Anonymous goes after Sony

[Nightwolf]

Hmmm I like what Notch said.

[King_Fluffy]

Hmmm I like what stickbeast said.

[Pentagram.J2]

ok first off, comparing video games to music and movies is a piss poor argument. Movies make the majority of their money from their box office run. If theyre losses aren't recouped, which is fairly uncommon, THEN DVD and Blu-Ray sales matter. Else, they're just extending the financial run of the product.

Music, while initially making most of its money off of albums, has other ways to recoup any losses from piracy by concerts and such. The only time that a concert can't help soften a piracy blow is if the artist/band is more underground then satan himself. Not to mention with the advent of the internet, posting a song to the official youtube channel leads to millions in ad revenue, so many people listen to music on youtube, album theft isn't nearly as detrimental as it used to be.

Video games only have one method of making money, their initial retail release. there aren't any other extremely common alternatives of making money in the video game industry. Therefore piracy is extraordinarily more detrimental to video games then it is to other media. Comparing the two is just absolutely absurd.

As for Notches comment, I lost a lot of respect for him with that statement when I heard it a while back. His comment on bad reviews is laughable at best. A negative review is doing its job. Telling the consumer what the reviewer thinks of the product, and if it's worth the money that it's being sold for. If the reviewer says that it's not, then they've done their job. Their opinion doesn't necessarily stop someone from buying the game. Red Steel got middle of the line-horrible reviews, I still bought it and had a blast with it. If there are unanimous negative reviews, then the developer failed to make the game worth a damn, and that's their own fault. With piracy however, there are few to no incentives to purchase the game if you've already downloaded it. I was talking to neel, about how he pirated Just Cause 2, saw how fun it was, and purchased it. I've got respect for people who have the resolve to do that, but the fact of the matter is, a lot of people will see no reason in spending money for a product that they've already got on their hard-drive.

Missed Release dates are another fault of the developer themselves. They're inevitably going to lose a few customers because of that. However, it's rarely a large amount of missed sales. I doubt many people will see a delay and say "fuck this game, no buy." A delay is far better then releasing the game unfinished and tarnishing your reputation as a studio. So again, laughable at best.

Yes, PC games can't be rented, and not all have demos. Maybe if people stepped up and wrote to the developer, or did SOMETHING to show that they didn't buy the game because of a lack of a way to try it before-hand, then I guarantee that the studio would pay more attention to the importance of demos.

Piracy is theft, and very few justifications are legitimate excuses for engaging in it. Anyone who pirates and doesn't eventually pay the studio for the game is detrimental to the industry as a whole, and I've no patience or respect for them. Especially if they try and justify it with a piss poor argument

[mbaxter]

Video games only have one method of making money, their initial retail release. there aren't any other extremely common alternatives of making money in the video game industry. Therefore piracy is extraordinarily more detrimental to video games then it is to other media. Comparing the two is just absolutely absurd.

DLC is becoming quite common.

Piracy to lost sales is not 1 to 1. Some people don't have the money to buy 20 games in a year, but might pirate that many. Yes, piracy leads to some lost sales, but that number is nowhere near 1 lost sale per pirated copy. Take into account people who pirate before buying to try things out (I know a lot of people who did that with minecraft), take into account people who pirate outside their means, take into account people who aren't very interested in something enough to buy it but are interested enough to pirate and play for 10 minutes.

Piracy isn't good, but labeling piracy as a reason for companies to fail? That's just false

[Django]

Piracy isn't good, but labeling piracy as a reason for companies to fail? That's just false

I don't know, remember that video games are sold around the whole wide world ,and not everyone
has the money to purchase those games unlike you or me. A vast majority of the gamers are
from the ghettos where they have no access to credit or any way of paying online for shit like DLC.
They are the ones who pirate the games and use the mods chips, etc the most. PC games in my country
never sell in the stores since everyone i know pirate them. Since they usually have to pay more for the
games ,and wait like a week or 2 for them to arrive at the store.
As any jew business man will say, a product that is not bought is a sell that wasn't made.

That said, video game platforms should not constrict the people into going to this primitive like behaviors
like pirating ,but to make them offers and provide them services that let make them think that they
really deserve the money(example, steam). Letting the customers create homebrew is amongst this
offers/services. And what sony did is backwards as fuck and patronizing.

Still the PS3 is still gansta yo fuck pc hators.

[Pentagram.J2]

the argument of "i pirate it because im poor" is utterly ridiculous. If you can afford a console or decent PC, you can likely afford games to play on them. You simply have to budget accordingly and prioritize. If you can afford a game a month, you're ahead of most of us. I only buy a game once every two or four months, if I'm lucky. Any other games I get in between are gifts from friends/family.

And yes, Baxter, a lot of the time piracy is not a 1:1 loss ratio, however, often is the case that it might as well be. I mean christ, World of Goo has a 90% Piracy rate. That's fucking ridiculous. And what do you mean "pirate outside their means"?

[stickbeast]

It's not a piss poor argument, its completely sound and logical. I'm not sure how "A film can recoup losses by releasing on dvd/music recoup losses by having concerts" refutes comparing the three? Besides, there are many ways a game can make money after its release that are becoming more and more popular. Ports, Special Editions, Subscription Fees, DLC, GOTY editions, and merchandise.

Why does Notch saying "creating a deeper relationship between developers and consumers" make you lose respect for him? How is that bad? What's wrong with making the consumer WANT to give money to you, rather than having the consumer HAVE to give you money in order to use their product?

You say an illegal download IS a lost sale, but a bad review is "not necessarily" a lost sale, when in your own anecdote, you bring up how Neelpos pirated a game, and then bought it afterwards. I downloaded Silent Hill 4 a few years ago, just because I wanted to try it. I would have never played it otherwise. The thought of buying it or looking for it would have never crossed my mind. I was more likely to buy a Silent Hill game afterwards more than ever. I saw there was one on steam, put it in my shopping cart, then stopped to check the reviews. They were bad, so I didn't buy it. I don't buy games that have a below 70 rating on Metacritic. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one either. However, I will pirate media that I might otherwise have no desire to purchase.

The industries like to pretend: you downloaded it, you would have surely bought it otherwise you thief! But that's not true. If I didn't download Silent Hill 4, I would have never played it at all. There are also those emulators for consoles one might not have. You can't just FIND a dreamcast anywhere, so you pirate games and play it on an emulator. If you didn't, then you probably wouldn't bother trying to track one down and buy it.

What does make me not want to buy a game is word of mouth. There are a few games I bought ONLY because of what someone else said, or because I wanted to play with them. If people tell me about a game, and I consider their tastes, it might tell me to stay away from those games. However, when something is available for free, the answer is most likely going to be a yes. If I try it and like it, I'll let other people know how much I liked it, and maybe they might buy it themselves. And maybe my illegal download contributed to MORE sales.

Anyways, all media is available for free, whether they like it or not. They can persecute and round up all the hackers they want, there will be someone there to take their place. Fighting it head on is just stupid and a waste of time and it makes you look like an asshole. Work with consumers, convince them its worth buying, rather than punish them for it.

[Pentagram.J2]

it seems to me like you didnt even read the majority of my post. Comparing the three is a poor argument because these aren't even remotely similar media when it comes to distribution and mass market consumption. Ports, special editions, and GOTY editions are for a niche market that for some reason didn't buy the game the first time around, hoping that whatever bonuses they include will convince them to buy it this time around. Then, people pirate those! Just for the extra content.

Don't even get me started on DLC, while yes it has proven to be successful and profitable to release DLC, it has also made it substantially easier for pirates to steal games, bit by bit. Hell, I stole the Fallout 3 expansions. As soon as I get my PC back up and running, I'm going to buy the DLC legitimately, because otherwise I feel horrible in the fact that I'm a part of this sickening trend taking over the industry.

Way to take what I said about Notch out of context, I never said I had a problem with that line. It was his remarks about reviews and shit that made me lose respect for him.

I was talking to neel, about how he pirated Just Cause 2, saw how fun it was, and purchased it. I've got respect for people who have the resolve to do that, but the fact of the matter is, a lot of people will see no reason in spending money for a product that they've already got on their hard-drive.

If you had read that line completely you would have noticed that I said that I respected people who did that, but that the fact is many people aren't going to do it if they already have the game sitting on their hard-drive. And no, a negative review isn't necessarily a lost sale. I direct you to Destructoid's Assassin's Creed 2 or Sonic Colors review. Negative reviews in a sea of positive, many people disagreed, and went on to purchase the game anyway. Many people enjoyed their purchases as well. Also, even if they did 100% result in sales loss, I wouldn't have a problem with it considering it's the job of these people to tell you whether or not they think your money is well invested in the product, and if the product just didn't do it for them, then it's the creators faults and they have no one to blame but themselves.

Your comment about not being able to find a dreamcast anywhere is absurd. If you have an internet connection, you can find spades of them on ebay or craigslist. If you have an independently owned game shop in your town that carries old games, odds are they carry a dreamcast or two. Old consoles are not extremely hard to find, for the most part. This however leads me to one of my three legit excuses for piracy: If it's an old game that you cannot get anywhere else, or no company is making money off of it anymore. In that situation, where the industry won't be harmed by the download, then it's fine.

Your illegal download may have contributed to some sales, but who's to say they never would have found out about the game otherwise? The list of justifications are endless, but in the end all they are are attempts to find solid footing on a very fragile base of an argument.

While I agree that the industry isn't going about the fight in the right way, I'm very happy any time I see a pirate banned or a hacker's account disabled. Maybe it's because I have an unapologetic love for the industry, but piracy and the excuses that come with it just piss me of. I hope one day the industry finds a way to combat pirates without making the paying customer pay, but as it is now, its a sacrifice I'm willing to accept.

[stickbeast]

Still don't see the difference in pirating films/music/games. A pirated copy is a pirated copy. They are different media, but similar in how they can be downloaded for free illegally, and how their respective companies try to combat piracy. When you steal a song/movie/game, its still there, no one is missing one.

I did read all of what you said, did you read what I said? Here's a tl;dr version: A pirated copy is no more a loss of sale than a bad review. People who pirate games aren't necessarily not going to buy them after pirating them, because they can be like Neelpos or me, or never really have interest in them at all. In other words, if there was no crack for it, they wouldn't have ever played it. People aren't necessarily going to skip on buying a game because it has bad reviews, but there would be many who'd be dissuaded to do so (in fact a bad review is trying to convince people: hey gamers, don't buy this game!)

If you are so against piracy, do you not accept people lending you games? Both the lender and the hacker's actions were made possible by a legal purchase initially...so what's the difference really? Especially if it's a single player game you can beat in 10 hours with limited replay value...plus there's always the reassurance you can borrow it again.

If not being able to afford new content isn't a good enough reason, why'd you pirate the Fallout 3 DLC?

[joe]

it's a very complicated issue. stealing a loaf of bread is already complicated - add in digital virtual copies and it's probably beyond a simple moral black/white.

personally the way i feel is that capitalism itself is broken and that under a better system all the people who play video games would pay into a pool based on their income/resources and then that pool would be used to fund big budget and indie games.

[Rat-morningstar]

joe for world president '12

long live communism

[Grndslmhttr3]

it's a very complicated issue. stealing a loaf of bread is already complicated - add in digital virtual copies and it's probably beyond a simple moral black/white.

personally the way i feel is that capitalism itself is broken and that under a better system all the people who play video games would pay into a pool based on their income/resources and then that pool would be used to fund big budget and indie games.

If only there was a way to pirate bread

and Pizza Rolls

[jermm]

Pentagram:

Do you not like iPhone hackers jailbreaking their devices? Because, that enables piracy as well. In addition to things as stupid as custom SMS sounds.

[NightFantom]

just leaving this here for the lulz, yarrr and to start a more bitesize conversation

seriously people, those posts are waay too long, i'd love to read them but i just don't have the time (nor the attention span for that matter)

anyway:
3 camps:
1) piracy = theft
2) piracy =/= theft, but does incur a sales loss
3) piracy =/= theft and has nothing to do with it (yarr)

@OP: maybe a vote is in order?


edit: for the record, i'm against people who copy stuff that isn't theirs and sell it (which IS a sales loss imo), but not necessarily against people who occasionally download something for personal gain or to help someone out

[Nightwolf]

I would prefer Jacque Fresco, The Venus Project, Resource-Based Economy

Then anyone who would want to make a game just for the fun of sharing a form of gameplay or a story with it as a medium could do as at their leisure. There would be nothing to steal.