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Five Ways to Fight Software Piracy:
The Publishers vs. The Pirates, Part 2
Previous in Video Games: The Publishers vs. The Pirates, Part 1 | Next in Video Games: The Publishers vs. The Pirates, Part 3 |
Maybe you thought this was just going to be a two part rant, but this time around I have some real, practical advice on combating software piracy. But first:
I am always grateful when publishers remain steadfast in their support for the untamed, savage jungle that is the PC. Twenty years of Darwinian attrition has made it clear that this is not the platform for the meek. If you’re not sucked dry by warez leeches, you’ll most likely be devoured by something far larger and higher up on the foodchain. If you manage to avoid being consumed, there is always the chance that your efforts will be found wanting, and natural selection will cull your team in favor of something that is smarter, lives longer, or is better at replicating itself.
It is also true that at any moment you may simply exit the jungle and take up residence in the greener pastures named Nintendo, Sony, and (strangely enough) Microsoft. Places where there is enough for everyone and you earn a living by farming money. So if you stick with the PC, you have my thanks.
But if you’re set on staying in the PC realm then you need to be at peace with the idea that anyone who wants to play your game without paying you is going to be able to do so. In PC gaming, there has never been an unbreakable DRM scheme. Not once, ever. Most DRM systems have a lifespan measured in days. A small handful might live a fortnight. No matter how convoluted the system you devise, it just takes one guy to wedge it open and let everyone else through.
Michael Fitch can rant against the people who rip off his company, and he’s justified in doing so. While people argue about the degree to which damage has been done, the fact that damage has been incurred is manifest. But as I said last time, piracy is a social problem, not a technological one. The solution is therefore going to be social in nature, not a new DRM scheme. You can’t convert all of the pirates into customers, but – as Fitch noted – you don’t need to:
So, if 90% of your audience is stealing your game, even if you got a little bit more, say 10% of that audience to change their ways and pony up, what’s the difference in income? Just about double. That’s right, double. That’s easily the difference between commercial failure and success. That’s definitely the difference between doing okay and founding a lasting franchise. Even if you cut that down to 1% – 1 out of every hundred people who are pirating the game – who would actually buy the game, that’s still a 10% increase in revenue. Again, that’s big enough to make the difference between breaking even and making a profit.
So the goal here should not be eliminating piracy, which is absurd and impossible. Instead, work on converting as many of those pirates into customers. Here are five ways to get people to pay for your stuff. Again, these are social changes – this has nothing to do with building a better DRM system. As a bonus, a lot of these things are free.
(Note that I’m going to offer advice for Developers and Publishers interchangeably. I know they aren’t. I trust everyone is smart enough to see how this advice applies to their part of the process without becoming confused. At any rate, publishers wield most of the power in the Dev / Pub relationship, so the process needs to begin with them.)
1. Make sure the pirates can’t offer a superior product
This one is obvious, which makes it even more infuriating that most publishers are incapable of grasping it. Your wonderful DRM scheme for which you paid so much money is going to be outlived by the average Drosophilidae. Your (legit) users are going to be faced with online activation, CD checks, and typing in serial numbers the size of nuclear launch codes. A pirate is going to click “install” and get on with the gaming, already.
I realize what a profound bore it is to hammer away at this appallingly obvious fact, but it’s less of a bore than that thrice-cursed dialog that gets in my face telling me to type in a huge string of mixed letters and numbers like some kind of king-hell CAPTCHA before I’m allowed to play. Knock it off already.
2. Get closer to the community
My antipathy towards 2kGames should be appallingly apparent to anyone who has read this site for more than a few days. They are crooks and liars, which deprives them of any high ground they might have against the pirates. The two deserve each other. When people leave comments about how they pirated BioShock, I react in the same way I might towards a guy who mugs spammers. I’m certainly not going to have any empathy for the supposed victim.
But if someone told me they were going to pirate Frayed Knights, I’d be damned angry. Jay Barnson is a great guy and I’ve followed his site since before he even began work on the game. I’m emotionally invested in his efforts, and I’d like to see him succeed. (He’s also never treated me like a thief.) Sure, it would be nice if everyone freely embraced a strict moral code; a planet of courteous and genteel paladins operating on the honor system with unwavering certainty. You can sit in your cubicle and imagine that bright shining fantasy world, or you can operate on this plane of existence and realize that the only way people are going to care about piracy is if they care about you. You need your audience to stop viewing you as a company and start seeing you as enthusiastic gamers with a passion for what you do.
Have a development blog. (Or just a personal one.) Give personal interviews, not just to the big publishers but to the podcasters and bloggers. Put your face where gamers can see it, so they will know who they’re stealing from if they choose to go that route. Get in the forums and interact with your customers. (Forums should always be a conduit between your developers and them, not a layer of insulation.)
Whenever you need someone to interact with the public, use developers instead of marketing guys so that fans can feel a personal connection with the people who made the game. You want them to walk away from the exchange excited. A fan is likely to brag to her friends, “I met the guy who designed Alyx in Half-Life 2!” If they meet with the Senior Vice-Executive Marketing Consultant Advisor from division 4? Not so much.
Companies are always so worried that their people will say something that makes them look like a jackass, and thus they prefer to tell everyone to keep quiet. But this just means that your enterprise is seen not as a collection of individuals, but as a whole. A huge, emotionless corporate monolith, a gestalt entity that communicates in doublespeak and frequently acts – ironically enough – like a jackass. Every team has a couple of people who love to talk about what they do and get reactions to their work. You just need to give them license to speak without clearing everything through marketing and legal first. The individual mistakes they make in these interactions will be more than offset by the giant mistakes you’re not making on the corporate level. (Ignore this advice if you employ John Romero.)
People might steal from strangers without regrets, but only a sociopath would steal from a friend. Be their friend, and they will line up buy your game. Some will even flame and shun the pirates on your behalf. These people want to love you. Stop treating them like lepers.
3. Offer a demo
Given the capricious nature of PC software, lots of gamers want to make sure a game is going to run on their particular setup before sinking $60 of non-recoverable money into it. I see lots of people who pirate a game “just to try it out”. We all know how that’s going to go. They get into the game, hours become days, and pretty soon they’ve had a blast, beaten the game, but never got around to buying it.
Don’t turn curious customers into pirates by denying them a way to try the game before putting their money at risk. Don’t give them an excuse to download a BitTorrent client and figure out how it all works. Make sure that the only people who turn to that stuff are people who are intent on stealing. Remember that P2P file sharing feeds on itself. The more people doing it, the easier it is to find files and the faster they download. The more people you can turn legit, the fewer seeds there will be, the harder files will be to find, and the slower they will download. Get the inertia going in the right direction.
4. Entice them with valuable updates
Game crackers seem to be quite competitive and release-driven. They brag about having the best games first. They pride themselves on “delivering” hot titles everyone is anxious to play. They’re also not real big on hanging around and “supporting” their crack for a months-old game when there are newer, hotter titles demanding their particular brand of mischievous attention.
Improve the game over time. If you make it so that registered users can just get the goods via an easy 1-click update, and pirates have to wade around for the right BitTorrent for the right language / release version, you’ve gone a long way towards rewarding customers and punishing pirates, instead of the other way around.
5. Clean House
Where are all of these pre-release versions coming from? When a game shows up on BitTorrent days or weeks before hitting the shelves, you can’t blame the internet. These people are pirates, not ninjas. They’re not sneaking in and swiping your gold master from amidst the laser tripwires, robotic sentry guns, and teams of heavily-armed roaming guards you no doubt have protecting the thing. Someone who works for you or with whom you have a business relationship is out there putting your goods on the internet. How is it you’re willing to make your customers bend over backwards to use your product via invasive DRM, but you can’t seem to take a few basic steps to find the person or organization who is stabbing you in the back?
There are a lot of ways of dealing with this sort of thing, and I hardly need to belabor them here. Just (secretly) marking various releases with a few identifying numbers will let you know where the executable came from once you see it in the wild, which will go a long way to plugging those leaks. If the review copy you sent to GamePunkz Magazine shows up on the net, you at least have enough information to act. Maybe not enough to drag them into court, but maybe next time they will have to wait until after release day to get their copy.
You should at least be able to make it so that the hackers have to buy one copy of your game before they can put it on the net. Once again, this means paying customers get it first, and pirates get it second.
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Changing the way you interact with customers is not easy, but it has to be better than pursuing the epic failure of SecuROM and its many cousins. The very worst that could happen is that it won’t work, which would make these ideas every bit as effective as current anti-piracy measures – with the added benefit that they’re probably a lot cheaper.
If the suggested numbers behind piracy are even half true, then a little progress should go a long way to boosting profits and making PC development a less dicey proposition.
Previous in Video Games: The Publishers vs. The Pirates, Part 1 | Next in Video Games: The Publishers vs. The Pirates, Part 3 |
118 COMMENTS? What are you people talking about?!?
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[...] the Rings’ comic series, has a two part look at PC game Piracy. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here. While he discusses Piracy in part one as reaction to another article, it is Part 2 that is more [...]
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[...] consoles, however primarily due to the fact that installing PC games sucks balls. I found this amazing article today and I would have to say I agree 100% with this guy. I’m actually downloading Call of [...]
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[...] to Part 2 that I decided to extend the series. First up is Justin Alexander, in the comments here: […] I am curious about one point: How would you suggest companies register legitimate buyers [...]
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[...] Twenty Sided » Five Ways to Fight Software Piracy:The Publishers vs. The Pirates, Part 2. A fantastic writeup on how to really do something “right” in the fight against piracy. (This deals with PC gaming, mostly, but could also apply to the xxAA issues that are rampant today.) [...]
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[...] has a three part series on PC game piracy in which he makes some concrete recommendations to the game industry. Part of Shamus’ premise is simply that video game piracy is a problem partly driven by the [...]
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[...] and release it with no hassles at all. Unfortunately, offering a game with no hassle at $10-$20 isn’t a superiour product. Offering that same game for free is. Damn freeloaders. [...]
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[...] again? The power seems to be solely in the hands of the publishers here. There’s already a set of concrete suggestions for the gaming industry, which are eminently reasonable but probably will never be embraced. A similar set of suggestions [...]
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As usual Shamus I’m in 100% agreement with all of your points, and I also second the posters who have noted that consoles aren’t any magic anti-piracy tool for game writers either; as pointed out, the reason it’s comparatively rare to pirate Xbox or Wii games at present is because most people using Bit Torrent and the like are playing games on the PC, so that’s what gets cracked. Eliminate games on the PC and you don’t eliminate gamers; they’ll just start expecting their console games to be available instead, and they will be. Trying to suppress technology to create discs for the Xbox, PS3, or Wii will be futile in probably even the short run, let alone the long run. All of the consoles have mechanisms to remove or work around copy protection; they’re not difficult to find if you’re in to that sort of thing (or if you just want to put Linux on it, or something).
It may be that the days of million dollar budgets for the graphics and audio teams are numbered, and that we’ll see more smaller games. It’s hard to see that as an entirely bad thing; I’m sure I’m not the only gamer here who LIKES good graphics but could easily name several pretty games that sucked and ugly ones that rocked.
[...] the Rings’ comic series, has a two part look at PC game Piracy. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here. While he discusses Piracy in part one as reaction to another article, it is Part 2 that is more [...]
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1263#more-1263
This is interesting. A one day snapshot of a very popular torrenting site. Overall it seems to support your theories Shamus, IMO. For example: “While there’s more strategic games there, what’s also worth noting that the current big game – Sins of A Solar Empire – is absent, despite sitting #2 in the US retail charts. Which you may say is a cute demographic snapshot – though, I’ll note, that while relatively few people are downloading it, despite the fact it has no copy protection, it’s the second-most seeded torrent – even if no-one’s taking, people seem determined to try and distribute it for some reason.” Go Sins!
Still, if you were to add a 6th step to your guide using this info it would have to be “Don’t make shooters”. Those things get pirated like crazy, possibly just because they’re the biggest genre right now.
The most difficult part would seem, to me, getting this kind of suggestion to somebody high enough in the chain of command of a gaming giant – somebody who can make a difference with their decisions (simply, an executive).
It needs to be taken much deeper than the public face of the company where it would often be filed away (or conveniently lost?) by somebody too afraid of losing their job from the potential restructuring that such processes may, or not, invoke.
#53 Matt P.: “Still, if you were to add a 6th step to your guide using this info it would have to be “Don’t make shooters”. Those things get pirated like crazy, possibly just because they’re the biggest genre right now.”
Or it could be that they’re pirated like crazy because they’re hot items at LAN parties and not every player comes prepared with a legitimate copy.
ArchU: That probably contributes, but it’s hard to argue that FPSes aren’t dominant right now for whatever reason.
I would like to add one point:
– Simultaneous worldwide release
This will ensure that the pirates will not have 4 months to crack and release the game, and thus ensure that everyone in Europe with access to a pirating site won’t have played it before it’s released here.
Noticed near the top some one mentions their going to pirate Dawn of war soul storm, ya know what… I cant afford the game, its out of my price range because real life costs come first, so im to poor to buy it. But the day will come, when i can walk up to the store counter with some of my hard earned cash, and pay for some one elses hard work.
Dawn of War Soul Storm, oh yes, she will be mine, yes, she will be mine.
As people mentioned above, the companies which are giving up on PC and switching over to consoles thinking this will solve the piracy problem must be living in some fairy tale land.
I mean, if it is so impossible to pirate console games, how come the torrent site I frequent has 7 classification categories for console games, and only one for PC games? And how come X-box titles are always high on the “most seeded” lists?
It’s kinda like movie studios jumping onto BluRay because it has more DRM – all the while you can pretty much already download every single BluRay release on torrent sites already. So futile.
Following Kevin Kelly’s Better than Free column, I would add two more points:
6. Accessibility and Choice
Give your customers choice of the way they want to purchase your game. If they don’t want a retail boxed version, sell them an online download directly from your website (and price it appropriately not to undercut your retail sales). This way, your most loyal customers can get the game the instant it goes on sale. To save bandwidth you can simply use bittorrent to handle downloads.
7. Embodiment
What happened to the nice manuals and extra stuff in the retail boxes. I remember that back in the day when you bought a game you got an in depth manual and sometimes even some other goodies like game posters, stickers, cheat sheets with useful commands/shortcuts or other fun doodads. Nowadays you get a 6 page pamphlet, half of which is used as advertising space for other games. :(
These are the things you really can’t download – or rather you can, but paging through a PDF scan of the manual doesn’t even compare to holding the beautifully illustrated thing in your hands.
I like what I read here, it seems sound logic . . . which means nobody in the business realm will listen :P
The latest game I paid for on PC was “Guild Wars” . . . my computer isn’t technically-improved enough to run much. I do like their trial code approach; you get one trial code per any of the three “campaigns” in the game. Nothing you accrue is lost, nothing is wasted, it waits there for you to purchase the game/code to activate it.
The games come in a DVD case with stuff. Yes, a paper manual (and a PDF is on the CD/DVD too). A reference card. A map. For an extra $10-15 you can get some in game swag and some more “feelies” if you like that sort of thing.
The game installs without a CD, by free download. I can’t tell where it stores the data cache . . . or how it runs without big libraries of models/textures/ares . . . but damn if it doesn’t give me a smooth game which only chokes after an Alt-Tab out of it.
It’s also . . . free from monthly charges. Which is why I play that instead of WoW . . . I kicked EverQuest, I don’t need anything else grabbing my credit card by the balls!
Before that, I bought Morrowind. I didn’t notice DRM at work there . . . just “CD has to be in to play” mechanics. Anyone know if there WAS DRM involved?
You said it, i have nothing to add
You state that demos are for people to “make sure a game is going to run on their particular setup.” I think that sidesteps the more important reason for demos, which is that people can’t make that investment without knowing what they are buying. When I need to try a game before buying it (via demo or piracy), it’s so I can see if it’s actually a good game, and a 5% demo will show me that infinitely better than all the reviews, or even gameplay videos, in the world. Reviewers never have the same taste in games as me (even if they are sometimes close), but a demo will let me decide if I enjoy playing the game, not just let me check if it runs on my computer.
I support piracy, not as theft, but as a necessity in the PC game market. I wish I could say all people who pirate a game to try it, and like it, get around to buying it, but unfortunately I can speak only for myself. I can, however, say that if publishers followed your advice, I would have no incentive to pirate at all. If I could try a game before buying it, and once I buy it there would be nothing to crack before it’s usable (as in, I can play offline and with no CD), I would have no need for cracks. I know that a large portion (though not all and perhaps not most) of pirates are motivated by convenience, and not money, so they would also lose their incentive if publishers followed your advice.
Thanks for an excellent post. It pains me knowing that most publishers won’t listen, but I sure hope some do.
I’d just like to point out that Valve doesn’t seem to have too much trouble with piracy. Out of all the people I know (although admittedly they are not many), not one of them is playing an illegal copy of any Half-Life or Source game.
Updates are released more often than not and you get these updates by doing practically NOTHING AT ALL. Fan or semi-pro sites seem to interview Valve personnel on a relatively regular basis, and apparently the Big Guy himself actually answers e-mails.
Oh, and the games themselves? Maybe they don’t have graphics to make your computer scream in pain and melt away, but I don’t really want my computer to make horrible noises and smell like burnt electronics. And they still look good. AND where the graphics themselves start to fail, the design and animations of the NPCs for example do not stand out like a needle in the eye – which is where the shiniest and more polished products usually fail, with unnecessarily awkward design and animations.
The only problem I have with Valve and Steam is the necessity of internet connection, not that it matters too much when I have a broadband connection and play other online games anyway. And I get the patches and updates without hassle.
What’s bad is that Valve, a company who doesn’t really NEED all the advice Shamus has to offer, is the type of company to listen and take the advice, while they who need it can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome their latest DRM is.
I whole heartely agree with Alex Ponebshek, I confess that I also downloaded some games, games that weren’t avaible anywhere else for me (Yeah, I’m looking at you Deus Ex 1) and games which I just wanted to check out. So I downloaded hellgate London and I was amazed and wanted to play it online too, and I also wanted to support it. So I paid 60 bucks for it to get the special uncensored edition (stupid censorship) and I’m ahppy. I can’t run it on full settings or the like but I enjoy it nevertheless. Then there are other games, like hard to be a God. I found a download but first read a review and checked the game out via some screens and the official site and then decided that such an interesting sounding ame should be supported, another 40 bucks, but to my dismay is the game absolute crap.
The fighting system is not that good, the camera position sucks and makes fighting even harder and the enemies hide several screens of while shooting at you with arrows (lots of fun trying to figure out where the arrows come from).
I wish I’d ahve downloaded the game for then I’d had saved myself 40 bucks and lots of frustration.
anotehr game, Restricted area, kinda like a daiblo 2 clone was also very interesting but I ahd to work 2 hours to get it to run, because after applying the 1.09 patch was it not palyable and I needed a no-cd crack, for teh version 1.10 however. Also would I ahve saved some money here if the’d ahve left the copy protection out.
And as my mom said after i complained to her, I was jsut tied and needed to get it off my soul, ‘I couldn’t ahve figued that out…’ And i guess taht this goes for a lot of game users, not everyone knows how to screw with the various settings in the .ini files or with no-cd cracks, or even where to get them.
Fantastic breakdown of the big steps that need to be taken to address piracy, Shamus. You deserve a round of applause. :)
All good points. I think steam is an excellent way of dealing with piracy (because of regular updates etc), the only negative point is that you do need broadband, but that should become more common.
I think adding more content over time through updates is a compelling reason to buy a game, because as you’ve said crackers don’t always stick around that long. Plus, everyone loves new free content!
Also, Stardock have an excellent policy as far as copy protection goes.
All good points. I think steam is an excellent way of dealing with piracy (because of regular updates etc), the only negative point is that you do need broadband, but that should become more common.
I think adding more content over time through updates is a compelling reason to buy a game, because as you’ve said crackers don’t always stick around that long. Plus, everyone loves new free content!
Also, Stardock have an excellent policy as far as copy protection goes, and they’re pretty close to the community as well.
Edit: Oops, sorry about double post…
I’m disappointed that everyone seems to take the stance that “CEOs are decision-makers are idiots”. Do people really believe that many execs with lots to gain from a successful game will really just make decisions so stupid that any random guy on the internet who has played one game can do better?
For instance, Shamus basically suggests that the game industry remove DRM and offer more extras (demo, contact with developers, extra levels, etc.). That’s a decent suggestion, but will it pay off?
It’s pretty silly that the main argument is “it can’t do worse”. If 90% of games are currently pirated, and dropping DRM makes 92% of games pirated then that’s 20% worse. And offering extra content after the fact, that could just be a waste of resources.
Usually in these posts everyone says how they don’t pirate, and I’m sure Shamus doesn’t. Well guess what, that means that you are totally out of touch with the problem. The execs who actually deal with this as their business almost certainly know more (and have more at stake) than the posters here.
“Write about what you know.” The posters here know games (especially roleplaying games :)). They have spent hundreds/thousands of hours playing and studying games. Are the posters here students of the sociology of pirating? Have they spent hundreds of hours in the pirating community, observing people’s behavior and getting to know the ecosystem? Probably not.
Everyone here is part of the same small niche that is totally divorced from the problem, and that’s why everyone is falling into groupthink.
Yeah, you’re pretty much right on the money here. Speaking as someone who has never pirated a game (I’ve downloaded hacked versions, but only if I’ve bought the game and just can’t find the CD), it would be really, really nice to be treated like a legitimate user by companies.
I know Steam is almost verboten around here, but I think the real advantage it has over any other possible DRM is that it’s just plain easy. No CD key attached to the case or the manual, no rootkits installed, you just pull up the program itself and run the game. I think of all the schemes people are coming out with, something that’s out in the open like that is a better way to start.
And correct me if I’m wrong, but steam doesn’t seem like it can be cracked nearly as easily as most of the rest.
Woo! Go Shamus! Awesome post!
Everyone I know has strict principles and never pirates, but the Neverwinter Nights crew seems to be doing pretty well with releasing little bits of extra content as their game goes on. You could also copy something they did with NwN2 and offer a “pre-register” version that comes with some extra bells and whistles. Not only is the game ON YOUR DOORSTEP the day it comes out, but you get some extra cool stuff inside. Then, after a couple of months have passed, they can let the people that didn’t pre-register download the bonus content as an add-on.
[...] consoles, however primarily due to the fact that installing PC games sucks balls. I found this amazing article today and I would have to say I agree 100% with this guy. I’m actually downloading Call of [...]
Company execs tend to have a high turnover rate, and therefore tend to be focused in the short term. Many of Shamus’ suggestions are focused on improving the community in the long term. If everyone expects that the next game out of Studio X will be DRM-free and will have reliable updates for X number of months into the future, they are more likely to buy. Yes, it might mean that you spend more money on those updates, but that only matters if it’s not made up for by increased sales. Right now, no one is even trying this route.
The same goes for the community building aspects of Shamus’ suggestions. Building a community takes money, and doesn’t bring in people for the short term. Over the long term, however, the measures might help reduce piracy and help build a community of fans for Studio X, instead of “the next big shooter.”
Shamus hit the nail on the head when he wrote that this is a social problem, not a technology one. Lets be honest here, many of the people here are likely tech geeks. We know what will be cracked and what won’t. Dehumanizing your machine in the name of efficiency means you might put out the game a little faster, but it has been taken to such an extreme that adding a little bit of extra cost can give a great marginal benefit.
And people really are less likely to steal from what they view as “the Man” who is out to screw them. I can’t even fault them for not seeing the relatively poor programmers who have families to support, because the whole structure as a whole tells each customer, “we’re watching you. We don’t trust you, we think you might be a terrible person.”
The best way to explain the whole idea behind Shamus’ post is, I think, to point out that community trust and good will are assets in and of themselves. They can be cultivated to increase sales, or they can be squandered to create mistrust.
Grue:
Did you even read the comments?The numerous examples of stardock on this site alone?The comparison(s) between civ and bioshock?Or do you believe that stardock and firaxis are just as inexperienced as we here in doing bussiness and had a stroke of luck?What about valve and steam?Or are they just as inexperienced as the two above?
Heres a bit of an old example(cca 2 years):When ubisoft was making HoMM5 they wanted to ship it with starforce.But this news caused such an outcry from the fans and numerous emails,letters,blogs,etc saying that they wont buy a game with such an intrusive DRM.Ubisoft dropped starforce and went for securom(the older one,much less of a hassle than the one used in bioshock).And it paid off.I myself know that just this move brought them (at least) 5000 dollars.Now how much money did 2k lose just because of sticking with intrusive DRM which brought them lots of bad rep?Again,just I know of at least 50 people that decided not to buy it simply because of the DRM,which is at least 2500 dollars.
And what about the money they save for not purechasing/developing that dropped DRM?Besides,examples I mentioned earlier are speaking against your speculations.
I must be reading the wrong site then,since in all of the recent discussions about piracy,at least half of the posters either admited they pirated(some more,some less),or know people that pirate often.And tell me,who has better numbers:A CEO of a company based in a country with very strict anti-piracy laws or a guy that(untill three years ago) bought pirated games regulary because he lives in a country that didnt have any such laws whatsoever(me,that is)?Even public institutions here had pirated software.So yes,I did spend hundreds(thousands actually)of hours in a pirate heavy comunity.
Do people really believe that many execs with lots to gain from a successful game will really just make decisions so stupid that any random guy on the internet who has played one game can do better?
Emphatically YES. This is the overwhelming opinion of workers in regard to most CEOs. Go read Dilbert a bit, and remember that much of his source material is examples sent in by readers (which he tries to make worse, but sometimes fails – I’ve actually experienced stuff WORSE than what’s in Dilbert on a couple of occasions, and it’s supposed to be “over-the-top” to be funny).
Why is this? Well, look at the way CEO compensation is structured: it rewards ultra-short-term thinking (as in “this quarter’s performance”), but it really punishes nothing (when you fire an executive, it always seems to involve giving them a lot of money, as in 7-9 digits in dollars). The incentives are completely and utterly screwed up.
In fact, the fastest way to earn money as an executive is to get canned as often as possible (yes, literally, and yes, I’m using literally correctly). In the long term, this may become problematic, as it become harder to get a job, but when you can make several years’ worth of CEO salary in one year before that becomes a problem, well, who cares about later? How to do this? Take a job, get canned, they have to pay out your contract (2-3 years, most likely). Lather, rinse, repeat. If you can manage to get canned from three 3-year contracts in one year, congrats, you’ve just received 9 years’ salary in one year. Considering the salary levels we’re talking about, that’s probably over $100million.
*Joins in the applause*
A great post, but useless unless the game developers/publishers see it. Get those emails sending!
[...] to Part 2 that I decided to extend the series. First up is Justin Alexander, in the comments here: […] I am curious about one point: How would you suggest companies register legitimate buyers [...]
Regarding piracy on consoles: It has existed since they started coming on disks instead of cartridges.
I will admit to owning a huge collection of pirated PS1 games when I was a poor high school student. I also owned a handful of pirated dreamcast titles.
My PS1 had to have a mod chip to play these games, though, which ultimately ruined my PS1 after a short lifespan. My dreamcast needed a boot disk in order to bypass the copy protection, and since dreamcast games came on GD-ROMS, the full game usually wouldn’t fit on one disk, so they often cut out the music or something to make it fit on a CD-R.
The X-Box needed a mod chip, and then someone figured out a way to load games without one. But ultimately to play pirated games you had to install a new OS on your box which made it impossible to play on Live for most games.
What I’m getting at is that while these methods worked and allowed for some amount of piracy, it was universally easier to just pay money for the games, and the product was typically superior that way.
Also, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo etc… can and will brick your machine with firmware updates if you mod them. Also you usually can’t play online with modded games. A lot of people will say they don’t care about this, but consoles are true online gaming platforms now, so this is increasingly problematic for pirates.
I think that all of your points are excellent, Shamus. However, the weak assumption in it is that people are rational. For the most part, they really don’t seem to be.
I used to make money gambling (counting cards and the like), and I saw first-hand that casinos seemed to be willing to spend WAY more money STOPPING card counters than it was ever likely to lose to them. Nobody likes anyone to “get the better of them”, and corporations (and their CEOs) are no exception.
So I predict that even if you did get these suggestions to the right people, they would be promptly ignored by most (if not all) just because of sheer human bloody-mindedness. Adopting your suggestions would mean admitting defeat in their “war on pirates”, and no one wants to have to do that. ;)
This is about the most intelligent thing I’ve ever read on the subject of piracy
Guy @ 16:
No, from 21-6 Productions (via Garage Games).
Dunno if it will help, but figure it couldn’t hurt…thought this one was worth signing up for digg just so I could add an extra point to the digg count.
Maybe I will get flamed for this, but I’m okay with that…I actually like Steam, since all it does is ask you to sign up, and then pay for the games you want, and I can do it all online from anywhere I can get on the internet. Doesn’t feel like I’m assumed to be stealing when using it, either.
With all these people telling pirating (sp?) stories, I thought I’d chime in that my very first pc game was a cracked version of ultima IV, I don’t remember who cracked it, but I do remember that back then most of the cracked games had fun splash screens proudly declaring who cracked it.
In the interest of being more on-topic, had I known beforehand that with a purchased copy I wouldn’t have had to work out all the spells by trial and error, I probably would have worked a bit harder on my dad to get him to buy it for me (the cloth map was way cool too.) This leads me into the point that I think-for pretty much any media, not just video games-people would be willing to shell out premium prices for games/movies/cds with cool permium stuff that you can’t get with a pirated copy, or even a lower price point downloaded copy.
Daemian: If you lived in a country “with no such laws whatsoever” then you weren’t a pirate at all. You were a simple law-abiding citizen.
If you approve of Valve or Steam then you like the DRM-heavy distribution that most posters are complaining about. Perhaps I misread the thread and most people like DRM but just think it’s done incompetently in many cases (this is very possible—implementing DRM as well as Steam is extremely hard).
“I’m disappointed that everyone seems to take the stance that “CEOs are decision-makers are idiots”. Do people really believe that many execs with lots to gain from a successful game will really just make decisions so stupid that any random guy on the internet who has played one game can do better?”
Well I don’t know who “everyone” is but we’ll have a look at this. Yes I do believe that it’s possible some random guy on the internet can make better decisions than the CEO of a company. Because I believe that at the core both of them are simply people so are equally likely to be right or wrong. Moreover, as the CEO of a company you DO have a lot to gain from a successful game. You are in fact the most biased person to be asked about how to effectively combat piracy of your game. Hell, you’re a CEO and thus much more divorced from mainstream gamers than some random guy on the internet.
“For instance, Shamus basically suggests that the game industry remove DRM and offer more extras (demo, contact with developers, extra levels, etc.). That’s a decent suggestion, but will it pay off?
It’s pretty silly that the main argument is “it can’t do worse”. If 90% of games are currently pirated, and dropping DRM makes 92% of games pirated then that’s 20% worse. And offering extra content after the fact, that could just be a waste of resources.”
Ummm, ok. It’s a nice theory you have there but so is communism. We’ll talk about this when you’ve got some facts. Until then have a look at the link I posted earlier. While I can’t prove decisively that Sins is seriously under-pirated -considering it’s sales figures- because the developers basically followed most of Shamus’s steps, it’s pretty likely.
“Usually in these posts everyone says how they don’t pirate, and I’m sure Shamus doesn’t. Well guess what, that means that you are totally out of touch with the problem. The execs who actually deal with this as their business almost certainly know more (and have more at stake) than the posters here.
“Write about what you know.” The posters here know games (especially roleplaying games :)). They have spent hundreds/thousands of hours playing and studying games. Are the posters here students of the sociology of pirating? Have they spent hundreds of hours in the pirating community, observing people’s behavior and getting to know the ecosystem? Probably not.”
I’d say the link I posted is a nice mini-study of pirating. Again it seems to come out in favour of the Stardock approach.
Are you a student of the sociology of pirating? If not then your opinion is just as invalid.
@Grue:
I was a law abiding citizen,but the people I bought pirates from were not.They did break another countries laws and were the first target of the police when the laws came into existance.
And people dont dislike DRM,they dislike intrusive and pain-in-the-ass DRM.
If companies embraced your suggestions, Shamus, I might buy games. But then, I just finished switching from Linux to Macs, so I guess I’m still not the target market. Sigh. Nobody wants my money for good software, I’ll sink it into pretty hardware.
As somebody who hopes to one day own his own PC games development shop, I for one, have taken your wisdom to heart.
Change is a slow thing, and those who have the wisdom to sell the product will invariable defeat those who have the skill to produce it, until one arises who has both.
Also, on demos: Every demo or patch you release and every mirror site that agrees to host them are more links in the pirates Google search. And every page of links that don’t have torrents in them in a twinge in the conscience of that pirate.
I know, because I am a pirate, and I’m not proud of it. I want to support PC developers, but I am a weak, weak man.
It wouldn’t take that much to tip the scales in favor of the developers, because while they lose the majority of these ethical quandaries, the battles are, I hope and believe, often close.
I am stealing your games… because I love them.
You could use this same plan to help the anime industry.
Just as a final point which may help explain why Blizzard became hugely popular – all of their RTS games allowed the spawning of several copies for use in LAN play.
This meant that once you bought the game, you could go along to a lan party or whathaveyou and all your friends could play as well. I believe it scaled as well, so while one copy on the network allowed two clones, two gave five or something like that.
Now although this isn’t useful for internet play, almost every new game I’ve ever tried I first got shown or played from a friend – there is no way I’ll drop the hundred bucks a new game costs on something I’ve never actually tried.
It also provides a strong incentive to get your own copy for while you don’t need one to play multiplayer, if you want to practise your skills…
It’s a shame that that TPTB won’t read this because the writing is stupendous.
“These people are pirates, not ninjas.”
Ha!
Grue wrote: “If you approve of Valve or Steam then you like the DRM-heavy distribution that most posters are complaining about.”
Steam is just a way of distributing games. Some of those games will come with overly aggressive DRM (like Bioshock) — but that doesn’t mean Steam is to blame for that (any more than your local game store is to blame for it).
Valve’s own games can be backed up and played offline. The fact that Valve essentially requires you to purchase the game through their online store (even if you bought it in a box from Best Buy, you’re still basically required to buy it from Steam) is somewhat onerous, but doesn’t really qualify as “DRM heavy”.
Matt P: I agree my opinion about pirating are worthless, that’s why I didn’t express one. I was merely reacting to all the smugness and self-congratulation, where everyone is feeling superior to the people who actually makes the decisions.
But after rereading the messages, this place isn’t the monoculture I thought it was—it appears that half the people like DRM (but want it implemented well) and the others doesn’t. Furthermore, there is some disagreement on where to put the balance between company and user: many of you have praised Steam despite Shamus’s calling it an “abomination”.
So that’s pretty much the situation CEOs are in. They think DRM will help, and they want it implemented well (although frequently they fail to do so), but sometimes they favor approaches that will make many intelligent people furious at them.
[...] Twenty Sided » Five Ways to Fight Software Piracy:The Publishers vs. The Pirates, Part 2. A fantastic writeup on how to really do something “right” in the fight against piracy. (This deals with PC gaming, mostly, but could also apply to the xxAA issues that are rampant today.) [...]
[...] has a three part series on PC game piracy in which he makes some concrete recommendations to the game industry. Part of Shamus’ premise is simply that video game piracy is a problem partly driven by the [...]
I had a nightmare with the anti piracy measures for “BAttle for middle earth 2″. Pretty so after i had beaten the campign i tried it online, wich meant i had to activate the game online and such. However, i soon forgot my account name, and therefore tried to get it back online, and if i remember correctly i didn’t manage to do so.
After a while after that, i reinstalled the game for whatever reason, and when i tried to play online, it told me to activate the game online. I had although done this already and couldn’t therefore do so again. When I tried to log in after that it AGAIN told me to register it, resulting in a closed circle making me unable to play it online.
This is just the kind of shit that makes you think “Oh, fuck the online features, im gonna pirate games from here on”
One game i love for its simple way to keep pirates outside the official servers are Warcraft 3. You need a correct cd-key to play online, and the cd-key can only be used from one computer simultaniously. you can create an infinite ammounts of accounts etc and install the game on an unlimited number of computers.
Why does it have to be more complicated then that? I mean isn’t a cd-key enough?
Wow, lots of comments.
I have GalCiv 2 and SoaSE, and both are very good, with no copyright protection at all.
Now, when I installed SoaSE (Sins of a Solar Empire, for those who do not know, great game, RTS with 4x elements, fun space game) It asked me for no serial number or anything. For a few minutes I was looking around, wondering, “where do I put the serial in? Wait, they don’t need it? WOW!” So, they never even asked for it. Which is awesome, I don’t need to keep my serial code or anything, and they offer a free dl if I lose it. On top of that, I don’t even need the disc in to play it! I can transfer it to any of my computers (none of which are “hardcore computers” as in still get a bit of a stutter at lowest), it scales immensley well, and has wonderful customer support.
I agree with their view: don’t hurt the customer, hurt the pirates. Plain and simple.
>devil’s advocate
#4@Shamus:
So…the
buggy…no…incomplete…hmmm, okay games these days are actually employing a new copyprotectionrestriction schema? Very clever Mr. Bond…very clever indeed :D/devil’s advocate<
Seriously though as much as I don’t want to be a “Me too!” guy, this says it all.
I agree with you about getting closer to the community and I was responsible for setting up one of the first publisher community departments at Codemasters. Also I worked a lot at bringing the press and the development staff closer together.
However you have a huge problem when development staff openly go onto blogs and forums and engage with the game buying public. There are a lot of very agressive knowall fanboys (of all ages) out there. Who will attack, whatever you write. They know better about any game design and will tell the game designer so. They are very difficult to deal with as they have long practice as keyboard warriors so they know every artifice to score points. Not nice people and far from nice for development staff to deal with.
As someone who pre-ordered Civ IV, couldn’t get it to run on my less-than-a-year-old laptop because of graphics fanciness, and ended up waiting a year to play it because I wasn’t shelling out the cash for a new laptop just to game, I can tell you – I will never buy another game without either a demo or a publisher’s guarantee (not a ‘you can return the game’ guarantee, an actual guarantee that means I’m not wasting my time with installs, failures, and fighting with the store over a return) that it will run on my system, i.e. a site I can go to that will give me a success/failure notice. That’s not to say I won’t pirate a piece of software to see if it works, but if I have to go to the trouble of pirating it, it makes it that much less likely that I’ll end up purchasing it later. (I’m not one to routinely pirate software, either – we’ve spent close to three grand on various software packages over the past year and a half, including a $1500 dev package I could have pirated.)
Bruceongames, the trick with the fanboys is just like with any other troll – DON’T deal with them. Nothing says you have to answer a post from someone who’s obviously trolling.