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Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 29 2013, 02:21 PM

http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/

A developer, just a start-up really, decided to take a risk .... and minutes after launching their first game, also put up a fully cracked version up as a torrent.

The trick is, the cracked version was slightly different: it smacked the player hard with, yes, softwarepiracy. Everyone who played the cracked version eventually went bankrupt; it was impossible to win.

More importantly, the "report anonymous usage data" feature of the game? Also reported which version of the software was running - legit, or cracked. After one day?

Only 6.4% of users - 214 of them - were playing legal, paid-for versions. The other 93.6% of users - all 3,104 of them - were playing the pirated version. And that, ladies and gentlemen, rather neatly puts whole buckets-full of nails into the coffin, for claims that piracy is "a minority" of game copies.

Oh, by the by? It's only an EIGHT DOLLAR game. For cryin' out loud, how stingy can you be, if you won't open your wallet for eight measley bucks? I've been homeless; I've spent months reliant on a soup kitchen for every bite of food to pass my lips; Ive slept under bridges. But never, not once, have I ever had even the most rudimentary computer, and felt that $8 was more than I could afford for a game that interested me. Not even when that computer was a mere Commodore 64, in the mid-1980s - and my weekly allowance was all of $3.

...

Okay, anyway, putting the soapbox aside. Really I just wanted to draw some more attention to that article, in a place I know is frequented by avid video gamers. I'm 90% sure there's few (if any) people here who don't already agree, but ... I'm sharing it anyway. so there!

Got a couple more places to share it at, too, so - off I go.

Posted by: DamHawke Apr 29 2013, 02:41 PM

The link seems to be dead...?

Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 29 2013, 02:47 PM

Not dead, just very slow to load. I imagine they're getting a LOT of traffic today.

You may have to try a few times to get through, or just wait a day or two.

Posted by: DamHawke Apr 29 2013, 02:54 PM

Just took a look in after refreshing a bunch.

Simulators aren't my kind of game but awesome way to dish out the punishing irony

Though any games priced in USD can appear quite expensive to people living in countries that have lower currency rates. Where I am, the average pirate DVD (yes, those bootlegs still exist) would cost maybe 2 USD at very most? depending on the amount of discs anyway. Very bad for developers still, especially fledgeling ones.

But I find waiting for Steam sales to be just as rewarding if you want something real bad I don't think I've bought a bootleg since I got on the platform.

Posted by: Bigity Apr 29 2013, 03:42 PM

This is just one data point, to be sure, but yea. Software piracy is lame.

OTOH, not having a demo is lame when you drop 60 bucks on something and it's a load of garbage.

For these reasons, I haven't bought a brand new game outside of WoW expansions and Borderlands 2 in years. I just wait and see what the new stuff is like and buy it later.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Apr 29 2013, 04:20 PM

So, in other words, the developers themselves put the cracked version up? I'm sorry, that skews your data all to hell, because that makes it legitimate to download the copy.

If someone steals a car and throws you the keys on their way out of town, you've recieved stolen goods. However, if the legitimate owner throws you the keys, you have not. Possession of the car, if not ownership, has come lawfully to you. By putting out a version on the torrent sites, they said to all and sundry "Wanna try our game? Here you go, the full thing, for free."

Only, worse, they didn't actually do that. They unleashed a gimped copy, a sabotaged copy, if you will. The analogy breaks down, now, but the fact remains that those who downloaded that torrent version of the game have done nothing wrong, because the legitimate owner made it available to them.

There is flawed methodology behind this experiment, the data gathered is invalid.


[e]Also, even the flawed data doesn't address the main issue - the presumption, and the false conclusion, that every single download is a full retail copy's worth of value being "stolen" from the developers. It is not. That's a terribly flawed presumption, and is one of the main problems I have with these statements.

Posted by: CanRay Apr 29 2013, 05:24 PM

So they threw you the keys to a car that has a tenth of a tank of fuel and epoxied the gas cap shut.

Posted by: Critias Apr 29 2013, 05:44 PM

Only if folks knew it was the developers that put the copy up.

Rather than throw someone their car keys -- to continue your analogy -- they left some car keys lying on the sidewalk. To people that walk by and see the keys, see a car next to them, and then decide to either (a) get in the car and drive off, or (b) not...does it matter who left the keys there? Does it matter if they fell out of some nice lady's purse while she was getting out of her car, if she put them there purposefully, or if someone else snatched her purse and then left the keys lying there when they ran off?

To someone who doesn't know which of the above happened, someone who knows only "here is a free copy of a thing that I could buy, and that I will, instead, not buy," it doesn't matter who left that copy lying around. All that matters is that it was there, and they took it.

ETA: To clarify, I'm only taking issue with that particular line of argument. I've got mixed feelings on piracy to begin with (for somewhat obvious reasons, perhaps), but I don't subscribe entirely to a knee-jerk "all pirates are terrible monsters" thing, either. I understand some folks download something to check it out then buy it, I know some folks download something to get instant gratification while waiting on a hardcopy, etc. What's more, I have no issue (personally) with folks that download out of print stuff; if no one is going to make money off of it any more, why NOT grab a copy to complete a collection, or whatever? But by and large I'm not trying to comment on piracy as a whole in the above post, only the assertion that the creators putting up a "cracked" copy is somehow terrible and monstrous of them, or makes those downloads legitimate.

Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 29 2013, 05:54 PM

And none of those people could ever be SUED in cout, you're right.

However, the people downloading the cracked torrent did not know it had been seeded by the developer. Their INTENT was to steal the game.

And the number of people who had that intent, versus the number of people who intended to acquire their copy by normally-legal channels, is the point of the article.

A point you have clearly missed entirely.


Incorrect.

They have done nothing unlawful.

But when they elected to download that torrent, they THOUGHT they were stealing. They intended to steal.



Bullshit.

Noone aside from the developer and the very few friends he asked for help, know that the initial seed was not being offered by an actual pirate.

Every single person who downloaded that torrent, and especially every one who re-seeded it, thought they were stealing the game, and/or facilitating it's theft by others. (And then had the gall to complain about the in-game piracy, on the official forums!!)

The data is 100% legitimate and valid, because the test was 100% blind - none of the "respondants" had the slightest clue they had been suckered.


There's no presumption. There is only the data gathered, and presented.

After one day, the number of users who had actually purchased the game amounted to six point four percent of those whose game client was able to "phone home".

That's not presumption. That's fact. It's data.

...

To be honest, I'm quite convinced you didn't really even read the article, or look at the data presented. Did you?






I'll grant you - I am much more likely to buy something, if I can try out a brief demo first.

Or if I "know" the developer, and like their stuff in general (Valve, Spiderweb Software).

Or if I'm familiar with the franchise, the game in question is a sequel, and the last installment didn't suck (e.g. Borderlands 2, Far Cry 3, Fallout: New Vegas).

Or if I've spent a fair amount of time reading/watching reviews, so i have a reasonable idea where my expectations should be set (Dead Island: Riptide; Legend of Grimrock; Metro 2033).

But I've also pre-ordered things "sight unseen", because trailers get me sufficiently interested that I'm willing to risk the money (Skyrim, Tomb Raider 2013, Deus Ex HR, Dishonored, Dead Island, Fallout 3)) Sure, sometimes I lose out. But, "you pays your money and you takes your chances". And most of the time, I've come out on top, IMO.

Posted by: X-Kalibur Apr 29 2013, 06:43 PM

You definitely lost out on Dead Island.

I will say there is one part where the test falls short - the seeded version being impossible to win. How many of those people would have purchased the game later had the seed been the real game, rather than a gimmick?

Posted by: Starmage21 Apr 29 2013, 06:49 PM

I feel like this argument, and the idea that the article attempts to imply is that for every pirated copy of the game, it amounts to a lost sale. That is simply not the case. I'm at work, and I wish I had something for you to back up the claim I'm about to make, but posting is quicker than true honest research, so lets just call this an anecdote where I at least attempt to be honest:

People will take things for free that they otherwise would not buy, no matter for how much.

That means an easily pirated game will be downloaded many times by people who would play the game for free, but never miss it if they had no option to pay for it. That means that the company whose game was pirated has not lost a sale, and any figures they attempt to publish that are based on moneys from lost sales are a blatant lie.

It is also not true that the company may not have lost money from the piracy, because like the forum posts some will actually try to get the company to support their pirated product which means lost productivity. There are other situations that count here too such as online games which pirated games cause undue stress on servers and such.

IF I recall correctly, the only time a pirated copy of a game amounts to a lost sale is from a small percentage who say the equivalent of "I can afford this game, I would buy it, but fuck you not if I can get it for free". Any such pirated copy of the game that amounts to "I otherwise would not have this game if I couldn't have gotten it for free" means that a sale has NOT been lost, the company has lost no money except for the edge cases above, and could not honestly claim otherwise.

Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 29 2013, 06:56 PM

No, I didn't. Sure, it had it's flaws. But, I still enjoyed playing through it.

That's the miracle of differing tastes.

...

As for truly losing out? I have a whole category in Steam, labelled "Mistakes" - games I regretted buying, some of them more for the TIME I'd wasted on them, than the money. Among them:

• Afterfall Insanity Deluxe Edition
• All zombies Must Die
• Arx Fatalis
• The Bard's Tale
• Chrome
• Dead Horde
• Death Rally
• DEFCON
• Empire: Total War
• Freedom Force
• Hacker Evolution
• Krater
• Postal 3
• Red Orchestra 2: Heroes ofStalingrad
• Space Rangers
• Supreme Commander 2

I know people who think some of those are quite good - which is also the miracle of diverse opinions and tastes.

Then, there's Sword of the Stars II ... a putrescent pile of utter shite that wasn't even worthy of being called "early beta client" four full months after it launched. A game I regret buying, even though it's predecessor was (and is) reasonably good.

So, yes - I win some, and I lose some. But what I call a loss, and what you call a loss, aren't necessarily one and the same thing.


The test would have worked the same, for that one day, whether it was crippled or not.

Posted by: Tanegar Apr 29 2013, 07:08 PM

You didn't like Freedom Force? Really? *boggles*

Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 29 2013, 07:11 PM

Really. It just struck a very flat note with me. *shrug*

Posted by: Ryu Apr 29 2013, 08:57 PM

I´m willing to buy games on the notion that I might like them if they come without mandatory online registration or (much worse) online status. I have bought both kinds regardless, but the general principle holds. I´ve bought all non-steam Paradox games I encountered, including the strategy-porn game Pride of Nations.

Posted by: X-Kalibur Apr 29 2013, 09:18 PM

Actually, I'd agree with you on most of those titles. Although I enjoyed Bard's Tale myself. Both the original and the newer one, although I readily admit it was mostly for the snark from Cary Elwes.

My roommate and I purchased Dead Island hoping for something far more than it was. One of the characters being essentially unplayable made it especially rough on us (the guy who throws his weapons, I can't count how many times we lost items due to that damn ability). But to be fair - we played through it once and enjoyed it okay. All in all in was still a better deal than a night at the pub.

Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 29 2013, 09:28 PM

I completely disagree. It's like going to see a movie at the theater. You don't get to sit in the theater and watch the movie, unless you pay for a ticket - or cheat the system by sneaking in. You don't get to watch a movie, and not pay for it, just ebcause you didn't like it. Or, at a restaurant - you don't get to skate on the bill, just because you didn't happen to like the food.

...

Some people get this idea in their head, that because a computer game is "only 0's and 1s", it doesn't have any inherent or innate value. And that's absolutely wrong - because the value is in the service; the man-hours of programming, testing, and creating that were required to make the game in the first place.

And I do not at all agree with that point of view. Indeed, I find it abhorrent.

Look around you, on this very forum. Many of the folks here are freelance writers for Shadowrun. And yes, I'm sure that there are pirated PDFs of their work out there on the Internet.

The same logic that applies to video games, applies to those PDFs. If you want, say, a copy of Safe Houses ... the requirement is that you're supposed to buy it. And from every copy sold, one of our own - CanRay - gets a wee tiny bit of money in royalties. Every copy pirated, however, doesn't generate that small cashflow for CanRay.

...

Then there is the assertion that "many pirated copies become purchases, because people pay for the game once they know they like it".

BULLSHIT.

That's not how human nature works. Humans, by and large, are lazy creatures. They don't put out effort they don't NEED to. And once Joe Typical has a copy of Game X that works .... he has no incentive to get a second copy of the same game. Seriously, why the hell would he BOTHER? It'd cost him money, and time, for something he already has. So unless Joe is especially principled (and thus, notso Typical anymore) ... he's not going to get a paid-for copy of the game.

Pirated copies are not "demo copies". For the majority of people who get them, they are the first last and ONLY copy they will ever get .. even if they think the game is the most awesome invention since the discovery of fire.

As for people who "wouldn't have bought anyway" .... well, they don't fucking deserve to play it, if they don't buy it. Period. No exceptions.

If you only buy games that offer demos, and Game X doesn't offer a demo? You don't get to play Game X for free. No, not even "just to try it out".

You don't get to go into a restaurant, try a bite or two, say "yuck", and get out of paying just because you didn't like it.

You don't get to go to the theater, watch five minutes, say "yuck" and get out of paying just because you didn't like it.

Why should games be any different?

Posted by: Starmage21 Apr 29 2013, 09:50 PM

That is a bit askew from the point I was trying to make, which was: "you cant count it as a lost sale, if the sale was never going to be made to begin with.", taking more issue with how the problem of piracy is presented, rather than the problem of piracy itself. It is only fair to report an estimation of of what actual lost sales would be, rather than assuming that every pirated copy is a lost sale and then adding incidental costs associated with the act of piracy and then saying "look everyone, this is how much money we couldve made!"

Posted by: Critias Apr 29 2013, 10:05 PM

One tiny correction there, Pax: we don't get royalties. I am on Neat, but (even with other fiction in the pipeline) that seems to be a one-time affair. Freelancers are, by and large, paid by the word (for some word) or flat rate (for other projects) -- no royalties. We write the stuff because we want to support the game, and we think folks will enjoy what we write. Pirated copies take money from Shadowrun as a setting, but not directly from us. When we pimp out our stuff and try to get folks to buy it, it's (a) because we hope folks will like it and have fun with it, but (b) because sales are tracked (to an extent) in-house, and they maybe bolster our chances of follow-up projects and that sort of thing. But it's largely theoretical, not strictly financial.

It sucks that the first two things I see when I google "Shadowrun Way of the Adept" is the pdf for free over from sup/tg and 4shared.com (and that free downloads are four of the first ten hits, in fact), yes. But it doesn't suck because it's directly taking money out of my pocket, only because someone feels like my work isn't worth paying money for, and that by doing so they hurt my odds of having direct creative control of future products, etc, etc.

Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 29 2013, 10:08 PM

And I still disagree.

The way it works, legally and morally: you have to buy the game to play it. ERGO, everyone who plays the game, bought it. So if you have 3,418 people playing the game, you b]should[/b] get the money for 3,418 sales.

Every one of those players who DIDN'T buy the game .... is a lost sale.

Not lost in the sense of, "in a perfect world with no piracy we would have sold that many units".

No; rather, "with that many copies in use, we should have $27,344 in gross receipts. However, only 214 copies were paid for, and we have only $1,712 in gross receipts. Where's the other $25,622 ...? Lost, that's where."



Except that, since noone has a crystal ball able to perfectly show you every "what if" scenario imaginable ... the only way to estimate what you could, even should have sold? Is to look at how many copies of your game are actually being played. Yes, including the pirated copies.

Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 29 2013, 10:12 PM

No? Huh, learn something every day.

I've known some of the folks working on Shadowrun, to one degree or another, pretty much from 1E days - Lou Prosperi was a member of the same university gaming club, for example. For another, I was in a group that faced off against a CyberZombie before they were officially published, too (I'm sure the GM, one of the authors, took great joy in my obvious panic after unloading a ripple salvo of five 12.7cm anti-vehicle rockets into it at effective point-blank range only slowed it down, hahaha!).

So anyway, I have a bit of a "defend the writers" impulse for Shadowrun - because I've known a couple of you folks on a fist-name basis, face to face.

Posted by: Tanegar Apr 29 2013, 10:27 PM

You can disagree all you like, it doesn't make you correct. There is no way to estimate what you could or should have sold, because there's no (reliable) way to get the data on what percentage of pirates would or would not have paid for the game if they couldn't pirate it. For the sake of argument, we'll call it a 50/50 split. 1602 pirates would have paid for the game, and 1602 would not. You cannot count the latter as lost sales, because you were never going to get money from them in the first place.

Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 29 2013, 10:43 PM

i pirate some games on principle, because the pirated copy is simply better in terms of usability and much less intrusive in terms of DRM stuff.
and i have bought games i have no intent of playing simply because the makers actually came out and said:"fuck that noise, no DRM with us!"

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Apr 29 2013, 10:47 PM

Page not available. ;;

Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 30 2013, 01:05 AM

The same could be said to be true about a car thief. Doesn't make what they do any less wrong.

Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 30 2013, 01:08 AM

Two wrongs do not make a right.

You shouldn't pirate games. At all. Period.

If you disagree with one or more of the conditions of legal acquisition, then you should go without.

Posted by: Starmage21 Apr 30 2013, 01:30 AM

Thievery and Piracy do not relate except that people generally feel they are amoral and illegal. Stealing the car, and copying the car and driving the copy around instead are not the same thing.

Posted by: dertechie Apr 30 2013, 01:32 AM

The concept that a pirated game is a lost sale, every single time, always rubs me the wrong way because it completely ignores the Law of Demand. Half an economics minor is more than enough to look at that and call bulldrek numbers bulldrek numbers.

Nice, someone else knows Jeff Vogel's stuff (and he's on Steam now!). I wonder if Exile II still runs on Snow Leopard. . . I doubt it, but I know Geneforge does!

Edit: Seriously? The Steam versions of Geneforge are only the Windows ones? I can't play my Geneforge on my Mac? WTF Steam? Jeff bloody well coded and tested those things on a Mac.

Posted by: CanRay Apr 30 2013, 01:53 AM

For those that want to try the demo, the website seems to be working now. It seems to be an interesting game.

I'll have to get it if it goes on Steam. (I'd rather trust them with my info.).

Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 30 2013, 02:24 AM

You make the classic mistake.

If you pirate a game, you're not taking the game away from the rightful owner of that copyright. You've stolen the right to control when, how, and by who a copy is made.

Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 30 2013, 02:26 AM

During my "poor" days, I played and replayed the very generously expansive "demo" portionof the Avernum and Geneforge shareware versions.

Now that I'm not poor, I've picked up the Geneforge collection on Steam, along with Avadon (directly from Spiderweb) and the most recent reboot of the Avernum series (via Steam, again). As new Avernums come out, I'll buy each one in turn. I've also been eyeing some of the other stuff, like the Nethergate one.


.... and not a lot of Mac users are on Steam, yet. No worries, I'm sure if Jeff wants the Mac versions on Steam, they'll be there. Possibly bundled free with the Windows versions.

Posted by: CanRay Apr 30 2013, 02:27 AM

I thought that was fighting a land war in Asia? Or betting against a Sicilian when death is on the line?

Posted by: Critias Apr 30 2013, 03:10 AM

No, they're not the same thing. But either way, the end result is that you've got a car and the car manufacturer hasn't gotten a dime from you. That's a problem for them, isn't it?


I don't think people say that it's a lost sale every single time (or at least not very often, in my experience), but to insist it's never a lost sale is equally as irritating a concept.

Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 30 2013, 03:30 AM

Those are on the list too.

Posted by: toturi Apr 30 2013, 04:59 AM

I think that what the developers of this game did was skew it such that anyone who downloaded the cracked version would have a negative impression of it and would therefore not buy it legally, so as to show that a pirated game is a lost sale.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Apr 30 2013, 04:59 AM

Not really. Actually, it's never a problem for the car manufacturer, because they will have been paid the first time for the stolen car; the manufacturer doesn't give a toss. It's the dealership or the end owner who's fucked. In the second case, nobody's actually fucked.



The number of people who would have bought a game, but abstain from paying the money for it because they can unlawfully acquire it for free, is miniscule compared to the number of people who would not have paid money for a game, but will play it if they can unlawfully acquire it for free. The people who (a) will have the finances to pay for the game and (b) the inclination to buy the game but © sufficiently lack scruples as to abstain from paying if they can get it for free is a very small cross-section on the Venn diagram.

Most people who play the game are going to be missing at least one of them. There will be those who have the finances and will play it, but would not buy it; either they do not want the game sufficiently to spend the money on it, or they are angry with the company which produces the game and do not wish to support them, but still wish to pay the game; they're not a lost sale, as they wouldn't have bought it in the first place. There will be those who do not have the finances to buy the game, but who would if they could, and will pirate it if they can. They're not a lost sale; they couldn't have bought it in the first place (and, indeed, if their financial situation improves later, they may decide to pay for it.) There will be those who have the finances to pay for the game and the inclination to do so, but do not lack the scruples to pay for it if they can get it for free; they're not a lost sale, because they're a made sale.

Posted by: Blade Apr 30 2013, 09:21 AM

I used to pirate games back when I was young and didn't have the money to buy them. If I hadn't pirated them, I would not have bought them. I wouldn't have worked to get money to buy them. I would have just played more freeware games/mods and demos.
Now that I have money I buy games. I buy them when they're on sale for less than 10€. It means I have to wait between one and five years to play a game (depending on how popular it is) but then I get to play it fully patched and modded and I don't have to upgrade my computer with the most expensive hardware to play them with all settings to the max. I've bought so many games I don't have time to play them all, and I now only buy them when they're less than 5€.

Back to the current case: let's say that in a parallel universe they had an unbreakable DRM and hadn't put the torrent online. What would be the difference on the sales? Unless we have the answer to that question, we can't say how much piracy harms the sells.

Posted by: bannockburn Apr 30 2013, 10:11 AM

There's clearly a lot of passion going into your arguments, Pax. You're even correct about the moral implications (not so much on the legal, those are different depending on the country you live in).
But you're not considering every aspect of this can of worms.

1.) It has been said before, there is no way to say which percentage of the pirated copy are an actual lost sale, since you can't say who of those people had the intent of testing it before buying it. This goes out of the window, of course, if the publisher actually provided a demo. I'm also not saying that it's okay, to test a game this way, but some of these thefts may actually result in sales.

1a) There are numbers and studies out there that show, that giving out a product for free actually raises the same product's sales. Very prominent and pertinent to this discussion are the humble bundles and an RPG called Eclipse Phase.

2.) Of course you cannot steal data. There is no physical entity changing owners. Piracy is not a shadowrun, where the hacker deletes all other copies. Of course that doesn't make it right to simply copy said data and give the people who made it the finger. Pirating a game despite having the intention of playing it and doing so if you'd have no option of pirating it would constitute an actual loss of a sale. That's bad. But there are two other things to consider before speaking of a real loss. People download it and wouldn't have bought it anyways? Not a loss. Not morally right, surely, but not a loss for the company, because they wouldn't have bought it either way. That's still bad, but less bad. But then there are the guys who download it, like it and buy it. That one is not a loss. It's a gain for the company and it's good. Some studies say that the first category and the last balance each other out in most cases.

3.) And this one is really simple: If there's DRM which makes it more difficult for an honest buyer to play the game, or in a similar vein, a version with the same price but crippled content depending on the region where the buyer lives, the pirates win. I will personally not buy any such game and tell my friends not to do so either, because that's the point where the company (though, to be fair, usually the publisher, not the studio) screws a legitimate customer. This also constitutes a loss of sale, even without an act of active piracy on anyone's part.
There's grades of this, of course.
e.G., I've bought New Vegas and Bioshock 1 on Steam. I also pirated both of them, because I paid the same money as the American version would have cost and got hitched with a German only New Vegas and a violence reduced Bioshock.
I will never again buy an EA or Ubisoft published game, because of Origin and uPlay requirements, even when you bought those games on Steam. I made this mistake with the first Assassin's Creed and will not make it again. Until those publishers learn to not treat their actual customers as thieves, they will never again see my money.

The topic isn't as cut and dried as people on either side of the fence want to make everyone believe, IMO.

Posted by: Thanee Apr 30 2013, 11:42 AM

Yeah, even though some people actually use them that way. But most surely do not.

Also, there are countries where software piracy for personal use is actually legal.

That does not make it morally right, of course.

Bye
Thanee

Posted by: Thanee Apr 30 2013, 11:44 AM

And, please, keep the tone civil. No need to throw BS around. Opinions are not automatically invalid, just because they are in disagreement.

Bye
Thanee

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Apr 30 2013, 12:11 PM

I'm pretty sure that piracy is legal out here in the Federated States of Micronesia.

Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 30 2013, 01:26 PM

Technically, it's legal in Germany too . .

Posted by: nezumi Apr 30 2013, 01:55 PM

The study is flawed. Who here has ever heard of Greenheart Games before yesterday? I sure haven't. Who here has heard of PirateBay? If I'm looking for a new game to try out, how likely am I to go to a known website like Steam or PirateBay, search for games, and try out what looks interesting? How likely am I to guess game company names until I find one I like? (Greenheart Games does not come up in the first twenty hits on Google for 'new games', 'download games', etc. It is also not available on Steam.)

I suspect a significant number of these players downloaded a game on a lark from PirateBay and played it. These are people who would NOT have purchased the game if it weren't available on PirateBay, because they had no idea it existed. This implies a failure of marketing. A fair test would be to take a known, well-advertised game and compare numbers, or at minimum, stock the game on both the largest file-sharing site AND the largest game-selling site at the same time.

HOWEVER, I do agree with their methods. Frankly, I'm proud to be a gamer, as the games industry has been working hard to educate and work with their customer base for decades to address piracy. Gaming companies don't sue grandmothers and children for millions in 'lost revenue'. So I go that extra mile to buy games when I have the chance.

A few quick notes for myself; I do pirate games. I pirated Starcraft II when an update error with Blizzard bricked my legitimate copy right before the last mission, and tech support required I spend a few hours uninstalling, reinstalling, and doing updates over my terrible Internet connection to get it working again. Plus, the constant sign-in and update process sucked even when it worked. I pirated GTA IV when the Rock Star sign-in process required too many IDs and wouldn't validate properly. I pirated Fallout 1 when it wasn't available for sale. I pirated Chemspace when I wasn't sure if it would work on Linux or if I'd enjoy the gameplay (and subsequently bought it when it did work). I feel no remorse for any of these.

I do also write for Eclipse Phase. I seed my work and email it to people. I agree with the PS+ philosophy; it's better for someone to like your game and not pay for it, then to pay for it and not like it. One of those builds trust relationships with your customers that pay out over the long term.

Posted by: Starmage21 Apr 30 2013, 03:04 PM

I suspect that this is why there are so many "open beta" phases that last for so long these days. It used to be that there would be a huge chunk of time dedicated to closed betas and then several weeks of open beta before release day. These days with some of the games out there, its hard to tell the difference between the three phases because open-beta testing lasts so long.

Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 30 2013, 03:18 PM

Assumes facts not in evidence.

You can no more prove this claim, than the people who claim everypirated copy is "a lost sale" can prove theirs.






And, I do think that more games should offer free demos of their games. Upthread, I mentioned that I would buy anything interesting-sounding that Spiderweb Software put out. That's because their free (and unusually-expansive) demos earned my loyalty long before I could afford to buy access to the rest of their games.


Perhaps not a loss of revenue. But, yes, "a loss" - a loss of their right to control the making of copies.


No. It's still morally bnkrupt. Stealing something, then sending in money later? Still starts with stealing.


Yes, they do.

I'm not saying "the companies are shining white knights, angels of purity and righteousness".

I'm just saying, "piracy (almost always) sucks."


That is actually one of the very, very few situations where I don't look badly upon the act of piracy. The consumer should not be charged the same money, for less product than the next guy, just because of what zipcode/country/etc each of them lives in. Crippled/reduced games, should be sold for reduced prices.

And, as a corollary (?sp), people in regions where a game has been priced down (due t currency conversions, local economy, etc) and thus, region-locked? Should have the opportunity to pay the FULL price, for an UN-locked game. Because, again, "otherwise they'll just pirate it", and that's another case where I really can't blame them.


I'm with you on EA, but I don't mind uPlay, myself. *shrug*


Well, no. Except, as I just said, "piracy (almost always) sucks".






So what?

Ever hear of "MinMax Games LTD." ...? Neither had I, until I bought "Space Pirates and Zombies".

Ever hear of "Amplitude Studios" ...? Neither had I, until I bought "Endless Space".

How about "SuperGiant Games" ...? Nope, not me either, until I bought their first-ever game, "Bastion" (and am now eagerly awaiting their NEXT game, "Transistor").

Hell. Had you ever heard of "Mojang", before Markus Persson had already sold a quarter of a million copies of then-Alpha Minecraft? I know I hadn't - and I know for a fact that you hadn't either, because at the time, not even "Mojang" existed. It was still JUST Markus. One guy, with his hobby-that-turns-a-nice-profit.

Not having heard of a company, in no way justifies pirating their software.


http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=134714217&searchtext=game+developer

You were saying?

Posted by: bannockburn Apr 30 2013, 03:20 PM

We're mostly in agreement then, Pax

Posted by: BishopMcQ Apr 30 2013, 03:35 PM

This topic is bound the skirt the line, and we all understand that. Please remember: No posts that contain pirated materials, requests for pirated materials, or advocacy of pirating are permitted. That said, there are a lot of different laws at play--copyright, Creative Commons, and various nations' takes on how each applies to their citizens. Thank you for keeping things civil and on point.

This is all just a friendly reminder, so we don't have to make official warnings. No one has crossed the line yet in my book.

Posted by: Critias Apr 30 2013, 03:38 PM

I'm sorry, but you're saying nobody is fucked if someone can just magically copy a new car and drive around in it. I would posit that, instead, the entire automobile industry is fucked, because now someone can just magically copy a new car and drive around in it. No one gets to make a living off of making cars any more, or certainly at least not to the extent they currently do.

Because someone can just magically copy a new car and drive around in it.

Seriously, can you not see how that would have a negative impact on people buying cars, instead?


According to...what, exactly? You can say so, and that's fine, I'm not disputing that it's your opinion. But when you say so with such certainty, I can't help but feel like you've got to have some statistics to back it up. So it would be great to see some of those actual statistics.

And -- again -- I'm not saying every pirated copy of a thing, ever, is a lost sale. I'm saying that some of them are. It's ridiculous to argue that every pirated copy is a lost sale, but it's equally ridiculous to argue that none of them are (so it's something no one would be worried about or take issue with).

Posted by: bannockburn Apr 30 2013, 03:40 PM

The car analogy is flawed, Critias.
It costs very real money and parts to produce a car. If such a copy were possible, we would all be very happy people indeed, since we'd have mastered Star Trek like replicator technology

On the other hand, once a piece of code is finished, it costs a miniscule amount of energy to copy that data.

Posted by: Critias Apr 30 2013, 03:45 PM

I'm not the one that started up the car analogy, I was running with someone else's ball.

OH SHIT PIRATED BALL SORRY GUYS.

Posted by: bannockburn Apr 30 2013, 03:46 PM

I think, it's only lent, so don't panic

Posted by: Starmage21 Apr 30 2013, 03:50 PM

I wanted to make the same point, but I abandoned it because I'm not sure its so different. You still make that initial investment in the development, but the difference is that once the product is finished, additional costs of production are relatively fixed and massively lesser than other goods. We might be talking about literal pennies per copy versus the cost-to-produce/Selling Price ratio that goods must contend with.

Posted by: cryptoknight Apr 30 2013, 04:18 PM

Actually in both cases you do.

You can return the dish to the kitchen if it's terrible. Most times you won't get charged. If you eat the whole plate of it, you don't get your money back though.

As for the second, most theatres in my area at least have a "if you leave in the first 20 minutes of the movie you get a refund" policy.

Doesn't mean I agree with Piracy, but these points aren't necessarily valid either.

Posted by: nezumi Apr 30 2013, 06:51 PM

Sure, but did you buy them opening day? No? Why not? Because you'd never heard of them.



I'm not saying it does justify.

Imagine 100 people heard of this game through the website, and 50 of them bought it. 900 people heard of this game through a file-sharing site, and 450 of them downloaded it.

In both cases what we're seeing is that half of all people who saw the game, got it.

HOWEVER, only 10% of the people heard about the game via a method which provides a quick way to pay for it. The other 90% heard of it through a site where you cannot pay for it; you have to download, or abort and circle around to the other method. Also established is that people who are on file-sharing sites are normally there with the intention of downloading files without paying for them.

The guy who wrote the blog post is taking these numbers and saying "OMG, 90% of people are pirates!!!" But that conclusion is false. He did bad math, and came to a bad conclusion. What he CAN say is "much more people see our game via PirateBay than see it via GreenHeartGames.com!!!" and he should draw conclusions based on that.

If you want to know what percentage of people will pirate, you need the majority of your sample audience to know, before they log in, where they can pirate the game and where they can buy it legally. He didn't meet this bare requirement.



http://store.steampowered.com/search/?snr=1_4_4__12&term=Game+Dev+Tycoon

You were saying?

Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 30 2013, 07:20 PM

You can return the dish, and not get charged, IF (and this is a huge if) one of the following is true:

• It is not what you actually ordered;
• It was not prepared correctly;
• It was not served in a reasonably edible condition (getting a steak twenty minutes late and barely room-temperature, for example);
• There was a health code violation.

If you decide "Hmm, I've never had a flatiron steak; I'll give it a try tonight" .... and it turns out you just don't happen to like it?

It's what you ordered, it was prepared correctly, it was served in perfectly-edible condition, and there were no health code violations (like, half a roach on the plate, or whatever) ...?

You owe the restaurant the full bill. Trying to just skate on that bill, will get you arrested.

Maybe you could negotiate with your server and the manager for a reduced bill, even to $0. But you aren't the one with final say on that.

...

That's not random example, by the by. The weekend before last, at Longhorn Steakhouse ... I decided to try the Flatiron steak, with parmesagn crust. I didn't especially care for it - it was edible, and not BAD, but that's really the best I can say about it. (I do like several of their other cuts.)


Not where I live, not that I've ever learned about. Most of them have a clearly posted "NO REFUNDS" policy. *shrug*

Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 30 2013, 07:42 PM

Actually, yes. Yes, I did.

I bought SPAZ, Bastion, And Endless Space the very day they launched.

Why?

Because they looked interesting, I had some money to spare, and being Indie titles, they were quite inexpensively priced.

Even now, SPAZ is $10, Bastion is $15, and Endless Space is $30 (I think it was 20% off for the day of launch, though).

Another one I haven't mentioned before, is "StarDrive", by the very one-man outfit "Zero Sum Games" (currently $30 on steam, but also 10% off at the time of this post). I actually bought that one BEFORE it launched, by the way. Never heard of the company, but the game intrigued me - and buying it during the Beta put it at 40% or 50% off.

Notice how games up to $20 or $25, I'm not worried about "what have I seen this company do before" ...? I'm willing to give the small guys, the NEW guys, a chance if their games are priced in the "impulse buy" range, or even a bit higher.




Then 450 of them did somethign morally reprehensible. They should have googled for the name of the game and company, found the legal place to buy it, and done so. Or if they preferred free demos, gone to the company's forum, and said "hey if you put out a free demo I can try, and it's good, I'll buy your game."

They should not have gone to a file-sharing site to download a game, in the first place.

In both cases what we're seeing is that half of all people who saw the game, got it.


Again, assumes facts not in evidence.

How do you know who heard of the game where?

How do you know that none of those who got the game via torrent, didn't first find the sales outlet?

And flipside, how do you know that none of those who bought the game, didn't see it in their P2P client, and say "oh, lemme check that out .... yeah, eight bucks is cool", and then bought it?

...

No; you want the developer to be at fault, you want to excuse the people who downloaded a pirated copy. And so you are trying to shape the data to fit your conclusions.

When you should instead be doing it completely the other way around.



No, no he's not. He's saying "OMG, for every bought copy, there are fifteen "pirate" copies! And then these freeloading bastards come to my forums and complain about the very action they themselves are immediately guilty of ...!"

It's the hypocrisy that's the point. These people pirated a game - and the ones who went to the forum, cannot NOT know that they were supposed to pay for it - and are complaining that in the game itself, [i]people are pirating games, and thus, noone is BUYING those games, and their little make-believe company goes out of business.



Truly, p[lainly, you didn't read the actual blog and are just talking out your backside right now.

The description file posted for the torrent was this:



Pay especial attention to that bit, "developer website". Everyone who found the torrent, also knew exactly where to go, to get a legal and paid-for copy. Yet several thousand of them chose not to.





Duh, they don't HAVE a game released yet. But, just because your search-fu was weak, doesn't mean they aren't ON steam, at all.

Besides, if you'd been one of those checkign for it via Torrent?

Right there. In the description.

Posted by: nezumi Apr 30 2013, 08:11 PM

Dude, you need to back down. For the most part, I *agree* with you. But I don't have the time to engage with someone who is going to dig into petty insults from a high horse.

Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 30 2013, 08:43 PM

If pointing out the blindingly obvious is "a petty insult" ... well, damn. I don't have any idea what to say, in that case.

Posted by: bannockburn Apr 30 2013, 08:46 PM

It's a matter of tone and you've been called out on it by different people often enough that one might think it 'blindingly obvious' that it might warrant a bit of inward reflection.

Edit: The internet is a place where facial expression and gesture are sorely lacking and you have a habit of making up for it by using italics and bold face. It might be one of the reasons that you come across as a bit rude.

Posted by: BishopMcQ Apr 30 2013, 08:59 PM

Let's all chill out. Tempers are running high so take a deep breath, read a different thread for a little bit, and come back in an hour when you have a clear head. One line sniping at each other is not going to help, and starts looking a lot like Personal Attacks. Thanks!

Posted by: Adam Apr 30 2013, 09:20 PM

Let's also bear in mind that the whole thing is largely a marketing exercise for Greenheart; trying to convert pirates to buying a copy, trying to stir up support and good wishes from people who oppose piracy, but mostly just trying to get people to notice, share, and talk about it.

People pirate stuff. That's never going to change. The special sauce is how publishers and creators react to piracy and the people who do it. People pirate for a variety of reasons, and you can't just lump them all into one bucket.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 1 2013, 09:41 PM

Hey, I played the free demo on my craptop last night and had a lot of fun!

I have this little crappy floor model craptop that I paid like a hundred and fifty bucks for before heading to Micronesia that can barely run anything. The screen is so small that even when I fiddle with the resolution, there's a small amount of graphic/menu cutoff that occurs when I play the demo.

But this game is really ideal for me because it doesn't require a nice computer or fast internet.

I think later this week when I have the chance I'm going to buy the full version.

By the way, in terms of similar games, has anyone played Gamebiz 2? That was also a good game, similar to this one.

My only critique of this game is that it seems like it's a little bit easy. In the 5 year demo game my character ended up banking like 2 million dollars coding out of his garage. It doesn't seem very realistic.

Posted by: Tanegar May 1 2013, 09:57 PM

Maybe your character is based on Notch?

Posted by: CanRay May 1 2013, 10:06 PM

I played a few games of it (it distracted me, less and less is doing that right now.). For every 2M company I made, ten went down the bankruptcy hole. So, yeah, it depends on a lot of things.

Posted by: X-Kalibur May 2 2013, 05:52 PM

Thank you Adam, for the voice of reason.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 2 2013, 09:08 PM

Oh god, this is too funny: http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/01/announcing-first-expansion-for-game-dev-tycoon/

Posted by: Adam May 4 2013, 01:34 AM

Most people get too het up with emotions regarding piracy. It's just business, and not a part of business that's worth taking personally.

Posted by: CanRay May 4 2013, 02:02 AM

*Looks up at the pirates hanging by their necks until dead* "Nothin' personal. Only bizness."

...

Wrong kind of pirates?

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 4 2013, 06:19 AM

OK, the full game is more challenging for sure. My biggest problem is that after a while in spite of inputs my game starts getting mediocre reviews. I suspect it might be that unless you update graphics AND sound with new engines, your games start to suck no matter what.

LOL in retrospect on using mono sound from the 80s way into the Playstation era.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 4 2013, 09:50 AM

LOL, I went bankrupt because if your staff don't get vacations they contribute literally nothing to the project and your end product sucks.

Posted by: Tanegar May 4 2013, 01:35 PM

I would find that funnier if I weren't already convinced that that is exactly what happens in the boardrooms of game publishers.

Posted by: X-Kalibur May 6 2013, 07:12 PM

Fixed that for you.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 6 2013, 10:03 PM

EA used to be so cool, too. Their games Strike Fleet and SEAL Team are some of the most awesome military simulations of the era.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 6 2013, 10:05 PM

So, I was looking at the wiki, and apparently the game penalizes you significantly if you publish repetitious genres of games.

I'm kind of "meh" on that one, as far as realism goes. That's like saying Final Fantasy could never have been a successful franchise due to repetition of genre.

Posted by: X-Kalibur May 6 2013, 10:28 PM

But Square didn't JUST make Final Fantasy all those years to stay afloat. SNES Era had 3 FF games (4, 5, 6) as well as Super Mario RPG, Seiken Densetsu 2 and 3, Live a Live, Chrono Trigger, Bahamut Lagoon, Breath Of Fire, Front Mission, Romancing SaGa 1, 2, 3, Treasure of the Rudras, and Radical Dreamers (I may be missing a few titles, I didn't include Secret of Evermore because I believe it was an NA only title). While those are all RPGs I wouldn't call them repetitious.

Posted by: Adam May 6 2013, 10:29 PM

I played the demo last night and then ponied up for the full version, and I feel kind of the same way: you as a publisher don't have much of an identity, you can't sculpt it, you can't port already-existing games to other platforms, you can't identify something as a sequel.

Maybe that complexity comes later in the game, but I want that complexity during the building stages of my company.

I don't think this game is as fun as running a real company.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 7 2013, 12:01 AM

Apparently in this game "sequel" is something you have to research.

Gamebiz had all this stuff, by the way, and IIRC it was freeware or shareware or something. Sequels as well. But it basically had no graphics and was very number crunchy, such that you could nearly spend the whole game developing for Atari 2600 or somesuch due to early-game market saturation and low rate of extinction.

Posted by: Starmage21 May 7 2013, 01:04 PM

Breath of Fire was Capcom actually!

That said, Final Fantasy was hardly a repetitious set of games, aside from the fact that they were all essentially JRPGS.

Posted by: X-Kalibur May 7 2013, 04:08 PM

Sort of, the first one was published by Square and then Capcom took it in house for BoF 2 - 4 and Dragon Quarter.

Posted by: StealthSigma May 8 2013, 07:17 PM

It's a honeypot. Honeypots in computing have been used for quite some time to gather information about people and behaviors. There is absolutely nothing flawed with their methodology and infact provided other useful information regarding piracy. The fact that pirates would utilize the official forums to attempt to report bugs or otherwise get their issues resolved shows that they do intend to not only deprive the creators of their rights of distribution but also intend to deprive the creators of monetary value by demanding service for a product they did not acquire through legal channels.

--



A test does not need to be exhaustive to be a test. It was a test with a significant enough sample size that determined initial piracy. Ultimately, that is the only metric about piracy that can ever be conclusively determined. You cannot link legitimate purchases to pirated versions in any way shape or form.

However to answer your question. The probability is likely that total usage of legitimate vs pirate is going to be at best 20/80%.

--



In all cases some party is deprived of rights that they have. With the car the owner is deprived of his right of ownership of the property. With piracy the creator is deprived of his right to choose how to distribute his creation. Rights are not something to be tossed away or ignored whenever they are inconvenient or cause an outcome that we find undesirable.

--



I disagree here. Game producers have to comply with laws regarding the country which the product is sold in. It's more espensive to comply with the laws by having to remove features. Because of that, the people in those countries are actually having a portion of the cost to produce their version subsidized by those in countries that do not require such features to be removed. I also do not condone piracy just to get around other irritating laws of a country. Most countries do not have the same freedom of speech and expression that is present in the United States and even then the US is far from perfect. Free speech zones, anyone?

--

As for great games. You should all play Kerbal Space Program. Newtonian physics simulators!

Posted by: X-Kalibur May 8 2013, 07:21 PM

I don't know what you're talking about, my free speech zone is everywhere.

Posted by: StealthSigma May 8 2013, 08:08 PM

I suggest you read about them then. Since SCOTUS has interpreted the first to mean that Congress and the government may not make law regarding the content of speech they are able to regulate when, where, and how of free speech.

Posted by: Adam May 8 2013, 11:14 PM

A honeypot in this sense does indeed skew the data, because it almost certainly accelerated the rate of piracy. Given that it's a small publisher with a niche game that had -- as far as I could tell -- absolutely no buzz before "the piracy experiment," the data is skewed. It may well have not been pirated at all within the first 24 hours if they hadn't seeded that version themselves.



Nor can you link it to lost sales.

We all think we know that piracy causes lost sales; but we also have to acknowledge that piracy leads to sales. I am _very_ comfortable saying this, based on my personal experiences, that of my friends/colleagues, and that of my customers, who wouldn't be my customers if they hadn't first downloaded and then purchased.

(Hence why we open license stuff now, because sanctioning sharing is a heck of a lot easier and more productive than fighting piracy.)

Posted by: StealthSigma May 9 2013, 01:13 PM

I doubt this skewed the results in a negative manner. Generally, without any sort of DRM measure, a game is pirated and seeded well within 24 hours. DRM is, and has always been about delaying how long it takes for pirates to crack the game and torrent it. If the original game has no DRM included in it or only very weak DRM, then a cracked copy would be out within 24 hours and that's really over estimating. It's not unheard of for a game to be cracked within a couple hours of when it was released. The size of the publisher doesn't matter in this case. The one way their experiment did skew the results was by making piracy seem like less of a problem than it was. Undoubtedly there were two versions being torrented. The version they leaked and a version that was cracked and torrented by pirates and some of the users that would show up as legit are undoubtedly using that version. They people making the game just got their version out first and became the dominant seed. If you read the article you will see that they generated their figures based on anonymous usage data and not sales figures and a part of that anonymous usage data was which version was being used. 214 users with anonymous data that was being sent to their servers were flagged as the legitimate version. That could be purchasers or it could be pirates though they could release sales figures to help narrow that down but that only works if 100% of machines with the legimitate version installed are sending back the anonymous usage data.



You have a product that is unusual in the terms of creative products. It does not correlate well to most video games. Your product has a core element with many added extras. You can open license the rules content for the SR4 rulebook and this is fine. They serve as a loss leader. That gets people access to the rules and the ability to play the game. Then Shadowrun turns revenue on whatever supplements it publishes... Arsenal, Unwired, or any of the setting style books that all a more rich world to play in. It probably also serves as a loss leader for other non-game products like books as people want to know more and more. A lot of video games can't really follow that model. They don't have the assets to turn out enough content at an acceptable price point that would cover the costs of the additional content and the original production costs. Would Borderlands be able to be profitable if it were a free game and charged $10 for each of the DLC? Maybe, but I doubt it. Then you can look at the other end of the spectrum. Kickstarter. Companies are making sure the costs of developing the game are covered up front before ever starting on production. It's basically a throwback to the style of selling art where wealthy patrons would commission a piece. It's just in this case the wealthy patron is a collective.

Like it or not, if you can't monetize your product then you will go out of business unless you're indepentently wealthy and can constantly throw your own money at it or you can convince the government that you're too big to fail and get dirt cheap loans that you'll never have to pay back.

Posted by: X-Kalibur May 9 2013, 04:45 PM

Tell you what, let's compare to the numbers that CDProjeckt Red has when they release Witcher 3 (since all their games are DRM free anyway).

Posted by: StealthSigma May 9 2013, 05:10 PM

If those numbers are recorded. Sure.

As an aside. I have trouble taking anything you post serious ever since I started watching Soul Eater and was introduced to Excalibur.

Posted by: X-Kalibur May 9 2013, 06:01 PM

LOL, that is completely fair. I actually took it from an old SNES game, truth be told. Total 80s cyberpunk styled game... where's a link http://www.gamefaqs.com/snes/588873-x-kaliber-2097...

Posted by: thorya May 14 2013, 09:47 PM

I wonder why more companies don't go with the Pathfinder approach to protecting their property. Customize each purchase so you know exactly who to go after if a pirated version does surface. They did this with their books by putting in the name of person that purchased the .pdf on each page. Sure, that's relatively simple to erase before pirating, but it makes people think twice. Especially if they're not sure they got all the identifying markers.

The really nice thing is that when we played pathfinder we could share the pdfs between members of the group playing without difficulty, and since none of us planned on putting them out on the web it did not impede us at all. But if we didn't know and trust each other, we wouldn't have shared them amongst each other, because then it could be one of our names out on the web attached to those torrents.
(I'm really not interested in anyone's opinion of whether sharing a pdf in the group is piracy or is no different than sharing a hard copy of the book, which we also do. There have already been enough arguments in this thread.)

I imagine you could do something similar with any purchased downloaded game to incorporate the personal information of the person buying the game into the game itself. See if pirates are as keen to put out a cracked version of a game when it might contain their name, address, and contact info (or credit card info?). Sure, they'll find ways around it and will try to modify their information so that it's not clear, but it's a relatively easy way to catch some of the pirates and make sure that if you do take legal action, you're at least taking against a real pirate or someone that's somehow connected with them.

Putting in a little extra data is much less intrusive to the user and solves the problem where you can't loan a game to a friend to test out. Which has always been the appeal of a hard copy for me, several of my favorite games were ones I would not have bought if someone had not loaned me the cartridge or disk and said, try this, and many others that on trying I ruled out and didn't purchase. You own that customized copy of the game and can loan it out or install it on however many machines as you want, but doing so involves risks of people distributing it further and your personal info getting out.
In fact, you could do it as a selling point and have the buyer's name alter the game in some small way so that it's "custom" to the person that bought it. Maybe their name appears in a random document that can be found in the game or some level geometry is based on the characters of the buyer's name, or some sound files are altered, etcetera. Nothing major, but just enough that when you play it, it's definitely your game.

Posted by: Adam May 15 2013, 05:43 AM

This doesn't stop any determined pirate, and once one "cleaned" version is available, well, no amount of watermarking everyone else's download/version of the game does a damned bit of good.

I tend to think that the person who thinks "Cool! This game addresses me by name!" is not the sort of person who's going to be involved in cracking it and uploading it to torrent servers.

(Although it's amusing that the cracked version will probably address everyone as "General Fuckbutter" or something like that. ;D

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 15 2013, 06:04 AM

I thought somehow embedding credit card info would be a great idea, until I thought of what could happen if someone used a stolen credit card number for piracy.

Posted by: Adam May 15 2013, 09:01 AM

I think that might well be illegal, _and_ the game creator/publisher almost never sees the credit card info itself, anyway.

Posted by: StealthSigma May 15 2013, 11:35 AM

If you process credit cards you're supposed to be PCI compliant as a requirement by the CC processing company. If you store a credit card number that means it must be encrypted if stored electronicly. That means that if you KEEP a copy of the PDF then it would need to be encrypted on the PDF but if you send it off to the customer and keep no local copies then you can plaster it unencrypted. I'm not aware of any regulations in the US that would matter.

Posted by: nezumi May 15 2013, 01:18 PM

Let me say that, as a customer, I would be very uncomfortable with my thumb drive or my laptop also carrying my credit card information. I feel uncomfortable with having to either leave my credit card information unencrypted, or having to decrypt my books each time I use them. And I feel VERY uncomfortable trusting my credit card information to any Adobe product, Adobe being regularly terrible at anything security.

Posted by: StealthSigma May 15 2013, 01:21 PM

I'm not saying it's a good idea to put unencrypted CC info of the purchaser on a PDF file... only that I'm not aware of any reason that it would be illegal or disallowed.

Posted by: Stahlseele May 15 2013, 02:43 PM

Because these are personal data of your customer, which you are not allowed to make public without the customers consent.

Posted by: StealthSigma May 15 2013, 03:20 PM

This is tricky, but it would require a court to adjudicate to know for sure.

The company is not making personal information public by embedding CC information on a PDF on a product which they give into your ownership and do not retain a copy. If that person then gives a copy of that PDF file to another individual then the purchaser is the one who released his own personal information rather than the company. Now, various countries might have different laws, but that is to the best of my understanding, how it would work in US jurisdiction.

A similar thing happened regarding health records that were released to the public by a lawfirm (medical malpractice) that donated scrap paper. A ton of personal health information was made available. The quirky part is that this information being released did not run afoul of HIPAA regulations since those only cover health related entities of which a lawfirm is not.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 15 2013, 09:40 PM

Whoa! Wait! Stop the presses? In the health care industry everyone is puckered to the max over HIPAA. But all you have to do is have a non medical third party leak the info, and you have some insulation from being HIPAA'd?

Posted by: Stahlseele May 15 2013, 10:17 PM

Yes, technically that is correct . .
But usually, you can't leak the information to the 3rd party without getting into trouble either . .

Posted by: KarmaInferno May 16 2013, 12:03 AM

PDFs have laughable security anyhow.

More or less the digital equivalent of a sticky note atop a pile of papers saying "please don't mess with this".




-k

Posted by: StealthSigma May 16 2013, 11:13 AM

Basically, as long as the entity that releases the information is not a healthcare provider, an insurance company, or some third type of entity, HIPAA doesn't matter to them.

Now, an entity may need to practice HIPAA compliance if they want to do any sort of business with a covered entity that would involve the transfer of personal health information since a covered entity is not permitted to do business with a third party that doesn't perform at the minimum level of security and guardianship that would be required by HIPAA.

That said, an entity does not need to meet any HIPAA requirements if they get the information because a patient told the HIPAA covered provider that the entity has permission to get your records.