Game Piracy, is it sending the industry broke.

XboxOZ360 - 493 days 2 hours ago

To TheHater, try reading the article, it's about piracy per-se' and covers ALL many of platforms, it's NOT a " nah nah . . . my platform is better than yours thing". It's about Video Game Piracy . . clown.

Piracy costs us ALL every year, and anyone that supports it is basically stealing not only from the publishers, but they are denying the developers their rightful dues and also stealing from your future in gaming.

It therefore covers EVERY platform, From PC, 360, PS3, right through to DS and Dreamcast.

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XboxOZ360 - 493 days 2 hours ago

Irrespective of what platform it is, it's aimed at all, because piracy affects all platforms, in one way, or another, as it relates to the Publishers who make games for ALL platforms.

That's what I mean. So removing PS3 seems somewhat silly, it's like saying, oh, that's okay, it doesn't both the PS3, of course it does.

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Immortal Kaim - 493 days 2 hours ago

It's certainly a contentious subject. Piracy (throughout any industry) is certainly a problem, call me naive but is the problem really rampant in games industry? I didn't know it was getting so bad?

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GrathiusXR - 493 days 2 hours ago

No matter how hard a developer tries to cut down on Piracy some how peoepl always find a way around the system and pirate hundreds of games regardless of platform..

Just look even though Steam is truly good and well many have been able to play Half Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2 and Portal by downloading the torrent and wala!...

Non need to pay for it on Steam just download unpack and play..

One day Piracy will be stopped but who knows when that will be at least this is a step in the right direction

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XboxOZ360 - 493 days 2 hours ago

There are some countries where copyrights have no standing, and basically mean diddly-squat .. Like Iran, they still get games, and consoles included, but if they can get the games cheap, they will. I have a guy staying with me at from Iran, and he's told me that they get anything over there without any worries with no copyright worries or possible prosecution.

SO piracy RUNS the country . . . see the problem . . . Whether it be a PC game, now or a PS3 or 360 game soon, the point remains, that it is crippling the industry.

Then, there's the other side of the thing for pub and developers.

Secondhand sales. Which is the highest turnover in gaming worldwide, and they get absolutely nada, zip, zilch, didly-squat from any game sold. Add that loss to the loss due to piracy, and you can start to glimps at WHY games cost the prices they do. If they didn't, even Atari's $US17.5 million loss last QUARTER would pale in comparison.

Get the picture now ?!

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harry190 - 493 days 2 hours ago

that is not 'suffering' from piracy right now is the PS3. It might also be one of the reasons why it is not having the same success in terms of hardware sales as its older sisters.(Especially in regions of the world where the average disposable income is substantailly lower than NA,Europe and some rich Asian countries)

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Cyan8313 - 493 days 2 hours ago

Isn't that much. And 2500 ppl is like 0,001% of game pirates. Pretty pointless tbh. Just a publicity stunt. If they want to make back a few monies they should team up with M$ and get to banning 360's.

But piracy will prevail. Nothing you can do about it.

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BrotherNick - 493 days 1 hour ago

I smell a rat. -_-;

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divideby0 - 493 days 1 hour ago

Crappy and expensive games are the problem.

Also we are seeing a all time high of BROKEN games upon their release.
GTA, Madden...the list is endless...buy a game, take it home and it dont work as it should...

I am renting games vs buying now, since they cost 60+ bucks. Way to expensive for a 10 hr play through

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jojo319 - 493 days 1 hour ago

It's really a catch 22. How many times have we all been burned by the entertainment industry? It's the ONLY industry i can think of where you can't get a refund if you are unsatisfied. I think the quality would improve (no bugs, etc...) if people were allowed to return their games, cd's, movies, etc.... when they stink. Why should every purchase be a gamble?

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hay - 493 days 1 hour ago

Piracy problem is important in gaming industry and they must fight it somehow. DirectDownloads are some solution to this issue, but there happen situation when people are selling 4 of their 5 possible downloads on PSN for example robbing even DDs so it's almost impossible to stop piracy. There'll be cracks as long as there are hackers, there are hackers as long as there's internet.
Sony made a great step with protecting their PS3 from pirating but too complicated architecture also is developer's pain.

Such cases make people more aware and cautious of the problem. Some are downloading less, some don't care, some starting to buy legit software. It all depends. Industry can fight pirates, it must to survive, but I don't think it'll succeed entirely.
It sucks most for gaming companies since making a game is much expensive and lenghty process than recording an album so it's sometimes to be or not to be for developers.

Unfortunatelly some people don't understand this problem. Some time ago I was called lame cause I paid for mmo game instead of playing on "private" server, and still being "weird" cause I bought PS3 "but there are no pirates on it, better go with X360".

If appreciation for someone's great piece of work is lame, so be it. Gaming industry needs more of it.

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Baka-akaB - 493 days 1 hour ago

Piracy is serious business , but please we got here one company involved that hasnt done anything major those past years besides losing money and surviving thanks to DBZ : Atari .

Are they going to tell me now that the source of their woes is piracy ? Their games , when they do release one , are ridiculed among critics and gamers .

I also remeber crytek crying and whining about piracy , as it being the reason for their low sales . Of course it had nothing to do with the fact that their game is basically farcry with a new graphical coating , and one not many people were ready to upgrade their pc for .

Ubisoft got some nerve too , they released eons before the pc version an Assassin creed that met harsh crisicism , and expected to sell it well on pc ?

Is piracy wrong ? Did it really affect those games ? Bollocks not much more than the others .
To begin with , nowaday must savvy enough pc gamers only buy games with multiplayer and online components . So if a game seems not that attractive and interesting to them , they'll pirate it , however , even if still wrong , they wouldnt buy those games they are hesitant about .

A gamer iffy about paying for the solo Assassin creed , with so many low reviews and deflated hype , released so late after the consoles version , wouldnt buy it period .

Just watch GTA4 , the most likely next candidate for massive piracy , sells like crazy soon .

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jerethdagryphon - 493 days 1 hour ago

the only way ican see to stop it is through use of highly itegrated drm

i mean integrated in the way windows explexplorer is integrated thottaly throught out windows

use an encryption generator thats scateters around the game engine so when its run it requests a code from the companys servers
no code game engine cant initialize
remove the encryption and the engines broken

it would have to be something vital to the engine and not beable to be removed

i have a friend who pirates all there games i wish theyd stop but they wont

i dont support piracy
one other major prpblem is bedroom coders

there not just kids with notepad these days there qulifierd programmers and hackers piracy is a shame and i wisdh tere was a way to stop it quickly and easily

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phreakatms - 493 days 1 hour ago

Will never be stopped. As long as there's internet, there's mass appeal for more and more people to jump in and give it a try. Sure, I download music and "other" things, I'm sure we all do. But games is something I will NEVER touch. I remember leading up to GTA IV's release a lot of people downloaded the game and I was so mad at them doing it. Not only did they no longer have to wait, but stealing from a video games developer is just sad when it takes them so long and so much money to produce a good product.

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snp - 493 days 1 hour ago

I'm not convinced.

You're talking about the largest entertainment industry in the world - bigger than music and bigger than movies.

The contention that all these downloads are real world 'lost revenue' hinges on the idea that there's 'billions' of accessable dollars behind pillows and in sock draws that could or would be 'fished out' if piracy was impossible.

I just don't see that being realistic.

I don't doubt games companies - some - struggle to turn a profit. I also don't doubt, though, that 'piracy' (which in numerical $ terms is always a theoretical) is often, if not always, a bit of a scape goat. The real problem doesn't seem to me to be the 'size' of the video games industry in dollars terms, or imo largely mythical 'billions' (trillions?) that would supposidly just magically get put back into ballooning it into gargantuan size if downloads were knocked on the head, but rather the absurd and problematic 'development' costs of modern games. Costs, ironically, that are expanded further with costly anti-piracy software added in the effort to chase this theoretical rainbow gold mine of 'missing money'.

You simply can't expect to 'add a few billion here for Wow etc', 'add a few billion there for casual pc online games', 'add a few billion for traditional pc games moving to consoles etc', 'add a few billion for boxed copies moving to direct downloads', 'add some more for micro-payments etc', and not expect a consequent reduction in sales in other areas to at least some extent.

It's easy to see '700k downloads of A/C' and say 'wow, look at all those $ lost', but realistically how many of those downloads are from compulsive downloaders who barely touch what they download? How many are people testing the game on the back of a lack of a demo? How many own a console version they forked out $60-120 for ( the game having sold close to the eight figure market across next gen consoles already) and simply wanted to have a look, and wouldn't have bought the same game twice even if they couldn't do it this way? How many of the 'stolen copies' were in those who bought the game legitamately over the next week, but were impatient to look at it early? How many took it, used it completely, enjoyed it, but simply had no money to pay for a legitimate copy over a duplicate?

I'm not justifying piracy, btw, but just saying i think you've got to be careful theorising a 'wonderful world' where all the modern problems of games production goes away with the magic treasure explosion of closing off 'piracy'. Many times what it constitutes is not really what you would call a 'sale' (potentially ever), and i doubt very much there are that many people with hidden $50's sitting around the house to buy all that much more even if you imagine every act of piracy as a worst case scenario being eliminated.

Basically, if the industry can't make a living off of double digit billion dollar marks - as the largest entertainment industry that exists - i struggle to imagine eliminating piracy, for all the righteousness we each may feel about it, is really going to make that much difference.

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XboxOZ360 - 493 days 2 hours ago

Well thank you, I love you too . . .come here and give me a hug . . .

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Pain - 492 days 22 hours ago

Blame M$.

It IS there PC OS that is doing the Harm since Piracy is happing on PC's.

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