Well, it kinda does really. If the publisher is straight up refusing to allow consumers to sample the product, the consumer has three choices on release day: Ignore it entirely and wait for the sales (like me) Buy it without any prior knowledge and hope for the best Get a taste through certain websites Although I don't do it anymore, just because I can't be bothered with the unpacking ISO process of installing a torrent, I thoroughly support ethical Pirates. The ones who want to play a game but can't or won't, whether it's through a lack of funds at the time, the ones who want to try-before-you-buy, even the ones who want to stick a middle finger up to the publisher because they couldn't be arsed releasing a complete game. The Pirates who download, just because they can, they're the ones who truly ruin things and are the archetypal target for DMCA supporters. It's just a shame that the ethical ones get caught in the crossfire.
In my opinion, the only way you change the behavior of the publishers is by doing what you do, or ideally, not buying or playing the game. Piracy contributes to the perceived success and to the hype of the game, which also gives additional justification for not changing the behavior.
Not buying something could also be interpreted as there's no market or interest for the product. People typically won't be able to communicate with the business why they aren't buying a game. Even if they do, its not like the decision makers will ever see it. Piracy on the other hand demonstrates that there is interest in the product but people are unwilling to fork over for it. That at least gives the business something to think about. Most of them deal with it by going nuts with DRM or whatever. After all business, especially big business, is merely one big alpha male mickey measuring contest. So meeting people that are resisting your business model in the middle is probably not even considered an option.
But are people really resisting their business model? I don't really think so, they still consume it. On the other hand, if people stop consuming those and instead only buy games from "good" devs, that will give "big business" something to think about.
Well I would consider consuming the media without paying for it resisting the publishers business model. Their business model being release media and sell it(or a license or whatever) for money.
That could work in the past. Nowadays not so much. Piracy doesn't have that much of an impact, so it fails as a demonstration tool. However, that's just my opinion and how I perceive things.
Because not buying you don't give money to those companies. Piracy still makes you part of the userbase, which means free advertising. EDIT: Regarding the past, I think there was a lot less money involved, and a lot less users, so piracy made a lot more impact back then.
I'm not going to totally dismiss that suggestion, but I think it plays a very small part, if any. I've already said that I've used piracy to determine what games I think are worthy of my time and thus are games I want to support. Once I've identified a worthy game, the amount I pay for it is determined by many things, including how much I want to play the game, balanced with how much cheaper the game might forseeably get in a time I'm prepared to wait. Hence I bought those 4 Nintendo games at release - I really wanted them and knew there wasn't much chance of them being available significantly cheaper - new or used - anytime soon. Admittedly, none of them were able to be pirated, but I was already committed to supporting Nintendo's best games based on previous pirated experience and wanting Nintendo to continue to produce such gems again and again. What every new PC game has to fight more than anything else is the saturation of the market. The backwards compatibility offered by the likes of Steam means there's plenty of great games going for £3-£5, so that it's far easier to resist new games at ten times the price. The reality of digital media is that marginal costs (see the article linked by Squallers will always bring prices right down. Why curb your income on a finished game by pulling it from Steam or keeping prices unrealistically high when you can leave it on reduced and open to sales and pull in additional income and win interest in the IP? TL;DR - the amount of alternative choices and the rate at which games drop in price are much greater factors in how much I end up paying for a game than the fact I could pirate it. Bayonetta 2 and Splatoon both had demos. The other 2 didn't, but are so well established and looked so good pre-launch. Mario Kart 8 was offered with a free download code for one of five other games, so that was completely irresistible. Smash U had nothing other than great hype, great reviews, and the momentum from Smash 3DS. But as I've said, piracy allowed me to develop a trust in Nintendo previously, so I didn't need to try-before-buy in these cases. My Nintendo experience, Nintendo's reputation, plus the hype and reviews, were enough. Going back to the thread title - this discussion has helped me clarify my thoughts and I would say if you love a product then just pirating it and never buying it isn't justified. But if you need piracy to help convince you you love it and then go on to buy it, I don't see the problem. Oooh - I can't wait.....
Excellent thread had to log back in and comment. As well as Steam/Netflix/other streaming or online sites, Amazon Marketplace, Music Magpie and Ebay have helped kill off any will to pirate, if I have an issue with a big studio or the price of something I can go Marketplace and get the physical media secondhand, have a genuine original but deny that studio the money (at a minimum £1.26 or £2.80 for the Amazon postage). I sat here and waited damn near three years for Prometheus to go under a tenner, it's Ridley Scott, you know you can go and watch the other two films he'll make whilst waiting for the price to drop but I wasn't paying 3D money for the second time when it was over £20. His films look so damn good that piracy (on my connection) would be pointless if I've already shelled out for the flat TV and BD player. Cinema chains have fought back with cheaper ticket prices than Blu Rays and (commercially) better films, musicians have upped their game in general, I missed the Prodigy's giveaway of one of the best tracks on their new album and grabbed the CD the first week it came out. It never happened to me personally but I've seen hardware that got wrecked by the wrong pirate software getting downloaded and came with various malware attached (this is within the last 15yrs). So now meh, if people want to pirate let them but I think it's pointless compared to the electric bill having your PC on for that long to DL something massive in HD if you don't have fibre, when the online rentals are 99p to £3.50, or £7-10 and you own that media for good if you like. [EDIT] and right now I'm just not buying a modern console when the gamepads are £40 like the games even before we get into piracy and whether the games work.
The birth of online only games like Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 despite been solo games reduced piracy a lot. Till this day Diablo 3 has not been pirated as the Pirates would have to run a server as 50% of the game runs on blizzard servers still. Starcraft 2 was finally pirated once offline play was added 2 years after launch. The general feeling is most games are been pushed as a online requirement to play. Piracy has harmed PC gaming that way that's for sure.
I did over the summer with a few flicks and finally got fed up having to clean and polish up secondhand Amazon marketplace DVDs, BDs and cases that weren't clean but which Amazon passed for fulfilment (never happened with music books or games, just films for some reason). Now I wait for Amazon itself or Zavvi etc to have it cheap and get a copy that really is brand new and sealed, so I suppose I've just remembered the one disadvantage to my strategy. Agreed with Rollo about PC gaming but more devs should be like Croteam and put in unkillable bosses and time-degrading features. They could even turn the unkillable bosses into freebie DLC for those that paid up for the game. Shame Steam can't solve it entirely.
Yup they are now edging their way up in price as the PC format becomes popular again. Back in 09 the most expensive PC game you could buy was £25 or less. I paid £24.99 for COD MW2 and that was expensive because it was Activision. Now they want £39.99 on Steam, pretty much the same as the console versions. Only difference is there's no licensing fee on the PC (estimated to be around £10 per game on Nintendo and £15 on the Xbone and PS4). So why are we being charged more as PC gaming hits an all time high again?
Because they can. And, as is generally the case, dedicated PC gamers are more cash rich than console gamers (a total generalisation, but whatever) and will not quibble over a tenner here and there. It may also be to make up for the patient gamers like myself, waiting for the price of older games to collapse, so they have to make as much as they can in week one sales.
As long as it is profitable, they continue to charge those prices. That's why I say that those that don't agree with those practices, need to stop giving them money and being a part of the userbase. That's the only way to stop them, in my opinion.
I think a lot of it is to do with Parents buying their kids games that they clamour for so much. 'Mummy! Mummy! I want to new CoD, Fallout, Witcher....' Parent buys games for their child regardless of reviews, rather on what the kid and their friends play and so it continues. The endless rehash (exclude Witcher from that of course) cycle goes on and therefore so does quality control. The parents will buy this stuff for their kids regardless of the price because it's what they're used to. Hopefully the new generation of parents will not buy into this crap and start taking notice. But I doubt it...
Yeah, I'd love that to happen, but I doubt it too. The cynical in me tends to think that people in general are too dependent on mindless consumerism in various things, not just media.
It's not just kids, it's everyone. This is our culture. It was once stories, myths, legends, paintings and plays. Now our cultural references take the form of games and blockbuster movies. Our culture is proprietary and those who can't afford it face social exclusion in one way or another, be it being unable to partake in the same activity as all their friends, or (spoiler alert) Spoiler being unable to join a conversation . Kids feel this more acutely and act upon that feeling with less restraint, but it's a motivating factor for us all. We would undoubtedly be culturally richer society without these artificial barriers to information, so I ask again - Is it ethical to exclude people from the prevailing culture based on economic standing?
But the lack of access has to do with the proprietary nature of our culture, as you say. Since that isn't changing fast enough, we are bound to the system, unless we make an effort to consume only the media that isn't like that. Pirating content isn't the answer. Teach and advocate for content that can't be pirated by definition is.
