So I guess I'll try my hand at another blog entry.

Piracy has always been a hot topic in the gaming industry, especially in the PC world. It seems that every day we are seeing PC centric developers doing one of two things. Either they blame piracy for low sales as their earnings decline, or they become more and more console centric with every game. I’ve even heard recently that Epic, known for making the popular Unreal series of shooters, will develop their next version of the Unreal engine for consoles primarily. This came as quite a surprise to me coming from a company which was built on an empire of PC games. So the question is this, what effects do piracy actually have, and what can PC developers do about it.

A friend of mine recently introduced me to the work of Matt Mason, who published a book in January concerning piracy, and his ideas are quite interesting. One major point which stuck with me was the question concerning what a company is actually selling. Basically, whenever a company is confronted by piracy, they need to ask themselves, “What product are we actually selling?” The problem I think many PC developers have is that they see their business as selling plastic discs, instead of selling interactive experiences. This is similar to the way Mason describes what happened to the record industry. Large record companies became too focused on selling CD’s, and forgot that they’re supposed to be selling music. They didn’t realize that the form it took was not the point.

In addition to this pinpointing, it is recommended that the companies involved try to compete with the pirates instead of combating them. By blaming pirates for all of the problems of the modern gaming industry, a lot of developers are essentially calling their audience evil bastards. This isn’t exactly the way to win over the hearts of the gaming world. What developers need to do is very similar to one of the outcomes described by Mason in the war between record companies and pirates. As file sharing became more popular, along came iTunes which provided the exact same service as a torrent but for a price. Apple sells its customer’s the convenience of a torrent in a legal method of download. They competed with the pirates and have made millions because of it.

What this eventually comes down to is this, more dev’s need to take advantage of digital distribution. If a company wants to make money with a PC game, they need to not sell it like a console game. Make it as easy to download a game from its official site as it is to find a torrent and see what happens. One doesn’t need to be a hardcore PC gamer to see the success of Valve’s Steam program. They, like Apple, are competing with the pirates and raking in the money because of it. I am not condoning the piracy of PC games, or trying to argue that it has had no affect on the sales of said games. What I am saying is that things change. A capitalistic society is one which is constantly being thrown new technologies which mess with the norms of production. The widespread acceptance of high speed internet connections is just another new technology. PC developers need to stop complaining about it and start using it to their advantage. Thoughts?