The Games Industry: Piracy, Used Games and Countermeasures

Submitted by Zeikku; December 26, 2011

The co-founder of Valve, Gabe Newell said a few months back that piracy could easily be avoided with top quality games. This is a pretty big statement from a pretty big man - No weight jokes here, sadly; I was referring to his impact on the game industry. All unintended jokes aside, the man does raise a great point indeed. A lot of people out there feel some game developer efforts just arent up to standards, so these people pirate games in order to test the game out. Im not going to act like I havent pirated anything in my life; I think we all have, whether it was music, videos or games. Fact is, I do not do it anymore and probably wont ever again – Why? Because it harms the industry and makes the game industry very unstable in terms of productivity and consistency with releases. Consider it this way; game companies invest a lot in game making; for the most part, a lot of things are outsourced and licensing/ publishing must be paid for and this partly why companies come to a loss with piracy. To put it simply; for each game that is pirated, the company loses profit for that one game and that game only - The phrase companies lose millions through piracy is little white lie. These companies only lose millions because piracy has gotten to a stage where it is widely distributed across the internet - So one leaked copy could mean that a million people are downloading it – Evidently not giving the developers or publishers a penny for each download. The company in this sense would have still technically not profited from one game only, but it literally means that 1 million game sales just wont happen.

What can the public do?

Ill start with the obvious – Buy a game if you want it and dont pirate it if you dont want to buy it. Piracy isnt cool and if you value gaming then you really shouldn't be siding with pirates. Have you ever wondered why the PlayStation Portable wasnt supported that well? Yes, Pirates. Even if Sony barely supported its own system, third-party developers were more than happy to until piracy plagued the system - Now thats just the PlayStation portable, imagine that one a bigger platform like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

What can the developers and console manufacturers do?

Albeit, I come from a hacking scene and I am a former developer, I know all about modding consoles – Funny thing is; I dont pirate games and even when I can, I am aware that modded consoles can run pirated games, but no one should judge what a small part of the community does. A lot of good has come from the community, e.g. bug fixes, better security, innovative homebrew games and applications which boost a systems features and capabilities. I think developers need to take a back-seat role on the modding scene across all platforms and not get it confused with the piracy scene. Someday, Id like to see console modding approved with the only downside being that it voids warranty. I still think pirates should be banned instantly. In this sense, itd be easy to identify the people actually harming the industry capitally. Modders aside, what about those legit gamers and why are they being punished because of pirates? It irritates me knowing that every time I buy a game, I have to use an online pass in-order to play online. Technically, the online pass was introduced for profit for the developers on used game sales, but theoretically speaking; it also goes for those pirates that are sitting on hacked Xboxes/PS3 somehow with online access playing games they havent purchased. Speaking of online, why is it that digital copies of games cost more than in-store? Come on - Developers are always insisting that digital games are the way forward and will be made available quite regularly and I look forward to that, but not when the digital games are £50 ($80). Considering the fact that players aren't getting any artwork, a box, a manual or a disc, it seems like a pretty bogus deal buying digital copies of games for more than what they cost in-stores. Going back to Gabe Newell's statement about the quality of games and how it will prevent piracy, I will explain why he actually has a valid point. How is it that games prior to this generation were near enough perfect and bug-free. I do not respect developers that just rely on patches to fix their games, it is a major killjoy for the user who spent their hard-earned money on their desired game only to have it patched every week. Multiplayer game creators often try to convince users, that patches prevent exploits - Well, what stopped the developers doing this during the beta testing phase? Games actually had to be perfect prior to this generation because patching wasn't possible. In my eyes, this has made a lot of developers lazy - By all means, I don't mean every single one of them, but at least 40% aren't putting as much effort as these developers did last generation - Which is another reason why consumers just don't have faith in products and why some people won't buy half-assed games. Used game sales or not, how can consumers value game developers and manufacturers if consumer rights are slowly being taken away? Although, I dont pirate games myself; I just think the situation goes both ways and developers being the people that provide us with games, should make sure these games are worth the costly retail prices with no extra requirements killing the experience. We as gamers keep this industry alive as much as they do, some mutual respect would be nice. By all means, I'm not calling developers lazy or saying their jobs are easy, because I can relate to that. I want to see developers profit and I wrote this because I am against piracy. I truly respect developers for their games, whether the games are successful or not and without doubt, a lot of effort is visible in games. Remember guys, say no to pirates! Anyway, hope you enjoyed my first article back - We'll keep you posted!

Tags: Countermeasures, Development, Nintendo, Piracy, PlayStation, PS3, Sony, XBOX 360

Games in opinion are well over priced Id say $40-45 dollars is reasonable especially if your trying to push dlc for sales. I personally used to support Sony and Nintendo on a weekly basis at one point with the ps2 and gba, that's cause the games where good and affordable. Now it's about $60 bucks a game plus dlc plus online membership, that's absurd to spend say $100 just for one game. Ive pirated before, we all have as stated BUT in those cases where i did for let's say the psp's sake the games where always deleted within minutes cause i felt they where half assed. Imagine if i paid $40-$50 bucks and couldn't get that back. I love the work developers do but they need to take the time out to listen to our suggestions.

# Guest 2011-12-26 09:12

I hate to say but... Some games now are crap... We pay 60 bucks for a game that sucks. The only reason we like the game is because we paid money for it. I believe that companies will profit more for the online pass and maybe a timeplay game... If the game was registered on the server, then it will last for x number of plays then the person will have to pay more to continue playing.

Secondly, companies should over look the modded consoles and make money on the online pass. Xbox360 sales went down when they started to ban people for having a modded console. How to solve that? Let the modders in and make them pay for LIVE and the online pass. More people, more sales. When the PS3 first got modded, the sales rose, then BAM back to nothing... Now the PS3 is just a console for streaming movies.

Open the gates sales will rise and gamers will come. Trust me... I see the trends. People will pay to play online.

# Guest 2011-12-26 09:25

Screw it. I will download anything thats not nailed down.

The only thing is, when pirating games, I find that I do not enjoy them as much if I didn't buy it. I don't feel like i'm dedicated to it unless I buy it. That's my 2c

# Guest 2011-12-26 10:31

I completely disagree with this. I have read of many studies about piracy and most all of them find that piracy has no negative impact on the industry, and in many cases those who pirate games end up buying more games them those who don't! I for one pirate games all the time and yet still have over 200 games on my steam account and at least 40 PSN games not including my disk-based games. Just recently I pirated both Skyrim and AC: Revelations manly to see if they would run on my PC. Skyrim ran fine and I've now bought it off steam, AC:R couldn't even run on low settings without being unplayable and lagy. Tell me, do you honestly think steam would refund me if I had bought AC:R because it won't run on my PC? There are many other reasons to pirate games though, as you mentioned, one of those is to see if the game is actually worth buying. If you go to see a movie in a theater and you think it's shit are you going to buy it on DVD/BD just to 'support the industry'? With alot of games not giving us demos anymore the only way to see if you'll like a game is to either pirate it or to buy it. I guess you could watch videos of other people playing it but then you don't get to feel what it's like to be playing it yourself and if the person your watching is very good at the game and you suck at it you might end up hating it anyway.

Anyway that's just my 2 cents on the whole piracy thing I know from my own experience that my piracy isn't hurting the industry 'cause I still buy everything I like and don't buy the things I don't like and still manage to spend thousands of dollars on games anyway.

# Guest 2011-12-26 11:05

I agree, games are so highly priced nowadays that the temptation to pirate is greater.

# Guest 2011-12-26 11:27

I think youre right, piracy is not the best way of play , but theres some countries like mine (bolivia) where a ps3 game cost around 100 u$ thats a lot of money for a third world country.

# Guest 2011-12-26 11:39

The problem is and all ways has been corprate greed.As a child from the 80s I've seen the 20 cent arcade machine leap to as much as $4 on some games.Then the introduction of the home console from my first Atari 2600 for $50 to my kids XBox 360 for $400.You cant tell me that technolgy has become more expensive.Its all about looking after their investers and the kids are ment to stay loyal and not pirate.Fairs fair in my book

# Guest 2011-12-26 12:30

exactly!

# Guest 2011-12-26 12:42

I pirate games because i'm tired of paying for junk that never works right, and I spend hours upon hours searching for a solution and contacting some half assed customer service that give me nothing but run-around. Yes I'm like a guy who got his heart broken by a girl he loved and now I treat them all like hoes... pirating imo does very little damage to these companies, they get money from government sponsors to fund their game developement, so by the time it's out there, everyone who worked on it has already been paid... I doubt that every copy sold goes into the developers pockets like "here's your cut"... so why should it matter... fact is, the industry is shit... they pump out games before fixing the bugs and create so many frustrated gamers, THEY cause them to turn to piracy or to just flat out not buy from that company any more... I can name a few I wont be buying from... and I truthfully love certain games and will fork over the money JUST to have that game in my collection based on the years of quality served up by particular company... but i'll be damned if i'm gonna buy some new game that just dropped without even testing it first just because they market it like crazy to build up hype then once you get it its riddled with glitches and shit... hell, the hackers are the ones who need to get paid, for all the free hours they put into giving us quality software that allow us to do the "important" things with our game systems...!!!

# enigma85 2011-12-26 13:14

I agree with everything you say. guilty here, not going to lie. but the exact reason i do it is cause i do not want to waste money on shitty games. if i play a downloaded game for more the 2-3 hours and i still wanna play it, i buy it. plain and simple. and demos are useless cause they lock everything up. the only thing i disagree with you about is the psp. there are a handful of games that are any good on the psp. just a handful. when the NDS has easier ways of pirating games (just buy a flashcart) yet still makes loads of money then the psp should have been the same. most psp games could be beat in 2-3 hours and have little to no replay-ability. but yea great article! love it!

# Decius 2011-12-26 13:33

engadget. com/2011/12/22/louis-ck-makes-1-million-in-12-days-proves-that-drm-free-conte/

NEED I SAY MORE!

I find it funny how you claim you won't pirate so it's going to help the Game Industry, It reminded me of Vegitarians and how some don't eat meat thinking it's going to stop the slaughter houses from operating.... really now? lmao.

^_^ Cute perspective on life though, I enjoyed your piracy rant but only finished the first paragraph once you started pulling out opinions which aren't facts*.

# Guest 2011-12-26 15:03

Exactly. What are you guys talking about? Companies are losing MILLIONS of sales?

I'm pretty sure I learned in economics that at a certain price level, a certain quantity of a product will be demanded. If no piracy existed, most of those millions of people illegally downloading the game WOULDN'T buy it at $60 anyway. So if those people wouldn't buy it with piracy, and wouldn't buy it without piracy, you can't really call that a 'lost sale'.

What piracy DOES do is spread the word about a good game. Have you ever heard a small business complain about piracy? No, only giant companies that already got $10 billion off the game DESPITE rampant piracy.

Yes, there are some people who would have bought it if piracy didn't exist. But there are tons more out there who buy the game because, thanks to piracy, a lot more people have played the game and told others they liked it.

Finally, here's a good rule of thumb: People don't follow stupid laws. For thousands of years, libraries have allowed people to read books without paying a cent to the author. The entertainment industry is just complaining because (thanks to the Internet) this sharing of content is happening on a more massive scale. And don't say 'WELL THE LIBRARY IS LENDING, YOU CAN USE DOWNLOADED MUSIC/GAMES FOREVER'. It is perfectly legal for me to scan a copy of the whole book, return it to the library, and then use the copy as much as I like. It only becomes illegal if I try to sell that copy to someone else.

So why is it different for games, music, etc.? Again, because the entertainment industry keeps crying for the government to stop people from sharing. They see the millions of people downloading the game, and think they're losing millions of dollars. But without piracy, most of those people wouldn't buy the game.

FYI this comes from a guy who hardly pirates anything and imports everything from Japan (where it's 5x as expensive).

# mardinn 2011-12-26 15:47

Wait.. when did playing games become a necessity? Its a luxure, if you can afford a console/PC then you're able to dish out 60 dollars a month. I did pirate things myself, but now I buy them. Wait for a good discount then buy the game.

# Guest 2011-12-26 15:48

I think the piracy would partially stop if they put lower prices on games. Because the prices for some games are unbeliviable. In my country they are even higher. >.<

# Xfri 2011-12-26 17:26

If i have Plenty of money i will not pirate, but i don't have so piratebay is my friend =)

# cmptrblder 2011-12-26 18:05

Games and movies are no different, alot of them are so hyped up and when you get to play or watch them there buggy or a flop. Very few games are actually worth a damn or our money. I play on a PS3 and 360 console but for the last few months I've been playing Onlive alot. The new games you can try them for a few days or less and if you like it, buy it. Would love to see bigger name games on there but I guess that model doesn't screw us like the current one does.....60 bucks for crap games.....they will do this as long as they can get away with it.

# Guest 2011-12-27 00:11

The system I pirate most is my gamecube, but thats because original games are hard to find these days, but if I find a store that has GC games, I buy them. Also have a modded PS2, but that only for region free (I have ps2 games from different regions), and I really like the homebrew on the psp and ps3, I was happy with the days of otherOS, you had legal homebrew back then, but everithing just went to crap and now the ps3 is dying. SAY NO TO PIRACY

# Guest 2011-12-27 04:40

Yarrrrrrg, Belay That! lest ye walk the plank.

# ylapointe 2011-12-27 08:30

okay so i gotta get my thoughts out on the table

ill break this up into 2 sections:

-what i agree with..

--what i disagree with

(this is going to be long so sit back and get ready to massage your eyes afterwards, if that's even possible xD)

-what i agree with..

okay.. so, there are a lot of points that i find agreeable. one of the biggest that i believe everyone should agree on is PIRACY SUCKS BALLZ!!! or at least that's what i'd like everyone to agree on :) .. but lets face it, everyone has there separate opinions and things they find appropriate despite society's laws. we just gotta accept that but not be limited to that. meaning:

"accept peoples opinions, but believe that they can change"

moving on now... ps3 modding is, in my eyes, a very great hobby to pursue and it could even be a business/job for some.. but, for those that mod (and mod ONLY for legal prepossess) you kind of have to of look from Sony's perspective.. which is:

They DON'T want piracy that could be caused by/from modded consoles.

i'm by no means saying that consoles should never be modded by those who can actually successfully mod them. no, the problem doesn't lie with actually modding but rather from sharing... the way i see it is: if you can mod, go for it! jsut don't share and there wont be any problems.

now before i go any further.. i aught to let you all know that im not really up to date on the "console scene" so some of what i say is probably not even applicable... so correct me if anything i say is wrong please :) knowledge is power ^^

i was going to address some more key points but they seem to be excaping me right now since i forget pretty easily when i focus to much on a specific point

--what i disagree with..

first let me take a quote from the article so i can reference it directly:

-----------------

""Going back to Gabe Newell's statement about the quality of games and how it will prevent piracy, I will explain why he actually has a valid point. How is it that games prior to this generation were near enough perfect and bug-free. I do not respect developers that just rely on patches to fix their games, it is a major killjoy for the user who spent their hard-earned money on their desired game only to have it patched every week.

Multiplayer game creators often try to convince users, that patches prevent exploits - Well, what stopped the developers doing this during the beta testing phase? Games actually had to be perfect prior to this generation because patching wasn't possible. In my eyes, this has made a lot of developers lazy - By all means, I don't mean every single one of them, but at least 40% aren't putting as much effort as these developers did last generation - Which is another reason why consumers just don't have faith in products and why some people won't buy half-assed games.""

----------------------------

there's really only okey point here that i don't agree with (although some of it is indeed valid).. so im just gonna jump right into it...

my only disagreement:

"Games actually had to be perfect prior to this generation because patching wasn't possible."

NO. that has very little to do with why games developed for the last-gen consoles were so bug free. the main reason why PS2 and Xbox games were less buggy, was mainly due to the fact they were less complex than games nowadays.. the graphics, the coding, the mechanics, etc... all of that was pretty much on a simplistic level back then... and the games that did have bugs and glitches were the ones with more complexity..

I, myself, code for fun and can understand it fairly well.. so being able to go to EA for a week and experience the making of the game "Need For Speed: Underground 2"(beta) was a great time in my life.. i was able to talk to some of the developers and chat with them about coding... they actually showed some example coding of the game and they actually gave me a copy of the beta game saying,

"If you can find any glitches or bugs then we'll send you the final release for free"

haha, i swear to god, i stayed up the next three days playing it trying to find any glitches xD. even in beta phase, the game was pretty much flawless. the only glitch that i found was if you cross at a certain section on the bridge and customize you car's height to be on the lowest setting, you car actually through the ground and into the water and continues down for infinity.. haha..

but anyway... that's all i have thanks for reading this massive comment xD

# Guest 2011-12-27 08:34

So...to make up for all the shovelware that companies have been publishing, we, as consumers, have to shell out US$60 a month for any game, regardless of whether it's shovelware or not?

That's not a good investment from any side of the fence, and I come from a little before the 8-bit age. When Dragon Warrior came out, I don't think my folks paid more than US$30 for it. When Chrono Trigger came out, the price tag was still no more than US$30.

If you think I'm going to pay US$60 for a game that I could probably complete in less than a week, only to turn around and attempt to sell it for less, you can quite frankly shove a PS3 game case up your ass, open.

# Guest 2011-12-27 11:20

this man speaks the truth!

# Guest 2011-12-27 15:56

What gets on my nerves is when people talk about piracy they don't use common sence. Yes no matter how you slice it companies will lose money over piracy. But what doesn't get brought out is something like 80% of that 1,000,000 have never thought of buying it and will never ever buy what their pirating no matter what even if it wasn't available online for free

# Lucario 2011-12-27 22:55

If piracy is to be against, companies ARE stealing our $$$$ because they want us to buy new copy to replace over our broken copies or different device with same roms on it. I will hate to see someone bought N64 game in old day and had to buy same N64 game again via Wii shop just to play them in 480p... And I will also hate to see someone had to buy multiple copies just to unlock multiplayer features and do some kind of multitasking things.

Pirate people like myself DO like to have real copies of our favorites and we like to pay $ to our favorite developers who made it, so no worries, developers...

If developers did earned lot of profits from their number of copies sold, then I just don't see why they would go mad over the fact that their copies were torrented for the millionth times.*

*One copy torrented = one profit lost...

One million of copies torrented = one million of profits lost?

But wait...

Does that mean that one copy re-torrented = another profit lost?

Funny.

one copy =/= profit lost, that is.

If developers did not selling the games very well just because of piracy, then that's probably not it. Maybe the game they created were not well made and were too pricey for us.. They should have give it a price cut or just don't make any more lousy games with price tag starting at $60.

Can't make good $? You'd better not expect good $ from your overpriced games and you'd better not think it was all pirate's doing.

So I wouldn't say "no" to piracy.

# Guest 2011-12-28 00:51

The major arugument that most consisitent pirates will make to you is that they never had the money to purchase their games in the first place. They will probably never be financially capable of purchasing more than the console. Personally I saved up for a long time to buy my ps3, and I only owned 3 ps3 games for the next four years. When backup managers became available, I could've gotten all the games I would have never been able to purchase. Lucky for me, I moved up in the world, and I can buy more games. But what about people who got a ps3 by sheer luck huh? The joy videogames have brought me over the years, hell I'm less deserving than somone who has less than me, so I'd condone almost anything they did to be able to experience that. I'm sorry, but it has also been proven that pircay has very little market impact.

# jesterking1 2011-12-28 16:01

This is all about the law of supply and demand. Being that the prices for games are well over inflated, and at a reduced quality (overall) the demand for these products at these price points are just not all that high. Piracy is the consumers way of saying "hey, we want your product, but we don't think you deserver our $60-$70 for it. I'm not quite sure who set the price point for games this generation, and why they are all the same price across the board, but that to me sounds like a monopoly or a cartel/trust. If individual companies set the prices for their games, with competing prices, you can bet piracy would be much lower. Of course it wouldn't be eliminated, but it would be reduced. Yeah, I get it. Companies want to make their money and get that paper. Dolla dolla bill yall. But they can't arbitrarily increase the prices of games with every installment of a console. Considering the price of games for previous consoles, we can assume the law of x2 can be applied. ps1 games $15-$30. Ps2 games. $30-$50. PS3 games $60-$75. ps4 games $100-$120. Arbitrary increases, because they can... Piracy is a consumer backlash. Instead of complaining about it, companies should be looking at themselves and saying "what are we doing wrong, and how can we fix it?" Instead they blame the act, instead of the cause. Only to just perpetuate the cycle. Around and around we go. Where we stop, nobody knows.

# jesterking1 2011-12-28 16:07

Another thing I find funny is, I know people who pirate games that they would never buy in a million years. Meaning, they have the money for the game, but they wouldn't buy it anyway. So game companies really don't "lose out" on any money. It's as if no one bought their product. Figures that count how much a company loses to piracy assume people who pirate the game would have bought it if the avenues of piracy weren't open. They don't consider that most people wouldn't have even looked at their game.

I'm not condoning piracy. I am merely making social commentary.

# Guest 2011-12-28 16:45

Why pay for a 60 dollar game, when as you place it in your pc or console, bam!!!, whats this, its BROKEN......meaning u need to patch it, bs, if the developers wanna reduce piaracy, cut the price of a game in half or lower.

# GUBMENTxCHEESE 2011-12-31 09:16

When I lived in the states, I never had a reason to Jailbreak my PS3. Game prices were reasonable, now that I live in Brazil and games can cost up to $150 each, it's simply too expensive and I had to turn to piracy. It's not the developers' fault, but the government's taxation on any and all imports.

Just to give you an idea, a PS2 still costs $350 and PS3 is around $1000.

# Guest 2012-01-01 16:29

I used to pirate everything. I have close to 300 games in my Steam account. I was destitute however. Having trouble making ends meet on food. Now I do buy games more often than not. But I rarely pay more than $10 for a huge game or $2-3 for a smaller indie title. If games would release at this price or lower I would probably buy them instantly and without hesitation.

I've also made a personal crusade to buy titles on Steam that I've invested many hours into in the past when they go on sale even if I don't neccessarily plan to play them again soon.

Steam makes a product that is more attractive than piracy at a price I am willing to pay. Right now movie/tv/music content has a less attractive marketplace than the product piracy provides. Music is the best of the bunch but DRM is keeping it down. TV shows are kind of dicey getting episodes free/cheap. Trackers make for a better product in most ways. Getting specific movies on demand for low costs is near impossible. My wife and I rarely seek out non-pirated movies because of this!

I have an entertainment budget and I would like to be able to give a portion of it to all the content makers. Books have survived with the library system in place (I also buy books I enjoy, even a hardcopy beyond a purchased the ebook version if I really enjoy it). Why can't other forms of media live on their merits. If people like media, some will pay to encourage more content. I would love to see some form of donation system into place for all media -- Probably won't happen soon but it IS HAPPENING on the fringes on independant media.

# Guest 2012-01-06 14:09

I have to disagree, I never had much money (still dont).

If I hadn't pirated, I still wouldn't have bought them.

So saying 1 pirate = 1 missing sale is so totally wrong.

And I hope people get this in their heads soon!

# Guest 2012-01-14 21:49

yeah whatever but tell me this:

why if piracy makes game industry unstable it's more living and powerful than ever?

I play games since atari 2600 and i never seen so many games,so many hipe,so many marketing campaign for games like today.

Piracy brought games from the 90 geeks rooms to everyone rooms.

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The Games Industry: Piracy, Used Games and Countermeasures

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