Should game industry adopt RIAA tactics?
p2pnet news view RIAA | Games:- Although online games are, “relatively safe from piracy,” those focused on a “single-player component” aren’t, says Ian Fisch (right) on Gamasutra.
“Every method of DRM that has been tried has failed,” he says: “every popular single-player PC game can be found for free on the internet, without exception.”
Much the same can be said about Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music ‘product,’ ongoing sue ‘em all efforts by Big 4 extortion unit RIAA, and clones, notwithstanding.
The campaign, “failed for them,” but, “I believe it could succeed for the videogame industry,” says Fisch. “I am suggesting that we implement the same strategy employed by the RIAA in its battle against music pirates.”
He says he’s never believed in the argument the “RIAA would earn bad press if it started suing music fans” leading to a “backlash and fewer sales”.
Why would “paying customers get upset if a company sues people stealing its product?” – he wonders. “Would people boycott Best Buy if it started prosecuting shop lifters? The shop lifters might complain, but who cares what they think?”
Right. Who cares?
But no one has stolen anything belonging to the RIAA’s owners, or anyone else. Music lovers share music with each other, and by no stretch of anyone’s imagination does sharing equal stealing. No one has been deprived of any thing s/he used to own, nothing is missing, permanently or otherwise, and no money has changed hands. And the claim file sharing directly results in lost sales has now been debunked so many times it’s barely worth mentioning.
Gamasutra goes on »»»
The second argument against the lawsuit strategy is that it is ineffective. Obviously this was the case for the music industry, which has been in steady decline since mp3 downloading began in earnest. Yet the differences between pirated games and pirated music are such that the strategy could be successful if taken up by the videogame industry.
A song, at its most fundamental nature, is sound waves. It doesn’t matter if it’s played off a CD, the radio or streamed over the internet. A song whose raw .wav file measures 80MB when on a CD or 200MB on a DVD can be compressed to a satisfying 3MB mp3.
A videogame, on the other hand, is 0’s and 1’s at its most fundamental level. A user must have every last 0 and 1 in tact (more or less) in order for it to function. The fundamental nature of the two mediums makes music much easier to pirate.
The small size of an mp3 eliminates the need for trust that comes with a pirate videogame transaction. A person can stream a low-quality version of a pirated Beatle’s song from a Russian website to ensure it’s the real thing before paying 10 cents for the download. Likewise, if the person’s using a downloading service such as Limewire, it doesn’t matter if 50% of the mp3s are fake because he can download 20 in two minutes. By contrast the average pirated PC game takes hours to download and cannot be previewed.
Pirated songs are also much easier to distribute. Songs can be compressed and streamed from an ad-supported site like YouTube. A pirate website can afford to sell a 5MB mp3 for 10 cents because the bandwidth costs are minimal. Assuming the pirate website used the same pricing scale for a 3000MB videogame, they would have to charge $60.
Hence most game piracy comes from one place torrent networks where bandwidth costs are shared between thousands of distributors. It is likely to stay that way because, unlike mp3’s, the size of videogames keeps getting larger.
By targeting lawsuits at those who share pirated games via torrent networks, we could put a sizable dent in videogame piracy. While only a small fraction of sharers would receive subpoenas, many would quit using torrents once word of the lawsuits got out.
It’s true that many pirates would switch to more complicated methods of obtaining pirated videogames such as MIRC or Megaupload. Others would use proxy servers to hide their IP addresses and keep using torrents. Still others would put their fate in the hands of programs that attempted to block out all torrent connections but those from trusted pirates. In all of these cases piracy would be more of a hassle thus driving up its cost.
“I would love nothing more if the general public associates pirating videogames with harsh financial punishments,” says Fisch, adding:
“This will only happen if we in the industry make it happen. We have a choice. We can either shape our products around the pirates taking our focus off compelling single-player experiences and abandoning single-player PC games altogether- or we can fight for the artistic freedom that the medium deserves.”
Gamasutra – Fighting Piracy: Bring on the Lawsuits!, May 5, 2009
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May 5th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
http://fravia.com/swansong.htm
Goodbye Fravia! (via Reddit)
May 5th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
From an archived Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fravia&oldid=287935442
Fravia was a pseudonym/handle for a European software reverse engineer (his real name, according to his autobiography, was Fjalar Ravia, but other names have been suggested) who is probably best known for his web archive of reverse engineering techniques and papers. Mirrors of the old web site (fravia.org) still exist (see, e.g., Internet Archive), though Fravia has publicly requested their removal in favor of his new web-searching-centric sites.
He led people from being ‘crackers’ to ‘reversers’, both in the sense of software reverse engineering, and as an ideology. He was strongly against advertisements, software user-restrictions, and what he claimed to be needless software protectionism. He was interested in written history, language, information theory, and was known to speak Finnish, German, English, Italian, Spanish and French.
His principal interests were most recently advanced web searching techniques, including how to write search bots, how to “cut through the web” to your target using special search strings (webbits), and how to find anything digitized, including unknown music pieces and rare books and images without knowing their names.
His anti-commercial attitude is well known, and there is not a single banner or advertisement on his sites. Similarly, his writings and workshops always underline and demonstrate his belief that the very structure of the web was made for sharing, not hoarding or selling.
In October 2000, Fravia got in touch with Richard Stallman at a LinuxDay event in Milan to which they were invited by a common friend. This meeting induced Fravia to start exploring and helping free software and free culture. He was also a friend of reverse engineering legends like _Mammon (creator of bastard, a linux disassembler[1]), Razzia (a visual basic disassembler), Zero aka Dr. Thorsten Schneider, and Woodman.
As of September 9th 2008, Fravia had stopped updating his site and holding conferences after being diagnosed and receiving treatment for a Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the tonsil, that metastasized[2]. His site was frozen for half a year but was then updated as Fravia slowly recovered, announcing that “experimental cures seem to work and seem to have stopped the nastier metastasis, even slightly reduced them”. He then focused on GNU/Linux.[3]
Fravia died on May 3rd, 2009.
May 5th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
I think the game industry has to look in a different direction.
Maybe have free versions that do not have full content or highest video quality.
most people i know who download the games are just wanting to try them out, demo’s don’t always offer a good test drive.
I personally don’t play PC games that often anymore and refuse to buy new ones since DRM came into play.
I have a Wii and a DS and will stick with them until DRM on the PC is dead.
May 5th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Perhaps this guy should check out the YouTube videos demonstrating the frustrations people who PURCHASE games with DRM have! maybe then they’d realize why the pirating of games is actually necessary when you use DRM!
May 5th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
This is so wrong it is unbelievable…
Some of the reasons that the music industry are so hated are that they over charge, they provide inferior products and that they treat ALL their customers like criminals – including those that do not pirate anything! Look at the recent news about them failing to reach an agreement with ISP’s in Spain where they wanted EVERYBODY to pay a piracy charge for example.
The games industry has a few aces up their sleeves though – in that they can fairly easily offer online content and other features that other industries cannot! However – one of the main reasons that people pirate PC games is because they use restrictive DRM that introduces bugs, performance issues and security issues on PC’s – whilst at the same time being completely useless and pointless in the fight against piracy – most games are cracked within hours! Like the music and film industries need to make their content worth buying, games companies need to focus their efforts on providing software that works out of the box, offers real value for money and encourages people to support them. A further form of revenue in games these days is in game advertising – especially when played online – look at games such as TrackMania Nations for an example of how “free” games can be profitable.
May 5th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Sorry to say that, but what a tard… If the game industry begins to play the same game as RIAA does, it wont get long before their sales will plounge… Im very aware that developing a game these days cost a hell lot of money, and in a way or another this money has to come back somehow to the developers pockets. But beginning to sue its customers should never be an option. Im sure it would make the problem worse… I had expected far better ideas from people who are used to use their imaginations every day in new games concepts… Hmmm… I guess I was wrong…
May 5th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Fine, go ahead and do that, but only if people are alowed to return games that are crap or don’t work.
I pirate games and I have also bought every one I liked. The rest I have deleted. Why would anyone want to pay 60-70 dollars just to try a game and find out it does not work on their PC and then only be able to return it for the same game?
Yeah they list recommended specs but that only allows minimum playability. Also what about the games full of bugs that make them unplayable?
If they stop the file sharing they stop their profits because no one will spend that much just to find out if it works or they like it.
May 5th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
“Better ideas” Maroan?
Unfortunately, better ideas are two a penny. The problem is in implementing them, and to do that you need money, invariably from people who don’t like risking it. The other problem is that no-one ever got fired for doubling the size of their IP litigation budget.
Here’s a ‘better idea’: The Bedroom Coderâs Business Model.
May 5th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
“Why would ‘paying customers get upset if a company sues people stealing its product?’”
Not “why would they,” but “why did they?”
Because modern consumers don’t hold the same outdated mindset that you do. We all tire of corporate greed telling us how we can and cannot use the material we pay for. I never engaged in peer to peer file sharing prior to the Napster fiasco and rarely do it today (I prefer to pay for independent music than download studio crap), but that’s what got me into boycotting the RIAA.
Nothing disgusts me more than some cigar-chomping pig threatening a teenage girl from a middle-income household because he claims she utilized a p2p program to trade music files.
I currently pay for videogames, but if they start treating their fans like criminals, I’ll boycott the gaming industry as well.
May 5th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
…and I too will add the games makers to the boycott list. I already will not buy from major labels nor from movie houses because I hate their tactics and methods. It will not be that hard to add game makers to it.
If there is one thing I hate it is to buy sub-quality games that simply don’t work as advertised. You can’t return them for a refund, all you can do is swap them for like. If one won’t work, a copy isn’t going to have a better result.
Poorly designed games is another big peeve of mine. If a game isn’t worth a hoot, why should I pay for what I don’t like? I don’t mind shelling out the money but I want to know before I do that I am getting my money’s worth. I would hate to tell you the games I have bought only to find out they were trash. There are not that many games I really like. My requirements for a game is that it has replay value; again and again. Most games fall seriously short in this department and I am not interested in them.
There are games I love. For instance, I have purchased every game in the Civilization series. Not once but most more than once. So I will buy. My standards are high when it comes to replay value and it is a must to have. I won’t shell out the money for fancy cover art. Nor will a blurb about it making it sound like something it is not, entice me to buy. I’ve been stung far too many times already going that route and I refuse to continue to do so.
Make quality games that fit my needs and I will be a repeat customer. Make trash and you’ll not see a dime of my money. That’s the way it is. Make it to where I can’t pretest those I would buy and I will buy none.
Deal with it.
May 5th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Should game industry adopt RIAA tactics? He obviously hasn’t heard of the instances where it has, and like the RIAA, proceeded to fail horribly by suing old people who have the technological expertise of half a cheese sandwich.
June 21st, 2009 at 12:33 am
Here’s an idea to consider. This would very costly, but game developers would also be able to find financial backing as well. They develop a game as usual, then post it to their website. No DRM or anything that would take away from the gaming experience. Just the game and only the game. That would eliminate the need to protect themselves from the “actual” pirates. They would be able to ensure the quality of the games so people would know where to download an official copy. Now if the games are satisfactory, then they can ask for their customers’ patronage in terms of how they think the game is worth if they want a sequel. They would have to actually work hard to earn evey dallor to ensure a quality expereince. Not sure how this would work for consoles, though. I, too, don’t like the idea of getting a good demo before buying a game if it’s going to mediocre.