Amusing DC/Xbox360 comparison

[BattleCookiee]

People that like a game will likely buy it.

 

People that download a game are likely not going to buy it in thr first place.

 

You want a example?

 

I downloaded The Sims, I liked it so much I brought the game and all the expansions, I also got the Sims 2 when it come out and all its expansions.

 

Aha, the Pro-piracy "common rule"

 

Now I can tell you I know alot of people who just download it because it is "free".

They just complete the game 5 times (dl'ed) without paying once, or ever hadding the intention to do so.

And they surely would have done so IF they couldn't found it free on the net.

 

Heck, most of the people don't even own legal software here anymore; their PC is stuffed with dl'ed stuff they use VERY regularly, but just refuse to pay for "enter lame excuse here"...

[Drakron]

Sorry but I can not buy it and play it, if I dont intended to buy it in the first place the only thing I am doing is supplying the publisher with a number of someone that played the game without buying it.

 

So how that hurts then?

 

I did not intended to buy the game, I only did because it was free.

 

That is why publishers are full of it when they pull piracy hurting then because if there was no piracy the number of people that would buy their games would not raise to even 1/10 of the people that downloaded and played the game.

[BattleCookiee]

Even better than the current 1/100 or such that it is now...

 

And for playing before buying: Demo's work here.

I cannot believe you if you say almost no game has a demo now. Like 90% of the PC games have Demo's produced for them...

[alanschu]

If a game isn't worth paying for, even at substantially reduced prices aka the bargain bin, then why is it worth your time to begin with.

 

 

The problem with Drakon's reasoning is that his logic is not falisifiable. Sure, there may be people that would just never buy the game, but it's easy to just make up magic numbers like 1/10 because clearly, people just wouldn't have the desire to play the game.

 

 

It's basic economics Drakron. People like to maximize what they can purchase. If something can be acquired for free, many people would choose that route. I mean, lets imagine if there was an offer for everyone that has preordered a game to receive a free copy without any strings attached "just because." Now these people have already committed their money to the product, having preordered the game. I wonder how many of them would opt for the free copy of the game. I would suspect it'd be much more than 1/10 because people always like getting something for as little as possible.

 

 

The "piracy doesn't hurt anything because I wouldn't pay for it" point of view is a naive one, used to justify the actions of piracy.

[Darque]

The "piracy doesn't hurt anything because I wouldn't pay for it" point of view is a naive one, used to justify the actions of piracy.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I dunno... I'm conflicted.

 

while I've never done any "real piracy"... roms and emulators are considered piracy to some.

 

And the only games I've ever emulated are games I couldn't get and play normally (because they weren't translated and released in NA...but were translated by fanbased translation groups later on.)

 

And in some cases I have gone on to buy future games from the series that were released (that I probably wouldn't have looked twice at otherwise) because of said emulation.

 

...Romancing Saga

...Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne

...The Final Fantasy series (I had no real intrest in the series until I played 5 via emulation... and when square finally did release it via the playstation I bought it in a heartbeat)

 

So I dunno... I can see their point.. to a point.

 

Edited.. typos and additional thoughts.

Edited November 10, 2005 by Darque

[Walsingham]

I test drive songs before buying albums, and like many people I have bought stuff later from bands I would quite literally never have listened to without piracy.

 

I alo know that while some people download stuff illegally and never buy they are often pretty much skint (poor) and wouldn't be buying if the piracy weren't there.

 

I have a copy of Civ IV in my backpack right now which I intend to use illegally. However I consider this justice for the heap of poop that was Civ III (which I did buy).

[alanschu]

I'm much more understanding of piracy towards abandonware and other older games.

 

I think it's a bit of a silly clause to have copyrights last for I think seventy five years. Technically you are still pirating (i.e. infringing on copyrights), but given you are not actually removing a revenue stream from the developer, I really have no problem with it.

[Diamond]

I test drive songs before buying albums, and like many people I have bought stuff later from bands I would quite literally never have listened to without piracy.

That's why you should shop in online music stores. :D

[Drakron]

I can make numbers up because the publishers also make numbers up as piracy lowering their sales.

 

Piracy is not theft because you dont go to a shop, get the game and run out without paying for it, doing that is theft and the publisher losses money since its a manufactured copy that was not sold because someone taken it.

 

They make a leap with saying piracy does the same because the manufactured copies were not sold to justify losses, its nothing but smoke and mirrors since they cannot honestly say someone would buy their game if they could not downloaded it.

 

The people that profit from piracy are the companies that sell copy protection since piracy helps then when they pull numbers out of their ass to show how sales are lost due to it, I agree that they do lose sales but I highly doubt they are any place near the numbers they pull out of their ass.

 

They blame piracy because "pass the bucket" is popular, its easier to say to the stockholders that they failed their expected sales numbers due to piracy that to say they invested on a ****ty game that lacked the appeal to make their expected sales numbers.

 

Same is happing with the DVD market since its cooling down and guess who they blame?

 

Piracy.

 

Not the fact they make a ****ty game that taken a loss during its theater run and somehow people would buy billions of copies of their ****ty movie in DVD format.

 

Not that is new, the rise on music piracy was due to the music labels got greedy and raised CD prices when the music market was high (due to low CD prices) and people started to be more careful with what they spend their money on.

[Sarjahurmaaja.]

"It's basic economics Drakron. People like to maximize what they can purchase. If something can be acquired for free, many people would choose that route. I mean, lets imagine if there was an offer for everyone that has preordered a game to receive a free copy without any strings attached "just because." Now these people have already committed their money to the product, having preordered the game. I wonder how many of them would opt for the free copy of the game. I would suspect it'd be much more than 1/10 because people always like getting something for as little as possible."

 

Yeah, that doesn't work so well at least with music piracy. I hear those crazies actually buy, as in pay moneys (!), for the stuff they've already otherwise acquired.

 

I'm going to make a bit radical assumption here: people are, at least on some levels, intelligent. If they really like Stuff a lot, and know that there will be no more Stuff if the people who make Stuff go broke and starve to death, they're willing to pay money for Stuff. Of course, if they don't like Stuff, the people who make it might as well eat **** and die for all they care.

Edited November 10, 2005 by Sarjahurmaaja.

[BattleCookiee]

Piracy is not theft because you dont go to a shop, get the game and run out without paying for it, doing that is theft and the publisher losses money since its a manufactured copy that was not sold because someone taken it.

 

How different is that from dl'ing it. With both they get absolutely no cash at all for their effort...

Note how making games costs money; NOT only the disk, manual, box and shipping...

 

They make a leap with saying piracy does the same because the manufactured copies were not sold to justify losses, its nothing but smoke and mirrors since they cannot honestly say someone would buy their game if they could not downloaded it.

 

Sure, some would not buy it; but the amount of people that DL it even when they would buy it, and thus won't buy it because they have it would is bigger.

 

The people that profit from piracy are the companies that sell copy protection

 

Yep, they make profit.

And the people who loose are: Honest costumers, developers, publishers, etc.

LOADS of Devs (Troika anyone?) went broke because their game didn't get bought, only downloaded ALOT. So even if many people played it, they didn't get the profits of that...

Also, if a product is *nice*, but has bugs, EVERY user has a problem if the game sells bad; since then the dev won't produce patches to fix it, and the game stays in it's bad state.

 

They blame piracy because "pass the bucket" is popular, its easier to say to the stockholders that they failed their expected sales numbers due to piracy that to say they invested on a ****ty game that lacked the appeal to make their expected sales numbers.

 

Nope. Many, many, many good games get sold badly; and many crap games sold well. Shiny anyone?

Quality games: Low Sales. Crap Enter the Matrix: Ca$h...

 

Same is happing with the DVD market since its cooling down and guess who they blame?

 

Piracy.

 

And correctly so. Many people I know posses complete film-collections on DVD. And they watch them regularly. Cost: $0. Profit for the creators; even less...

 

Not that is new, the rise on music piracy was due to the music labels got greedy and raised CD prices when the music market was high (due to low CD prices) and people started to be more careful with what they spend their money on.

 

Meh. I recall reading on these boards that games still cost the same as 8 years ago. But for some reason people needed to DL more and buy less... (even if they can buy more games, since the pay etc. did raise)

Higher prices are no excuse if there are no higher prices

[alanschu]

Looking Glass Studios is probably the poster child for piracy hurting a company.

 

Both Thief and System Shock 2 had heavy exposure throughout the internet via piracy, as well as critical acclaim. Both games had hideous sales however.

 

I remember reading up about how at one point, there was more people playing Tribes online than actual copies of the game being sold.

 

 

It's no coincidence that excellent multiplayer games that started to require CD-Keys to play online resulted in an explosion in sales.

 

Furthermore, what about single player games? How many people actually go out and buy a single player game that they've already beaten?

Edited November 10, 2005 by alanschu

[Darque]

Furthermore, what about single player games? How many people actually go out and buy a single player game that they've already beaten?

 

Well.... :ph34r:

 

I did order the PC version of Indigo Prophecy after playing and beating the PS2 version... :ph34r:

 

I'm strange like that though.

[alanschu]

I did buy Jedi Academy after beating it too.

[Darque]

Ya know, I still need that game.

 

I was tempted to get the GC version... but it goes for like 60!!!!!!!!!!!wtf!!!!!1oneleven!!! used at EB

[Deraldin]

Furthermore, what about single player games?  How many people actually go out and buy a single player game that they've already beaten?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Let's see...

 

Alpha Centauri

Stronghold

Thief (1 and 2, couldn't find them for the longest time)

Silent Storm

 

Edited November 10, 2005 by Deraldin

[Drakron]

Looking Glass Studios is probably the poster child for piracy hurting a company.

 

Both Thief and System Shock 2 had heavy exposure throughout the internet via piracy, as well as critical acclaim.  Both games had hideous sales however.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Unfortunatly heavy exposure and critical acclaim alone do not sell games.

 

There is a game I loved from that company ... ever heard of "Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri" ?

 

You sould read this:

 

http://ttlg.com/articles/lgsclosing.asp

 

Informative and shows how you are quite wrong (even if it displeases me that Terra Nova was a factor but yes, it looks a Mechwarrior clone and quite franky I did buy it because of that).

Edited November 11, 2005 by Drakron

[Diamond]

Piracy is not theft because you dont go to a shop, get the game and run out without paying for it, doing that is theft and the publisher losses money since its a manufactured copy that was not sold because someone taken it.

Whatever the excuse, piracy does hurt companies. It is silly to say "piracy is not theft". Bulk of game production budget goes into making a game, not manufacturing media.

 

In fact, making actual copies got even cheaper than several years ago. So, by your logic, game/music companies must have just fantastic profits.

 

 

Not that is new, the rise on music piracy was due to the music labels got greedy and raised CD prices when the music market was high (due to low CD prices) and people started to be more careful with what they spend their money on.

Why? One label can't just "raise prices", because competing recording labels will profit from that. Prices usually stay at their "natural" level, if not taking into account other factors, like inflation.

[Spider]

Why? One label can't just "raise prices", because competing recording labels will profit from that. Prices usually stay at their "natural" level, if not taking into account other factors, like inflation.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

This is simply not true. The major music companies have created a standard when it comes to prices on CDs. If one raises the price, they all do. Through monopoly market economy is disabled.

 

Minor music companies usually have very different pricing of their products.

[Diamond]

This is simply not true. The major music companies have created a standard when it comes to prices on CDs. If one raises the price, they all do. Through monopoly market economy is disabled.

 

Minor music companies usually have very different pricing of their products.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes, look like you are right on that point, however on a long run music market will self-balance.

The legal download market is growing because they're keeping prices low enough to make the black market, which is almost always more risky to use than the legit market, look less attractive by comparison. It's probably also the case that high CD prices, which were largely responsible for the initial growth of online file sharing, are also helping to drive people to legal download services. It's cheaper to buy an album on iTMS and burn it than it is to pick that album up in the store.

"CD piracy is rampant, but legal downloading is on the rise"

[alanschu]

Looking Glass Studios is probably the poster child for piracy hurting a company.

 

Both Thief and System Shock 2 had heavy exposure throughout the internet via piracy, as well as critical acclaim.  Both games had hideous sales however.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Unfortunatly heavy exposure and critical acclaim alone do not sell games.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

When I said heavy exposure, I was talking about the prevellance of pirated copies.

 

My roommate at the time had an ftp server and wholeheartedly participated in distributing pirated games.

 

In one week alone he had over a thousand downloads of Thief. It was one of his "best sellers." The only other game that was being pirated at a more proficient rate for him at that time was Half-Life.

[Darque]

I've always wondered why people would set up a server to distribute pirated games...

 

I mean what do they get out of it? They're paying for the bandwidth.

[alanschu]

He'd receive access to other people's servers in doing so. And he'd have a request list, and anyone that would upload a requested file would get a password so they wouldn't have to wait in line.

 

It's how he got all of his games. He even got CD keys and whatnot so that he could play the games online for free too.

[BattleCookiee]

^

 

Too bad that is more rule than exception these days...

[Darque]

ack sucktastic