There’s an article on Macworld.com (Link) that puts more meat on the bones of the comments I’ve been making for some time: piracy has a long-term price tag that ruins things for everyone, and if people don’t understand the cause and effect relationships involved, then they’ll some day be stuck choosing from old, recycled content as the best creators simply shut down or move elsewhere.
This excerpt really underscores the problem for these developers:
Destineer President Peter Tamte tells me that the difference I’ve described between sell-through and update downloads is more common than not. He said that when his company shipped its squad-based first-person shooter First to Fight last year, it found within a few weeks that more people were trying to log on to multiplayer servers with a single banned serial number than the total number of copies Destineer had sold combined.
Sad.
What’s the answer? Well, publisher’s are finding it: shift to online verification systems (like Steam) or move content to platforms that make piracy difficult/impossible (game consoles).
Just imagine all content on a heavily-DRM’d, super-technical piece of hardware that has a built-in self-destruct in the event of tampering. If it’s not here already (and I suspect it is), do you think this is going to make videogames cheaper? or more expensive?
Time’s up.
Congratulations to those of you who felt entitled to take someone else’s hard work. You’re on the verge of making things worse for everyone.
via Blue’s News
I’m not so sure. Can there be a way to figure out, if these people would have bought the original software in the first place, if these priated copies did not exist?
Here is the problem, there have not been any conclusive studies that have proven that such revenue would have been lost in the first place. Its always seems to be estimates and often overstated. They must be a way to justify this…
Do note though I do not support piracy in any form.
In the quote I pull, that question is irrelevant. People were using pirated software to play the game. Period. What they would or would not have done if there had been no pirated copies is speculative. That excerpt points to something that happened; no speculation about it.
I’ve long used the “theme park”, “music concert” and “movie” examples. If someone sneaks in they’re not stealing anything tangible. Maybe everyone should sneak in and decide for themselves if it’s worth paying the entrance fee… after they enjoy (or don’t enjoy) their time inside. How many people are going to volunteer to pay after they’d had their fill? C’mon. There’s a certain level of common sense to how people are going to behave that has to factor into this.
For some reason I’m getting a lot of spam directed at this post. Time to close comments.