Todd Hollenshead talks about Pirates

(leifhv) #21

This is also part of the problem. Its simple economics. Make games affordable and good and people will buy them. Produce crap at over inflated prices and u push people to the black market.[/quote]

Yes, it’s extremely simple economics:

-Companies will go where the money is.
-They don’t care about arguments like ‘I want to pirate before I buy’ or ‘I want fantastic games and they better be cheap’ or ‘Console games are pirated also’. It just doesn’t matter…but their profit does.

I welcome any effort that lessens the piracy problems on the PC. Not because i particularly like copy-protection and online authorization but because the PC is my preferred gaming platform and I want to see future releases from id, Epic and CryTek on the PC.

(Gringo) #22

Note how I said ‘affordable’ not ‘cheap’. Ur arugment for the perieved decline of pc gaming is over simplified. It cant be solely put down to piracy tho it is a problem.

(M8DNanite) #23

Like I said XBOX360 has been hacked and you can play online with pirated copies (this was not possible with xbox1 and still not possible with PC games), only thing needed is to flash the DVD drive firmware. Wii has been also hacked.

But i think the main reason for moving to consoles is bigger customer base ie more money. Because many previously non-gamers/computer hobbyists now play games too. Its so easy to hook the console to TV, put disk in and go sit on couch and play. Compared to PC gaming compatibility issues, installation issues, hw upgrading something almost once a year etc.

(SKaREO) #24

Hear, hear! I’m with you there.

I agree, exactly. Anti-piracy as we see it now harms the paying customers more often than the hackers/crackers/lamers.

That is the path, now its up to game companies to walk it.

(Joe999) #25

That is the path, now its up to game companies to walk it.[/quote]

can’t agree to that. those who pirate games now will always find excuses for the most laughable reasons in order to continue pirating games. example quote from irc:

i’d like to know why it bothers you so much if i download, say q4, and mess around on a local server by myself, trying to see how it runs on my machine (as opposed to the demo, which as i’ve stated is like another game). why does this offend you? so what if i look at the SP while i have it? my goal is to determine if the MP is worthy of my hard-earned dollar.

and

ID isn’t entitled to my money. i’m entitled to a game i deem worthy of purchasing.

what’s next? sun wasn’t shining when a game got released? :roll:

(Gringo) #26

What happened to the customer was always right :wink:

Seriously tho, how many products are out on the market that u are allowed to sample first. U test drive a car, u can try on clothes or free samples etc etc. What with the nature of pc gaming i.e. computer upgrading etc it makes sense for people to be able to sample things before hand.

Tbh im not defending piracy, I think those who produce good quality games deserve to recieve payment but due to the unequal nature of wealth distribution not everyone can afford them. Thus people have a demand for a game but not the monetary level to acquire it, hence piracy. Of course a lot of those/us who engage in such illegal activity can afford the games but are just tight feckers. Im rambling now and have probably strayed so far off course im slamming in a brick wall.

Carry on.

(Ifurita) #27

While I know you’re not advocating this position, others do use it to justify their actions. Last I checked, if I wanted snacks from the grocery store, but didn’t have the money, I wasn’t allowed to shrug my shoulders and leave the store without paying.

(SKaREO) #28

Joe, I’m with Gringo. I don’t defend Piracy, but I do support choice. I have been suckered into games that weren’t worth the money I spent, and after that I always listened to community feedback about games before buying. That feedback started to get biased with “news” web sites claiming games are spectacular, so I had to stop listening to the money and start listening to the gamers. You know what? A lot of gamers with awesome reviews are pirates too.

(ayatollah) #29

Do you guys not realise what demoes and, to a lesser extent, reviews are for? The vast majority of titles out there have a demo available too.

(Gringo) #30

Very true but chances are that if someone was selling such snacks that they stole at a cheaper price many people would buy them.

Its a very complex debate, I guess the moral argument is that if u cant afford something then u have to go without till u can afford it. There is of course also the advertising element to all this tho that it creates a strong desire for products. Thus they create the want in people which does not discriminate between those who can afford to buy and those who cant. I blame it all on them :stuck_out_tongue:

EDIT: Demo (at least claim) that they are not the final product. What happens if it has changed for the worse? I also dont trust reviews, my opinion is the only one that counts :smiley: :wink:

(SKaREO) #31

Yes, but sometimes those reviewers have a brother who helped create the game, or maybe there’s an executive who doesn’t want to lose his job because he didn’t manage his development team properly. Maybe the site can’t make negative comments about the game, so it gets biased.

They give you demos jam-packed with fun, then you buy the game and its a giant bore, the demo might have been more fun on its own. If game developers make quality games, the money will come, guaranteed.

(Joe999) #32

there’s a simple solution to that: try before you buy. if you can’t try, simply don’t buy. if a company doesn’t deliver a demo before game release, then wait. if you can’t wait, then it’s your problem. there’s no argument that would support piracy.

waiting and not buying is what i’ll do with all coming games and i don’t care about any review that’s been given to me. see gears of war, hyped to heaven and it’s the utter crap.

(leifhv) #33

Afaik you also need an older 360 firmware which very few has and there is no known way to downgrade if you don’t have it. Due to this the number of 360s that can run pirated games is microscopic. Either way it doesn’t really matter as I’ve tried explaining the my earlier posts.

(leifhv) #34

That is the path, now its up to game companies to walk it.[/quote]

A companys formost responsibility will allways be to its shareholders…suggesting that they put the community before their shareholders is ludicrous.

The companies that are moving towards consoles now are producing quality games (Id, Epic) , but of course the quality of a game is not really a factor in this discussion since a game of a given quality will make more money on a console than on the PC.

And no, it’s not up to the game companies to ‘walk the path’…they are allready walking the path towards the consoles so the kind of ultimatium Skareo is making is laughable imo.

(leifhv) #35

Yeah, that happens all the time! :roll:

If game developers make quality games, the money will come, guaranteed.

The best game developers in the business are moving towards consoles now so if their games isn’t good enough to make money on the PC I think it’s safe to say that it’s not possible at all.

(Ifurita) #36

Very true but chances are that if someone was selling such snacks that they stole at a cheaper price many people would buy them.

[/quote]

Last I checked, that was called fencing, which is also illegal

(SCi-Fi) #37

In the end if piracy isnt sorted, companies will disappear and the pc as a
games machine will die its as simple as that.

Ppl dont understand the amount of money that is spent to make a
game and the 30-40 pounds/dollars to buy it is just peanuts to the budget
theyve had to make it, so the amount of games they have to sell is allot.
Then you get piraters who say haha tough we dont care will in the end
will kill the pc and we all will end up moving to consoles and then games
will cost allot…

So i cant see why that if there are sites that contain pc games or any
games that are illegal then they are banned from the internet! If they are
outside the goverments range then they should be blocked its as simple
as that…

(SKaREO) #38

Well I won’t make a futile argument about theft here. I don’t agree with people stealing, but I am an advocate of free-speech, and unbiased information.

I will say that I know people in my neighborhood who illegally trade their console games when they get bored of them, so they only really buy half the games and save their money. People who get paid for their reviews are being biased. People who play a game free and then say what they think are being truthful. If you look at beta testing boards in the feedback section, you’ll notice a big difference between the reviews there and the ones on game sites.

Moving to the console isn’t the cure to piracy. The cure to piracy is to make something worth buying. Anyone can see that quality games make quality $$$. World of Warcraft is the top grossing game, they don’t seem to have a problem, so I think you should see what they do well, and mimic that.

(SCDS_reyalP) #39

Coincidently (or not :lol:) WoW is one kind of game that CANNOT be pirated in any meaningful way (technically, you might be able to make compatible servers and set up your own WoW universe, but it would be a huge undertaking and an easy target to shut down.) So WoW doesn’t offer a solution to developers who want to make single player games, or (to a lesser extent) non-MMO online games.

Just making a product worth buying isn’t the end of the story. Few people will pay for something they can get for free without risk.

(SKaREO) #40

That’s true that developers can suffer from piracy. However filesharing and releasing videos on YouTube has proven an amazing Marketing tool as well. Instead of releasing full games, some places use p2p networks to share demos of upcoming games. Developers have been allowing YouTube to host certain “teaser” style gameplay demos.

Devlopers have also been working with online distributors like Steampowered.com by Valve. Hundreds of thousands of gamers use Steam every day, and new games from developers show up a lot. You can browse the online store and download games directly. The games are also pretty cheap, usually from $9.99-$39.99, so they probably get a lot of sales.