If you could NOT copy games, would that make them cost less?

Piracy may seem good to most, however thats where the problem occurs.

You have people like Gabe Newell who develops programs such as Steam which is badly coded as an effort to prevent piracy, however this doesn't prevent anything, I know a few friends who have a pirated Steam, I won't name the program but it allows you to have every game and play on cracked servers.

Then theres me who can't even log into Steam because of some stupid generic error, I can't call Valve's tech support as they don't even have a tech line or any number to call. There 2 week waiting system of useless tech support employees sucks, they keep saying they see nothing wrong and it should work but they don't know why. Poor.

Also being forced to use a program to even play singleplayer, and I may add that Steam is a resource hog.

Then you have EA games a greedy company. I used to respect them, then they made BF2, great game but heavy bugs. Their patch attempts were very poor, the lack of dedication was poor to be honest. They had something going, BF2 was very big and a very popular game, EA ruined that with their lazy patches. Their patches sucked, either due to incompetent employees or greedy managers trying to spend the least on developing.

The lack of community involvement and the fact they never gave many maps to the community, a whole 2.

EA then develop 2142 with adware in it. I don't care if it doesn't affect your computer but the fact that they are up to their usual money making schemes of greed is poor. Companies that do that, idiots.

EA = Greedy, not-dedicated.

Valve = Greedy (£20 for each episode that lasts like 3 hours lol) Forceware, with their stupid Steam program that your forced to use.

Really, I hope companies do not follow this trend. Companies that im still loyal too:

ID Software
Raven
Activision

Those are off the top of my head, ones that I actually do respect. Especially ID Software, not only have they got dedication to the community (last Quake 4 patch included like 12 new maps, a new weapon, a new game mode and several fixes) but they also don't have this terrible greed that companies like EA have, money money money. Sure business is about money making and profit making, however to the extent EA take it, it is ridiculous.

Yes I know about businesses, and a company has a fabric that is easily damaged, EA are badly disrespected, everything they seem to do seems to be a negative aspect on the community, hence the bad air towards EA.

Good companies like ID Software maintain their company well, such as creating a game and supporting it to the max, providing good tech support and not creating stupid adware in games to make money on the side and not having this greed, they balance it. Make profits yes, but also provide the community with dedication to their game and their customers. When Quake Wars comes out, I will buy it, as I know its by a quality company who makes quality products.

Ask me a year ago if I'd buy 2142, I'd say damn right, as time went on EA got worse then I finally discovered their *evil* plans, to be honest their plans and marketing techniques are messed up. Being the biggest games company in the world, they can afford to make mistakes here and there and even abuse their power as they do. Bill gates overcharges for his products ridiculously, however he sort of balances it out by supporting his product, giving tech support and providing updates for security issues and his products don't carry any sort of adware.

Long post, read it and understand, reply back :) .
 
Broadening the topic just slightly, I do believe to a certain extent that pirated games add a certain "cool" factor to consoles. Look at the PS1 for example, and the Dreamcast with it's homebrew games. The DC was far to easy to play copies on though. No modding required, I wonder if that's one of the reasons Sega didn't get much backing for the DC (or at least it may have cut it down) afterall, Konami and others aren't going to want to create a game to see it copied in 5 minutes flat.

Somewhat changing to a different perspective, the Genesis was imported from the USA,and a slew of converters allowing you to play UK and Jap games were created, and the more "daring" invididuals used a hacksaw to at the plastic tabs that were added in the versions after the US, so they had a completely multi region machine. I have heard this increased the anticipation somewhat for people in the UK. After all, now they had been constantly hammered with talk from their friends and the magazines about the latest awesome games, like Sonic and Altered Beast.
 
If they want to stop piracy then they shouldn't provide the burners and cds/dvds, ect ,ect to be able to do such things. How long before Blu-Ray burners become mainstream and affordable, not too long and once people cotton on to using the hardware to get these free games then it becomes even cheaper. If it wasn't for piracy you'd still be paying £2 a blank dvdr, same goes for retail games, they wouldn't get cheaper by any means, its all utter toss that game companys blame piracy for lost sales.
 
no cos then theyd find some new way in blaming something say the oil for silicone has gone up something stupid like that ......
 
My personal opinion is that pirate games should suffer a lack of online functionality (license codes like PC or even a steam like system). This would be easy to implement on consoles and would be a good middle ground for anti-piracy.

What it would achieve is that truly good long term games will be bought and crapper single player games (of course the GOOD ones will too) meaning devs will hopefully work harder on future titles.

Lets face it tho, the truth of this matter is obvious to see. Look at these forums, you see three maybe four people with the odd early/unreleased game in their tag right? And this is a forum full of TECHNICALLY ADEPT AND KNOWLEDGEABLE PEOPLE.

So how many high street shoppers are gonna mod? How many 9-5 office employees? How many 15 year olds?

You see where im going? we forget that the margins on piracy (on console which need modding) are tiny.
 
One thing that annoys me is that they are released before we can buy them in the shops! So not only can they be had for free, they can be played before the punters that pay £40 for the game can.

I mean COD3 is already available FFS :mad:
 
Duradrum said:
One thing that annoys me is that they are released before we can buy them in the shops! So not only can they be had for free, they can be played before the punters that pay £40 for the game can.

I mean COD3 is already available FFS :mad:
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hehehehe

*whistles*

But yea, its quite a benefit - im always curious to how these big piracy groups work and get releases so early. Quite interesting really.
 
McDaniel said:
hehehehe

*whistles*

But yea, its quite a benefit - im always curious to how these big piracy groups work and get releases so early. Quite interesting really.
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Usually gets leaked by someone working in the company, or it is released in say Japan then released ripped or so, so that it works and is in english.
 
dirtydog said:
I thought PS1s played CDRs without modification?

(Or is that Dreamcasts I'm thinking of)
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the old PS1 used to, that biro pen trick (which i actually remember a lot of magazines telling you how to do it to play imports (and at the same time copies), then the cart that used to plug in the parallell port on the back of some of the older/first consoles.

There was/is even a way of doing this with some PS2 consoles.

Anyway.

PC Games always cost less because with the Console games the companies have to pay the licence fees to Sony, MS, Nintendo etc for the games, which ups the prices, where as on the PC there is no licence fee to pay .
 
I've always wondered why games cost so much more than a music CD or a DVD. They also have a piracy issue, and piracy does seem the scapegoat for whatever problem they are currently having in the music/film/games industry. If you ask me, releasing titles that are more original and less stale would help sales, along with more respect for the buying public.

I guess at the end of the day, as long as they make a profit then they are happy, and we are happy as they can continue to develop. EA is shocking tho, I hope this isn't a start of a trend. In the states, there are DVD's now, with trailers on the start which you cannot skip thru - yet more advertising to wade thru. :rolleyes:
 
MikeHunt79 said:
I've always wondered why games cost so much more than a music CD or a DVD. They also have a piracy issue, and piracy does seem the scapegoat for whatever problem they are currently having in the music/film/games industry. If you ask me, releasing titles that are more original and less stale would help sales, along with more respect for the buying public.

I guess at the end of the day, as long as they make a profit then they are happy, and we are happy as they can continue to develop. EA is shocking tho, I hope this isn't a start of a trend. In the states, there are DVD's now, with trailers on the start which you cannot skip thru - yet more advertising to wade thru. :rolleyes:
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hmm probably because a game takes proportionally longer/more cash to produce than a film in terms of cost amortised by revenue streams.

for example a film costs x amount and expects to make x hundred million back at the cinema. it is then cast out on to a DVD and sold at a fractional value to incvrease the revenue stream from the original film.

witha game however, there is no cinema screening/revenue... it ALL comes from the sale of the DVD/Game disc, therefore the cost is attributed sdifferently, and revenues must be achieved accordingly (higher game prices)

for me the most worrying aspect is the "pay per download" addon's which Live/Sony's online system will facilitate. games should not be sold as half entities to be "topped" up with micropayments from the user to enable/experience the full game - see GT:HD for the ultimate ripoff.
 
McDaniel said:
Prices would certainly go up, though ive pirated games and still got the originals because they've been that good or i want to use the multiplayer side :)
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lol :). i love u mcdonald :D.

tbh when some people pirate, the software companies dont actually lose money if that person wouldnt have bought the game anyway. does that make sense. i dunno.
 
Mana said:
lol :). i love u mcdonald :D.

tbh when some people pirate, the software companies dont actually lose money if that person wouldnt have bought the game anyway. does that make sense. i dunno.
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Thats quite a common concept in the piracy argument but i think its BS. Sure, in principle its correct, the people more likely to pirate are those that cannot afford many games, sure enough. But equally they will pirate the games they COULD afford. You see piracy takes cost out of the equation which is where another common trait of pirates, namely greed, comes into play. Pirates download EVERYTHING cos its free, whether they would have bought it or not.

The fact is, saying pirates arent stealing from the companies because they wouldnt have bought the game anyway is condoning someone actively getting for free what others pay for, having said which, with this countries benefit system thats nothing new!
 
I'd hate to think what would happen if there wasn't piracy, we could quite easily see £50 for every single game, I mean windows vista already has an insane price I dread to think how much more they would put it up by!
 
Personally I think the prices would be what they are right now.
Games have gradually risen in price since I have been into computer gaming to a point where they are roughly double what they should be based on inflation costs.
Software piracy was pretty rife in the schoolyard (hurrah for high speed dubbing LOL) and I hardly knew anyone who had the same game as anyone else as an original on the Speccy or C64.
Today I know VERY few people with a chipped console or a copied game, simply because its not as "Joe Bloggs" as it used to be to make a copy and get it running on your machine.
IMO piracy is simply the excuse that the software companies use to grab £40-£50 a shot for things which are worth about half that.
 
i wish microsoft could do something to stop pirated games on the 360.
if you go on the net now you can get a copy of every 360 game.
i see today you can even get gears of war and its only out in america today.
it can only do harm to the console as developers will start to think its a waste of time spending years making a game just to see it pirated.
it could turn devs to the ps3 as it will be much harder to make copyied games because of blue ray etc.
 
Nickg said:
yar, u have to think along the lines of the game dev and publishers.

they are presuming that every pirated game = 1 sales less of said game. Therefore the believe and publish numbers suggesting that that are losing X amount of cash baed upon this.

In Reality it may be a ratio of for every 10 pirated games they are actually losing 1 sale because not everyone who gets a pirated game would have paid for it, its most likely they would have gone without.

so the expected uplift most games publishers are factoring in to their claims that piracy means they have to double/treble their profit margin to maintain the same amount they *would* have recieved without pirates is quite fanciful.

therefore i believe a reduction in piracy would only increase game sales by 1/10th (approx) the amount expected by the publishers thus they still woulnt have scope to drop their prices.

so piracy is quite negligible in terms of Games price inflation imo.
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agreed many of mates at UNI that would have NEVER purchased 99% of the music/games/films ect they download. The only games they buy are the ones they need GENUINE cd keys to play online with, bf2 ect
 
ian flowers said:
i wish microsoft could do something to stop pirated games on the 360.
if you go on the net now you can get a copy of every 360 game.
i see today you can even get gears of war and its only out in america today.
it can only do harm to the console as developers will start to think its a waste of time spending years making a game just to see it pirated.
it could turn devs to the ps3 as it will be much harder to make copyied games because of blue ray etc.
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It has always been the case across just about every platform. Off the top of my head we had copies floating about on even cartridge based consoles (thanks to some rather clever hardware tricks from China).
It is more of a shame that MS have so far been unable to combat it, especially considering the nature of the Live network etc which is the killer app so to speak. I think without the ability to play copies on Live it would suddenly seem less appealing. Original Xbox had a better time than this IMO, at least there was no live play with a chipped machine.
Who knows, it may be that they are just gathering intel before dumping the entire lot of them off the live network...
 
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