Windows A Mature Thread About Piracy & DRM

Chris from Introversion has released a diatribe on the IV forum in response to a post at RockPaperShotgun. It's basically a realistic perspective on how they view piracy as an Indie developer and how it's affected them. Full article is here. Below is an extract:

One school of thought would have you believe that the future of PC Gaming is already in the gallows, whereas another would suggest that PC Gaming will never die, as it's a safe-haven for Indie developers and will ascend again as High Street Retail continues to recede.

Personally, reading Chris's post has kind of inspired me to stop [pirating games]. I used to convince myself with a "I make games, therefore I can pirate them" mentality but it's time I grew up, I think, and started supporting the industry which butters my bread.

DRM is a totally other issue which Chris also talks about and I'll save my opinions on that for a later post.

As the title suggests, lets try and keep this discussion mature.
So, what do people think?

 

His argument only holds true if there is a major incentive for people to play the multi player game. This is all that he says. Bioshock tried the non-local DRM with the whole you must be connected to the internet during the install to get the relevant patches and authorise your game and we remember how much fuss that caused on a purely single player game.

The reason the central DRM for MMOs is so successful is because people need to log into a central server to use the game. UT2k4 had a similar system, yes you could use one of the pirate keys floating about on the web but using it would lock your game out of internet play once the game checked your key at the central server. This however didn't stop it being used over a LAN or against bots so the capability was reduced not totally lost through the DRM.

DRM that completely blocks any usability ie Bioshock's will get broken via hacked installs which point to faux servers which will validate the game.

I agree with his view that pirate games should be treated as extended demos but this idea only holds true if your multi player section of the game is as appealing as the single player or you can develop a valid reason why the game needs to be connected to the net to play.

Honestly I would like to think that game developers and publishers would become more rational and accept that every pirate copy means one lost sale as it doesn't. Would I expect all those on the Uni UT2k4 LAN server to have gone out and bought a copy of the UT? No, most were only casual players but enjoyed the experience of some casual fragging against new friends. When it was mentioned that there was a new one coming out in 2007 many said they'd buy it. Now if only 20% of those that said they were going to buy it did then Epic have had an increase in sales rather than a loss as none of them were intending on buy 2k4 and many hadn't even really heard of UT.

 

I agree entirely on his stance that pirating is "customers who've yet to be convinced". In the past I have pirated games, but the only games I currently play and have played for a long time (past the first level for example) I actually own. That means wc3, wow, settlers 6 and CS. They are all games worthy of buying, and in a way it helps the industry. I say this in reference to companies like EA. For those of you unaware EA are only in it for the money and treat their teams like crap. EA churn out **** to make money and buy purchasing their games your only encouraging bad games for the sake of money. Well I wont buy a bad game, and I wont buy a game until I have tried it (unless its from blizzard who I <3). I don't give a **** how EA complain it "hurts their programming teams", like **** it does - they get paid the same. It does hurt EA and their shareholders but they're still making money off crap games.

This goes for the record industry, the movie industry and any other industry. I want to make sure what im buying is worth the price, and if I like it then I pay them to make more of the same - my statistics go down as liking that particular thing and maybe then they will stand up and say "well look, if we make a quality product then people pay for it".

No RIAA artist gets my money. No RIAA artist even gets my download time. If they start looking after me then ill show some compassion in responce but until that day no sir. I think if these industrys find they can look after their users the users in responce will give them love back.

[/unintentional rant]

edit: and I agree about DRM. Put less money into system which will "always" be hacked within' a week and make that saving get back to the user.

 

Off topic a bit but Bogo, is Settlers 6 actually good? I was highly disappointed with Settlers V, does it stay true to the older games?

Back on topic, I will occasionally pirate a game I'm not sure about, since demos very rarely give you a good picture of the whole game or if I can't get hold of it elsewhere. Buying a copy off eBay doesn't help the developers at all so you may as well pirate it if there's no other means of getting it. If I like a game I will buy it, which kind of adds to the point of piracy doesn't lose sales, since very rarely will those people buy the game anyway.

What annoys me a lot is when I buy a game, most recently the Witcher, that has annoying copy protection crap. For some reason it doesn't work properly for me and means I have to reset my PC every time I want to play it otherwise it won't recognise the disk. DRM only annoys the people who are legally using it, it doesn't reduce piracy at all since there are always ways round it.

 

I agree with the consensus that if it is a good game I will buy it, I'll play the demo first, and if I like it I always buy the game. This is mainly due to the fact that if it get's updated, needs registering I don't have to piss around with cracks and hacks to get the game to work.

 

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up for me.

Although sometimes it's the exact reverse, when it comes to DRM and such. I only play my cracked version of SC:CT despite owning it so I don't have to ruin a perfectly good computer by infecting it with Starforce. There are a couple other odd examples, but that's my general theory - games worth it get my money. It's also another reason I'm slightly more inclined to buy console games - aside from the fact that pirating them is considerably harder (to the point where I've never really bothered trying), I don't have to worry about DRM ruining the system. I put the disc in, and it plays.

 

I wanted to pirate san adreas. I bought in on xbox and now i want it on pc just to try out the multiplayer mod. But i have bad luck with pirating and it never works. Ive bought every game i play though. I dont see the point in pirating really, spending 25 quid on a good game doesn't really bother me. Id only pirate games if i was bored and just wanted something to pass the time with which i wouldn't buy otherwize. They arn't really lossig money as i wouldn't buy it in the first place. But i gues thats a flawed arguement.

As for EA, i cant beleive they ahve gone and bought up bioware and pandemic.The gaming industry is ruined

 

I stopped pirating games a while ago. But it really takes its toll on a student budget.

 

i've never pirated a game without either buying it or deleting it within a week, which is kind of surprising considering the rate at which i download movies and tv.

i'm not really sure why. i think it's because i trust that my money is going to people who deserve it, rather than buying george clooney another tuscan villa. also, as a casual gamer, a good game will provide me with months, possibly years of enjoyment. if i pay $20 for a movie i might watch it three times, where's the value in that?

 

Settlers 6 is pretty good yeah, though imo the demo was way to revealing. Its pretty challenging in places though, really nice graphics and good gameplay

 

It depends on the game really, and when you look at it, to a pirate mind (aka, why pay $60 for n hours entertainment, when i can pay $monthly fee for it?) only sees that you need to buy for multiplayer - an idea that i agree with - basically, that while single player is nice - let's face it, it usually forms a TINY part of the time people will play the game for. After all, when some games go multi via mod or standard, some people put in your standard 60-80 (a few hours a week, maybe?) up to the thousands. When you consider that now you've fed your $60 game 2k hours of playtime over the last few years, the value really gets there.

But I mean come on. Anywhere from $30->100 per title? Is a ten hour single player campaign really worth that much money? I mean, to me, a game should take as long to play, or at least provide as much enjoyable time, as the amount of time it takes to work to produce the money for it. Granted, that's 8 hours for a $60 game.

 

When It comes to pirating ive pirated ever type of media going from music, to films, to games to software. However now its all changed, and im not sure when exactly or why, but ive been more motivated to legit media now.

When I got my PS1/PS2 and Xbox I got them chipped straight away so I could download games but since I got my 360 that has changed.

The reason why I pirated games on the old consoles was purely for the reason that I didn’t want to pay £40 on a hyped game, play it and think, ******** I got ripped off and now ive lost £40. A game that comes to mind that got me like that was Final Fantasy XIII, I feel conned.

The only demos you could get on those consoles were those on demo disks attached to game magazines which set you back around £5 each. I refuse to have to pay for demos like that as Im not interested in reading the magazines. So there wasn’t any option to try a game before you buy it.

Therefore I downloaded the full games onto a re-writable disk and try them out and if it was crap then ill try another game and only then if I liked the game, id go and buy it.

Now things have changed with the 360 because new demos are published on xbox live every week or so and I can get to try these games before thinking about purchasing them. Therefore reducing the risk of making a bad choice based on the box cover and loosing £40.

I am happy with every game I bought on the 360 because I got to play it first and try it. There have been some games ive been interested in and tried the demo to think, thank god I have not bought that.

On the PC it was more of a hassle thing. You need a real game to be able to play online and as the only games ive been interested in on the PC are mainly online games, id purchase a legit copy because I don’t like the hassle of getting a copied version and spend days trying to get a stolen serial number to work. You could say the same thing about xbox live. I want to play online and don’t want the risk of loosing my subscription fee by being caught out with a pirate game accessing Xbox live.

Films I buy no matter what because they are cheap with so many deals or the time like 5 for £30 or £3 each. But I do pay £15 for a new release if it’s a film I seen in the cinema and really enjoyed. I prefer to watch films with 5.1 sound and at the resolution it should be. Im tiered of dodgy copies recorded from video cameras and prefer to watch the film how it should be. I still download the odd film but its only while im waiting for the DVD comes out to buy it. I like my library of films and just prefer to own them than have copies, plus it looks nicer if you got all those boxes on the shelve instead of hundreds of DVD spindles stacked up in the living room. The last film I downloaded was earlier in the year and was Children of Men. Before that was Planet Earth Series because I wanted to see what that’s like in HD. Now I want either a PS3 or HD DVD player to buy this series.

A great example why demos work, I would never of picked up a Guitar Herogame because they just looked naff and not my type of game. however, the demo on Xbox Live is the most played demo I ever played because It was there in the download section and I thought what the hell, and now have the real game Guitar Hero III and 2 Wireless Guitar Controllers. If the demo wasn’t there then maybe I would have a chipped 360 and pirated the game but would still end up with the same result in spending nearly £90 in one go like that.

End of the day, Pirating has actually accelerated my spending on media because im trying more than I would usually get to by legal means and therefore end up buying more because I have liked what I seen/heard/played.