operation flashpoint?? that game is ancient, the only thing they are going to do is piss off people who will be more inclined to steal operation flashpoint 2.

jigglypoofs

@Llost:

A few illegal downloaders...actually buy games too.

Vecha

@ObZen The RIAA has sued people for releasing their OWN MUSIC. Music they have produced themselves and music not under them on file sharing networks. They are a corrupt big bad organization and yes in some light they deserve to be stolen from because they rip their artists the hell off...

The course of action with a CD is you pay 14/15 bucks or more for it (this usually has like maybe 3 good songs on it except on a rare occasion) The artist sees maybe a few cents of that money.... The RIAA tries to play it off like Piracy is hurting the artists when its not. The artists earn their money from tours not album sales and how the RIAA is operating will end up crushing them badly.

We need to get out of the 1980's business mentality of being sue crazy and operating like technology hasnt eveolved to solve these problems. I work for Atari personally and i can see in some light where developers are upset but i tend to agree that suing people is not the way to go as it just creates problems...

Look at the developers pulling out of the ESA recently. More are likely to follow as they hired the head of the RIAA. Piracy in all fairness isnt good or bad.. It can actually help a developer sell more copies of a game.... While fundamentally they run around screaming they lost sales i dont think its true.

The gaming industry is still a booming market with people making alot of money (it hard as a start up these days unless your fantastic...) While i dont outwardly agree with piracy I'm not 100% against it either.....I dont think its right that people are sued for thousands of dollars by the RIAA for having 3 songs in a share folder that they may not know are actually there simply cuz they installed a program or what have you and are just the click through type people....

The game industry in general needs to start creating compelling content that you can only get with the retail copy. Internet checks are good DRM, Limiting installs is bad.... There are ways they can fight it without looking like bullies and here is hoping they start before they are relegated to what the music industry is now...

linadragon

@Strong Arm: Is this post serious, or are you being ironic with your gross neglect of punctuation, grammar, and proper movie quoting?

@Llost: Hey, this is the internet. Don't you go bringing that common sense crap around here!!

ObZen

Big companies can afford big lawsuits, smaller companies often have to let it slide because it's not in the budget.

e-friend

@Overlord44: Yeah, sound's a lot more accurate. I'm surprised they can cut console prices almost monthly but never games. Bluray movies are a ripoff too right now.

mikeleddy83

???
Punish your customers
illegal downloaders
illegal downloaders = customers?
Don't try and stop illegal downloading

I don't know but I think he's got this one wrong.

Llost

I dont see the point in suing these people, because all they are going to do is rub more people the wrong way. Fair enough if they stop the piracy at the source, i.e the people who are proving a service capable of sharing, but not by sending out thousands of court summons, ffs.
Things like this, and those stupid Would you steal a car? and Knock off Dave adverts, only make me want to start breaking the laws, which is something i have never done.

Reminds me of the teacher in The Breakfast Club who thinks by showing how manly he is he will be able to stop the students from breaking the rules "Grab the bull by the horns". How neive are these people, seriously?

Strong Arm

Translation: "Pirate the hell out of EA games! No consequences!"

nolanvoid

And yes, I'm aware I didn't only list indies or mid sized companies, but they got where they are by starting small... It's always the bigger companies that whine about piracy anyway, like the collaboration seen here.

Agnates

Thank god I didn't download their games.

Then again, £300 aren't exactly that much to get away with a black eye. Could come much worse.

Candlejack

@y2julio: I understand dude, but what do you want them to do? Just watch as rampant theft continues? They have to do something. The sad thing is they're well within their rights, but the majority of the public these days feels they are entirely justified in stealing things online.

Walk into a brick and mortar store and walk out with a rack of DVDs under your jacket and you're going to jail. But if you do it with a mouse-click in your home, you're perfectly within your rights.

That's the mentality we're dealing with these days. Makes no sense.

ObZen

*sigh* Once again, everyone, repeat after me:

Piracy is not stealing, as stealing takes something from someone and then they cannot use that something - this is copyright infringement!

Doesn't make it any less wrong, but it DOES make it more accurate. They have to tar it with the brush of stealing to try to gain public sympathy. Which this tack won;t do. Wrong approach guys - you need less DRM and cheaper prices. I know I won't play any more PC games that don;t meet these 2 conditions.

Overlord44

@Anton P. Nym: DRM isn't better functioning on consoles, it's just harder to calculate the extent of piracy there. Console piracy works by a provider who downloads the games, burns them, then SELLS them to consumers for a low price. You can imagine that's done without giving them a chance to count the number of illegal copies sold because if they did know of him, he'd be in jail already.

As for indies and mid sized companies dying out because of piracy, all they need is creativity, like Stardock, Valve, Blizzard and countless other studios. If they don't have that, they aren't worth having around anyway.

Agnates

What i notice that it are mostly small companies that are troubled with piracy.

DutchOtaku

@ObZen: I don't steal CDs but I don't agree with the RIAA filling John Doe/Jane Doe lawsuits and wasting our taxpayer money and court time.

y2julio

this improves my opinion of ea and i sure as hell won't buy any games from companies taking measures like these.

if it's such a big deal release all your games exclusively on the ps3 and be over with it instead of extorting people, mostly teenagers.

kraembaer

Is it just me or does it seem strange that only the first 500 who ignore the summons get sued? Why not everyone that ignores?

If this was really about protecting intellectual property, you would think they would sue everyone invovled (provided they had sufficient evidence). This seems more like a stab-n-grab to me.

Not that pirates don't deserve to pay up regardless...theft is theft, no matter how you slice it...but it still seems like a really odd way to enforce intellectual property rights.

Cogito

@y2julio: Indeed I have. And while I think cds are overpriced, I don't steal them. I'm just more selective about which ones I buy. The RIAA is protecting its property, plain and simple.

I love how people can find ways to defend theft and criminal practices if they happen to be stealing from "big evil corporations."

ObZen

Moore said they should be dealt with accordingly also, he just thinks suing isn't the best course of action.

As for the number of downloads, do they really think they would have sold those copies if pirating wasn't available? if so, I laugh at their face for being so clueless of the industry they're a part of.

All they end up doing is losing actual money by going to court, but I guess those fancy laywers they pay anyway have to somehow justify their existence. These are just attempts to scare people but they didn't work in the past and they sure won't work this time either.

Agnates

@flukielukie: Don't almost all valve games have nosteam versions available? I play counter-strike with mates on the cracked one and randomers on the retail one.

mikeleddy83

@ObZen: @dead_red_eyes: Have guys been paying attention to the RIAA?

y2julio

I agree that sueing consumers for downloading some crappy 3D pinball game at sometime just comes off as desperate for money to me and doesn't make me think that the studio is better.

If they really wanted to block piracy then find a way to to it through product release online validation requiring to play the game is a simple way and yes will annoy the consumer but its a much better way to stop people from cracking it.

Or just deliver updates to those who bought it just like Team Fortress 2, that game is damn near impossible to crack.

flukielukie

Part of me thinks that suing consumers is counterproductive, generating ill-will without solving the problem.

Another part of me thinks that something does indeed need to be done about illicit filesharing before indies and mid-sized companies bleed to death.

All of me hopes there's a real fix for this out there, or we're going to see a huge contraction in the developer pool as they default to either consoles (for better-functioning DRM) or ad-supported Flash games (where downloading is moot).

-- Steve

Anton P. Nym

"Apparently, file-sharing got really obnoxious recently - 691,000 downloads of Operation Flashpoint by Codemasters in one week alone."

Fucking hell. That is out of control. I get what Peter Moore is saying, but these people broke the law, plain and simple. I agree with ObZen, that they should be dealt with accordingly.

dead_red_eyes

"I'm not a huge fan of trying to punish your consumer"

Had they bought the games legally, then they'd be your consumer. Since they stole them, they're thieves and should be dealt with accordingly.

ObZen

what Peter Moore says makes sense. The RIAA sure isn't winning in the piracy front and all they are doing is taking up court time and tax payer money.

y2julio

Its seem the only way Moore can justify is existence is by releasing a statement every now and then. I wonder if he misses micro.

shinko

I agree with this. Suing people just makes the general populace angrier.

djlowballer

Best way to prevent piracy is to make the benefits for buying the game legitimately good enough to make pirating it a poor idea. Stardock/Ironclad did this with SoSE by only allowing paying, legitimate customers to get all the patches and additions they made.

Burguois, Teabagger of Olde

By consumers he means gamers not pirates. And I completely agree with him. There are a lot of people that don't want/believe in paying 50~70 bucks for a game, specially bad games with poor replay value.

He is proposing to increase games value to make them more attractive.

xymor

The interesting thing is that you can see the whole "build game experiences that make it more difficult for there to be any value in pirating games" stuff in Spore. Not in the draconian copy protection scheme, obviously, but in the fact that all of the absolutely spectacular community tools and content sharing that they've put into that game are added value given only to those willing to pay money for the product. Unlike things like Starforce or SecuROM, those kinds of additions reward paying customers rather than punishing them for their investment, and at the same time can actually be far more effective against pirates.

Putting in those kinds of features can mean extra work for the developers, sure, but in the end everyone wins as a result of it.

Rabish12

The RIAA is getting what's coming to them after many years of screwing their consumers. Besides, people act like this is a new thing. As soon as cassettes were invented, people were making copies of records.

Same thing with CDRW drives. But did that ruin the industry? Hell no. The RIAA's draconian approach to (legal) downloadable music is what has really hurt them. If they had jumped on the bandwagon years ago, instead of prosecuting people who stole a couple hundred songs, perhaps they could have been in the position of iTunes, or some other such download leader.

Instead, they're stuck stirring a shitty pot. And its their own damn fault. Is it still theft? Hell yes. But since the RIAA cannot find ONE person to blame like they did with Napster, they instead sue indescriminately and many of those cases are being thrown out.

Your tax dollars at work.

But video game piracy is a different beast all together. Game prices have risen as development costs rise (while simultaneously the price for materials i.e. discs and such fall). $60 seems crazy to pay for a disc based game (after all in the N64 age, the CD was supposed to be a cheaper alternative to Nintendo's ancient cart based system).

But I'm sure most of us remember paying $80 for Super Mario RPG. When 3D rendering and whatever else goes into creating video games gets cheaper (ha!) I'm sure we'll see Sony and MS scale back their MSRP by $10. I'm sure.

2NinjasTapedTogether

Well, we all know that when the RIAA brought pre-teens and college students to court for downloading a handful of N'sync mp3s on fileshare and sued them for hundreds of thousands of dollars which they didn't have or possess any means of acquiring, it ended all music piracy forever, without exception. So I think we should definitely crack down on these guys stealing copies of some generic war sim shooter, because lord knows that war-setting FPS titles are our most precious natural resource.

I as a taxpayer look forward to covering the court costs of this worthwhile endeavor.

Calhoun

Again, it never ceases to amaze me how people will defend illegal activity as long as some "big, greedy corporation" is the victim.

Society these days has its priorities all kinds of messed up. Wants and needs are completely confused with one another. And the sense of entitlement and selfishness is truly sickening.

ObZen

well ill have to agree on everything, and theives must be dealt with accordinly. but i think they should try solving problem from a different point of view. Why does people download games in the first place? Ill have to admit - im not innocent in this case also. But i chose to download games because its impossible for me to purchase in the country i live in. For sale we have only pirated, or fucked up localizations that wont even update these games. And if i try to buy something from EA store (and most other EU or US stores) they tell me "game is not available in your region". And if i try and order a box - they either cant deliver to my country either my customs hold the box and ask more money for it. And its not like i live somewhere in outer space. Its Ukraine. So as for me its not a problm to pay for the game. Just make it possible for me to pay for it !!!

While other people download games - to try them out (means devs need to make better demos), and other people just because it doesnt have multiplayer... Well about this case: Mass Effect managed to fix this. they made so hard ass copy protection that im not sure if anybody cracked it yet.

So bottom line - its possible to avoid such stuff. just put more attention and effort in it.

Sexy.KOT69

@ObZen actually copyright infringement isnt inherently illegal its a civil matter not a criminal matter... Though failing to appear at a summons could result in prosecution.... Also the way current copyright law is wasnt the way it was originally intended to be used... Much like the US patent system its pretty broken....

linadragon

@Vecha: The point is that they are illegally downloading them in the first place so it's hard to attest to how many games they do buy. I buy all mine legally so you can call me a customer. Can we call these people customers? Anyway I agree they do buy some games but largely it's not enough, I'd say they should buy atleast 80% of the games they have downloaded but if they're downloading them in the first place I doubt they had the intention to purchase them.

Llost

@Chronixal: Thanks for clearing that up. Illegal is still illegal, so let's stop with semantics.

ObZen

@ObZen if you go out and steal a car you stealing a clearly physical object not just data.... If you went and stole the DVD for the game rather then pirating it that would be different as your taking a legit key and getting full access to the game. Pirated versions of games are often limited IE no multiplayer or online content etc...

While i dont entirely agree with piracy there are things the game industry can work on to cut down on it which JGab clearly outlined. These are the biggest reasons people pirate and working on all of those fields will cut down on quite a bit of piracy.... If you get rid of wanting to try the game before you buy , quality content and peoples curiosity and price games so more people can afford them you put yourself in a better position... You're left with people that are either really dirt poor pirating them or people that just pirate for the sake of it...

But at the very least working on those things will definitely cut down on some of the prime reasons people pirate...

linadragon

@ObZen: No, because that'd be theft and this article is about copyright infringement. Theft of property is defined as "taking with the intention to permanantly deprive someone of said item". Nothing has been lost so nothing is stolen. If you'd magically cloned said car, your logic might make sense.

Seriously, for everyone who shouts of likes an expert really needs to learn the basic fundamentals of theft and copyright infringement.

Chronixal

"They are either forced to sign with an RIAA based label or they are pretty much screwed to high hell as far as making a living off doing music."

@linadragon: So they'll have to get jobs to supplement income. Sounds like every band I've ever met. Them's the breaks. Again, it's supply and demand dude. And the market is way over-saturated.

ObZen

The simple fact is that they can't get rid of piracy by suing random people and screaming around like having a rabies. That's what RIAA and MPAA has been doing for years and what has changed? Besides hate of the general pubic neither has archived absolutely nothing. I don't have the magical solution, but it's pretty damn clear that they have to adapt and change their business model, not fight the windmills. As sad as it may seem to someone, piracy in current model has come to stay, only way to stop it would be to shut down the entire internet.

ara

@ObZen clearly you miss the point here... The RIAA has in the past SUED independent artists that are not signed under them. They rip off the artists then act like they dont and that piracy hurts the artists where it doesnt. They are either forced to sign with an RIAA based label or they are pretty much screwed to high hell as far as making a living off doing music. So its not a ohhh i dont want to sign situation if they cant get a better deal and their livelihood is on the line.

The point is the RIAA is sue happy. They go around suing anyone even people not under their authority. They are not allowed to touch non RIAA based artists , indie artists etc they have no rights and there have been numerous suites over this stuff which is ridiculous.

linadragon

How are you a "consumer" if you "have clearly stolen intellectual property"?

I guess its easy enough to consume things you haven't paid for, but I don't think thievery fits into a supplier consumer market model.

Being a publisher you could take a lesser cut and ask developers to price their wares more reasonably so people wouldn't feel like they are being ripped off for a game that may suck. Nevermind, what the fuck was I thinking.

invictus

@JGab: So if I go out and steal a car, am I a "potential" consumer who may go out and buy other cars based on my experience with my stolen one?

I'll have to try that sometime. I'll let you know how it works out.

ObZen

@ObZen: They can sue then if they want but only when they have the information required. Not that John/Jane Doe crap.

y2julio

@linadragon: Dude, I'm a musician. Don't explain the biz to me. I know all about it. I have no illusions about it. And the industry is still within their rights to protect their property. The artists sign the contract. No one puts a gun to their head. It's simple supply and demand. If a band doesn't like the terms of the deal, they can refuse to sign. Another band will happily sign up. It's an over-saturated talent pool. Tough cookies. Musicians might have to get jobs.

ObZen

@ObZen: They're consumers. If they're interested in your game then they're "potential" consumers who may have bought it to begin with and are probably buying other games. If you go out and sue them for stealing one game, it's unlikely they'll come back and buy one of your games. It puts a lot of people off to the company, and solves nothing because piracy is still happening one way or the other.

Games are being pirated for numerous reasons: lack of quality, curiosity in the game and wanting to try before buying, and costs. If companies came out with high quality games, let people try them out for a bit, and lowered the cost it'd kill off some of the piracy, but not all of it (obviously, there's always going to be piracy in a world where people can't afford to lose a $1).

JGab

I think it should tell you something that the only companies involved in this meaningless litigation are bottom-of-the-barrel publishers like Atari or Codemasters. I'd threaten to boycott their products for this disgusting behavior but the truth is neither company has put out a single game I'd even consider buying anyway.

aphex_twin

@Vecha: You have unearthed my subtle hint of sarcastic delivery, sirrah. I salute your deductive skills.

Calhoun

So those 25,000 were the ones distributing? 0_o

zeldarooles

@Llost:

They should buy 80% of what they download?

Vecha

There are lots of people I know that pirate AND buy games. So I guess if you want to sue everybody and lose a customer permanently that might in the future buy a game from your company, go ahead. DRM doesn't work. If a person has the mentality that they are willing to pay for good product, they will. Forcing people never works.

painty

@Calhoun:

That was a joke right?

Ending all music piracy for ever?

Seriously....joke right?

Vecha

@Anton P. Nym: The point isn't that making games better will help fight piracy. The point is that making them better in ways that can only be accessed by paying customers will. Pirating a game, any game, is easy nowadays, but pirating a game with a great deal of solid online functionality and then getting everything it offers is not. Again, Spore is a good example of this, because pirates for that game are going to be cut off from the custom content that'll be populating everyone else's universes.

Rabish12

@Anton P. Nym: These methods didnt work well for movies but thats cuz they arnt as value branded etc... Making games better and having better quality, better demos etc and lowering costs will reduce piracy... It wont get rid of it thats for sure but it will cut down on it for people like me and alot of the people that pirate that i know. We do it to demo the games so we dont lose out on money. If the game is good we buy if it sucks we drop it.

Ok fair enough the shitty game makers may be losing some money because we actually find out their games suck before buying them but the good game makers we usually show that we appreciate the game and buy it. The only people piracy really hurts are the bad developers that cant make a decent game...

linadragon

Wait, so you're telling me (symbolism) chopping off someone's arm for stealing stealing a cabbage ISN'T an appropriate response?(/symbolism)

Here I was thinking you should just make them pay for the cabbage. Show's how silly I am.

Narb

@Agnates: Point taken; my phrasing should have been "where the barriers to piracy are higher".

Anybody arguing that making games "moar betta", or even cheaper, will reduce piracy is fooling him/herself. That didn't help in the '80s; award-winners were pirated just as much as the bargain-basement titles were. Trust me, I was there. I don't have a solution to piracy myself, but I *can* recognise methods that didn't work in the past.

-- Steve

Anton P. Nym

I agree with Moore, don't punish the consumer. Game companies can find other ways to deal with this situation, RIAA are just a bunch of douches. Just saying RIAA has a really bad stigma; ruthless, unrelenting failures. They have sued little girls, elderly grandmas, a persons family after they have passed on, and so on. If game companies follow the same track, there will be alot of outrage as gaming is definitely a more cohesive community. A great deal of us buy our games legally, especially console games, so punishing the whole for the few is retarded.

It gives me great pleasure to read when the RIAA fail and the defendants sue back for malicious attacks. They are trying to make an example of people through law suits, but it turns around and they are given example of how pathetic they are. Screw the RIAA.

Kenoji

I think we're also all forgetting that people pirating games aren't likely to have purchased your game anyways. The industry loves to trump this up as lost revenue, but is it really? They haven't lost money from people who weren't likely to pay for it anyways -- they never were potential customers.

It's the exact same situation with the music industry. If music piracy stopped today, would the same people downloading songs flock to stores to buy a CD that has one song they like? Of course not! But that's how the RIAA and their ilk trump this stuff up -- especially when they're trying to claim damages in court. They're suing people who have one song on their hard drive for upwards of $5k per song claiming lost revenue. They're terrified that their profits are down and pointing their finger at their number one scapegoat: piracy instead of where the problem really is: the large number of shitty bands under their umbrella and ridonkulous amounts of overhead costs.

RStormgull

So they are willing to loose more money in court cost to sue the consumer who may or may not even have the money to pay up anyway. Smart thinking there.

LostChild

I may well be one of these people, and should I recieve a letter telling me to stop pirating games (which I have) and to pay the fee, I will tell them where they can stick their threats. If they successfully sue me or take me to court to get me to pay the original fine, I will sue them right back in the European Court of Human Rights as a breach of my EU law guaranteed, right to privacy.

Anaralia

@linadragon: Google "commodore 64" to see what kind of games I was talking about. Not movies, games. Yes, they existed in the '80s, honest. I used to swap 5.25" floppy discs laden with cracks & warez as a kid, until I gradually realised what I was doing was wrong. Let me tell you, I and my circle weren't the least bit interested in buying the games, no matter the quality. If I had the full version back then, I wasn't going to pay money for it later.

@Rabish12: Indeed adding extra content only available to registered copies is a good way to fight piracy, no argument there. I was addressing those who say "$60 is too much for crap games," and proposing that lowering costs or raising quality would reduce piracy.

-- Steve

Anton P. Nym

I think there are plenty of ways to give people incentive to buy games. Lowering the price of older games, especially, and having a fair DRM structure. I think Steam is a great example; they're constantly adjusting the price of games and the DRM allows you to install the game anywhere you can log in, but still prevents piracy pretty well.

By the way, Beyond Good & Evil is only 5 bucks on Steam until tomorrow. I couldn't resist, had to scoop it up the moment I saw the ad. Now... I wonder what cut of that 5 bucks the developers gets...

BoboDaHobo

I suppose buying developers and sacking half their workforce is better for the developers than piracy? /sarc

vincevl

So almost 700k people a week still want to play a game published in 2001? I would sell it for 2$ a pop and make millions a month.

ps. Its a bit funny that Codemasters plays the saint here considering they made the games for the controversial Camerica company, which bypassed Nintendo's lock-out chip by glitching it and produced unlicensed NES games.

Kelativo

@aulzon: This makes downloadable systems like Steam unusable if you up the size of them. It also makes it ridiculous to make room for alot if you have a large games collection....

There are ways to make people have less incentives to pirate and they involve better content , better quality , better gameplay, better demos as well as value from some type of online service for any PC game...

linadragon

Peter Moore is correct. While I hate these thieves, suing isn't the answer. Just look at the music industry.

Xemnas

Oh, and I don't think Peter Moore (or any other industry execs with an IQ above 90) needs to be told this, but the day I start getting treated by video game publishers as a criminal is the day I become one.

aphex_twin

Yes they are consumers, even the pirates. They may pirate games but they also buy them too.

The PC gaming industry is already facing what the music industry is facing due to piracy. Here's what I think the solutions are going to be.

First make a great multiplayer system that is linked to an authentic cd-keys or authentic cd. Warcraft and Counter-Strike are hugely successful because of this.

Second make games larger. It takes time for people to download, if you can make the games like over 8 gigs people have less incentive to pirate.

aulzon

the best way to stop piracy is cheap software.
if the original price almost the same as pirated version, people will choose the original

Nacht

@Anton P. Nym:

Vicious circle, that. Games cost $60 because the returns are tough - they know that n number of gamers will pirate that software and a good percentage of n might have actually bought the game so the tag is high to break even. Then again, why don't super blockbusters like GTA4 and COD4 come out the gate with a lower price (they know the game is going to do well)? Because everyone's greedy. "If they bought GTA4 for $60, surely they'll buy Extreme Easter Egg Hunt for $60!"

The conundrum is that the costs to develop are indeed pretty steep - as a general consumer demographic, we pretty much only buy top-graphics games. Reviewers don't help because if a game looks uglier than Gears of War, it gets slammed for it and gamers in general make a huge deal about graphics.

Anyways, you can't stop piracy so long as the media you use is made available to the consumer. E.g. when Blu-Ray players get nice and cheap and readily available, you'll see a whole lotta burned PS3 disks.

dunetiger reads kotaku, seems pleased

Think of it this way

Operation Flashpoint is an ancient game, with the announcment of operation flashpoint 2, people are going to want to give it a shot. There is currently NO online store that offers it, there a small demo with barely any content, and the retail version is scarse in stores.

Now, how much effort will the average human being put into going out, finding, and paying for an old generic game? Id estimate about maybe less than .3% of that 691,000 people who illigaly downloaded it would have purchased it if it was somehow impossible to pirate. That means that the company would be making a mere couple hundred sales rather than expanding their audience for there next title, which will most likely be harder to crack, more available, and more likely to sell to people who were introduced to the developer/game from the first one.

Lets look at the music industry. When napster first started to mangle artists around the world what company essentialy came in and made buying music more convienient again? Thats right an online store with a huge selection... Itunes. And now with steam, valve is offering the same easy advertising and ease of buying and patching, basically making it more convienient to purchase a game rather than spending the time and effort to slowly download a sloppy, usually no multiplayer cracked version.

Kind of like moore is saying, these companies saw those numbers and simply got pissed and looked for the quickest cash rather than devising a better solution.

insanewookie

@Anton P. Nym: Games back in that era werent all that grand some were fun some werent but it was still a budding industry at the time. Its now an established industry so they cant go about doing things the same way as the did in the 1980's... I'm well aware of the commodore 64 but you didnt define what you were talking about really.... The gaming industry isnt the same it was in the 1980's and they cant make the same moves they would of back then IE sit around and do nothing about quality...

You were a pirate/cracker/warez simply because you could and there are a good deal of people like that yes... But there are also a good deal of people that use them simply as demos and that is where the gaming industry can work on stuff immensely. Just because you wouldn't of done something doesnt mean others wont just remember that... You are you and I am me plain and simple everyone is different....

But they can at least fix some of the problems that some of us have with them in regards to game quality , shitty demos, and value added features for retail versions........

linadragon

Though I don't necessarily like it, those that download, play, then decide to buy due to the absence of a demo are not bad in my book. In an era of increasingly hostile return policies it is necessary, I guess, for some people. I choose to spend a bit more time researching by reading reviews, forums, and watching videos, but still... That is excuseable. And if you don't like it -- delete it.

And I do agree that the tactic should be to ruthlessly punish the distributors, not the person that goes to the sites for a game or two. While they are both clearly wrong, there is scale to be considered here, and the best use of time / money for the prosecution.

BigWeather

@wicko:
I'm not being a douche. He doesn't make a good point. If I were to factor in your additions it becomes a bit more of a good point, and yes I agree that DRM, etc. that makes it hard for customers (not pirates) to use the software is crazy and should go.

I just get very irritated that theft, and this is theft, of games is condoned. To the one earlier that said it was copyright infringement and not theft because nothing went missing -- bzzzt, wrong. The person selling the game had $60 go missing. Just because it is theoretically unlimited supply doesn't make it not theft.

And peoples' arguments on how to combat theft, including even some in the industry, is increasingly "Oh, Mr. Pirate, what can we do to change your mind so you won't steal from me any longer? Do you want cheaper games? More content? Multi-player? Editors? Dynamic content a la Spore from other players' creations?" What the hell? Pirates have no say. The persons making a game have a budget, make a determination of what they want to do within that budget, and produce a game. They price it at a price that they deem fair.

If you don't agree with the price, features, or what have you don't buy it or play it. Stealing it is not the answer, and if we threw people that stole music and games and what-not in jail, even one night per violation, far fewer would do it. We don't slap car thieves, or shoplifters, or what-not on the wrist like this, why does software piracy get a free pass?

BigWeather

I think a lot of younger pirates just don't get how what they do is really stealing. The older ones probably do, but it still is like "no harm, no foul" for most people.

I don't think there really is a way to convince people otherwise who don't work in the software industry. I think once you have slaved away, crunching for months and months to make a game (any software, really) you can really identify with the sense of loss or being cheated when you see people taking your software for free.

The people who understand and still do it anyway are just thieves and I could care less if they get sued. Problem is, there's no way to know who is who.

kidko

@Obzen I admit to downloading games but it's usually because they don't have a demo and I want to try it out. I downloaded Sins of a Solar Empire LOVED it and bought it.

Brereton55

why not just go after the people who put up the game to share in the first place or after the big distributers.

redice

@BigWeather: Except theres a difference between stealing, and pirating. Yeah, throw them in jail... put our taxes to good use.

wicko

@BigWeather: Don't be a douche, he makes a good point. Price doesn't have to be restricted to monetary amounts. Price can also mean the amount of grief consumers have to go through (with DRM and copy protection), you make it hard for consumers to use their own product, then in a sense it costs more (time/effort) for the original version versus a pirated version.

wicko

@insanewookie: Good points, I def. agree that just because some X number of people supposedly downloaded it, doesn't mean that translates into an equal number of sales.

There are much better remedies than suing all these people.

shadow300z2

Personally, they should do to these thieves what they do to other theives. THROW THEM IN JAIL.

Screw this pay up or we'll sue. Throw them in jail.

BigWeather

I pirate games. Why? When was the last time anyone heard of a return policy for games? You end up buying a game you don't like, there isn't anything you can do about it. I've managed to return a game once (opened) and the only reason I was allowed to do so, was because I had bought Prey for the PC, yet the disc was for the 360 version of Prey.

Demos have stopped me from needing this, but there aren't enough developers releasing demos. Far Cry 2 isn't going to have one because they don't want to limit the player to where they can go or what they can do.. fair enough, but all you have to do at the end of the demo is say "unfortunately we were forced to limit you in our demo, but our game is much bigger!".

In the end, there are some games I take chances with, which I will do with Far Cry 2, but many I won't. Sometimes the demo doesn't do enough for me, so I download the game to check it out a bit further. But when a game is worth paying for, I buy it. I own well over 100 games for PC, PS2, PSX, and PS3. I've never pirated Playstation games, usually just PC. I have about 30-40 PC games.. all this collected while I was paying tuition at my university. I won't lie though, I've definitely pirated some games and played through them entirely, but mainly because my budget only allowed so much. What usually happens is I'll pick up that game a year or two later for cheaper.

wicko

@Nacht:
That's a great idea. Say, the best way to stop people from stealing cars is cheap cars. If Porsches were nearly free people would choose to buy one from the dealer rather than steal it.

BigWeather

@ObZen: I agree. These people don't respect you, so why the Hell would you respect them? They're thieves, and thieves should be punished.

mfwahwah

It's just funny because the way the internet community works half the time, companies who go out of their way to do shit like this people will just pirate their stuff even more out of spite.

Ashura

I think one part of pirating is the desire to belong to a group and the pirate "scene" pulls some people in search of (internet) fame.

The release group structure makes it a sport of a kind with Nukeing releases and making Propers. You could think of it as
show wrestling of sorts.

The cracking culture began as a way to show your superiority and make flashy intros and its still that in some circles.

Unfortunately now in the time of broadbands its way more convenient to just put your torrents on when you go to bed
and play in the morning compared to buying the game legally. Also theres a lot of games that are not worth their asking price and people only play them because they can get them for free.

Kelativo

@BigWeather: "We don't slap car thieves, or shoplifters, or what-not on the wrist like this, why does software piracy get a free pass?"

Because no matter how many times you bray in a donkey-like fashion with sequentially wordier and no doubt louder tones, you cannot change the fact that the legal definition of the term "software piracy" refers to copyright infringement, and not theft?

Calhoun

@Vecha: That's atleast, assuming we're being lenient too. I'd say 100% is what I'd expect but there's a lot of idiots who can't live without having some free stuff.

Llost

@wicko: In an ironic twist, the reason you can't return opened games is because of piracy. If retailers could trust that consumers wouldn't just rip the game for themselves and then return it, I think they'd be quite happy to accept opened games that paying customers didn't enjoy.

Piracy screws over the honest.

-- Steve

Anton P. Nym

@roflwaffles: You just mashing your fists on the keyboard, or trying to convey something?

Calhoun

@BigWeather: One copy downloaded is not the same as one lost sale. That's the sort of nonsense the RIAA peddles, but it's simply not true.
If I give away samples of a new bubblegum flavor for free, how many people will take it? And if I charge $1 instead? Demand is elastic for non-essential goods.
Yes, piracy is a problem, but Moore is right, you won't win over consumers by treating them like criminals, even if some of them are engaging in (minor) wrong-doing.
To some extent the publishers have created the problem for themselves by not giving people what they want -- an easy way to buy games online, at reasonable prices. (People always point to Steam, but the selection is extremely limited.)
The game industry might do well by looking at DVD sales -- when Warner Bros. took the "crazy" move of lowering prices from the then-standard 20 to 30 dollar price point, in some cases cutting it in half, sales boomed and the other studios soon followed suit. When the cost of creating additional copies is trivial, sometimes *lowering* the price will maximize profits.
Seems to me a lot of these old-media dead-enders need to go to business school.

erlik

@Calhoun:
ITT grammar nazi pirates

roflwaffles

@roflwaffles: Agreed. While I for some reason enjoy purchasing hard copies and collecting them, I still use steam for a lot of games (I still bought Orange Box) mainly games I don't really care much about not buying the hard copy (like peggle or Titan QuesT). A renting system would be great, Valve already does a great job with free weekends (like the TF2 free weekend). I think they should offer it more often or more variety of games (not just Valve games).

wicko

@Anton P. Nym: Indeed, I know this. Which is why I didn't suggest they should offer a return policy again and suggested that they make it easier for people to try their game/purchase their game.

wicko

@BigWeather: I disagree. Like I said in my earlier post, I have pirated games, and purchased them later. I own quite a few recent games that I pirated, and then purchased (Gears PC, Call of Duty 4). Did they lose money? No. I know its common for people to think that pirates only do this so they don't have to pay, but I disagree. Yes, people like myself are most likely in the minority, but that doesn't mean there isn't a substantial amount.

Keep in mind that even those people that download games for the sake of not having to pay anything, are still not thieves in my opinion. Thievery usually involves other crimes as well, as going up to a person and saying give me your money without any kind of weapon or intimidation is NOT going result in a successful theft. Breaking and entering, trespassing, etc. Software piracy does not involve these, it never needed to. I don't see how copyright infringers should be likened with those types of people.

I do agree that infringers with no intent to support the industry should be punished in some way, but it also makes it hard to distinguish between them and me. So, I think they definitely should make it more attractive for people to buy games (with demos or free trials, less intrusive copy protection). Think of it like how you would treat a rebellious child. Punishment doesn't work, they will just do it more, and not only that but nobody gets anything out of it. The developers don't get more money, more tax money is spent and time is wasted. Instead, making it attractive to NOT pirate will involve more sales and less time wasted.

wicko

@Jonn: So when fighting the lawless, you have to abandon laws? Man, you can't just phone in that amateur-hour trolling attempt. Put some effort into it or don't do it at all.

Calhoun

smart game sharers base their sharing servers in sweden - pirates' haven.

animexplorer

The best way to stop piracy is to stop selling games in a way they can be pirated easily. For example, steam. If steam were to implement a "trading" system (to give/sell games you own, and a return system (say for 5 days after you buy it, you can remove it from your account for partial credit, something like 90%) many of the problems pirates cite would go away, and it would go back to wanting something without paying for it.

roflwaffles

@Calhoun: Yeah, cause we all know how pirates are obsessed with legality, right?

Your sea lawyer defense has no effect.

Jonn

SAY IT WITH ME, FOLKS.
THE LEGAL DEFINITION OF WHAT THIS IS IS COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT AND NOT THEFT.
We're not (necessarily) saying it's right. We're saying that the LEGAL DEFINITION, ACCORDING TO LAWS is that it is copyright infringement.
Actual, factual, look it up in the books legal definition.

rekenner

You also have to remember the people who, after purchasing a pc game, find the crack online to get rid of the copy protection crapware. It is something I've done for almost every PC game I have ever gotten. I agree that Piracy hurts developers, but too often it is the publishers who did nothing but invest in the product that go the legal route of punishing pirates. But I suppose it is better for the big faceless company to make the lawsuits instead of the creators. Look at what assholes Metallica looked like when they went after Napster. Who know what sort of hit that took on their reputation.

prelude97

at least its an affordable amount, not sending some poor sharer into bankrupty with a fine of US$600,000.
300 Pounds should be a very very firm slap on the wrist.
However, it does make everybody viable tobe sued, and its a bad thing that providers fork over personal details to the authorities for a witch hunt (not the terrorist witch hunt that is...)

sander_dutch

Since when illegal downloaders became consumers? Im I missing something? I really hope everyone who downloaded that game gets the warning

zaagis

@rekenner: That's merely a technicality that your using to allow yourself the liberty to steal the product essentially (taking a free copy of the code).

Llost

It doesn't really matter if the person would have bought the pirated copy or not. Pirated games reduce the demand for all commercial games. And legally if a piece of software is priced at 10,000 dollars then you can demand 10,000 dollars for each stolen/pirated copy (that's without getting into statutory damages). You wouldn't seek 50 dollars per copy or 2 dollars per copy if that is what the person would have paid. They stole 10,000 dollars worth of software, not 50.

dosboot

I still don't get why people insist on conflating piracy with theft. They are two distinctly different ideas, just like plagiarism is not "theft" in any meaningful legal sense, even though people say, "Hey, you stole that guy's ideas."

Does that make plagiarism OKAY, just because we're not calling it theft? Of course it doesn't. It's just recognition that they are, in fact, two different concepts.

EmpressInYellow

@ObZen:

If you were trying to make a point you've failed, BIG TIME. First you come into this thread with a self-righteous attitude like you know exactly what the problem is and how to solve it. Then when people begin arguing with your statements you argue with things like:

"Thanks for clearing that up. Illegal is still illegal, so let's stop with semantics."

The point you're arguing is at it's core an argument about semantics. How data copying relates to stealing is a point of semantics. Don't argue something that you don't fully understand. It will help you waste less of our time in the future.

NeoAkira

I pirated COD4 to see how the full game ran on my computer, when i saw that it ran perfectly i went out and bought it, if i couldn't have pirated it they wouldn't have got my sale.

londonlad

For it to be stealing the file sharer would have to deprive the company of something they already had. Stealing a game from a shop is theft, downloading a copy isn't.

londonlad

It's funny... Games often come out on illegal sites before coming out in the stores. And it's waay easier to get it of a site, than in a store. Plus if you're unsure if you like the game at all, the only thing you'll spend on it [if you download it illegally] is disk-space and time.
They made gaming as it is today... They could have seen it coming

Dragzonox

@EmpressInYellow: Thank you for saving me the time to type that.

@Jonn: See above. Read. Learn. Live.

NeoAkira

@shinko: "Asked about it in an interview with Eurogamer"

He answered a question in an interview, and it is a question that is relevant to him in is work.

Spartan1308™

@ObZen: Please understand copyright infringement is a civil matter. Your car example is dumb as that is a criminal offense, the only good analogy for this will be if you go and make cars like that because you stole their plans, that will be piracy (copyright infringement).

KamuZ

@Jonn: But it's not "just semantics".

Look, let's get this out of the way. I'm not a fan of piracy. I'm not -defending- it. I just don't think muddying the waters with inaccurate comparisons helps anyone.

For it to be "theft", you would logically have to be depriving them of actual, tangible value such that they have experienced a LOSS in value at the end. For instance, I steal your car. You no longer have a car. You have been deprived of that car.

In the case of piracy, what's being "stolen" is a hypothetical: the hypothetical money the downloader might have paid if they hadn't downloaded a copy. The rights holder never actually had that money. That money might not have existed in the first place. That download does not prevent the rights holder from continuing to sell the software. They have not lost that code, those art assets. As there was no physical medium involved, there has been no physical loss of value.

Now: None of this to say that piracy cannot be -morally equivalent- to theft. It's not a defense of piracy, saying, "Well, at least I didn't steal a boxed copy." It's just that, if we're going to talk about this stuff, we should at least do it honestly.

EmpressInYellow

@erlik: Yeah, how dare they treat people who break the law like criminals. They obeyed the law at other times, so they shouldn't be treated like people who-wait.

@NeoAkira: Really? I thought this was about people getting things they didn't pay for for free, not semantics.

It's sold, you're not paying for it, it's not some sort of gift, you're unwilling to pay for it, and yet you take it anyway. What does that sound like to you?

Jonn

@Calhoun: No, I mean that a practical definition of something is different from a legal one. It's still illegal, and the copyright infringement/theft distinction is just semantics.

Jonn

@RStormgull: Nnone exist that is a point some of us are trying to make.... When we have no way of telling if a game is decent without either A playing it at a friend house first or B pirating it then its just an unacceptable case. Demos arnt hard to get out they just cost internet bandwidth for the company which paying a bit a month to distribute something (hell this can be done through mirrors like filefront etc...) its not really that unacceptable for them to make a demo.... Hell make a demo 1 full level of the game + the training if you need to... That gives people some idea of what the heck is going on.

The fact is i see alot of the game industry simply getting lazy. I work for atari and this news saddens me that they would really go there i mean honestly thats low to resort to RIAA tactics (even though the amount is a bit more logical then what the RIAA would of trie.d..) Still there are many t hings the game industry itself can do to fix the problems and alot of them involve instilling some faith in them back onto us...

Alot of us have lost faith in games. Its become about shiny. We dunno whats good so we either buy a game and find out we hate it and are out 50-60 bucks (less we wait for price drops) or We dont get it.... Or we turn to piracy...

Here's a business Idea.... Do some advertising every so often on the Demo... Then each time a demo gets downloaded the game company can get a bit of money or they can get a straight up lump sum... If they cant warrant paying for bandwidth themselves they can gerate income off the demos... Also tie in mirror sites etc there is no excuse demos dont exist for every new game short of laziness...

linadragon

Your only bet is to find people whose reviews you trust, get opinions from friends, or see what respectable online communities say about the game. Failing that, rent the game if it is not for the PC.

dosboot

I've got...a... plan. What we need is a program similar to Steam or Gametap that provides a secure platform for downloading games. What's different about this program is that it lets you download a game before you've purchased it, but it's timebombed or level limited until you buy it. This way you get to play and try the final release product without shelling out the money for it, but all you have to do is click purchase and blammo the rest of the game is unlocked!

This won't SOLVE piracy, I'll admit that straight up (I don't think anything ever will). What this WILL do is eliminate the try-before-you-buy excuse.

RStormgull

As someone previously mentioned, GBP300 is definitely more of a "slap on the wrist" than US$600,000. I'm sure most people who were sued would be capable of paying that amount.

Also, piracy doesn't just happen over the internet, games are also shared between friends. I'm sure that even now people know how to rip their own games; with a ripped copy all you would need is a crack and voila.

I myself agree with the notion of simply adding consumer-only features. I bought TF2 simply because Valve continuously updates it, and a few other games because I feel that I'd play them more than, oh, say...once.

Replay value and quality are the keys, here.

I'm rather shocked at all the "piracy is theft, throw them in jail" comments in this thread, as well...

VieMort

@Dragzonox: People used-a-could download demos to solve that issue, but since games got so freaking huge it became largely impractical.

Since gamers can no longer trust game reviews (since it's been revealed that companies can buy scores from the major players), how does one solve the issue of knowing if you'll like a game before you shell out $60+ USD for it?

Piracy is unacceptable -- that is an absolute fact. Without demos and honest reviews, what alternatives exist to try a game before you buy it? I'm not asking that to prove a point, I'm honestly asking because I don't know.

RStormgull

The GTA IV tattoo guy is absolutely correct.

Rubezh

@ObZen: Contrary to what the RIAA may try to argue, "Supply and demand" is not a justification for unethical, sleazy, exploitative business practices.
(See also: Walmart)

EmpressInYellow

@Dragzonox: So... you're saying Interplay should make it? j/k

I agree, it should be a third party to prevent one company simply flooding the market with their garbage and not giving the smaller companies a chance. Problem is that the start-up costs for such a thing would be horrific and not something that an independent could easily get going.

PC Gaming Coalition: assemble! (We should just make nVidia do it)

RStormgull

The issue i find with reviews is that they arent really accurate even if honest reviews.... The same person reviewing it may not have the sames tastes as you do...

@@Jonn: Well no because they are taking something from you that physically exists.... It's in the bank as cash and if someone gets stuff from phishing its considered fraud and other things along with it but ugh we wont get into that...

The argument that its like any other type of theft is kind of off as its not.... Its a copyright matter which is civil. It'd be like with holding your rent until your super fixes a water leak... It becomes a civil matter. While its still not right both sides needs to work this out.

It will never go completely away but there are ways the gaming industry can massively cut down on it. There are many things they are doing wrong that in some situations make piracy rather necessary especially with our economy the way it is at the moment.... As things raise in price expect people to be more frugal with their money and wanting to try before they buy....

Even a car has a test drive.... In fact a dealer i know lets people keep a car for about 12-24 hours varying on when you take it out and then return it. The issue is there are many things going on and its not just black and white. You cant say its good or bad it just is and there are reasons to be both for and against it and anyone on any singular side are the ones fooling themselves...

linadragon

@EmpressInYellow: So if someone has been getting their checks via direct deposit for years, and I take all their money via phishing, it's not theft? I'm not sure what definition of theft you're working under, but mine only requires something of value to be stolen. Physical presence has nothing to do with it. Check it. Double-check it.

@RStormgull: There are plenty of honest reviews. You just need to stop thinking GamePro and start thinking LiveJournal.

Jonn

@RStormgull:
Then it would have to be a program by gamers, for gamers. There are many things I don't like about steam, and EA Downloader thingy.

We could also go the linux way... But not entirely free games, but cheap games with a soul. You know, that could almost solve two+ problems.

Dragzonox

@dunetiger reads kotaku, seems pleased: Crap economics.

Piracy has nothing to do with the price of games, other then higher prices increasing piracy. You can't pass costs on to the consumer easily in an elastic market, and games are an elastic market.

arstal

@Dragzonox: Your idea has promise. Now we need some venture capitalists to back it.

RStormgull

How about: buy a second-hand version of the game off ebay, and until it arrives - play a pirated version. Later, resell the game.
If a game is worth keeping, don't sell - this WILL make 1 another person buy the retail version. If you'd love to support the developers, buy it on day 1. Also, you can get one second-hand + one retail version, and give as a gift the second-hand version to a friend, who would have never purchased a copy. I do this.

And fucking off with the region-locks! I.e one of my fav games Grandia III for PS2 - not released in Europe. I had to mod my PS2 and NOT buy the game while it was available on retail (paypal didn't support my region yet). Now I can get the game second-hand, with no dough going to the developer, and it won't fucking work on my 60GB PAL PS3. I have the money, am used to paying $110 for games, but I am denied the option to pay for my entertainment. And then I'm labeled a pirate, and possibly hunted down. Well duh! At least my government was smart enough to make the law here protect "pirates" like me.

somarix

@RStormgull:
Hah, interplay FTW!! ^^

And who should make it?... nVidia? No no noo... Heh, a small group burning for gaming (that could be their slogan ^^) would have to make it.. See Innovation, they started in a Net Café in london, and now they have uplink, darwinia, and so to follow.. I'm talking about starting such a service like Wikipedia started: With few basic rules that it had to be user-friendly, working, ADs-free, and the money needed to run the servers would come from publishers. And I'm not talking more than a small amount of money. It could become more of an art-style to drive gaming, than a mass-production x)
Just a fast think-trough of how it could work.. Hmm..

Dragzonox

@Dragzonox: Have you ever seen or heard of a venture communist? Isn't that kind of an oxymoron?

RStormgull

@RStormgull:
Does it have to be a capitalist? -.-

Dragzonox

You know what? fine. Get rid of physical cds and make every game downloadable only using xbox-arcade style drm. That means unless it's the original console, the only way you can play it is by being hooked up to the net to authenticate it. Don't bother with releasing titles for the pc, since consoles can protect better, and need to be modded to run cracked games, as opposed to hitting up a torrent.

if 700k copies of my game were being pirated? I'd be damned if my hard work was being given away for free, and I'd go tell the pc community to screw itself while i started making games I could earn money on.

raiseplease

@Jonn: It's about picking your battles, not about absolute right-and-wrong. Or maybe you think we should throw the book at every jaywalker as well?

If you're a business, image is important.

erlik

@raiseplease: Thats a bit of an absurd concept really as not everyone is going to have mass internet to download each and every game.... Games can be pirated in any medium its just figuring out how to do it. Also not everyone has high speed internet and its foolhardy to think they do.... They lose more money by not releasing it on PC and as a download only on any console cuz this just leads to mass problems with who is actually able to play the games. Its a flawed logic in many ways... It just doesnt work and it lowers the amount of money they'd bring in at all..

Give people less of a reason to pirate, do the methods mentioned by the pirates , make games better quality , better demos , more replay value , and enthralling online content and you will keep pirated copies lower... Rushing and laziness are abound in the gaming market and publishers/developers need to pull their heads out of their collective asses and start working harder on a solution that is a positive impact on the gaming community not a negative one.

linadragon

@RStormgull:
Let's take the best one at out disposal, for starters... No matter what site he's on :)

Dragzonox

@Jonn: Your logical fallacies are like -ambrosia- to me.

When you take money from someone, you have -deprived- them of that value. The fact that the money exists as 1s and 0s instead of paper currency is irrelevant; by taking that money, you have deprived them of the use of that money.

The entire system of trade is based on the assumptions of ownership and exchange of value. Ownership, ie. I own X and the value it represents, is transferred from person to person in exchange for other things of value.

Theft is -depriving- someone of X, which they own, against their will. So again, I steal someone's car, I have deprived them of that value: they owned the car, and now they have nothing.

With software piracy, it's different. The "value" here is the software. When someone downloads it, they have not "deprived" the owner of that value; the owner still has the software and can continue to sell it. In your example, you are stealing the -money-, and the people you've stolen it from no longer have access to it.

Ideas about exchange of value and the like are simply -different- when you start discussing information that can be copied 1:1 without any loss of the original. Value in the traditional sense relies, to an extent, on scarcity: there are only so many apples, or cars, or whatever. You can't wave your hand and make one materialize. They are a limited resource, just like money, the time of people who provide services, etc.

If there were a magic machine that could copy apples, 1:1, without any expense or loss of the original, would you be STEALING from that apple farmer if you made a bunch of copies of his apples? He still has them, after all.

Again, people get hung up on this because they act like it's a DEFENSE of piracy. It's not. It's just a call for a little more clarity and intellectual honesty in the language.

EmpressInYellow

I actually think these companies should sue. If this kind of stuff happens often enough I guarauntee piracy will start to decline. Maybe they'll alinate "customers"...you know, the ones that are stealing games instead of buying them, but hey, its not like they were making any money off of them anyway.

The same could be said about Xbox live. I for one have stopped buying subscriptions because of the plethora of tards that I encounter on a continual basis. Maybe if Microsoft started banning them(Blizzard does it and gamers behave, Kotaku does it and commenters behave)then they would make more money in the long run? Just a thought.

fenderfuel08

i agree with moore on this one. thats just pathetic.

joeloliol

@fenderfuel08: On the other hand, I -don't- pirate games, and I know I would think twice before giving money to a company that behaved that way.

EmpressInYellow

When will companies learn that 1 downloaded copy is not the same as 1 lost sale? I don't endorse illegal downloading, but a multimillion dollar sue is not the way. I mean, if the end of the sue were only to pay the retail price then it would be ok, but they ask f*cking millions!

Great Merol

Cracking down piracy without offending users is incredibly easy for PC games. Bind patches, online play and additional content to an online account. Meaning you cannot get any patches without registering online OR getting a disk from the manufacturer.

That increases the annoyance for illegal copies, while reducing the burden for legal ones. The sole problem of this is that 'bad' games (as in unliked games) will be an even tougher sell.

Considering that the number of "Games 2.0" is rising, should help as well - imagine Spore and the others without any sharing of content.

develin

@ObZen: [sarcasm]Because people who have pirated a game have never bought games ever, not a single one.[/sarcasm]

I think Moore is absolutely right here. Reguardless of the ethics or lack there of reguarding piracy, these companies should be pragmatic on this issue. They need to look around and see how other examples of the current lawsuit strategy are fairing. They will find that it's a dead end.

It doesn't discourage piracy because a company can only pursue action to an infinitesimally small portion of people who pirate a product. Even when they do win all it does is generate negitive feelings. The companies make no money because the average person pirating a game or a song or a movie has no money to pay any damages awarded anyways. So all it ends up being is a huge money sink that generates nothing but billable hours and bad press.

Valhawk