5 Reasons It's Still Not Cool to Admit You're a Gamer

[TheTerminator2004]

While its (probably) true that if people didn't download, publishers wouldn't impose restrictive DRM, its not the fault of people downloading games. Its the publishers fault for thinking that imposing more restrictive DRM will stop the problem. There is no evidence to show that illicit downloading is a problem - and almost all of the few studies that have been done indicate that it doesn't have any impact. Some have even suggested that it has a benefit! The vast majority of people who download a game, do not do so instead of buying it.

 

There are a lot of reasons people download, almost all of which are not a lost sale, but I've written looooong posts on this before, so I really cba going through them all again here. Suffice to say that 90% of illicit downloads come from people downloading because they've lost their disc, or because they've installed the game but can't play it because of the copy protection, and so need a crack, or simply because they're interested in a game, but it costs £50, theres no demo available, and no other way to try it out before buying. £40-50 is far too much money to spend when you can't even be sure what you're getting will actually work on your PC - and of course, you can't get a refund on a game once you've opened it.

 

As for whether games are worth the price they're often sold for... well, as the saying goes, everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it. I personally think the prices many AAA titles are sold at these days are exorbitant, and would never pay more than £20-25 for a game, at most. Clearly, however, lots of people are willing to pay more than that, otherwise they wouldn't be sold at that price. I think its just another example of how weak-willed gamers, as a whole, tend to be. Just like the MW2 outrage ("We're all going to boycott your game because you got rid of dedicated servers!" *game comes out, everyone rushes off to buy it anyway*), its more a case of everyone complaining about how outrageous and disgusting the prices are, but being so desperate to play the game that they break, and go buy it anyway.

[jaysus]

also mind that there simply isnt enough money in circulation to buy all the music that gets pirated anyway :P, if the RIAA would ask for all the bucks it always says it looses due to pirates we would need to triple or somin the actual amount of money in existance... or we should lower interest rates exorbitantly, inflation going rampart, and then we might have enough bucks to buy music again, point is intellectual property was never a factor in the calculation of interest rates and the worth of money, that wasnt a problem as long as art was just a nuisance in financial calculations but nowerdays with the RIAA ir GEMA, welcome to the hell of capitalism :)

according to the RIAA one mp3 is worth as much as 52.000 sacks of rice for example, does it feed anyone? no... does the RIAA loose 52k sacks fo rice if someone pirates such a song? no...

as long as copyright laws are as pointless as they are atm and as long as intellectual property is being treated as third grade good and unimportant as an economical factor piracy should not even be illegal... its like saying breathing air while sitting in a cold tub while playing with exactly 4 rubber ducks has to be illegal... nonsense...

once we had a line in our constitutions, a penalty has to be in relation to the crime comitted and the damages done, in this copyright context however there is no relation left

[Halororor]

Let me put it this way.

 

The first cars were created without alarms, then they got stolen. So the giant car manufacturing companies decided to install (often irritating) security systems, like the hateful imobilizer. Yet, cars still do get stolen, because people are greedy, they want what they can't have.

 

If you steal a car, you can't blame the manufacturers by saying you stole it because you didn't like the security it has built in. In essence, this is exactly what pirates aim to do. They try to find crappy ways of justifying why they steal. Unfortunately, one reason they stick with is 'I pirate because I hate DRM'. This does not justify piracy. You are in no way entitled to playing a game. It is a luxury. If you don't like the way the devlopers offer it, you don't play it. As simple as that.

[Kazakovich]

My philosophy when dealing with new aquaintances is that if they judge me by this time old standards, then it's their own problem, not mine. If someone would put me down for enjoying video games, for instance, I really don't think I'd like to know them anyway, which in turn means their impression of me doesn't matter to anyone. I'm sure this will turn me into a perpetual unemployed loser when the frames for acceptable individual traits gets narrower in the future, but, oh well...

 

To summarize; don't let people who CBA to challenge or examine their prejudice get to you. It's up to them. It's not very worthwhile dealing with a person who finds it easier to assume you're a shut-in loser based on what form of entertainment you prefer than to get to learn you better.

[TheTerminator2004]

Firstly, stealing a car, and copying a song, or game, or whatever are completely different. When you steal a car, there is a victim - the person you stole from loses their car. When you download music off bittorrent, or whatever, there is no victim. Someone who has a copy of the song, makes a new copy, and gives it to you. They still have their copy, but now you have one too. The only reason the RIAA et al want it stopped is because they feel that people who download music or games etc do so instead of buying them, and therefore they are losing money because of this. There is little evidence to support this (other than a couple of studies which were a) flawed, and b) funded and performed by the MPAA - and thus can't exactly be trusted). There is little evidence suggesting this isn't the case either, of course - I can count the number of studies in this area on one hand - but theres more evidence than the copyright organisations have.

 

As for downloading a game because of the DRM... I've done it before. An example would be Mass Effect 2, where I bought the Digital Deluxe edition, but when I tried to play it, found that theres a bug in the DRM which, for some reason, stopped the game from authenticating online (and thus locked me out of all the DLC). I did spend a fair amount of time trawling around the Bioware forums looking for a solution, even attempted to get in touch with EA customer support (but in true EA style, their entire customer support website happened to be offline for a extended period of time). In the end, I was forced to download all the DLC off bittorrent, and crack it. A perfectly legitmate course of action imo. How often do you think legitimate users have been forced to download cracks or whatever off bittorrent? Its happened to me several times, and I've heard plenty of other people complain about having to do it in the past, so I'd dare say that its quite common, and quite understandable.

[ub3rman123]

I'm having that exact same problem with Grand Theft Auto 4. It told me my CD (Bought fresh in the box from a Wal-mart) was a copy, and couldn't be used. Then it made me enter 15 different codes scattered around on the box and manual. I get the idea it'd save me more time to pirate the game and just mail Rockstar 50 dollars. (Not that I'm willing to pirate the game, I love my computer too much.)

 

Also the game still won't work.

[Halororor]

Firstly, stealing a car, and copying a song, or game, or whatever are completely different. When you steal a car, there is a victim - the person you stole from loses their car. When you download music off bittorrent, or whatever, there is no victim. Someone who has a copy of the song, makes a new copy, and gives it to you. They still have their copy, but now you have one too. The only reason the RIAA et al want it stopped is because they feel that people who download music or games etc do so instead of buying them, and therefore they are losing money because of this. There is little evidence to support this (other than a couple of studies which were a) flawed, and b) funded and performed by the MPAA - and thus can't exactly be trusted). There is little evidence suggesting this isn't the case either, of course - I can count the number of studies in this area on one hand - but theres more evidence than the copyright organisations have.

 

 

True. It might not be entirely the same as stealing a car, but you get where I'm coming from with the DRM thing. The point is, the first game ever made and commercially released wasn't made with any copy protection, so people pirated it. This made developers start inventing copy protection to protect the software they spent ages creating. This copy protection got cracked, so they created tougher copy protection. Which also got cracked. This has continued through the years up to a point where legitimate buyers are getting the worst end of the deal. We can't blame the developers or publishers, though, as they merely seek to protect what's theirs.

 

I also hate the DRM imposed on us, but I blame pirates for it, not developers. You can't ignore the cause and hate the effect.

 

It doesn't matter if publishers don't technically lose money or actual products through piracy, pirates take what they are not entitled to, then seek reasons to justify it. Stop pirating and you'll see prices drop as well as DRM get left behind.

 

Oh, and I couldn't care less whenever a customer who bought the game pulls it from the internet as well. They already paid, so it's well within their right. However, if you didn't pay for it, it's not within your right to use it at all.

[TheTerminator2004]

This is the thing: filesharing is not the cause. It's an effect. Yes, there are a small number of people who will always pirate, no matter what. But they wouldn't have bought the game/film/album anyway, so they're irrelevant. Everyone else who downloads, does so for a reason, and it is those reasons which publishers need to be addressing. They may download a game because they have no way of knowing what it will be like, or if it will even run on their PC, before they buy it (in which case publishers need to provide a decent demo or trial - something they don't do, or don't do well, for a lot of modern games, and then expect people to gamble £50 on an unknown. No refunds on games once you've opened/installed them, remember). Maybe they lost their CD, or are unable to download the game again for whatever reason (Steam account got hacked? It happens surprisingly often), and just want to be able to play the game they paid for. Maybe the game's DRM is stopping them from playing it, and they need a crack.

 

There are plenty of valid reasons, and plenty of ways to make them irrelevant. There are other reasons which might not be considered quite so valid by some, but which are also very common. For example, games which retail at exorbitant prices (or unbalanced prices - plenty of modern games get sold for $30-40 in the US, and 50-odd euros in Europe) - some people will rather download, and then buy the game when it's cheap. Or games which are released in one region earlier than another (Ghostbusters is a classic example of this, coming out in the US several months earlier than in the rest of the world).

 

Clearly these are all problems which are easily solved by the publishers - release games everywhere at once, at reasonable prices. In the olden days of having to transport physical copies of a game all over the world, differing release dates was understandable. But now, there is absolutely no reason for a game sold on Steam to only be available to people in the US. Thats the reason I didn't buy Assassin's Creed when it came out, it was listed in Steam, but it wouldn't let me buy it. Judging by reviews, though, its a good thing I didn't buy it. Not that I have any way of actually knowing (short of downloading it), seeing as they didn't release a demo.

 

But yeah, piracy is an effect, not the cause. Publishers make stupid mistakes, or try and screw over their customers, and then when those customers resort to filesharing as a solution, they slap loads of restrictive DRM on - ironically, only causing more people to download it.

[Vagrant0]

This is the thing: filesharing is not the cause. It's an effect. Yes, there are a small number of people who will always pirate, no matter what. But they wouldn't have bought the game/film/album anyway, so they're irrelevant. Everyone else who downloads, does so for a reason, and it is those reasons which publishers need to be addressing. They may download a game because they have no way of knowing what it will be like, or if it will even run on their PC, before they buy it (in which case publishers need to provide a decent demo or trial - something they don't do, or don't do well, for a lot of modern games, and then expect people to gamble £50 on an unknown. No refunds on games once you've opened/installed them, remember). Maybe they lost their CD, or are unable to download the game again for whatever reason (Steam account got hacked? It happens surprisingly often), and just want to be able to play the game they paid for. Maybe the game's DRM is stopping them from playing it, and they need a crack.

 

There are plenty of valid reasons, and plenty of ways to make them irrelevant. There are other reasons which might not be considered quite so valid by some, but which are also very common. For example, games which retail at exorbitant prices (or unbalanced prices - plenty of modern games get sold for $30-40 in the US, and 50-odd euros in Europe) - some people will rather download, and then buy the game when it's cheap. Or games which are released in one region earlier than another (Ghostbusters is a classic example of this, coming out in the US several months earlier than in the rest of the world).

 

Clearly these are all problems which are easily solved by the publishers - release games everywhere at once, at reasonable prices. In the olden days of having to transport physical copies of a game all over the world, differing release dates was understandable. But now, there is absolutely no reason for a game sold on Steam to only be available to people in the US. Thats the reason I didn't buy Assassin's Creed when it came out, it was listed in Steam, but it wouldn't let me buy it. Judging by reviews, though, its a good thing I didn't buy it. Not that I have any way of actually knowing (short of downloading it), seeing as they didn't release a demo.

 

But yeah, piracy is an effect, not the cause. Publishers make stupid mistakes, or try and screw over their customers, and then when those customers resort to filesharing as a solution, they slap loads of restrictive DRM on - ironically, only causing more people to download it.

Well, the problem with that argument is addressed in the article. Regardless of what the game costs, even if it is only 1 cent, people will still pirate it. Even when the company which releases the game does so without any DRM and at a very small price, people will still want to get it for free, or insist that the game is still too expensive. Although there is one flaw in that point, dealing with the fact that people could decide how much they wanted to pay, so would naturally opt for the least amount, the main thing to take from it is that the vast majority of people out there don't have the slightest idea about how much money it takes to make a game, and are only concerned with their own budget. Even an entirely digital release costs money for the bandwidth.

[SpellAndShield]

Playing PC games is just one of many kinds of escapism. Some people dance, some people do drugs, some people run, some people have sex 30x a day...at the end of the day, it is all a form of escapism, people being desirous of ignoring reality because let's face it, it sucks.