What if you can't afford the game.

[Griff3n]

A story now. In the recent Steam Summer Sale, Galactic Civilizations 2 became one of the flash deals. I think it dropped to about four quid. Despite owning the game on disc, I bought it again just for convenience's sake. Then I bought another copy for my girlfriend. Then I bought another copy for my friend. Why? Because it's a wonderful game that never ever treated its players like criminals. No DRM bull. No restrictions. A reasonable price. I thought it deserved my money, multiple times.
The past hundred years' brutal commodification of stuff, this vile transformation of everything into a protected product of inflated value, has been steamrollered by the advance and democratisation of technology. Progress has led us to a place where the only meaningful currency left is goodwill.

Lol Steam is a DRM, it is just done right :D

I just want to add my 2c's here. IMHO piracy is probably the most important advertising that a game can have, when people get their hands on the game and play it, they see what the game is and what it is REALLY like, not what hyped up videos and marketing make it out to seem like. Quite a few games with amazing concepts and brilliant trailers are actually giant let downs because the trailer doesn't tell you that the campaign is only 4 hours long, the story line is weak or that the game play is repetitive and tedious. However piracy is wrong. It is "stealing" and "I can't afford it" is absolutely no excuse. You don't NEED to be playing video games, you can go outside or watch TV and you can live without them. But I do think that it is a terrible idea for developers should leak a few levels of the game so that when the game actually gets released people will have a greater idea of whether they want to buy it or not [I may be deluded though]. But that is just an opinion. Whether you like it or not, gaming is growing because of piracy and if someone pirates the first game of a series, and enjoys it, they are more likely to support the franchise than continue to pirate it.

And having said ALL of that it really does come down the actual individual person and whether or not they are willing to pay for, delete or distribute after they have pirated it. That is something each person needs to decide. That 6 step thing basically condones stealing in all facets and I, feel that should not have been published by Eurogamer.

[Squirly]

Oh please, as if people don't follow that logic already. If they didn't publish those 6 steps, someone else will. And as for condoning stealing, that's BS. He's rationalizing the logic that people who pirate follow and using it to explain his point. His point NOT being that piracy is ok but that the industry is hopelessly clueless about WHY there is piracy and HOW to combat it.

I know there are some here who will take to the soap box immediately and start harping about how there's 'no excuse' and how there's no middle ground. Well guess what? THAT'S NOT THE POINT HERE. Nobody said you can and should or are justified in pirating. Not anyone.

[Griff3n]

Oh please, as if people don't follow that logic already. If they didn't publish those 6 steps, someone else will. And as for condoning stealing, that's BS. He's rationalizing the logic that people who pirate follow and using it to explain his point. His point NOT being that piracy is ok but that the industry is hopelessly clueless about WHY there is piracy and HOW to combat it.

I know there are some here who will take to the soap box immediately and start harping about how there's 'no excuse' and how there's no middle ground. Well guess what? THAT'S NOT THE POINT HERE. Nobody said you can and should or are justified in pirating. Not anyone.

Lol. It would appear that I ended up using this thread to declare opinions I have on piracy that have not much to do with the topic at hand. My apologies Mr Squirly

But no matter how many times I read that article I cannot help but feel that there is an air of saying that "its ok, 'pirates' are not doing anything wrong. It is the companies and game corporations that need to change the way they do business because we don't like it" I now also understand why Eurogamer would publish that article because it does have valid points and ones that a company would do well to consider and publishing it from a well known platform like Eurogamer may have people reading it that can influence companies. And now rescind that opinion.

But people like it the way it is. It is free after all, I mean look at the reception that Origin got. EA is trying to make it more convenient for their customers.

[Legion]

I pay for my products.
When i pay for a product and have to jump thru hoops with internet costs and DRM systems.
And i look how the pirates get to enjoy gaming.

[Squirly]

But people like it the way it is. It is free after all, I mean look at the reception that Origin got. EA is trying to make it more convenient for their customers.

... and charging the same price as for a store-bought copy. As well as releasing their games only on Origin in order to screw over Steam (**** move, but understandable from a business perspective, i guess).

[Zoop]

But people like it the way it is. It is free after all, I mean look at the reception that Origin got. EA is trying to make it more convenient for their customers.

No, Origin was a scheme purely hatched so EA could get more money. We already had a convenient place to buy EA games. It was called Steam. EA just didn't want to have to pay the cut that Steam takes for every sale. They even tried to undercut Steam by selling DLC in-game and not through Steam.

Origin does a few things right, but ultimately it doesn't have a patch on Steam.

[Griff3n]

No, Origin was a scheme purely hatched so EA could get more money. We already had a convenient place to buy EA games. It was called Steam. EA just didn't want to have to pay the cut that Steam takes for every sale. They even tried to undercut Steam by selling DLC in-game and not through Steam.

Origin does a few things right, but ultimately it doesn't have a patch on Steam.

I see what you did there ;)

But I am sure that eventually it will get there, once it has gotten over the initial "AH WE MUST GET MONEY AND STEAL PEOPLE FOR STEAM" We have to remember that Steam has been refining its platform for many years. I hope that other publishers dont go the route of EA. I prefer to have all my games in one place.

[.exe]

@.exe, yeah, there is a large portion of pirates who pirate because FREE STUFF, but the thing is, game developers and publishers should stop focusing on those guys. They're a lost battle. The article isn't trying to justify piracy, it's just trying to explain why it's there and why the industry's current mindset isn't working.

They should instead focus on fixing their business model to ensure those customers they already have stay, something which companies like Ubisoft certainly don't quite understand.

Look at it this way; we've currently got an industry where a 6-10 hour generic, non-innovative FPS like, say Syndicate, is priced the exact same as a genuine masterpiece such as Dark Souls. Maybe if Syndicate was priced more according to its value, say $30, sales wouldn't have tanked? It's kinda like selling both a newly released Mills&Boon romantic novel and a newly released book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series for R350, and expecting the romantic novel to sell.

As for the development budget of videogames, that something I've been hotly debating for a while now. My opinion is that AAA developers spend way too much money on developing videogames and especially marketing. If a game that retails for $60 needs to move 3 million copies just to break even, then something along the chain of development is seriously wrong.

That's why the indie industry is rising so fast. You've got groups of dedicated, passionate developers developing games on pretty low budgets, often with a lot more polish than AAA games get. This opposed to corporate entities with hundreds of developers who don't know each other and come to work because it's an 8-5 job for them, not because they're passionate about developing videogames.

I just wonder how many 'lost causes' there are. That number is probably pretty big, but let's hope services like Steam and Desura do make it more convenient for those who are 'on the fence' and who can still be swayed to purchase games legally.

Pirates I don't think are inherently dishonest people. The ones I know would never dream of shoplifting for instance, but there is this disconnect that arises when they have an opportunity to pirate something online. I think the convenience issue comes up again big time here as well, as well as that the chances of being caught and prosecuted are basically nil.

Anyway, I agree with a lot of what you say and it's been interesting reading all the responses so far.

[Death_cometh]

I view piracy like this; Think of the gaming community as people driving on the road, the majority of them are going to obey the rules by driving in the correct lane, paying attention and obeying the speed limit and don't drink and drive. These people represent the majority of the gaming community who purchase games legally and are not a problem.

Then you have a select few who speed, talk on the phone, apply make-up, don't have licences, drive in the emergency lane drink and drive and generally ruin the experience for everybody else. These people are the pirates people who think that the rules do not apply to them or that they are special and do not need to be confined to the same rules as everybody else. The problem is that developers and publishers try to stop these people from breaking the rules by making more rules when what they need to do is teach these people why the rules are in place instead. They must also realise that they are punishing the 95% of the people who are doing things right as opposed to the 5% who are not.

I do feel that the author of the article is right in regards to distribution, R600 for Dark Souls or Red Dead Redemption or a game that provides an otherwise deep, rich, fun experience is fine but R700 for a 6 hour Call of Duty campaign is not. That is why developers and publishers should find more creative options such as separating the campaign and the multiplayer eg: R200 for each or R300 all together.

Essentially what game developers are doing is what the music industry used to do which was make an album with one or two good songs and fourteen others and charge you for all of them on the same cd even though you didn't want the other fourteen songs and they had to change this later when people could chose which songs they wanted at an individual price and suddenly the music industry suffered because now people were not buying whole albums because whole albums were not worth it.

[Wesley]

I'm not so sure I agree with your analogy of other road users who drive like idiots. Pirates indulge in piracy because they feel that there's no reason why they should pay, or they feel that there's some way that their actions can be vindicated because they'd rather pirate a game than support a crappy publisher, etc, etc. They know what they're doing is illegal but they don't think they'll be caught or that it'll become a problem.

But paying separately for a multiplayer and singleplayer campaigns? Noooooooo, don't let that idea get out, EA wants to make you pay as much money as possible anyway with their current subscription services to BF3 just like Activision charges you for COD Elite. Rather have multiplayer titles as free-to-play versions instead and have in-game purchases, because shelling out money for essentially two copies of the game is pointless. If that idea is ever pitched, there should be two versions of the game - the full one, available for purchase with extra incentives for doing so if you're going to be playing the multiplayer, and the multiplayer component free to download so that everyone can get in on the action. Its a different business model that caters to the freeloader but benefits the publisher as well.

Also I think the music industry is better off thanks to the iTunes revolution and buying singles. It allows the recording studios to have more singles by different artists rather than try flesh out a whole album by a generally mediocre one, like Keisha.

[Drakus]

This topic is quite interesting. Especially at a time when the Rand is fast approaching a point where a new AAA title is going to cost you R1'000

[Toxicnitr8]

thats so true !! it really really really sucks :/ personally i really think that a game if its gonna be that expensive needs to come with free dlc forever , till the next game is out or something because if its gonna 1000 bucks then 200 bucks for dlc every time a new map pack or something is brought out , that limits you to the number of players you can play with , because if you diddnt buy it and 50 percent did you can now only play with 50 percent of the people because that map will be rotated to and ull be disconnected :/