Piracy

[icycalm]

PC Game Piracy
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/pc_game_piracy/

You can bitch all you want about only being able to sell a game in China for $15 instead of $50-$100 (cry me a river, by the way), or you can shut the fuck up and actually deal with the market situations.

I wonder how exactly they would deal with that. If publishers started selling their games for $15 in China, my guess is we'd have riots on our hands in the rest of the civilized world. (I realize that Americans pay less than Europeans, and no riots have resulted from this, but that's only because the price difference is not as great as it would be with the hypothetical scenario of games in China costing $15 a pop.)

Note: I do not mean the word 'riots' literally.

Way I see it, that's the only reason publishers are not dropping their prices for poorer regions. They'd rather miss out on that revenue stream, than risk upsetting their base consumer markets.

All this is conjecture, of course: I have no "evidence" and don't care much about the subject to go looking for any. But from a purely theoretical perspective, I can't see any solution for the publishers that wouldn't also entail considerable price reductions in their wealthy home markets as well.

[BlackerOmegalon]

I think they don't give a shit about those regions as they know they cannot scam people into buying their games at the prices they sell them to rest of the world for, but still wish to maintain a brand presences there by selling consoles. And even when software sales are a lost cause there, they can still capitalize on piracy with console sales.

Here in Saudi Arabia, Sony rarely released games officially during the PS1 and PS2 era, yet they sold the consoles like crazy (based on my observation and not official numbers). They knew about the huge pirated game market here and didn't seem too bothered about it. 99% percent of game stores here sell nothing but pirated games and consoles pre-installed with modchips. I'm pretty sure Sony Middle East knew what these stores are doing when they were taking only the consoles but not the games. This seems to be case for rest of the Middle East. With the PS3 though, they have started to release more games, which is probably because PS3 piracy has not surfaced yet.

I wonder what Jon Rose thinks about publishers bitching about used game sales, which sounds to me a lot like how they bitch about piracy. In addition to anti-piracy measures, I am guessing they will start introducing anti-used games measures. Epic Game's president suggested game endings be downloadable content to combat the used game market. They have become greedy to the point that they wish to stop used game sales!

I’ve talked to some developers who are saying ‘If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free’. We don’t make any money when someone rents it, and we don’t make any money when someone buys it used - way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it.

Link

If you showed someone the bolded sentence alone, they would probably think he was talking about piracy! I read somewhere else (I forgot where) about some publisher complaining how they have to provide patches to everyone who buys the game used, which sounds like how they bitch about the cost of providing (shitty) support to people who pirate games. Is there any other industry this greedy and willing to treat it's consumers like shit? I wonder if next they will suggest my little brother to pay a fee to play the games I own? I have actually seen nincompoops describe the used game market as legalized piracy, but I guess you will see everything online.

I feel like I have gotten off-topic. I could probably go on all day about the many ways the consumer is being fucked with this generation. I'm sure gaming journalists will look out for us though, at least until they get hired to do PR for game corporations.

[Jon R.]

But from a purely theoretical perspective, I can't see any solution for the publishers that wouldn't also entail considerable price reductions in their wealthy home markets as well.

This leads to the idea that maybe the prices do need to go down in the wealthier home markets too. Maybe shooting for a $40 game would lend itself to making decent games instead of engine demos; I'd like to see someone argue that the cost of most Western AAA games isn't due to a lot of technical makework.

I wonder what Jon Rose thinks about publishers bitching about used game sales, which sounds to me a lot like how they bitch about piracy. In addition to anti-piracy measures, I am guessing they will start introducing anti-used games measures. Epic Game's president suggested game endings be downloadable content to combat the used game market. They have become greedy to the point that they wish to stop used game sales!

It's worse than that, actually. Capps has become so detached from reality that he wants to put a stop to a legally defined right. His is a logic that he wouldn't like so much if it were suddenly applied to the resale of the expensive cars his employees drive.

[azukipanda]

I wonder what Jon Rose thinks about publishers bitching about used game sales, which sounds to me a lot like how they bitch about piracy. In addition to anti-piracy measures, I am guessing they will start introducing anti-used games measures. Epic Game's president suggested game endings be downloadable content to combat the used game market. They have become greedy to the point that they wish to stop used game sales!

Used game sales are already being actively prevented by some companies. Valve and Stardock tie their games to online services, and once a retail copy has been activated it can no longer be used by anyone else. It really is nothing but greed since it's not dictated by any practical necessity.

How Barack Obama Can Bring the Change the Video Game Industry Needs:

We also need to rein in the used games market and not with DRM. It is fundamentally unfair that developers are being robbed of profits for work that they've done. If the ESA will not offer a mandate, then we'll need the government to do so. Publishers and developers should be entitled to at least half of the price from the sale of every used game. However, we need for there to be caps on used game prices and a Blue Book system for video games to prevent price gouging. We also need for developers to respect our tradition of the second hand market and have part of the mandate state that developers cannot use DRM to inhibit used sales.

Putting aside the batshit insane idea that the government should interfere in the matter, it's interesting that the game industry supposedly has some kind of God-given right to profit. I have heard many people express the same idea, and they just assume that the game industry is naturally entitled to do whatever it thinks is best for the bottom-line. But I'm sure these same people oppose unfair and unethical business practises by companies like ExxonMobil.

[Bradford]

Putting aside the batshit insane idea that the government should interfere in the matter, it's interesting that the game industry supposedly has some kind of God-given right to profit. I have heard many people express the same idea, and they just assume that the game industry is naturally entitled to do whatever it thinks is best for the bottom-line. But I'm sure these same people oppose unfair and unethical business practises by companies like ExxonMobil.

First, just to be clear, the text quoted from the Kondo article are the words of the article's author, Nick Michetti, not Obama as I had at first feared.

Second, where are you from? Don't you know that here in America you have the right to life, liberty, food, a job, healthcare, profit, a house you can't afford, at least two cars, hugs when you're feeling sad, and a reach-around from your local congressman? Honestly, doesn't anyone read the Constitution anymore?

[Crazy Man]

Speaking of Steam...

Whoops!

[Strifer]

I wanted to make a longer post, but one quick look over at the gtaforums is basically the reason why PC gaming sucks.

Because we condone it!

[Bradford]

I'll happily go one step farther; it is not just condoned, but celebrated. The second post on that page:

Haha. I will laugh at those people after the patch is released and it fixes most of the horrible bugs/errors, who took their games back to the store. They were so sure that there is no patch coming. What an ignorant attitude... I bet that when patch is out and game gets fixed with patches and Ati/Nvidia drivers, then they will run back to the store "omg Rockstar is the best, I love them!"

This guy is going to suffer through a broken game for months, toiling away at configurations and settings, searching through forum threads for magic combinations of drivers, and when a patch is eventually released, he's the one who will be laughing? He lives in a world where his suffering is noble and celebrated, because the "hardcore" PC gamers appear to take a great deal of pride in having the knowledge to make their computers do backflips to run a game.

It's as if the challenge of making the game run is half the fun of PC gaming. I can accept that - they can have fun doing whatever they want - but some awareness of it would be nice, along with less laughing at people with enough sense to take broken things back to the store.

[icycalm]

http://www.edge-online.com/features/val ... -expensive

The fat man knows what he's talking about.