95.5% Piracy rate; And Yet it Moves Developer Interview


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What is sad is that developers just do not put good Copyright Protection into games that is whats sad. I mean, the protection is pretty much a separate product from the game so it can be easily peeled off and the product used. Sometimes you just have to generate a fake serial and you are ready to go - IN THE PRESENT DAY. These people should be punished for being that idiotic.

A good example of this would be Sims3 - it is already out - hacked - with about 3000+ peers.

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I see lot of s*it in this topic, you peoples try to argument what? PIRACY IS BAD. If is good for you because you are a damn stealer/thief/and i can continue, for little software companies, piracy is extremely bad.

Oh, and for completely useless peoples who have the bravery to comment/review/form opinions about software who didn't paid a penny, please, keep your mouth shut, you have no right to comment, you have no right even to compare with something else.

I have no time right now to write more, maybe some of you got an idea.

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I see lot of s*it in this topic, you peoples try to argument what? PIRACY IS BAD. If is good for you because you are a damn stealer/thief/and i can continue, for little software companies, piracy is extremely bad.

Oh, and for completely useless peoples who have the bravery to comment/review/form opinions about software who didn't paid a penny, please, keep your mouth shut, you have no right to comment, you have no right even to compare with something else.

I have no time right now to write more, maybe some of you got an idea.

we do get an idea, we are tired of being ripped off by lousy games ... not sure what the idea is behind your post, tho, other than wanting to silence one side of the debate?

you have no right to label me a thief because it is not right to label me a thief, i paid for what i got, and what i dont pay for i dont end up with...

Edited by carmatic
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we do get an idea, we are tired of being ripped off by lousy games ... not sure what the idea is behind your post, tho, other than wanting to silence one side of the debate?

No, you didn't got any idea, if you don't like something, don't buy it, nobody force you to do it. But if you get an illegal copy, you are guilty 100%.

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An interesting discussion. I think the fact of the matter is unless you change the hardware of the PC to something proprietry like with whatever locks down the PS3 (and to a lesser extent) the xbox360, then as a developer you have to accept that multiplayer is going to be the only way you will get strong sales. To some degree I think that gives developers an impetus to focus on multiplayer more than single player and who can blame them. But all this talk of embedding the anit-piracy into the game itself - look at Windows...your OS (for most average users), Microsofts WGA is tethered into the system and its still crackable 100 ways from mandalay.

That being said the cost to develop for the PC has come down in price due to cross platform. You make a game for the PS3/Xbox and yes you have to spend some capital converting that to the PC but not as much as developing a game from scratch.

Still I think filesharing has become a staple for our current era/generation, adults and kids of the whole spectrum know where BT is and can easily work out how to apply a crack. The only real method forward would be a revolution in PC computing, such as creating a hardware locked down "PC gaming DVD Drive" something like that whereby the game would only work on that hardware...the tradeoff for the consumer of course would hopefully be cheaper games. I dont know what the answer is that was just a suggestion and yes no doubt zapping firmware etc it might be cracked, but look at the 360 system, yes its breakable but such a pain in the arse the pirates for that platform are insignificant.

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No, you didn't got any idea, if you don't like something, don't buy it, nobody force you to do it.

and yes, i dont buy it if i dont like it... the important thing is that because i dont like it, i dont keep it either

it being 100% illegal as it is right now just makes it 100% on the developers side, they can screw us up as much as they want because its illegal for us to do anything about it

Edited by carmatic
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An interesting discussion. I think the fact of the matter is unless you change the hardware of the PC to something proprietry like with whatever locks down the PS3 (and to a lesser extent) the xbox360, then as a developer you have to accept that multiplayer is going to be the only way you will get strong sales. To some degree I think that gives developers an impetus to focus on multiplayer more than single player and who can blame them. But all this talk of embedding the anit-piracy into the game itself - look at Windows...your OS (for most average users), Microsofts WGA is tethered into the system and its still crackable 100 ways from mandalay.

That being said the cost to develop for the PC has come down in price due to cross platform. You make a game for the PS3/Xbox and yes you have to spend some capital converting that to the PC but not as much as developing a game from scratch.

Still I think filesharing has become a staple for our current era/generation, adults and kids of the whole spectrum know where BT is and can easily work out how to apply a crack. The only real method forward would be a revolution in PC computing, such as creating a hardware locked down "PC gaming DVD Drive" something like that whereby the game would only work on that hardware...the tradeoff for the consumer of course would hopefully be cheaper games. I dont know what the answer is that was just a suggestion and yes no doubt zapping firmware etc it might be cracked, but look at the 360 system, yes its breakable but such a pain in the arse the pirates for that platform are insignificant.

That will just solve nothing.

If you lock down everything, they will get cheap copys from china or ripped internet games.

If you flee to consoles and abadon the pc market, then console piracy will rise.

Face it... the only solution is to build trust and solid good games with maintained demo code.

You can't stop anything, even if youre pushing on the bigbrother age and censor everything on this world.

You only **** off your customers and fail.

Instead focus on driving their need to buy your game, their trust in you.

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the average pirate already cares about the game's quality, to a degree, but cares less about it and more about the game's popularity.

Example: "Oh, X game has 9999 seeders. It could be good, it could be bad — I'll just download it anyway. After all, their must be a reason why so many people are seeding it."

Moving on from semantics. (though you are still wrong)

That is a complete load of ****. I think you'll find your average pirate has a lot more savvy than you are giving them credit for. Undoubtedly more so than average Joe.

To be able to download and run a game successfully requires a level of technical understanding, and general ****ing, about beyond the norm. Though for the poor PC gamer, it's pretty damn close.

Pirates are quite the discerning bunch, and generally will not waste their time/HDD space/ratios/precious blank discs, on crap.

Same go's for music, films, TV shows, software. You know your product is **** when people don't even want it for free.

And the only reason game X would have 9999 seeders is because it's good. Pirates are not stupid.

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the circumstances of purchasing any form of goods is when you want or need the goods themselves, and you want/need them for a reason... you wouldnt go buy a car when you are hungry , would you?

You don't seem to be following along as your responses are in regard to irrelevant details. There was only one point to walk away with from my statement; it was simply that we purchase a variety of goods without ever truly knowing what the total experience will be before hand. The context of this is in regard to your point about pirating whole games being justified because without playing the game in its entirety you could never know if it is really any good which relates to your desire to only purchase good games. Rather than leave the connection of my response up to you, I will just state it. The majority of your purchases contain some unknown element in them--some quality that you can't ever determine without having used the good for an extended period of time or consumed the good. As such, not knowing the true experience of the game is no more unique to gaming than it is to buying food, buying a car, seeing a movie, or various other goods. I assume you don't advocate the theft of the prior listed goods and therefore to be consistent you cannot advocate the piracy of games--again in the context of unknown factors. You have to find something unique about games that would justify their piracy over other goods.

In short, nearly all of your purchases have unknown factors as such it is not unique to games and therefore does not justify the piracy of games when you don't justify the theft or piracy of other goods on the basis of the same factor.

And again, you can determine a lot about a game without having played the full game and expecting every game to satisfy you is unrealistic.

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it being 100% illegal as it is right now just makes it 100% on the developers side, they can screw us up as much as they want because its illegal for us to do anything about it

Two wrongs don't make a right. You can give any kind of excuse you want but illegal is still illegal. Let's be honest here, most of us have been guilty of doing this at least once. That still doesn't make it right.

I use to feel the same thing about music. I hated buying CD's just for one great song on a lousy CD. I am so glad stores like iTunes and Amazon came along. Things are more fair on the side of the user now. Maybe something like that will happen in games eventually.

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Let's not forget the negative impact piracy has had on store policies. You used to be able to return opened cds, games, movies, and music but not anymore. So at one time you actually had the chance to return the game if you didn't like it but now you don't.

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It has nothing to do with "piracy".

Average users (I, for one..) can't really "pirate" anything, they rely on special groups to do that, it's the store's fault, not "piracy".

I wouldn't refund those who are dumb as hell, or desperately trying to look dumb to get refunded.

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No. It has been clearly stated by many stores that the policy is explicitly in place to prevent people from routinely buying optical media, copying them, and returning the product to the store. The average user can pirate most movies and music with little effort--games are generally more complicated though.

Maybe you weren't old enough to remember days before CD burners. In those days you could buy a music CD, open it, then return it. After CD burners, ripping software, and piracy became prevalent stores changed their policies to prevent people from abusing their refund/exchange services.

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I find this Piracy thing very interesting. More studies need to be conducted about Piracy. I'd like for example to see 10 People who have never pirated anything online and always bought media in normal or high concentrations (CD, DVDs, Blurays, and Games) to be introduced to Piracy in a controlled environment. Like giving them a training course in piracy, a Computer in which to pirate whatever they want and an internet connection. And then I'd like to see how much media they still pay for vs what they download for free. I'd also like to see if they consume more media then they would normally simply because they have free access to anything they want.

Obviously this test would have to be conducted in a controlled manner somehow. Being a developer myself I don't like it when people pirate my content but I don't really have enough data to tell me if it is really an 'issue' or not. If these people weren't going to buy it anyway but simply consumed a copy because it was out there free then that makes me happy, but if its someone who would have bought it otherwise then that makes me sad.

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  • 2 weeks later...
well it is possible people could pirate it try it once realize how badly the game sucks and never play it again?

That would be my position on the issue, I'm fed up with all the hype you here about a game only to get it and find half the cool stuff is far fetched from the actually game, or even worse, the game is ****.

I use pirate copies to evaluate a game, and it's worth and if it's a good game, i'll buy it. recently I was trialing NFS Undercover, after looking through the games car selection and playing the first few levels I realised it was a wash out, and chose to delete the game

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