^ Don't forget, there's also those who simply can't afford to buy games.
^ Don't forget, you're not entitled to play the games if you can't pay for them. Go do something else instead and nobody will drag you out and beat you because you didn't buy the game.
^ Don't forget, you're not entitled to play the games if you can't pay for them. Go do something else instead and nobody will drag you out and beat you because you didn't buy the game.
Personally, I do not pirate games. And when I do download a game through "pirate channels", it's simply for backup purposes. I was speaking about a majority of pirates who simply don't have the financial resource to pay $60 for a video game (which I'm often reluctant to pay myself). Of course, it is technically illegal. But the reality is, most people don't care.
There was a time when pirates were a minority, but things have changed greatly with the advance of internet/bittorrent, etc. Your average Joe is a pirate now. Most of them don't even know it's illegal to download a (commercial) game from the internet. You wanna go drag all of them out and beat them up for it?
Online games? Looking up hints? Downloading patches?
Your average Joe is a pirate now. Most of them don't even know it's illegal to download a (commercial) game from the internet. You wanna go drag all of them out and beat them up for it?
Sorry, but I just can't believe people nowadays are dumb enough to think you can have stuff with a price tag on it for free - just because it's on the internet.
Online games? Looking up hints? Downloading patches?
I don't play much online games, the internet machine suffices for what little online gaming I do. It can't, however, run many modern (released in the last 2 years or so) titles. Looking up hints and downloading patches gets done on the same pc, then the files get transfered to my gaming pc using a USB stick.
Sorry, but I just can't believe people nowadays are dumb enough to think you can have stuff with a price tag on it for free - just because it's on the internet.
You'd be surprised how many people I've met who think this is true. They might seem dumb to you, but there's really nothing more than plain old ignorance at work here, which is a little sad.
You wanna go drag all of them out and beat them up for it?
You definitely don't want to target consumers, but something has to change. People are pirating because they can get away with it -it doesn't matter if it's a great game or terrible game (metacritic), $20 or $60, cost a million dollars or 50 million dollars to make, has a demo or not, good graphics or not, PC native or port. Only 10% of PC game installs are legitimate.
For traditional companies, it's getting harder and harder to make a profit selling PC games. Only 4% of games that start development across all platforms ever turn a profit, the PC-specific percent must be abysmal. Rampant piracy has basically created the environment we're in now. EA and Activision run almost everything. Companies are afraid to take risks, so we only get games that are "sequalizable", etc...
Sure you can get games for free, but it doesn't make any sort of useful "statement" to the developer or publisher. It makes them churn out crappy sequels with draconian DRM, or turn to developing console titles only. You reap what you sow. If it turns out people don't want to pay for PC games any more, the market will certainly respond -but it may not respond the way you want.
You definitely don't want to target consumers, but something has to change. People are pirating because they can get away with it -it doesn't matter if it's a great game or terrible game (metacritic), $20 or $60, cost a million dollars or 50 million dollars to make, has a demo or not, good graphics or not, PC native or port. Only 10% of PC game installs are legitimate.
Yeah, something has to change, but whom- the buyer or the seller?
Today, this internet generation is used to mass-consuming multimedia. The days of buying a POS cd for 20 euros, listening to the only 2 out of 17 songs that are good, are over. People can get access to such a wide range of options, that there isn't enough time to cover it all. This is good. It's good because what's happening with the whole internet revolution is people learning to understand eachother, from all over the world. It's a global society and we share with eachother and we learn shitloads. The general global education comes through the internet, people get educated because of the internet. Knowledge can no longer be withheld like it used to. This is good and serves to mankind's development.
Consumers have gotten better education. Record companies cannot sell shitrecords anymore like they used to. Instead of realizing the marketing crowd just got tougher and realizing it puts a lot of pressure on companies to come up with better solutions, maybe delivering more than just a product- maybe delivering PACKAGES, they try to revert the progress made. They still want to sell their shitrecords to an inflated prize at the expense of the uneducated customer.
For traditional companies, it's getting harder and harder to make a profit selling PC games. Only 4% of games that start development across all platforms ever turn a profit, the PC-specific percent must be abysmal. Rampant piracy has basically created the environment we're in now. EA and Activision run almost everything. Companies are afraid to take risks, so we only get games that are "sequalizable", etc...
Not to talk about myspace and other huge communities where musicians, some definetly shitloads more talented than a lot of crap out on CD, post free stuff.
Free is everywhere. The internet has opened up the market and now there's millions of "talented" people competing for competition, doing stuff for free just for marketing. Just look at iReport or w/e for CNN International. So companies, people that work in the entertainment industry, need to take their shit to a whole new different level. That's where it's at. You can't deliver amateur crap that the average Joe coulda done if he had enough time and money, you need to deliver artistery. You need to show that that education you got actually taught you something special. No more plastic factory, now it's time for true artists to deliver. Time for the crap to gtfo.
And yes, that DOES mean getting inventive. Maybe a really well made game isn't enough anymore? Maybe it's not so far above shit that consumers, who can get shit for free, cares? I know that I enjoyed Johnny Rocketfingers 2 more than most other games I have played and I have replayed it 3 times and I'll probably replay it again- and this is a short freaking game.
I paid for your games because I feel you deserve the money upholding a genre I hold very dear, so that's my motivation.
onlyamonkey is right and on top of that, we all need better quality. Our sense of good taste has evolved to a new level, which wants to be satisfied. I don't wanna pay 50 euros (not dollars) for a new game. This is crazy, totally overpriced imo. So I wait until it gets cheaper. Then I also check how many people are still playing it (after about 2 months), what did the game magazines write about it and so on. Only then I may think of buying that game. I got a lot of money but I also got a lot of games that I never finished or even played. So using hard earned... ehh well long-time-collected-pocketmoney for stuff that's not worth it, is something that I barely do nowadays. Just think of the hyped merchandise products. Who needs'em ? I go to the movie, that's it. I don't need to replay the story on my computer (okay LotR was nice to play and I love the music).
how can you tell that only 10% of game installs are legit purchases? it's not like you can track how many copies you WOULD HAVE sold if there was no piracy. You can't gather statistics from hypotheticals.
how can you tell that only 10% of game installs are legit purchases? it's not like you can track how many copies you WOULD HAVE sold if there was no piracy. You can't gather statistics from hypotheticals.
We don't track that sort of thing, but many games which do things like, for instance, post to an online leaderboard, or have a very common tech support issue, you can tell with that. If you have sold 100 copies of your game, but you're having 1,000 different unique installs posting scores to your leaderboard, that gives a good hint. Or (and this is fairly hilarious, in terms of how awesome people are) if your tech support department gets inundated with tech support requests to the point that more people ask for help with the game than you have paid customers, one should take the hint. Both of these things have been reported as happening to other developers (not those precise numbers, but trends like that), though I lamely can't remember which companies.
I'm always amazed when people are throwing around with whatever numbers they read elsewere or thought out on their own. :O)
It's interesting to read that you can't make any money with video games anymore because this is still a growing industry. Maybe it helps taking a look at other industry branches for a second. Same with the argument that the PC is a dead platform you can't make any profit on. Tell this Blizzard and i know quite some smaller studios who are doing fine there. I really wonder how TTG survived and steadily enlarged until they did the Wii version of Sam&Max then.
Anyway i think it's common knowledge that there are different reasons for piracy, originals offer less value than cracked versions (thinking of cheeky copy protections which invade your system), mediocre gaming experiences, too expensive prices, the pure availability of cracked versions, lack of understanding that an act is unlawful, crappy demo versions, buggy games...
Some of these things you can take care of to a certain degree and some you can't and don't want to.
I think as a developer you should always try to treat your customers the same way you would like to be treated on your own and that in quite some cases this simply isn't happening. Sadly a lot of developers/publishers tend to beeing more restrictive than it makes sense. The gaming industry also shows quite some similarities with the music industry here.
Dunno, i just have to remember that the music industry also once said, when they were changing from vinly to CD that once the CD production process will have amortised, the CDs will get cheaper again, which never really happened.
The same in many cases has happened with online distributed video games. Developers used to say, if they can get more percentages out from the retail price then they would be able lowering the prices as well. In reality this only happened to a rather small degree or amount of games. The better part of the money often went elsewere. But here are also good examples and stores which exactly are doing this, so it's not all bad.
But taking a TTG season as an example, including the costs of the shipping DVD on average it sums up beeing more expensive than i can get a game in the store around the corner. The advantages of that a developer has his own store and can make usage out of the online distribution isn't showing up in your wallet. It might be seen elsewhere like in the quality of the game or the increase of the company. Don't misunderstand me i'm fine with paying the price for a game i'm interested in if it's worth the money but i also see the point that people ask themsevles why companies invest their money into stupid things instead of providing enjoyful content with a fair prictetag instead and fulfill their promises.
And much much more could be said about this topic, time out.
Just to close this with a constructive critique: I don't see a reason for a copy protection on a DVD i payed for weeks before and were the season has been released already. This would be the right place for sparing a superfluous copy protection!
TTG seasons are 35 bucks, and then 6 bucks to ship the DVD at the end of the season. that's 41 bucks. other games you would go to the store to buy either cost 50 bucks or 60 bucks. NEVER 41 unless they're 2 years old and on sale or GOTY editions or something
telltale seasons are STILL cheaper even WITH the shipping costs, not more expensive.
Can't remember the exact numbers right now. With the seasons i bought it just ended up beeing slightly more expensive than other adventure games (no budget versions) you could buy in the store for instance.
There was a time when pirates were a minority, but things have changed greatly with the advance of internet/bittorrent, etc. Your average Joe is a pirate now. Most of them don't even know it's illegal to download a (commercial) game from the internet. You wanna go drag all of them out and beat them up for it?
Also not really true, piracy was always very high in the computer area.
I can remember the C64 times when almost everone pirated the games.
(More in Europe than in the US where at least some people bought the games)
Games usually sold 30.000 worldwide, millions of those computers were sold. In my personal opinion the sell through rate today even on the PC is much higher than it used to be in the past, but the problem is that games cost way more than they used to cost in the past.
But the main difference of having 2-3 people working on one game several months like it used to be in the early console or home computer times, or having to spent a movie budget and an having to feed a big production team for a single game.
But the main difference is really today everything has been sped up to a big degree. Back then piracy was previvalent in schools where children swapped disks (with several months delay, except for bbs based piracy), nowadays it is a click of a button!
But given the production costs, it is understandable that companies prefer to develop for consoles nowadays. Back then console hardware was subpar to the computer hardware, so there was a technical incentive nowadays the gap has narrowed to a big degree and piracy which also exists on consoles (except the PS3) is not as widespread as on the PC but for the sheer numbers alone the PC still is saved since sales equal on all platforms thanks to the split of hardware platforms within the console section.
But give the trend towards notebooks and the existence of the measly intel graphic processors in the majority of them (who are pushed to unknowing people who then never become potential customers because the games cannot decently run on those things) with diminishing desktop sales numbers the pc might become the least selling platform in the long run.
For reference, the point of DRM is not to prevent a game from being pirated. It's to delay a game from being pirated so more copies can be sold during the first few weeks.
I always thought that DRM is against Stan’s previously used games, not against piracy.
I always thought that DRM is against Stan’s previously used games, not against piracy.
Depends on the type of DRM, the classical copy protection made Stan happy,
the newer schemes with limited installs and online activation are probably the ones which Stan doesn´t like.
Funny thing however is that most used game sales nowadays happen in the console area, where such schemes are not existing (yet)
Yeah, something has to change, but whom- the buyer or the seller?
The buyer. Here's what's going to happen.
Spoiler: Within 10 years all commercial PC game purchases will be made through a Steam-like application. To play every game, you will need an account key and be connected to the Internet, like an MMO. The game assets and portions of the executable will not be stored on your computer, but will be streamed to you. All you'll have on your computer is a fancy terminal program. The only way to pirate games running under such a system is to steal an account key, or hack the servers.
"Absurd!", you might say. "Nobody will stand for that!". Oh, won't they? Think about it. As the Internet becomes faster and more ubiquitous, the probability of a system like this increases quickly. There are also a huge number of benefits.
Benefits to consumers:
No DRM - authentication is done through account keys and being online.
No activation limit - install as many times as you like, can only be signed into account on one computer at a time.
Take your settings, save games, and entire catalogue of games with you from computer to computer. (stuff Steam can already do)
Generates no trash. Environmentally friendly!
Benefits to companies:
Absolutely obliterates the second-hand market.
Assets not stored on local computer, hackers can't bypass login to play.
Even if a pirate does manage to generate a fraudulent account key, it's not like they can leak it on bittorrent and let 10,000 people jump on. The account can only be signed in once.
If you detect a hack/pirate attempt, you can disable the key and possibly the user's access to Steam entirely. Assuming Steam accounts will be keyed to credit cards or something at this point, you might also be able to block the individual from ever using the service again with any card they own. If you really felt like it, you could probably bring legal charges against them.
Hope I didn't spoil the surprise for any pirates lurking in the thread! The vast majority of the masses are just about ready to accept "you have to be online to play games" and the technology for all of this alreadyexists.
Spoiler: Within 10 years all commercial PC game purchases will be made through a Steam-like application. To play every game, you will need an account key and be connected to the Internet, like an MMO. The game assets and portions of the exectable will not be stored on your computer, but will be streamed to you. All you'll have on your computer is a fancy terminal program. The only way to pirate games running under such a system is to steal an account key, or hack the servers.
Not sure if this is a feasable perspective for within 10 years, first of all you cannot think that half of the potential customers will be on fibre within a 10 years timeframe (there nowadays still is a huge percentage still on analog modems). The majority still will be on dsl which is too slow for streaming game assets within the game (which is what I read here)
Secondly, if you stream with a slower line, what are you going to stream, my guess is you only can stream certain game assets, and then you have another loophole, that is having transparent proxies in between which can track the data sent and accepted.
Also what are you going to do with a load of angry customers who cannot play because due to some outage they are disconnected from the net.
For the next 10 years I only can see a system like Steam where all the game assets are downloaded upfront as feasable.
But then the core data still is on the customers hd, encrypted but still there!
Streaming the content (the rendering) has it's benefits (some obvious benefits against piracy, reduced development costs as it only has to run on one system, quality is much less dependent on the users hardware, easy to setup demo versions, spectator mode, ...) but as groovy as OnLive and others want it to sound like, it needs a stable infrastructure first: huge bandwith, contrary to a broadcasting service it also needs fast reactiontimes and then it needs a lot of number crunching power.
I can see certain genres going first that route because they aren't as responsive and less demanding than others. Some might start it more in a local fashion as well. All in all it's moving into a movie direction with the difference that it's interactive.
I think cracking/piracy is still possible on it. It always is an issue at the point where the check is done. Beside of the keys you could try running the service outside the server farm, utalizing maybe hacked computing power, maybe certain specified home systems will be able to run it as well. According to the outlay this might work or just be insane. I just would be cautious with saying never.
What i disagree with is that all the benefits which have been listed should be kind of restricted to this delivery form. This is a little bit like saying if you want a banana then you need to drink a milk shake whilst actually you could consume the banana in quite some different ways already if there would be the will to let people. And for the trash, electronic distribution already is a benefit against trash, right?! But you're baiting people with slip case cover art! ;O) Moreover all those server farms/cloud computing needs to be manufactured and fed with electricity as well. You end up in a typical client-server model discussion.
Anyway, no matter how it will turn out, i hope that you still will have a choice to decide what to buy and ljust in case all goes completely wrong you can still program games on your own or play one of the thousands of games which have been released already.
If the battle against piracy is won, it'll be interesting to hear who is to blame once a game hasn't meet the expectations.
Not sure if this is a feasable perspective for within 10 years, first of all you cannot think that half of the potential customers will be on fibre within a 10 years timeframe (there nowadays still is a huge percentage still on analog modems). The majority still will be on dsl which is too slow for streaming game assets within the game (which is what I read here)
Secondly, if you stream with a slower line, what are you going to stream, my guess is you only can stream certain game assets, and then you have another loophole, that is having transparent proxies in between which can track the data sent and accepted.
Also what are you going to do with a load of angry customers who cannot play because due to some outage they are disconnected from the net.
For the next 10 years I only can see a system like Steam where all the game assets are downloaded upfront as feasable.
But then the core data still is on the customers hd, encrypted but still there!
The idea is not to send the assets. If you think of a current setup as a server, connected to the internet, connected to your client box, connected to your input/output devices; the idea is to switch the position of the internet and the client. The server will handle all the operations of the server and the client and will send to you, what can be considered, the signals for your monitor and speakers. The internet will essentially be transmitting a movie to you.
Lower bandwidth accounts can be catered for by lowering the resolution, reducing the frame-rate, reducing the sound sample-rate, or by compressing the video or audio. Compression is unlikely as an option though, as it places more stress on the server.
High-bandwidth connections aren't a strict requirement. Some DRM developers already let you scale the protection all the way up to streaming portions of executable/script code. I don't think any game companies have shipped products with this level of protection yet.
He's going to play the game either way. He doesn't care/know if the developers get his money if he buys it, he just wants to enjoy the game. Pirating it is more profitable for him.
Pirates always come up with ways to beat copy protection... Instead of beating piracy, why not try and make sure that by buying a game, you're being benifitted?
I mean, I buy games because I want the developers to get money for their hard work, ensuring that they can churn out more games. That's benefit enough for most of us, but not everyone, sadly...
I wouldn't mind streaming content in this way, as long as the price comes down to reflect my reduced usage rights. Afterall that is what I'm paying for when I buy games, music and films anyway - a license, albiet one with less restrictions.
Apart from video games, realtime cg streaming services are the wet dreams for quite some years in quite some businesses, especially those who like to offer a high quality standard to their clients. Most of the time it doesn't happen due to some of the problems mentioned above and a few additional ones. In reality it's just not as easy as it first sounds like, at least not now.
The idea is not to send the assets. If you think of a current setup as a server, connected to the internet, connected to your client box, connected to your input/output devices; the idea is to switch the position of the internet and the client. The server will handle all the operations of the server and the client and will send to you, what can be considered, the signals for your monitor and speakers. The internet will essentially be transmitting a movie to you.
Lower bandwidth accounts can be catered for by lowering the resolution, reducing the frame-rate, reducing the sound sample-rate, or by compressing the video or audio. Compression is unlikely as an option though, as it places more stress on the server.
You mean a system like second life, but graphically more advanced... good question if that really will become sucessful for games, we will see. I know there are several projects in the works for such systems. ATI to my knowledge has something in the works with another company.
He's going to play the game either way. He doesn't care/know if the developers get his money if he buys it, he just wants to enjoy the game. Pirating it is more profitable for him.
Here's the thing: Most pirates wouldn't buy the game anyway. Or at least that's the principle most developers that publish DRM free work from.
Also, how do you give benefits for buyers that pirates can't take advantage of? That might be possible for online games like MMOs but for a single player game? Good luck with that.
Here's the thing: Piracy might be rampant, but for the most part Draconian DRM won't solve it. On the other hand going completely DRM free will only make the problem worse in the long run.
DRM is inevitable, and Piracy probably equally inevitable for the foreseeable future. What both industry and consumers need to realize is the need to compromise. Personally, I think Steam is fair one in the current day and age.
I wouldn't mind streaming content in this way, as long as the price comes down to reflect my reduced usage rights. Afterall that is what I'm paying for when I buy games, music and films anyway - a license, albiet one with less restrictions.
Valve/Steam have so much of my money.
I wish they offered some sort of unlimited-access subscription plan for $50/month or so.
Also, how do you give benefits for buyers that pirates can't take advantage of? That might be possible for online games like MMOs but for a single player game? Good luck with that.
I personally think that's what we should be thinking about, not copy protection.
I personally think that's what we should be thinking about, not copy protection.
It's pretty impossible. For digital things, they'd just get uploaded with the pirate version. For physical things, like figurines, that's gonna up the price of production(and the price of games as a consequence).
Telltale actually DOES do this for an extent, though. The DVD, for example, and the pre-order forum are buying incentives.
Copy protection is fine as long as it doesn't screw with you too much. Keeping a person from making more than 20 copies without at least making the person ask nicely is not an unreasonable request. When the company behind the protection sees complaints and then adjusts their protection to reflect those, it's hard to say "But they're horrible, draconian imperials!" Especially since you actually get TWO licenses with the season. One that lets you download the games and activate them something like 20 times, and another that you can activate as many times as you want with a disc check. Telltale's DRM exists, but it's so transparent that I don't mind it. It's not treating the customer like they're automatically a thief, it's just drawing a line and saying "Hey, we don't want you posting your serial number online and letting everybody download from our servers and play our game from your single purchase."
Those who are on the "anti-DRM" side of the aisle often forget that the seller AND the buyer need to respect the other. A person or company that is selling usage licenses needs to respect that the end user is going to need to reinstall, that the end user may need to use multiple machines, and that the end user should not NOTICE the copy protection(especially in annoying ways) during normal use. The buyer needs to respect that the seller has a prerogative to protect that license from casual sharing using their resources.
The fact that technology exists that can foil a locked door does not mean that people shouldn't bother locking them. The fact that a fence can be torn down or cut through does not mean that the very making of a fence is stupid. The fence is there to keep people from casually trespassing, possibly without even knowing that they were doing so.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind TT's copy protection at all...
But obviously, this game WILL be pirated...
BTW - I think we should hack at the reason why people pirate games - Obviously, we can't convince people who care, and just want their games for free, but I think we should give them a reason NOT to pirate games - Just what exactly, I want to think about...
I wish they offered some sort of unlimited-access subscription plan for $50/month or so.
Valve / Steam got my money until i learned the hard way that I could not get the season CDs for Sam and Max Season1 after buying from Steam ;-)
Besides that over here in Europe Steam is mostly more expensive than buying the game from the store. I usually just buy from them if there is a weekend special.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind TT's copy protection at all...
But obviously, this game WILL be pirated...
BTW - I think we should hack at the reason why people pirate games - Obviously, we can't convince people who care, and just want their games for free, but I think we should give them a reason NOT to pirate games - Just what exactly, I want to think about...
Well the main problem is, that one of the arguments of piracy is that the games are too expensive, then lets have a look at the iphone, the average game there is 5 $ but still piracy is rampant!
So if someone wants to pirate he will do it anyway, all other arguments are lame excuses!
And so it begins. Here's a bit from EA on Sims 3 and piracy:
EA CEO John Riccitiello has a new message for people who want to pirate EA games: go ahead and do it. "By the way, if there are any pirates you're writing for, please encourage them to pirate FIFA Online, NBA Street Online, Battleforge, Battlefield Heroes..." he told IndustryGamers. "If they would just pirate lots of it I'd love them. [laughs] Because what's in the middle of the game is an opportunity to buy stuff. "Welcome to the new EA, where you're not being sold a game, you're being sold a store.
Sims 3 was leaked weeks before the game was supposed to be released, along with a warning not to allow the game to connect online. The torrent file also urged people to buy the game if they liked it; a cynical person might say that it sounds like more of a marketing plan than a leak. Riccitiello even jokes that this was a "secret" marketing program for a large-scale demo, focused on Poland and China. He denies that the leak came from EA, though.
EA has some built-in protection against pirates when it comes to Sims 3. A large percentage of the content isn't even saved on the disc: you have to go online and activate the title to get the rest of the game. "A huge amount of the gameplay is an overlay for the community, where you are sampling assets created by other people. So for the pirate consumer, they don't get the second town, they don't get all the extra content, and they don't get the community," Riccitiello explained. EA had sent me a copy of the game to check out, and while installing I noticed there was a 3GB update that needed to be installed to play.
EA thinks this is the secret to stopping—or at least curbing—piracy: games should be services, not products. Or at least products that should be selling other products. We already knew that EA would like to turn Tiger Woods into a subscription-based product, and Sims 3 is a game that wants you to constantly be creating, downloading, and buying new virtual items. The old business model was selling expansion packs, but that was too complicated: why not cut out the retailers and turn the game into its own store to sell the products?
"I'm a longtime believer that we're moving to selling services that are disc-enabled as opposed to packages that have bolt-ons.... So the point I'm making is, yes I think that's the answer [to piracy]." Riccitiello told IndustryGamers. "And here's the trick: it's not the answer because this foils a pirate, but it's the answer because it makes the service so valuable that in comparison the packaged good is not. So you can only deliver these added services to a consumer you recognize and know... So I think the truth is we've out-serviced the pirate."
The Sims is a great testbed for this approach: the audience trends more towards the casual, and the frequent expansion packs have historically sold very well at retail. This is an audience that's ready for microtransactions, and may actually welcome buying content at a trickle instead of spending $30 a throw for a new disc every few months. Battlefield Heroes is likewise going to be a free product with for-pay aesthetic updates, and EA recently turned its card-game-slash-strategy-title Battleforge into a free-to-play product where you can buy extra cards if you tire of the hand you're dealt in the initial download.
Some of these moves may be experiments, and Battleforge may have simply failed to sell, but EA is certainly interested in expanding the idea of how games are sold and consumed.
And so it begins. Here's a bit from EA on Sims 3 and piracy:
Thanks for the interesting quote...
I assume this might work for some games, but in the end it wont work for every game there is. I for instance probably would never buy a game which relies on micropayments to finish it, simply not interested!
I can live with the approach Telltale does however!
I am not sure piracywise if the approach of EA works in the long run, after all the additional content has to be sent to the users harddrive, so it is just a matter of time if those expansion packs are cracked!
Anyway such a micropayment approach is simply uninteresting for me, one of the reasons why I never got into MMRPGs where this already has happend very often! And one of the reasons why I stopped playing trading card games after a short period of time!
I thought everyone on this forum wanted to be a pirate...oh well.
Seriously though, the only time I condone pirating a game is when it is nearly impossible to purchase the game legally or if the purchased copy you own is unplayable. Like if you have the floppy version of SMI and your only computer with a floppy drive dies on you, I think it's perfectly acceptable to download a copy of it. Secondly, if you look for a game everywhere (specifically one that has been out of print for years) then downloading a pirated copy and emulating seems perfectly acceptable to me.
However, pirating newer games (not just new games) is just hurting the industry.
Comments
np: Tosca - Annanas (Uko Dub) (Suzuki In Dub)
How's that?
Personally, I do not pirate games. And when I do download a game through "pirate channels", it's simply for backup purposes. I was speaking about a majority of pirates who simply don't have the financial resource to pay $60 for a video game (which I'm often reluctant to pay myself). Of course, it is technically illegal. But the reality is, most people don't care.
There was a time when pirates were a minority, but things have changed greatly with the advance of internet/bittorrent, etc. Your average Joe is a pirate now. Most of them don't even know it's illegal to download a (commercial) game from the internet. You wanna go drag all of them out and beat them up for it?
Ignorant, yes. Cheap, yes. That dumb, no.
np: Tosca - D-Moll (Session 1) (Dehli9 (Disc 2))
I don't play much online games, the internet machine suffices for what little online gaming I do. It can't, however, run many modern (released in the last 2 years or so) titles. Looking up hints and downloading patches gets done on the same pc, then the files get transfered to my gaming pc using a USB stick.
You'd be surprised how many people I've met who think this is true. They might seem dumb to you, but there's really nothing more than plain old ignorance at work here, which is a little sad.
You definitely don't want to target consumers, but something has to change. People are pirating because they can get away with it -it doesn't matter if it's a great game or terrible game (metacritic), $20 or $60, cost a million dollars or 50 million dollars to make, has a demo or not, good graphics or not, PC native or port. Only 10% of PC game installs are legitimate.
For traditional companies, it's getting harder and harder to make a profit selling PC games. Only 4% of games that start development across all platforms ever turn a profit, the PC-specific percent must be abysmal. Rampant piracy has basically created the environment we're in now. EA and Activision run almost everything. Companies are afraid to take risks, so we only get games that are "sequalizable", etc...
Sure you can get games for free, but it doesn't make any sort of useful "statement" to the developer or publisher. It makes them churn out crappy sequels with draconian DRM, or turn to developing console titles only. You reap what you sow. If it turns out people don't want to pay for PC games any more, the market will certainly respond -but it may not respond the way you want.
Yeah, something has to change, but whom- the buyer or the seller?
Today, this internet generation is used to mass-consuming multimedia. The days of buying a POS cd for 20 euros, listening to the only 2 out of 17 songs that are good, are over. People can get access to such a wide range of options, that there isn't enough time to cover it all. This is good. It's good because what's happening with the whole internet revolution is people learning to understand eachother, from all over the world. It's a global society and we share with eachother and we learn shitloads. The general global education comes through the internet, people get educated because of the internet. Knowledge can no longer be withheld like it used to. This is good and serves to mankind's development.
Consumers have gotten better education. Record companies cannot sell shitrecords anymore like they used to. Instead of realizing the marketing crowd just got tougher and realizing it puts a lot of pressure on companies to come up with better solutions, maybe delivering more than just a product- maybe delivering PACKAGES, they try to revert the progress made. They still want to sell their shitrecords to an inflated prize at the expense of the uneducated customer.
Well, guess what?
Games:
http://www.johnnyrocketfingers.net/johnny-rocketfingers2.php
http://www.theworldshardestgame.net/index.html
Comedy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE3KdcTgrno&feature=channel_page
Not to talk about myspace and other huge communities where musicians, some definetly shitloads more talented than a lot of crap out on CD, post free stuff.
Free is everywhere. The internet has opened up the market and now there's millions of "talented" people competing for competition, doing stuff for free just for marketing. Just look at iReport or w/e for CNN International. So companies, people that work in the entertainment industry, need to take their shit to a whole new different level. That's where it's at. You can't deliver amateur crap that the average Joe coulda done if he had enough time and money, you need to deliver artistery. You need to show that that education you got actually taught you something special. No more plastic factory, now it's time for true artists to deliver. Time for the crap to gtfo.
And yes, that DOES mean getting inventive. Maybe a really well made game isn't enough anymore? Maybe it's not so far above shit that consumers, who can get shit for free, cares? I know that I enjoyed Johnny Rocketfingers 2 more than most other games I have played and I have replayed it 3 times and I'll probably replay it again- and this is a short freaking game.
I paid for your games because I feel you deserve the money upholding a genre I hold very dear, so that's my motivation.
We don't track that sort of thing, but many games which do things like, for instance, post to an online leaderboard, or have a very common tech support issue, you can tell with that. If you have sold 100 copies of your game, but you're having 1,000 different unique installs posting scores to your leaderboard, that gives a good hint. Or (and this is fairly hilarious, in terms of how awesome people are) if your tech support department gets inundated with tech support requests to the point that more people ask for help with the game than you have paid customers, one should take the hint. Both of these things have been reported as happening to other developers (not those precise numbers, but trends like that), though I lamely can't remember which companies.
It's interesting to read that you can't make any money with video games anymore because this is still a growing industry. Maybe it helps taking a look at other industry branches for a second. Same with the argument that the PC is a dead platform you can't make any profit on. Tell this Blizzard and i know quite some smaller studios who are doing fine there. I really wonder how TTG survived and steadily enlarged until they did the Wii version of Sam&Max then.
Anyway i think it's common knowledge that there are different reasons for piracy, originals offer less value than cracked versions (thinking of cheeky copy protections which invade your system), mediocre gaming experiences, too expensive prices, the pure availability of cracked versions, lack of understanding that an act is unlawful, crappy demo versions, buggy games...
Some of these things you can take care of to a certain degree and some you can't and don't want to.
I think as a developer you should always try to treat your customers the same way you would like to be treated on your own and that in quite some cases this simply isn't happening. Sadly a lot of developers/publishers tend to beeing more restrictive than it makes sense. The gaming industry also shows quite some similarities with the music industry here.
Dunno, i just have to remember that the music industry also once said, when they were changing from vinly to CD that once the CD production process will have amortised, the CDs will get cheaper again, which never really happened.
The same in many cases has happened with online distributed video games. Developers used to say, if they can get more percentages out from the retail price then they would be able lowering the prices as well. In reality this only happened to a rather small degree or amount of games. The better part of the money often went elsewere. But here are also good examples and stores which exactly are doing this, so it's not all bad.
But taking a TTG season as an example, including the costs of the shipping DVD on average it sums up beeing more expensive than i can get a game in the store around the corner. The advantages of that a developer has his own store and can make usage out of the online distribution isn't showing up in your wallet. It might be seen elsewhere like in the quality of the game or the increase of the company. Don't misunderstand me i'm fine with paying the price for a game i'm interested in if it's worth the money but i also see the point that people ask themsevles why companies invest their money into stupid things instead of providing enjoyful content with a fair prictetag instead and fulfill their promises.
And much much more could be said about this topic, time out.
Just to close this with a constructive critique: I don't see a reason for a copy protection on a DVD i payed for weeks before and were the season has been released already. This would be the right place for sparing a superfluous copy protection!
telltale seasons are STILL cheaper even WITH the shipping costs, not more expensive.
how much is it to ship over there?
Also not really true, piracy was always very high in the computer area.
I can remember the C64 times when almost everone pirated the games.
(More in Europe than in the US where at least some people bought the games)
Games usually sold 30.000 worldwide, millions of those computers were sold. In my personal opinion the sell through rate today even on the PC is much higher than it used to be in the past, but the problem is that games cost way more than they used to cost in the past.
But the main difference of having 2-3 people working on one game several months like it used to be in the early console or home computer times, or having to spent a movie budget and an having to feed a big production team for a single game.
But the main difference is really today everything has been sped up to a big degree. Back then piracy was previvalent in schools where children swapped disks (with several months delay, except for bbs based piracy), nowadays it is a click of a button!
But given the production costs, it is understandable that companies prefer to develop for consoles nowadays. Back then console hardware was subpar to the computer hardware, so there was a technical incentive nowadays the gap has narrowed to a big degree and piracy which also exists on consoles (except the PS3) is not as widespread as on the PC but for the sheer numbers alone the PC still is saved since sales equal on all platforms thanks to the split of hardware platforms within the console section.
But give the trend towards notebooks and the existence of the measly intel graphic processors in the majority of them (who are pushed to unknowing people who then never become potential customers because the games cannot decently run on those things) with diminishing desktop sales numbers the pc might become the least selling platform in the long run.
Depends on the type of DRM, the classical copy protection made Stan happy,
the newer schemes with limited installs and online activation are probably the ones which Stan doesn´t like.
Funny thing however is that most used game sales nowadays happen in the console area, where such schemes are not existing (yet)
The buyer. Here's what's going to happen.
Spoiler: Within 10 years all commercial PC game purchases will be made through a Steam-like application. To play every game, you will need an account key and be connected to the Internet, like an MMO. The game assets and portions of the executable will not be stored on your computer, but will be streamed to you. All you'll have on your computer is a fancy terminal program. The only way to pirate games running under such a system is to steal an account key, or hack the servers.
"Absurd!", you might say. "Nobody will stand for that!". Oh, won't they? Think about it. As the Internet becomes faster and more ubiquitous, the probability of a system like this increases quickly. There are also a huge number of benefits.
Benefits to consumers:
Benefits to companies:
Hope I didn't spoil the surprise for any pirates lurking in the thread! The vast majority of the masses are just about ready to accept "you have to be online to play games" and the technology for all of this already exists.
Not sure if this is a feasable perspective for within 10 years, first of all you cannot think that half of the potential customers will be on fibre within a 10 years timeframe (there nowadays still is a huge percentage still on analog modems). The majority still will be on dsl which is too slow for streaming game assets within the game (which is what I read here)
Secondly, if you stream with a slower line, what are you going to stream, my guess is you only can stream certain game assets, and then you have another loophole, that is having transparent proxies in between which can track the data sent and accepted.
Also what are you going to do with a load of angry customers who cannot play because due to some outage they are disconnected from the net.
For the next 10 years I only can see a system like Steam where all the game assets are downloaded upfront as feasable.
But then the core data still is on the customers hd, encrypted but still there!
I can see certain genres going first that route because they aren't as responsive and less demanding than others. Some might start it more in a local fashion as well. All in all it's moving into a movie direction with the difference that it's interactive.
I think cracking/piracy is still possible on it. It always is an issue at the point where the check is done. Beside of the keys you could try running the service outside the server farm, utalizing maybe hacked computing power, maybe certain specified home systems will be able to run it as well. According to the outlay this might work or just be insane. I just would be cautious with saying never.
What i disagree with is that all the benefits which have been listed should be kind of restricted to this delivery form. This is a little bit like saying if you want a banana then you need to drink a milk shake whilst actually you could consume the banana in quite some different ways already if there would be the will to let people. And for the trash, electronic distribution already is a benefit against trash, right?! But you're baiting people with slip case cover art! ;O) Moreover all those server farms/cloud computing needs to be manufactured and fed with electricity as well. You end up in a typical client-server model discussion.
Anyway, no matter how it will turn out, i hope that you still will have a choice to decide what to buy and ljust in case all goes completely wrong you can still program games on your own or play one of the thousands of games which have been released already.
If the battle against piracy is won, it'll be interesting to hear who is to blame once a game hasn't meet the expectations.
The idea is not to send the assets. If you think of a current setup as a server, connected to the internet, connected to your client box, connected to your input/output devices; the idea is to switch the position of the internet and the client. The server will handle all the operations of the server and the client and will send to you, what can be considered, the signals for your monitor and speakers. The internet will essentially be transmitting a movie to you.
Lower bandwidth accounts can be catered for by lowering the resolution, reducing the frame-rate, reducing the sound sample-rate, or by compressing the video or audio. Compression is unlikely as an option though, as it places more stress on the server.
-Get his favourite game for free.
-Buy it.
He's going to play the game either way. He doesn't care/know if the developers get his money if he buys it, he just wants to enjoy the game.
Pirating it is more profitable for him.
Pirates always come up with ways to beat copy protection... Instead of beating piracy, why not try and make sure that by buying a game, you're being benifitted?
I mean, I buy games because I want the developers to get money for their hard work, ensuring that they can churn out more games. That's benefit enough for most of us, but not everyone, sadly...
You mean a system like second life, but graphically more advanced... good question if that really will become sucessful for games, we will see. I know there are several projects in the works for such systems. ATI to my knowledge has something in the works with another company.
Also, how do you give benefits for buyers that pirates can't take advantage of? That might be possible for online games like MMOs but for a single player game? Good luck with that.
Here's the thing: Piracy might be rampant, but for the most part Draconian DRM won't solve it. On the other hand going completely DRM free will only make the problem worse in the long run.
DRM is inevitable, and Piracy probably equally inevitable for the foreseeable future. What both industry and consumers need to realize is the need to compromise. Personally, I think Steam is fair one in the current day and age.
Valve/Steam have so much of my money.
I wish they offered some sort of unlimited-access subscription plan for $50/month or so.
I couldn't agree more, it makes a lot of sense.
Telltale actually DOES do this for an extent, though. The DVD, for example, and the pre-order forum are buying incentives.
Copy protection is fine as long as it doesn't screw with you too much. Keeping a person from making more than 20 copies without at least making the person ask nicely is not an unreasonable request. When the company behind the protection sees complaints and then adjusts their protection to reflect those, it's hard to say "But they're horrible, draconian imperials!" Especially since you actually get TWO licenses with the season. One that lets you download the games and activate them something like 20 times, and another that you can activate as many times as you want with a disc check. Telltale's DRM exists, but it's so transparent that I don't mind it. It's not treating the customer like they're automatically a thief, it's just drawing a line and saying "Hey, we don't want you posting your serial number online and letting everybody download from our servers and play our game from your single purchase."
Those who are on the "anti-DRM" side of the aisle often forget that the seller AND the buyer need to respect the other. A person or company that is selling usage licenses needs to respect that the end user is going to need to reinstall, that the end user may need to use multiple machines, and that the end user should not NOTICE the copy protection(especially in annoying ways) during normal use. The buyer needs to respect that the seller has a prerogative to protect that license from casual sharing using their resources.
The fact that technology exists that can foil a locked door does not mean that people shouldn't bother locking them. The fact that a fence can be torn down or cut through does not mean that the very making of a fence is stupid. The fence is there to keep people from casually trespassing, possibly without even knowing that they were doing so.
But obviously, this game WILL be pirated...
BTW - I think we should hack at the reason why people pirate games - Obviously, we can't convince people who care, and just want their games for free, but I think we should give them a reason NOT to pirate games - Just what exactly, I want to think about...
Valve / Steam got my money until i learned the hard way that I could not get the season CDs for Sam and Max Season1 after buying from Steam ;-)
Besides that over here in Europe Steam is mostly more expensive than buying the game from the store. I usually just buy from them if there is a weekend special.
Well the main problem is, that one of the arguments of piracy is that the games are too expensive, then lets have a look at the iphone, the average game there is 5 $ but still piracy is rampant!
So if someone wants to pirate he will do it anyway, all other arguments are lame excuses!
I assume this might work for some games, but in the end it wont work for every game there is. I for instance probably would never buy a game which relies on micropayments to finish it, simply not interested!
I can live with the approach Telltale does however!
I am not sure piracywise if the approach of EA works in the long run, after all the additional content has to be sent to the users harddrive, so it is just a matter of time if those expansion packs are cracked!
Anyway such a micropayment approach is simply uninteresting for me, one of the reasons why I never got into MMRPGs where this already has happend very often! And one of the reasons why I stopped playing trading card games after a short period of time!
Wizards of the Coast has all of my money.
(Yeah, I know - talking about piracy is frowned upon here... or am I mixing things up again?)
np: Aesop Rock - Five Fingers (None Shall Pass)
Seriously though, the only time I condone pirating a game is when it is nearly impossible to purchase the game legally or if the purchased copy you own is unplayable. Like if you have the floppy version of SMI and your only computer with a floppy drive dies on you, I think it's perfectly acceptable to download a copy of it. Secondly, if you look for a game everywhere (specifically one that has been out of print for years) then downloading a pirated copy and emulating seems perfectly acceptable to me.
However, pirating newer games (not just new games) is just hurting the industry.