Piracy has always been a big issue with me. From what I have gathered, most people seem to think either that piracy doesn’t really exist, or that it is nowhere near as bad as it is made out to be. And yet, what I see now is that piracy is so commonplace that I am regularly offered stolen goods by otherwisen normal, law-abiding people. It seems that folks have a hard time understanding how digital property works, and this has turned into one of the most frustrating things I have to deal with on a regular basis. Insofar as how it has affected PC gaming, basically “home court” for my favorite hobby, we now stand at a point where the mainstream industry is seriously considering canning PC gaming altogether, leaving only MMOs or similar where DRM (unnecessarily considered a four-letter word nowadays) is accepted on the whole without question.
I would love to do an encompassing, in-depth article examining all the arguments surrounding the issue and coming to well-founded conclusions backed by hard data, but as it turns out, someone else did it for me. Koroush Ghazi, the guy behind the excellent one-man site TweakGuides.com, has created an incredible article that says everything that I could or would want to say about piracy, and I highly recommend that everyone read it all the way through. It’s long, but I promise that it’s worth it. You may find it here:
Additionally, I highly recommend checking out anything else on his site that may be relevant to you. His tweak guides for games have never lead me astray and I follow his Tweaking Companion guide to the letter every time I set up a new machine. As a result, I’ve always had games running faster on a machine that is more stable than I’d previously thought possible, and all because I was willing to spend a little more time making sure everything is installed properly. Over the years, the amount of time I’ve saved not having to deal with issues that poorly set-up system will give you has made the extra time investment worth it a thousand times over.
Oh, and to assuage any suspicion from any cynics out there, I’ve never had any interaction with Koroush beyond reading what he puts on his site. I’m writing this here now simply as a way to share the love, get some edjumucashun goin’, and with any luck, prevent an unimaginable number of headaches.
January 15th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Took me 3 days of casual reading, but I finished that article. It is staggering to see the sales numbers for PC Games and the piracy numbers for the same game.
One thing that confuses me greatly is the attitude of many gamers out there in regards to pirating new games. So Crysis isn’t worth $50 to them? Go play something else. You can find Far Cry for $10, and a lot of other good, fun, still graphically beautiful games for that price. Sometime this year they will be able to get Crysis for $10-$20. Once the “new, now, or never” attitude stops, publishers may stop basing the success of their games on first week sales. I’m flabbergasted that after selling 1.5 million copies Tomb Raider: Underworld is considered a flop by the publisher. I am eventually going to buy a copy, but once it hits $30, my personal value level for that game.
I believe we have had this discussion in the past, that you disagree with my methods somewhat. I still llegitametly buy the games though if I want to play them, and that is the point. Buying Stalker for $15 got me to buy Clear Sky for full price.
Off topic, when are we gonna hang out?
January 15th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Hey, as long as you buy the games legally, I ain’t got no ish wit’cha. It’s the retailer’s decision what to charge for a game, so the thrifty gamer is well-advised to seek out bargains. I recall the point of contention being that I disagreed about whether a particular game was worth a particular amount which is a question of taste (someone with adequate means who loves title X would likely pay more for it than someone who didn’t like it at all) and also that a pack of 5 games that costs $50 means that each should cost $10 individually, which is more a question of economics, marketing, and logic. I think we reached a good compromise on it, though. ^_^
Also! Excellent question, my good man. I shall have my people talk to your people. ;)