moddb.com writes "How can we lower game piracy?"

moddb.com writes:

"It is a little disheartening to hear stories of high piracy rates of new indie games, dependent on their fans support - so i'd thought i'd pose the question why this is?"

[outwar6010]

by lowering the prices of games

[Fox01]

Especially in Europe; 70€ for a game! wtf!

[outwar6010]

in the uk its 40 pounds and most of the games are under 20 hours. If more devs give were like bethesda and gave hundreds of hours of gameplay and just general replay value; instead of half assing their games and expecting people to seriously spend money on them.

[Eamon]

Definitely the price.

Also, it's due to "convenience." With high internet speed connections, downloading a PSP game for example would take less than an hour.

It's more convenient for a person to download it in the comfort of his home than to dress up and walk to the high street to purchase the game.

Or even buying online. Pirating is more convenient than even postal delivery LOL. Why wait till release day when you can download the leaked version in half an hour?

So there are quite a few factors behind piracy.

[bub16]

SOO true, if they lowered the prices of games. i would have LOADS of games. £40 a go is pretty steep considering the minimum wage will bring you home about £200 a week and half of that goes to paying bills anyway!

[badz149]

might only lowering piracy for a little bit. nothing...and I will say it again, NOTHING beats free stuff!

typical pirates: why pay even $1 if you can get it for free?

[Darkspade]

Lowering Prices and Video Game Returns...

[aaaaaaaaa]

Video Game Returns might go a long way in the fight

[Ocelot525]

no more exclusive dlc for preordering @ gamestop, hmv, ...
like in fallout NV...

Only pirated versions could have all DLC, the people who bought it legally could only have one of those dlc packs

[Bear_Grylls]

It's total BS hey.

I purchased NV but after finding this out I "pirated" the SKIDROW release of PB, if that's what you call it if you already own the game.

And yeah you get all the extra bits that you would have got if you bought it at GS or got the limited ED etc.

You get like for or five upgrade packs from the start of the game. Makes a huge difference.

[Darkseeker]

Problem is that they use piracy as an excuse to sell games more expensive. However, 59-69$ here for a new game is a total rip off. They could easily make profits at 39-49$.

Beside, the things about piracy, is that the company doesn't lose that much money. They practically don't lose any as there is a lot of games pirates wouldn't buy anyway.

[outwar6010]

american gamers are already getting games cheaper than aywhere else 60 bucks is 30 pounds yet we pay 40 pounds which is roughly 80 bucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bumnut]

Can you change some pounds into dollars for me? im going to america soon :)

[aaaaaaaaa]

$60=£36.61 at the moment

[BeastlyRig]

At this point nothing will stop me from pirating cod..

BF3 I pre odered though!

[aaaaaaaaa]

from what ive read about COD, is it worth having? even if its free

[Pandamobile]

Make the games worth buying.

[NateCole]

Thats a tough one. Games like Dynasty Worriors is not worth much to other but to me i love them to bits.

Variety is very important and one of the by product of variety is that some games will be deem not worth buying for others because people have different taste. Then you have online centric and SP centric gamers.

[DasTier]

Whoops I meant to agree with you there :P

[badz149]

come on...that's one of the weakest excuse to pirate game ever! you think it's not worth buying and decide it's worth pirating? even if it's not worth full price, you can always wait for price drops which nowadays happens a lot sooner for majority of game out there and there will certainly be a price where you think it worth THAT! or better yet, rent it for those who have access to rental services!

it's kinda pathetic when people claim a game is not worth buying but refuse to rent or wait for it to drop in price and decide to pirate it and play it early...which means, they actually WANT to play the game! doesn't that pretty much equates to "WORTH BUYING"? it's just that you think "it's not worth it" = "I don't want to pay for it" = PIRATES?!

[Pandamobile]

The Pirate Bay is where I rent my games.

[badz149]

yeah...they do that :-)

[ChrisGTR1]

you can do what xbox did. ban all pirates from online play making the console pretty much obsolete therefore making them rebuy a new 360 for online play only and buying only AAA games that they really want , only to play pirated <90 scoring games on their other console. ;)

[Eamon]

Which begs the question, even if the game isn't worth the price, does it deserve to be pirated while the successful AAA games are getting purchased?

[ChrisGTR1]

well if a games not worth 60$ (for me) i wont pick it up until its 20$ or used at around that price. like MvC3 for example, i dont think its worth 60$ so im waiting till its 20$. that games all about online (even though the online blows which is why im waiting in the first place)getting a game like this and playing it SP only would be pointless.

[NateCole]

For me personally i would like to have a different standard scale for game prices.

Yearly sports games and COD's with a different coat of paint should be much lower in price.

SP only games should perhaps have a lower price compare to SP + MP games given that SP + MP game in theory should be more expensive to make and maintain as with the MP component.

I do agree with most who posted above about reducing the price of games. If games are cheap i am sure a lot of people will buy legit copies.

Reduce the price to make them affordable to many people to sell more and get more money in return.

The industry should look at other revenue streams to try and offset game production budget which seems to be one of the excuses use for hiking prices.

[Speakindatruth]

Price is too cheap for games. I'll get a lot of dislikes for this, but devs aren't getting enough credit for their games. Publishers hog all the profits and then give back about 30% to gaming studios. These guys need to rebel when people start making video games an essential part of their existence, like movies. Remember, gaming hasn't been around as long as mainstream media, and eventually, they'll be making so much money, you won't have to worry about price. But right now, you do, because games take like 4 years to make. Deal with it.

[Eamon]

The main reasons why Steam is very successful:

1) Price - Steam constantly does sales and pretty good ones too like 70% reduction for Complete Valve Pack. It goes to show how much they can reduce and yet still make profit. So it's very obvious that games are overpriced these days.

2) Convenience - While there is a debate over whether Digital Download should replace Physical Media, Steam is completely Digital yet still very successful. Why? Because a customer can purchase a game and play it in a short period of time right in the comfort of his home. Convenience is a very attractive thing to consumers.

[aaaaaaaaa]

The only reason steam is so successful is convenience, all your other points are wrong they are expensive just look at it like this they don't need to produce anything, no disc no cover no case no manual all steam do is sell games just like a shop but yet shops online or high street can reduce the price of physical media far quicker and longer almost every game you can get on steam can be purchased 15%+ cheaper from online or high street stores
I know a few people who download games from torrent sites these people are not short of money. When i ask why they download games the one reason they didn't give was price, a few of the reasons i did get was its easy, to much choose, see if i like it.

[bumnut]

Some games on Steam are expensive, Black Ops is stil £39.99

What a rip.

[hano]

By making good games?