Before you balk at another piracy discussion, or dismiss the issue because “everyone pirates everything,” take a minute to think of the last piece of entertainment you enjoyed. Whether it was a game, a movie, a book, a comic, a TV show—it doesn’t matter—do you think it was deserving of your support? Would you want more of it? If so, did you pirate it to get access to it? Why or why not?
I think there’s a lot to be said for the consumer that chooses to actively support their chosen media. Yeah, yeah, “the machine” gets most of the money, we all know it. Publishers, retailers, manufacturers all take their cuts and the actual artists themselves see only a fraction of the profit. This is largely true. But it’s also true of most industries; the intellectual source of most products isn’t often compensated in a way most people would consider “fair,” but they are at least kept in business.
But, nonetheless, I am a staunch supporter of the artists I enjoy. I want to see more product from the developers, directors, authors and bands that I enjoy, and if their bosses aren’t getting paid, that means no more distribution, no more promotion and no more product. Are pirates really sticking it to EA when they pirate Spore, or are they sticking it to Will Wright?
Or, more likely, they’re not trying to stick anything to anyone. Most pirates claim that they pirate products simply because it is the most convenient way to get them. It sure is a hell of a lot easier to wait for a download than it is to drive to a store, deal with customers, lines and clerks to get your game. Also, it affords the less-than-affluent gamer the opportunity to test-drive a new game instead of buying it right away and being disappointed. This, I suppose, is the most valid argument for something like game piracy, but it is by no means an excuse. Often, in my experience, pirate acquaintances of mine will tell me that they played through an entire game that they have pirated and that “it was alright, but I’m glad I didn’t buy it.”
Maybe so, but you’ve still used the product. I don’t think it’s unfair for the onus to be on the consumer to research and understand what they want or don’t want to purchase. If it’s a toss up for a pirate whether or not a game they’ve downloaded will be any good, and it does turn out to be good, where’s the motivation to obtain a legal copy of the software that’s already on their machine? Outside of the rare morality stricken pirate, there isn’t any, because there are no immediate repercussions to software piracy.
Don’t get me wrong—I don’t think there should, or could, ever exist a way to immediately persecute someone for software piracy. I don’t think that the average person registers that they are committing a crime, and are denying a studio their potential as game makers when they pirate a game. There’s a lot to be said not only for the cost-effectiveness of piracy, but also the convenience. I think, though, that some education mixed with an awareness of the industry is all it takes to dissuade the would-be pirate. The education part isn’t hard to come by: it’s not difficult to see that PC gaming is in a relative slump compared to its console counterparts, and it’s no coincidence that PC games are the most easily pirated. We should probably also have a moment of silence for the Dreamcast because, ugly as its controllers were and tough as the competition was, they weren’t the only thing that brought the system, and Sega, to its knees.
The benefit of convenience, however, is an almost insurmountable counter-point that many pirates offer. Many will denounce the idea of spending time and money on gassing their vehicle, driving to the store and back, and probably spending a good amount of time in line when they could more easily pluck their entertainment from the web. How can anyone argue this logic?
Say “you’re a lazy person, and cheap too”?
They will say, proudly, “I know. So what?”
They will also often claim that if more games were made downloadable, via sources such as Steam, that their game library would instantly fill with legally obtained digital copies, as mobility was only the inconvenience that held back their long repressed desire to support the developers whose games they often enjoy for free. As a sort of case study and riposte to this argument, I’d like to bring up radiohead’s album release for In Rainbows. Listeners could download the album from the band’s site and choose to pay whatever they wished for it. Five bucks. One buck. Or Nothing. Free music, just like the pirates get, if you wanted it. Yet the album was pirated over 500, 000 times in its first few days of release, with projections of illegal copies overtaking legitimate ones over the next few weeks. The reason?
"People don't know Radiohead's site. They do know their favorite BitTorrent site and they use it every day. It's quite simply easier for folks to get the illegal version than the legal version." – Eric Garland, “Free? Steal It Anyway,” forbes.com
Games seem to suffer from a unique, if stunted, argument against legitimate purchase. It goes like this:
“Oh, if only it were available for download and I didn’t have to leave my home! Then I would pay!”
Anyone remember World of Goo? No? Maybe that’s because over 90% of its download-only release were illegally obtained copies. This game has a meta critic rating of 94% and it only costs twenty bucks and now its publishers have filed for bankruptcy. Why did this happen? Again, it’s just flat out easier to pirate, somehow making it okay to steal for all but those 10% of owners who thought this masterpiece of a game was worth twenty measly dollars.
So piracy is a tough bug to squash indeed. However, there are some neat people sharing their neat ideas on the subject. Michael Lynton, Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment compares the advent of the internet to that the of the interstate highway system. Both allow for easier connection between their users, but only one was built with guardrails:
“In no other realm of our society have we encountered so widespread and consequential a failure to put in place guidelines over the use and growth of such a major industry.” – Michael Lynton, “Guardrails for the Internet,” huffingtonpost.com
He pretty much straight up hates the internet. I don’t. I hate some of its unthinking users and the greediness, laziness and financial circumstances that lead them to piracy. Unfortunately, gamers have no more right to free games than they have to free anything else and no misplaced sense of entitlement is going to change that. If a gamer can only afford to purchase a handful of games each year, then it is their responsibility, if they want the industry to continue to flourish, to know what to own and what to avoid, and to not simply go fishing on torrent sites to see what’s good, free, and easy to get. If you’re pirating, you have internet. Go to Google and press the keys ‘v’ ‘i’ ‘d’ ‘e’ ‘o’ ‘g’ ‘a’ ‘m’ ‘e’ ‘r’ ‘e’’ ‘v’ ‘i’ ‘e’ ‘w’ ‘s’ in that order and see what pops up.
It might be knowledge!
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I'm amazed you didn't bring up the issue of invasive DRM like SecuRom. There is one situation in which I will pirate a game free of guilt, and that is to avoid invasive DRM. When I'm presented with the option of pirating a game, and owning it, or "renting" it from a company with many VERY annoying restrictions, I'll swallow my ethics for the sake of a good gaming experience.
ReplyDeleteI empathize with the industry for trying to protect their products, which they have every right to do. But in the same way that buying a game legitimately supports the creators, buying a game with invasive DRM supports ITS creators, and that was something I was not willing to do.
But there is a happy ending of sorts. EA has started to shy away from said DRM, because they realized they were alienating the consumers that WERE trying to support them, and actually rewarding the pirates! So this, ironically, is proof that what you spend your money on keep it in existence, and what you refuse to spend money on will vanish. It's a great power, and also a responsibility, that lies in the hands of consumers.
Nice post.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you phrase the idea. "Support."
Simple. Accurate.
It dispels most of the discussion points by itself, specifically the big one: the used market.
Now, I gotta admit that I'm a big employer of the used market. I can buy three or four or five games, used, for the price of one new one.
But who am I supporting? Well, my wallet. And Bill, the guy who bought the latest/greatest, beat it two days later, and then turned it around on Amazon.
But certainly not the creators. Sure, they got their one legitimate sale out of that copy. And sure, that copy isn't eliminating tens of thousands of potential customers, as a shared torrent would. It's just like sharing a book.
But they're getting 0 dollars from me.
Be nice to see that change. I'm hoping digital distribution and reduced costs are the magic solution. We'll see.
But I'm not willing to pay double or triple or quadruple the cost for a title in the hopes that I can single-handedly keep a developer in business.
PS I hear World of Goo's 90 per cent pirate rate was lost "potential" sales, which really means almost nothing.
Lots of people pirated Spore, for example, since it was on the torrents a month or something before release. Honestly, I was one of the pirates.
But lots of people later bought it. Like me (full price, new copy - even got the tee shirt).
But I'm sure there is little benefit to debating 50 or 90 per cent pirate rates outside of useless "accuracy". Pirating is still a problem regardless of the numbers.