Benifets to be a pirate gamer :(

mr.sly said:
Of course it can be compared. In both cases, the people who actually put their lifes into making a game dont not see any return whatsoever.
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You've not addressed my point regarding what happens when the second hand market is limited, especially when it's a new release. The pirates don't have a shortage of copies.

You have to admit that in these circumstances, pirating it detremental to the developers revenues whilst legitimate people must buy a new copy.

Burnsy
 
mr.sly said:
You're very knowledgeable of Windows. So for example (taking the law out of it for a second) I purchase Vista, install it, then I sell my disc to a 2nd hand shop. They sell it on make a profit, Microsoft sees nothing and I've made some money back as well. That person might as well just download the copy, because they're supporting Microsoft at all.
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I thought you bought a license for Vista and that license cannot be transferred to any other motherboard.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
You have to admit that in these circumstances, pirating it detremental to the developers revenues whilst legitimate people must buy a new copy.
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But he's saying that second-hand sales are also detrimental to developer revenue.

Gaygle said:
I thought you bought a license for Vista and that license cannot be transferred to any other motherboard.
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Only with the OEM version IIRC, and a quick phone call gets you past that.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
You've not addressed my point regarding what happens when the second hand market is limited, especially when it's a new release. The pirates don't have a shortage of copies.

You have to admit that in these circumstances, pirating it detremental to the developers revenues whilst legitimate people must buy a new copy.

Burnsy
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Well you're not guaranteed to find a brand new copy either. But maybe if the 2nd hand market wasn't around, you'd see a lot more copies printed and that wouldn't be a problem.

And of course pirating is detremental to the devs, but so is the 2nd hand market and also rental stores.
 
Ulfhedjinn said:
But he's saying that second-hand sales are also detrimental to developer revenue.

Only with the OEM version IIRC, and a quick phone call gets you past that.
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ANd I'd agree, but I'd also say they weren't quite the same. Pirating is more detrimental, especially during the growth part of the product life cycle.

Gaygle said:
I thought you bought a license for Vista and that license cannot be transferred to any other motherboard.
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Retail copies can, but GD isn't the forum for that discussion.

There's another factor that may come into effect here and that's support. What about the extra support and service hosting cost incurred? For example game servers etc. They aren't paid for by the initial purchase cost in a pirated copy but they are adding to the overall numbers of people using the services.

Burnsy
 
mr.sly said:
Well you're not guaranteed to find a brand new copy either. But maybe if the 2nd hand market wasn't around, you'd see a lot more copies printed and that wouldn't be a problem.

And of course pirating is detremental to the devs, but so is the 2nd hand market and also rental stores.
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I think another factor that is missed is the ability to correctly price a product. Say you do some research and find that on average a 360 game is sold on maybe five times, you can account for that resaleability in the initial purchase price. You know that you will sell a certain amount of copies on launch and know roughly when sales will die out and then you can calculate your pricing strategy accordingly.

Pirated copies have so many unknowns. Before the product launch you don't know how effective your copy protection will be nor much of your sales will be taken up by pirated copies. How is a publisher going to accuratly calculate whether to charge an extra £1 or not if they can't calculate the risk?

Burnsy
 
Burnsy2023 said:
I think another factor that is missed is the ability to correctly price a product. Say you do some research and find that on average a 360 game is sold on maybe five times, you can account for that resaleability in the initial purchase price. You know that you will sell a certain amount of copies on launch and know roughly when sales will die out and then you can calculate your pricing strategy accordingly.

Pirated copies have so many unknowns. Before the product launch you don't know how effective your copy protection will be nor much of your sales will be taken up by pirated copies. How is a publisher going to accuratly calculate whether to charge an extra £1 or not if they can't calculate the risk?

Burnsy
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I don't work in product management or anything related, so I'm not sure how it all works.

But if your first point is true, its worse than I thought. First time buyers are basically paying extra for games, just so people can buy a 2nd hand copy.

If we got rid of the 2nd hand market, they could drop the price and make it cheaper for people to buy first time around. Maybe even dropping the price to that of 2nd hand games now.
 
mr.sly said:
But if your first point is true, its worse than I thought. First time buyers are basically paying extra for games, just so people can buy a 2nd hand copy.
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Think of it a different way. You're making an investment with a good exit strategy. You may pay a premium for the initial purchase price, but a decent second hand market will allow you to sell it on at a decent price too.

Burnsy
 
mr.sly said:
I don't work in product management or anything related, so I'm not sure how it all works.

But if your first point is true, its worse than I thought. First time buyers are basically paying extra for games, just so people can buy a 2nd hand copy.

If we got rid of the 2nd hand market, they could drop the price and make it cheaper for people to buy first time around. Maybe even dropping the price to that of 2nd hand games now.
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No first time buyers pay:

cost of the game at launch - trade in value of the game

With the resale value of the game deteriorating as time passes eventually converging to 0

Edit: just read the post above which says the same as me.
 
Oh no one is saying pirating is excatly the same as second hand,

I'm only saying second hand purchases are making no revenue for the retailer and hence it is possible to compare it to revenue loss due to pirating.

You can't really compare physical items like houses cars etc because you can't really pirate though. DVDs , CDs are differente.
 
Nothing wrong with pirating. Without it, many of these so called hit games/movies/tvseries would never be hits at all without pirates. Pirating enables content to be offered to the masses who might otehrwise not be able to access it.

Funny how many music bands are beginning to realise that offering their latest album for free is a very good idea as for when it comes to playing a gig, they will virtually garuntee ticket sales, having distributed to the masses.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
And I'm saying it's not comparable for reasons in post #167

Burnsy
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Show me an example of a game company who does that? the prices are set by the distributor aren't then?

They are always at RRP of £50 and available for £40 online. Unless that price already includes the fact its going to be sold X number time?

There is also the cost of the hardware subsidy as well to include.

5 second hand copies sold = £200 of new games not bought. How is that accounted for?
 
There is nothing wrong with pirating, there I said it again, now cry me a river.

Not transferrable? How so? Here's an idea, offer warcraft 1-3 for free and watch your WOW subs shoot up.

Do the same for warhammer, the same will happen. Trouble is these comapnies as so short sighted they can t see how much they will gain by investing in the free route NOW. EA a classic behemoth, consistently produces **** poor games (SIMS anyone) and charges people through the teeth for them.

As an addition, believe EA will allow and already have advertising in their games, well **** me, now there is even LESS need to charge people for the software.
 
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sid said:
Show me an example of a game company who does that? the prices are set by the distributor aren't then?
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It's be the publisher/distributors, but it's just common business sense.

sid said:
Unless that price already includes the fact its going to be sold X number time?
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Of course it's all accounted for. The absence of rentals etc is one of the reasons PC games are cheaper then equivalent console games.

=sid said:
5 second hand copies sold = £200 of new games not bought. How is that accounted for?
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Like I said in my previous posts, it's all part of the initial purchase price strategy.

Burnsy
 
As the calcualtions probably tell you, these companies are NOT in the gaming business for profit. So what do you think they are in it for and hence why pirating is a moot point - ditto for music/movies etc.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
It's be the publisher/distributors, but it's just common business sense.



Of course it's all accounted for. The absence of rentals etc is one of the reasons PC games are cheaper then equivalent console games.



Like I said in my previous posts, it's all part of the initial purchase price strategy.

Burnsy
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To an extent yes but not fully I'm sure of it.
 
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