MSNBC & Stardock Talk Piracy

[QUOTE="OoSuperMarioO"]

[QUOTE="Avenger1324"]...What I'd like to see, maybe even just as a trial, is for one big name developer to release their game, without copy protection, and ask people to pay for it what they think its worth. This was trialed with Radiohead when they sold their album this way.

Companies need to face up to the fact that they cannot prevent piracy with tools, so they need to persuade people to buy the game instead of pirate it. Allow people to pay what they want for it, and some money from a potential pirate is better than getting no money from them when they pirate it instead.Avenger1324

Be very honest, if you spent 20-30 million dollars to make a game over a 2-4 year development period, would you risk allowing customers to pay for what they think it is worth?

There's no denying that it is a very big risk to take, but it is a gamble that has been tried (albeit only once), and did make money.

Games developers make claims that the piracy rate is in the 80-90% range, and by letting people pay what they want to get a genuine version without the need to crack or find workarounds would surely tempt some just for the convenience. Even attracting a small % of the potential pirates would match the number of people buying the game legitimately anyway.

By having it download only direct from their own site it cuts out so many costs - no need for a separate publisher, no packagaing, no transportation, no cut taken by stores.

While there would obviously be people that want to pay nothing, or the absolute minimum, the esults of Radiohead's experiment was that people were paying to get it, even though there was the option to get it for free. As with any figures there is no way to tell how many people would have pirated it otherwise, or how many got it for free, simply because they could, but it does show that people are prepared to pay what they think it is worth, even when they could pay less.

Another platform that is suffering from high piracy rates would be the Sony PSP. Interestingly, while Sony is recommending to not dump PS2 ports, the software is still being pirated at high rates, but fascinating the hardware sells are up. Much like the PC platform the fundamentals are quite the same meaning both platforms are extremely easy to acquire illegal game software. In addition, piracy is a free mechanism with absolute no impact on personal income, thus why contributions are just so high.

As I stated in my earlier post, the only solution I can see to piracy would be to do a psychological mechanic like the Xbox Live service which essentially is to create a sense of urgency of fear to not contribute piracy. Even though there is a existence of piracy on the xbox 360 platform there are consumers however not willing to get their xbox live accounts ban for detection of illegal activity. What can work similar for the PC platform is IP providers and Publishers can work together to ban people IPs that are detected for illegal authentications, though this will not wipe 100% piracy rate, it will however create that same sense of urgency to lower piracy contribution.

Though with the case of Sony and the PSP there is an important difference. For people to pirate the games they still need to have purchased the hardware, and for Sony that creates more sales and profits, though they lose out on software not being bought. The difference facing PC developers is that when their software gets pirated they don't get anything from it. They don't sell hardware required to run it. The idea of an Xbox Live banning does seem like a deterrant, but is that really a practical solution for a PC? Short of getting every ISP to agree to cut the user off it just wouldn't be effective, and the amount of time it would take to go through all the steps to get them banned would take months. Banning a console works on Xbox because MS have total control over the specific hardware, set out their T&C's at the start, and have tools to detect piracy. I don't know if it is even possible to ban specific PC hardware, With PC piracy you face the main issues that it is: 1 - very easy to get started 2 - very little chance of getting caught 3 - not much consequence for getting caught To prevent piracy you either need to find a way to prevent them pirating (which so far have been ever more harmful to everyone) or find a way to turn a pirate into a consumer that pays for the content.Avenger1324

It's already been proving for years now that software won't solute piracy, nor would influence solute it as seen by Demigod. However, the industry should be willing to attempt psychological mechanics as I suggested earlier. IP providers can very easily pull the plug from your network throughput. With IP providers and Publishers working together chances are they can even improve communication to make these task become a reality on a daily groundwork.

But you have another conflict of interest with the ISP. While it might be the "right thing to do" to cut off their service to a pirate, it directly reduces the income for the ISP. Unless the ISP is going to get a benefit they aren't going to willingly hunt down suspected pirates using their service and cut them off. One option is to pass laws to force ISPs to act in this way, but that really isn't a practical solution worldwide since every country would have to pass its own set of laws.Avenger1324