I predicted the future of gaming right here on GS forums.

https://www.gamespot.com/forums/xbox-association-1000003/why-do-people-buy-singleplayer-games-27149830/

9 years ago pirating was rampant in gaming, previously to this I had a thread where I stated that the only way to combat pirating was to add multiplayer to your game...I wish this future never came true. God I miss good singleplayer experiences...looking at you Anthem.

Yeah maybe one day the great age of single player games will come back again.

There are tons of great singleplayer games oO

What are you going on about? There's a whole bunch of single-player games.

What exactly did you "predict"? That more online/multiplayer games would become popular? Well, there's still plenty of good SP games out there but I guess you from 9 years ago thought it was dumb to buy SP games so I'm trying to understand what your point is.

Yeah I'm confused but this time I think I got it... so piracy is a problem and stil is.... I think....

Well something should be done I guess at some point.

I predicted what the state of fallout 76 would be before it was even announced. I also predicted that people who fiercely defended Fallout 4 would be hugely butthurt of the next game that came out of Bethesda studios(which turned out to be fallout 76). I would be damned if I could find that comment, though.

Oh yeah, I predicted the outcome of Anthem ツ

Oddly enough preferred FO4 to FO3, had decent shooting mechanics. Could have done without a talking protagonist though.

FO76 looked like garbage so avoided that like the plague haha.

Seems bad for Fallout fans right now but The Outer Worlds maybe what fans are craving.

As pointed out in a post I read last night I forget the poster or thread. But It was stating how Russia went from the biggest pirater of games to the biggest market because the availability of physical media is just frustrating to some people.

It was when Steam launched that piracy disappeared overnight.

@Coldzboy: Fun fact. There’s more sp games than mp games...sadly.

What are you going on about?

@raining51: piracy isn't and has never been a problem. There's even plenty of studies that show this.

So companies invested billions in developing and licensing DRM cause it's fun?

@Black_Knight_00: no it's because of a perceived threat or issue. Games get cracked in under a day usally movies as soon as they are web released or a screener from some where it's released. So how would it be different if they didn't use DRM?

I predicted that CP77 will take AGES for CDPR to finish.. I was right!! hahaha.

Again, if companies invest resources in trying to prevent something, it means it is a problem. Whether their preventive measures are effective or not is immaterial.

They have been losing massive chunks of their revenue to piracy for decades. Back in the 8bit computer age you could just copy your game on your dad's tape deck and share it with all your friends at school, who in turn copied it and shared it with hundreds more, cutting revenue for the game to a fraction of its potential. Back in the late 90s-early 2000s you could take your PC game and install it on an infinite number of computers and it would run without even a CD check, which is why CD checks were invented. To claim piracy was never a problem is just bizarre. It was contained as a problem because companies found ways to prevent most people from doing it.

Software piracy is like diabetes: sure, you can live with it and it probably won't kill you, but it's still a huge problem.

@Black_Knight_00: go read the studies. They don't loose anywhere near what they have spent on anti piracy. I can't link (on way to work). Piracy has been around since the book press if not longer if you count copies done by hand. Raids by the Romans where done to stop not only copies of the book but any copied material. It really does nothing either way for anyone.

What studiies are these? Please link them when you have time to.

@Black_Knight_00: will do, just won't be for a while

@Black_Knight_00: https://www.scribd.com/document/172985274/LSE-MPP-Policy-Brief-9-Copyright-and-Creation

This was made by The London School of Economics and Political Science. Its more about music then anything else.

https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_study.pdf

This is an EU commission report showing for every 100 games downloaded, 124 are sold including free to play and that it doesn't affect video game sales.. However take note that

"On the contrary, the study authors take pains to use a number of survey strategies and statistical models to limit the effects of false and misremembered responses, as well as the "endogeneity" problem in the correlation (i.e. people who like games are more likely to play both pirated and legitimate games).

For instance, the survey asks respondents about their generalized moral attitude toward piracy and their familiarity with piracy terms, both of which are highly correlated with reported piracy rates. As the study authors put it, "if people know piracy terms but do not report piracy, this might indicate untruthful responses." "

@npiet1: Based on those numbers, it means that close to 40% of all users of a game are playing a pirate copy. I don't see how their conclusion can be that it doesn't impact sales.

@Black_Knight_00: it doesn't, because the corporations uses erroneous logic, stating that they loose money, because someone did not buy the game. They don't loose money, because they can't possibly know that the person, if the game would not be accessible via illegal means, would buy it. They just hope that he would. The same erroneous logic could be (and is) used to frown upon second-hand sales of video-games or recording videos on your VHS, which you've seen on TV.

And as it was stated in EU Report, for each case of piracy, there is a certain mode of advertisement of the article, i.e., if the pirate will not buy it, one or two of his/hers friends might after hearing how great it is and wanting to experience the full scope (i.e., multiplayer) or just wanting to support the devs.

P.S. The publishers would in their minds frown upon my video-game purchase practice, i.e., I purchase their game after a year or more when all of the patches and bug fixes are out, and when the store has big sales for the particular title. So, instead of paying 60 bucks, I pay under 20 bucks (so, they loose-out on 40 bucks).

It most definitely does impact sales, and the entire industry agrees with me. The conclusion reached by that study is absolutely bonkers and the research specious at best. Assuming their numbers are correct, which is a big if, legit sales being 124% of pirated copies is dismal numbers by any standard, it speaks of a widespread phenomenon that's slicing sales projections almost in half.

And it doesn't end there: you know what else negatively impacts sales? Used games, which is why everyone in the business can't wait to go full digital. By your logic, more poeple playing the same used copy of the game means free advertising for the product and that is not how companies want to do business.

@Black_Knight_00: case in point because gns pretty much wrote what I would. The Witcher 3. No DRM and more sales then most games

SP games are all around us, and arguably are the best games, if you look at the reviews.

Because software piracy has been in decline for a decade: digital delivery and strong competition and deals have made it so that a lot of people who before just downloaded a game illegally now buy it and download it through legitimate means.

And it doesn't end there: you know what else negatively impacts sales? Used games, which is why everyone in the business can't wait to go full digital. By your logic, more poeple playing the same used copy of the game means free advertising for the product and that is not how companies want to do business.

If you're talking about physical copies, then I'll have to disappoint. In law, at least in Continental Europe, there is a doctrine called "first-sale doctrine", which states that when a merchant sells an article, the merchant looses all of its rights to it (and has only obligations in terms of quality). The buyer may do anything with the bought article, which is in limits of the law, including, selling it. The merchant cannot receive double payment for the same article, which was sold. As Russians say "Nichrena sebia", I know that the publishers would like that the buyer would give back the copy, which they do not use, and then try to re-sell it, but this type of Ostap Bender shit does not fly.

@Black_Knight_00: deals have nothing to DRM because when games are released they are usually full price $60-80 depending on where you live. If anything digital downloads help the piracy community, with preloads etc. Can you sauce where game piracy is on a decline. And your last point, if anything that means they are wasting billions on DRM if it's not needed.

They aren't spending as much on DRM now that people have accepted wrappers like Steam or Epic serving as DRM. Just think how much they invested in licensing or making their own DRM middleware before that was a thing.

As for the piracy decrease, here is a 2006 source (year of the Steam boom), a 2008 source and a 2018 source.

Another reason for the piracy decrease is that when console gaming went mainstream (circa 2007 with Call of Duty 4) the consoles on the market were very difficult to mod to play pirate games, which coupled with the fact online play was increasingly important, led a lot of people to just accept that they were now going to buy games instead of copying them.

2006 sauce: BSA Study Finds PC Software Piracy Declining in Emerging Markets While Worldwide Piracy Rate Remains Stable; Piracy Rate Unchanged at 35%; Global Losses Increased by $1.6 Billion

2008 sauce (which is about 2007) "Now, for what software makers don't want to hear: "However, because the worldwide PC market grew fastest in high-piracy countries," states the report, "the worldwide PC software piracy rate increased by three percentage points to 38 percent in 2007" so its down a little in some but overall still rising.

2018 sauce: down 4% since the last chart 2 years ago then down agian 1% 2 years before that and then rose 2$ 2 years agian. Not really showing a nice picture here. Seems more variable then rates going down. “Piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It helped Romanians improve their creative capacity in the IT industry, which has become famous around the world,” he told Bill Gates. That was just cool bit of positive piracy.

Non of these even touch games either but I digress.

So back to the original debate: Does piracy really hurt the industry? and then Does DRM matter?

Arguable the EU COMMISION doesn't think so and DRM doesn't seem to make a difference.

@npiet1: It hasn't become easier at all. Cracking firmware is actually harder than soldering a bypass chip to a motherboard or sticking an action replay into a parallel port. You most likely don't know anyone with a modded 360 or PS3, let alone Xbone or PS4. That fact alone should tell you how much harder piracy has become. Back in my day it was standard procedure to pirate games on PS1, PC and Dreamcast. Even SNES bootleg cartridges weren't hard to obtain. Today there is no such phenomenon and on top of that this is happening during and right after an economic recession.

You most likely don't know anyone with a modded 360 or PS3

Actually, funny enough, I do. In my country it was a standard practice for the retailers to offer next to the standard consoles the so called "jail-broken ones" with soldering bypass chip on them, as you say. Of course, it was "under the table", but everyone knew (mostly because they even advertised this on their webpages; it's really funny when you think about it). The reason why PS4 piracy is a bit non-existent, is because you need to have an old firmware version (which as far as I know, you cannot roll-back to, if you have a higher version) and some third party content installed on your console, which for most people should be a burden.

My opinion, if you want to make piracy as minimum as possible, you need to offer something that good, which will force even the hard-core pirates to buy it. Or make cracking of the games as cumbersome as possible, so the majority of pirates, who are not computer fluent, would actually think that buying a legal copy of the game is much more easier than cracking it.

@npiet1: DRM is weak sauce. My sources suggest piracy is key to the buoyancy of the software industry.

How else would I have learnt the adobe programs and then go on to be a productive member of society as a money making creative dude.

Same goes for audio software.

Amiga hacking groups informed professional programmers with their techniques and hacking groups were an established route into the games industry, serving as portfolios for programmers. Showing development companies are not particularly concerned about piracy.

Hackers are employed for their skills in security to work on pointless drm and network firewalls (anything is hackable if it's plugged into a cable or phone socket).

Black_Knight_00 The existence of DRM is just to placate nervy and paranoid shareholders to show something is being done about the perceived loss in profits.

HAHAHA avoid original point.

It's not. Softmods are way easier than soldiering a chip for most people its usually a usb stick and some tutorial . I had a flashed 360, mate had it jtag but he paid someone though now its a usb stick you plug in. I had a modded ps3. PS4's can be done but as the other guy its hard to do with newer versions of the console , The wii was the easiest. The switch is done. I knew a few with a chipped ps1 including myself but didn't know anyone with any modded carts except the r4 for the ds. The original Xbox was the hardest funny enough. The dreamcast had no DRM.

Oh yeah its rumoured a few scene people get jobs in DRM after a while.

University's don't discourage it either (especially with text books).

@npiet1: Absolutely not. Cracking a firmware is way harder, in fact it still hasn't been achieved for a number of systems, and not for lack of trying. Modding the hardware of a 32bit console was a piece of cake that any monkey with the bare minimum knowledge of electronics could do in their garage. As firmwares became more complex and modded consoles were banned instantly upon logging into the respective nextworks, piracy all but disappeared from the console market.

And with that I'm out.

lol besides the xbox one what hasn't been cracked? NOTHING lol.

@npiet1: The dreamcast had no DRM.

It actually did but there was an exploit with a karaoke hardware feature 'MIL-CD'.

@jackamomo: I had one. It was straight copy but I did own it like 12 years after release.

Pirating and stealing is here to stay in the global sense hopefully I believe now video games have a solution of some kind.

How did you enjoy it?