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Personally I think piracy sucks arse as it's undeniable that every time a game is pirated a company risks losing a sale.

 

To paraphrase Chris Rock, I'm not going to pirate it, but I can understand. My options are, either wait and pay a silly amount, or pirate it. I'm doing neither. Regional schemes for things like games and films should have died off long ago, regional pricing should be dying off now, but it seems it's just too big a cash cow.

 

If 5,000 people pirate a game, does that mean 5,000 lost sales? The companies would like you to think so, but there's no way to prove any single one of those people would have bought the game if it had not been available as a torrent or whatever. Perhaps all of them simply wanted it for free and would never have bought it no matter what the price. I feel that reality lies somewhere between. A good chunk of them probably pirate it because they don't have the money, but my point is I have no proof. This is just my opinion, not fact, and the one thing I'm not going to do is punish people because I think my opinions are facts. Unlike, say, every company who ever sold a game.

 

When it comes to the indie stuff, be it film, music, games, whatever, I'll happily buy it because they don't shit all over the product and tell me it's chocolate. Everyone got to buy World of Goo, for instance, from 2D Boy's site, same price, no taking the piss.

 

Someone's pirating Call of Duty and Bobby Kotick can't afford a new solid gold yacht? Couldn't care less.

 

EDIT : Hey FA this thread has been dead for 2 years. What happened lol

 

I choked to death on my own rage.

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I've been thinking about piracy in relation to availability, and decided that's got a lot to do with why DRM hasn't been stamped out. It's got nothing to do with long-term piracy prevention, the entire goal is to force those people who want it "as soon as possible" to buy it. The theory is that this group makes up the majority of those who'll get the game in the first place, plus launch day prices tend to exceed what people are willing to pay five months later.

 

That is to say, it's a stalling mechanic. If it can hold up for, say, one week, then the DRM has done its job - the majority of people who could've bought the game and wanted to have it, would've bought it within that period. The publishers care more about those initial short term sales then they do about the long term, because in the long term, sales figures are going to drop anyway (as will the prices people are willing to pay for an aging product).

 

This makes a bit of sense when you consider that an otherwise good game can bomb if launched at the same time as another game people perceive as better. The sales figures won't eventually "even out" over time, because the bulk of them are always racked up in the first few weeks.

 

With this point of view, it could even be argued that game DRM works. Many games that are touted as "cracked" on launch are only half done - for example, GTAIV had a ton of cracks floating around, most of which did let you play the game, but didn't catch all the "landmines" built into the code which caused the camera to sway around the screen randomly and any car you attempted to drive to explode within about a minute (meaning that there was no point to playing). All the cracking groups trip over themselves to be the "first" to release a crack, so no testing got done, and no working cracks got released.

 

Presumably some are out by now, but who cares? The bulk of the intended market will've bought the game long before that happened.

 

Of course, this all only applies to games and DRM. Attempts at DRM or staggered regional releases in regards to music just piss people off (which, yes, ups the piracy rate), and hence make no sense to me.

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Regional schemes for things like games and films should have died off long ago, regional pricing should be dying off now, but it seems it's just too big a cash cow.

 

Hmmm... FA, I'd LOVE to agree with you. In a way I definitely do, as a brief history of my internet past would show... But I don't think you're completely correct here. One has to compare digital products to any other product in some way at least - and I definitely see companies lowering the price in a certain region when they are trying to break into a new market etc..

Actually I can't see a good reason to prevent a company from releasing a product in a certain region sooner and cheaper than elsewhere, it is their product anyway. As far as I'm concerned, they can give it away as long as it is not a move to destroy the competition, as was the case with Internet Explorer.

 

Please don't kill me in X-COM AAR. ;)

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and I definitely see companies lowering the price in a certain region when they are trying to break into a new market etc..

 

Absolutely. Mostly, when competing, you lower your price versus similar products. Or you raise it, if you have a good brand with more perceived value (Apple, for instance). That's competition, and that is how you generally lever your way into an area.

 

Actually I can't see a good reason to prevent a company from releasing a product in a certain region sooner and cheaper than elsewhere, it is their product anyway.

 

I'm not trying to stop companies doing this, I don't want to pass an act of international law to compel them to apply the same price everywhere, I want them to realise that it's hurting their sales. I don't mind paying a little bit more for something than in the US, there are extra costs with bringing any product to another country, even digitally, but that doesn't justify more than doubling the price.

 

I understand that in the US, there's going to be more of that type of music, a higher background level, if you will. So they need to price competitively to sell. I also understand that in the UK and other countries, the background level might not be so high, so they can afford to charge a little more. But that argument is redundant now with the Internet. I can get any music I want within five, ten minutes. Even legally, there are bands releasing tracks, EPs, and albums for free on their websites. They often don't care what region you're in, and when they do the security is so light it's pretty much a knowing nod to the fact that people from other regions are going to DL it (e.g. a zip code checker. Now, if only there was a global information network that let you look up zip codes...).

 

The way I see it, the company is being a little spiteful. So, is it any surprise that people are a little spiteful in return, and pirate? Whenever you release anything now, you have to face the fact that you are competing against the pirates. You have to give people a reason not to pirate. The first unreasonable thing you do, you lose sales. The second, more sales. The third, more sales. And if a pirated version isn't available, and you're being difficult about your product (hello Ubisoft) people just won't buy it.

 

Pretending that the Internet only exists in avenues that work for you, and not the consumer, blows up in your face. In this example, they use the Internet to advertise to everyone. Everyone goes to the site, sees the album is available now, and toddles off to get it. But if you live in 95% of the world's population (or more accurately, the 1.75 billion or so who have access to the Internet) you're out of luck. But that same channel they use for advertising could be used for sales. They could sell the album there, to everyone.

 

Basically, the way I see it is this. I want the album. The album is not on sale to me. For no reason. So if I want it, I have to pirate it. Why do companies put people in this position in the first place? They have no reasonable explanation, other than "Well, if you wait a month and then pay twice as much, you can have it." which is going to fall flat on its face as an argument in any market.

 

*Company A want you to wait a month, and pay twice as much as when they were selling it to those guys over there.

 

*Company B want you to have it for free.

 

Except Company B are pirates, and all they ask (if torrenting) is you stay online for maybe an hour, uploading the file to others. It all occurs at a remove, you never see the artist suffer, you're helping rip off a bunch of arseholes in suits sat around a table going "We need to rape more markets!", and you have lost nothing and gained some music.

 

Obviously, that's not always accurate, but that's the perception of it. I mean, why am I here, writing this? Is the Internet not a salesman's dream, a virtual shop window where you can present your goods however you like and sell them to anyone in the world? They want to sell music, so sell me some bloody music. Don't put people in this position where their choices are either the company losing out or themselves, because the company will end up bleeding.

 

The friend who recommended the band to me also mentioned they're touring the UK. There is no chance I am going to see them. I wouldn't go if a ticket popped through my letterbox right now. As BB pointed out, the 5-10 minutes I spent futilely trying to spend money on them whipped me up into a fine, creamy rage and I suspect I shall be here for quite some time raving about The Man.

 

If you're going to advertise something to people, make sure you sell it to them. As BB also pointed out, if they feel they need DRM to protect initial sales, fine, go ahead. Better yet, limit me to the two devices I listen to music on (my PC and my phone), and perhaps time-limit the DRM to three months, so that the first sales explosion is protected, and then I get to do whatever the Hell I want with my files. But for the love of God, sell it to me.

 

As it is, I'll see the album in a year or two in a bargain bin for

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DRM nostalgia...

Heh. Reminds me of the Ultima games, eg in UVII where they gave you a physical map and then asked you the longitude/latitude of certain locations. Only bloody EA didn't supply a map with my copy, meaning it was many years indeed until I got out of the first town (you could mess around in there as much as you liked without the map).

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  • 10 months later...
The "I.T. Crowd" version of that ad is genius if you've not seen it yet and get a chance to catch it on YouTube:

 

Yeah, I always remember this version when forced to watch that original ad, makes it far less annoying.

 

And the ending makes me to look behind every time I visit rapidshare, just to be sure :)

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  • 1 month later...
I miss the times were games were not that popular are the market wasn't fighting about customers and the devs were making games for your entertainment - you played for better equipment not buy better equipment or there wasn't this bullshit - "buy here from us now and you will receive ultimate doomsday weapons of uber destruction - why should you struggle with this game we will make it easier for you". (i've just read the description of kingdom or amatur on origin - the bottom advertisement line just made me facepalm so hard that my face fell off).
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I think that the anti=piracy crap has gotten way too out of hand, and it should be discontinued overall. Well, that should only count in PC Games.

 

I don't mind a little advertising in a movie, tv show, etc. Some games, yeah, there could be some advertising too, in the background. Like vending machines, etc. The only thing I don't want to see is either a futuristic game with today's ads or a historical (either an actual historical game, or even a fantasy game) that has modern advertising in it.

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  • 1 month later...

It depends on the local laws and may differ state from state. For example where I live, it never mind from which source I got and installed the game as long as I use a valid (bought) SN. And I am forbidden to use anything circumventing the DRM (if present, and it usually is), so no no-cd cracks even on legal SW, it would be otherwise considered illegaly obtained even if you still have a bill from the store :argh:

 

So if you are really interested you have to dig into the paragraphs of your local DRM law, but the chance someone finds you are using a cracked copy of something is imho nonexistent. And your morality remains untouched since you paid for the program you're using.

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