Piracy: Is it as bad as they say? (Article and survey results)
By metal_mills 61 Comments
I started a survey up a few days ago. It's point was to find out the real facts about piracy. On one side we have companies claiming piracy is killing the PC, hurting sales on the DS and PSP and if it never existed then their games would be selling millions more. On the other side we have people claiming piracy is overblown and that it isn't as bad as the big dogs claim. Sadly though, it's not the user that gets to make the choices here, it's the companies. Due to the ease of piracy on the PC we are are seeing less exclusives, less multiplatform games getting ported over from the consoles and heavy and ridiculous forms of DRM such as Ubisoft's that forces users to stay connected to an online server constantly, even when playing single player. Other kinds have only 3 installs allowed. This kind of treatment makes the honest buyers seem like the criminals. But is it necessary to keep trying these radical kinds of copy protection in order to keep the games getting released? Is every download a sale lost? Well, my survey helps to try and figure that out and tries to get down to the facts(or as close as within reason).
I went to the source of the problem and asked 253 rum-swelling, saber swinging, treasure hunting pirates about how much of an industry destroyer they truly are. And to answer the question probably going through your mind, yes, I am aware 253 pirates isn't close to the many millions around the world but as I found out this topic is a hell of a lot more taboo than even I thought. I scoured the internet for sites I could post my survey at but it wasn't as easy as going in and watching the people click away. It turns out piracy...kinda a touchy subject around gamers. NeoGAF refused me to even ask people to participate. Gamespot closed my thread down(after it somehow ended up on the subject of Crysis' sales). Even some piracy forums instantly banned me, closed or ignored my thread. Geez, thanks guys...
Thankfully though, some sites were happy to help out and thus my survey began.
The survey consisted of 6 questions. Each one a multiple choice.
Do you pirate all of your games?
The first question is pretty simple. And pretty unanimous. Over 88% of the responses said that they don't pirate all of their games. A pretty good start to the survey, and remember this is answers from pirates, not just any gamer, so it was a little surpring. I actually expected a lot more people to say they 'yes' to this question.
If No, would you say you buy 50% or more of your games?
So this question was aimed at the people who don't pirate every game they own. It might not be as big of a difference as the last question but with 65% saying Yes, that is still in favour of people buying the game, rather than pirating it.
What is the main reason you pirate games?
Coming in second with 30% was "Can't afford to buy games". Well, I have to ask how did you afford the PC or console to begin with? I can see where they are coming from though. There are times when too many games come out and with limited money(and time) you have to pick what you want to get. I never ended by buying Fable 2 because there were just so many games coming out and buying another one of top one the eight or so I had bought would be crazy. However, if I got it for free, I'd probably throw it in and try it out from time to time. Maybe to help combat this they should stop going nuts on releases? Remember when games took 3 or 4 years to come out? These days 2 years seems like a long time! With games like Call of Duty pumping out a new game, plus several pricey map packs every year how can you keep up? They aren't the only series that does it though. Halo is another who released ODST last year and Reach this year. Left4Dead is the same. And God knows how many 'Hero' games have been release, what is it? Like 6 in one year? No wonder people can't afford games! I think it's safe to say as well that if they couldn't pirate all of these games they sure as hell wouldn't be buying them all, we'll get to that point a bit later though in question 5.
Coming in third with 25% was "It's free". Honestly, I thought this would be by far the most voted answer. Isn't that the core reason people pirate to begin with? I thought so. I guess it isn't like that for many people.
And finally, at exactly 10% we have "Easier to pirate than buy". This is kind of a broad answer. It covers reasons such as older games that are hard to find, countries that might not release the game or online games that people can't buy because they have no credit card. Things like that.
If a game had a copy protection that was hard to crack would you wait for the game to finally be cracked(Eg: several months) or just buy it?
DRM is never impossible to crack. There are times however when it can be harder to get around. Some games can have a crack in 24 hours of release. Some can take a few months. One such game was The Sims 2. Sure there were cracks out for it soon after release but none really worked that well. The main issue was you couldn't enter any build mode so basically half the game was broken. Would that stop the pirates though? Would they go out and buy it instead? Well...kinda? As you can see the clear winner of the question(with 63% of the votes) is: "Depends on the game". So it really boils down to the big names or not. The Call of Duty's and the Half-Life's. Games that people must have ASAP and they simply can't wait.
Another deciding factor of this could be how bad the DRM of the game is. Games with terrible DRM such as Ubisoft games would probably push quite a few of those "Depends" into "I'd wait for the pirated version". The other 2 answers are pretty close together with "I'd buy it" just getting ahead by a few percent. So overall a good kind of copy protection could help sales and ward off piracy but it actually NEEDS to work and without the customer being made to feel like a criminal. Sadly, no such DRM exists yet. As for the games that aren't big releases, they probably wouldn't have any kind of effective DRM anyway.
If for some reason all piracy stopped today and it was impossible to pirate any game(retroactively too) what would you do?
So what would I pirate do if he couldn't be a pirate anymore? Well, the answer is: Cut back on gaming. I think this question out of all of them shows that not every pirated copy is a sale lost. Something many developers and publishers think is true. With just under 60% the main answer was they'd buy more games but not all the games they would have downloaded. So if piracy was cut out, then yeah, we'd see an increase in sales. Is it as much as we'd think though? The other two answers are very, very, close. One getting 19% of the votes. and the other getting 20%. The winner? Buying all the games. While 20% isn't huge, it's a sizable number. Imagine if this survey had a million pirates fill it out and the results were the same. If they bought all the same games that's 200,000 extra copies per game.
Now, I know, it's imposable to tell how this question would have turned out if a million pirates had filled it out rather than 253 but it's something to think about. Whether or not piracy is the devistating monster some people claim it to be, one thing is for sure. We have to find ways to stop it. And no, I don't mean stop releasing PC games. I mean find a way to fix it rather than including these insane forms of copy protection that don't do shit and then jack the price up to $60US.
If a game was $5 - $10 would you buy it?
I added this question after reading an article which was claiming that a recent Indie pack, which included 5 indie games that you could pay whatever you wanted for them had been pirated a large amount if times. 25% of all downloads of the indie pack were a pirated copy. Now that's pretty sad not even paying $1 for 5 great indie games. The developers are people who need the money. Not only that but a sizable chunk of the money was going towards charity. That's pretty low to pirate something like that. The victim isn't a multi-billion dollar company. It's people like you and me, and sick children. It's not on and people who do that are worse than a regular pirates, they are scum. On the other side on things though, Runic Games has just come out to reveal that Torchlight has sold over 200,000 copies and making it one of steams best-sellers. The game has also seen on sale several times for $5 and $10 giving it huge sale boosts.
I think that combined with the answers of this question show that most people probably will fork out money for a cheap game. It's only those few who want something for nothing, no matter who they effect that really hurt the small developers. Sadly with pirates number in the millions around the world, those few can seem pretty big sometimes.
So that's it. End of the survey. So what have we learned? Well, I think it shows piracy might not be as bad as people say...but things could be better and have a possibly of being better if someone can invent an effective form of copy protection. I think the gaming industry needs a bit of a restructure too to help with the cause. It's just getting too big and too chaotic for it's own good. With many series releasing a game every year and the holiday seasons getting so crowed it's starting to make the normally quiet Q1 season into an extension of Q4.
Simply put, there are too many games getting release that it's going to start turning against the industry and I think it already has. Medium budget games have no room anymore and each new release needs to out do the one before it. Budgets are through the roof and the prices of games might even reach $70 next-generation as some analysts claim.
To the industry it hurts the smaller guys who try and make a game only for it to bomb because any one of a dozen big titles are released around it. It hurts creativity because companies are to scared to risk $50 million on a game that may or may not sell. Which is why we have a painfully large amount of FPS and TPS'ers this generation. They sell, so everyone sticks with them.
But when are people going to get sick of it? Modern warfare is tired and played out. WW2 themed games are pretty much dead. Zombies games are on it's last legs for many people. Even the classic sci-fi and fantasy theme's are getting worn out. MMO's are just trying to copy WoW and failing because of it. I mean, what the hell is left? With the huge number of games being released and the high prices, it makes people turn to piracy, a free and easy way to try out these games without requiring a second mortgage.
Not only that but in this day and age these titles should be getting world wide release dates. Yet they don't. Many countries have to wait for games, sometimes even up to a few years, before it's available in their country. Sure they can import but why should they have to? It should be there at the game store or on steam.
At the end of the day, you can say piracy is wrong, flat out. And you'd be right.. However, I think the industry by sorting itself out a little bit could help the situation. Along with that, they should either use a good, workable form of DRM or don't use it at all as it doesn't help them one bit and in fact makes people who never pirates games start thinking about pirating the superior, DRM-free version of the game. In the end though, it's down to the person who pirates the games. They don't need to play them and in life if you can't afford something then you can't have it and it should be like that for video games too. All the honest buyers of games can do it keep supporting the games you like and hope the companies don't come up with even crazier DRM's that hurt us more than they hurt the pirates.