What's the best way to reduce piracy?

[Jake]

The concept is bullshit.  Why?  I have a simple two word rebuttal.

"Piracy is a potential lost sale, which is harmful to the industry!"

"Prove it."

Ask me if I would have bought a game if I hadn't had the ability to pirate it. Yes. Yes I would've.

Some people would, some people wouldn't. For a publisher to make a claim that every person that pirated it would have bought it is silly.

[Scotty]

That's why the subject of the topic is "What's the best way to reduce piracy?" and not "What's the best way to eliminate piracy?"

(Might as well jump on the semantics train with everyone else)

[sayers6]

I wasn't saying that everyone would buy the game who at pirated, my point was that some would. In economics, generally speaking, the more potential sales you have, the more likely something is to be sold. It doesn't matter if everyone would buy it or not. You can't deny that there would be more potential sales, and with a few people like me, their sales would increase.

That's why the subject of the topic is "What's the best way to reduce piracy?" and not "What's the best way to eliminate piracy?"

(Might as well jump on the semantics train with everyone else)

Hell if we were talking about eliminating it completely, the answer is simple; stop making shit.

[ARTgames]

What's the best way to reduce piracy?"

+Try and make as many of the games functions and services online based so they have to connect to your servers. Make all your games like an onlive service if you can.
+Make your games for systems that are more locked down and harder to pirate on like consoles.
+Bring back arcade machines and lock them tight.
+Make the games cheaper.

I think these are some of the best ways to reduce piracy.

[Scotty]

I'm putting my hard-hat on before Chris reads that.

[ARTgames]

Well I kinda wanted to discuss a system in which piracy would be imposable because all software would be "free" because we had a different incentive than money but I understand that's more in the territory of hypothetical and never going to happen. Not really on topic I guess.

[sayers6]

+Try and make as many of the games functions and services online based so they have to connect to your servers. Make all your games like an onlive service if you can.

And make it so that when servers go down or a person doesn't have internet the go insane? I almost outright refuse to buy these types of games. Loss of Profit.

+Make your games for systems that are more locked down and harder to pirate on like consoles.

I may not have had a gaming computer for long, but you can do much more on a PC than you can a console, and it's much more portable. Consoles get outdated, and not everyone has them. Loss of profit.

+Bring back arcade machines and lock them tight.

Very few people play these that I know of. But I'm sure if you found someway of making them more appealing, it's plausible. Unused medium.

+Make the games cheaper.

It's hard to make games cheaper with how the current system works, I know quite a few places take out a loan, contract, or something, to pay back what they spent within X amount of time. They charge higher, because they need to make the profit now. And from what I understand, they aren't getting the full amount of sales they should be, because people like me by them almost exclusively used. I have 2 "new games" in my house. BF3, and infamous 2, one of which came with the PS3. From what I understand, Sony is planning on locking the games with one console, so that prices can be lowered. Not a bad idea, but i wish they would do some sort of a time lock on it, so that after say 1 year, it's unlocked and can be used on any system. Loss of profit (in current circumstances.)


Companies are not going to give up profit just to make their games cheaper and hopefully less pirated. They will do what they need to, to make profit. Hell, if pirating somehow made them money, you would see a big banner saying "Pirate our games" everywhere.

[Jake]

Companies are not going to give up profit just to make their games cheaper and hopefully less pirated. They will do what they need to, to make profit. Hell, if pirating somehow made them money, you would see a big banner saying "Pirate our games" everywhere.

Actually, many companies would argue that they make more profit when doing some of the things Art stated. You think Ubisoft added that crappy online always DRM to reduce their profits? You think Microsoft decided not to release Halo 3 for PC to reduce profits? Whether or not this is beneficial for companies is debatable, but automatically assuming that these are lost profits is wrong. Companies sometimes try to limit consumers to stop piracy in hopes of making more money. I would say that it is a case of short term profit vs long term profit. Imposing DRM to stop piraters might make you more in the short term, but you are also alienating customers that may choose to not buy games from you in the future.

[ARTgames]

If you notice my post was just a reflection of the times of how they "reduce piracy?" And the last two where for fun. :) But looking at this narrow minded to just reduce piracy I think it will. But taking this more seriously I know the tech enthusiasts argument would be what sayers6 just said. Regardless locking someone into a closed platform like my first two plus signs has worked before and could work for other possibility.

The Iphone. One of the most locked down platforms ever. And its the the #2 most sold product of all time. If all they want is money it could work for them realistically. Not saying that that's the way I want things to be. :/

[Scotty]

The profit part seems to be the biggest crux.  They're greedy, and they'll do what they have to, to pay back their debts and walk away with a profit.  That's why a lot of success is being found in the indie games now-a-days, where less debt is accrued before development even begins, and milestones/schedules, while still important, are a bit more flexible.

I may have mentioned this prior, so I apologize if I'm being redundant, but it's my personal, semi-off-topic, opinion that I think part of the lack of interest in purchasing games is not only attributed to cost effective (or rather, cost reducing) piracy, but the overall quality of what gets released.  When video games took off in the 90's, I was hard-pressed... In fact, can't recall a single instance of a bug in the SNES games I played.  I think it's the nature of the beast though, that as technology gets better, we inherently accrue more possibilities for bugs, but it's getting to the point where it's obvious that stability comes second to release schedules for a lot of the big-name companies.  How often does a new Call of Duty game come out now?  How many games has EA crippled (for everyone, seemingly including the supposed Quality Assurance testers as well) upon release?  How many games do you need to download a patch immediately after installing from a CD/DVD?  The industry is monopolizing on what has become a very profitable market by hiring developers/designers for minimal salary, working them near to death (I'm not joking in saying that either) then letting them go once they hit their deadline, regardless of how complete the final product is, and they often times already have milestones laid out in front of them upon release to go in and buff out all the bug.  They're taking what has evolved into a naturally error-prone technological wonder and increasing the instability exponentially by doing everything they can to make as much profit off of it as possible.

So naturally, people are concerned about shelling over $50-$60 dollars for a game that may not even be playable by no fault of their own (i.e. outdated hardware vs. death-march deadlines), let alone enjoyable.

How do they correct this?  I don't think they can at this point without taking irrational measures that just wouldn't work (starting over).  They dug themselves into a hole over the last decade and a half, and now they are paying the price, with improving technologies outside of video games (P2P file sharing) making sure the sword is firmly planted in their gut.

[ARTgames]

I agree with you with the problem with today's big games but I do think your looking at the past with a bit of nostalgia glasses. There where many bad games back then, there where many bugs back then, and games back then cost just as much or more than they did today. http://www.1up.com/news/90s-game-price-comparison-charticle (Sorry this was a bit off topic) But I makes me wonder how it would be if the internet was as big as it is today back then.