Piracy is a hot topic for any PC developer, so when I went to check out Dragon Age: Origins in Edmonton, I took the opportunity to ask BioWare whether a loyal fanbase makes piracy less of a problem and, if not, how the studio deals with it.
"Piracy is always a problem, for all media," answers Mike Laidlaw. "Certainly offering people editions of the game that include bonus items do help encourage them to purchase the title rather than pirate it, as do options like additional content that check for valid copies of the game, these measures help because they don’t penalize the legitimate users of the game by adding additional steps to install or launch, for instance.
"Instead, they offer an incentive to the player who is running a legitimate copy of the game. This is certainly a paradigm shift away from the harsher copy protection we’ve seen in the past, and I think it’s not only working, but appreciated. It creates a friendlier environment for everyone."
Electronic Arts won itself no fans with its continued and insistant use of SecuROM in all of its products. Hopefully BioWare's commitment to treating paying customers with a little more respect will be rewarded. Knowing what pirates are like though, it's a little doubtful.
Jim Sterling serves as reviews editor for Destructoid.com, head of the Podtoid podcast, and produces a number of news stories, original features, one-of-a-kind videos. With his passionate argumentative style, controversial opinions, harsh delivery, and dedication to brutal honesty Sterling is a name that you can't help but recognize.
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Contest:
6:40 PM on 09.04.2009
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I'd point to the music industry and Apple's success with iTunes as a good example of this, except they all acted too late allowing piracy to become a mainstream way of acquiring music content. How much better would they have done if they hadn't let Napster beat them to the punch on digital distribution? How much again better would they have done if they hadn't waited for Apple (a notoriously proprietary company with a vested interest in pushing particular hardware platforms) to break down those barriers, but tying the system to their hardware, pricing, and DRM schemes?
Who knows, but I'd say a whole hell of a lot on the former and a bit on the latter. It's good to see that, at least some, in the video game industry is finally learning starting to learn what should have been obvious from the outset. Make a good product, create a good value proposition for the customer, and don't make it difficult on the people to use what they've paid for. Capitalism would sure run a lot smoother if the people drawn most passionately to it weren't so much more greedy than smart.
Wrong :| Plenty of people who pirate end up buying, most don't but a significant portion still do. Think of it as used game sales for PC, except Gamestop doesn't get the money :P Though piracy of music is far more rampant games aren't QUITE as bad, though they're probably worse at robbing developers of money then used game sales on consoles, the margin probably isn't that wide.
The real crux of it is that there's just not a megahuge PC gamer base anymore, sure it's pretty big and with the lack of licensing fees it can be pretty decent but most PC gamers will just wait a couple of months and the game will drop to at least 1/2 price on ebay (sealed NTSC copies, not just the cheap Euro/Malaysia shit) unless there's a compelling reason for them to buy it straight away (i.e. valves awesome multiplayer games, which I still got at $35 off just for waiting a week and a half).
Though what you said about piracy for music is probably true, they wouldn't have bought those CDs anyway. Piracy is a fact that devs are gonna have to live with, it's fine and well to try and stop it, but when you put something like DRM or more specifically that filth Securerom in a game you make it much much worse. It's a much easier time on pirates then on actual customers (I bring this up cause of the article).
Not @ hpv - Sure Bioware can say they realise this, but fact is they shipped Mass Effect with Securerom, even if it was EAs decision I feel (though I really have no idea) like they didn't fight it. And it's a great time to start "realizing" it when EA has been stepping down it's DRM measures. To me Bioware is just saying this for PR, I personally think they didn't think this for a second before, and now they realized it was a stupid idea they're back-peddling, talking like they knew it all along.
And even if they did, it's not like what they say would matter then is it? Cause it shows that they apparently have absolutely no say in the matter.
The more difficult something is to crack the more interesting and challenging it is to a select group of people.
Once a game is cracked it is shared on many different sites, then stopping the distribution of the pirated material becomes almost impossible.
There is no reason that the retail copies of games should suffer more restrictions or copy protection than digital copies of the games.
It was a terrible idea, it hit the fan multiple times, they're still slow on the uptake, hopefully they're getting better.
I have respect for Starforce though, even though it had terrible beginnings of clotting your comp it was a tough bitch to crack and it took a lot longer then before ;p
Piracy is not stealing, it's copyright infringement. The pirate is illegally duplicating a copyright-protected product, and, therefore, is not *taking* the product away from anyone else. Organisations such as the BSA, RIAA and MPAA suggest this is equivalent to stealing, because of associated revenues lost due to pirating. If you buy into this argument, however, you cannot also accept that pirates will pirate their software no matter the circumstances. The entire argument rests upon the premise that pirates will become legitimate customers if the avenue of piracy is closed to them.
The entire argument is ridiculous because the avenue of piracy will never be closed, and, as others mentioned, many "pirates" are also legitimate customers who purchase a given piece of software.
In any event, the main thing people need to recognize is that copyright-infringement is a crime (no doubt about that), but it's not fricking equivalent to stealing and the fact that so many are willing to equate these things is simply frightening. Next we'll have thought-crime for having a thought someone has a copyright on without paying them for it (we actually already have this in the form of patents, but that's another topic).
And I don't think thousands game devs yet no one conducted a assess about the pros and cons of including DRM. They are computer savvy guy themselves, it's unlikely that none of them ever do some pirating themselves(hence first hand exp). DRM likely is a deliberate choice
btw if you were curious, dont get TA: Kingdoms, it's a terrible game.
Yeah, I know. Kingdoms sucked ass.
On the other hand if you didn't already, make sure you have the core contingency expansion. Cause it really makes TA TA. Other good oldschool rts awesomeness.
Dark Reign
Homeworld
Homeworld Cataclysm
Ground Control <- Fuckign AMAZING Single Player
Conquest: The Frontier Wars
Hostile Waters: Anateous Rising (sorta RTS :P)
that's all thats coming off the top of my head.....
Though you should definetely play Shogo (it's an fps)
Most of em you can get cheap off of ebay, and ground control is free on fileplanet (they give you a key and everything)
Yeah, I have CC. I also have a bunch of mods for it, which really make TA TA. It's just not the same to me without my old favorite units, the Medusa, the Little Brother mobile artillery, and the Karganeth assault mech (which makes the Krogoth look like a tinker toy).
I think I'm going to make a blog post about TA now.
I am one good example that proves everything you say wrong-
I buy games and have bought a number of games that I originally obtained cracked copies of and so far as your other statement, it is the exact opposite. I (and my wife for that matter who is a big sims player) have pretty much stopped PC gaming altogether and have stopped purchasing PC games almost purely out of a hate for DRM schemes and crapware/rootkit installs on my machine, so basically I wasn't turned "legitimate" by making it more difficult- I just stopped buying and turned to console gaming, so they lost sales on me esp. on games that I absolutely would have purchased like spore, sims3 and mass effect (since I only have a ps3 and wii).
@xaliqen
copyright infringement actually isn't a crime (in most states here in the US) it is a liable offense that can be brought to civil court- in most states here you cannot go to jail for "piracy" unless you are selling duplicated materials and then it is a charge of counterfeiting and not infringement (trust me on this one, I have been working in civil courts trials for the last 10 years mainly on B2B IP cases on both sides of the fence).
I like the SPECIAL EDITION argument, ofc it lures some ppl to buy it.
But the DLC/Online check argument sucks ass.
Its sometimes its easy, sometimes its hard bypass or manipulate the check....but its ALWAYS possible.
I know how all of that shit works. AND I AM STRICT AGAINST PIRACY.
I aiming to be one day a game dev/designer and i sometimes afraid about the future.
And sometimes i can understand when a Activision-asshole persuades the ppl to pirate the games. ( I would raise up the prices if i could)
Another big factor is the fault of countries like Russia and China for piracy. You can buy the pirated version there on the fucking market, next to grandmas vegetables. Or in poland, the country i was born, you need to look for some weird guys on the market, go to them, say them what games you want and they will go to a van, burn the games, return to you and you pay a small price.
I have some russian friends, they have played the first pirated pc games i ever saw in my life like BLOOD 1 or DOOM or wolfenstein.
As long as the goverments of this countries dont give the software/game industrie a hand, there will be such a strong piracy rate.
It will always be, but not so strong if we govs would help.
The only thing you can do is try to make the best damn game you can and hope, hope to your deity that fans will like it enough to buy a legitimate copy. I honestly think that Valve suffers from less piracy, because people honestly like the games they make and want to give them money.
Piracy is wrong, yes, but gamers will always do it because most gamers are poor and even with demos, you can never be sure what to spend your money on. With most Valve games, you can be confident of getting a really good product. Not so with most publishers. Rather than take that gamble, many pirate games instead.
If you build up a good track record for releasing stellar games (Valve, Blizzard, Square Enix, Double Fine Productions, even though they only ever made one game) then piracy will drop.
you might as well call it rape or murder or prostitution or kiddie porn- same thing right?.... infringement is infringement and stealing is stealing, if you want to call it something else you sound like a terrorist to me- oh wait no that is something else too huh?
choose your fucking words correctly or you are an idiot.
Releasing content over a secure service. Let's use Xbox Live for an example. Games that are download-only rarely get pirated. There's too much bullshit involved with mucking about with the XBOX HD to play Live games than flashing the XBOX DVD Drive firmware to play discs. It works. Live titles, like arcade games and map packs sell thousands upon thousands of copies with very little piracy compared to physical copy games(unless you're dumb like Bethesda and release your DLC on disk). Steam games seem to only get pirated when released through other channels or mediums.
The point is this - games on disks are obsolete. No one wants to lose fifty+ dollars for a lost disk - if you pay for it once you should have it forever. Manufacturing disks and packaging and shipping all contribute to the rising price of games. Also, by distributing games through secure services online the so called "cost of piracy" is out of the picture.
This would be supreme selling point for multi-console / PC gamers, and I think the loss (in reality) would be negligible, since I don't think people buying the same game on multiple platforms is a real-world source of moderate profit.
This method has means of abuse, but really, what doesn't when it comes to software distribution. Just add a key with game purchase that lets you get your install from 'some storage site' and be off. 1st Dev & Distributor to pickup on this, could do well, IMO. After all, more game purchases = Win, yeah?