The great piracy debate has accomplished only one thing -- the proliferation of alarmist buzz-words to make piracy sound ten times more sinister than it actually is. Industry types used to equate piracy with communism, but that no longer sounds scary enough. Terrorism is all the rage these days, and Japanese game publishers have decided that's the new gold standard when it comes to labeling software pirates. Yes, DS flash carts are just Al Qaeda in another form.
"The fact is that you can download any Nintendo DS game as much as you want, so there's no way to even calculate the damage," explains Association of Copyright for Computer Software president Yutaka Kubota. "This is an issue that affects our national interests, and personally, I see it as a form of information terrorism that is crushing Japan's industry."
Don't get me wrong -- the fact that a game platform's entire library can be ripped off without penalty is somewhat disturbing, and it's a shame that so many good games suffer in sales thanks to so-called hardcore gamers stealing them. However, the reactions from the other side of the fence are just laughable. They need to be looking at ways of using piracy to their advantage, rather than sitting back and making hysterical claims to magazines.
Look what happened to the music industry. Perhaps if record labels had worked with online music distribution instead of fighting it, they wouldn't be on their knees right now. Videogame publishers sometimes seem in danger of going the exact same way.
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:
1:40 PM on 05.21.2009
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Nice use of 'thanks' at the end of the statement.
Should I be arresting them?
Software piracy is generally bad; however it does not compare to going into a cafe and blowing yourself up.
Whether or not they want to embrace this method of digital distribution for titles or not, it's their own damn fault that it's gotten this far already.
Lets not misunderestimate the turrists; they might start putting in subliminable to trick to chillns' in to hitin' Merica.
God bless Merica, thank you.
UMDs suck. They break too easily. But with me on a 3000 I will have to wait for a while to get rid of my crappy plastic disks.
DS cards get lost TOO EASILY. I have lost Metroid Prime Hunters, New Super Mario Bros, Sonic Rush and Mario Kart. All my good ones it seems :( My M3 Real has everything I need. AND I don't have to pay £50 for Metroid Zero Mission! Hooray!
Wii piracy... Why the hell would I pay £40 for Wii Music? I borrowed it off a friend, installed to my HDD, and great. VC... we shouldn't spend money on games we already have.
Xbox... too much trouble.
PS3... 45GB for one game... no thanks. I also need the actual PS3.
PC and Mac... Too easy. Why spend £60 on a program you will hardly use?
If I like it I buy it. Plain and simple. If not I delete it. Doesn't make me a terrorist, I just don't want to waste my monnies :D
though this isn't anything new. It's only growing because it's becoming so easy to find everything on the internet. Nintendo's answer to killing the R4s was the DSi and as you can see, that's already been cracked. Nintendo doesn't need to release a new handheld to stop piracy. That's only going to increase it.
As for digital downloading, it's something that should've been thought up for handhelds since it got big. Granted i'm a person who wants everything (case, game, book, etc.)it does no good if publishers aren't going to even consider doing it. Sony's "somewhat" trying it with the PSP but i'm sure there's a way around it.
So therefore, piracy is best used as a trial service and luggage shrinker, although I am aware from experience that once a major RPG is leaked to the internet a week early (Pokemon Platinum) even a guilty pirate like me might not want to use the retail cart if you have a weeks worth of progress in a save file on an SD card. But in my case, I have vowed that my next playthroughs of Dragon Quest V and Chrono Trigger will be on the retail carts, as well as any other DS RPGs in the future I like enough to buy.
So therefore, piracy is best used as a trial service and luggage shrinker, although I am aware from experience that once a major RPG is leaked to the internet a week early (Pokemon Platinum) even a guilty pirate like me might not want to use the retail cart if you have a weeks worth of progress in a save file on an SD card. But in my case, I have vowed that my next playthroughs of Dragon Quest V and Chrono Trigger will be on the retail carts, as well as any other DS RPGs in the future I like enough to buy.
I had been holding out because I generally buy all the games I feel are worth buying but I finally got fed up with the DS's dearth of crap games that I don't play for more than 15 minutes.
Not to mention that Nintendo brand games are far more expensive than the other games and they NEVER drop in price. Portable systems are often about impulse buys for me, so when I see an older game that I thought looked cool for $10-15 I'll buy it, but Nintendo games NEVER hit that price. Also, most of them are just rehashes or ports of older games diminishing their value to me.
In any case, I've only used my R4 for two things: 1- Pokemon Platinum (I previously bought Diamond so I wanted to see if it was markedly better. It really wasn't) and 2- Culdcept DS (it's a fan translation of the JP version which apparently is never going to see a US release.)
If anyone wants more info on the Culdcept DS stuff, send me a PM and I'll hook you up.
But since I'm here, I'll offer my suggestions for a digital download future: insert the manual into the game. If you've played Retro Game Challenge, you know what I'm thinking of.
I test games of multiple genres, including those that I would have never looked twice at otherwise. And yes, my not R4 has encouraged SEVERAL (read: about 8 or 9) cart purchases that I would not have made otherwise.
Sure, it'd be easy to just keep the games on the R4 and play whenever I want, but I actually WANT the games industry to survive. So I buy games also. It's the only way to go, IMHO.
By that definition, anyone speaking against the USA or any of it's actions, or wanting a re-evaluation of our so called "Democracy" is instantly a terrorist. Look up force, and then wonder why they are using it separately from violence.
The more you know...
Terrorism... what the shit.
World of Goo? Great game, almost everybody agrees. Piracy rate? 80-90%. Publishing company? Bankrupt. Knock it off guys.
Drinking and smoking isn't against the law and it doesn't hurt the producers of cigarettes or alcohol - in fact, it helps them.
I'm under no delusions - piracy is never going away, I'm just disappointed that the current generation is so selfish that they actually try to justify it as "the right thing" and "good" and demonize companies trying to protect their own interests and survival as bad, evil, stupid, and in the way of some sort of progress. Try being one of the guys that produces this often stolen media, it changes your perspective a little. Work in film sure as hell changed mine.
Wow, you really just took what I wrote and decided to make your own meaning up, didn't you?
I should also clarify that I agree with your article, I just have a pet peeve that I get carried away with. Sorry about that. Calling piracy "information-terrorism" is a gross misuse of terminology that will likely do little to nothing to help their cause.
I should also clarify that I agree with your article, I just have a pet peeve that I get carried away with. Sorry about that. Calling piracy "information-terrorism" is a gross misuse of terminology that will likely do little to nothing to help their cause.
Using the music industry example. When record labels were busy shutting down sites like Napster, they did not think to instead try and work with such sites to make money, rather than trying to close them and demonizing their customers. There are ways you can make money from the current situation and to entice people to pursue more economically friendly avenues of game acquisition. Steam is one of them.
The fact of the matter is, many big-name publishers are acting exactly like major record labels did in the nineties. History will repeat itself unless publishers wise up and realize that piracy is here to stay, and they have to roll with the punch rather than attempting to absorb it and refuse to change their stance.
As much as it displeases me, legal and "right" are not synonyms.
It looks like we simply disagree on what "using piracy to your advantage" means. What you described sounds less like "using piracy" to me than "combating piracy" with intelligent business practices. Those actions are designed to lower piracy rates by providing a service that is more convent to the user than downloading the content illegally, or "better support" in high piracy areas. Your example is probably the first I've seen in the guise of "using piracy to their advantage" that wasn't a call for developers/publishers to use piracy as "advertising," championing illegal distribution as good for the industry.
But yes, Valve is exactly what I'm talking about - they are a company that is reinventing and reevaluating content distribution to face the chaining industry. It's my opinion that they shouldn't have to, but it can't be avoided - they are fighting a force that can't be stopped through conventional means.
As I said, I was knowingly being a little unreasonable because of a pet peeve. I agree with your formed opinion, but your delivery of said opinion struck a chord with me - I disagree with your terminology.
So you are suggesting we make piracy legal, and find a way to "use it?"
(This was the parallel you were making to prohibition, correct? The problem with this is that the crime in trafficking drugs and alcohol that came out of prohibition came out of something that was previously legal and enjoyed being banned. Piracy would only be comparable to the illegal sale of drugs and alcohol if it was a response to Video Games being outlawed, which it is not. These things were only made legal again after the crime got out of hand and it was determined that controlled distribution system would lower crime rates - whereas for video games we already have a controlled and legal distribution system.)
I just don't think this people should even be allowed to brag or publicise their piracy habits on a gaming website (that has a symbiotic relation with the industry), and not even be condoned. Piracy won't just go away, sure, and many of the DRM implementations are bullshit, but the current gamer audience also needs to be "educated" by their peers.
(Can already imagine Jim doing a post along the lines of "Piracy is bad kids, don't do it. LOLz").
@Syn
The way you're talking, it seems you wont mind on a "creative" tax over your ISP bill, because that's how governments turn alcohol into profit.
The form of media isn't the problem, the problem is your treatment of your possessions.
the point is that this is the information age. as time goes on, information becomes more easily accessible to wide-spectrum audiences, and easier to share between individuals in that audience. trying to enforce some sort of wide anti-piracy movement (I'm not saying this is what you're doing, but it is what the music industry has been trying to do for ages) is an exercise in futility and ends up criminalizing citizens for increasingly insignificant acts. digital downloads are here to stay, but that doesn't mean piracy is. the long term solution is to find a way to reconcile the convenience and abundance of mainstream media downloads with the ownership and profitability of distributed work by artists and designers. however, we've got to leave that up to the business guys, because I have no idea how to do that.