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[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i think it's fully possible to want to reduce piracy for reasons other than increasing profit. for instance, if one believes that piracy has other negative effects on society and innovation, or is unfair to artists, one could want to reduce it even if one doesn't profit from its reduction

part of the original motivation for copyright law for instance wasn't to increase profits, it was to protect authors who were being ripped off by publishers. back in the 18th century and earlier, publishers did not have to seek permission from an author in order to publish their books. publishers could just take a popular book and publish and sell it themselves without giving the original author anything, offering it at lower price and outselling the original, and it was all completely legal. this led to authors being even poorer than they are now. they're certainly still ripped off by publishers, but at least publishers are now forced to negotiate for the rights to the book and not just publish it without the author's permission, which is overall a better situation for them (tho still not ideal)

[s_l_m]

I think the best anti piracy is to lower the cost of your game, I am far, far (as in more than two times) more likely to buy a 30 dollar game than a 60 dollar game...

Either that or manuals with codes or codewheels or something like that, nobody does that anymore, but it was surprisingly effective during the "don't copy that floppy" era, at the very least it is a huge hassle to pirates.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I think the best anti piracy is to lower the cost of your game, I am far, far (as in more than two times) more likely to buy a 30 dollar game than a 60 dollar game...

i'm not sure this works very well because mobile games (such as android games) tend to cost less than pc games, and are pirated at a higher rate than pc games. pc games also tend to cost less than console games, and consoles games are pirated at a lower rate than pc games. even the indie game bundle, which could be bought for a single cent, saw enormous amounts of piracy

game prices also used to be much higher than they are now (remember $80 snes games?), and piracy also used to be much lower than it is now during those times

so i don't really think piracy rate is related to sales price very strongly. piracy rates for a game seem to be related to its platform (how easy it is to pirate) much more than its price

[s_l_m]

There is a lot of truth to what you say, mobile games ARE pirated like crazy despite costing very little. Maybe on a large scale it doesn't hold up, but I know that for me personally (obviously I can't speak for other people) I try to support artists as much as I am financially able to, but there are unfortunately a lot of people out there who think differently. All I know is that price is the main factor in my decision to pirate something.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

yeah but that's just going by a single case of yourself. if we went by any other person we'd get different results. for instance in my case, the only games i pirate are games that are not available for sale anymore. so if i were to go by myself i'd say that the way to reduce piracy is always to make your game available for sale, not have it go out of print and be unable to be purchased anymore

[s_l_m]

Fair enough. but all I know is how I feel. I wish I could magically understand how to make people not want to pirate something, but all I know is how to make me not pirate something. Just contributing that information

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

to understand it isn't magic, it just requires statistics. and there are statistics about it. perhaps i've a better perspective because i actually have a game that has been pirated, so i'm not just looking at it from the side of the person pirating, and can see it from both sides. and in my experience there's dozens of different reasons people pirate, the main one being that it's easy and they can get away with it without any consequences. so simply making it a little bit harder (with fake versions, etc.) matters a lot more than reducing your price, *especially* because reducing your price has such vast repercussions on overall profits even ignoring piracy. for instance, if photoshop were to reduce its price from 700$ to 20$, would piracy of photoshop go down? of course. but would its overall profits go up? probably not.

also i'd suggest reading this: http://www.positech.co.uk/talkingtopirates.html -- someone asked pirates why they pirate. he then gave a list of the reasons they gave him, with a general sense of proportion about what % of people gave which reasons

[PompiPompi]

I don't think poverty is the real issue. It's more like greed.
I don't mind poor people pirating a few games because they can't afford ANYTHING, but most pirates are people who can afford games, they are just too greedy they want to save money and still play games.
Edit: As an evidence, many of the pirated AAA titles are games that will mostly run on higher end computers or even XBOX, if you can afford a high end PC or an XBOX you can probably afford to buy games.

[moi]

in order to be an indie dev, you have to understand the whole universe, and then propose a paradigm to suppress world poverty

[s_l_m]

in order to be an indie dev, you have to understand the whole universe, and then propose a paradigm to suppress world poverty

I haven't been on this site for very long, so I don't know much about it yet, but does it have a "forum quote of the week/month" section?
Because I nominate this

[Dacke]

@PompiPompi
I think you need to look up a definition of 'greed'. Pirates share freely, which in many ways is the opposite of greed.

Greed is the inordinate desire to possess wealth, goods, or objects of abstract value with the intention to keep it for one's self, far beyond the dictates of basic survival and comfort.

Personally I don't see why it would be more moral to respect the mess that is called copyright law. I think that the act of supporting individual artists and creators is good, while copyright laws are bad from a moral perspective. But that's a a discussion for a different thread.

I haven't been on this site for very long, so I don't know much about it yet, but does it have a "forum quote of the week/month" section?
Because I nominate this

He was just paraphrasing an old RinkuHero quote.

[s_l_m]

Ah, I should probably lurk more...

[Dacke]

nah 

[PompiPompi]

Dacke, I was more referring to the "end user" of piracy rather than those who spread the software.
The people who download an illegal copy of a song instead of buying it.
For most people who download content illegaly, the main reason is because they don't want to spend money.
So when they get illegal content they save money. It's greedy because they want to both poses new content(entertainment) AND save their money. Where most more honest people need to consider their budget when buying entertainment, and know it will come on account of other things.

[Moczan]

I have to agree with PompiPompi, that while there are people who pirate because of poverty, it's hard to believe that people pirating newest AAA titles are poor, cause hey, they can afford internet connection and a powerful expensive PC.

On the other hand, I think there are more pirates in eastern Europe or Asia than in the west because seriously, game prices here compared to typical income are just fucking huge.

[s_l_m]

I have to agree with PompiPompi, that while there are people who pirate because of poverty, it's hard to believe that people pirating newest AAA titles are poor, cause hey, they can afford internet connection and a powerful expensive PC.

On the other hand, I think there are more pirates in eastern Europe or Asia than in the west because seriously, game prices here compared to typical income are just fucking huge.

This could be true. I am in Canada and despite hanging out with hackers/gamers/general outsiders for most of my life, I probably have met like maybe 9 or 10 people who actually have a hardware modded console (and I am one of them), and I know way more people who buy all of their games than pirate any. The system that I have seen the most rampant piracy from is probably the dreamcast, where pretty much everyone who owns a dreamcast is a pirate (not really a big surprise), or Android, just because it is so easy. That being said, I have never been to Europe, so I can't compare. But I honestly don't see piracy as that huge of an issue here

On second thought, I live in Saskatchewan, which is considered the "redneck" province, so it makes sense that people would be less tech savvy here...

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

yeah i definitely disagree with dacke in that i feel that a lot of pirates are motivated by greed. this isn't true of the philosophical pirates who feel copyright law is evil or whatever, but it's true of most of everyday pirates: the ones who believe piracy is wrong but do it anyway because they don't want to pay for something that they can get for free

i suspect that about 90% of pirates would *not* pirate if they were millionaires, and those pirates don't usually "seed" their torrents after downloading them, they just download for themselves and don't care about sharing with anyone else. they aren't in it to share, they're in it to take

so basically, if you would pirate even if you were a millionaire, and if you care more about sharing pirated material with others than finding pirated material for yourself, then you are closer to a "philosophical pirate". if you would not and do not, you are closer to a "greedy pirate"

[Moczan]

Other than price, there is a serious lack of distribution. While you can buy most mainstream titles, getting stuff like Odin Sphere or Dark Cloud 2 for PS2 was really hard, for more obscure titles only guys who import have them and they ask a lot for them.

[Radix]

I have to agree with PompiPompi, that while there are people who pirate because of poverty, it's hard to believe that people pirating newest AAA titles are poor, cause hey, they can afford internet connection and a powerful expensive PC.

Hardware can be substantially cheaper from market to market, though. You don't really need a top end system to play new releases if you don't care about full settings; the equivalent of a five-year-old high end system will do.

so basically, if you would pirate even if you were a millionaire, and if you care more about sharing pirated material with others than finding pirated material for yourself, then you are closer to a "philosophical pirate". if you would not and do not, you are closer to a "greedy pirate"

Yeah, that's dumb. You're ignoring the potential economic disutility of the potential chance of being busted multiplied by those millions.

[EdgeOfProphecy]

There's a percentage, I believe to be extremely high, of people who pirate something but would not buy it otherwise.  These people are not lost sales, they were never sales to begin with.  Gots to keep this in mind when considering the whole pirate thing.

I do not believe there's this astounding downward trend in percentage of income spent on media consumption.  Until that happens, I will not be particularly concerned with piracy.  People are still spending lots of entertainment, and will in the foreseeable future.

Seriously though, you're not smart.  No one is compared to the teeming billions of humanity.  Anything you put up for sale is going to be cracked and on a torrent site lickity split, no matter what measures you take to prevent it from happening.  Instead, focus on delivering a better user experience to your customers than pirates can, and trust that people will actually drop cash on the thing if its worth buying.  If you piss off your customers, or make it very difficult to get your product legitimately, then you're going to run the risk of people pirating your stuff.  HBO hemorrhages money by not having legit means of purchasing Game of Thrones episodes.  It is absolutely no coincidence that it was the top pirated TV show, because there's just no easy way to get it otherwise.