What poses a greater threat to the gaming industry?

[hoofhearted4]

Thirdly, game publishers seem to be short-sighted and refuse to see or plan for long-term consequences. For example - I, for one, do not own all the Fallout 3 DLC, nor any of the New Vegas DLC. However, many of the newest mods tend to have these as a requirement, meaning that if I want to play a new mod, I have to buy the associated DLC - DLC that I do not have any interest in. So, if I have to buy the DLC to play a mod, am I technically buying the mod itself? See where this can get complicated?

 

i dont get how this point has anything to do with anything. if the Dev releases a tool kit, how is it their problem whether or not a certain mod works with or without said DLC?

 

also, (Off Topic) how can you have no interest in DLC for FO3? it was great DLC and much needed. (NV i cant say as ive never played them and only beaten the game itself once) :P

 

 

the source of a lot of piracy seams to be Steam, or at least thats what pirates use as an excuse. why is that? what is the big deal about having Steam? I have it, and ive never had any issues what so ever with it both with normal games and modded games. just curious

[dthumb]

Hey why don't you add this to your paper? IP Patents on Consoles

 

Sony and Microsoft has spent years fighting off lawsuits since the PS2 era, PS3 and XBOX 360 releases.

[marharth]

If you have DRM your game gets pirated more. It is counter productive and is without question a bigger issue then just piracy.

[hector530]

i voted DRM, and DRM drives away customers

 

also Pirates are pirates

 

witcher 2 had no DRM still got pirated 2 million + times

[Gracinfields]

Well as Vagrant did say that Ubisoft's DRM drove away potential customers is true, I am one of them. I use to love the Rainbow 6 and Ghost Recon games they made but once they released that must be always online DRM I haven't bought a single game from them. I am even skipping out on the new Ghost Recon game because of it and from what I saw its Awesome. Further more it isn't just DRM abuse that cause DRM to be hated, small coding issues with a DRM can totaly fubar you enjoy of a title you bought. Example being the first Gears of War game which had a coding issue with its DRM which caused the game's DRM to expire 2 years after launch, now they did create a "patch" to fix the issue but it doesn't patch the game or DRM, it patches the BIOS. Another major issue for DRM is the limited installation ie you can only have 3 installs of the game. Now before they didn't have a deautherization tool this ment after you installed it and uninstalled it then went back to reinstall it you were boned as it now has taken up two of your 3 installs. After the creation of Deautherization tools this is less of a problem but a major problem if you computer up and dies now you can't deautherize the machine at all so that is one install lost. As for DRMs stopping pirates Ubisoft knows this hasn't worked as their always online DRM was cracked with in a few days of launch of the first game it was ment to support. Oddly enough the only people that where able to play that game in the first week were the pirates as the DRM and server issues kept the legal owners of their copy from playing at all. Thus people that bought a legal copy now went in search of cracked copies just to play what they purchaced. The problem is it likely down the road all games are going to be turn toward a streaming providers like onlive as there is no files on the users machine, and I think that will put a major nail in the gaming coffin.

[Vagrant0]

What you are talking about is DRM abuse.

The point you're missing is that every major publisher seems to be going this route slowly but surely.

 

I'm also sure that previous DRM failures, like Starforce, also served to drive customers away since it screwed up most legitimate copies in the process. I personally know of a few people who wouldn't have even bothered to look up game cracks or other illegal means if it wasn't for their legally purchased game not working because of poorly implemented DRM systems. SecureROM is another one which undoubtedly cost companies customers due to its tendency to break hardware and occasionally prevent installation of valid game copies.

 

The ONLY form of DRM which probably didn't cause people to run the other way was installation keys that did not need an online connection, but were still used as a means of connecting accounts for online play (Diablo 2). It was a system which did not block players from just playing the game they bought, and which still encouraged people to have a legal copy in order to play online or patch. Despite the fact that Diablo 2 has been out for over a decade and has its share of cracks, it also has tons of people who still purchase the game legally so that they can play online (since cracked keys are regularly blocked from online play/patching). It was a system which was much less complicated, much less invasive, and much more effective than any being used today. But it isn't used because of the chance that someone would be able to play an unpatched, single player version of the game by pirating it.

 

Piracy itself doesn't directly cost a company money since the company is not providing any support, bandwidth, accounting, or distribution for that product. The only thing it does do is contribute to a free-rider problem (people who pirate getting for free what relatively few are actually paying for). The problem with every recent form of DRM is that it assumes that the person is a criminal, treats them like one, and doesn't give much incentive when they aren't. It's a free-rider problem, so it needs to be handled like a free-rider problem, not a theft one.

[Eddieawsome]

I disagree, piracy definitely costs a company thousands if not millions of dollars and the reason is most pirates i have encountered`s mentality: why should i pay for it when takes is a few clicks tp get it for free. As long as pirating something is a option developers will be relying on peoples conscience`s to get the money they deserve for there work, which is hardly reliable. DRM is nothing but the reaction by corporate idiots in suits to the idea that they might lose a few dollars. And as always the corporations idea only made the problem worse. But DRM is being treated as a problem on its own, it is only one of the side effects of piracy and should be treated as such.

[ziitch]

You know, I'm surprised no developer or publisher has simply hired a team dedicated to simply finding said distributors of pirated content and get info on exactly who to go after... Names and addresses are often required for domain registration, so finding a illegal distributor, contacting the webhost of the site and getting that information (as it can't be withheld), and then sending the info off for the legal team to write and send a C&D letter to sounds much more accurate of hitting the root of the source than any current form of DRM. Why devs don't want to hire and train people just to do this single task, and would rather instead use DRM baffles me...

[Vagrant0]

I disagree, piracy definitely costs a company thousands if not millions of dollars and the reason is most pirates i have encountered`s mentality: why should i pay for it when takes is a few clicks tp get it for free.

Which is essentially the free-rider issue, not a theft one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem

 

It isn't actually theft since it cannot be specifically quantified how many of those people actually intended to buy the game in the first place, or were willing to buy the game if not for there being a pirated copy available with relatively little difficulty.

 

That mentality can quickly changes in the case of games which offer integrated incentives, such as online play, or in cases where the game is one that people like well enough to just buy. Minecraft for example has both. Pirated versions can't update, and can't be used to join servers. Although there are people pirating it, there are also people who have gone on to buy it after pirating it so that they have access to those features and because they want to support the company who made it. In this case, the piracy actually leads to MORE sales than it would otherwise since even a small fraction of those people who might not otherwise buy that game eventually do after they have played it awhile. Meanwhile those who wouldn't have bought the game wouldn't regardless what was attached to it, so them playing it for free (at a risk of higher bugs, viruses, complications) doesn't actually change anything.

 

Even if those extra "redeemed pirates" are less than 1% of the total sales, that is still more money that is being made from piracy compared to the actual costs that the company might endure after gold because of piracy. Meanwhile extensive DRM structures which prevent legal owners from playing can result in a loss of as much as 70% of the customer base (from Ubisoft's figures).

 

The part that people really don't pay much attention to is how piracy has increased as the amount of playable demos being passed around has decreased. Not saying that the "try before you buy" demographic is particularly large or is a valid excuse for piracy, but it is a growing trend given the number of overhyped games being released.

 

@Zilch... According to what digging I did back when, most of those who are connected to piracy groups use hosts in countries where piracy laws don't apply (Switzerland) or would be exceptionally hard to prosecute. The "bay" has had several attempts made to shut it down, most recently DNS/IP blocking by ISPs in the EU, but it never really amounted to much since there are ways to counteract it, and governments seem more interested in blocking wide swathes of net activity (because some companies lose more to youtube and facebook than piracy) than just passing laws targeted at the problem. Contrary to what you might think from the Megaupload thing, most piracy isn't handled through direct downloads (except in a cloud environment).

 

Most of the initial distribution of piracy (people who actually crack the game and re-package it is done through private FTP or closed networks... Only after it has passed through some second or third parties does it find its way to a public system. Movie piracy is handled similarly, usually someone making duplicate discs to sell first, but is a shorter process for obvious reasons, which is why movie bootleggers are easier to track down. Most of those who actually make the cracked releases do it as a means of protesting use of DRM, or just for the bragging rights of beating whatever new system was put in place by whatever company. Several piracy groups actually HATE (with a seething passion) people who download to leech.

[aruless]

 

 

Most of the initial distribution of piracy (people who actually crack the game and re-package it is done through private FTP or closed networks... Only after it has passed through some second or third parties does it find its way to a public system. Movie piracy is handled similarly, usually someone making duplicate discs to sell first, but is a shorter process for obvious reasons, which is why movie bootleggers are easier to track down. Most of those who actually make the cracked releases do it as a means of protesting use of DRM, or just for the bragging rights of beating whatever new system was put in place by whatever company. Several piracy groups actually HATE (with a seething passion) people who download to leech.

 

 

yea ftp, irc and then torrents, sites like megaupload, mediafire, fileserve, hotfile their number are not quite that big in comparation to the ftp, irc or torrents, plus i have to say, ppl who rly wanna a game are gonna end buying the original, and also is so true that the demo's was a great fetaure, u can always check if the game is rly what u want trough a demo, but i guess thats some times bad for the developers cause ppl would see how bad the game it is so no body would be buying the same(and no the beta test is not the same).