Author Topic: OK, SEGAbits, let's sit down and talk about piracy...  (Read 11529 times)

Offline crackdude

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Re: OK, SEGAbits, let's sit down and talk about piracy...
« Reply #15 on: January 06, 2012, 04:57:45 pm »
I get most of my games used though. I doubt that gives 'em much money anyway..


Truth is most games are too damn expensive right off the bat.


Minimum wage here is 485euro (=617 USD). A new game is usually 70 euro (=89 USD)


That's almost 15% of our month's work for a fucking game.
SEG4GES

Offline SOUP

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Re: OK, SEGAbits, let's sit down and talk about piracy...
« Reply #16 on: January 07, 2012, 09:39:35 am »
I get most of my games used though. I doubt that gives 'em much money anyway..


Truth is most games are too damn expensive right off the bat.


Minimum wage here is 485euro (=617 USD). A new game is usually 70 euro (=89 USD)


That's almost 15% of our month's work for a fucking game.

That's the main reason why I don't buy games until they drop down in price. PS3 and 360 games always start around the $60 mark here, but are pretty much guaranteed to go down to $19-$29 less than 8 months after release. It's just a matter of waiting a few months, and you're saving 50%-66% off the initial price.  This doesn't really apply to Nintendo, or a lot of DS games from Japanese publishers. Games from SEGA, Ubisoft, EA, Take2, Namco, and THQ usually drop down to $19, with games from Sony, Microsoft and Capcom dropping to at least $29.

Don't even get me started on anything realeased on Steam. 75% off sales are a pretty regular occurence there.

  ...Sony, Microsoft, and Capcom 30

Offline crackdude

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Re: OK, SEGAbits, let's sit down and talk about piracy...
« Reply #17 on: January 07, 2012, 01:47:47 pm »
Within one year, games here drop down to the equivalent of 40 - 65 USDollars usually. That the launch price in the States.

Whenever I want to buy a game at launch I buy from some UK site. With UK prices plus shipping I still manage to save around 20 euros.

It's crazy. And the reason the PS1 and PS2 ruled here (as opposed to Sega's dominance in the 90's) was piracy alone. It is also the reason the Xbox 360 grew in Portugal as well.
SEG4GES

Offline MadeManG74

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Re: OK, SEGAbits, let's sit down and talk about piracy...
« Reply #18 on: January 07, 2012, 04:16:47 pm »
Some interesting food for thought on piracy:

The Witcher 2, a very hardcore centric title which was almost universally praised for being an outstanding PC exclusive, was launched without any DRM at all. This is what most people argue for when they talk about piracy, claiming that 'DRM punishes the consumer more than the pirate'. It was also sold for a universal price of $40 US, no matter what country you were in you paid that much when you downloaded it from GOG.com (great site btw).

In the time that the game sold 1 Million copies, it was estimated to have been illegally downloaded 4.5 million times at a conservative estimate. This is apparantly 'not bad'.

Quote
Polish developer CD Projekt claims that its Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings has been pirated more times since release than you might have expected. In a recent interview with PC Gamer, CEO Marcin Iwinski does some quick back-of-the-hand calculations according to what he saw on illegal downloading sites, and comes up with 4.5 million copies of the game obtained illegally. He also says, however, that "as of today we have sold over one million legal copies, so having only 4.5-5 illegal copies for each legal one would be not a bad ratio."

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/11/30/4-5-million-pirated-copies-of-witcher-2-out-there-according-to/


CD Projekt still doesn't believe in DRM, which I'm thankful for. I think DRM really does hurt the honest consumer more than the pirate (part of the reason I like GOG so much is that their games are 100% DRM free), and I hope that other companies follow suit.

Offline Aki-at

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Re: OK, SEGAbits, let's sit down and talk about piracy...
« Reply #19 on: January 07, 2012, 09:01:10 pm »
I had no idea.. I do love the man. Arsenal's my favorite english side. Though 2005 is long gone and I've been a little disappointed lately..

I think that will last for sometime longer, Manchester City and Chelsea can just outspend everyone. But as long as we have guts too win its all I can ask for (Despite being technically worse, our team seems to have stronger resolve now since Wenger bought those five players on the transfer deadline day)

what.

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.



Do not worry, my hand gave the drink a very deserving THUMBS DOWN

(Just look at it! It's like some evil demon chef made that to poison me!)

I'm not sure I understand your question.

I was just asking how does anime fans who spoil themselves differ from game fans who spoil themselves (By both being pirates)

Music gets money by buying albums/songs.
Games get money buy buying.. well.. games.
TV shows get money by showing on the telly, which they will either I download or not.

Maybe I'm dead wrong lol but this has been my way of thinking for a long time now.

Kind of. If a show is popular enough, they might expand it into more seasons and all that. TV series do not just get their money from one run on telly, if a show proves to be a ratings hit, then they might extend it to more than one season. Notable examples of anime that I can think off my head are; Sonic X and Big O were big overseas and that is why a second series was commissioned.

Basically whilst they have paid for one season, I am sure the producers of the show usually hope it runs for more than one season, if everyone pirated it, it would not.

Wow, I started a topic about piracy and it sorta envolved into an indepth theological discussion on personal value that each and every one of us and it goes to show that sentimental value is something that differs between individuals.

Do not forget the semi-Arsene Wenger background information for Crackdude in there either!

Well I just wanted to understand your point better, but I think Crackdude explained it well enough for me.

Although I imagine we are all in the same book when it comes to pirating, being bad. However, how companies have gone about trying to rectify the problem has been idiotic.

Offline CrazyT

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Re: OK, SEGAbits, let's sit down and talk about piracy...
« Reply #20 on: January 07, 2012, 09:02:45 pm »
Gonna be totally honest here. Piracy has always taken place in our house ever since the dreamcast. I remember one day when my brother had ordered like 10 games (this was maybe a year after the dreamcast's launch when we allready had bought some games). Being young, it speaks for itself that I was simply enjoying the games and obviously thought it was cool I could experience all these games.

This was when cd-burners were still not so popular, same for downloading large files with the slow internet from back then. I think it took a year or 2 before we started burning our own downloaded games. We weren't the wealthiest family. Chances were small our parents would buy us games, and my brother occasionally had to suffer his wallet to get that one game he was dreaming about. Nonetheless, we still bought the games that were totally worth owning officially like PSO and shenmue 1 and 2.

The whole concept of being able to finally experience so many games for free was just totally exciting for us. Every new platform we would always try to find a way to get ourselves some free games. I remember the gamecube getting modded after a year, The Wii ended up getting modded too, the xbox360 and even the ps3, which is pretty rare to manage. We became quite the pirates looking back at it(argh matey), and honestly being able to mod a console in itself actually felt pretty satisfying. My oldest brother became very good at it and started to look more like a hobby for him. He liked the technical side of the modding so he enjoyed doing it just for the sake of it. He managed to mod the mega drive with a 50/60hz switch and make profit selling it. He managed to do the same with the saturn and make it read burn copies too(which is great when some games are mad expensive).

Getting the consoles was allready a big investment, but getting the games was pretty hard for us. I think AKI T allready pointed it out well. If we never knew about pirating, I don't think that would have made us "buy" more games, instead we would have just simply not have been able to play so many games. This became especially clear since late. We all have jobs now and earn some good money. We all buy our games regularly.

This is just my story however. I know plenty of people that pirate their games still even with loads of cash in their wallet, and I believe that community isn't as small as people think. Of course it requires some wisdom and skill to mod a console, but some people actually end up making it a service and make money out of modding for others. It is even legal for a shop to mod here in the Netherlands. And yes I think games suffer for it. PC being the most vulnerable of all the platforms has suffered alot from it. Getting less exclusive games and ports after months. Piracy is hard to go against because it's something that happens in private environments. It needs to be tackled differently.

I think the best platform that has proven itself against piracy is steam. Steam does a REALLY REALLY excellent job in tackling piracy. It's not just being able to download your game and play it, but next to that it adds an excellent services. Updates every now and then, a great messenger that can be brought up while playing, good prices and just the overall community experience with achievements etcetera. Playing games is fun, but everybody knows that it's even more fun when you can legitimately share your experiences with others.

This is where I see the future honestly. Official product's gotta offer more than the pirated ones to such a great degreem that it becomes worth money.

So yes, I have been guilty :(
« Last Edit: January 10, 2012, 02:00:20 am by CrazyTails »

Offline max_cady

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Re: OK, SEGAbits, let's sit down and talk about piracy...
« Reply #21 on: March 02, 2012, 07:25:19 pm »
OK, guys I want to sort of' bring back the topic and throw it in a slightly different direction.

Being away from my Xbox 360 for a while (loaned it to a friend who seriously wanted to play Red Dead Redemption) made me go back and try out a few games on the PC I've been missing out.

What does this have to do with piracy? Well, a lot. PC games have taken a massive dive when the 'net exploded and it's been only through digital download that there has been some stability... However, I feel that even though it's great to see PC Gaming get a second wind, it is nevertheless frustrating that the thing that helped it, paradoxically is also making me not want to play games on my PC.

F***ing DRM!

I've been playin' a couple of 'em over the past weeks and I had to stop. Sonic CD, for example, I bought it at Gamersgate.com and I had to install the STEAM app because it's the only way to play the game. Games for Windows is another app, a XBL-like authentication system that you use, even though you could've just typed in the CD-Key from the game.

It's not even remotely enjoyable to play a game when your hard drive is full of unnecessary clutter...

Plus, DRM security is so easy to compromise, why bother at all?

Offline George

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Re: OK, SEGAbits, let's sit down and talk about piracy...
« Reply #22 on: March 06, 2012, 03:40:10 am »
I have about 500gb of downloaded data. Mostly because I have the space. I usually delete films. I download based on a few factors.

Want. If I like the actors/directors etc.

Price. What its priced

Availability What format? Released in America?

I don't go into a store and buy a season of a show for 50 dollars. EVER. Sorry, that is way too much, doesn't matter the run time. I usually buy flicks when they are reasonably priced. I probably buy more movies than most people that I know.

Not only that, studies show that pirates go most to movies and buy media. So, er, fuck 'em.

Offline MadeManG74

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Re: OK, SEGAbits, let's sit down and talk about piracy...
« Reply #23 on: March 08, 2012, 02:08:56 am »
I agree with Max on DRM, it hurts the consumer more than the pirate in my opinion. I used to hate steam with a passion, but now I don't mind it too much, but it's still annoying to have to jump through hoops just to play a game you honestly bought.

I remember it taking about 5 hours to set up Empire Total War thanks to steam related bullshit forcing updates and veryfying things and not letting me install it anywhere but in Steam's directory etc.

That's why I like GOG.com, completely DRM free PC gaming.

Offline Barry the Nomad

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Re: OK, SEGAbits, let's sit down and talk about piracy...
« Reply #24 on: March 08, 2012, 08:04:37 am »
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzzqFFKwOik[/youtube]

DRM is pretty shitty. I have some old iTunes music with DRM and there is a 5 machine limit. My old computer = 1, my new computer = 2, last job computer = 3, my iPod = 4, my old laptop = 5, my new laptop = exceeds limit!

Offline max_cady

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Re: OK, SEGAbits, let's sit down and talk about piracy...
« Reply #25 on: March 10, 2012, 04:04:03 pm »
I had that problem too with DRM from downloadable MP3 sites. I got so frustrated that it's actually so much better for me to order the music CD online and then rip the music tracks so I can listen to 'em on my laptop or MP3 player hassle-free.

PC games in general, ever since the DRM situation arose and digital distribution is all but commonplace, it has thrived but the loss of physical media does bring some unconfortable side-effects along with it.

Let's just say that I just don't want a certain game anymore, you know what I mean? It's cool that you can rdownload it again whenever you want, but if you're not going to play it, it shouldn't be too troublesome to sell it to someone else...

Offline George

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Re: OK, SEGAbits, let's sit down and talk about piracy...
« Reply #26 on: March 10, 2012, 05:00:32 pm »
This might sound like I'm a hipster, but give me a second.

Most of the bands that I like release records. Usually in limited editions, so I just go and buy one of those. They are limited pressing, they have big pictures and look cool on shelves. So I buy that, then I (if it doesn't come with a MP3 digital code) pirate the album for digital listening.