Titan Quest producer rants on PC market.

[Gorth]

Good God! (a) because 70-90% figures are bogus; and (b) because maybe a certain amount of piracy is legitimate and, indeed, for the greater good.

I am curious about that statemet. Care to elaborate?

 

And I suggest you chose your wording very carefully...

[Qwerty the Sir]

When I was pretty young me and a couple of kids from my neighborhood all had a Super Nintendo and we had some different games from each other.

 

The games we all really liked we all had separate copies of (like Super Mario World or NHL 94), but games we were more casual about only one guy had (like Stunt Race FX).

 

We sometimes used to play those types of games when going to each others houses, and at times, even borrowed or traded games.

 

To me at least, there is a distinction between that kind of borrowing, lending, trading, gifting, and playing together of a game as opposed to making a copy of a game that wasn't mine for my use.

[Meshugger]

Fun fact:

 

- While studying at the university, i had a lot of free time and i pirated games. And i couldn't afford any upgrades either.

- Now, when working, i have less free time, but i buy games instead. And i can afford to upgrade pretty much whenever i want.

 

Today i bought Lost Odyssey for the Xbox 360 (Which feels more like a Final Fantasy game than FFXII ever was). During the last 6 months i have bought S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (Collector's edition), The Witcher, Bioshock (PC), Super Mario Galaxy, Mass Effect, Guitar Hero III (PS3) and the out-of-print, original editions of Deus Ex and System Shock 2.

 

Moral of the story, companies never lost any money from the likes of me, since we wouldn't have bought them anyway.

[newc0253]

Nope. Because I got royalties on that book, which is what I was entitled to.

so what's the difference between that person lending their copy to a friend, and allowing their friend to photocopy the book?

 

you got your royalty from the book either way, so where's the harm? were you mugged if they make a photocopy but not if they borrowed a copy?

 

Nope, because I got royalties on the original book, which is what I was entitled to. BTW, game developers don't get royalties from Amazon or EBay when they sell used games either?

but why shouldn't you get royalties on the resale? morally, i mean? why shouldn't you claim when others profit from your work further down the line?

 

either you think it's morally right that you shouldn't profit from resales, in which case i'd be interested to hear your reasons why.

 

or maybe you think it's morally right because that's just what the law is - something which many people would find a deeply questionable view.

 

My publishing contracts all specified a number of books that would be donated free to libraries and various other media.

did you negotiate the contracts yourself? or were you just signing some boilerplate standard clause?

 

either way, do you think it's fair that some people should read your book for free?

 

do you think writers should be forced to donate free copies to libraries for the public good? or do you just think it's a matter of charity?

 

Nope, only when my intellectual property rights were violated, my books put online without my permission, and the royalties to which I was entitled were stolen.

your legal rights? or your moral rights?

 

Piracy is condoned because it's an easy way to steal property without paying for it, and morally-challenged individuals like to steal stuff. If you worked at a company, or spent a year writing a book, or years developing a game, only to have a bunch of self-serving hooligans say, in effect, "Cool! Thanks for spending all those hours creating this... now watch me take it for free, mwahahaha", I think you'd feel a little less charitable toward the thieves.

if i were working on something that could be infinitely reproduced without cost, i'd give careful thought to my business model before i pored in years of effort.

 

but that's just me.

 

"Since piracy is inevitable" we, the gaming public, are saddled with horrific anti-theft software on our legally purchased games, which probably cost nearly double what they would cost if piracy wasn't inevitable because a larger percentage of the globe's population weren't self-justifying theives.

the beauty of the free market is that, if prices go up too high, people will pirate more. so it's probably in the economic self-interest of publishers not to pass on the costs of anti-piracy measures.

 

if they're rational, that is. i get that a lot of people aren't.

 

I suppose you support shoplifting too, because "shoplifting is inevitable", and so is the hefty 30-40% retail increase placed on items we honest people buy to cover the loss of merchandise that dishonest people steal. Even you must be able to realize that when huge percentages of revenue is lost through theft, the price of the items on the shelf must be increased to cover the loss.

30-40% of retail price of any item is to cover shoplifting? you anti-piracy types really swallow some ridiculous figures, don't you.

 

but shoplifting is theft because you're stealing something that's tangible and can't be replaced without cost. it's really quite simple.

 

Which they are forced to do because people like you insist that "piracy is inevitable." Then go out and pirate to prove it.

someone forced radiohead to offer flexible pricing on their last album? who?

 

tell me, i'll buy them a drink.

 

and (b) because maybe a certain amount of piracy is legitimate and, indeed, for the greater good.

 

That is the saddest, I daresay sickest, statement of all. Do me a favor. Write to good old Michael, or even to J.E. Sawyer... hell go straight to Fergus... and you tell them that you are stealing their products so that they have to struggle even harder to stay in business, lest they end up like Black Isle, IL, Strategy First, Eon Storm, etc., is "for the greater good"... the "greater good" meaning, of course, your ability to continue to steal their stuff with impugnity.

 

I'm sure they'll send you a letter of profound thanks, which you may then share with the rest of us.

me? i pay for all my games, thanks.

 

but while i write Fergus and Sawyer and whoever Michael is, how about you write all those poor folk dying of malaria in third world countries because western pharmaceutical companies insist on enforcing their intellectual property against the manufacters of cheaper, generic anti-malarial drugs. Maybe you'd like to explain to them how piracy can never be for the greater good, even if it means that an anti-malarial drug that could save their kid's life might cost $1 instead of $50.

 

sad and sick, indeed.

Edited March 1, 2008 by newc0253

[newc0253]

And I suggest you chose your wording very carefully...

why?

[LostStraw]

When I was pretty young me and a couple of kids from my neighborhood all had a Super Nintendo and we had some different games from each other.

 

The games we all really liked we all had separate copies of (like Super Mario World or NHL 94), but games we were more casual about only one guy had (like Stunt Race FX).

 

We sometimes used to play those types of games when going to each others houses, and at times, even borrowed or traded games.

 

To me at least, there is a distinction between that kind of borrowing, lending, trading, gifting, and playing together of a game as opposed to making a copy of a game that wasn't mine for my use.

 

There is a very large distinction. Lending or giving a game to someone else is legal. Making a copy of a game and giving it to someone else is copyright infringement.

 

Although with online distribution systems becoming more popular the lending of games may eventually become a thing of the past -- this is the thing I disagree most with about such distribution models, unfortunately it's probably a primary reason for publishers to like them.

[Sand]

Just because you are poor does not give you the right to steal. Plain and simple.

[Gorth]

And I suggest you chose your wording very carefully...

why?

Because it sounded like you were about to justify illegal activities as a perfectly fine and good thing to do (the "greater good") part.

 

Piracy doesn't drive prices down and make stuff affordable, competition does.

 

And as mentioned previously, you malaria example is irrelevant. People stealing for basic survival is a hell of a lot different from people stealing because they decided to spend their money elsewhere rather than buying what they are stealing. I am pretty sure that shipping 500.000 free copies of Halflife 2 to Bangladesh is not going to improve the infant mortality rate. A rather silly comparison really.

 

As for your book example and photocopying, what you are stealing is the use of the book when copy it illegally (yes, a simplified way of putting it).

 

People trying to explain why they are entitled to steal something, that nobody *forces* them to steal makes them look rather pathetic, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

[~Di]

Most of this post is irrelevant crap, presented only to be surly and argumentative, not to gain any understanding or to share information. So I'll ignore that part.

 

Nope. Because I got royalties on that book, which is what I was entitled to.

so what's the difference between that person lending their copy to a friend, and allowing their friend to photocopy the book?

 

you got your royalty from the book either way, so where's the harm? were you mugged if they make a photocopy but not if they borrowed a copy?

 

Because photocopying the book is a violation of copyright. On the legal page in the front of every one of my books is, among other legalities, the following: "All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of... " .

 

The harm is that it's against the law. The harm is that ignoring that law means that others can copy and plaguerize my work, use illegal copies as options for future fiction based upon my copyrighted material, and put it out on the internet where it can be globally stolen as used for anything from fully plaguerized work to uncompensated film options. BTW, The Authors' Guild has initiated many lawsuits against college bookstores and professors who have purchased single copies of textbooks, then photocopied them into work books for their students. And they have won. When a professor photocopies various chapters of several texts, then bundles them up and sells them to his students so they don't have to buy all those original texts (thus paying legitimate royalties to the authors), that is theft as well.

 

Authors (and game developers) have created a product for public consumption, and have a right to be compensated for it. Period.

 

 

the beauty of the free market is that, if prices go up too high, people will pirate more. so it's probably in the economic self-interest of publishers not to pass on the costs of anti-piracy measures.

 

if they're rational, that is. i get that a lot of people aren't.

 

Apparently you are one of those irrational people, if you think that developers should simply eat the cost of theft and eat the cost of trying to prevent theft, because passing that cost along will simply result in more theft. What your theory advocates is basically that developers should simply allow themselves to be driven out of business. The inevitable result of what you suggest is the eventual end of the PC gaming market. Period.

 

The pharmaceutical/malaria idiocy is just that, idiocy.

 

My last post to you on this topic, since you do not appear to be interested in learning anything about copyright infringement; you only want to argue for the sake of argument.

Edited March 1, 2008 by ~Di

[damonors]

Di, it probably would be best just to ignore from here on out, for your own sake and sanity. You can bang your head against a wall only so many times before something dents, and it ain't gonna be the wall. I would also add something about feeding trolls, but is it trolling if someone truly believes it?

 

I wonder, though, where they got the numbers for pirating from? It might be buried in this thread, but I am not going to read through much of the self-deceptive justification for stealing to find it. It seems that these numbers are wayyyyyy too high for the US, but I'm basing this off of just my gut feeling. But still, I'd like to see the methodology for getting those numbers out of curiosity. [Note, even if the numbers turn out to be like 10-30%, that wouldn't make it 'good'.]

[skuld1]

Good God! (a) because 70-90% figures are bogus; and (b) because maybe a certain amount of piracy is legitimate and, indeed, for the greater good.

 

(a) Please share with us the actual, correct %. Oh, please include figures from the studies you conducted and their methodology as well, thanks.

 

(b) Yes, yes, some pharmas protect their IP to the detriment of some afflicted with malaria... so that makes it okay for people to pirate video game software??!! If you truly believe this, you have some serious problems.

[~Di]

Di, it probably would be best just to ignore from here on out, for your own sake and sanity. You can bang your head against a wall only so many times before something dents, and it ain't gonna be the wall. I would also add something about feeding trolls, but is it trolling if someone truly believes it?

 

I wonder, though, where they got the numbers for pirating from? It might be buried in this thread, but I am not going to read through much of the self-deceptive justification for stealing to find it. It seems that these numbers are wayyyyyy too high for the US, but I'm basing this off of just my gut feeling. But still, I'd like to see the methodology for getting those numbers out of curiosity. [Note, even if the numbers turn out to be like 10-30%, that wouldn't make it 'good'.]

 

The numbers from from the article in the opening post, and article written by a developer for the soon-to-be-defunct ILE (Titan Quest). Since Sawyer immediately agreed with the post in its entirety, I'm guessing this 70-90% figure is standard knowledge inside the gaming industry, which probably spends a great deal of money tracking such things since their livelihoods depend upon it. Certainly they are in a better position to access and track legal versus illegal gaming than those of us who merely buy... or steal... their games for our own personal enjoyment. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

 

And yes, I've already put in my "quit" notice to a certain poster in this thread. My head hurts enough.

[Gromnir]

there is no point in arguing. is no plausible or reasonable excuse for the theft or piracy o' a LUXURY good or service... ever.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Pop]

but while i write Fergus and Sawyer and whoever Michael is, how about you write all those poor folk dying of malaria in third world countries because western pharmaceutical companies insist on enforcing their intellectual property against the manufacters of cheaper, generic anti-malarial drugs. Maybe you'd like to explain to them how piracy can never be for the greater good, even if it means that an anti-malarial drug that could save their kid's life might cost $1 instead of $50.

 

sad and sick, indeed.

This thread has caught retarded.

 

Weak boarding. Bring on the lockhammer, I say.

[Amentep]

and whoever Michael is,

 

I'd hazard a guess that would be Michael Fitch, Creative Manager with THQ for Titan Quest, the guy who's statements about Iron Lore going under was the impetuous to start this thread...

[Gorth]

there is no point in arguing. is no plausible or reasonable excuse for the theft or piracy o' a LUXURY good or service... ever.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Since I don't have a clever closing remark, I am going to borrow Gromnirs (without asking him no less)...

 

There is another thread discussing the company and it's games http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic=49079

Edited March 1, 2008 by Gorth
Adding link to other topic

[Walsingham]

there is no point in arguing. is no plausible or reasonable excuse for the theft or piracy o' a LUXURY good or service... ever.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Since I don't have a clever closing remark, I am going to borrow Gromnirs (without asking him no less)...

 

There is another thread discussing the company and it's games http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic=49079

 

gromnir for teh win on this occasion.