# lol piracy and PC videogames



## ElizabethAlexandraMary (May 14, 2010)

so I just realized
like
companies put DRM on their shit to prevent pirating
DRM makes people pirate more because it makes for shitty retails
then retails sell less
so like
companies then drop PC sales because of pirating
then lol consoles

so
um
pretty much
companies ruin their own PC sales

help I am confuse


(Also I fucking know games without DRM actually have it worse for pirating, and that a little smart marketing and product strategies can't solve everything, but shit.)


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## LizardKing (May 14, 2010)

Yeah


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## Ames (May 14, 2010)

[yt]ZLsJyfN0ICU[/yt]


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## ElizabethAlexandraMary (May 14, 2010)

LizardKing said:


> Yeah


 Fuck I know.

Let's go back to company-owned arcades, where you can only play staring down the barrel of a security officer's assault rifle.


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## Darkhavenz0r (May 14, 2010)

Offering no DRM on your games nowadays is like offering yourself ass-first to a shitty-dicked rapist. The reason increasingly-crippling DRM exists nowadays is to give developers and publishers a few desparately-needed months (in a market where increasingly more and more games are being built around the concept of planned obsolescence within the span of one to two years, such as many sports-genre titles) on the market to regain their development costs and make a few extra bucks while they're at it, _knowing full well while designing their DRM scheme_ that it is going to eventually fail. But the more prolonged that inevitable failure of their copy protection, the more opportunity to cut a profit.

You can take a cue from the many indie developers that put their games out without any kind of copy protection scheme. Do you really think the typical pirate kid that leeches the new Razor-1911 or ReloadeD release is going to think twice?


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## Seas (May 14, 2010)

Darkhavenz0r said:


> Buying games with DRM nowadays is like offering yourself ass-first to a shitty-dicked rapist.



Fixed.


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## AshleyAshes (May 14, 2010)

I really don't think that DRM encourages piracy.  

More importantly, piracy on the PC in single player games encourages the move to consoles.


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## Darkhavenz0r (May 14, 2010)

@Seastalker: Uh, ok, that's really helpful. Can you explain why you feel that way about a viewpoint you apparently ignored entirely?

@AshleyAshes: May I rebutt that perhaps, out of frustration for these companies continuing to in effect screw over their potential customers, release groups and such find inspiration to keep cracking and releasing pirate copies of games to stave off the eventuality that we may no longer own our possessions?

What I mean is, the ultimate goal of alot of suits in publishing companies (just me speculating the possibilities here) is to move to a model in which you must constantly rent the right to use your software (in one sense or another) and take the whole cloud-computing concept to the next level by making sure that customers do not at any one time have access to all the bytes that make up the data they are renting. In effect, this means that if this line of thought continues, there will no longer be "tower" computers; there will be only terminals in which you remotely access your games and constantly pay to use them. You can kind of think of it as a much bigger-scale version of OnLive.


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## Zydala (May 14, 2010)

http://kotaku.com/5533615/another-view-of-video-game-piracy

Best article I've read about video game piracy yet. Some highlights on it: people aren't losing as much money as they think they are on piracy, not as many people are pirating as you might think, do pirates really play/would buy everything they download?, why PC games are actually losing money, and stuff like that.

It's written by the people who did the Humble Indie Bundle earlier this month. With the DRM-free stuff, in which they raised over $1 million with.

Anyway, I think that DRM is sort of the wrong solution to the problem. I mean I don't think it loses sales, but it can be discouraging for people when the DRM programs are inhibiting to the player itself (like the AC2 one). 

I think my favorite solutions that companies have been doing lately are the copies that have limited gameplay that they put out themselves on torrents and stuff, and let people decide if it's worth their time. Also does anyone remember the Batman: Arkham Asylum glitch on the pirated copies? I thought it was funny because people would come to forums complaining and others would know exactly why the game wasn't working. I think some players eventually patched it, but it wasn't a terribly bad solution.


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## ElizabethAlexandraMary (May 14, 2010)

AshleyAshes said:


> I really don't think that DRM encourages piracy.
> 
> More importantly, piracy on the PC in single player games encourages the move to consoles.


No I know, and I don't think I'm just an old fart trying to stay behind the times. But PC gaming has some pretty interesting advantages (as do consoles) that will be lost as the consol market gains size.



Zydala said:


> http://kotaku.com/5533615/another-view-of-video-game-piracy
> 
> Best article I've read about video game piracy yet. Some highlights on it: people aren't losing as much money as they think they are on piracy, not as many people are pirating as you might think, do pirates really play/would buy everything they download?, why PC games are actually losing money, and stuff like that.
> 
> ...


That's really interesting.


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## Aden (May 14, 2010)

Zydala said:


> http://kotaku.com/5533615/another-view-of-video-game-piracy



Good article.


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## Runefox (May 14, 2010)

DRM in itself is not evil. Copy protection in itself is not evil. However, the direction DRM is going (see also: Ubisoft/EA "always-on" DRM requiring a network connection to authentication servers at all times even for single player) is inherently going to topple over.

If this causes a crash of the PC market, the console market is then fucked.


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## ElizabethAlexandraMary (May 14, 2010)

Runefox said:


> DRM in itself is not evil. Copy protection in itself is not evil. However, the direction DRM is going (see also: Ubisoft/EA "always-on" DRM requiring a network connection to authentication servers at all times even for single player) is inherently going to topple over.
> 
> If this causes a crash of the PC market, the console market is then fucked.



As much as I'd like to agree with that statement, on which claims are you basing it?


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## ADF (May 14, 2010)

GameSpot review scores, A-AAAA.

PC still gets the vast majority of developer support, having more games to its name than any of the consoles. The only ones really having a problem is the big companies that spend millions/10s of millions on their games, the more it costs to make games the more copies you have to sell; and it is then that losses to piracy (imagined or not) become a concern.

Frankly when they become that big they are less appealing. Most of these big companies pump out one size fits all, cross platform, lowest common denominator crap that appeals to the masses but is largely bland.


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## Runefox (May 14, 2010)

FrancisBlack said:


> As much as I'd like to agree with that statement, on which claims are you basing it?



What, the console market being fucked? Let me copy-paste something I wrote on Kotaku earlier:



			
				Runefox said:
			
		

> Regarding PC versus console e-peen measurement, remember this: Without consoles, PC gaming would not currently have as large a market nor quality of titles as it has today. Many games are cross-platform and the PC owes a lot of its major releases to this. There are still companies like Valve who primarily work on the PC, but this is changing rapidly.
> 
> However, at the same time, the consoles currently owe the PC a debt of gratitude for their continued technological advancement. The competition between ATI/AMD and nVidia fuels the race for faster and more capable graphics chipsets that the consoles capitalize on. Should the PC gaming market fail, that competition ceases to exist. Hardware development will stagnate (even for Intel/AMD in the processor market (while unrelated to consoles directly), will probably head more towards power-efficiency rather than raw speed), and new consoles will have less and less of a leg up on the previous generation, if any. R&D for this kind of thing is massive, and custom chips nowadays are almost completely out of the question (even the Cell was a collaborative effort that made its way into other platforms).
> 
> Either side winning the "war" could very well lead to another crash. Be thankful that the PC and consoles exist side by side, and that the PC's push the hardware envelope while the consoles push the software. Things aren't the same as they used to be during the high days of PC gaming, but with any luck, they'll keep going for some time yet.



It's worth noting that a single console generation is at least two or three generations of graphics hardware and CPU design.


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## AshleyAshes (May 14, 2010)

Runefox said:


> If this causes a crash of the PC market, the console market is then fucked.


 
Except everyone expects DRM on the console.  It's closed hardware and we're all okay with that.  Then agian, we'd all conclude that the console companies went INSANE if their machines COULD just run DVDRs or BDRs right out of the box.


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## Runefox (May 14, 2010)

AshleyAshes said:


> Except everyone expects DRM on the console.  It's closed hardware and we're all okay with that.



Nah, that's not the point I'm trying to make (though similar DRM on a console would also be unacceptable - Always-on connections aren't as common as Ubi/EA think, and perfect connections aren't common, either. The way this kind of DRM works may as well just stream the game over the network as far as the user is concerned).

The point I'm trying to make is that if the PC gaming market collapsed and competition ceased between AMD/ATI and nVidia in the performance GPU market, console hardware innovation will stagnate. A single console generation is akin to about three generations of computer hardware, and without that advancement, future generations of consoles won't be able to exploit that. Hardware innovation in the console arena will also stagnate, which means either releases of very similar hardware across generations or no new hardware at all (which is just as bad for business). Consumer GPU and CPU technology will advance towards energy efficiency instead of advancing in computational power and feature sets, and that will basically be that. The entire reason consoles exist as they do today is because of the advances in the PC realm (remember who makes the graphics chipsets in every major console today and where their R&D comes from).

This has direct consequences for the software arena because many of the companies that currently make their businesses up from rehashing similar games over and over again (hi, ActiBlizzard!) will no longer be profitable. While this might seem like a good thing, it's the profits that are made by these kinds of games that fuel experimental projects like Mirror's Edge. In the worst case, that could precipitate into a full-on crash in the console arena as well, or at best, seriously reduce the volume and quality of future titles across the board. Furthermore, if console manufacturers can't sell new generations of consoles for lack of new hardware and high-volume/quality software, there's no profitability in keeping up things like the PSN or X-Box Live, and more than likely production of consoles will slow or cease. Which would equal crash.

Graphics aren't everything, but keeping consoles profitable is - And one of the biggest ways to do that is to update it every few years with new hardware. If a console can't be updated, there's no profit in it for anyone.


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## Spawtsie Paws (May 14, 2010)

LizardKing said:


> Yeah



I remember popping a boner reading that because it is so damn true.


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## Issashu (May 14, 2010)

Heh, this reminds me of some of the more "sophisticated" copy protections. I think PoP: Two thrones (at least one of the trilogy about the sands) made you disconnect the cd-rom, if you wanted to play with a crack. Me and a friend were wondering what it would mean for a laptop user. Disconnecting physically your drive on a laptop is pretty hard. So we got the PoP disc, installed the game and then applied a crack. The result was really funny. The protection didn't even kick in  No need to do anything on a laptop beyond placing the cracked .exe file.

And speaking of DRM and windows life...you HAVE to try Dawn of War 2  It uses both steam and windows live at the same time  Requiring non-stop online connection to some server is not a solution. Steam games are the perfect example that it can be cracked too and the only people suffering are the ones, who actually bought the game :/

Also the statement that piracy happens on PC only (or even mainly) is completely wrong. Think about console chips and similar.


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## Runefox (May 14, 2010)

Yeah, the only console where piracy currently doesn't happen whatsoever is the PS3. The X-Box 360, Wii, PSP and DS all are vulnerable.


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## Zaraphayx (May 15, 2010)

Companies don't lose as much money to pirates as they think they do.

Plus some games are really crap and I'm not risking money on something that's going to give me 2 hours of entertainment then get flushed off my drive.

Plus media scares keep most people from pirating ever, average joe internet user sees the news article about some college kid who got sued for 500 thousand dollars for downloading some songs and his ass clenches in terror.


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## Shireton (May 16, 2010)

Darkhavenz0r said:


> Offering no DRM on your games nowadays is like offering yourself ass-first to a shitty-dicked rapist. The reason increasingly-crippling DRM exists nowadays is to give developers and publishers a few desparately-needed months (in a market where increasingly more and more games are being built around the concept of planned obsolescence within the span of one to two years, such as many sports-genre titles) on the market to regain their development costs and make a few extra bucks while they're at it, _knowing full well while designing their DRM scheme_ that it is going to eventually fail. But the more prolonged that inevitable failure of their copy protection, the more opportunity to cut a profit.
> 
> You can take a cue from the many indie developers that put their games out without any kind of copy protection scheme. Do you really think the typical pirate kid that leeches the new Razor-1911 or ReloadeD release is going to think twice?



Yeah, look how horribly Stardock has done with the games it's published having no DRM. Oh, wait, they're doing fine.


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## AshleyAshes (May 16, 2010)

Runefox said:


> Yeah, the only console where piracy currently doesn't happen whatsoever is the PS3. The X-Box 360, Wii, PSP and DS all are vulnerable.


 
Yeah but the PC is the most vunlerable.

PC: Overwrite with patched files.

Wii: Softmod that while fairly easy could still be well beyond users in the catagory of 'Your mom and dad'.

Xbox 360: Drivemod requires disassembly and flashing of new firmware onto the optical drive.  Well out of the skill range for many people and they often need to pay 'some guy' to do it.  Options for the JTAG mod to allow unsigned code to execute is worse, a specific dashboard version is required and even using this mod is more complicated

PSP: Used to be easy, but now only certian firmware versions are exploitable on new units.  The PSP is best considdered 'sealed up' in as far as new shipping units.

DS: You still need to make the effort to mail order or buy the R4 or similar devise.

PS3: Hackproof, currently.

So you can see the skill needed to pirate on machines varies but by far the PC is the most idiot proof though I'm sure there are some people who couldn't even figure THAT out.


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## Ireful (May 17, 2010)

It seems that when most pirates come across a game that they can't cracked, they're not going to buy the game. They're just going to move on to another game that they can crack.

DRMs are not going to increase sales. It may keep honest gamers honest and that's about it. I don't mind when gaming companies take steps to keep their product copy protected, but when the paying end user has to jump though hoops to play the product, that can hurts sales of the game or worst, make gamers loose interest in any new products produced by the same company.


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## Issashu (May 17, 2010)

AshleyAshes said:


> So you can see the skill needed to pirate on machines varies but by far the PC is the most idiot proof though I'm sure there are some people who couldn't even figure THAT out.



"Some" is an understatemen,considering how many questions about cracks exist on certain forums. 

Indeed for some of the consoles you need to have hardware knowledge, but then you also got friends and professionals, who could do it for you 
And the cost to put a chip on your console would be around 2-3 legal games. For some even less that 1 (DS).

It's not piracy that turns developers to consoles, but the easiness of developing games for a console. Every single XBox360 (or PS3,Wii,etc.) user anywhere in the world has the same hardware. You don't have to test and optimize your product for a range of hardware configurations or operating systems. You just have one single set of hardware that you can use. Also consoles are made for playing games. Simply compare the process of getting to play a game on the PC and on a console (install vs pop the disc in). It's only natural that consoles become the main gaming platform.
The "PC piracy and loss of money" topic is pretty much the same as "music companies loosing money due to illegal mp3 downloads". No one is loosing THAT much money  The Stardock example above is just perfect


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## Saxton Hale (May 17, 2010)

Pirating led to DRM to prevent piracy which led to more piracy to remove DRM and now consoles.
You simple-headed hooligans killed the market.


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## AshleyAshes (May 17, 2010)

I really think that only the single player market on the PC is threatened however.  Multiplayer where we use online networks to play has DRM that we're all okay with.  You have to varify your key and always be connected to the network to play online games.  MMORPGs are a prime example of this.  The system is essentually the same as all of this hated 'always online' DRM that people complain about, the thing is WoW is useless offline anyway so we don't care.


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## RollandM (Jun 8, 2010)

Shireton said:


> Yeah, look how horribly Stardock has done with the games it's published having no DRM. Oh, wait, they're doing fine.



and Bethesda who only puts out a good game like every 3-5 years having no DRM other than please insert the CD if even that. (if you even count please insert the CD) 

Frankly you want good digital rights management.  Make your games so goddamn amazing and powerhungry that only someone running with 6gb of ram and a 1gb video card on a six core cpu can play them. cause not many broke people will have a box like that.  Because hey alot of piracy is just due to "Well I want this but I'm NOT willing to dump 60 bucks on it"


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## ElizabethAlexandraMary (Jun 8, 2010)

RollandM said:


> and Bethesda who only puts out a good game like every 3-5 years having no DRM other than please insert the CD if even that. (if you even count please insert the CD)
> 
> Frankly you want good digital rights management.  Make your games so goddamn amazing and powerhungry that only someone running with 6gb of ram and a 1gb video card on a six core cpu can play them. cause not many broke people will have a box like that.  Because hey alot of piracy is just due to "Well I want this but I'm NOT willing to dump 60 bucks on it"



Well sorry, Fallout 3 had securom.

I'm running through less and less issues, though. Dunno if securom works any better, but it didn't crash on me once with most recent games.


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## Eric (Jun 11, 2010)

Well, DRMs are stupid. While crackers almost always find a way to bypass them, paying players are bugged by them (e.g. only being allowed to install the game 5 times, having an internet connection while playing). It's kinda like the companies are slowly forcing their paying customers to become pirates.


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## yiffytimesnews (Jun 14, 2010)

Is it no wonder then why the better games only appear on the consoles. I heard some developers simply refuse to do any more PC games simply due to the piracy issue.


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## Lobar (Jun 14, 2010)

I'll stop pirating when they stop expecting me to pay $50 up front for something I might not even enjoy.


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## Stratelier (Jun 14, 2010)

Lobar said:


> I'll stop pirating when they stop expecting me to pay $50 up front for something I might not even enjoy.


Boo you.

But seriously, there's an article in the current issue of _GamePro_ talking about piracy.  One quote from a Sony rep went something along the lines that not every pirated copy represents lost sales revenue -- some represent sales that _never would have occured anyway_.  And unfortuantely, it's nigh-impossible to tell the difference.

Not to mention that if you decide to play a game over at a friend's house rather than purchasing your own copy of it, that may be another lost sale for the publisher, moreover with nothing illegal going on.

Not to mention how publishers don't have a tax on used-game sales....

In the meantime, there are those game-subscription services....


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## south syde dobe (Jun 14, 2010)

LizardKing said:


> Yeah



I'm not going to lie, that is some bullshit that you have to put up with that and you paid for it...


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