Publishers to fine 25,000 game pirates

Moley · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:36

memory said:
pirates are preaching again

If you want to brand a 12 year old doing tape-to-tape copies of zx81 games a pirate, then yes. However that was 25 years ago and I don't consider myself a pirate anymore, just as I don't consider myself a 12-year old anymore....

:rolleyes:

fini · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:36

Flammy said:
That every single person who downloaded crysis would not have paid cash for it if they didn't have the resources to get it for free? If that is correct, hell whats the point of even trying to sell games, when people aren't going to buy it either way?

Well I know for a fact that piracy increases sales - and I have two leading studies (one by Harvard and the other by Birbeck (sponsored by the Canadian Government)) to back me up.

Caged · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:37

Flammy said:
Er I don't think I implied that at all, in fact I explicitly said that the 'pile of games' represented downloads. Like you say, the actual number of games in the pile is irrelevant. Either way that has nothing whatsoever to do with what I am saying.

This is exactly the sort of baseless confused justification that annoys the hell out of me. You know this for a fact do you? that every single person who downloaded crysis would not have paid cash for it if they didn't have the resources to get it for free? If that is correct, hell whats the point of even trying to sell games, when people aren't going to buy it either way?

Sorry, what am I justifying?

I don't think it's a massive stretch to speculate that the vast majority of people who pirate games wouldn't have purchased them if the means to pirate them didn't exist.

Amnesia · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:37

ian flowers said:
EA are against fining pirates.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ea-exec-warns-against-suing-file-sharers

im a big fan of EA's C&C series..i will put my pre-order in early for RA3

and any expansions they release

Flammy · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:38

D0nk3y said:
What people are doing now is downloading the game deciding whether its worth buying or not and then either comitting piracy by not buying (if they think its worth buying) or just deleting the piece of crap and therefore not comitting piracy
Everyone has their own logic.

That is particularly bad logic. How is downloading, playing then deleting a game because its crap not committing piracy?

uv · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:39

fini said:
Well I know for a fact that piracy increases sales - and I have two leading studies (one by Harvard and the other by Birbeck (sponsored by the Canadian Government)) to back me up.

Whilst those studies are genuine and whatnot, they are based around music downloads and CD sales

D0nk3y · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:42

Flammy said:
That is particularly bad logic. How is downloading, playing then deleting a game because its crap not committing piracy?

That is the point. To you thats blatent piracy, to others its just trying out a game.

Flammy · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:43

Caged said:
Sorry, what am I justifying?

I don't think it's a massive stretch to speculate that the vast majority of people who pirate games wouldn't have purchased them if the means to pirate them didn't exist.

key term there being 'speculate'. That sentence is no more hard fact than if I said all pirates were Drug-dealing colombian terrorists. Personally I disagree and think that if illegal downloading stopped, legit game sales would go up considerably.

The justification is people download a game>but the publishers wont lose out as most wouldnt have bought it anyway>no damage done>piracy is fine.

Caged · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:44

Everything in this thread is opinion and speculation, nobody is presenting hard figures because there aren't any. It is my opinion that pirates are people who would go without games if they couldn't get them for free, and yours that they'd all turn legit.

And for what it's worth I never said piracy was fine.

uv · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:45

D0nk3y said:
That is the point. To you thats blatent piracy, to others its just trying out a game.

Call it what you will, it's still illegal.

RDM · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:47

fini said:
Well I know for a fact that piracy increases sales - and I have two leading studies (one by Harvard and the other by Birbeck (sponsored by the Canadian Government)) to back me up.

What you know for a fact is that two limited studies into CD music piracy showed a possible overall increase in sales due to piracy. This doesn't really translate into "all piracy increases sales".

RDM · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:49

Caged said:
Everything in this thread is opinion and speculation, nobody is presenting hard figures because there aren't any. It is my opinion that pirates are people who would go without games if they couldn't get them for free, and yours that they'd all turn legit.

The likelyhood is that it would be somewhere in between. Which does end up meaning that piracy does cause a loss in revenue, just not as much as the publishers state.

fini · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:51

RDM said:
What you know for a fact is that two limited studies into CD music piracy showed a possible overall increase in sales due to piracy. This doesn't really translate into "all piracy increases sales".

I'd debate the studies being 'limited'. I also don't quite understand why you think music piracy is any different to games piracy??

EDIT: I'd also add that if we want to look at software sales, a study on behalf of the Australian government decided that the BSA figures were, and I quote, 'absurd'.

RDM · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:55

fini said:
I'd debate the studies being 'limited'. I also don't quite understand why you think music piracy is any different to games piracy??

Because it is a completely different market with a completely different product at completely different price levels with a completely different cost basis?

As to why the studies were limited is because they were dealing with illegal activity and only one market. Dealing with illegal activity makes it harder to get accurate results, dealing with only one market makes it harder to apply the results to other regions. For example the US music market is quite different from the UK music market which is in turn quite different from the French music market.

RDM · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:59

fini said:
EDIT: I'd also add that if we want to look at software sales, a study on behalf of the Australian government decided that the BSA figures were, and I quote, 'absurd'.

Without a doubt, what the BSA will have done is estimated the number of copies pirated (which may or may not be accurate) and then multiplied that by unit profit and said "this is how much we have lost". Which is of course ludicrous. However they are bound to overstate their case and give the maximum losses they could have incurred.

Flammy · 21 Aug 2008 at 17:02

Caged said:
Everything in this thread is opinion and speculation, nobody is presenting hard figures because there aren't any. It is my opinion that pirates are people who would go without games if they couldn't get them for free, and yours that they'd all turn legit.

I dont think they'd all turn legit in the sense that they would all suddenly start buying all the games they used to download, but going from say downloading 100 games a year to buying 5 games a year would still mean 5 extra sales that weren't there before.

Amnesia · 21 Aug 2008 at 17:05

Flammy said:
I dont think they'd all turn legit in the sense that they would all suddenly start buying all the games they used to download, but going from say downloading 100 games a year to buying 5 games a year would still mean 5 extra sales that weren't there before.

thats assuming those that download never buy games.

fini · 21 Aug 2008 at 17:05

RDM said:
Because it is a completely different market

If you mean geographically I don't understand what is so different between the Canadian consumer (used in the Birbeck study), the German consumer (used in the Harvard study) and the British consumer. Each country shares nearly the same figures for piracy and each country consumes very similar material.

with a completely different product

How does it matter what the product is - the product is IP. It is IP for sale in a tangeable medium thus any IP tied to tangeable medium can be compared.

at completely different price levels

Music may be cheaper, but none of the reasons given in any of the studies as to why piracy increases sales has anything to do with 'and then they decide to buy it because it's cheap anyway'...

with a completely different cost basis?

I wouldn't say the cost basis is soo different. Substantially initial investment for both leading to a product which can be reproduced at minimal cost. Games may cost slightly more than music to produce - but once you've included the cost of the music video, promotion etc it wont be THAT different.

Flammy · 21 Aug 2008 at 17:08

RDM said:
The likelyhood is that it would be somewhere in between. Which does end up meaning that piracy does cause a loss in revenue, just not as much as the publishers state.

I can't see how its possible to argue with that. The actual costs of piracy are completely open to debate, but the fact that it does cause less revenue than it should is undeniable.

krooton · 21 Aug 2008 at 17:08

What about games that don't actually differ from platform to platform, and owning 1 version?

I have guitar hero 3 on ps2, I get the pc version, the only different being the graphics as far as I can tell, everything else is the same. Is that so bad, seeing as the devs have already been paid?