I've been into games since the early 80's, and in the industry on and off for much of my life. I've seen what piracy does.

I've seen entire platforms literally eliminated by software piracy. Software is the reason to have a machine at all.

The Commodore 63 and the Amiga were not lost because Commodore itself was a poor company (it absolutely was, just awful), the platforms were lost because piracy made developing for them pointless. No software of any note, no sales of the machine, machine dies.

This must happen even if the company behind a given platform were the the smartest and best in the world. No software, no machine.

The PC will almost certainly survive in some form no matter what.. it is also used everywhere for business.

But unchecked, piracy must, one day, make it only a business platform, devoid of any games of any power.

There is no excuse, none, for software piracy. It screws everyone, even, in the end, those committing the piracy. Piracy is short term gain in exchange for permanent loss. It is the mindset of the loser, the failure at life.

Thank you for the concise, excellent article and comment.

The trouble with PC piracy is this: DRM promotes piracy. An overly restrictive/intrusive DRM scheme (StarForce or SecuROM, or any number of the online activation systems a la Bioshock) makes the cracked (therefore pirated) version of the game *more valuable* than the protected version, simply because one doesn't need the disk to hand, or an internet connection to play a singleplayer game. As DRM becomes more tightly integrated into a game's core, the chances of being able to get a "simple" noCD crack decrease, and so more downloads of a full image (chalk one up to the piracy stat here) are made, even though the downloader *already owns* the "defective" (DRM'ed) product.
Stardock have the right idea: their lack of DRM on the game makes the cracked version exactly as valuable as the legit version, and copy-protection happens in the added value phase (patches and content updates, where a CD key authenticates the download, but not the software itself)
The only exception I've ever made to this opinion is Valve, who adopt a slightly different model: the value that they take away from legit versions of their games by requiring Steam, they add back with the internet-based features of the same (vast numbers of patches, the Community, and the Hardware Survey). With that said, I'd still prefer DRM-free Valve games, but the Steam DRM is sufficiently flexible as to be nearly transparent to me.

I would have to agree with John Glanville. I generally do not pirate a game unless I own an original copy; I simply prefer to have cracked no-cd versions of games because they are more convenient for me, especially running on Linux with all of the disc images on a shared drive in my home network.

That's the same reason I hacked my PSP; I have yet to download a pirated game, but I have downloaded plenty of homebrew, ROMs for old NES cartridges I own, and converted images of my PSOne games, which have been given new life on the handheld. I have gotten far more use out of the device with unauthorized (but legal) software than with actual PSP games.

The issue is not that piracy is bad; one can argue on either side of the fence, but it will not change the fact that you cannot stop piracy whether it's bad or not. Several figures in the music industry, such as Trent Reznor, have realised the same thing with music. The proper response is not to add easily-circumvented protection that will annoy honest users and amuse hackers, but to change the technology and distribution to fit the trend.

Developers need to find a way to add value to their products without adding restrictions, value that is lost or at least not conveniently copied through piracy. I am a legal software user, and even I feel the need to break software restrictions as soon as I encounter them, simply because I do not want companies telling me how to enjoy my purchase.

What a bunch of self-righteous nonsense.

Condensed down, your point seems to be "Arguing against piracy killing PC gaming is killing PC gaming". What are you suggesting as an alternative? That the next time a publisher uses piracy as an excuse for not supporting the PC platform, we should lend our voices in support? "Yes, yes, you're very right, developing for the PC is indeed a pointless exercise these days, with all the pirates and whatnot." That'll show them! They'll be back with PC releases again in no time after that, I'm sure.

In any case, you present your point with nothing but anectodal evidence to back it up, while handwaving around the arguments you're supposedly "getting to the meat of". For instance, you claim that you don't know the ratio of pirated copies to lost sales, while an article over at your sister site Gamasutra pegged it at about 1000:1. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350

Regarding slow PSP games sales and piracy, the DS is much easier to run pirated games on these days than the PSP, and yet games for that console seem to be selling rather well.

When it comes to "deserving", no, people who haven't paid for a game are not entitled to play it. However, people making a game that people aren't willing to pay for are also not entitled to make money on the project. Neither Blizzard or Valve started out with 12 years of goodwill. They are where they are today for a reason - they consistently make very good games that people are willing to, maybe even pleased to, spend their money on. If other publishers would like to be where they are, I suggest that following their example is a rather better idea than sitting around whining about piracy.

If you really think piracy is killing PC gaming, perhaps you should present some data to back up that assertion, or at least present a coherent argument, instead of just telling your opposition to shut up.

However, people making a game that people aren't willing to pay for are also not entitled to make money on the project.

Of course not. But have you been to a pirate board lately?

Check out how many requests start with "I really love this game, can someone get it for me?"

Or even more fun, "My child really wants this game, can someone get it for me?"

And how many responses to games being posted are "I've been looking EVERYWHERE for this game!! Thanks so much!"

These people are not downloading the game for free because they don't think it's good enough to buy. They make no pretense of just wanting to try the game to see if it's worth buying, or of refusing to buy because of something the developer/publisher has done to piss them off.

Pirates come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some honestly do try-before-they-buy and pay for the games they approve of. Some don't care about the games at all and crack just for the thrill and the status.

But an awful lot are doing it because they don't want to spend any money, and they can't see the VALUE of paying for something they could just take.

How many times am I going to end up reading this, Chris? :)

You know, I think this article effectively sums up the problems of piracy, not really in its content (mostly rickety argumentation, but we'll get there), but in its execution. If you follow the skeptical blogging community and their frequent feuds with everyone from the Discovery Institute to 9/11 Truthers, you can probably tell where this whole piece went wrong from the start. You don't write an editorial in response to a vague and unstated argument because you end up with a substantial exercise in invalid invective.

Let's go point by point. First Mr. Carless indicts the argument that there is no evidence that piracy causes quantifiable harm by suggesting that it obviously causes quantifiable harm, because look at all the people doing it. Unfortunately, that doesn't imply that there's any degree of quantifiable harm - it doesn't imply anything. I don't think that anybody who criticizes the quest against piracy would claim that piracy causes NO harm, but instead would state that the harm that piracy causes is not significant enough to merit the response being mounted against it. Any amount of DRM or copy protection costs money, be it in licensing fees, programming time, lost sales, or any combination of those or other factors. If the benefit of adding the protection does not outweigh the cost of doing so, that's a clear argument against it. What's critical here is that we quantify the harm so that we can intelligently make that decision, but instead, we end up with arguments like this, gesturing at a vague mass of thieves and suggesting that there's...well, some amount of damage.

The argument regarding some games "deserving" purchase and others not is largely an effort at misdirection. That's not an argument that a person criticizing aggressive DRM would take, but instead the position of a person defending piracy as a positively ethical action, which is supposed to be a position we're dismissing offhand.

The author's points regarding console piracy are taken, to an extent, but the conclusion that he draws is tenuous at best. Citing the PSP as an example of a console that is significantly impacted by piracy is a poor example, for instance, because it's also a console plagued with a high price of entry, some potentially significant marketing issues, and a game release schedule that could be called schizophrenic at best. As is usually the case in discussions like this, the author is taking a complex situation and using it in an attempt to address a single issue - piracy.

I understand where PC developers are coming from here. I can't imagine how irritating it must be to work at a struggling studio and see your wares freely traded by the community you're trying to serve. It would certainly make me angry enough to scream about it. Unfortunately, that doesn't make it a significant issue in fact. This is an emotionally charged matter for all parties involved, and it's an even more difficult issue discuss in absence of any kind of objective evidence. I'm no friend to piracy, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that I find myself using my PC less and less for games in part because of the presumption that comes along with aggressive DRM. Sure, I get the same kind of treatment on consoles, but at least there, I'm conditioned to expect it. There are certainly other reasons with a greater influence on my gaming habits (specifically, it's just plain easier to play a game on a console, and I'm getting lazy in my old age), but it's a contributing factor.

With as many complicated influences on the issue of piracy as we have, I think we can rest assured that the one thing we do NOT need more of is righteous editorializing from either side of the dispute. If you really, truly want to help, please, design and execute a study to determine the real material impacts of software piracy (seriously, the BEST evidence I've found for either position is at least 20 years old and addresses the subject indirectly, mostly concentrating on piracy's impact on shareware turnover, if I recall the study correctly) so that companies and consumers alike can know how much protection and hassle is the right amount to keep everybody in the games community - developers and players alike - satisfied, and hopefully in the black.

Gamer Girl:

I agree with everything you're saying, however I don't see what it has to do with the discussion or how it is indeed a response to anything I wrote. Like I wrote in the sentence right before the one you quoted: "no, people who haven't paid for a game are not entitled to play it." That does not change the fact that people - like you say, of all shapes and sizes, and for a variety of reasons - WILL pirate games. How are you proposing to change this? Even more relevantly, how is not speaking up when companies complain about piracy going to change this? People like that have been pirating all kinds of media basically for as long as media has existed, and this is not going to change.

If people can't see the value of paying for something they can just take, then maybe publishers should try providing that value! I work in software myself, albeit not in the games industry, and I know that people have been and still are pirating our product - I've spoken to some firsthand. If we did nothing but wring our hands and complain about this, we might have failed as a business long ago. What we do, and what Blizzard and Valve does, and what Stardock does, is try to add value for the people actually paying for the software. In our case, they get a login area where they can download updates and renew their licenses, and of course support from us. In cases where we, like Ritual, have had pirates calling us for tech support, we offer to sell them a license and handle their problem if and when they've paid.

If you want to be successful in the software industry, you have to take piracy into account. Preventing piracy entirely would be a pretty costly endeavour, if at all possible, and when the data available shows that you'll likely only sell 1 additional copy for every 1000 pirated ones, you're unlikely to recoup those costs.

The only reason companies keep bringing up piracy is that it's such an easy excuse to use when you fail. That does not, however, make it a good one.

"The trouble with PC piracy is this: DRM promotes piracy."

I would disagree with this. Instead, I'd say it allows people to rationalize their piracy.

Also, using different distribution methods and adding value is great... when you're Trent Reznor, an artist who, through traditional channels, earned millions of dollars and has millions of fans throughout the world. He can afford to experiment, as can the Valves and Blizzards of the world.

For everyone else, giving stuff away for free is a pretty risky business model. The economy works better when you're a single artist; when you're a team of 20-100 game developers, it's a much bigger risk.

I would think it has more to do overall with people having massively skewed priorities and simply being feelings overly entitled on the issue. Games aren't food, nor are they life-saving medicine. They aren't shelter or any other necessity. If anything they're quite the luxury. So where's the logical, burning NEED to steal them? If you can't afford a game, or have no desire to pay for it...just don't play it?

If you're like most gaming enthusiasts you've probably already got enough games around the house that could be replayed, or even games you never bothered to finish. You could always go bargain bin dipping and actually find an awesome, neglected title for around $10. There's also a huge PC reservoir of fantastic freeware titles out there.

The fact that these games aren't necessities, that anyone could just as easily go to the library and nab a free book for a bit, makes it seem even more unreasonable and dishonest.

"If people can't see the value of paying for something they can just take, then maybe publishers should try providing that value!"

I agree that adding value is a better way of attracting customers than DRM. I hate DRM and go on long rants about it and don't buy games that use particularly nasty forms of it.

However, developers already ARE adding value. THEY MADE THE GAME. The game is, in itself, valuable. If it weren't, you wouldn't be trying to swipe it.

There is a very basic problem in people not seeing the value of paying for things. Somehow, many players have become so disconnected from the economic realities that they think games make themselves and information deserves to be free. They claim to be enormous fans of a game and yet are not willing to support it. They rip off products and then complain when they're told there won't be a sequel because there weren't enough sales to pay for one.

That last often helps slowly bring some pirates around and teach them the value of voting with their dollars... when they see a favorite series or studio fold due to lack of sales. Unfortunately, that's a bit late.

What I'd like to see is an educational campaign that instead of "Piracy Is Theft!! We'll send you to jail!!!" promoted the value of paying for things you like.

I don't pirate PC games. However, I would buy many more if they did not use rootkits for copy protection. I don't care how fun the game looks (and oh, they do look fun... Spore and The Sims 3, forgive me!), I will not pay a person to poison my computer with an unremovable phantom process that wastes resources and interferes with my normal use of the machine.

I don't mind launchers like Steam, because I know when that is or is not running and I can remove it. I don't mind serial numbers and online activation, because I am willing to make concessions to the fact that software is easily copied. But protecting a game with the likes of SecuROM is a deal-breaker for me, and a growing number of others.

Sadly, it seems that this perspective is completely ignored any time the issue comes up. Certainly I have seen no evidence of publishers even acknowledging the existence of honest would-be buyers. The closest that we ever come is debating the laughable idea that pirates are somehow resiting, Robin Hood-like, the inclusion of baleful DRM - which itself overpowers the more sensible but only tangentially related notion that there are people who download cracked versions after paying for the real thing. And then there are the huge numbers of legitimate gamers who seem to have no problem with the stuff - as if I could somehow change my mind and become one of them. (I'm a programmer. I have heard (being far too frightened to test it myself) that common copy-protection schema respond with false positives to programmers' tools like debuggers.)

This is clearly a losing scenario for all of us. I don't get to play the games I want, developers don't get my money despite the fact that they have made something that I want to buy, and publishers, due to ignorance or due to pressure from the ignorant, have to keep licensing more and more unreasonably strong (and probably expensive) copy protection, because they have somehow decided that the only possible cause of low sales is piracy.

"However, developers already ARE adding value. THEY MADE THE GAME. The game is, in itself, valuable. If it weren't, you wouldn't be trying to swipe it."

Of course, I was talking about adding value beyond what people get when they download a pirated copy - but I think you got that. I also think your idea of a pirate is veering dangerously close to being a caricature. I've never met anyone who pirated because they thought everything should be free. Granted, they might exist, but I think they're few and far between.

In my experience, just like my parents friends with the most copied tapes were invariably the ones with the biggest record collections, the people who pirate games are mostly the same people purchasing them. Even if we woke up tomorrow to a world where piracy was impossible, it wouldn't magically give people more money to spend on games.

This is all just conjecture of course - I would really love to see a large-scale study of peoples purchasing and pirating habits so we could actually have some real data to point to in this type of discussion instead of just opining back and forth.

"What I'd like to see is an educational campaign that instead of "Piracy Is Theft!! We'll send you to jail!!!" promoted the value of paying for things you like."

This, I agree with, and I'd much rather see companies spend their money on something like this than more DRM.