Piracy, as we all know, is a phenomenon that has exploded along with the introduction of the internet over the past decade. It is estimated that several hundreds of millions of dollars is "lost" to this illegal market. It is not without consequence, however, that companies are shifting their strategy around game development to require online authentication of their software. Funcom, one of the major players in the gaming industry who are responsible for games such as "Dreamfall", "The Longest Journey" and the upcoming "Age of Conan" are putting their foot down.
Funcom CEO Trond Arne Aas told the press that they have decided to discontinue their development of "offline" games. The loss of revenue to piracy is just too big. He noted that prior to Dreamfall even reaching the stores last year, over 200'000 copies had allready been downloaded and distributed illegally on piracy websites such as The Pirate Bay, and according to Aas, the widespread piracy of today is radically changing the gaming industry.
Game developers who focus solely on offline games are running into some major problems. For exacmple, in France the gaming industry is in a crisis due to piracy.
The game development industry is not alone about noticing the effects. Other industries like movies, music and porno are reporting decreasing sales, both in box and internet sales due to the large amount of "free" websites on the net. For example, the sales of porno DVD"s decreased by a whopping 15% last year.
3 things you should know about intellectual property rights:
1) Data and intellectual property theft is illegal almost everywhere globally.
2) Copying/duplication for privat use is legal a lot of places if you own an original copy of the media.
3) Downloading games, movies or music from "open" websites such as The Pirate Bay is illegal, and not only do you expose yourself to digital theft but due to the way most "open" P2P networks operate you also end up re-distributing the data yourself.
Comments
Too bad, I heard Dreamfall and The Longest Journey were pretty good games... Selling games over the internet won't stop piracy, it might decrease it, but its still there. You can easily play counter strike source on illegal servers. Even mmorpgs aren't safe... hell, World of Warcraft is also playable on illegal servers. Of course, I won't go into details now. If there wasn't for piracy, I'd be spending a shitload of money on games that could really suck. Piracy is important, it might take away from the player base, but it also adds. There are people that won't buy the game until they are sure its worth the money. There would also be alot less gamers, and less feedback from gamers. I know the number of developers and publishers that actually listen to their fans is smaller every year, but IMO experienced players who give good suggestions are still important. Piracy gives them the opportunity to play alot of games, remember, buy and even promote the good games and good ideas from certain games. Think about it that way..
First off.. most of this is pure bs that they loose money.. or well sure they do loose money due to pirace BUT if they would get their heads outa their... and accept that the market and stuff is changing and willingly change with it they would not have such a big problem as they are having.
For example the music industry claim they are loosing x amount of cash but other very well done research articles show the total opposite, that actually yhe marker is increasing.
The industry however totally refuse to change how they sell their media and who buys a cd today? I would love to get it digitally and then burn it myself and then print the cover myself and voila a totally new cd in less than 2 minutes and i dont have to leave my house. Also it's not the artists that are loosign on this.. it's only the company.. artist get roughly 1-2% of the companies sales and the rest of their money comes from merchandise and live gigs.
So yes in one sence i guess one could say they do actually loose money.. but it's only due to their own stupidity for not changing with the market.
Sorry for any spelling misstakes :P
I wish all game companies would release their games like valve does...makes updating games as well as buying and installing them really easy Having them all in one place is a plus as well
-- BEGIN RANT -- I don't know if they are really wrong. There are already markets that have been completely destroyed due to pirated material being available very freely on the streets. Mostly these markets are in poorer countries. Some countries do not even have copyright laws and there software development is non-existent. I don't think we are morally superior in nations which provide a large part of the income of these companies so there must be a very thin wall protecting software developers.
If you removed copyright laws, which is effectively happening since we are eroding the laws by commonly accepting piracy; I have little doubt we would also have the same piracy levels as these poorer countries. This is probably why software is trying to move to an online model where application are stored on webservers and logic is kept private.
I think people fail to see the value in virtual goods such as software. I mean it's not really like buying a TV or a DVD player. Once you realize that the epitome of value, i.e money, is a purely abstract concept that lacks any real value at all, I think it becomes easier to trade some virtual numbers for some virtual bits. Last time I saw any real money was probably weeks ago, I always use my Visa and bank transfers. So stealing software is like stealing money, you're really just stealing the mass hallucination of value.
Now I pay for my software but sometimes download my movies. Being a software developer I guess solidarity doesn't really stretch beyond my own circles.
-- END RANT --
I'm trying my best to get those porno DVD numbers up though.
" For example, the sales of porno DVD"s decreased by a whopping 15% last year. "
Probably because people's partners are gettin it on more now its the new millenium rather than internet piracy taking hold :P
Funcom is making a fool out of themself. Ask Valve or EA why they are selling their products via the internet.
Piracy is by it's very definition theft. Always has been, always will be.
ANYBODY who claims that people will successfully pirate music, movies, games or anything else and then will go plop down the cash for the legal version of what they have already stolen is full of shit. Plain and simple. No smoke, no mirrors, no twisting numbers to make something out of nothing. NOBODY is going to do that.
All that piracy does is let some percentage of the population that would have otherwise purchased the product AND those who would not have purchased the product anyway obtain it without cost. The percentage is debatable and perhaps impossible to nail down, but you can pretty much bet the percentage is going up every single year as more people get broadband access and become more internet savvy (i.e. learn how to steal music, games, etc using software such as limewire).
Call a spade a spade and quit trying to blow smoke, kids.
Personally, I welcome the day when all industries figure out a way to stop all piracy. Sadly, I think this day will never come until and unless money is no longer the great motivator of all human innovation and productivity. But hey, we're talking tech and we can dream, right?
Ye great, in my country its in by the law that you can make 2 copies. The question is how am I suppose to make legaly a copy of something that is copy protected.