I am not a fan of video game pirates. I say this towards those people that have never purchased a video game in their lives and somehow sit on a throne of self-satisfaction without ever thinking of the people that they may have hurt in the process. I am also not entirely a fan of music downloading, but with the rise of spottily and other streaming music services the need to pirate music is on the decline. Not so with video games.

In an article by Rob Crossely writing for develop; the research firm Envision has reported that illegal video game downloads has increased by as much as twenty percent in the UK alone. This to me is very alarming because this isn’t just hurting the big boys, it’s the little people. How can a small indie game company hope to compete in the industry if virtually every single copy of his game is downloaded illegal by some brat that doesn’t feel that he or she needs to buy anything.

Hopefully as gaming moves forward more developers will work with their players to provide their games in such a way that it removes the need to pirate from the equation. In an interview with Gabe Newell, the head of Valve, he feels that “Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable. Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customers use or by creating uncertainty.”

I hope that Gabe is right and that the future will only get brighter. Otherwise we may see even more developers start turning away from PC’s and moving exclusively to consoles where pirating is still a problem, but not nearly as prevalent.

http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/story_type/site_trail_story/interview-gabe-newell/


http://www.develop-online.net/news/39116/Games-piracy-has-climbed-20-since-2006#after_ad