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"Gaming in a criminals world"

I have just had this idea. Don't really know where it came from but i'll write it down. Don't know if it is worth the read but if you have time please read it. The other day I wrote a topic about piracy, In everyones view piracy seems to be a bad thing but there are others who disagree with everything that has been said before. They are the criminals who copy the games and sell them on to make themselves a pretty penny (usually quite alot of pretty pennys).

So why am I telling you this, don't really know. I myself used to copy games, before you judge me please read on.
It was a long time ago, I was about 12 maybe 13 and I owned an Amiga. At that stage everybody I knew that owned an Amiga copied games and gave them to friends. I didn't even think twice about doing it as I didn't know it was wrong. Sometime I used to go to a market in Glasgow on the weekends to get copies of the newest games at dirt-cheap prices. These guys made a living out of selling games and it wasn't until a few years later I realised just how bad piracy was and the real effects of piracy.

Piracy is a major problem but its a problem that will never go away. No matter how good the technology to stop it is there will always be a way round it. The main problem lies within society itself. Until the people who buy and sell them realise that its wrong it will never stop. So why am I going on about this, The other day I was walking through the street and a guy asked me if I wanted to buy a PS2 game. It obviously wasn't his and since you can't copy them (yet) how would he make his money, he steals then sells them for £10 less than the shops. I turned him down and walked away. I stopped and looked back and waited to see him approach a few more people before a few policeman shouted then chased him and arrested him for stealing.

All this made me think, are some people really that bad, the answer is yes. But is there a victim in all this? Ok so stealing and piracy is wrong but these large companies can afford the effects, if they couldn't then they would stop making games. Do you honestly think if piracy stopped and no longer happened that game prices would drop, I don't.

Im getting a bit side-tracked so I'll get back to the main point. People who copy games. Recently I went back to the market that I used to buy amiga games. I used to buy imports for my PSX (they weren't copies but I don't know if they were stolen or not) The same guys were now selling PSX games (copies) I decided to ask why they sold them.
He had no problems telling me, Here is roughly what he said.
Why should you pay £30 for something you can buy for a fiver. Or with PC software something that costs over £300 that I can sell for £15. This is how I make my money. People copy music onto tapes for friends, copy videos and dowload music and films from the web. What I do is no different other than the software companies make such a big issue over it. If all the money went to the people who made the game It would be fine but it dosn't. It gets split and alot goes to the people who sell it which is wrong. The only reason they make it a big issue is because they are greedy and want more money from people like you gamers. They don't care about you at all.

I wasn't sure if he was just trying to get me to buy games or if he truely ment what he was saying. But how much of it is actualy true. I don't think people understand the true issues of piracy enough. Its wrong plain and simple and more should be done to get this message across to the people, not spent trying to modify hardware to stop it. Also do the developers really care about us, as long as we buy the games they are happy. I'll stop now as I have probably bored you all. : )
Thanks for reading.
AliBoy

FM, thats all true, but as it's going to be near-impossible to catch *every* person who does a copy or two, the authorities will concentrate their efforts on the big fish.

Your Honour wrote:
> That's interesting, it's not only illegal to copy a game, it's also
> illegal to PLAY a copied game. To be honest, I don't think that the
> police or games publishers are going to knock on everyones door to
> see if you're copying.

I would imagine that they are more
> concerned about catching the people who copy a game 100+ times, then
> sell them at car boot sales. Some reports even suggest whole
> warehouses of computers and CD-R's copying thousands of games at a
> time and shipping them to other countries.

Correct, but add up the number of factories producing pirate CD's, (Hundreds?), then add up the number of people burning a CD with a copy for one of their mates. (Millions?).

It's the little pirates that do the damage, the ones who think 'just one or two copies for my mates at school won't do any harm'.

That's interesting, it's not only illegal to copy a game, it's also illegal to PLAY a copied game. To be honest, I don't think that the police or games publishers are going to knock on everyones door to see if you're copying.

I would imagine that they are more concerned about catching the people who copy a game 100+ times, then sell them at car boot sales. Some reports even suggest whole warehouses of computers and CD-R's copying thousands of games at a time and shipping them to other countries.

Facts, Figures, FAQs about Piracy

"In 1998 alone, U.S. video game and PC game companies lost more than $3.2 billion worldwide due to entertainment software piracy. Losses caused by Internet piracy total millions more. It's sad to say, but entertainment software piracy also hurts gamers and the general public. With the money lost to piracy last year, U.S. game publishers could have developed about 1,600 new high quality games."

- Interactive Digital Software Association

"There is a huge problem with piracy in the PlayStation market and it is having a serious impact on developers and publishers. Normally, we'd use copy protection that attempts to prevent duplication, but that seems to be getting cracked more easily by ardent pirates so we're trying something new. Even if a pirate cracks this system and makes illegal copies, the people who may use pirate CDs won't trust it to run properly and will hopefully buy the full copy of the game at retail."

- Simon Prytherch, Codemasters (re: LMA Manager)

"Some of you probably don't know why software piracy is such a horrible aspect of the gaming industry. You might think that burning a game won't cause much of a problem for a big gaming company since you're only ripping them off one game. If that gaming corporation is ripped off 40 or 50 bucks because of you its no big deal, right? Not really. Once you get the hang of copying games, you don't stop. In truth, most development house are actually quite small businesses, usually consisting of only 50-100 employees. If you think about it, the development cycle is 18-24 months and even up to three years to create a grade 'A' title. Those are long hard months in which developers put in hours of their precious time just so you can have some fun.

Furthermore, creating any type of game is extremely expensive (Shenmue anyone?). Game production may cost upwards of 2 to 3 million dollars and that doesn't even take into consideration paying around $40k to $50k to an average of 30 employees every year. Then you look at marketing and manufacturing which is another million dollars or so. Finally, development houses will spend hours of extra time doing the little things such as building and updating websites, making demos, press releases, interviews, and much more.

Yet, there are still people that claim that they copy games because buying them off the shelves is just way to expensive. Some even say that game prices are rising and finding a good price is almost impossible. Well, that's just plain ludicrous if you ask me."

- Abbas Anwar, SegaWeb Editorial

"Nintendo has filed hundreds of lawsuits against video game counterfeiters, winning a number of significant victories worldwide. The production and sale of counterfeit video game products cost Nintendo, its publishers and developers an estimated $750 million in sales worldwide last year."

- Nintendo press release, Dec 1999

Q. If I own a game, don't I have a legal right to make a backup copy of it?
A. You may have certain rights to make a backup copy for archival purposes. However, backup means backup! You cannot legally sell a backup copy (unless you also sell the original copy to the same person) or transmit it over the Internet.

Q. What if the game company is no longer in business or never released the game?
A. Copyright protection is not determined by commercial availability. Even though a game is not available through retail channels, that does not mean that it has fallen into the public domain. In fact, copyright protection for corporations lasts for up to 75 years.

Q. So is it also illegal to sell hardware add-ons such as mod chips that allow you to play illegal copies of games?
A. Yes.

Q. Is it illegal to play a game that is pirated?
A. Yes.

- eBay FAQs re: Piracy

I think the main problem is the lack of knowledge. Developers don't seem to do enough to warn people of the consequences of piracy. I think more should be done to warn people. Extra warnings on games, tougher laws against people who continue to do it.
We also don't know the full extent of the problem. Developers release figures saying it cost us £xxxx amount on piracy, but are these figures true? Are they exagerated? Are they the same for all developers?
I think that more information is required to the public about how serious this problem is. Without it then piracy will continue and the market will grow and grow.

Because it ALL adds up!

If everyone thought that it's ok to copy the odd game because it won't harm the games industry, (and from comments on this site after a year of campaigning against piracy you'd be surprised, most people think it's ok to do it), then add it up. 1000 users on this site, take all their games, work out that 90% of those games are pirated, that's about £27000 in lost revenue already.

Then there's other users, other sites, other countries.

If one in 3 games is a fake, and the industry earns a billion pounds a year, where did the other half a billion go that they should have got?

Half a billion doesn't sound much, but it looks like this:

£500,000,000

Say the average game took £5 million to make, that's 100 games we miss out on, every year. Because some people think it doesn't damage the games industry.

I know that 1/3rd of games out there are copies, but I still am positive that the loss to the games industry isn't 1/3rd of profits.
People with, say 10 copied games, wouldn't have bought them all - maybe 1 (after all 10 copies would cost about the same as 1 original).
Therefore the actual loss to the games industry is about 1/10 of the actual figures they quote. If they say piracy costs the industry 10 million a year, then I think the actual figure is closer to 1 million.
Still a large figure, yes. And I'm not ignoring the vast amounts of piracy going on in eastern countries.
I think the people who are going to damage the games industry are those that would have otherwise bought the game, but elect for a cheaper pirate copy. The other people, who wouldn't buy the original, can be left out of the equation. At least in terms of 'harming the games industry'.
If you don't think so, why not?

erm... the market guy!

Do i get a prize for answering first?

AliBoy wrote:
Ok so stealing and piracy is wrong but
> these large companies can afford the effects, if they couldn't then
> they would stop making games. Do you honestly think if piracy
> stopped and no longer happened that game prices would drop, I
> don't.

WHAT!!!!????
About one in three games currently in the market place is a fake. That's the estimate from the Federation Against Copyright Theft. To date, TWO great games have had to be canned for the Gamecube, because of job losses at the developer's premises. Games are being canned almost on a weekly basis. Ever wondered why?

To make a game nowadays, you need a budget of £millions, a staff of about 120 people, production facilities, licences, hardware etc.

These 'large' companies are quite often little groups of 20 or 30 people in a small development company, who's whole lives have been devoted to gaming, who spend countless hours away from their families trying to get the gameplay 'just right' for us, the gamers. Every single time a game is pirated, it hurts them.

As for PS2 games not being pirated, I can get you 10 games for £30. It would probably take you longer to decide which 10 titles you wanted than the time it would take me to get hold of them, that's how easy it is. So that's about £330 of software, and not a penny of that money would go to the publisher, the developer, the retailer, the shipper, the production companies involved or the little guy who proof reads the manuals.

The only reason pirates rip off games and sell them, is because it's so easy. They KNOW it's wrong, or else they are just too ignorant to realise how badly their activities are affecting the gaming industry.

Now who's more greedy, the guy in your local market or the games industry?

I agree if games were cheaper piracy could be reduced a little, but I have no idea just how much each game is worth and how much profit can be made from one game.