Topic: Piracy

[Bill Aurion]

That is, as long as you don't sell your backups...

[KDR_11k]

Lik-Sang sold GB and GBA flash cards and writers for a long time, they were later sued under a DMCA-like law for selling modchips.

[joeamis]

so its ILLEGAL to sell devices that let you make backups,
but it's ok to have backups?!?!?!?!

[KDR_11k]

It's illegal to have a device or software that circumvents any kind of copy protection (term to be applied broadly), but it's okay to have backups and make backups if not circumventing copy protection. Yes, the law IS weird.

[Uglydot]

This is why CloneCD shutdown.

[manunited4eva22]

It's illegal to sell that product, its not illegal to make it...

[marikhyuko]

Hey guys

Yes priacy is definately wrong, but really there is nothing we can do about it.  The only thing we can do is complain.

Right now I am studying Video Game Development in college, and found some really interesting facts on video game priacy alone.

Check this out... The information below are from instructor that has been working for a while in the gaming industries.

"The ESA estimates $ 3.2 billion in sales are lost as a result of game piracy.  With the money lost to piracy, U.S. game publishers could have developed about 1,600 new high quality games."

Wow 3.2 billion$, dont' believe the numbers?
Try taking 1 million piracy copy games and multiply by average cost of 35$.  Thats 35 Million$ per year.  Thats only 1 company number, now take that multiply by 5.  Thats 175 Million Dollar.

How about not 35$ per copy, and 1 million piracy copy games
Lets try 20$ for 1 retal version game, and 500,000 piracy copy games
Thats 10 Million dollar loss per game develope for a single company.
The priacy number I show isn't very realistic, but you get the picture.  If all 100+ company were to combine their number it'll sum up somewhere near 3.2 billion$, if not more.

Still not convince that priacy aren't a problem?
Check out this fact...

"The Top 10

These are single games, not franchises.
According to GameState magazine, as of May 21, 2003…

   
10) Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (PSX)    Sold 8 million copies
   
9) Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2)       8.5 million copies
   
Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES          10 million copies
   
7) The Sims (PC)             10 million copies
   
6) Super Mario 64 (N64)          11 million copies
   
5) Super Mario Land (Game Boy)       14 million copies
   
4) Super Mario World (SNES)          17 million copies
   
3) Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)          18 million copies
   
2) Tetris (Game Boy)          33 million copies
      
1) Super Mario Bros. (NES)          40 million copies"

Another interesting fact...

NES games make ridiculously a lot of money wouldn't you think?
Despite that there are less compitetion back then, but the most important part is that there is very little piracy back then.

Lets do some math and calculate how much money 40 million copies is..

40 million, let say it cost 10$, the answer is obvious 400 million $
Now lets take a game that is easily pirate, the first cd rom games on the list (The SIMS)  10 million copies, and multiply that by average 40$ per pop...  Thats...400 million $ wow, just as much money but the cost is 4 times more, and sold 4 times less.

Keep in mine the time which those 2 games are made
Mario Bro somewhat in the 1980s, and the sims is late 1990s.  The currency exchange dramatically increase between that time, so it is not suprising that the sims can make as much as mario bro.  If the currency back in 1980s worth as much as the late 1990s, image how much mario bro would make 40million times 40$ = 1.6 billion $.

Thats only if there were no piracy.  If there were piracy back then, 10% of that profit would be gone.  400 million $ x 0.10 = 40 million $, that equal to 1$ per copy.

Still think piracy are not an issue.

How about now?
I am sure one of your favorite games are on this list

11) GoldenEye (N64) - 8 Million
12) Donkey Kong Country (SNES) - 8 Million
13) Super Mario Kart (SNES) - 8 Million
14) Pokemon Red/Blue (Game Boy) - 8 Million
15) Half-Life (PC) - 8 Million
16) Tomb Raider II (PSX) - 8 Million
17) Final Fantasy VII (PSX) - 7.8 Million
18) Myst (PC) - 7 Million
19) Gran Turismo 3 (PS2) - 7 Million
20) Dragon Warrior VII (PSX) - 6 Million
Dreamcast: Shenmue II (100, 000 copies)
GameCube: Metroid Prime (Over 1 million copies
Xbox: Halo (2 million copies)

Notice cd copy games has awefully low selling rate, in comparison to cartiage?

Take some time and think about the facts, before questioning the current issue about piracy, is worst then you think.

[UncleBob]

The people who seem to think they have the right to steal from others would likely be the first ones to complain if someone stole from them...

[KDR_11k]

May I suggest something, namely that the ESA's numbers are made up? These organizations make up their profit numbers by assuming that every single pirated game is a lost sale. This is only true for counterfeits. Many people pirate games and wouldn't have bought them even if they hadn't pirated them. Some people even buy the game after pirating it, which would list them twice. The ESA, RIAA and MPAA would love you to believe that online piracy was a problem but it's plain out propaganda. Look, people can easily download 200 games but they couldn't afford them. A warez'd game doesn't take away from the person's money and many people use a part of this money to buy legitimate copies even though they pirate other games. These "lost sales" are sales that could never possibly happen because the money to conduct them doesn't exist.
Counterfeits are something different. A counterfeit is often sold for retail price and the buyer believes it is genuine (why do you think MS has all those holograms on their CDs and that "certificate of authencity"?). The buyer definitely had the intention of paying for the game but the counterfeiters tricked them out of that money. But counterfeiters are nowhere near these numbers.

[MattVDB]

Couldn't agree more.  I know people who have downloaded Mario64 just to see how it runs on their fatty computers rather than the 64.  They own the game too, but does that get counted as a "lost sale"?  It's hard to say.  Propoganda though it is, I feel.  Get a load of this:

"There is only one logical integration of all these statistics with the recent Soundscan data: even though actual point-of-purchase sales are up by about 9% in the US--and the industry sold over 13,000,000 more units in 2004 (1st quarter) than in 2003 (1st quarter)--the Industry is still claiming a loss of 7% because RIAA members shipped 7% fewer records than in 2003.

Forget the confusing percentages, here's an oversimplified example: I shipped 1000 units last year and sold 700 of them. This year I sold 770 units but shipped only 930 units. I shipped 10% less units this year. And this is what the RIAA wants the public to accept as 'a loss.'"
http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2004/04/record_sales_up.html

Could people be playing the same number shifting with current software?  I have reason to believe.

[UncleBob]

The entire "maybe they wouldn't have bought it otherwise" arguement is crap.  You're still taking something that isn't yours.  Period.  There is absolutly no excuse for this kind of behavior.  Anyone who thinks it is okay really needs to review their own basic morals.

[marikhyuko]

Well, once again there isnt' anything we can do about piracy, the only thing we can do is sit back and watch these company get bankrupt.

Similiarly with animes, the people I talk to so far in school all have download version Naruto, no one ever has a single legal single copy episodes in a box.  Lets say 4 episode on a dvd cost 500yen (Which is like 5$ canadian, maybe less), now multiply 25 dvds (100 episodes) thats 125$ down the drain for the artist for their hardwork.  Thats only 1 person pirating it.  Take that 125$ multiply by thousands and million people.  Now I just made up that 500 yen thing just to make my point.

People who download games, anime, software, will not then go buy them.  Thats that.

I talked to many people about this, and they can care less.  If they like to keep this up, all I got to say is.  GOOD BYE games GOOD BYE anime.

[KDR_11k]

Bob: We aren't arguing morality or legality, we're arguing impact. And I'm saying piracy has much less of an impact than lobbyists want you (and especially their shareholders) to believe. But of course it's easier to implement invasive copy protection methods and abolish fair use than actually delivering quality products. I mean, you can't tell your shareholders it was YOUR fault that profits dropped.

marikhyuko: Bullshit. People with enough disposable income to spend on games or anime will still buy them. That guy who didn't buy Naruto (maybe because it isn't available on a DVD that works in a region 1 DVD player or because without subtitles it's of zero use for him?) might have blown all his cash on that Dragon Ball box set already. Or perhaps he tried to buy Naruto, got a counterfeit (fansubbed) and lost his money on that but still didn't register as a sale?
There are people who stopped buying originals because they can pirate them but those are few. Many still buy a few originals and don't have the money for more.
And besides, piracy has never driven a company into bankrupcy because no matter how many pirates there are there will always be millions of legitimate buyers as long as your product has sufficient quality (means Acclaim died because they delivered crap, not because everybody copied their games). A product that can sell will sell, pirates won't stop that from happening.
By the logic of the lobbyists the creative industries died out at least three times over. With MCs nobody bought music as they all could record it from the radio, with VHS nobody went to the movies as they could record them off TV and with Cd and DVD burners nobody bothered with buying anything at all because you could pirate everything, oh, and then the internet killed the dead corpses all over again. Know which part of this didn't happen? Why do we see such large industries controlling our governments now? Shouldn't they have died decades ago? Yet they are here to stay.
The movie industry is stagnant because they rehash the same BS over and over again, because by now everybody knows the four or five plotlines Hollywood can think up, the music industry is stagnant because 1. people finished migrating from records to CD adn 2. less CDs get released. The game market died because everyone was sick of the same bad games over and over again, before Nintendo revived it.
Rehashes, the feeling that everything has already been done and we are only seeing things we have already seen, lack of innovation, that's what kills the industries, not pirates. That's why the DS and Revolution are different, Nintendo doesn't want to be under the roof of rehashes when it all comes crashing down. They are preparing for the worst. Maybe others should take notice.

[Flames_of_chaos]

The one of biggest regions that piracy runs rampant is South America because pirated versions of HALO2 and San Andreas and other big games are already being sold there for arround 4 dollars.  And when G4TechTV was interviewing major publishers there such as Nintendo and Microsoft they both said that piracy is ruining the presence of other big publishers such as UbiSoft,Sega and so on.  I was surprised that South America is as bad as China and Hong Kong in terms of piracy.

EDIT: And the sad thing is most consumers dont care if they buy pirated games.

[KDR_11k]

You see that happen in poorer regions because people don't have enough disposable income for commodities like software and they buy what they can use. Since counterfeits don't work any less than an original (often they work even better because the intrusive copy protection schemes are removed) they are good enough and at 5 bucks you don't care whether those companies get their money. And after all, it's the big companies in the rich countries screwing you over all day anyway so why contribute to their bottomline more than necessary?