The fun fact is that that is much harder to test for. While you can compare behavior over time and see the possible impact of a pirated version being released (and therefore do a calculation of losses to piracy, if the data does show any) you can not compare performance of DRM vs non-DRM games, since you will be comparing very different products (at most you can compare a DRMed game versus the same non-DRMed in another service -Steam vs GOG- but since those services already have very different user bases, it´s hard to get solid findings from such a comparison).
So, the negative consequences of not having DRM (earlier piracy) are measurable (although we don’t know the extent, even if it’s significant at all or not) while the positive consequences of not having DRM are much harder to measure.
70% of Witcher 3 sales were console copies, which do indeed contain DRM.
I am with you. Most games are one and done, simple because there is so much available to me, that rehashing old games seems to take up to much time and my Backlog is too great.
Besides, at the rate things are going, we will end of like the movie industry, and have remakes every decade or so. Baldurs Gate, Age of Empire, final fantasy.
Like VHS before it, I expect that if its a game I really love playing that much, I won’t mind buying it again in a new format later in life, and throw the creators and few extra dollars. They deserve it.
Pirates will rationalize their actions any number of ways. I once met a guy who said that because he was a veteran he earned the right to pirate games. Whatever. My favorite is when pirates suggest that they’re doing the industry a favor, and when they suggest that everyone does it. OK, guy, whatever keeps you sane.
I guess, though, it’s a bit of a kick in the shorts to see someone who professes to be in the games industry suggest that pirating is a good way to demo games, especially these days. There are tons of ways to see if a game is right for you, and even if you don’t like any of those, the whole argument smacks of privilege. If you don’t want to play games that don’t have demos, just don’t. You aren’t entitled to play any game you feel like playing.
Yes. Both from my perspective as an individual consumer (if I buy a piece of media, I expect to be able to go back to it indefinitely), and from a historical perspective. Games face certain obvious technical challenges to their longevity that things like books and movies don’t (although as they shift to digital formats they’re taking on some similar issues), and I can’t necessarily expect a game to continue working through massive changes to operating systems, hardware, etc without someone taking the time and effort to make that happen, but I certainly can expect companies not to arbitrarily introduce extra complications to that process or actively interfere in preservation efforts. DRM is just that.
The game preservation problem is important relative to archiving purposes, but is not big overall, because almost all games are shit.
About all the games are really objetivable bad, and what make then palatable is the fresh smell and the positive shock of graphics upgrade.
We can lose about 99% of all videogames, and not much of value will be lost. Is the other 1% that we really want to preserve for the future.
Since we don’t have to preserve 100% of all games, only a few, the effort to preserve games is smaller.
The challenge to preserve games is probably only achievable if you manage to preserve the hardware with the software. And if the hardware is the Internet, or a remote server, it can be protected easily.
Anyway perhaps even the greatest videogames made in our generation will be unplayable. Videogames are more a creation of a culture than other things. Many Korean games are unfun to play because put so much importance on grinding. Some games appeal to germans, but not many people of other countries. Maybe in 1000 years the culture will change so much that it will be impossible for people to play our videogames and enjoy them.
We don’t know, so is a good idea to preserver our shit. Even if we don’t know what shit will be worth preserving.
I say that probably most videogames are not worth the time to preserve them.
There’s no reason not to preserve everything and let future generations decide what they are interested in. I doubt that the shot callers back in Elizabethan England would have considered Shakespeare worthy of preservation as great art and yet…
The only place where they have done some investigation to the perceived copyright infringement effect and lost sales would be with the music industry, and the results from multiple surveys into that showed that those who were the most active with copyright infringement were also the ones who spent the most money on music - if this translates to the PC gaming sector is unknown, but I think it would be reasonable to expect the “mass consumer/hoarder” behaviour in one entertainment area might also show the same kind of behaviour in other entertainment areas.
[citation needed] - going out skiing so cant find the links now, some of them were linked from The Register amongst other sites.
Still: Correlation does not imply causation.
Even more Still, it would be interesting to see the sales graph for a title on steam, then the number of returns using the new policy, then the same graph for the availability of a torrented version of the title to see if the number of returns of the title decreases after the title is available for torrenting. And for “series” it would be even more interesting to see if this also includes back catalogue items.
Licensing DRM is one thing, but I think you should also consider the added cost of technical support, backend, etc issues caused by the DRM.
Unless the DRM licenses are such that the DRM company will do the support for anything DRM related?
The cost of implementing and using it would obviously go down as you use it on more titles, provided the same people are involved (which I guess goes against the Hire&Fire norm in the PC gaming industry).
Buying lots of stuff does not give you the right to steal anything. They’re unrelated. And nobody here really needs a thread wherein a software thief continually tries to rationalize his behavior or to convince other forum members he’s in the right. There is literally no chance of you winning over the crowd on this board.
I disagree with the words “steal” and “theft” being used when it comes to making unlicensed copies of software.
“Copyright infringement” is the correct term to use for it, although it doesn’t invoke the same negative connotations/feels as the other words + “pirate” do.
From Wikipedia: “copyright holders, industry representatives, and legislators have long characterized copyright infringement as piracy or theft – language which some U.S. courts now regard as pejorative or otherwise contentious”
This is the kind of strong correlation (if the behavior is repeated over several titles, and thus confirmed) that might be found on the data. Since only publishers have this data (and they do have it), we can only speculate.
Hint: look at the percentage of big games with trial versions next year versus those last year. Most likely if there’s a reduction in returns, publishers will adjust.
But even then, the huge majority of AAA sales go to consoles. And they have stricter return policies. We tend to talk as if Steam was all there is, when in reality it’s just a big minority of the market.
Yes, games are definitely under copyright. Rules can’t be (they have to be patented) but the implementation of those rules (including aspects of generic visual appearance) can be -and is by default- under copyright (and trademarked for extra protection).
The equivalent to movies (to take an easy example) is that you can’t copyright the idea of a movie where a young hero, with the help of an old master, destroys an evil space empire (even if it’s the first time such a story is put to film). But you can copyright Star Wars. And light sabers.
A game becomes by default a copyright when it’s released, as a whole, and that protects the expression of (but not the idea behind) every unique defining feature.
Copyright infringement is the correct term, as it’s making an unlicensed copy rather than an illicit transfer of ownership. That’s entirely semantic, though.
You know, I’m always frustrated by how what you just said is so absolutely obvious to me - that someone benefiting from one’s work without paying when that one expects payment is morally wrong - and yet people will go into long discussions based on red herrings to avoid that exact point.
“It’s not stealing! It improves things, really! Games should be free!” I’m just so tired of people missing the point spectacularly that nowadays I just avoid these piracy discussions (and most similar discussions, in fact), since it rarely does anything other than diminish my faith in the human species.
The only thing infringement has on outright property theft is that in the short term, you aren’t denying someone else that product. You’re not actually taking one unit of X away from someone else.
In the long term, it could be seen as even more destructive because infringing causes the producer to pass increased cost onto legitimate customers with DRM. At least with property theft, it rarely impacts the manufacturer, so the loss is on the individual victim.
This isn’t even the case with physical theft. Unless you’re in a very highly competitive business that can only afford to charge the marginal cost, theft is built into every step in the pricing chain. What you charge the retailer is a little higher and what they charge customers is a little higher.
But your point is totally valid and the rationalization of piracy because it’s not physical theft is silly. As if the semantic different really matters.
Yes, I should’ve clarified. Loss prevention costs are passed on to the consumer, but I was talking about the more common scenario in which a thief steals property from a private individual. In that case, rarely does the manufacturer/producer increase the cost to cover the stolen item.
