leech off the hard work of developers like CD Projeckt, the market for such games is going to crash as the profitability simply will not exist.

Interesting to see my thread derailed within the first page...

The intention was never to discuss the morality of piracy, nor the efficacy of current methods used to combat it.

The purpose was to come up with new and interesting ways to deter piracy. From Software (developers of Dark Souls) went online and slaughtered everyone who downloaded their game illegally before it was available for purchase. This led me to believe a good way to combat piracy would be to empower the players to somehow isolate and punish known pirates. The TF2 griefing video I linked shows how a server host griefs a known aim-botter into dying from any damage and making his weapons do 0 damage.

On December 01 2011 18:55 SKC wrote:


That's a much better analogy to a Demo, not piracy. A small sample to get the taste, but not enough to prevent someone from buying. That's the major point, as soon as you deliver the full product as a test product, you kill the biggest incentive for someone to buy it. That's why multiplayer games are much more often pirated and then bought, they don't deliver the full service. Demos used to be a lot more common before, but people still pirated heavily, so I don't think that would really be a solution.

On December 01 2011 17:20 Liquid`Drone wrote:


firstly the restaurant analogy or whatever is obviously somewhat faulty and yes intended as a slight joke - for it to be a valid comparison to piracy they'd have to supply full meals for free in the convenience of my home, and that would indeed kill their business. but if technology allowed restaurants to somehow, without losing any ingredients of their own, magically create and teleport a small portion of food to a plate right in front of me, before I was making my decision on where to go eat my food, then that would be something all good restaurants would immediately jump onto.

anyway though, the reason why food is different from "cultural material" in this discussion is that food is something everyone has to eat at least a couple times every day, whereas culture is something that is part of "excess spending". essentially, people spend money on culture only after they've spent money for all necessities, and thus, how much money people spend on culture is limited, and for people with a budget, usually a reasonably fixed amount per month. thus, piracy does not necessarily hurt producers and distributors at all, because if I'm spending $150 per month on culture, piracy merely allows me to spend that money on the game/music/movie/tv production I feel deserves it the most, while still allowing me to enjoy a full spectrum of cultural activities, rather than having to make educated guesses with regards to what I like the most, still spend $150 per month, and probably have a less enjoyable experience. if anything, my appreciation of different cultural mediums ends up growing as my exposure to them grows, and it becomes more important for me to support the industry..

On December 01 2011 08:02 HereAndNow wrote:

That type of mentality is fine if it wasn't thousands (millions?) of people thinking the same thing for gaming, movies, and music.

"Oh, I'll only pirate a couple games, maybe $500 worth. $500 isn't that much to a big game company."

And then another person thinks that. Then another person. Then another. How long before there are millions, billions of dollars worth of pirated material out there? $60 doesn't hurt anyone. $60 a million times does.

It's like voting in America. You don't think your one vote counts, so you don't vote. Then thousands of people think the same, and the election is completely fucked one way or the other.

On December 01 2011 07:46 Liquid`Drone wrote:


the game mentioned in the OP is Witcher 2. it is a single player rpg. it has not been "crushed by piracy", in fact as has been shown by this thread, it has made a nice profit. and as was just mentioned by another poster, skyrim was released 3 weeks ago. that's the biggest and most anticipated, and guess what, most bought, single player rpg ever. and the next elder scrolls game is going to be even bigger, with even more quests, more voice actors, better graphics, more sales, and more pirated copies, because despite piracy, and arguably, partially due to piracy, the game industry keeps growing and growing and growing, and it will continue doing so.

small indie developers are hurt by piracy though, and that sucks. but these blanket "piracy is always wrong" "piracy equals theft" "piracy hurts everyone but the pirate" "piracy is illegal thus it is immoral" statements.. they're just a way of simplifying reality in a stupidifying manner.

On December 01 2011 19:23 gruff wrote:

Demo's isn't the solution but it is a solution. I'll give you that it may not be the most efficient way to make people not pirate but it's certainly a way to make people buy your game, something that goes in the same line of thought (at least if it's a good game, otherwise not. -_-)

On December 01 2011 11:34 Staboteur wrote:
I've often wondered why bigger companies don't flood the pirated game market with red herrings of their own games. I'd think the number one reason people pirate games is convenience, as when you're given a choice of "Spend an hour going to wherever the game is sold, spend 60 bucks (if it isn't sold out) and then return home to play" or "Don't move, don't spend anything, wait about as much time as you would going to get a physical copy and only risk viruses or a slightly faulted version of the game"... well, it doesn't take much thinking to see that anyone with a comfortable computer chair and your standard sense of morality (Please, don't pretend *most* people are above this) will opt for the second choice.

If, say, Bethesda was to release 4 faulted copies of Skyrim en masse to torrenting websites, they'd become part of a process that would make pirating feel a whole lot less safe and a whole lot less convenient than it currently is/feels, which should initiate a global shift making piracy actually feel like what it is; stealing.

And I'm not saying LOL GIVE ALL THE PIRATES VIRUSES N WIPE THEIR HARD DRIVES. I'm talking about, say, a full-sized version of skyrim that, after hitting 4 hours of gameplay, pops up a message that says "We're glad you showed enough interest in Skyrim to pirate it, but pretend this was a demo, because until you buy the full game "-insert their website here-" you're not going to get any further

..And it'd be followed by the game locking itself.

I don't know if this is unreasonable for a coding front (I.E. all people would have to do is bypass the lockout and be fine) or a legal front (could a company be charged for knowingly spreading "flawed" copies that claim to be the real deal?), but I can fully see it being functional in terms of execution and follow-up. It would not take much to hire two dudes to work 8 hours a day for the first few months of release charged with the task of making these herring look tasty, uploading the "flawed" copies to popular torrent sites, and offering off-putting comments on "legit" pirated copies that suggest that the "legit" one is actually a demo / flawed.

Yeah. Far as I can see (sadly, based on personal pirating experience ) the two biggest reasons people pirate is not because they can't afford it, but because it's more convenient than the alternative, and you're more likely to get hit by a car walking to EBgames than you are to get dinged by anyone for pirating. Red Herrings would both reduce the convenience of piracy, as well as introduce some element of consequence to piracy. I know I'd shit my pants if I was playing a pirated version of the game and the game popped up a message that said

"Nice pirate bro"
"Love - Blizzard entertainment"

and then immediately deleted itself.

On December 01 2011 23:28 TheDraken wrote:



that system is all fine and dandy, except for something brilliant we invented called a rating system. it would only take a few dozen people running into that before you'd be back to the same old.

the industry is just going to have to suffer until they get it through their fucking heads that this isn't going to go away. the people who keep trying to fight against the pirates are never going to win, because it essentially comes down to attempted extortion of the consumer base.

i lol at people who are genuinely concerned by legislation going through governments to try to stop piracy.
it won't happen.
the internet has become an uncontrollable leviathan of a creature that no government can stop. people look at china as a worst case scenario for western internet rights, and yet the "great firewall" is still chicken shit that would take no time to circumvent. game companies think they're the most brilliant asshats on the planet coming out with these "uncrackable" anti-piracy protections, and all the while their electronic bank accounts are being raided by some russian toking it up in his basement. 90% of government online assets probably couldn't even stop the humble LOIC let alone any coordinated effort to circumvent website restrictions.

game companies need to learn what is a reasonable price for a game. they need to learn that porting off a console and calling it a PC game is lazy and fraudulent. they need to learn that DRM will only hurt paying customers, and will ultimately just fuel the fire. and they need to learn to stop being so damn antagonistic (especially music companies) towards pirates. as has held true since the dawn of time, you piss off pirates, they fuck shit up.

On December 01 2011 19:02 Aldehyde wrote:

It pisses me off when developers and publishers keep whining about how many times their game is downloaded and yet never answer the question "did you sell enough games?".

On December 02 2011 05:01 Runnin wrote:

I hope that someday you ask your boss for a raise and he tells you "don't you make a livable wage already?". If a game is good enough for you to play it, then pay for it, whether or not they make their budget back is irrelevant. You aren't entitled to a game just because the company made some money.