Posted by David Fendley in I recently responded to an article that conjectured a “solution” to video game piracy that required fairly elaborate technology and partnerships. I thought I would share my thoughts on combating video game piracy with the rest of you.
The original article can be read here, though it is not a prerequisite to understanding my conclusion: http://www.gamehounds.net/2009/05/22/the-end-of-piracy/
My response follows.
Cooper,
You definitely are tech savvy. Unfortunately, every idea within your proposition can be circumvented. It may take some time, but it can and will be. Rather than spending a copious amount of time describing how it can be broken, let alone difficult to implement, we should look at why games are pirated in the first place.
There was a poll a year or two ago by an independent video game developer that asked visitors why they pirated games. The top reasons were: to circumvent DRM, the cost of games, and poor quality games.
DRM.
DRM has always been beaten — it only takes a matter of time. Companies are wasting time and money by utilizing DRM. Of course Macrovision doesn’t want you to know its DRM is worthless, but it really is. Drop DRM. Yes, pirates will be enthused, but more importantly, legitimate customers, those whom are truly hurt by DRM, will be relieved.
Expensive games.
Years ago when MGS2 first came out for the Xbox, EB Games (now owned by Gamestop), sold the game for $20 a pop for the first week of its release. After that first week the price went up to $40. A manager at one of my local EB Games said they sold boxes of that game that first week. Why? The game was incredibly affordable. Even if you walked into the store with no knowledge of the game, taking a chance that a game may be bad at $20 is not a huge risk. $40-60? That is a big risk.
I also learned that charging $60 for this gen’s games is not actually due to increased development costs as some in the industry would like you to believe. It is actually because of this: Publishers/developers began releasing standard editions at $50 and special editions at $60, offering only minimal difference between the two. The special editions sold very well, telling publishers/developers that gamers were okay with paying $10 more for a game. One could argue that the special editions came with more, which technically they did, but it’s not like these special editions came loaded like Blizzard Collector’s Editions do. Charging $10 more was clearly not going to alienate the gaming majority.
Of course games are taking more and more to create; yet games cost about the same 5 years ago and 10 years ago, perhaps even 15 years ago. Games have become increasingly complex, yet they’ve remained relatively close in price point. I don’t find these price hikes fully justified.
Poor Quality Games.
Recently I bought Universe at War on Steam for $5 during a weekend sale. I had heard of the game, and it turns out that I had played it before, but I figured $5 was chump-change for a video game and whipped out my credit card. Fortunately the game turned out to be rather good, but $5 was not much of a risk at all to find out. Yet we have companies charging $50 for games like “Transformers”, which is horrid, and “Terminator Salvation”, which is only four hours long! I don’t mind paying $40 or so for a good game such as “Morrowind”, “Warcraft 3″, any game in the “Unreal Tournament” series, or many other quality games out there, but with so many mediocre games flooding the market, it’s not cost effective to take a chance at that price point. Bring the cost of games down, the quality of games up, and games will sell themselves.
Digital Distribution.
I absolutely abhorred digital distribution when Steam was launched. How dare I be told when and where I can play my games. Another reason I loved physical mediums was that they were much easier to run on an emulation layer in OS X and Linux. I have since changed my mind.
I have become so sick of physical discs, cases, and boxes lying around, let alone having to track down a manual for a CD key, that I am in the process of thinning my movie, music, and video game collection physically. I adore how Blizzard and Bioware let you store your CD keys online for easy retrieval. Blizzard even lets you download the game client. The same can be said of Steam. With Steam, I can easily download my purchases hassle-free. As a result, I often look to digital distribution systems first when looking to purchase a video game. The downside is waiting for the game to download, but Steam has mitigated pre-orders through pre-loads, and this issue will continue to minimize as Internet connectivity speeds increase.? Digital distribution is extremely enticing to publishers and developers for two primary reasons. One, it’s cost effective. Publishers don’t have to print and ship discs, cases, and manuals, let alone give a cut to retail stores. Two, it circumvents used game sales. Ideally I would like to see digital distribution services allow you to transfer your game license to another account at will, but I fear this will never happen — at least not for some time. While the downside of current implementations of digital distribution is the inability to resell your games, services are in development that will allow gamers to rent games digitally, making gaming even more cost effective, available, and on-demand. With a shift towards digital distribution for multimedia as a whole, I believe we will see mass adoption of digital distribution for video games very quickly — especially if publishers and developers lower the cost of their games as a result of the affordability and efficiency of digital distribution.
Conclusion.
Video games need to become more affordable, better in quality, stripped of all DRM, and available on digital distribution systems. Yes, pirates can crack even digital distribution systems, but video games will continue to be pirated regardless of medium. Potential video game customers need to be enticed into buying games over pirating games. These aforementioned methods lower the cost, increase the quality, and make a game easily accessible — three core principals to selling any product.
It is easy for any industry to blame pirates for their failures and flaws. Look at how bloated “sales lost to piracy” figures are. This is done for shock value. If you research how these figures are computed, you would probably laugh. Piracy is a real threat and a valid concern, but there are efficient, affordable means to combat this nuisance, reaching out to current and would-be pirates without harm to the legitimate customer.
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