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This is actually two topics rolled into one, mainly it is just to test the waters. Obviously this, unfortunately, is not the most active section. Furthermore I feel as though there will not be many people to oppose me. Hopefully I wrong! But in the meantime, since the two topics are closely related anyway, I have decided to it one topic as not to needlessly clutter up the section. Now to the topic(s) at hand!


Ok first up you have your PC developers that LOVE to complain about piracy, claiming that piracy is killing the PC gaming industry. So my question to you is... Is this true? Is it the rampant piracy that is causing the downward spiral of PC games?

Second we have the console developers that continuously gripe about not getting any money from used game sells and rentals and that it has a fairly big negative impact on their bottom line. My questions to you is... Does used games sells and video game rentals hurt the console gaming industry? Should the gaming industry receive royalties from video game rentals and used game sells or should used game sells and rentals be disallowed?


Now please, don't just agree or disagree with the questions, put forth reasoning for your beliefs, this is the intelligent discussion section!

Amusingly software piracy is most rapant amongst PC Game developers..... piracy is a question of convenience people pirate things because it's easier than having to jump through DRM hoops or whatever.

The royalties thing.... I don't think it's necessary I mean actors/production companies don't get additional royalties each time a DVD is resold so why should Games companies

My question regarding PC piracy, though, is that if it is having as big of an impact as PC developers claim.

I disagree.


For one, music piracy is a much MUCH larger "issue" then PC game piracy as more people pirate more songs then they do PC games. Not only has it been demonstrated that music piracy does not effect the music industry as badly as groups like the RIAA claims, but it is believed that piracy has had a positive effect on the music industry. But I digress.


I believe that there is a slew of issues such as price of hard, compatibility, DRM, lack of used game and rental markets, the list goes on and on, but I do not believe that piracy is having such a massive negative impact like devs would have us to believe. I also believe, that today's PC target audience, is yesterday's "console kiddies" whom are more reluctant to give up their incredibly cheap and convenient consoles for expensive, complicated PCs. I think that devs are just bandwagoning with the anti-piracy crowd because it makes for a convenient scapegoat. It certainly makes for a much better reason for why your game failed in the eyes of your shareholders instead of simply admitting that the game was utter crap.

well personally i do agree that to an extent PC gaming is effected by the Piracy, afterall, it is VERY easy to do, moreso than Console gaming.

ill use the PlayStation 2 for example, to play said games you do need to buy an additional part then have it installed into the console itself to evade an inbuilt authentication system. i wont say much more than that because i feel it may break some rules regarding criminal actions etc, because technically the part isnt illegal but the most common use of it - Game Piracy - is illegal. thus the dilemma and why im staying clear of it.

now consider that with PC gaming, most of the time you can get ahold of certain file replacements or patches from several popular websites or other file sharing methods.

suffice to say that piracy is bound to effect PC gaming more. it always was, but saying that it is killing the industry i think is a completely OTT statement. Sure the progression of PC gaming and the sheer number of console games available versus PC games (of the generation) has been a lot slower, but to claim it is dying/dead is incredibly naive. there is still a good PC gaming market, albeit a lot smaller than consoles. i mean there are PC exclusives etcetera that people if they want to play *cannot* have ported to their console. and assuming the DRM were impeccable they'd have to buy the game, or go without.

which hints me towards what I beleive is doing the damage to PC gaming. Bad or Insufficient DRMs. it is easier said than done, to create and implement a DRM system to combat piracy effectively, but for their effort anyway i applaud them. (mind you i hate DRMs, they have been a hinderance to me and others in a number of legitimate scenarios. but in the context of defending the industry, good on them.)

Now as far as royalties and secondhand products, I daresay that they need no such payment. Consider that when a product is sold brand new, they have their royalties paid straight up, they have their product in public, being seen all around the place. Anywhere you go, if you mention 'unreal' there are those who will know of any of the unreal games, unreal tournament 1999/2kx/2/3/whatever. theres free advertisement by word of mouth by itself. Also, theres other developers as another example using the game engine created by unreal: the Unreal engine (creative naming, no? ), games like Pariah, some of the more Rainbow Six games too.

if one dev company were to claim for royalties on a secondhand product, then another and another from them, and so on. if i bought FarCry 2 for example secondhand, thats Ubisoft who made the game, they bought the game franchise from Crytek, they use the Dunia engine, theres 3 software devs right there. it goes on and on, and FarCry 2 is definitely not the only game with arrangements like that in place so second hand royalties would be insanely difficult to manage should it become a widely used concept, it would turn into a huge mess, a web of arrangements, and ofcourse games arent just sold in one country, so theres the international laws regarding business to consider too.

Also considering the game devs have sold the product, they arent a bank who i want to be paying services to constantly. i mean for usage of thecompanies servers and upkeep etc, like DLC at 10 bucks a pop, or in World of Warcraft for example fair enough. however for an offline game, what we're looking at here can be taken out of context so many ways then abused over and over. THAT would be the death of gaming on ALL consoles or PCs if it ever exploded into being in this way.

Basically they sell a product, they arent a service. they've sold their product, they get their percentage, let that be it. but if they become whiney and demand money from every second hand sale or rental, they'd be no better than the corrupt monopolistic telecomms company, or the banks if you subscribe to certain conspiracy theories.

~soul

[quote="Solus"i wont say much more than that because i feel it may break some rules regarding criminal actions etc, because technically the part isnt illegal but the most common use of it - Game Piracy - is illegal. thus the dilemma and why im staying clear of it.[/quote]
You are misinformed. Acquiring copies of video games, movies and music from "unauthorized distributors" is not illegal. However being one of those "unauthorized distributors" is. What makes most so called "piracy" illegal, is that you are also uploading while you are downloading, thus making you an "unauthorized distributor".


And yes, I agree that piracy is more prevalent on the PC. But I do not believe that the majority of those pirates would be buying the games if they had to. As I said in my last post, there are a number of things that are causing people to shy away from PC gaming, I think that some of those things are causing the PC gamers that would normally buy their games, to become pirates. Such as the intrusive viruses DRM that comes loaded on to games. Now, I am not entirely against DRM, some of it is fine. Take for instance CD keys, the way they used to work was perfect! They obviously did not do much to prevent piracy, but they did do quite a bit to discourage it without harming the customers. They kept the pirates off the official servers, which for the ones that actually care enough to buy the game period, would then do exactly that.

SuperSaiyan wrote:As for the PC game part, I have no basis as this is the only game I play on my computer, I am a console player myself

Case-in-point? XD

Not sure really where I stand on the point of second hand sales but when it comes to rentals there should be some kind of royalty system as the rental place is gonna make a profit from it and its a recurring profit too.

Whereas a pre-owned sale is not recurring, once that unit has been sold it wont be returned and then sold again X many times over.

Piracy is an issue and anyone that says it isnt is a fool, however its nowhere near the industry killer that it is presented as. PC piracy will always exist no matter how hard companies make the DRM or other protection systems so really all they can do is try to keep it to a minimum.

Console piracy however can be minimised much more than PC piracy due to the closed systems and they have every right to make it hard and keep the system closed. Oh and Solus you were worried about talking about 'those' devices because you werent sure about their legality, well in US territories they are illegal due to the DMCA and in the EU they are considered illegal by the courts if installed even though there is no explicit law because having them installed implies criminal intent.

EIDT: also it must be remembered that for each unit sold say for £40 the developer only see around about £5 or maybe £10 if they are very lucky. Normally speaking the publisher like EA takes 80% or more of the profit from the sale price.

@ Jack: over here technically duplicating said games is illegal, but not exactly policed like it is elsewhere. and regardless of here or there, there are other nationalities where either the part for the console or the duplicate game itself is illegal, im not exactly knowledgeable in laws governing this sort of thing elsewhere. in any case to stay on the safe side i wont go into detail.

~soul

Jack wrote:For one, music piracy is a much MUCH larger "issue" then PC game piracy as more people pirate more songs then they do PC games. Not only has it been demonstrated that music piracy does not effect the music industry as badly as groups like the RIAA claims, but it is believed that piracy has had a positive effect on the music industry. But I digress.

I completely agree with you. Record companies like to claim a bunch of things, but not the fact that they are making record profits (no pun intended). Plus it gets more bands out there, more recognition, which means more people attending concerts and possibly (ironically) more CD sales. I know a lot of people who would rather download a song or two to test the waters, then buy the CD for what it's worth.

Kit-Fox wrote:Not sure really where I stand on the point of second hand sales but when it comes to rentals there should be some kind of royalty system as the rental place is gonna make a profit from it and its a recurring profit too.

Whereas a pre-owned sale is not recurring, once that unit has been sold it wont be returned and then sold again X many times over.

Actually, games can switch hands many times, I've seen used games for sell at GameStop with Blockbuster AND Game Crazy stickers on it(it being the same game). Anyway, rental copies are sold to rental agencies at premiums, so they've already made their royalties for those games/movies, it just happens to be a flat fee which is what they agreed to.

ramen07 wrote:

Jack wrote:For one, music piracy is a much MUCH larger "issue" then PC game piracy as more people pirate more songs then they do PC games. Not only has it been demonstrated that music piracy does not effect the music industry as badly as groups like the RIAA claims, but it is believed that piracy has had a positive effect on the music industry. But I digress.

I completely agree with you. Record companies like to claim a bunch of things, but not the fact that they are making record profits (no pun intended). Plus it gets more bands out there, more recognition, which means more people attending concerts and possibly (ironically) more CD sales. I know a lot of people who would rather download a song or two to test the waters, then buy the CD for what it's worth.

Exactly! And it's the same story for the PC gaming industry as well, they are making record profits and profits keep soaring every year.


They just greedily want more money, it has nothing to do with attempting to recoup losses and everything to do with wanting to fill their pockets. I mean recently some dev was confronted with the fact that profits have soared 17% in the last year, to which he rebutted "but development costs have doubled from 10 years ago". Of course they have, and your profits have tripled! It's really nothing more then misinformation they are using in attempt to make the gaming audience more pliable and accepting of price hikes and their ridiculous business practices.

I think that people blow piracy way out of portion. I mean, most of us probably have a downloaded at least 1 song off of the internet illegally. I know that I download a lot of torrents. However unlike most pirates I follow a code. Pirate Code.

As for the the renting thing. I think that, as said before, the company's should not get a thing. If they want to try to charge the renting companies, then they would also have to charge anyone that barrows a game from a friend (It's along the same line of thinking).

I should probably clarify..... I work for a games developer so have a unique perspective in these areas.....

Piracy (not just in PC Gaming) is as I see a matter of convenience. Until you can login to a single site and find anything you want, then have it on your computer in ~ 10 minutes (on newsgroups) or a few hours (on torrent), you will always have piracy.

Things are getting better in regards to TV, Music and Movies are slowly catching up and Games are doing what they can (Steam is making a massive impact)

Any PC Dev that complains about Piracy needs to seriously rethink their position (particularly their monetization model for their particular game)

I think the issue we have at the moment is a few PC Game Devs are jumping on the anti-piracy bandwagon, whether they believe in what they are saying or not is something I can't comment on but it's certainly a sheep following the flock (music and movie industries) situation rather than any particular financial losses as a direct result of piracy.

The simple truth is.... most people would willing part with their cash for anything so long as it is convenient and worth it. No amount of piracy would change that.

Feel free to disagree with me but that's how I see it.

Lt Col Mitchell wrote:I think that people blow piracy way out of portion. I mean, most of us probably have a downloaded at least 1 song off of the internet illegally. I know that I download a lot of torrents. However unlike most pirates I follow a code. Pirate Code.

As for the the renting thing. I think that, as said before, the company's should not get a thing. If they want to try to charge the renting companies, then they would also have to charge anyone that barrows a game from a friend (It's along the same line of thinking).

Although not worded so flowery I'm sure most of your casual pirates will adhere to a similar code. I know I have downloaded albums to see if they are any good before shelling out cash on them.

You know who I love..... TV Production Companies and channels. They know that piracy doesn't harm them so don't give a crap.