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[december]

I fail to see how iTunes makes piracy impossible.  Everyone I know strips the drm off of iTunes purchases as soon as they are able.

[Bennett]

I fail to see how iTunes makes piracy impossible.  Everyone I know strips the drm off of iTunes purchases as soon as they are able.

No, for games. You can't burn your iphone games to CD and then re-rip them DRM-free mp3 like you can with songs. They're on a closed device, they run signed code, and I can guarantee you that pirating them will be too hard for 99.9% of people. Even a jailbroken phone can't install app store games for free.

[Paul Eres]

Signing and customization are a lot of work when one has thousands or tens of thousands of sales a year, though. It might work when you're in the hundreds a year range (and I'm still only in that range myself), but I imagine it'd be harder for the more successful indies. Especially customization.

One way to deal with that is limit to the "first 500 copies sold" or something, but that is only an incentive against piracy until those 500 are sold. And even then: creating 500 custom avatars would probably take longer to do than making a new game.

[mewse]

Well, like I said a few pages back, a service like Steam or the iTunes app store makes paying much more convenient than pirating. (iTunes also makes piracy impossible - one reason why I think indie devs should go for it).

Yeah, convenient payment is essential.  It's difficult to make people feel that payments straight from your game app are secure (unless you've got a huge reputation), so you sort of have to go through a trusted third party. Which is annoying, as you'll be losing a lot of sales due to having to send people to another site to do the transaction.

But there are a lot of other models already in existence - again, like I mentioned before, CaravelGames gives you a year-long subscription to their hint service and their high-score table. It's much easier to stop people accessing these things illegally, since you don't need to worry about things like multiple computers using one account.

Interesting.  I wonder how well that works for them.  It sounds like they're not selling their games, but rather are selling a subscription to their online services.

Or at least, that's how it's going to look to the people considering pirating.  I wonder how compelling those hint services and high score tables are.

Multiplayer games have had this down for years. Have a members-only matchmaking or clan-making service. Have private servers. Have an online leaderboard. It's easy to limit these things so only paying customers can access them.

Yeah, the whole "avoiding-piracy" thing is really a solved problem if you have an online game that requires a subscription or otherwise matches players against a credit card number.  It's a lot harder to do this for single-player games.

The trick is to think about it like this: how is the legal version better than the pirate version? If the only answer is warm fuzzy feelings, you are going to lose some revenue.

Good point.  You can lock down your network services no problem.  But that really weakens (or destroys) your game for offline players, and makes even the online people worry about what'll happen if or when your services shut down.

And anything you distribute to the offline players can be redistributed by pirates.  The only way around that is (as you suggested) to distribute new content extremely frequently, faster than the pirates will keep up with (which means you have to continue creating new content forever, and incurs all the hassles that e-mail mailing lists always do, etc).

So I dunno.

[Cymon]

You could even smash our two ideas together, and call it the "telethon" model.

The what?

The telethon model.  The game becomes the entertainment acts, people send contributions in and people who contribute a lot are given "thank you" gifts.

Now that I'm thinking about that, most telethons have either a particular "target" amount of money which they're aiming to raise, or a specific duration, or both.  [/quote]
Yes, but telethons work on the "We're going to be as annoying as he**, reminding you every 30 seconds of the shows you're not going to get to see until we get X dollars" model, where as you're suggesting "We're going to make something you like, and keep making something you like until you give us what we want."

Okay, not exactly, but you get the point.

What you should do is provide screen shots and gameplay videos and tell eveyone that you'll release the game when you get X dollars, but until you do you're going to direct them to another cactus download every day until you get the money you want.

[mewse]

Yes, but telethons work on the "We're going to be as annoying as he**, reminding you every 30 seconds of the shows you're not going to get to see until we get X dollars" model, where as you're suggesting "We're going to make something you like, and keep making something you like until you give us what we want."

Yeah, it basically does give the farm away, and then asks the receiver to give something back for what they've already received.

Fair point.

[Mattias Gustavsson]

It's not about business model. It's not about fair or unfair pricing.

It's about the simple fact that if you're not prepared to pay the price set for a given game, you don't get to play it.

You're free to play other games, or wait for the price to drop. You're not free to steal just because you don't like the business model or the price.

And if a developer cares more about audience than revenue: release a freeware game.

In no case can piracy be said to be good or right or have ANY benefits, other than for those who steal...

[Chris Whitman]

It's about the simple fact that if you're not prepared to pay the price set for a given game, you don't get to play it.

Since I regularly play games without paying for them, I would argue that your simple fact is simply wrong. It turns out that, while I do pay for some games because I choose to, I am also free to steal them whenever I want.

In other news: you are not the boss of me.

[Mattias Gustavsson]

I meant it as "you don't get to play it, according to the law".

Are you saying that everyone should be allowed to do as they please with no regard for law and order? That people are free to murder, rob people etc just because they feel like it? That's just silly.

If I create something, I gets to decide what is allowed to do with it. I gets to say how much money people must pay to use it. I gets to decide under what conditions people might use it. Turns out that when we're talking about my creations, I am the boss of you.

If you have a problem with that, then you don't get to use my creation.

If you do that anyway, because you can get away with it, it just makes you a selfish greedy bastard. Some people don't mind being selfish greedy bastards though, but don't come saying that you have the right, moral, legal or other, on your side.

People defending and promoting piracy makes me sick. When they do it in terms of "freedom" and "individuals rights", doubly so.

[mewse]

Guys, guys, I think we've pretty much already settled this "is piracy okay or is it a bad thing" debate as much as it's going to get settled.

To recap for those who don't want to trudge through the 20-ish pages of posts again:

Pirates are selfish dicks who are "too nice for this world" and so don't have to actually obey conventional laws or ethics, but can take and do whatever they want because to do otherwise would "just put (them) on the losing end of the stick."

Those who don't pirate, on the other hand, are "brain-washed corporative(sic) drone(s)" who "babble (their) stupid imbecile mouth(s)" when they talk about moral rights, ethics, and respect for international law.  And what's worse, they are "so convinced that pirates are evil (that they) manage to deceive (themselves)" and discount the many legitimate reasons that breaking international law is actually a good thing for everyone.  Such as, for example, making it possible for pirates to so effectively demonstrate how they are "too nice for this world". 

And they have a pretty compelling point, there.


See?  Plain and simple, all conclusions that nobody could argue with.  Now can we let it lie and all just get along again, please?

 

edit:  Fixed my hyperlinks

[Ragzouken]

If I create something, I gets to decide what is allowed to do with it. I gets to say how much money people must pay to use it. I gets to decide under what conditions people might use it. Turns out that when we're talking about my creations, I am the boss of you.

You're calling pirates selfish and greedy bastards, but do you have any idea how selfish you sound here?

[Don Andy]

I think someone like Derek, who has a somewhat objective view on these things, should write an ACTUAL summary of this thread and then just close it.

I'd do it myself, but as a starter of the pro-pirate debate I'm hardly to be considered objective.

Actually, I think said summary should be posted on the Blog, as some sort of Addendum to the answers this Harris guy got.

[Mattias Gustavsson]

If I create something, I gets to decide what is allowed to do with it. I gets to say how much money people must pay to use it. I gets to decide under what conditions people might use it. Turns out that when we're talking about my creations, I am the boss of you.

You're calling pirates selfish and greedy bastards, but do you have any idea how selfish you sound here?

Nothing selfish about it. The person who makes something gets to decide the terms for how it is to be shared. That's only fair.

If I chose to release my stuff public domain (which I do), that's entirely up to me. If someone else chose to charge for their game, it's up to them, not the rest of us.

You either pay what the author wants, or you don't play the game. There's plenty of other games to play, including a lot of free ones.

[mewse]

Derek, who has a somewhat objective view on these things, should write an ACTUAL summary of this thread and then just close it.

Yes, please.

Be sure to include in the summary that the pro-piracy people declared that the creators of content are being unreasonably selfish for wanting a modicum of control over the distribution of their creations.

Also, that their piracy is okay because people who make games are all stupendously rich, and so don't need money anyway.

Also, that the pro-piracy people declared that piracy is okay because CDs are made from petroleum products.

Also, that their piracy is okay because if they didn't pirate, they wouldn't be getting something for nothing.

So yes, let's do have an official, objective record of the arguments put forward by the "Pro-Piracy" crowd, and advertise them on the front page of TIGSource for all the world to see.  I heartily agree.

 

[Movius]

I think someone like Derek, who has a somewhat objective view on these things, should write an ACTUAL summary of this thread and then just close it.

I'd do it myself, but as a starter of the pro-pirate debate I'm hardly to be considered objective.

Actually, I think said summary should be posted on the Blog, as some sort of Addendum to the answers this Harris guy got.

If someone owns something then nobody can force them to do anything with it they don't voluntarily agree to (assuming theres no violence or threats involved.) This is unalterable fact, doesn't come any more objective that that.

Doesn't matter if you're an evil KKKorporation slipping unlabeled, unobtrusive spying programs onto an unsuspecting customers PC or a harmless beggar out for free games. The ethical situation is identical.