Interesting read on piracy when it comes to digital games...

[triassic911]

http://tommyrefenes.tumblr.com/post/45684087997/apathy-and-refunds-are-more-dangerous-than-piracy


Basically it says that digital games shouldn't calculate a loss in sales due to pirated copies. I know this topic has been discussed prior, but the author wrote a very lengthy, detailed response explaining his reasoning. What are your thoughts?

(Guild, get out of here.)

 

[Rydian]

An instance of piracy isn't a loss in the first place.

Instead of describing the $29 billion number as sales lost to piracy, he said, "I would have preferred to call it the retail value of pirated software." But, Mr. Gantz said, when the trade group released the study, it termed the $29 billion as losses.

http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2004/07/4008-2/

The only people who claim it's a loss are people who have no idea how any of this works in the first place, and companies that would obviously benefit from the propaganda.

 

[Hyro-Sama]

Can we ban piracy threads for awhile?

They've been popping up too much lately and the drama that comes with them gets tiresome.

 

[Sefi]

I've always wondered if they ever factor in that a huge percentage of pirated material would have never been bought at all. Person A goes and downloads every Wii game ever made. Would they have bought all those games? I really doubt it.

 

[the_randomizer]

We should ban piracy and Nintendo doom threads too.

 

[Necron]

But Nintendo is doomed is actually funny D:

 

[the_randomizer]

Funny huh?

 

[mechadylan]

If piracy is calculated by manufacturers, it's done so into their own overhead and not into the final price of a released product. A "genuine" factor that non-digital manufacturers face is "breakage," but this does not affect MSRP either. Digital copies and hard copies of games are relatively close in price if not exactly the same. The risk of a digital copy becoming damaged in transit and the subsequent costs is nil, but that doesn't mean that it should be significantly cheaper than a hard copy which can be directly affected by that variable (greatly, in some instances.) Reason? Calculated loss by manufacturers in overhead and profit.

 

[ShadowSoldier]

tl;dr. Piracy is stealing.

later

 

[triassic911]

An instance of piracy isn't a loss in the first place.

http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2004/07/4008-2/

The only people who claim it's a loss are people who have no idea how any of this works in the first place, and companies that would obviously benefit from the propaganda.

Yes, you are right, and the article does a well job in explaining why. A lot of people assume that all piracy affects sales.

 

[LDAsh]

wel i aint neverz gonna not neverz stop pirating all my gamez bro mow-yeah hell
i am teh torrent king u:1kb/s d:999999999999kb/s
and all my torrentz got 99.9% then i got cut tehm all off like dogz tehy be
mow-yeah!!!1
FBI aintz not never gonna kick my front door cuz i makez granny sit there
tehy kickz my granny and i SUEEEEE obamaz right in the trouserz!!!1

 

[narutofan777]

did u know u can play snes games on a website? no downloads, no nothing. nintendo must be goin' crazy... they are losing thousandz and thousandz of dollars. I mean piracy is evil and bad. I don't like piracy. why am I on gbatemp?

 

[WiiUBricker]

Piracy doesn't impact big companies as hard as small ones.

 

[assassinz]

tl;dr. Piracy is stealing.

later

That's why they should stop calling the file-sharing of games piracy. It's sharing, not stealing. The game was purchased, then shared, with no profit to the original purchaser.

 

[Brian117]

wel i aint neverz gonna not neverz stop pirating all my gamez bro mow-yeah hell
i am teh torrent king u:1kb/s d:999999999999kb/s
and all my torrentz got 99.9% then i got cut tehm all off like dogz tehy be
mow-yeah!!!1
FBI aintz not never gonna kick my front door cuz i makez granny sit there
tehy kickz my granny and i SUEEEEE obamaz right in the trouserz!!!1

Stop.

 

[J-Machine]

Stop.

hammer time?

on topic though... I really did wish digital versions were a little bit cheaper. not so much it'd piss of stores butlike 5 or ten bucks couldn't hurt.

 

[Wizerzak]

Very good read, I just wish more developers would be like this (I know Valve and most indies already are).

Also, wtf is going on in this thread? Maybe 30% of the posts here don't belong in the EoF.

 

[Rydian]

they are losing thousandz and thousandz of dollars

No they're not.