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untitledavFeb 2, 2012
People will still buy new releases and piracy cannot be stopped
dougrochfordFeb 2, 2012
Stop charging so much for games? Do you really only want me to be able to buy a select few games at MAXIMUM per year at $60? I haven't been downloading any games, but I would much rather buy the 10 or 20 games that I missed out on this year for an acceptable price instead of buy 2 $60 games and cry about how I can't afford to play the rest. As game designer, I want the most people to experience my work and art. I also know that we do lose some sales to piracy but we also gain a lot of new fanbase from things such as bit torrent. - dougrochford
mawdsFeb 3, 2012
This is why I wait for games to drop in price. They usually do after a couple of months.
Or get preowned.
mrzaikoFeb 3, 2012
For a COD game. You end up paying more than $60, when you include the extra maps... Its ridiculous. My black ops game is worth $12 on any store while they keep selling it for 60.
wipisFeb 3, 2012
I noticed the other day while buying some books online. New was about $15, digital was about $10 (reduced price, great!) but the kick in the nuts was the used copy was about $3. I like hard-cover books as much as the next guy but in buying books (or movies or music) there is often little incentive to buy a new or digital book.
I like what Radiohead did a while back with In Rainbows. Not only did they do the pay what you want but they also sold the physical record and CD. When buying the record or CD (or the fancy box set with extra art and such) it included the digital download so you didn't need to worry about ripping the CD or even opening the record if you wanted to listen to the music. (FYI I know audiophiles want to listen to the record because it "sounds better" but the truth is that music was recorded and mixed by computers. It's already been digitized.)
So if I buy the hard-cover, limited edition (or even the paper-back) of a new book I should get the e-book download with it for free. I'll put my fancy book on the shelf (saving the binding) and read the e-book on my Nook.
elimgarakFeb 3, 2012
Yes, the audio was digitized when it was mixed, but it was digitized at a MUCH higher sample rate than what you get when you rip it.
wipisFeb 3, 2012
Unless you download the FLAC format.
elimgarakFeb 3, 2012
Then you get huge files.
neondistractionFeb 3, 2012
You know, $60 bucks has been the going rate for new video games dating back to the NES. If you account for inflation games have actually gotten cheaper.
rglarson13Feb 3, 2012
I agree about the inflation part, but NES games used to be $40. Then SNES and Genesis games were $50, as well as most PSX games, although a few (e.g.,FFVII) started at $60, and then once the PS2 and the Xbox showed up, games have been $60 ever since.
neondistractionFeb 4, 2012
There were some NES titles that were 55-60 bucks when first released. Not all of them, but the big-name AAA titles were. Super Mario Brothers 3, for example, retailed in that range. I was there, I remember.
rglarson13Feb 3, 2012
So, if I understand you correctly, your argument is that getting a game right away isn't worth anything, and games should be as cheap when they come out as they are after a year?
Donuts4UFeb 2, 2012
Every study says pirates spend more. Some test and buy, some test and trash it, some test, trash and buy the next one, when their wallet allows. If pirates like your stuff, they will buy it too. Not the same day maybe, or even the same game, but you will get a sale if the experience was good. You're competing for customer experience and that subtle thing that made pet rocks so valuable.
Industry has to get over the brick and mortar approach of looking at electronic bits and bytes as some sort of inventory that can be tracked last in first out, first in last out or which has to be counted at all.
You can't count bits and bytes, you have to count sales and customer loyalty.
elimgarakFeb 3, 2012
If a company is losing 90+% of its revenue on a game that cost millions to make, then the fact that you might buy their next game doesn't help them much. It doesn't help them pay their bills.
http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_4.html
Donuts4UFeb 3, 2012
You assume those games would be bought. That assumption is both erroneous and fallacious. There is no net loss of revenue, I argue there is a net gain in revenue from piracy.
elimgarakFeb 3, 2012
And I disagree strongly. Pretty much everyone can afford $20 for a game. Do you have some evidence that supports your point of view?
Donuts4UFeb 3, 2012
It's not a theory that pleasurable experiences both increase the addiction to the experience and cause behaviors that cause the experience to be repeated and decrease the time between experiences.
Pirates -have- to get the next release, now.
elimgarakFeb 3, 2012
1. That's not evidence.
2. That's why you do a demo.
3. I can't believe that 90% of the people would rather not buy the game at all than not pirate it. Some will certainly just not play the game if they can't pirate it - but many will.
rglarson13Feb 3, 2012
Untrue. Studies say that pirates are more likely to go to concerts (and buy swag), which is not the same as buying games.
That's a far cry from spending more generally.
Donuts4UFeb 3, 2012
Nope. Pirates spend more period. Although no doubt ICP fans probably skew the statistics a bit. Nevertheless movie pirates spend more at the box office than non-pirates. I won't bother linking as a simple google search will counter the well known and laughed at statistics producers pump out, such as the one above.
elimgarakFeb 4, 2012
"Browncoat it. Make it pay forward.
DRM is a joke. Seriously, do you really think something that compiles can be protected? That's not a 'threat" it's a fact of the operating system."
Have you ever worked with DRM? Have you personally tried to disassemble and deal with DRM code? Encrypted code? Obfuscated code? Components that encryt and decrypt parameters on the fly when data was passed between functions? Even components that detect debugging and trash the stack when a debugger is attached?
I have. And it is not a joke - it is actually pretty complex and complicated.
Yes, given enough effort you can indeed disassemble any system, since computers are finite state machines. The point of DRM however is to make that as difficult as possible. If it is so difficult as to not be worth the effort, and if the system has some sort of recovery mechanism to handle breaches, then DRM is indeed quite useful and makes sense.
For example, if it takes a hacker weeks or months to breach a system, and if the system can recover in a couple of days, then it is quite worth it.
What does "browncoat it" or "make it pay forward" mean?
jerroldsFeb 2, 2012
Gotta think a bit outside the box, any baked in deterrents and DLCs will be cracked. As cool as Catwoman was in Batman AC - it was almost immediately cracked and included in the game.
But the 2 that could work in curbing piracy
1. Making them way cheaper (Steam sales) - people with actual jobs like paying for things they think have value
2. Community - leaderboards, stats, in game video uploads, contests, etc
3. Physical perks - get a limited edition toy or t-shirt or something in the mail
4. Free/Early access to another game's content (Diablo III beta)
I dunno - piracy is part of the ecosystem, can always try to use it like the creators of Minecraft.
elimgarakFeb 3, 2012
Nah, I doubt that would work. Look at World of Goo - no intrusive DRM, leader boards, available on Steam for only $20, and a 90% piracy rate. :-(
jerroldsFeb 3, 2012
Ya that sucks - but i meant, for buying customers (aka have to register with valid key) they get the extra stuff, pirated copies wont be able to register and get the goodies.
Still sucks though. I try to buy my stuff from Steam when they have those awesome sales.
elimgarakFeb 3, 2012
So what would stop a pirate from packaging up this extra stuff and sending it out to other people? Without DRM it would be just a few extra components, after all.
Donuts4UFeb 3, 2012
Browncoat it. Make it pay forward.
DRM is a joke. Seriously, do you really think something that compiles can be protected? That's not a 'threat" it's a fact of the operating system.
untitledavFeb 2, 2012
Do not stop piracy?
slindenFeb 3, 2012
I can't believe that no one has mentioned the fact that "one piece of software pirated != one lost sale." Those "millions" of people pirating the game will not all go out and buy it if they suddenly can't play the pirated version.
D1gst1llsuxFeb 3, 2012
true, most of the s**t I pirate I would never pay for anyway. Photoshop is about $600, I would never buy that program, but it is fun to play with.
elimgarakFeb 3, 2012
Not all would pay for it - but some would. Depending on the game and on how much it cost, many would. E.g. most people can afford $20 for World of Goo (when it first came out). 90% of the players chose not to pay that.
elimgarakFeb 2, 2012
Unfortunately whoever wrote that article doesn't understand what DRM is and what it is for. DRM is used in games primarily to make it harder to disassemble the game, as well as to tie the game to a specific PC. That makes it harder for pirate to copy the game to another machine and play it.
Now let's look at the proposed solutions:
1. Bake in Deterrents. Without a way to detect that the game was pirated there is no way to instantiate the scorpion. Without code security a pirate will just find the scorpion detection code and remove it. Therefore, some DRM code is required.
3. Perks. Without DRM, how do you make sure that a pirate doesn't just copy the perk files over?
The rest of the methods are reasonable, but I am not holding my breath for most of them.
esc27Feb 2, 2012
Except DRM is useless. All it takes is one pirate to break through (almost always happens) or better yet someone to leak the code from within the company and all that DRM is useless. Pirates just download the cracked copy and legit users get a lesser experience.
elimgarakFeb 2, 2012
It's not utterly useless - it is just not nearly sufficient in some cases, and completely detrimental in others. It does however prevent most would-be pirates from copying the game. This reduces the number of copies and game variations available on-line.
That limited number of variations makes it easier to do things like lock down on-line services. If there is only one copy of the game available, with/tied to one activation key, then the key can be revoked when used too many times.Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.
neondistractionFeb 3, 2012
Ok, name ONE game that couldn't be cracked.
elimgarakFeb 3, 2012
Why? I didn't say it makes things impossible to crack. I said it makes things HARDER. A computer is a finite state machine - ultimately you can untangle and crack anything.
My point is that it does help simplify the problem by at least reducing the number of variations of the game out in the wild, and the number of people who copy the game. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry can't just copy the game over. It is a little bit harder than that - instead of millions of versions of the game being pirated, there are only a handful out in the field - and those versions are much easier to block and/or target for things like on-line incentives.
You could argue that DRM is hurting the game industry more than it is helping, but I would disagree. Consider that there are many, many millions of copies of each game being pirated. The number of legitimate gamers not buying a game because of DRM is far smaller than the number of people pirating the game. According to estimates 70% of people play a pirated version of some games, if not more.
http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_4.html
Look at COD:MW2 for example. 4700k downloads from torrent, compared to 200-300k purchases from Steam and retail. That's an over 90% piracy rate on PC.
This is killing PC game sales. And destroying some awesome game companies that would still be making great games if they could actually get payed for their work. Remember for example that MW2 cost 40-50 million to make, and 200 million to market.
Or look at World of Goo - the game has no intrusive DRM, is relatively cheap at 20 bucks, and is available on Steam. Despite that the piracy rate for the game is about 90%.
neondistractionFeb 3, 2012
It makes it harder to crack for the people that actually do the cracking, but once that's done they post the crack online and any random dumbass capable of following simple instructions can pirate any game he wants. You make it sound like DRM is having some effect on the ability of most people to pirate, but that's not true. All it does is punish those that actually paid money for it.
Take a look at what happened with Assassins Creed 2, for instance. On more than one occasion their verification servers were down for several days in a row, during which time anyone that actually paid money for the game was unable to play it, meanwhile all the people that pirated it were playing with no issues at all.
If you want to discourage piracy, the first step would be to make it so that the pirated version of your product isn't the superior one.
esc27Feb 3, 2012
"Look at COD:MW2 for example. 4700k downloads from torrent, compared to 200-300k purchases from Steam and retail. That's an over 90% piracy rate on PC."
That just proves the failure of DRM. That game had DRM (in the form of requiring Steam to play.) The pirates clearly weren't friends making simple copies for each other, but people using bittorrent to download copies ripped by experienced hackers.
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There is something to be said for simple measures that help keep people honest. One interesting study I read about a while back observed an office where coffee was sold on the honor system. Many people paid for the coffee, but a significant number did not. Simply putting a picture of a face on the coffee pot. Any face be it human or a kitten greatly reduced the number of thefts. It worked on a psychological level to help people think about what they were doing and associate the theft with harm to another being.
To reduce small time copying of a game between friends a license code and simple, polite request attached to a photo of the dev team would do wonders. No it wouldn't stop everyone, but it would leave legitimate customers feeling appreciated and owning a better product. and which is more likely to be successful in the long run, treating all your customers like criminals in effort to stop the significant number that will pirate no matter what DRM you use, or treating the ones who do buy your product fairly and respectfully in hopes of keeping them as legitimate customers and maybe even increasing your paid customer base.
elimgarakFeb 3, 2012
"On more than one occasion their verification servers were down for several days in a row, during which time anyone that actually paid money for the game was unable to play it, meanwhile all the people that pirated it were playing with no issues at all."
First of all, there were issues with pirate copies of the game - they didn't work right. Second, I am pretty sure that the makers of the game made more money by having this DRM, despite any server trouble.
"If you want to discourage piracy, the first step would be to make it so that the pirated version of your product isn't the superior one."
Done. "World of Goo". Cheap, non-invasive DRM, can be installed on any machine with Steam. 90% of all copies of this game are pirated. Next idea?Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.
neondistractionFeb 3, 2012
That's funny, because I pirated AC2 out of spite, and never once did I have a problem with it. Yeah, in the first month there were a couple of issues that popped up with certain parts of the game not loading properly, but once they were identified there was a fix issued shortly.
And I said 'discourage piracy' not prevent it. The cold hard truth is that you can't eliminate piracy, it's not possible. All the money ubisoft spent on their fancy DRM system didn't stop anyone that wanted to pirate it from doing so. The smart developers have realized and accepted this.
elimgarakFeb 3, 2012
"The smart developers have realized and accepted this"
And went out of business. Or just stopped making games for PCs.
Like I said - at a 90% piracy rate for a 40 million dollar game you just can't win. Or at least you have to sell millions of copies to just break even (considering that the developer gets a fraction of the money).
neondistractionFeb 4, 2012
Yeah, the maker of Minecraft is totally out of business. And Valve, man they're really struggling right now too.
elimgarakFeb 4, 2012
"Yeah, the maker of Minecraft is totally out of business."
Minecraft is an Indie game and a special case. It is just one guy selling this very popular game - even if he gets 95% piracy, he still makes profit.
"And Valve, man they're really struggling right now too."
Valve is even more of an edge case.
Valve has two businesses - it distributes games on Steam taking 30-40% of each sale, and it makes a couple of very popular games.
Steam is obvious - Valve doesn't really need to develop anything new there. Or nothing substantial anyway - it is a distribution channel. Valve is basically the main and major force in on-line distribution business. It sells hundreds of millions of games - so even with enormous piracy of all of the games on Steam, it still makes more than enough money.
With the handful of Valve original games - basically Half-Life and Portal - piracy is indeed a factor. But once again scale is key. Portal sold 4 million copies outside of Steam. That's already plenty to make profit for a game developer. It must have sold at least 2x more than that on Steam - and that would be pure profit since Valve wouldn't need to pay to a distributor.
The problem is that most games don't sell that many copies. Most very good games - if they don't stand out, then the corporation loses money. With games costing tens of millions of dollars, most game companies are one mediocre game away from going out of business.
elimgarakFeb 3, 2012
"That just proves the failure of DRM. That game had DRM (in the form of requiring Steam to play.)"
That is the most basic version of DRM out there. It doesn't prove the failure of DRM - if anything it proves the failure of Stream to prevent piracy. DRM is a very big term that describes all sorts of protection technologies. You can't condemn them all because a single system failed.
"The pirates clearly weren't friends making simple copies for each other, but people using bittorrent to download copies ripped by experienced hackers."
Doesn't matter - it's the same principle. Friends making copies for each other also take away sales.
"One interesting study I read about a while back observed an office where coffee was sold on the honor system."
I doubt very much that this can be implemented at any sort of scale.
"and which is more likely to be successful in the long run, treating all your customers like criminals in effort to stop the significant number that will pirate no matter what DRM you use,"
It will not help everyone, but I am sure that you can make things difficult enough if you implement the system properly. Look at WMDRM and its breach response scheme. It has been breached, but that happens very rarely, and is patched pretty damn quickly. If you do something where a pirate has to spend several weeks to crack a game, and the crack is made useless within a day or two, then piracy would decrease drastically.
"or treating the ones who do buy your product fairly and respectfully in hopes of keeping them as legitimate customers and maybe even increasing your paid customer base."
What's more likely is that piracy will simply kill many/most PC gaming. Piracy rate on consoles is a fraction of the rate on PCs.Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.
rglarson13Feb 3, 2012
DRM is far from useless. It keeps people honest. Sure, you're going to have the dedicated pirates, but DRM isn't intended for them (or at least, it's not anymore) -- DRM is all about keeping Little Timmy from making a copy of Little Jimmy's game.
trivialanomalyFeb 3, 2012
Lol. You cannot 'stop' piracy, same as you cannot 'stop' other illegal activities.
elimgarakFeb 3, 2012
Yea, why even have police? You cannot "stop" murders. Don't even try. We are wasting so much money on paying cops!
trivialanomalyFeb 3, 2012
Oh, don't get me wrong - I'm all for piracy being illegal, with reasonable (unlike what is happening at the moment) penalties. But thinking that it can be 'stopped' is naive.
elimgarakFeb 3, 2012
Hmm... Well, it depends on the mechanism. I don't think there are that many people that pirate WOW. And you can set these types things for multiplayer games as well.
I wonder if the Assassin's Creed 2 system worked - they didn't have that much DRM, and all you had to do was be connected to the internet when starting the game. They reduced the requirements for network connectivity to minimum. Unless somebody was able to successfully remove that requirement and all the hooks to it, that anti-piracy system should have worked.
D1gst1llsuxFeb 3, 2012
One might think that MaximumPC could afford to hire some editors, that article was horribly written and contains numerous logical and spelling errors.
tomgfromcanadaFeb 2, 2012
yes it would work
christa_visser_laneFeb 2, 2012
Great!
jamboidFeb 3, 2012
The number of pirates is related to the "hassle of buying" vs the "hassle of pirating".
"hassle" includes factors such as monetary cost, risk of getting caught and difficulty installing and playing the game etc.
You CAN increase the "hassle of pirating" with DRM in a naive attempt to reduce piracy, but you are simultaneously increasing the "hassle of buying" by a *MUCH* greater amount and this causes an even greater number of people to move to piracy.
A better solution is to reduce the "hassle of buying" by making games cheaper, providing better customer care, releasing games when they're actually finished and so on.
If you DO want to make the "hassle of pirating" higher it must not come at the expense of the legitimate buyer. Find some other way of doing it!
gkiltzFeb 3, 2012
Do what the industry has done:Make the product so bad you would have to be a brain-damaged chimp on weed to want it!!!
jamboidFeb 3, 2012
DRM serves only to harm paying customers. It has NO EFFECT on the pirates.
Pirates are far too busy swashbuckling and walking planks to worry about if some game can only be installed 3 times.
nicksteryFeb 2, 2012
App store apps are rarely illegal because their so darn cheap and easy to get. Games don't need to be massive but easy to obtain, work well and affordable.
Hard core gamers like it hard core (incl price), but for regular gamers, simple is best (I think)
elimgarakFeb 3, 2012
World of Goo. App store game - on Stream. $20. A small game that is very easy to obtain. 90% piracy rate.
nicksteryFeb 3, 2012
I'm proven wrong ;(
Thx elimgarak
elimgarakFeb 4, 2012
Yea, I just found out about it myself. I wanted to go into game development, but this is a pretty depressing statistic for PC gaming. Unless I spend quite a bit of time on a DRM implementation. :-(
BrushTeethFeb 2, 2012
Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherf**king snakes on this motherf**king plane!
alison49990000Feb 3, 2012
one way to do it. here.. why dont all these big players do this i do not understand.... http://bit.ly/nu00UJ