I actually read the article, hoping to see a mention of "Stardock".  I was disappointed they did not mention the company by name.

I thought the whole article was kinda blah. I mean they basically were saying the more companies should got the small game up front with lots of DLC route. Which personally I hate. When I play a game I like to play all the way through it. Not play part of it then wait 2-3 months to play another part then so on. I know games like Dragon Age and such made a bit of money off their DLC but personal I never got any of it cause by the time it came out I had already beaten the game and didn't feel like going back to play 1-2 extra missions I had to 'PAY' for.

Not to mention when you compare the economics of hours of gameplay vs price the DLC is often far less cost efficient for consumers. It's mostly just banking on your fondness for the original game.

I wish they had cited Gal Civ 2 instead of Elemental. I recall reading another article on piracy several years back a little while after Gal Civ 2 came out. And they pointed to how it was hitting the top of the sales charts even though it has no DRM. And the article went on to say how Piracy does not have as big of an impact on sales as a lot of studios claim.

Personally I think piracy is just the scapegoat for crappy games developers. The marketing and devs need to explain to the higher up executives, who often know little about tech matters, that the reason sales are so low for their "great new game" is because people are pirating it. And if only they weren't pirating it they could meet their original sales targets. So the executes ask how they can stop this piracy and then the devs come up with some crazy DRM (Case and point UBISOFT) while the legal depart gets tasked with cracking down on these pirates.

Honestly I think most companies loss more money trying to fight pirates then they get back from the few pirates turned customers. First off the whole legal side of things cost a lot of money because lawyers aren't cheap. Second a lot of paying customers leave, like I won't buy any UBISOFT game with that DRM and I "was" a settlers fan but not touching S7, plus the cost of developing and maintaining said DRM. And lastly pirates aren't your average Joe who is tech illiterate. While most may not be skilled hackers they do at least have a fair bit of knowledge regarding computers and how to navigate the internet. You can find pretty much anything you want in less then 5 mins if you know where to look on the net these days.

Trying to stop piracy is like trying to stop the tides. In the end you'll just end up exhausted and your clothes will have to be hung out to dry.

In closing though I think the reason Stardock games do so well in sales is not only because they are good but because they dont' have any DRM. People don't wanna have the hassle of stupid DRMs and often they figure if they have to dnld some crack off a site to get a program they paid for to work then why bother even purchasing it in the first place. Especially since the crack isn't supported by the developers.

Well, for software developer, Piracy is indeed kill them; but for hardware industry, just like Playstation and X-Box, piracy will increase their sales. Why? Because, Pirated DVD is cheaper than the original ones. The high price prevent people from the third world to buy Playstation or X-Box. That's why they just secretly share the way to pirate their game, so people who can't afford the original games can play and buy the console. Even with the pirated version.

Well the problem is the hype mongers basically do this simple formula to come up with how much a company "lost" due to pirates. # of time Software was torrented * Price of software = Money lost due to Piracy. The problem is it assumes every download is a person who would of bought the software and doesn't have it and that every download is a unique user.

I know people who have downloaded software because they lost or broke the CD/DVD. But because they still have the Serial KEY they can still play it even over match making systems that check to make sure the user bought the software because it goes off the Serial Key. People such as these are included in the "Lost sales".

Then there are the bored kids who don't have the money to buy it and can't get their parents to fork over the cash. These kids were never gonna buy it cause they don't have the means so they don't really count as lost sales either.

Next there is try before buy people who actually download a game to see if it's worth purchasing since demos have all but disappeared from the market these days. These people actually constitute an increase in sales, kinda like they showed a similar trend in the music industry with people who dnld music also buy more CDs. In a way piracy is a form of marketing cause more people try it and thus word of mouth spreads so someone who wouldn't of even heard of the game might actually go out and buy it.

Then we come to the looking for a quick thrill crowd. These people just want to find a game for free and play it. Much like the bored kids only these people actually have the money to go out and buy the game. They just don't want to spend their money on it cause they are looking for a cheap thrill. If they can't find it via the pirated software they will simply move on to something else like youtube vids, flash games, or etc. While Anit-piracy advocates often try to include them in lost sales the truth is these people were never going to buy the game in the first place even though they could afford it.

Lastly we have the "true lost sales" section of piracy. Which since the whole thing is a black market and those tend to have far less records it's hard to get an accurate account. But this group I think makes up a very small percentage of overall piracy. This is basically people who can afford it and would go out to purchase the game but they choose instead to go pirate the game. It sounds similar to the cheap thrill group but the key difference is this group of have purchased the game if piracy wasn't an option where as the cheap thrill would of simply found something else to do rather the play/buy the game.

EDIT: Oh yea I forgot another group. The pre-release rabid fan group. They are kinda like the try before buy group only they were always gonna get the game. Back in College there was this guy in my class who loved Street Fighter and went nuts with SF4 came out. He got a pirated copy of the game a week before it came out and brought his modded console to campus to play with a bunch of other people after class. Even though he pirated it and the company would mark it as a lost sale he still bought the game for both 360 and PS3 (He really liked SF).

Over the years I've spoken with a lot of people about piracy and if they have engaged in it. And frankly I've heard a lot of reasons why from people why they do it. Most of which I've pretty much lumped the basic premise of in the groups mentioned above. But besides the reasons for why people pirate I think just as important are the reasons why people don't.

1) To much hassle - Lost of fake sites with ad banners and fake files more it hard for novices to find the real deal.

2) To risky - Id Theif concerns, Virus, and Malware litter some sites and are even inbedded in some of the software you can download

3) Moral - They think it's akin to stealing so they choose not to (though some may torrent stuff the own if their disk is damaged)

4) Legal - I actually hear this from maybe 2% of people as most say they figure the odds of them getting legally procesuted is slim to non-existant. Just goes to show Anti-Piracy laws aren't much deteriant.

5) Not Tech Savy - These people aren't that tech litterate and pretty much say they wouldn't know how to pirate as it sounds overly complicated.

I actually put them in order based on what I hear the most. And at the top is the easiest for companies to increase. Before the music industry wised up and there was a lot of sites around to download music from. But when they finally accepted that online was the wave of the future and setup sites for customers to digitally puchase and download music their sales took off and many of the sites faded away. While music piracy isn't completely gone it's not what it use to be. I think the same will be true of video games and other software. As companies provide easier access to their software through digital distribution like Impulse as well as deals like the weekend sales they will encourage more people to buy then they would by implementing some overly complicated DRM which often are plagued with bugs and easily disarmed by pirates.

I would alike to add another category to Pyromancer2k's excellent list:

Refusal to be robbed!  There are many people out there that would be extremely willing to purchase the original for $20 to $30 - but feel like they are constantly being robbed by the software companies when they have to pay $40+ for a game.  This is especially true of games that have little or no honest replay value (10 hours to finish the game means that game sould be worth $15 to $20 - not $50!).  I haunt both the Impulse and Steam store for the one day and weekend deals, because those are the only prices I will willingly pay for a new game, and I am not alone in that.

I understand very well how expensive it can be to make a game (I have a friend programming for EA Sports, another that woks for THQ, and another that was part of the old Eidos team).  I also know people that have been part of "independent" software productions that have outperformed the big-name games and who made very good money selling their products at $10 to $15.  Get rid of the bloat, and the prices can come down.  Stop blowing hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing games that have no chance in heck of selling more than 100,000 copies.  What the big gaming companies need is more people that actually play games that can tell them if their new game is likely to sell.

Anyway, enough of my rant.  Back to you all, and what do you think?

For one it allows them to maintain a bit of control over what users saying about their games or the company in the forums. I know EA changed this policy/terms of use a while back to where your forum names was tied to your Master account and if you got ban from the forums it ban you from the games that use the service. I don't really know what became of that though as I don't have any games that use such a setup and refuse to purchase any with such setups that the producers can simply deny my usage (Like Ubisofts DRM).

It's all about the money. MMOs bring in a ton of continous revenue for companies and more companies want to find a way to tap into that extra revenue. If they can get players to "rent" games by having to constantly pay some kinda of subscription service then they will.

The topic of piracy is also partially a smoke screen for the real issue. Which is the producers want to go after used game market which is extremely profitable. The majority of retailer's profits like Gamestop comes from Used Game sales. A lot of producers see this as piracy because one person paid to own the game but several people get to use it and the retailer makes a ton off the transaction between owners.

To combat this more companies want to tie the game to a specific user thus there is no chance for resale. Companies work with sites like Steam because for several reasons. First they know the site is selling new copies and not used copies, thus more money in the producer's pockets. Secound they don't need to setup their own tracking system as they can simply use the service in place by Steam to tie the Serial Key to that User's account and thus the game can't be resold or transfered. So anyone wanting to play the game must by a new copy. And lastly the fact that selling the game on Sites like Steam have less overhead then producing physical copies of the game and distributing them to retails Nation wide or even globally.

As to the question of why publishers would want their distribution options dictated to them. Well frankly they wouldn't but sadly they don't always have the luxury of that choice. Sometimes a distributer has enough control over the market that they can dictate to producers what terms they will accept. Walmart is the most famous for this as they have driven many manufacturing companies out of business or overseas because they couldn't meet Walmart's depand. In case you didn't know Walmart goes to production companies and says "This is how much we are gonna pay for that item, take it or leave it." sometimes that means the company has to lower quality to meet the price and other times it means pay cuts, layoffs, or moving overseas.

Back to the topic at hand though, Steam is trying to position it self as the Walmart of digital distribution so that publishers will have to come to them because they will be dependant on them. One of the Stardock devs(I think Frogboy) wrote an article a while back on what they thought of Steam and how Steam was basically trying to get their hooks into developers which would end up meaning less freedom for devs in the future.

I think Xbox 360 has set up a model that is not only developer friendly, but probably the future.  They are starting to release games more and more with codes so if you buy it new you get all functions, if you buy it used you are either missing fuctions or or even levels/characters and then you have to purchase them.

I can see that model taking over more and more.

More fun reading from http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100517/1609539448.shtml

Swedish Police Say Anti-Piracy Law Has Harmed Ability To Catch Criminals

from the consequences dept

We've pointed out many times in the past the "unintended" consequences of certain activities, and it looks like the entertainment industry's worldwide effort to push for more and more industry-favorable copyright laws is causing serious problems elsewhere. Apparently, Anders Ahlqvist, who runs the Swedish IT crime unit is noting that the response to the IPRED law in Sweden (pushed by the entertainment industry to crack down on unauthorized file sharing) means that it's now more difficult for him to do his job. Part of the issue, of course, is that various ISPs responded to the law by seeking to protect their users' privacy by deleting log files. Of course, that probably means it's only a matter of time before the industry pushes for new data retention laws, despite evidence that more data retention can actually make life trickier for law enforcement as well. Still, at some point people need to recognize that the entertainment industry's single-minded focus on "stomping out file sharing" rather than adding value through new business models has some serious costs elsewhere.

Yea that's called counterfeiting and fraud and it's not quite the same. With digital copies you can make an exact copy of something not an imitation. Also a lot of counterfeiters pretend that it's the real thing and it's just some bulk/warehouse discount. Of course other times people know they are buying knock offs which is fine because the person knows it's not real and it's just a look they are going for. It's the counterfeiters who con people into thinking they are getting the real thing that are the problem especially with things like medication and other unsafe items.

I agree with that. Like the article I linked above. The more they push the larger the problem becomes. Laws and Legality are meaningless in the end. It all comes down to economics with supply and demand. People want the goods and services provided in a reasonable manner for a reasonable price and if the devs/distributors won't provide it they will find someone who will.