With the constant "potentially confirmed" rumors regarding next-generation and the debacle of the always-on mechanic, I thought I'd take a look at a large part of the incentive for such a feature; piracy. Piracy has been around almost as long as gaming with even the earliest consoles having hacked counter-parts that allowed gamers to download games and roms. It's apparent in both PC and console gaming, although it's more openly available to PC users as it's as simple as loading up a website and clicking a simple link.
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
Eventually they’ll realize the value is with the employee not the company. Buying an IP means nothing if the people who contributed are let go. They’ll get it one day.
tech is different because they buy threats and then kill them. Twitter bought Vine and did nothing with it. Despite people seemingly liking it. Could've had tiktok a decade before bytedance. go figure.
They buy IPs not talent. That's why these buyouts never work and the IPs die. Right now it's too expensive to develop games - but I expect that to shift maybe as AI tools can make it easier. The best games have been indie games for awhile as big developers fuck their ips to death with "games as a service" -
INDIE Live Expo, Japan’s premiere online digital showcase series , will debut never-before-seen games & content updates across more than 100 titles on May 25th.
"The best games of the year and the creative teams behind them were in the spotlight at the grand award ceremony of the German Computer Game Award 2024." - German Computer Game Awards.
Sure buddy... You're trying to tell me it has a deeper story than goat 🐐 simulator 4000?!?!?. I wanna give bg3 a shot but my brain is burnt out on long games
It's a weird subject. I know people who are all up for piracy and some who despise it.
I guess it also falls down the developer, I think not many feel guilty pirating EA games. If your game is good enough and you respect your customers Piracy is not that big of an issue than for others.
AND this DRM bullshit just makes things worse when pirated can enjoy games right away without a single problem when people who bought it have to suffer all the pains of DRM
I would pirate every game from EA and Crytek after an experience i had with a purchased pc game from them -.-
I wouldn't pirate a naughty dog game or projket red game -.-
Exclude bioware >.> i would purchase from them
As a hard core gamer, I don't condone piracy, but it will always be there. And I am more than sure everyone has done it in some fashion.
One thing that I know hurts PC -- as for consoles its a lot harder to pirate games -- sales, is the simple fact that developers/publishers don't release demos anymore.
If we look at Steam hardware checks, most people don't have the latest hardware by any means. That is understandable, but this is the problem.
The percentage of these people that can't but the latest hardware don't want to take the risk of buying a PC -- that they can't return -- just to sadly learn their PC can't handle it.
I actually know a European person who does this constantly. He is still young and can't afford new hardware, let alone buying a $50-60 game 2-4 times a month. He pirates it, if his PC can handle it, he buys it on a sale, what he can afford.
Also piracy will always be there no matter what, I just hope to god companies realize this and stop with the DRM.
Look at how well The Witcher 2 did without DRM, yes 5,000,000 plus downloaded it illegally, but over 1 million copies were sold, also RPGs isn't everyone's cup of tea.
Thank you for reading.
I believe that theft is occurring on both sides. The pirates are stealing from the companies while the companies are stealing from the honest consumer.
While it may seem unlikely that a company would do such a thing, a reasonable investigation reveals such truths. Though they are better hidden from those that are not educated in these matters.
Most people know what piracy is. What they don't know is some of the reasons why. The generalized consensus revolves around the idea that they are just around to cause damage to a company. My take is that they have become victims of predatory business practices while trying to play by the rules. They have gotten to the point where they felt enough was enough and decided to just take back what they considered stolen from them.
On the flip side the companies have to sit back and watch the legal system enforce a loophole of not recognizing used games as a form of piracy. Not talking about consumers buying used games but rather those companies that sell them. For some reason the legal system doesn't require used game sellers to pay the creators a portion of the profits even though the used game reduces the chance of a potential new game sale.
Now these developers have no choice but to demand a platform that will police (or service) their products. So instead of licensing the game to the consumer direct from the store they just sell the license to the platform holder instead. This platform holder in turn creates a completely controllable format and never sells this format to you.
Instead they sublicense the game to you and write up a nice long set of rules, including how you'll never keep it. They attach the game to an account, which is attached to their service, and run around trying to maintain the illusion that digital software is a format superior over the physical and that these two are comparable products. What they neglect to say is that their form of digital software is not a possessible item even though they maintain the illusion that you can buy, receive and play it the same way going the physical route.
The truth is that digital software is superior and on comparable grounds with the physical format if a service wasn't standing in the middle. Note that the choice to not use the service exists when the physical disc is used...limited only by it's online mode. By buying a digital title you are allowing them to service your single player game making them a requirement in order to access the title.
This illusion is the theft that is occurring right now and most people don't even know it yet. It is these events that create the vicious cycle back and forth...with one entity fighting the other and creating a bigger opposition in the process. More predatory business practices lead to more consumers who steal back...until the industry is ruined for everyone. Next gen will be a rude awakening the masses will experience and those that don't steal may just leave the market altogether...realizing they are paying ownership prices for rental property.
GameStop selling used games, or any person selling used game, is not a form of piracy.
No other form of used product on the market requires part of the purchase to go back to the original company. If I sell a used car, I don't owe Chrysler a chunk of the profit.
That would be double-dipping by the companies that make the game, which is anti-consumer.