Piracy has hit a new low....

[ThunderPeel2001]

Full disclosure: I have pirated games before, but it's made a squirm every time, and I universally buy them anyway.

Jesus.

[Lu]

A tear ran down his cheek everytime he played, certainly.

Now can you even pay 1ct when paypal charges 30ct per transaction?

Yea, I believe if the donation is less than 32 cents, the developer earns about 0 cent. Though I guess you can choose to pay for the transaction costs?

[Snooglebum]

A tear ran down his cheek everytime he played, certainly.

Yes, indeed. Multiple tears.

[Roswell47]

I stopped pirating software a few months ago when I got a keylogger from a program I'd downloaded and I got my World of Warcraft account hacked and banned. It took me like 5 days and 4 different anti-virus software to remove the trojan. And then I mailed Blizzard to get my account back but that went really smoothly. I've learned from hearing people talk about pirating and myself doing it is that pirates are either poor or greedy as f*ck. The majority are greedy losers though (Not denying that I was).

[Nachimir]

Going by pirates I know, I can testify to that. There was also someone looking into buying habits correlated to piracy, who apparently found that people who pirate also tend to buy a lot more anyway. This too corresponds to a lot of pirates I know (but not all).

The most interesting thing I've read on it recently is this piece by Peter Serafinowicz. Knowing more musicians and game developers helped, but the main reason I stopped pirating stuff was because other options became more convenient. People follow the straightest line to what they want, generally. Piracy is a great big desire line, some companies are catching up.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Going by pirates I know, I can testify to that. There was also someone looking into buying habits correlated to piracy, who apparently found that people who pirate also tend to buy a lot more anyway. This too corresponds to a lot of pirates I know (but not all).

The most interesting thing I've read on it recently is this piece by Peter Serafinowicz. Knowing more musicians and game developers helped, but the main reason I stopped pirating stuff was because other options became more convenient. People follow the straightest line to what they want, generally. Piracy is a great big desire line, some companies are catching up.

Well said, sir!

Growing up in the 80s, piracy was almost legal. Almost. (As in, it wasn't, but it was very prevalent, and done by everyone. Even your Mum. Anyone remember tape to tape?) Anyway, I feel kind of sad that the younger generation have only grown up with consoles. I'm sure I would have died from boredom without my gigantic copied Amiga game collection as I grew up. But these days I have money (well a bit) and I'd generally rather own the original simply because of, as Nachimir rightly said, ease.

I can't be bothered with CDs anymore, but thanks to Zune subscriptions and my eMusic account it's very easy for me to legally get whatever music I want to listen to. DVDs are so cheap now that I'll happily pick up whatever film I want to watch, or just rent it through LoveFilm. Games are obscenely expensive, but I don't mind to much because I refuse to buy them at full price -- and I'm happy to wait until they come down in price.

But the idea that people should feel guilty for pirating something is ridiculous to me. Maybe it's because I grew up in the late 8-bit/early 16-bit era, with tape to tape, XCopy etc. etc.

I imagine that, in truth, if you had the money, you'd buy it. That's always been the case for me, and it's also the case for every pirate I know. I suppose there might be some evil millionaire locked away somewhere who takes great pleasure in not paying for anything, but that's not what I know.

The REAL evil twats, IMO, are those that SELL pirated goods. These people ARE irrefutably stealing from copyright holders, taking money destined for them and diverting it elsewhere, profiting from other people's hard work. That I cannot abide, and those people should feel extremely guilty. The worthless gits.

[Erwin_Br]

I think piracy played a significant role in the rapid development of portable music players and on-line stores/streaming services. MP3 quickly became very popular because it was possible to download an album much faster than before. This triggered the popularity of the MP3 player, the iPod, and later the on-line store (iTunes) and streaming services (Spotify).

We probably would have moved away from playing CD's in a portable CD player anyways, but I doubt it would've gone so fast. Maybe we'd been stuck with the mini disc for few more years, or something.

[Nachimir]

That's an interesting point. I think you're right. I doubt digital products would have accelerated so fast without it; the number of bought tracks per ipod sold was laughable at some recent point.

The other effect of piracy on me has been to demonstrate to me how untenble a vast music collection is. I've stripped 80 or so gigs acquired in the past 13 years (itself stripped down from more given to me) down to 16 gigs of almost entirely bought stuff. Even at that size, it still sometimes feels a bit too big to grasp, at least compared to the CD collection I had in the 90s. I want a music collection I know and love, not a respository of things I've acquired without contemplation. That's what cloud services are for.

It's post-scarcity media, but we're still picking through the impact crater learning how to deal with it.

[Forbin]

Right now it's also driving video on demand, as publishers are being forced to compete with online streaming sites. Hulu wouldn't exist without people uploading videos to stream sites.

A lot of my friends have stopped downloading MP3s in favour of playing videos from youtube. It's a bit crazy, but never underestimate the value of convenience.

As Valve is fond of saying, a pirate is an under-served customer. The difficulty is keeping pace with consumer expectations. There's no excuse for being behind the curve.

[DanJW]

I think that brings us back to the beginning of the thread. It's hard to see how the pirates of the indie bundle could have been better served.

Perhaps if the publicity had been better then more people would have seen it on sale, rather than having the torrent be their introduction to its existence?

[Inphidel]

Right now it's also driving video on demand, as publishers are being forced to compete with online streaming sites. Hulu wouldn't exist without people uploading videos to stream sites.

A lot of my friends have stopped downloading MP3s in favour of playing videos from youtube. It's a bit crazy, but never underestimate the value of convenience.

As Valve is fond of saying, a pirate is an under-served customer. The difficulty is keeping pace with consumer expectations. There's no excuse for being behind the curve.

:tup: Well said valve.

I've pirated games in my time, but I have found them to be mostly games I've just wanted to check out and not a game I was waiting for. With Steam sales I am often buying these games I would have normally just pirated because I doubt my own willingness to actually get my moneys worth out of the game itself due to no real over-the-top interest in the game.

For instance, Torchlight, I've never been huge into Diablo, especially a single player one at that. however I heard a lot of good things and it seems like a good game to jump in and out of from time to time. I wouldn't have paid the full price point for it. but when it went down to 5 bucks (maybe it was 9.99) I couldn't say no. I even bought it for my brother and a friend.

With digital distribution cost being a lot lower then that of creating a disc, box and then shipping it all over the globe, I find it hard to pay for any game with a full retail cost when it essentially feels like a OEM purchase. /shrug

[syntheticgerbil]

I don't know, fuck Valve. That's very one sided thinking to place full responsibility in the company for not serving consumers properly. As said before, there are other reasons people pirate, multitudes of reasons, many circumstantial. Then you have to factor in how people get to what websites and what country they live in, their standard of living, their wealth, the individual value they place in creative works that serve no necessary function in their lives, and even down to their humble opinion on what makes a game or any other type of media worth the cash. A company may be able to offer whatever deal completely fits the lifestyle for some and they still will pirate.

I do see merit in companies not properly getting their shit out there to the consumers in a convenient manner, but that sure as hell isn't the only answer. It's just not that easy.

[brkl]

I think that brings us back to the beginning of the thread. It's hard to see how the pirates of the indie bundle could have been better served.

Perhaps if the publicity had been better then more people would have seen it on sale, rather than having the torrent be their introduction to its existence?

That's probably a part of it. Another is that kids don't have credit cards or paypal. The third is that some people have weird reasons for being a pirate and can't be helped.

[MrHoatzin]

For me piracy is a combination of convenience/laziness and moral objection/activism. I don't have a tidy moral reason that covers both of those aspects; I don't try to explain away my pirating ways as uniformly just and good. It is just messy and there is no easy way to conflate things.

Lately I have only pirated games that I can no longer get anywhere legitimately, and big blockbusters sans demos that I was not sure would run on my machine. All of the ones that didn't run, I didn't play, and I didn't feel like a putz for blowing 60 dollars on something useless. Fallout 3 ran relatively well, so I bought a legit copy. Steam is probably the single most responsible thing for me not pirating games.

If Netflix streaming worked on my Ubuntu laptop, which is the only thing plugged into my ancient SONY Trinitron, I would be all over that. I buy DVDs of all things that I would care to see more than once. I borrowed The Wire from the school library. It happened twice that I couldn't get the next season in line, it was checked out for weeks on end, so I torrented it. I wanted to buy the box set and was very close to doing it, but couldn't justify it since I didn't think I'd want to watch it again. It would be another thing clogging my bookshelf forever. I was borrowing the show from a public library anyway.

I have no love for huge, lawyered-up institutions that would just fucking LOVE to be able to screen all of my internet all the time for the smallest shreds of even vaguely copyrighted and copyrightable stuff, regardless of any fair use. The copyright law as it exists and manifests itself in the corporation-loving western world is an anathema to progress, invention, propagation of culture and preservation of civil liberties. Copyright lasts too fucking long and is far too often used as a bludgeon to silence new creativity that builds up on old one, rather than to ensure artists can live off of their work. The studio/publisher/label model does provide a livelihood to a lot of little people, but is still unnecessarily top-heavy and machiavellian.

Still, my kind of rationalizing is wholly at odds with stealing charity indie games. I have no explanation for those fuckers. People love a free lunch?

[ThunderPeel2001]

I think that brings us back to the beginning of the thread. It's hard to see how the pirates of the indie bundle could have been better served.

Perhaps if the publicity had been better then more people would have seen it on sale, rather than having the torrent be their introduction to its existence?

Hasn't this already been answered many times in this thread? Many people would have just seen a link on 4Chan and clicked on it. Many kids don't have access to credits cards/Paypal... and their parents probably don't see the value in buying them more games. And some would have simply downloaded the pack multiple times.

Hell, wasn't Ben There Dan That torrented?!

Edited May 19, 2010 by ThunderPeel2001

[Wurtsi]

I was surfing GOG and found this: http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/humble_indie_bundle_5_indie_games_for_amp_pound_whatever

Apparently people were giving out free codes fairly easily.

[elmuerte]

Ryan Gordon did a similar thing: http://twitter.com/icculus/status/13729906955

[ThunderPeel2001]

So errr.... Sorry to get this back on track, but which of the games are actually worth downloading? Are they all decent?

I wouldn't want to add things to my backlog unnecessarily!

(I already grabbed World of Goo.)

[Snooglebum]

I don't know, fuck Valve. That's very one sided thinking to place full responsibility in the company for not serving consumers properly.

HERESY!

[ThunderPeel2001]

HERESY!

Don't ask Toblix his (entirely valid) opinion.

[syntheticgerbil]

So errr.... Sorry to get this back on track, but which of the games are actually worth downloading? Are they all decent?

Since I haven't played Machinarium yet, even though I own the UK DVD case version, I would guess that one is worth it at least based on the Samorost games.

I played either a demo or earlier version a year or two ago of And Yet it Moves and it didn't grab me too much.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Since I haven't played Machinarium yet, even though I own the UK DVD case version, I would guess that one is worth it at least based on the Samorost games.

I played either a demo or earlier version a year or two ago of And Yet it Moves and it didn't grab me too much.

Which package did you see...?

The bundle includes World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru and Penumbra Overture. And Samorost 2.

[syntheticgerbil]

Shit, this whole time I thought we were talking about this set of games: http://www.theindiebundle.com/

But really there is a difference between The Indie Bundle and The Humble Indie Bundle. Nevermind me.

[Forbin]

I don't know, fuck Valve. That's very one sided thinking to place full responsibility in the company for not serving consumers properly. As said before, there are other reasons people pirate, multitudes of reasons, many circumstantial. Then you have to factor in how people get to what websites and what country they live in, their standard of living, their wealth, the individual value they place in creative works that serve no necessary function in their lives, and even down to their humble opinion on what makes a game or any other type of media worth the cash. A company may be able to offer whatever deal completely fits the lifestyle for some and they still will pirate.

I do see merit in companies not properly getting their shit out there to the consumers in a convenient manner, but that sure as hell isn't the only answer. It's just not that easy.

Let me be clear, the first sentence was the only quote from Valve. I do think there's no excuse for being behind the curve, whether it's software, music or video. If you're a leading content creator, there's no reason for you to be less interested in the future of your medium than a bunch of teenagers creating the next big thing.

Anyways, they weren't just talking about convenience of digital distribution. Gabe has specifically brought up proper internationalization and release scheduling with countries that regularly pirate games. I believe Russians were their example of under-served customers.

Also, don't fuck Valve, you angry little man.

[syntheticgerbil]

I think it's still ridiculous to expect all responsibility to lie in the hands of the company making the material. Valve makes quality games but I don't think their word is god just because they have Steam and have graced us with a market opinion.

I would bet there are still tons of people pirating their games in Russia, even though looking into the rest of the things they said along with the "underserved customer" quote, the Russian piracy rates have dropped (Or just more Russians are buying, it doesn't really say). Also they were just talking about publishing delays in Russia hurting their sales as well as Steam sales spiking interest internationally in purchasers of certain games. Neither really have much to do with the Humble Indie Bundle the thread is based on, nor would anything Valve did in the case of Mother Russia turn the pirates of this bundle away and change their minds. The "underserved customer" quote seemed to serve more of a purpose as a controversial headline more than anything underlying the reason they said that.

Edited May 20, 2010 by syntheticgerbil