So, I wrote this story about piracy.
And I was totally surprised by some of the comments on this story. I mean, fair enough, nobody is a saint. But I was accused of writing a biased article, a one-sided view of the issue. But what other side is there? Do people really expect me to write a story that defends video game piracy?
Apparently, some do. They accused me of not seeing things from the 'pirates' point of view'. Maybe, once upon a time, I would have agreed that there is another side to this whole issue. But not after talking to half a dozen developers who confessed how pirates more or less single-handedly brought down their businesses. Or how they're too afraid to speak out about how damaging game piracy is, lest they anger gamers who, predictably, will react by pirating even more games.
And all this talk of the games industry making more money than the film and music industry. Sure, but what percentage of that money goes to these developers? The ones who make the games? The ones who suffer when their games are pirated? The ones who, at the end of the day, will lose their jobs?
Nobody pays any attention to that. Nobody even thinks about that. To them, the games industry is just one giant entity; an entity with too much money. Anyone who pirates is therefore a hero. An underdog. A guerilla fighting for the rights and freedoms of those who deserve it.
But let's get one thing straight. The games industry is not the film industry. And it's not the music industry. Games are not made by million-dollar studios serviced by hundreds of people. They're not made via a pre-conceived formula, thrown together any which way in order to make the Christmas rush. Games are made by people, albeit small groups of people, labouring day and night to put their talents to good use. If you pirate games instead of paying for them, these are people who will feel the effects. And where's the heroism in that?
Comments
I used to think that this was "people are honest until they are given an opportunity to be dishonest," but with the excuses that a lot of pirates, including many casual pirates, give to justify why they steal or convince themselves that what they are doing is not stealing (they don't consider it theft because they don't want to consider themselves thieves), I fear for the future of intellectual property.
For example, a guy in one of my classes was talking about he pirated Half-Life 2 because Steam was blocking him from the game he bought legally. He, in the future, will make the the statement to Valve by not buying another Steam game, but what about the game he bought? Hit the pirate sites and play it. Is that fair?
It's all one big morality play anyway. It depends on what side of the fence you're on. Perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you expect the user to pirate and you pile DRM all over the disc, then the gamers will pirate it just to get a fair deal. You cannot win.
My ultimate view is the piracy debate is lost and the culture intrenched. So every business needs to evolve and adapt. How is up to the industry? Does this view make me unpopular ...maybe.... does the commercial reality out weigh moral debate - sadly yes. Heroism, sadly is lost in the gaming industry.
First of all, you're incredibly cute and I'm totally in love with you since I saw the Alan Wake thing with the pac-man impersonation, haha. S2
Anyway, let me tell you something about my situation here in Brazil. Games here are around 300 reais. This is like more than 150 dollars! (considering most of the time 1 dollar is 2 reais or something)
I mean, I already have to be kinda rich to own an Xbox 360 since it's around 1.700 reais here (which is 870 dollars, a lot more than most people pay around the globe). Then, if I keep my console "blocked", I'll have to be double-rich and buy one or two games per year. Well, being such a good person here is really expensive... now, if I "unblock" my Xbox, I'll get to buy any copied games for only 15 reais (7.50 dollars) or even burn them in a good computer myself!
So, what basically EVERYONE does around here is buying pirated games. For now, the Xbox it's still expensive for most kids, but the same thing happens to the PS2. Everything is too unfairly expensive, so people simply get them through piracy! Of course it's wrong, but we are not going to pay 150 dollars for each game anyway... so we just get the illegal versions.
That's probably a tax thing. The government pretends it wants to encourage the brazilian game industry (lol... uh, it doesn't even exist... brazilians usually run away and go make games somewhere else, like the creater of Project Natal) and so it tries to PUNISH us with taxes if we try to buy foreign games. It doesn't help anything, only piracy. And seriously, I'm totally buying pirated games if the original ones are that unnecessarily expensive.
And finally, just to show that I'm not such a bad kid:
I've asked a friend to buy me a GTA:VCS for PSP when she was in the US. It was only 20 dollars and here it's worth 150. That was fair... it's 40 reais, but it's an acceptable price considering it's worth the same people pay in dollars. Anyway, I do not own GTA only. My PSP is 'unblocked' and I download every game I want for free. It's wrong but in terms of destroying the lives of people who work in the game industry it doesn't make any difference. I don't have enough money to keep buying any more PSP games for 150 dollars. I think what's really bad to the international game industry here is the government and it's exaggerated taxes.
Well, well... just clarifying here what would be the "other side" of piracy. Sorry for writing this full book here...
paul939