Piracy Facts
Hi all. I know this site from my Fiancee who is working to become a 3D modeler. I am a graphic designer who has to design a campaign on a topic we are passionate about and a cause related to that topic. I love games, always have, and my fiancee has brought up the effects of illegal download/pirating of video games, specifically the effect on the modelers/programmers/artist. What I'm looking for is information on the effects of game piracy on the industry. I see people pirate because they think the big CEO's are millionaires and can afford it, but I've also been told that it greatly effects the people who work on the game; modelers, programmers, ect.
I'm looking for anything to help me out. I'm creating a poster design as well as a 7 minute presentation on the effects of game piracy, so everything and anything is appreciated. Note: Not talking about music or software piracy, just gaming.
TL;DR: I need facts about how game piracy effects the industry, from CEO's to workers.
I'm looking for anything to help me out. I'm creating a poster design as well as a 7 minute presentation on the effects of game piracy, so everything and anything is appreciated. Note: Not talking about music or software piracy, just gaming.
TL;DR: I need facts about how game piracy effects the industry, from CEO's to workers.
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Replies
That has great information, it helps a lot, thanks! I need more detailed facts as wells, for example about DRM. I don't know what it is or why it matters.
Thanks!
All claims of damage to the industry are theoretical, not factual. That doesn't mean that they don't exist, they just can't be measured. There are also benefits, which also can't be measured. Furthermore the impact varies significantly from title to title.
If you're looking to make an infographic or something you're going to have to fill it with bullshit statistics from industry lawyers.
Loads of sources to back up their claims, also talks about how DRM negatively effects customers yet does nothing to pirates.
you've already put the cart before the horse, and imo you're going to spread bad info if you come it at the wrong angle and don't understand the problem to begin with.
you would be far more benefited by starting to understand how copy write effects us locally and internationally. and more importantly what the effects of sopa and pippa could do. you can completely discuss copy write and pirating without the context of games at all. and really the data isn't there to understand the effects currently. games have far more, and bigger problems than piracy. distribution models,funding structures etc. the fact is most artist are paid for there time so pirating doesn't directly effect them. the counter is that studios loose money then cut artists, but i
suspect (not researched). that all the studios heavily effected that say this had really fucked up funding/management etc. has anyone here on poly count been at a studio that closed and said piracy was the reason. i would like to hear what that company was like before the so called problem. copywirte will be completely different in a couple of years. its like prohibition its creating part of the problem itself.
so piracy is the last issue im worried about,if you make a good product it will generate income, directly or passively. as an artist i may be on the other side, and i do not reflect the ideas of my company.i don't pirate games but i say pirate all you want just to burn the god damned system down as quick as possible, the effects are nill compared to the bad bushiness models of games/studios/and there leaders.
[ame="
I'm just at the beginning of research and not defined on a subject yet. Our assignment is less information, more persuasive as to create an ad campaign to stop people from pirating games. I've heard different sides, one saying it's not a problem and one saying it's a huge problem, but you raise valid points. Nothing is set in stone and I'm still doing research to determine if this is the right path to go on at all. In your opinion, is there something I should be focusing on more than the piracy aspect?
TF2, WoW, Farmville are going to be the way games will be going. Online, social, multiplayer. Not because they're necssarily BETTER, but because they are more financially viable.
It might not be directly correlated to piracy, but lack of games sales hurts developers, and greatly disrupts our lives. Here's an extensive list to the studios that have had layoffs in the past year:
Id
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=93159&highlight=layoffs
Day One:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=91821&highlight=layoffs
Silicone Knights:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=90582&highlight=layoffs
CCP:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=90090&highlight=layoffs
Relic:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=88636&highlight=layoffs
Ignition:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=86143&highlight=layoffs
Kaos:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=85744&highlight=layoffs
Zipper:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=85199&highlight=layoffs
Black Rock:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=84523&highlight=layoffs
Crytek:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=84559&highlight=layoffs
Obsidian:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=84198&highlight=layoffs
SOE:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=83205&highlight=layoffs
NetDevil:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81060&highlight=layoffs
Behaviour:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81465&highlight=layoffs
Rare:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81243&highlight=layoffs
Disney Interactive:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80525&highlight=layoffs
Bizarre Creations:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=78425&highlight=layoffs
Torque 3D:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=78279&highlight=layoffs
Raven:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=77423&highlight=layoffs
Yet you'll post it in the thread to imply such...
Couldn't be the economy could it?
Most people who pirate games feel that pirating does very little to a studios bottom line, yet we see studios closing, and very frequent layoffs.
I'm simply saying they are stealing from studios that are going bankrupt, or are not meeting financial expectations, and have frequent rounds of layoffs. They are stealing from passionate developers who uprooted their families to chase their passions, worked shitloads of weekends and long nights, just to be given the short end of the stick due to their product they labored on not meeting financial expectations.
As noted from the link i posted earlier:
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy
@Squarepants
Gabe Newell (CEO of Valve) says that piracy is a service problem more than anything
http://www.gamefront.com/gabe-newell-piracy-is-a-non-issue/
It may be interesting viewing it from that side.
I know quite a few guys who are very very boastful of pirating absolutely everything.
Their defense is that they have no money to spend on games (these guys are salaries employees with cars, and girlfriends). Yet they own modded Xbox's, Wii's, hacked DS's and PSP's.
Are you telling me that guys with an Xbox, Wii, DS, and PSP, unlocked iPhone, with a PC setup for games and yet owns absolutely ZERO games. And despite playing hundreds of games, would never have bought a single one if the option to pirate was not available?
I admire Gabe, and what he did with Steam, but remember the Humble Indy Bundle Debacle?
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Saving-a-penny----pirating-the-Humble-Indie-Bundle
People would rather pirate it, over donating $0.01 to charity. Games made by small indy studios, with NO DRM. It's not just a service issue, it's a value issue. Some people just think games are free to make, made by charitable developers who should work for free distributed for free, for the good of mankind.
I'm not saying it's a 1:1 sales lost. I'm saying there are people playing games they haven't paid for, and they refuse to pay for them because they've never had to.
People actually believe that Video Games have NO MONETARY VALUE. And I find it odd that a lot of developers are encouraging that paradigm.
I don't want to meddle in the discussion itself, since everybody seems to be repeating age-old arguments in chronological order. Just thought I'd share.
didnt say it wasnt A problem just not the important one or the one to focus on disect etc. like mentioned before is is more of a side effect (or smokescreen use politically)
you would be way better served starting to understand how copywrite effects us locally internationally and compare. or more specific to the games industrty funding/distribution of projects.
"It might not be directly correlated to piracy, but lack of games sales hurts developers, and greatly disrupts our lives. Here's an extensive list to the studios that have had layoffs in the past year:"
JacqueChoi
did you play any of the game from these studios? i have worked at one of those and know peeps at a few more and i can say for a fact they went down to bad management/projects not piracy.
"Aren't layoffs more related to a lack of projects/funding or simply getting rid talent that isnt needed (in ID's case) rather than direct game sales?"
not lack of funding.Improper funding models etc. ID and Epic are more tech company making games to slang the engine. ID didn't die cause rage was pirated, they couldn't get his engine sold(unreal filled the market).these two are not the best example for this discussion so i digress there.
"I'm simply saying they are stealing from studios that are going bankrupt, or are not meeting financial expectations, and have frequent rounds of layoffs. They are stealing from passionate developers who uprooted their families to chase their passions, worked shitloads of weekends and long nights, just to be given the short end of the stick due to their product they labored on not meeting financial expectations."
this is a perfect example of how the piracy fallacy works, this is exactly the message they want you on and it fear mongered right into you (no insult or disrespect)/"those poor developers your steeling from" NO, its the shitty funding/distribution/marketing people running these companies into the ground and dooming people from day 1. (this is art not science) if a product sucks, fix it till its good or rethink what your doing as a company.
"I'm simply saying they are stealing from studios that are going bankrupt"
corelation does not equal causation.
Stop looking at this from the ground level your trying to present sides to pirating/not/
this is irrelevant and will not be changed with anything near the current model.zoom out man zooooom ouuuuutttt!
you mean the mindi debacle that got those games into way more hands than any of those projects ever could have alone, gave tons to charity and still made everyone involved some cash. yea i remember, its damn good for indie developers.
if your a decent artist you'll never have a problem finding work (i turn projects down weekly and have no one to give them to).that face book poster is assuming alot and does not understand the laws/models in place. again looking at this from morality,ground level will get us nowhere. i work at blizz, there are more pirated games of ours than all other out there, and we still turn a profit because the product is decent regardless of all the problems but again not the best example.
to sum up again if your aguing piracy your in the wrong mindset to undetstand/solve this problem
I think WoW and Battle.net were stellar examples of what games have to do to combat piracy, at the same time, I think it was just the first step.
As we all know prohibition does NOT work. We can not PREVENT piracy. We can only stop developing products that can be pirated.
Battle.net and MMO's, dedicated servers, XBLA are services that can NOT be pirated. Which is why I mentioned I can see a death of the self-contained video-game, unless it can be saved by an un-hackable Cloud Service.
The truth is, I know PLENTY of absolutely stellar artists (some mentioned in the previous 'inspiration thread') that are struggling in a big way to find work.
Keep in mind, not everyone can get their wives to quit their careers, shuffle their kids out of school mid-semester, arrange to sell off their mortgage, just so they can relocate to another country to find work that will likely be temporary.
irrelevant and anecdotal, no evident to suggest this, even children know there time is valuable but this is way of topic.
"I think WoW and Battle.net were stellar examples of what games have to do to combat piracy, at the same time."
lol..... here's the problem, what you think is not reality. sc2 was cracked/distributed/and had LAN support pirated in day one. you realize there are entire populated pirated wow servers in china not hosted by us.
"As we all know prohibition does NOT work. We can not PREVENT piracy. We can only stop developing products that can be pirated."
there ya go!!!!!, that's the correct train of thought to start on, but its not to stop developing, its to understand how to do it effectively and fairly.
and off topic but evidence of your thought process
"The truth is, I know PLENTY of absolutely stellar artists (some mentioned in the previous 'inspiration thread') that are struggling in a big way to find work.
Keep in mind, not everyone can get their wives to quit their careers, shuffle their kids out of school mid-semester, arrange to sell off their mortgage, just so they can relocate to another country to find work that will likely be temporary."
because they struggle to find it doesn't mean its not there.and this thing called internet allows you to work from anywhere(sry for the sarcasm).
"Keep in mind, not everyone can get their wives to quit their careers, shuffle their kids out of school mid-semester, arrange to sell off their mortgage, just so they can relocate to another country to find work that will likely be temporary."
this opens the window to me showing me your thought process. if this is what you think you need to do for employment, this tells me all i need to know about how you think(not attacking,observing). this was the industrial mind set. find work set up a family. we hit the tech age where you set up your fam anywhere you want and do the work on your own time.
As far as I know and can tell, there is no private sc2 servers. You really can't pirate the full starcraft 2 experience, so that's a success in their book.
Yeah by private servers I meant pirate severs, or anything like 3rd party leagues such as iccup for sc1 (which came way late in the games life).
i re-read the thread and it feels like i threw out an ad hominim attack in the end there kinda. just wanted to say thanks for digging into the discussion and i appreciate your viewpoint. ill think about this some more. and thanks through suffering though my lack of proper grammar and linked quotes.
ryswick,zacD,
your right, no ladder/points/match etc so not the full experience, but basically playable campaign or lan style.
to bring this all home for the OP. sticking to IP/copywrite/distribtion/funding/marketing etc is the way to go not this piracy angle. shit, you could case study all the companies JacqueChoi posted and write your article based on that collected data. i posit piracy will not be the reasons these studios were crushed, but would love to see what you find out.
title
"2011, Shitty games, Shitty company, or shittiy people, A tale of products,people, and pirates"
Id read that
I'm not saying piracy would not play a part in reduced sales and studio layoffs, but at the end of the day the one who makes the decision to ruin those people's lives is who's responsible, not the pirates, and unlike the pirates that person could do that whenever they want to.
I also disagree that piracy makes the product valueless, only the cost value out of the two things we all consider when purchasing anything: Inherent Value and Cost Value. If IV is higher than CV you buy it, if CV is higher than IV you don't. CV can be affected by your own values and external factors like whether or not you can afford it, and IV can be affected by how badly you want it or need it as well as many more outside factors. A bargain is when the CV is so much lower than expected that the IV goes up. CV is often considered a negative part of the equation, "How much will I have to fork over in order to get my what I care about..."
When a product is free (or pirated) the Cost Value is 0, but the Inherent Value is the same but now it can only stand for itself, there is no improvement through bargain and there is no drawback to receiving it. (however the bargain principle still occurs in comparison to freeware, people see MORE IV in a pirated product that may have had a CV than a freeware that doesn't.) This ideal is not a defense of piracy, piracy artificially forces CV out of the equation and nothing really deserves to, but it does continue to support and explain some of the concept that removing piracy will not create sales, since a pirate will now be forced to into using the IV vs. CV process.
Also I realise now that this could be easily be assaulted by others here in regards to the proposition of a products value, after all the concepts of value do vary from person to person.
I stopped reading to post before I saw the rest of this.
There's a HUGE misconception in this industry, that a LOT of other industries 'get'.
Employees are such a valuable commodity. Especially one that fits in with the culture, understands the programs, the tools, the pipeline, knows the team, and the goals.
http://www.therainmakergroupinc.com/employee-retention-articles/bid/80350/The-Real-Costs-of-Employee-Turnover
There are also are a ton of unquantifiable but VERY REAL issues with turnover. Bad employee morale is a big one.
Once layoffs hit a studio, some of the alleged 'best of the bunch' will feel that it's a rickety ship and start sending applications out, which could be substantial.
Overall the general cost of hiring a NEW person, getting them up to speed, ramping them up (especially if they need to be relocated) is a LOT more costly.
apparently not if you come from a high cost country and move your shop to Montreal with it's tax breaks...
You're almost right, but it's actually value and price. They are not the same thing. We value things that which we do not apply a price to. I value a sunny day and time with my family, but I wouldn't put a price on that. There's no doubt that every gamer, regardless whether they buy their games or download them, values their games. The thing is, they have no applicable price. They are abundant goods and as abundant goods, the market sets the price at zero.
Price is determined by the supply and the demand for that supply. Where the two meet is the price the market will bear. As supply increases, demand decreases and thus the price drops. If the good is abundant, thus the supply is effectively infinite, then the price continuously drops until it hits zero. You can value games, but that doesn't mean they have a price.
Here, let's hear it from an actual economist:
[ame="
So it's inarguable then that all redundancies (not applicable to an employees performance) during periods where their skills will not be required or put to good use are due to their games just simply not selling enough vis a vis all them pirates? It should be accepted fact and with figures then that this will almost always be the case. Of course new staff is costly and turnover is bad for morale, but it's become an accepted element in a lot of creative industries that the period between full scale productions is a time of lacking job security. How could I even present this opinion if it wasn't a possibility that upper management could find merit in cutting 'unnecessary spending' in a period of low output? Of course it's not the right thing, it's no good for morale or long-term costs; but they are still paying for say 20-30 people (or more) a full-time wage right now when you don't need them for another 4 months.
*edit vut not really* This applies best to the publisher model where funds are externalised, smaller studios would have a better connection with the worth of their employees and the status of their revenue.
I know I know, I'm not an actual economist I never made any guarantees that my concept was not my own. But I wasn't looking at it from an economic point of view, but a psychological point of view (especially the consumer.) The values I was extolling were either inherent and personal, or external - the value placed on it by others. You may value sunshine and it's costs are none, you enjoy it freely. If I monopolized the sun and charged you for access at $5 an hour you may conclude it is not worth that cost and shut yourself indoors to avoid paying. Of course the sun still has value to you but now I'm not receiving money from somebody who values the sun... etcetc
I just realized that we were practically agreeing with each other and we're having a battle of semantics.
While the theory is sound, this isn't really how it works in the real world. Just look at the humble indy bundle thing, when given the choice to legally buy the game for virtually nothing, the majority of consumers DECIDE to pay a reaonable amount for a product that is in infinite supply. If the "zero price" theory had merit in the real world, you would never see that.
Its any interesting theory, and he makes a very good point about alternative methods for revenue, but it isn't as cut as dry as "digital goods have no price", I mean really, thats simply nonsensical. It could be how you would like it to work, but its not how it actually works in reality.
Yes. It's the transfer from actual cost to no cost that change our approach to the decision-making process, as in now there is no decision to make: If you were ok with pirating something you could now just have it.
The indie bundle is interesting, by allowing the consumer to control the cost, they would use their own values and principles to dictate the amount of bargain, whereby increasing the the inherent value!