Piracy In The Gaming Industry

[Timewarp]

Recently Ubisoft announced they had around a 95% piracy rating and that they would be going into the free to play market, the profit for Capcom and Sony have gone down and tons of companies are closing down. I think it's about time we face the facts, piracy is having an effect on the gaming industry and it's not going to end well for anyone.

The effects of piracy are all around us. We don't support the games that need supporting anymore, the online passes designed to bring in more money for companies like EA Games, Downloadable Content getting out of hand and companies like Square Enix focusing on titles like Final Fantasy that are sure to bring in money less then titles like Sleeping Dogs that make a risk (P.S - SE are back in my good books for that one, you should buy that if you haven't it's an amazing game)

People have been blaming the games companies for these problems but I say we blame the pirates, they backed the games industry into a corner. We can no longer blame the companies for what is simply a response to negative behavior, when the first gamer pirated that game they started this, when we gamers started pirating we created an atmosphere of mistrust between ourselves and the people who make our games.

Yes it's true that the things I've talked about where created not to protect the intellectual property of the people who work for the publishers who put these barriers in place and instead for money but what did we expect was going to happen? Video games cost money to make, a heck of a lot. Take a look at the credits for Sleeping Dogs that goes on for ages now how do you think those people get paid? By Square Enix but for that to happen Square Enix needs to see a lot of sales coming from the game, they need to know they made enough profit for that to have not been a waste of time.

I'm begging of you if your committing video-game piracy think about the effect your having. Titles like Final Fantasy, Call Of Duty, Halo, Super Mario even happen because of piracy. Their not bad but they could be better, these games are being made because their sure things because piracy is making it so hard to draw a profit that risks aren't risks, their death sentences.

For the point of getting of the backs of Square Enix I'll move onto another example. I don't say this to accuse or to attack anyone but rather because I don't think people who commit piracy realize the damage their causing, their not only attacking greedy publishers but people who are just trying to make a living. Used Gaming doesn't effect the industry as much since somebody bought a copy but Piracy does, you can say you weren't going to buy it but if your playing it that retracts your point.

But enough from me and my analogues what do other people think about piracy? Is it a problem? What can the gaming industry do to fight it? And our the gaming companies handling it well?

[Deleted]

First time in a while that I have used my noggin to think. Might not be coherent.

I belive piracy has increased simply due to the fact that originality in games is gone. People are wiling to pay for games, but they aren't willing ot pay for the same game with some new paint and some shiny stuff glued onto it to make it look new, reference CoD, Battlefield, actually anything FPS bar Halo (they keep everything fresh by using a futuristic concept with a long running, fluid and well thought narrative and plot).

The ones to blame for this are SQEnix, EA and Actiblizz, for they are either buying the original developers like DICE, PopCap, Crytek (the ones behind crysis, need a name check for that), all the companies that started to make good games, but got bought out and are now forced to the corporate ideal of done by date x, to standard y, so we can sell z copies.

While I don't condone pirating, with that in mind I refuse to blame them for pirating, someone who has bought all the DLC for each COD game since MW1 and the game at full whack will have spent nearly £300, and for what exactly, the same shoot russian/japanese/whatever they are bulllumpings that they know sells, because it is a proven seller to a cliche market. Henceforth, if I buy one, I have theoretically bought them all, so why should I buy the same game 5, 6 or more times.

It's the same with WoW, why should I buy into the idea of anohter expansion when previous ones are worse and worse, it's a case of if I can't pirate it to see what the fuss is about, I would rather not buy it.

And to slide onto the point of the pirates bakcing developers into a corner. That is incorrent the develpoers sat in the corner themselves and got surrounded by the pirates coming in to view the mess. Name a genre, and there is only one real competitor. Sports sim? EA. God game? EA. RPG? SQEnix. MMO? Acti. Any other genre? Doesn't matter they're near enough dead.

So to conclude in a TL;DR way, if you want to blame someone, blame developers for providing a situation where games are too bland to want to buy.

[Timewarp]

The thing is that piracy has been around for a long time, the problem lays in that companies need sure things, games that are going to make money because with a new IP comes the risk that it might not sell as well, Assassin's Creed might not have sold well so it's a big risk.

I don't think Piracy is ever right, it's fine to say that you think a game is bland and therefore you don't want to buy it in fact it'd make the gaming industry better. I'm not saying if Piracy that it'd take all the problems away with it, what I'm saying is that it seems to me that Piracy came along so the games companies tried to make their games better, the piracy continued so the games companies placed DRM onto their games and introduced online passes.

What I meant by backing into a corner is that it seems like the pirates don't get that games companies exist to make money and while I hate the guys like Activision and EA Games who screw around with games and would as you say rather just sit in a corner with their tropes and cliches, I think sometimes by accident this method of dealing with these companies accidentally attacks the guys really trying to put something new out there. Don't forget that the pirates attack indie devs as well, people who will if your right will save the industry.

The main problem I have Brosef is that I know the way an executive of the companies who make the games you talk about think and they use piracy as an excuse for their disgusting policies, Online passes? Dealing with Piracy! Always online service? Piracy! DRM? Piracy again! I think it gives them a platform for which to excuse their poor behavior because without piracy how is the C.E.O of say EA Games going to get us to think that the DLC wasn't a bad thing.

Also Activision's a bad example for a company, I mean that's a company so bland I'm certain they have a machine to suck out your imagination and put it into an actual creative box.

[Deleted]

I see your point there butdigress that beforethe Indie Devs become big enough to publist fres Trip-A titles, they get bought out or go bankrupt becasue they overstretch. A lot of people would happily buy games, but once again, they refuse to becasue 80% of the market is one of the Goliaths. I admit I have pirated a game or two becasue they are EA but in general, I try the demo if available, then if I like I buy it. I believe the majoirty of the gaming public does that too.

[Timewarp]

Also some of the blame should rest on the publisher. Most of the time you see these annoying things happening with games it's due to the publisher forcing the development team into making stupid choice for instance with Dead Space, EA Games are the guys telling Viscreal Games to add Co-op to Dead Space 3 and to make the game more like Uncharted as they think those things will make the game sell well.

I agree with you that the games are bland but I don't think we can blame the development teams, there's around 60 people a year going into gaming and there's a ton of development teams going around who would kill for a job. Meaning if your the head of a development team then you can't ignore the publisher, it'd be insane, they could fire your team and easily get another team in.

[Haunter 360]

It's a tricky one, the whole piracy argument thing.
Whilst piracy HAS been around for ages, the internet's made piracy a lot bigger than it ever was.

HOWEVER, most of the companies complaining about piracy aren't actually the ones badly affected by it. They're too big to be taken down simply by a number of nerds NOT buying their games.
Instead, most of their problems are caused by their own incompetence and refusal to think outside the box, believing that through experience they know the market, which is preposterous, since the market is always changing. So, they spend loads advertising their games, dish out ridiculous amounts of money, then fail to understand why not enough people want to buy Call of Battlefield 7, because people are getting sick of them.

So they blame pirates, which is the equivalent of the excuse 'My dog ate my homework'. The people affected though, ironically, are the smaller, cheaper, more creative game companies, since they've put everything on the line, and the overall profit each of their games make is positively miniscule compared to those the big companies vomit up. However, these smaller companies are actually selling better than they ever did ten or so years ago. Heck, games like Limbo wouldn't even have EXISTED back then.



So, do I condone piracy?
No, but having pirated stuff myself, I see the attraction.
Piracy makes you feel free, like how the internet used to be until entertainment corporations began trying to assert control over everything. The idea of people pirating the games me and my team work on is an apphaling idea - But to be honest, I think we'd be much more damaged if the last bastions of total freedom are systematically hunted to extinction.
Plus, I'm betting that piracy's more due to the economic downturn than to any genuine hatred of the company (I mean, heck, new games are around £40 - Who has that kind of money just lying around?). This is also another reason why indie games are selling much better nowadays - They're small, cheap and affordable. Everything the big games aren't.


The games industry will survive its pirates, just as it always has.
There will be casualties, but that's just how business works.
Those who aren't flexible and can't adapt to changes in the economy will have to learn through financial losses or bankrupcy, and that's just the way of it.


So, in short, stop whining Ubisoft, you generated enough bad karma with the Rabbid games to last you fifty lifetimes.

[Timewarp]

To be honest I think if their telling the truth then 95% is a bad number but to me it sounds a little like somebody asked Ubisoft how much money their losing and their response was "FIFTY BILLION MILLION GILLION BAJILLION!"

[Haunter 360]

True - I don't think there's actually a way to measure the pirating of video games. Y'know aside from going through ridiculous and expensive lengths to find every single internet pirate.

[Timewarp]

Well I think the problem is we should think of games publishers like stupid backwards evolved monkeys who only understand money and only think of anything in terms of money, yes the monkeys are flinging their poop at us but their doing that because the pirates went and stole the money from the stupid backwards evolving monkeys. I mean I can't really blame a publisher for being annoyed. I mean it's easy for them to see piracy as people telling them "I like what you've made but not enough to pay you"

Like always I don't think the problem is AS bad as the companies say it is, they blow things out of proportion hoping social stigma will set against these pirates if they play themselves out to be hapless victims but it's still a problem, what REEEAAALLY gets to me is when these pirates claim it's big business they pirate from so it's not a problem and them they attack an Indie developer, I mean really? Yeah Pirates you pirated from Sos your really sticking it to Richy Rich there!