Pirating Game Dev Tycoon Dooms Players to be Ruined By Piracy Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 | |
Yes and like most flawed arguments you ask for evidence and yet offer none in return. The only measurable fact is that people are playing a game they have not paid for.
The fact that successful games exist in a market where piracy in prevalent does not mean that piracy does not affect some businesses in a profoundly negative way. In general, the move to consoles was in response to piracy concerns on the PC. Because people pirate, legitimate customers now can often only buy their games through Steam Origin or some other DDS that restricts their de-facto ownership of said-games.
And yet no one in this discussion is claiming that piracy is the sole cause for failure of a business.
Theft is a crime, it's not an issue of morality, nor am I talking about morality. I'm talking about understanding for the individual. Though if the basic rule of morality is to treat others in the same manner as you yourself would want to be treated then the theft of games and other media speaks more about the individuals view of themselves than anything else. If a gamer doesn't believe that a developer deserves their money and respect, then it follows that the gamer likewise does not respect themselves. So perhaps the real issue is not one of copyright but of gamer self-esteem. And yes, if in switzerland the law determines that piracy is legal then it is legal. But in the majority of the countries of the world, it remains to not be the case. | |
It is clear from this one line that debating anything with you is irrelevant because you have one basic failing. You don't understand that a response is to a specific point. The entire premise of your previous argument is roughly as opposed to "An artist by nature is concerned with creating art." Therefore an artist in general wants to be paid for art because payment supports their ability to continue creating artwork. As opposed to, an artist should be more concerned that people consumed their art whether they played it or not. My point above, that not all artist create art for consumption is in support of what I'm saying. The fact you don't understand that, and instead put it into your "oh well they don't care about piracy" nonsense is proof of your lack of understanding. The fact that some artists don't care about piracy is irrelevant.
Art doesn't need to be view and appreciated to have value. Just like a person doesn't need praise to have value.
What? So no one bough Aliens Colonial Marine? Wrong.
Heart doesn't pay rent or buy groceries.
But I recognize that piracy isn't going away, no matter how much people complain about it, and that the best thing to do is to accept it and move on. (DarthFennec) Accept it and move on? I would suggest, in future when you enter a discussion that you actually understand what you're arguing for because from these two posts it's clear that your opinion is changing to fit your reply. Which means you don't actually have an argument. You're simply trying to win one reply over the other which is also why your replies focus on sentences out of context than understanding the debate as a whole. Either way, you have won one thing: My disinterest in what you have to say. | |
I never said the demo wasnt DRM free, you said the GAME is DRM free, I didnt mention the demo at all. Seriously bro, if you are going to be on an internet forum, reading is highly advised. | |
Reading is one thing, actual comprehension is another. The game has no DRM the thing you refer to as DRM without any understanding of what you're talking about is the poisoned torrent that the developer released. Seriously bro, if you are going to be on an internet forum, reading is highly advised. | |
I can't wait for the next video game market crash. When most of the big companies retreat and play it very safe, then when a dev who went the crowd-sourcing route gets mad about piracy we can have a whole new argument about how piracy doesn't ruin anything. | |
You are the one who has no comprehension of what DRM is.
Their lil poisoned torrent fits the definition of DRM to the letter. | |
It's not that I don't understand what you're saying, it's that this discussion is about piracy, so any arguments about art are only relevant if they also have something to do with piracy. I agree with you that artists who just want to make stuff for themselves and don't want anyone else to see their work would't be happy to know that someone pirated their work, and I'm saying that since they wouldn't distribute their work in the first place, that fact is completely irrelevant.
I never said it didn't have value. It has as much value as the artist decides it has, and that value comes from the act of creation. That's exactly why it's pointless. If the artist can give the same amount of value to a complex, beautiful drawing as a bunch of scribbles, why waste the effort on the former?
I said nobody buys games THEY don't like. Just because YOU happen to not like those games doesn't mean other people feel the same way. But I guess you have a point, sometimes people buy into the hype and marketing in the triple A market, or they just buy every game in a series just because it's part of that series and assume they'll like it. Not that it matters, as none of those things apply to your example.
I never said it did? All I said was that, as long as his heart isn't into it, it's good that he gave up, he should definitely pick a different career path in that case. Being a startup game designer really doesn't pay very well, so it's better for his rent/groceries that he goes with something else.
No. It means accept that piracy exists, and move on to other, more relevant concerns. For example, how to sell games to pirates.
My argument hasn't changed at all. From my very first reply, my argument has been the following:
Yeah, funny, I was about to say something similar about your replies. You haven't responded to the vast majority of my points at all, instead you've been mostly picking at my wording, misinterpreting my clarifications, and making wild assumptions about how little I know about what I'm talking about. I will continue to assume that you aren't doing these things on purpose, because I would like to have an engaging and enlightening conversation with you. I will also assume that you feel the same, and that you simply misinterpreted my responses as "simply trying to win", especially since I feel that I've pulled this conversation back to focusing on the central debate-as-a-whole more than once. | |
The piracy gag is weak and a violation of suspension of disbelief. Pirates generate zero profit, not negative profit. Also, like it or not, piracy is a means of information distribution. If pirates download a game and like it, they tell their friends about the game. Some of those friends may purchase the game. By this line of reasoning, pirates increase profit because 1) they would have never bought the game in the first place and 2) their word-of-mouth advertising generates additional sales. We see this time and again, especially with indie titles, where piracy generates publicity which generates massive sales. Does it matter if 90% of your one million players are pirating your game when without piracy you would instead have 100% of 10,000 players paying? | |
Because I'm NOT trying to "prove" that piracy can't possibly cause a loss in profits. I've even desribed alternate paths in my arguments for the case if it does cause some in certain examples. What I'm claiming, is that in the end, neither of us can prove it in one way or another, so 1. you shouldn't use "sales are lost" as a definitive argument without proof either. (more on that later)
Yeah, they are. They are also playing over at a friend's house. They are playing demos and F2P games. They are borrowing books from the library. Picking up newspapers left on a café's table. They are downloading books that are already in the public domain. They are listening to musicians' channels on youtube. Again, you could make the difference that these are legal and file-sharing is not, but this just proves that you are just blindly following whatever the law says. You don't have a problem with the concept of "people playing a game that they haven't paid for", or even with artists losing potential revenues (after all, they could push for longer IP ownership, or all content being playable by one), as long as it's done in a legal way.
DarthFennec already covered this pretty well. It's not unreasonable, but the opposite of it, of a pirate's eventual recommendation leads to more sales, is not an unreasonable scenario either, therefore you can't prove whether won sales happen as well. If won sales outnumber lost sales, then the game as a whole won sales with piracy, and you can't reasonably claim that you know this not to be the case.
And that's why I linked to the single-cause fallacy. To "affect" and "to cause" are very different thing. You can look at a video game company's financial results, and declare that if it is going bankrupt, this was "affected by" piracy. You could also claim that it's "affected by" taxation, or "affected by" not enough of the demo players buying the full game, or "affected by" some people buying used discs. Basically, you could claim any fantasy scenario where you can imagine deleting one type of theoretical loss and adding a theoretical gain that they can dream up. But these are ALL inevitable constants in the market, that they should have taken into account when they planned their budget. There are a few truly direct causes that can make a studio go bankrupt, like a particularly unpopular game, or a sudden new tax. Th fact that 90% of players are not consumers, is just a fact.
Maybe, though 2. Equally anecdotal stories can be made about how the subscription MMO genre's almost constant financial failure, is an example of DarthFennec's scenario in work, how locking out piracy making communities more insular and less quickly growing than with games that anyone can access.
I don't think the phrase "de facto" means what you think it means. Besides, Steam games can still be pirated, you know that, right?
Again, then why aren't you arguing against every possible cause, that could theoretically contribute to the publishers collecting more money?
Come on, you know that I know that Piracy happens to be "illegal" in the US, you are not trying to convince me about that. When you say things like "Piracy is ultimately disrespectful to the developer", when you argue about the financial effects of piracy, or even when you aree comparing piracy to theft, you are not making descriptive claims about what is legal, you are making arguments in favor of why one thing should STAY illegal. If you don't even claim to have any arguments against file-sharing other than "it's illegal", then the obvious solution to fix that huge problem of yours, would be to legalize file-sharing. See? Problem solved. Creators keep profiting from other revenues, they no longer get robbed of profits that they are entitled to (because they are no longer entitled to it), and consumers are no longer disrespecting the developers, because respect is no longer supposed to be expressed by obligatory payment per every copy.
The Golden Rule doesn't work that way. It's something that we should strive towards, not a clue to eveyone's secret motivations. And to answer your question, no, I don't think that I would ever demand the respect of others that comes from dictating everyone what publically available data they are allowed to access. The Golden Rule isn't just about "do whatever others demand of you, because you would also expect others to follow all your demands". It's intended to describe a sense of equality, striving to live and let live, to find a common compromise. | |
And this whole post tells me one thing. You didnt read past the thing you quoted, at all. Have i ever justified Piracy? Name one example. Clearly look at it and tell me where i have EVER said "in this case, its totally okay to pirate." Please. Go ahead. I'll wait as long as you need to twist whatever i write to suite your needs. I have mode the point that in some cases, i can understand it, i have in some cases done it. I never did it to steal. To send a message or whatever to some faceless publisher where the right hand doesnt know what the left is doing. I pirated for one simple reason, one simple question, and follow me on this one because its the entire point. Does this Game i have interest in work on my computer or not? Its that simple to me. Does it work or not? What if i cant get a Demo? And i havent seen many demos in years, maybe a handful at best and those were usually to games i had no interest in owning in any form any way. You label me as a pirate for the consideration that i might want to know if a game works beforehand? And dont give me the tripe about "Look at the Hardware Recommendations", i did, in the case i mentioned, obviously it didnt work anyways. If the game worked? I went and bought it. What if it was full price? Then i just waited, i didnt keep the "pirate copy" until then. What if it was already reduced? Well so? Am i somehow wrong for waiting for the game i want to drop in price if i am not willing to pay 60 Bucks for it but rather pay 40? I never pirated to have a game for free. I didnt do it to send a message, i didnt do it out of some sense of self-entitlement that somehow the developers owe me. Because they dont. But neither do i owe them my money unless they deserve to have it. First step: A Game that interests me. Am i interested? Okay. Step two: Make sure the game works. Does it work? Okay. If either of these questions gets the answer "false"..then yeah, either i dont buy it, or if i did, i am well within my rights to bitch at them for it. Or to return the product. Evidently the returning part didnt work for me then, so i skipped that step. I tested whether it worked or not on my own and THEN bought the game. If it didnt work? Then i didnt potentially lose money in case i get another refund refused. If it works? They get my money. How much i pay them though doesnt really matter. Whether i wait until it drops in price or not is totally unrelated to any notion of piracy. Unless you also want to claim that any person who does not buy a game on day 1 is somehow a entitled pirate. And if you even think that, please stare in a mirror, for a very long time. Because im certain, something is really wrong with that logic. As a sidenote, i used EA because its a example of one publisher, could have said activision, or atari, or ubisoft. Am i somehow "bitching" at them? No, please dont assume anything that isnt there and base your argument on evidence that doesnt exist. | |
Well, from what I seem to understand from Akalabeth's arguement from my side of the discussion, he is basically viewing this as a matter of the legal vs. the illegal defining right and wrong, therefore you *ARE* sef-entitled just by thinking that developers could possibly not deserve all the legal rights that they are granted right now. Because apparently "Faith in copyright law is faith in the tradition of the law as we know it", so you are automatically a dehumanizing, disrespectful thief just for not respecting the authority of legal tradition. | |
People pirate for the same reasons they watch internet porn (the greatest and most ignored victim of piracy): 1. It's free. Why do we debate the morality and self-justifications of a practice that would essentially not exist were it not easy, free, or anonymous? How many bitTorrent users would there be if every file transfer had a 50%, 10%, or even 1% chance to log their real name in a database somewhere? How about if each file transfer had a 15% chance to make their PC completely unusable for 24 hours? How about if all bitTorrent software had a $19.99 cost that users could not get around paying? One of my biggest fears when I'm "researching" whatever depraved sexual fetish I'm in the mood for at the moment is that I'll accidentally click an inconspicuous Facebook Like button. But as long as Gyges' Ring is firmly on my finger I'll happily join questionable forums, pay to support niche porn, and shout from the mountaintops the names of Goblinboy, The Owl, Pusooy, and Tlaero & Phreaky--Pulitzer-Prize-quality purveyors of digital eroticism who will never receive real-life recognition for their accomplishments or make enough money off them to buy EA's newest PoS game. At least with internet porn the justifications, merits, value, and demand still exist when anonymity is taken out of the equation. When you remove anonymity from piracy you are left with nothing. It's a practice that primarily exists because there is no fear of getting caught. | |
I think the main difference is, that most people would completely disagree with you about "digital eroticism" being an art form that deserves the protection of continued improvement and creation for the sake of progress to begin with. As far as most people are concerned, if there are already enough porn videos out there to let me watch new ones every day for the rest of my life, then, as one cracked.com article put it, "titties are post-scarcity". They don't want to fund the making of more porn, because they honestly believe that the world doesn't need more porn. They wouldn't say the same about video games, because even if we as a culture already have a multitude of great games, they believe that there is a value in the continued existence and improvement of the games industry as well. | |
Great idea actually. We should rally support "Make piracy legal, it will destroy video games and thus stop violence" The regular people will eat it up! | |
which is freaking hilarious by the way, because one pirate who was complaining about the in-game piracy was asking if it was possible to research DRM like Always Online. the irony is so god damned thick, you could cut it with a Lancer. Captcha, Too Salty! These pirates are the Sodium Overlords, Working for Captain No Johns and the Salty Crew! | |
Use kickstarter -> Piracy offset by pre-paid fan funds + more artistic freedom -> Problem solved. Or, you know just consider the fact that most great artists throughout history made their work for it's own sake, without neutering it for mass appeal out of fear of profit margin expectations. If you're a consumer, don't pirate shit without buying it. You should show your appreciation for an artists work, and your desire to see more from them. | |
Yeah it's great and all but it makes it impossible to search for ACTUAL reviews of the game without people praising the astounding way they've dealt with piracy. For the record, I downloaded the demo and it's pretty mediocre. | |
The great artists got paid to make it. Michelangelo didn't spend years painting the Pope's ceiling without compensation. Mozart was contracted to write The Magic Flute. Dickens was paid by the word for his exceptionally long stories and expected to make a "tidy thousand pounds" off of A Christmas Carol. And, yes, Shakespeare's plays were, indeed, neutered for mass appeal, mostly out of fear of offending his paying audiences. Tolkien spent a good chunk of time wrestling with the publishing pirates of his day who profited off his work. Which uncompensated artists did you have in mind? | |
So people should only bother with realising their artistic ideas if there's personal benefit involved? That just seems cynical, and definitely misses the point of art by a mile. Anyway, the ones off the top of my head, Van Gogh, Kafka, Thoreau, Bach, Edgar Allan Poe, that photojournalist from the American Civil War that I can't remember the name of, Socrates, John Keats, every female artist pre-20th century, and thousands of revolutionary mathematicians and scientists that were ridiculed into obscurity. There's hundreds more great cultural heavyweights that went unappreciated and penniless in their own time, but I can't think of them. Anyway, even if every legitimate artist ever made a trillion dollars, I think my point remains the same. Art has a purpose, to contribute to culture through one person's unique point of view, it's not there for reward. I really wish the word "Art" had a synonym I could think of. The word is starting to do that thing where it goes all numb and just sounds like a deaf noise. | |
I'm waiting for the micro-transaction patch that will fix this problem, by adding in a new set of buttons | |
Sounds round about right... This is par for the course with lazy game design: Developers realise they are chasing a dead end to late & so try to drum up interest by contemporising it with some kind of funny social or societal message. | |
With all these arguments about art not being worth anything. I'd love to see the responses if your boss told you you're not getting paid because the company would do fine without your efforts, but he still wants you to come in and work. If an artist can be unappreciated and penniless, why can't everyone else who does what they love for a job. | |
Reminds me of the PC pirates in Rocksteady's forum after the first Arkham and the "it's a bug in your moral code" burn | |
Devil Survivor 2 did something like this. The first boss in the game is immortal until a plot specific event happens, but that event doesn't happen on pirated copies. Anyway, I think this was a really neat idea, but I'm still going to pass on this game. I'd rather just play Kairosoft's Game Dev Story. Hey look, a post that isn't filled with quotes from the past 10 pages or so :) Hooray. | |
This is the funniest way to get out an anti-piracy message ever.
all of the yes to this. | |
Independent Developer. | |
Even after becoming a jaded netizen, I am absolutely appalled by the amount of oversimplification in this thread. So there's only "starving artists" and "money-grubbing exploiters", eh? No middle ground? No? You can't make something great, offer it at a reasonable price that allows people to experience it and pays your rent? Huh. Okay. Fine then. I'm sorry I even asked. | |
Bach worked for the church (which he hated to do), Edgar Allan Poe lived a miserable life with massive financial uncertainty, Socrates wasn't an aritst, nor did he leave any written works (though it is true that he apparently didn't charge for the attendance of his lectures), Kafka had a prober job as a lawyer. EVERYBODY needs a source of revenue. If - to summarise the logical conclusion that can be drawn from this thread - you are so foolish as to depend on your art or creative/scientific work as a source of revenue, you're bound to get f*cked. Seriously, is that it? I can somewhat understand the stance towards huge, corrupt companies, AAA titles with shitty generic plots and gameplay and poor customer service - but if you're seriously justifying screwing a single hard working individual over, there must be something wrong with you. I know that's an argument that has been sucked dry, but just because your salary is not depending on factors such as whether people feel like spending money for the work you've done and you can't thus really empathise with people in his condition (even though you might not admit that) doesn't mean that you can easily whitewash the troubles he's in. Especially when his income depends on whether people think it adequate to pay the price of an ordinary meal at a decent restaurant (indie games are even cheaper in comparison in CH). No wonder he moved away from that field.
Amen. | |
Reminds me of the stat maxed Invader that would constantly hound the player of copy of Dark Souls that got sold too early. | |
Because you didn't give the developers any money for that game. Why should they listen to you? When they make a sequel and fix all the flaws, you'll probably just pirate that too. | |
I applaud the creators even if this doesnt stop piracy at least they are thinking outside the box | |
A little heavy-handed for a clone of Game Dev Story. | |
Yeah I hate how battlefield 3 is basically a clone of wolfenstein. Have you played GDT? If you have, you'd know that it's a fuckload more detailed than GDS. | |
Its a Brilliant game, and apart from some bubbles has just as much to do with Dev Story as Dev Story has to do with the hundreds of game developing sims that's been around since the 80's. Just saying. | |
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