Hi All,

We just posted a link over at Gamezebo for an article about piracy and how it affects the gaming community. The article was published over at Gamasutra but I wanted to share it with you all.

I think it's a shame that people think it's OK to take something for nothing and not think about who they are affecting when they do this. Click HERE if you wish to read the article.

Margie B

This article tells you how to search for and acquire illegal casual games. I'm sure people intent on stealing games know how, but I was unaware of how to do it. I really think that it's a sign of the times we live in that some people who would never think of stealing your money or property will, without a thought, steal someone's hard work. I have no answers, but it is a sad commentary on our society.

Thanks Margie, it disgusts me beyond belief how many people think nothing of owning a pirated game. And to top it off they post and complain they are having issues with it and get angry if it has glitches. I wish they could do more.

Ana

My only pirated game was not by choice and I refused to even open the sealed sleeve when it arrived. Got burned on eBay with Uru and promptly bought the game from Amazon.

Now I mostly purchase only from Amazon and GameBoomers - have you heard of GameBoomers? And of course BFG.

Will read the article now, Linda

Thanks Margie for the link to an interesting article. What I found particularly sad was the very poor increase in sales in proportion to the reduction in pirated downloads when this had been achieved. This would obviously indicate that lots of games have been downloaded & played illegally by a lot of people who just wouldn't have bothered with them otherwise.

I don't condone this at all & realise a small increase in sales may be a lot of games, but it does make you wonder after reading the article whether piracy is seeming to affect the industry a lot more than it actually is??

One of the comments after the article mentioned the price of the games from Reflexive as being $20 - I know a lot of other casual game sites also charge this (or $19.99). Personally, even with a favourable exchange rate, I find this expensive for a download casual game - I have paid this a couple of times for games not available at Big Fish but I do think it's too much. I wouldn't dream of trying to get them illegally, but obviously many other people would so maybe more of the casual game sites should think about what they could charge to encourage what seems like a lot of people to buy who are currently downloading pirates. (There's an economic principle in there somewhere )

Hey Chrissie,

I agree that if companies would charge less for the games more people would be willing to buy them instead of just hunting around for sites that will let them play for another hour. This is why BFG is so successful because they understand that they can get more customers with their club pices and therefore make their money doing volume sales. I can't even begin to count the number of times I've read someone say that they are going to wait for BFG to get a game so they can use their game credit.

Unfortunately, some people no matter what you do are going to take something for nothing, even if the games were a dollar. I think that a reduction in prices would encourage the honest people to buy more games.

Ana,

I know what you mean about the people who get illegal copies and then complain about it. I always recognize them because they mostly talk about issues that were present during the beta phase of the game. I think they have a lot of nerve.

Margie B

I agree that this practice - which is apparently rampant - is not only immoral but threatens to undermine the industry.

The game industry, however, is not certainly alone. In the recent issue of Readers' Digest, Sheryl Crow mentions the music industry's concern that "people don't feel like they have to pay for music anymore."

And this type of thievery runs the gamut from knock-off designer purses to wireless "piggybacking" to pirated movies shown for free on the Internet to companies that blatantly copy machine parts and manufacture and sell faux pharmaceutical drugs - some so cleverly packaged that even a pharmacist cannot tell the real (effective) drugs from the fake (ineffective) ones.

A lot of this activity, including casual game piracy, seems to occur in other countries where the culture - perhaps as a result of indemic government corruption - accepts such behavior.

Whether the transaction is conducted via the Internet or not, though, it would seem that piracy is the fairly foreseeable impact of doing business in a global economy where there is no multinational correspondent to the Uniform Commercial Code, no international patent laws, and an absence of a variety of other laws that protect creators, sellers and others.

As others here and on Gamezebo have pointed out, I think in America and Europe (where I think/hope at least a significant number of people are still of the belief that the behavior is wrong) casual game piracy is a function the price point. People are not willing to pay $20 for a casual game, but they are willing to commit to a stream of monthly payments (far in excess of $20) which would allow them to purchase several games selected from a large group, and thereby pay a lower price for each game. I agree that this appears to be an ideal value proposition from which consumers, marketers and developers are most likely to benefit, both in the near and short term.

But sadly, unless and until developers can come up with better locking mechanisms (the old Mission: Impossible "This tape will self-destruct in 30 seconds" line comes to mind) I do not think we will see the kind of changes in our lifetime that will put an end to the behavior.

Where there's a will there's a way. Those who want to cheat and take advantage will continue to do so sad to say. But those people are in the minority. Parents need to instill honesty and integrity in their children and maybe we can put a stop to this kind of thing by doing so.

I got burned on justadventure .I sent them the real thing and I got the copies and I still payed the price not knowing it was copies I was trading for but I guess this is a sign of the times .

Ouch dragonuk44! Did you report that to JA team? If nothing else they can ban the seller. Also you might be able to get your money back?

Kinda late in the discussion here, but Margie B you bring up a good point in people loving to point out issues that they get in beta. I get them in my comments a lot and I always try to "shame" the commenter, so to speak. "Hey you must be playing a much older, perhaps beta version of this game, and you should try downloading the updated version from Big Fish!"

The weirdest thing is when they post "begging" comments. "Could someone send me this game for me because I can't afford it?" "I think they should release this game for free because not everyone can afford it."

Sometimes you have to wonder though - $19.99 may be expensive, but it is no way less expensive than having your computer riddled with viruses from illegal copies of games and getting it fixed (or spending time fixing it yourself.) But there are always good deals even without BFG - even Playfirst has a bundle deal.

Kaki's Sister/ unfortunately, they are NOT the minority. From what I've read, more adventure games are pirated than bought!

As for the "searching for trials" issue, I think that's easily fixed. Just tack a different version number onto each portal's version of games, so that a saved game would only work with a given portal. Wouldn't be much fun if they had to start the game over each time.

Part of what I don't understand is why game publishers are not more on the ball about piracy sites - obviously they exist, and they're well known to the people who make the games. I hang out on an independent game dev web site and in one of the discussions, a dev mentioned that he belongs to all of them so he can take down links to his games as he finds them. Would it be a very difficult thing to ask google to simply NOT index piracy sites?

google spiders things automatically. they dont really want to be in the business of having to check each site by hand to see if it's a 'good' site or not. even with sites their spiders think contain viruses they dont remove the site (since they might be wrong) they just put up a warning saying it might be a bad site.

google doesnt believe in removing sites

I don't see anything wrong in trying a few of the demos as sometimes I need more than an hour to decide. I replayed one game demo a couple of times because I liked the game but something was just annoying to me. I still haven't purchased that particular game but others where I tried a 2nd demo I decided to go ahead and purchase. Believe it or not I was that way with the first MCF game, Azada and Dream Chronicles but in doing the 2nd demo I did indeed decide to purchase. I really didn't care if I duplicated or advanced in the game.

How is this piracy by making use of a 2nd demo?

Just call me confused
Linda

it isn't. the only time it would be is if the game is so short that you can finish the entire game in the trial period (especially if you're saved games transfer over so you can keep going from where you left off)

if youre just doing the trial AGAIN because you havent made up your mind theres nothing wrong with that!

they just worry that some people are trying to find every site to get trials from so that they can play the whole game free. i dunno if there are enough different demos for that to work unless a game is really short though.