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Hmm...
If they want to take away LAN personally I don't care, BUT they should allow private organizations such as iccup to host their own server. The developer of the game (bliz, whatever company owns made hon, whomever) should have an option for people to use their servers for the same as a replacement for the bliz servers. The new server host would just have to have the same authentic ID checking program that would verify that the person has bought the game. This first of all would lower lag for a lot of gamers (aka bliz servers), and put less load on the bliz servers, which would save bliz money.
Not to mention, how much money do they lose with putting LAN in?
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On June 24 2011 06:45 visual77 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2011 06:39 akomatic wrote:On June 24 2011 06:30 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 06:26 akomatic wrote:On June 24 2011 06:20 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 06:14 akomatic wrote:
How did this get to 40 pages of rationalizing piracy? Obviously piracy reduces revenue in most cases.
Music: The music industry lost over half its revenue over the past decade. Without record sales, the Indie artist model has shifted to licensing their hit single to an ad campaign and performing concerts indefinitely. Concert ticket prices have risen drastically. People used to look at their $14 and say, "I'd rather have a CD than this money because it's the only way I'll get to listen to that music when I want." The internet today laughs at people with a purchased music collection.
Movie: The movie industry has flat-lined for the past decade in theatre and DVD sales. Their model has shifted twoards theatre revenue from "event" movies, huge budget films, mostly 3D, and mostly action-adventure.
Game: The only entertainment industry that is growing is the gaming industry. If it weren't for the dynamic of the console (difficult to pirate games) and the server (essential to online games, high upkeep costs, secrecy of code) then this industry would fall just like the others. Game industries can't afford to let pirates create a work-around for online play. This is almost all incorrect. The music industry as a whole is growing ( 1, 2). Only record sales are shrinking. The money is coming in from increased concert revenue and other scarce goods. The movie industry is also growing ( source) You're rght, I'm sorry I mispoke. I was looking at charts for CD and DVD/VHS/BlueRay sales. As I said, concert and theatre sales have picked up the slack from other sources. The advent of 3D has bucked the flat-lining I was mentioning. That said, all of these trends (increased cost and emphasis on live experiences, DRM, no LAN, selling music licensing) are the result of trying to bypass piracy. I don't think it's so much the result of 'bypassing piracy' as it is a changing marketplace. The content itself has become an infinite good whose primary purpose is drawing attention to the scarce goods (live concerts, online experiences, etc.). As more people share the content freely, those scarce goods become more valuable and become the main source of revenue. Fighting 'piracy' is a losing battle not only because you won't stop people from sharing, but it's really in the best interests of everyone if content creators and consumers alike learned to embrace this new model. I agree, this was the thesis of the recent book "free" by Chris Anderson. But in the context of games there is no live experience. The alternative in the gaming industry is hard-to-pirate console games and server-side games. I think offering the single-player for SCII for free may have been a great markettng tool to get people to buy the multiplayer. But if a person was able to pirate the entire thing because the multiplayer code was exposed, then suddenly there is no more "scarce good." While I don't have a good example or idea for every game to have a scarce good (hence why I'm a code jockey and not a business major), SC2 has a very visible scarce good - the b.net ladders. If only authorized copies could connect up to the ladder, use the matchmaking system and have a rank, league and division, then there would be a scarce good to sell to the customers. I'm not advocating a subscription service by any means, just to clarify. I've made this example before in this post, but I'll reiterate because I think it's very relevant here - Imagine setting up a LAN party and inviting 20 gamer friends. Of those 20, only 5 have copies of SC2 (and thus, b.net ladder rankings). The other 15 are on the fence about the game. You install 15 free copies (free in the the sense that Blizzard is okay with this kind of behavior, not illegal copies) and have a 10 hour LAN party. Of those 15, 5 have so much fun that they want b.net rankings and go buy the game. The infinite good (the game itself) has promoted the scarce good (access to the b.net servers). Edit: Bam! 250 posts. Zealot icon!
while the bnet ladder as a scarce good is viable, what's stopping someone from taking the cracked version and making something similar to iccup? Elo rankings and mmr isn't exactly unrepeatable. They wouldn't have it set up quite the same as bnet but the ICCup rankings did it's job, you could probably do the same by mashing together code from various other games with matchmaking. Believe me, if there was a way for LAN to exist I'd support it, but currently from a business standpoint it stands to serve few, and hurt the company too much to risk it. And to me, that's feasible, and I don't hate blizzard for it. It makes cents. (lol bad pun).
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On June 24 2011 04:02 latan wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2011 21:02 TheSubtleArt wrote:On June 23 2011 20:08 xtfftc wrote:
Everyone knows by now that piracy boosts the longterm sales - of music, of books, of games, of everything. Everyone but incompetent CEOs trying to increase their end-of-the-year bonuses. I'd disagree. From a business standpoint facilitating piracy really offers no benefit; it's equivalent to making a product and giving it away for free. On top of that the scope of piracy is pretty huge, and Starcraft isn't something that benefits much from other merchandise (except for the occasional blizzard strategy book very few people buy). If it does, I highly doubt it's enough to compensate for losing millions of potential purchases. . Never heard of free samples? It is the #1 strategy for promoting a product (when it's good).
I have, but there's a difference between giving a customer a free sample, which is a very tiny chunk of a product, and giving away a game complete with almost all features someone desires. You'd be surprised how many people play Sc2 casually and don't care for multiplayer beyond playing a game at a lan party with friends. It's just not practical from a business perspective to introduce lan, and Blizzard is first and foremost a company that wants profit.
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Can anyone here speak on the feasibility of so called "Server-on-a-Truck" solutions for Tournament play?
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On June 24 2011 06:29 Kazeyonoma wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2011 06:27 Solicer wrote:On June 24 2011 06:05 RoyalCheese wrote:On June 24 2011 05:55 Solicer wrote:
So I was thinking of a way to change the way the game worked so that you had to be registered online in order to play a offline in a LAN mode, so to speak.
What if, in order to plan on a LAN mode of sorts, you had to connect to battle.net at least once on the machine you play in order to get 'recognized,' or rather, so battle.net can give you the privilege of playing in the offline LAN mode. It would be like saying,"We just want to make sure you bought the game/activated your account (you know, the CD keys/codes). Now that you have made contact with Battle.net with a legitimate account that has access/bought the game, we will give you the privilege on this machine to run in the LAN mode."
I know that there are always downsides of something, and with this, if you wanted to play on a brand new machine, you would NEED access to the internet still, at least at first, to play on the LAN mode. Also, I am not that knowledgeable in regards to how easy it would be to bypass this, so I'm not sure how secure this would be.
And, this may have been suggested before. Nonetheless, could someone enlighten me a little bit more as to why Blizzard wouldn't have something set up at least similar to this? It's not as easy as that. It's not hard to find a "auth.blizzard.com/authenticate" (example of url upon which the authentication service would listen) and replace it with "auth.pirated.com" in binary file and thus bypassing the whole auth. Of course you could use some sort of public/private key encryption which would validate that the message token from blizz authentication service was really sent from blizzard but, as with the auth url, the public key can be found and replaced in order to make the fake tokens seem legit. I see. So, is there any way at all to have the LAN mode disabled until you can verify, through the internet, that you have bought the game (with the correct keys/codes, and a legitimate account)? Or is there no way to do this because of the nature of the files/data that is needed to activate the LAN mode? The only truly bypassing way (and it still can be bypassed btw), is to force the client to check and check often with the bnet servers to reauthenticate enough times to make it difficult/annoying for piracy to break the code, but at that point, if you need to connect through to bnet so often, why not just do it ON bnet.
While I agree that I don't think LAN will be implemented due to certain result of it getting pirated, saying that LAN wouldn't be worth it with constant verification checks is illogical. The game would still be played over LAN, and therefore would result in sub 10ms delay, instead of say 200ms to the BNet servers. That is a huge advantage. Besides the fact that game traffic wouldn't have to go over the ethernet connection, greatly shrinking bandwidth usage.
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On June 24 2011 06:53 Kazeyonoma wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2011 06:45 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 06:39 akomatic wrote:On June 24 2011 06:30 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 06:26 akomatic wrote:On June 24 2011 06:20 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 06:14 akomatic wrote:
How did this get to 40 pages of rationalizing piracy? Obviously piracy reduces revenue in most cases.
Music: The music industry lost over half its revenue over the past decade. Without record sales, the Indie artist model has shifted to licensing their hit single to an ad campaign and performing concerts indefinitely. Concert ticket prices have risen drastically. People used to look at their $14 and say, "I'd rather have a CD than this money because it's the only way I'll get to listen to that music when I want." The internet today laughs at people with a purchased music collection.
Movie: The movie industry has flat-lined for the past decade in theatre and DVD sales. Their model has shifted twoards theatre revenue from "event" movies, huge budget films, mostly 3D, and mostly action-adventure.
Game: The only entertainment industry that is growing is the gaming industry. If it weren't for the dynamic of the console (difficult to pirate games) and the server (essential to online games, high upkeep costs, secrecy of code) then this industry would fall just like the others. Game industries can't afford to let pirates create a work-around for online play. This is almost all incorrect. The music industry as a whole is growing ( 1, 2). Only record sales are shrinking. The money is coming in from increased concert revenue and other scarce goods. The movie industry is also growing ( source) You're rght, I'm sorry I mispoke. I was looking at charts for CD and DVD/VHS/BlueRay sales. As I said, concert and theatre sales have picked up the slack from other sources. The advent of 3D has bucked the flat-lining I was mentioning. That said, all of these trends (increased cost and emphasis on live experiences, DRM, no LAN, selling music licensing) are the result of trying to bypass piracy. I don't think it's so much the result of 'bypassing piracy' as it is a changing marketplace. The content itself has become an infinite good whose primary purpose is drawing attention to the scarce goods (live concerts, online experiences, etc.). As more people share the content freely, those scarce goods become more valuable and become the main source of revenue. Fighting 'piracy' is a losing battle not only because you won't stop people from sharing, but it's really in the best interests of everyone if content creators and consumers alike learned to embrace this new model. I agree, this was the thesis of the recent book "free" by Chris Anderson. But in the context of games there is no live experience. The alternative in the gaming industry is hard-to-pirate console games and server-side games. I think offering the single-player for SCII for free may have been a great markettng tool to get people to buy the multiplayer. But if a person was able to pirate the entire thing because the multiplayer code was exposed, then suddenly there is no more "scarce good." While I don't have a good example or idea for every game to have a scarce good (hence why I'm a code jockey and not a business major), SC2 has a very visible scarce good - the b.net ladders. If only authorized copies could connect up to the ladder, use the matchmaking system and have a rank, league and division, then there would be a scarce good to sell to the customers. I'm not advocating a subscription service by any means, just to clarify. I've made this example before in this post, but I'll reiterate because I think it's very relevant here - Imagine setting up a LAN party and inviting 20 gamer friends. Of those 20, only 5 have copies of SC2 (and thus, b.net ladder rankings). The other 15 are on the fence about the game. You install 15 free copies (free in the the sense that Blizzard is okay with this kind of behavior, not illegal copies) and have a 10 hour LAN party. Of those 15, 5 have so much fun that they want b.net rankings and go buy the game. The infinite good (the game itself) has promoted the scarce good (access to the b.net servers). Edit: Bam! 250 posts. Zealot icon! while the bnet ladder as a scarce good is viable, what's stopping someone from taking the cracked version and making something similar to iccup? Elo rankings and mmr isn't exactly unrepeatable. They wouldn't have it set up quite the same as bnet but the ICCup rankings did it's job, you could probably do the same by mashing together code from various other games with matchmaking. Believe me, if there was a way for LAN to exist I'd support it, but currently from a business standpoint it stands to serve few, and hurt the company too much to risk it. And to me, that's feasible, and I don't hate blizzard for it. It makes cents. (lol bad pun).
There is nothing stopping them. But I'm also not convinced it would drain so much revenue from Blizzard as to hurt the company. If there was an ICCup 2, I think it's safe to assume that the only people that would shift to it are the more knowledgeable players. Not everyone who plays SC2 frequents forums like these and would even be aware of these alternate servers. Money would be lost, certainly, but would 100% of the money be lost? Probably not.
In fact, I think most people who shift to ICCup 2 would be the more skilled players. That would leave players like myself (mid Gold, but aware of these alternate servers) in a weird position - do I not pay Blizzard and play on a server where I can never find a fair match, or do I go to the b.net servers where there are people at my skill level.
At the same time, another scarce good coming out of Blizzard on this one would be to keep b.net more desirable than ICCup 2. Provide a better matchmaking system, more detailed stat tracking, more attractive options for match types. By keeping their service more attractive than ICCup 2, they are selling the scarce good - the talent of their developers.
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On June 24 2011 06:45 visual77 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2011 06:39 akomatic wrote:On June 24 2011 06:30 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 06:26 akomatic wrote:On June 24 2011 06:20 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 06:14 akomatic wrote:
How did this get to 40 pages of rationalizing piracy? Obviously piracy reduces revenue in most cases.
Music: The music industry lost over half its revenue over the past decade. Without record sales, the Indie artist model has shifted to licensing their hit single to an ad campaign and performing concerts indefinitely. Concert ticket prices have risen drastically. People used to look at their $14 and say, "I'd rather have a CD than this money because it's the only way I'll get to listen to that music when I want." The internet today laughs at people with a purchased music collection.
Movie: The movie industry has flat-lined for the past decade in theatre and DVD sales. Their model has shifted twoards theatre revenue from "event" movies, huge budget films, mostly 3D, and mostly action-adventure.
Game: The only entertainment industry that is growing is the gaming industry. If it weren't for the dynamic of the console (difficult to pirate games) and the server (essential to online games, high upkeep costs, secrecy of code) then this industry would fall just like the others. Game industries can't afford to let pirates create a work-around for online play. This is almost all incorrect. The music industry as a whole is growing ( 1, 2). Only record sales are shrinking. The money is coming in from increased concert revenue and other scarce goods. The movie industry is also growing ( source) You're rght, I'm sorry I mispoke. I was looking at charts for CD and DVD/VHS/BlueRay sales. As I said, concert and theatre sales have picked up the slack from other sources. The advent of 3D has bucked the flat-lining I was mentioning. That said, all of these trends (increased cost and emphasis on live experiences, DRM, no LAN, selling music licensing) are the result of trying to bypass piracy. I don't think it's so much the result of 'bypassing piracy' as it is a changing marketplace. The content itself has become an infinite good whose primary purpose is drawing attention to the scarce goods (live concerts, online experiences, etc.). As more people share the content freely, those scarce goods become more valuable and become the main source of revenue. Fighting 'piracy' is a losing battle not only because you won't stop people from sharing, but it's really in the best interests of everyone if content creators and consumers alike learned to embrace this new model. I agree, this was the thesis of the recent book "free" by Chris Anderson. But in the context of games there is no live experience. The alternative in the gaming industry is hard-to-pirate console games and server-side games. I think offering the single-player for SCII for free may have been a great markettng tool to get people to buy the multiplayer. But if a person was able to pirate the entire thing because the multiplayer code was exposed, then suddenly there is no more "scarce good." While I don't have a good example or idea for every game to have a scarce good (hence why I'm a code jockey and not a business major), SC2 has a very visible scarce good - the b.net ladders. If only authorized copies could connect up to the ladder, use the matchmaking system and have a rank, league and division, then there would be a scarce good to sell to the customers. I'm not advocating a subscription service by any means, just to clarify. I've made this example before in this post, but I'll reiterate because I think it's very relevant here - Imagine setting up a LAN party and inviting 20 gamer friends. Of those 20, only 5 have copies of SC2 (and thus, b.net ladder rankings). The other 15 are on the fence about the game. You install 15 free copies (free in the the sense that Blizzard is okay with this kind of behavior, not illegal copies) and have a 10 hour LAN party. Of those 15, 5 have so much fun that they want b.net rankings and go buy the game. The infinite good (the game itself) has promoted the scarce good (access to the b.net servers). Edit: Bam! 250 posts. Zealot icon!
Damn protoss. I knew there was a reason I couldn't like you.
I don't think anyone would pay $60 (sometimes $120,$180 for mutliple servers) just for the match-making and bnet 2.0. Especially when you consider that most pros just play custom games. I think they had to draw the line somewhere, and totally withholding multiplayer code was the most logical place. And when you consider the Korean subscription model, almost nobody would pay a monthly fee if they could have the LAN for free.
My overall mindset is that I want this well-made RTS game to make a profit. I want companies to not give up on this genre. And I feel like LAN, though nice, would almost certainly decrease revenue.
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What sucks about not having LAN (with HoN in particular) is that over the last 5 weeks there has been massive downtimes from DDoS attacks and data/hardware failures. It feels almost like HoN has been down as much as it has been up for the last month. Without any LAN, nobody can even log on and dick around in training mode or watch replays at all until the servers come back up.
This isn't an argument for LAN as much as it is an argument to have at least something implemented to allow players to do something if shit goes awry and servers go down for days.
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On June 24 2011 07:05 akomatic wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2011 06:45 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 06:39 akomatic wrote:On June 24 2011 06:30 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 06:26 akomatic wrote:On June 24 2011 06:20 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 06:14 akomatic wrote:
How did this get to 40 pages of rationalizing piracy? Obviously piracy reduces revenue in most cases.
Music: The music industry lost over half its revenue over the past decade. Without record sales, the Indie artist model has shifted to licensing their hit single to an ad campaign and performing concerts indefinitely. Concert ticket prices have risen drastically. People used to look at their $14 and say, "I'd rather have a CD than this money because it's the only way I'll get to listen to that music when I want." The internet today laughs at people with a purchased music collection.
Movie: The movie industry has flat-lined for the past decade in theatre and DVD sales. Their model has shifted twoards theatre revenue from "event" movies, huge budget films, mostly 3D, and mostly action-adventure.
Game: The only entertainment industry that is growing is the gaming industry. If it weren't for the dynamic of the console (difficult to pirate games) and the server (essential to online games, high upkeep costs, secrecy of code) then this industry would fall just like the others. Game industries can't afford to let pirates create a work-around for online play. This is almost all incorrect. The music industry as a whole is growing ( 1, 2). Only record sales are shrinking. The money is coming in from increased concert revenue and other scarce goods. The movie industry is also growing ( source) You're rght, I'm sorry I mispoke. I was looking at charts for CD and DVD/VHS/BlueRay sales. As I said, concert and theatre sales have picked up the slack from other sources. The advent of 3D has bucked the flat-lining I was mentioning. That said, all of these trends (increased cost and emphasis on live experiences, DRM, no LAN, selling music licensing) are the result of trying to bypass piracy. I don't think it's so much the result of 'bypassing piracy' as it is a changing marketplace. The content itself has become an infinite good whose primary purpose is drawing attention to the scarce goods (live concerts, online experiences, etc.). As more people share the content freely, those scarce goods become more valuable and become the main source of revenue. Fighting 'piracy' is a losing battle not only because you won't stop people from sharing, but it's really in the best interests of everyone if content creators and consumers alike learned to embrace this new model. I agree, this was the thesis of the recent book "free" by Chris Anderson. But in the context of games there is no live experience. The alternative in the gaming industry is hard-to-pirate console games and server-side games. I think offering the single-player for SCII for free may have been a great markettng tool to get people to buy the multiplayer. But if a person was able to pirate the entire thing because the multiplayer code was exposed, then suddenly there is no more "scarce good." While I don't have a good example or idea for every game to have a scarce good (hence why I'm a code jockey and not a business major), SC2 has a very visible scarce good - the b.net ladders. If only authorized copies could connect up to the ladder, use the matchmaking system and have a rank, league and division, then there would be a scarce good to sell to the customers. I'm not advocating a subscription service by any means, just to clarify. I've made this example before in this post, but I'll reiterate because I think it's very relevant here - Imagine setting up a LAN party and inviting 20 gamer friends. Of those 20, only 5 have copies of SC2 (and thus, b.net ladder rankings). The other 15 are on the fence about the game. You install 15 free copies (free in the the sense that Blizzard is okay with this kind of behavior, not illegal copies) and have a 10 hour LAN party. Of those 15, 5 have so much fun that they want b.net rankings and go buy the game. The infinite good (the game itself) has promoted the scarce good (access to the b.net servers). Edit: Bam! 250 posts. Zealot icon! Damn protoss. I knew there was a reason I couldn't like you. I don't think anyone would pay $60 (sometimes $120,$180 for mutliple servers) just for the match-making and bnet 2.0. Especially when you consider that most pros just play custom games. I think they had to draw the line somewhere, and totally withholding multiplayer code was the most logical place. And when you consider the Korean subscription model, almost nobody would pay a monthly fee if they could have the LAN for free. My overall mindset is that I want this well-made RTS game to make a profit. I want companies to not give up on this genre. And I feel like LAN, though nice, would almost certainly decrease revenue.
How much of the player base is comprised of pros? If every single master league player decided not to play, that is, by definition, only a 2% dip in sales.
I also want this well made RTS game to make a profit. That's why I bought it and will buy the expansions, even if I could get them for free. I'm just thinking that the piracy bogeyman is incredibly overblown, and this insane desire to smash piracy might not only be misguided, but even harmful. There are opportunities that they could embrace that I honestly feel will make them *more* money, give a better experience to the consumers and generate more goodwill among their fan base.
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Hopefully this hasn't been brought up yet, but how exactly does LAN latency work for BW's ICCup? Would it be possible to implement something like that for sc2 or would the LAN setting need to actually exist first?
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Sweet more developers speculating based on arbitrary and made up stats about every pirated game being a lost sale and blah blah blah, piracy hasn't really got any easier or any more widespread in terms of a percentage of users since the PC came popular. In terms of impacting software sales the internet era is way better off than the era of Atari ST disk swaps, since the majority of ST/Amiga owners were nerds as opposed to nowadays where the majority of even PC gamers would prefer to have the ease of use of buying a product and playing it properly than pirating stuff with confusing workarounds to play multiplayer or even single player in some games.
It's the DRM and invasive anti-piracy measures that cause a rise in people pirating because the experiences can not only be equally annoying but the pirated versions can actually be easier to use. It's a sad case of publishers misinterpreting pirated copies as lost sales that then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. It doesn't help that there's clever bastards who set up DRM software houses based around exploiting said myth and thus giving legitimacy to the idea that it's true.
Anything past requiring a valid CD key to play online is not only a stupid idea in the first place, it also can actively dissuade people from buying your product. Indie devs don't make stuff DRM-free out of a grand utopian vision of people being good natured people, it's just not good business sense.
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Anyone that's compares pirating software to the equivalent of stealing a real life object, or committing a real crime like rape. Is a complete moron.
Pirating ONLY means the developers get less money. OK????!?!
No one dies from pirating, no one gets raped.
Not having LAN support is just today's way of company's/developers trying to get more money.
THAT IS ALL.
It's not even going to work either.
*note: I do like Blizzard. I don't want them to fail. But piracy will never take down blizzard. People do buy stuff they have pirated if they can get better support from the bought version.*
I have tested games like Magicka, realised it's a fun game. Then bought it. Fuck people who say pirating is causing developers to lose money.*
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On June 23 2011 10:51 hashaki wrote:
Buuuhuuu, pirates ruined our shit, pirates are the reason we're not making as much money as we would.
Grow the fuck up developers. Music and movie-industry has been saying the same shit for years, but looking at the numbers it turns out they're lying. They're making money as never before, despite not keeping up with the wishes of customers in terms of prices and ways of selling their merchandice.
Now, there are ofcourse diffferences when it comes to games, but are there good games out there that didn't make money? I don't really see an issue here, good games -will- sell.
I'd buy any good game. As an example, I bought Morrowind and I didn't buy Oblivion.
See how that work developers? Get your shit straight and your games will be paid for. Stop making boring fps-games or shitty games in general and stop blaming your lack of creativity and skill on pirates, it just doesn't work.
Zzz
Then explain to me why, I had zero incentive to buy BW back in its heyday.
ZERO. INCENTIVE.
I had the game for free. So did all my friends. We didn't care how good the game was(we loved it). You oughta take some of that foul language and remove it, because it's not helping your examples one bit.
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On June 24 2011 07:10 visual77 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2011 07:05 akomatic wrote:On June 24 2011 06:45 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 06:39 akomatic wrote:On June 24 2011 06:30 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 06:26 akomatic wrote:On June 24 2011 06:20 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 06:14 akomatic wrote:
How did this get to 40 pages of rationalizing piracy? Obviously piracy reduces revenue in most cases.
Music: The music industry lost over half its revenue over the past decade. Without record sales, the Indie artist model has shifted to licensing their hit single to an ad campaign and performing concerts indefinitely. Concert ticket prices have risen drastically. People used to look at their $14 and say, "I'd rather have a CD than this money because it's the only way I'll get to listen to that music when I want." The internet today laughs at people with a purchased music collection.
Movie: The movie industry has flat-lined for the past decade in theatre and DVD sales. Their model has shifted twoards theatre revenue from "event" movies, huge budget films, mostly 3D, and mostly action-adventure.
Game: The only entertainment industry that is growing is the gaming industry. If it weren't for the dynamic of the console (difficult to pirate games) and the server (essential to online games, high upkeep costs, secrecy of code) then this industry would fall just like the others. Game industries can't afford to let pirates create a work-around for online play. This is almost all incorrect. The music industry as a whole is growing ( 1, 2). Only record sales are shrinking. The money is coming in from increased concert revenue and other scarce goods. The movie industry is also growing ( source) You're rght, I'm sorry I mispoke. I was looking at charts for CD and DVD/VHS/BlueRay sales. As I said, concert and theatre sales have picked up the slack from other sources. The advent of 3D has bucked the flat-lining I was mentioning. That said, all of these trends (increased cost and emphasis on live experiences, DRM, no LAN, selling music licensing) are the result of trying to bypass piracy. I don't think it's so much the result of 'bypassing piracy' as it is a changing marketplace. The content itself has become an infinite good whose primary purpose is drawing attention to the scarce goods (live concerts, online experiences, etc.). As more people share the content freely, those scarce goods become more valuable and become the main source of revenue. Fighting 'piracy' is a losing battle not only because you won't stop people from sharing, but it's really in the best interests of everyone if content creators and consumers alike learned to embrace this new model. I agree, this was the thesis of the recent book "free" by Chris Anderson. But in the context of games there is no live experience. The alternative in the gaming industry is hard-to-pirate console games and server-side games. I think offering the single-player for SCII for free may have been a great markettng tool to get people to buy the multiplayer. But if a person was able to pirate the entire thing because the multiplayer code was exposed, then suddenly there is no more "scarce good." While I don't have a good example or idea for every game to have a scarce good (hence why I'm a code jockey and not a business major), SC2 has a very visible scarce good - the b.net ladders. If only authorized copies could connect up to the ladder, use the matchmaking system and have a rank, league and division, then there would be a scarce good to sell to the customers. I'm not advocating a subscription service by any means, just to clarify. I've made this example before in this post, but I'll reiterate because I think it's very relevant here - Imagine setting up a LAN party and inviting 20 gamer friends. Of those 20, only 5 have copies of SC2 (and thus, b.net ladder rankings). The other 15 are on the fence about the game. You install 15 free copies (free in the the sense that Blizzard is okay with this kind of behavior, not illegal copies) and have a 10 hour LAN party. Of those 15, 5 have so much fun that they want b.net rankings and go buy the game. The infinite good (the game itself) has promoted the scarce good (access to the b.net servers). Edit: Bam! 250 posts. Zealot icon! Damn protoss. I knew there was a reason I couldn't like you. I don't think anyone would pay $60 (sometimes $120,$180 for mutliple servers) just for the match-making and bnet 2.0. Especially when you consider that most pros just play custom games. I think they had to draw the line somewhere, and totally withholding multiplayer code was the most logical place. And when you consider the Korean subscription model, almost nobody would pay a monthly fee if they could have the LAN for free. My overall mindset is that I want this well-made RTS game to make a profit. I want companies to not give up on this genre. And I feel like LAN, though nice, would almost certainly decrease revenue. How much of the player base is comprised of pros? If every single master league player decided not to play, that is, by definition, only a 2% dip in sales. I also want this well made RTS game to make a profit. That's why I bought it and will buy the expansions, even if I could get them for free. I'm just thinking that the piracy bogeyman is incredibly overblown, and this insane desire to smash piracy might not only be misguided, but even harmful. There are opportunities that they could embrace that I honestly feel will make them *more* money, give a better experience to the consumers and generate more goodwill among their fan base.
Speaking as someone who bought BW (again) 10 years after release, I appreciate the value of pirated software to foster growth of a community, goodwill, and future sales. But in the case of SC2, my gut says that the loss of sales would be moderate, and that the goodwill gained would have a smaller value. I guess it's just a judgment call.
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On June 24 2011 07:33 D_K_night wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2011 10:51 hashaki wrote:
Buuuhuuu, pirates ruined our shit, pirates are the reason we're not making as much money as we would.
Grow the fuck up developers. Music and movie-industry has been saying the same shit for years, but looking at the numbers it turns out they're lying. They're making money as never before, despite not keeping up with the wishes of customers in terms of prices and ways of selling their merchandice.
Now, there are ofcourse diffferences when it comes to games, but are there good games out there that didn't make money? I don't really see an issue here, good games -will- sell.
I'd buy any good game. As an example, I bought Morrowind and I didn't buy Oblivion.
See how that work developers? Get your shit straight and your games will be paid for. Stop making boring fps-games or shitty games in general and stop blaming your lack of creativity and skill on pirates, it just doesn't work.
Zzz Then explain to me why, I had zero incentive to buy BW back in its heyday. ZERO. INCENTIVE. I had the game for free. So did all my friends. We didn't care how good the game was(we loved it). You oughta take some of that foul language and remove it, because it's not helping your examples one bit.
Maybe cause you were a kid with no money? Who through thankfully due to piracy was able to play the game, then because of having the game later bought SC2? hello piracy promoting blizzard?
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On June 24 2011 07:40 akomatic wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2011 07:10 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 07:05 akomatic wrote:On June 24 2011 06:45 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 06:39 akomatic wrote:On June 24 2011 06:30 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 06:26 akomatic wrote:On June 24 2011 06:20 visual77 wrote:On June 24 2011 06:14 akomatic wrote:
How did this get to 40 pages of rationalizing piracy? Obviously piracy reduces revenue in most cases.
Music: The music industry lost over half its revenue over the past decade. Without record sales, the Indie artist model has shifted to licensing their hit single to an ad campaign and performing concerts indefinitely. Concert ticket prices have risen drastically. People used to look at their $14 and say, "I'd rather have a CD than this money because it's the only way I'll get to listen to that music when I want." The internet today laughs at people with a purchased music collection.
Movie: The movie industry has flat-lined for the past decade in theatre and DVD sales. Their model has shifted twoards theatre revenue from "event" movies, huge budget films, mostly 3D, and mostly action-adventure.
Game: The only entertainment industry that is growing is the gaming industry. If it weren't for the dynamic of the console (difficult to pirate games) and the server (essential to online games, high upkeep costs, secrecy of code) then this industry would fall just like the others. Game industries can't afford to let pirates create a work-around for online play. This is almost all incorrect. The music industry as a whole is growing ( 1, 2). Only record sales are shrinking. The money is coming in from increased concert revenue and other scarce goods. The movie industry is also growing ( source) You're rght, I'm sorry I mispoke. I was looking at charts for CD and DVD/VHS/BlueRay sales. As I said, concert and theatre sales have picked up the slack from other sources. The advent of 3D has bucked the flat-lining I was mentioning. That said, all of these trends (increased cost and emphasis on live experiences, DRM, no LAN, selling music licensing) are the result of trying to bypass piracy. I don't think it's so much the result of 'bypassing piracy' as it is a changing marketplace. The content itself has become an infinite good whose primary purpose is drawing attention to the scarce goods (live concerts, online experiences, etc.). As more people share the content freely, those scarce goods become more valuable and become the main source of revenue. Fighting 'piracy' is a losing battle not only because you won't stop people from sharing, but it's really in the best interests of everyone if content creators and consumers alike learned to embrace this new model. I agree, this was the thesis of the recent book "free" by Chris Anderson. But in the context of games there is no live experience. The alternative in the gaming industry is hard-to-pirate console games and server-side games. I think offering the single-player for SCII for free may have been a great markettng tool to get people to buy the multiplayer. But if a person was able to pirate the entire thing because the multiplayer code was exposed, then suddenly there is no more "scarce good." While I don't have a good example or idea for every game to have a scarce good (hence why I'm a code jockey and not a business major), SC2 has a very visible scarce good - the b.net ladders. If only authorized copies could connect up to the ladder, use the matchmaking system and have a rank, league and division, then there would be a scarce good to sell to the customers. I'm not advocating a subscription service by any means, just to clarify. I've made this example before in this post, but I'll reiterate because I think it's very relevant here - Imagine setting up a LAN party and inviting 20 gamer friends. Of those 20, only 5 have copies of SC2 (and thus, b.net ladder rankings). The other 15 are on the fence about the game. You install 15 free copies (free in the the sense that Blizzard is okay with this kind of behavior, not illegal copies) and have a 10 hour LAN party. Of those 15, 5 have so much fun that they want b.net rankings and go buy the game. The infinite good (the game itself) has promoted the scarce good (access to the b.net servers). Edit: Bam! 250 posts. Zealot icon! Damn protoss. I knew there was a reason I couldn't like you. I don't think anyone would pay $60 (sometimes $120,$180 for mutliple servers) just for the match-making and bnet 2.0. Especially when you consider that most pros just play custom games. I think they had to draw the line somewhere, and totally withholding multiplayer code was the most logical place. And when you consider the Korean subscription model, almost nobody would pay a monthly fee if they could have the LAN for free. My overall mindset is that I want this well-made RTS game to make a profit. I want companies to not give up on this genre. And I feel like LAN, though nice, would almost certainly decrease revenue. How much of the player base is comprised of pros? If every single master league player decided not to play, that is, by definition, only a 2% dip in sales. I also want this well made RTS game to make a profit. That's why I bought it and will buy the expansions, even if I could get them for free. I'm just thinking that the piracy bogeyman is incredibly overblown, and this insane desire to smash piracy might not only be misguided, but even harmful. There are opportunities that they could embrace that I honestly feel will make them *more* money, give a better experience to the consumers and generate more goodwill among their fan base. Speaking as someone who bought BW (again) 10 years after release, I appreciate the value of pirated software to foster growth of a community, goodwill, and future sales. But in the case of SC2, my gut says that the loss of sales would be moderate, and that the goodwill gained would have a smaller value. I guess it's just a judgment call.
Unfortunately, it is a judgement call. I think it could work if they managed it right. There is not enough evidence supporting this for any company of this size to feel okay doing it. Their investors would flip out. I just honestly feel that evidence will slowly mount over the next decade until what I'm suggesting becomes commonplace for companies of all sizes.
It's pretty much the same as what happened with DRM free music downloads over the past decade. 10 years ago, it was extremely hard to believe that virtually all music would be released for download in a non restricted format. Now look at the music industry. It's changed, but it's still there, still profitable and the consumers got what they wanted.
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I just want to say - I hardly believe that 3 million coppies of SC2 being pirated last year converted into greater profits than if it weren't to be pirated at all...
I am apt to believe that pirating doesn't really generate revenue as some may defend here. Call it logic, or call it experience (having pirated games before), but after I pirate a game, I RARELY purchase it afterwards. Unfortunately, there is little incentive to buy a game you can already obtain, and most pirates by definition have little morals to buy a game after pirating it.
Not having lan features likely only lost a small percent (if any at all) from buying the game. Having a game that is easily able to being pirated would likely lose a lot potential buyers (most notably the casual fans). Seems relatively logical from my point of view.
(and in my opinion, pirating is pretty much equal to stealing in most occasions - there aren't too many times it is not the same :| )
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I agree with the reasons why LAN shouldn't be implemented. I agree piracy would take away revenue from the company and regardless of how small in terms of % that is, money is money to a business,
All i can say is fair enough. We already had big offline tournaments like dreamhack and mlg in which there weren't that many major issues.
Also, i think it would be easier to have all the computers at a offline event access the internet via wireless cards instead of them all being connected physically which would be the case in a lan.
If this isn't the way lans are done, lemme know since my knowledge might be outdated.
At the end of the day. i pay good money to play sc2 and if there is no lan that's not a big deal. I prefer more money going to the company so they produce quality games rather than crap games like what blizzard did to wow (wow is just a money machine now).
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On June 24 2011 07:26 Aruno wrote:
Anyone that's compares pirating software to the equivalent of stealing a real life object, or committing a real crime like rape. Is a complete moron.
Pirating ONLY means the developers get less money. OK????!?!
No one dies from pirating, no one gets raped.
Not having LAN support is just today's way of company's/developers trying to get more money.
THAT IS ALL.
It's not even going to work either.
*note: I do like Blizzard. I don't want them to fail. But piracy will never take down blizzard. People do buy stuff they have pirated if they can get better support from the bought version.*
I have tested games like Magicka, realised it's a fun game. Then bought it. Fuck people who say pirating is causing developers to lose money.*
That counter to the analogy doesn't really make sense. If you steal something, noone dies, noone gets raped. The only thing that happens is the person you stole from get's less money.
Piracy is still no exactly the same as stealing, because piracy only affects the developer, while stealing affects the middle man that loses his item/money. And people don't care nearly as much about the money of the big business man as they care about the money of people like themselfs or their close ones.
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On June 23 2011 07:10 mdma-_- wrote:
that still doesnt explain why they cant allow people to play each other in lan with the necessecity of being logged into bnet/whatever online client.
cheap excuse just to blame it on pirates tbh
Because a simple hack would pass this, unfortunately.
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EPT
