Quake 4 Dowloaded Almost 1 000 000 Times

[Devilfish]

Lets face it, people are lazy. Rather than going to the shop queuing up and paying over the odds for something that might not even run on your own PC. Its much simpler to download and play. Saves the hassle and frustration i guess. Soonq?

[Mogget]

But it says on a lot of games, something like "FOR HOME USE ONLY: Unauthorised rental, blah blah, re-sale, charging for use, etc are prohibited."

So you's still breakin' da law.

I suspect that the "resale" part means that you can't resell the game as a new product. I am not aware of any law that forbids anyone from selling something second hand when they have finished with it.

[A Hen]

It's quite a spurious one though. If the current releases are good, they get bought. What the industry ought to do instead of arguing a point that'll go on for ever is make it possible to play these old games legally, just as Nintendo are doing. Then I'll have no excuse... and I'll also be quite happy to pay for stuff like Super Metroid.

So long as it's not £15.

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Agreed on all points.

[Fry Crayola]

So?!? Just because you won't buy it on the basis of it being alot for it's quality (or lack of), certainly doesn't mean its overpriced.. clearly people are buying, they can't be overpriced..

..would you rather they be sold for much less and then for it to just be the first person to snatch the purchase?

Madness..

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What? If something is being priced based on its rarity and I want it for its quality, then I'll find it overpriced. It isn't a single global value, it applies to me.

Now we're entering a time with downloadable content, this can cease to exist. I'll gladly pay for old games - but I want the game for how good it is, not so I have a shiny rare hard copy.

[Fry Crayola]

One of the best things to improve the videogames industry is not to pay for software. Never ever.

A lot of people talk about how important is to pay for the games that deserve it. Well, there's no console game in the world that worths the money you pay nowadays.

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Well, that's just clearly nonsense. I could list tons of games that have been well worth the money I paid for them. Was Pro Evo 3, a game that I played for an entire year in single and multiplayer, not worth £40?

[Switchblade Honey]

My Old Post about Preowned being the same as Piracy:

And a new one about copy protection only inconveniencing the legitimate users:

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The argument that "preowned is the same as piracy" keeps being made, but it's stupid.

HMV and Virgin don't offer a used DVD selection, but GAME sells used games. Why is that? Because videogames are overpriced.

First let's discard the wrong idea, which I've even heard spouted by the Guardian gamesblog, that games prices have to rise because of rising production costs. The cost of making a big Hollywood film is 10 times what it costs to make a game, and yet DVDs don't cost £400. You don't have to know much about economics to realise that what you charge for something isn't dictated simply by how much it costs to make. For one thing, price affects demand.

There's a huge amount of unmet demand from people who would buy more games if they were cheaper. That's why GAME has to devote floor space to used games - to try and capture some of that market. If they could price new stock more sensibly, they wouldn't need the used bins, but I imagine they're restrained from discounting too much by what the publisher charges them.

Is a used game market a bad thing for the games industry? No. It's helping the games industry, because a strong second-hand market makes people buy more new games. If you know you can trade in a game for a decent fraction of its price new, you're more likely to take a punt on it. This is especially helpful because the games industry is increasingly producing heavily marketed new games that are dogs (Driv3r, also apparently Stubbs). People need an incentive to risk their £35.

The games industry can't stop people writing P2P software, and they can't prevent people disabling copy protection systems.

What can they do to prevent piracy?

Price games more realistically. Developers should cut out the middleman and go to online distribution systems (like Steam, but, you know, reliable) and pass the savings on to the consumer.

Console makers should put in the R&D costs to create new storage formats that can't be burnt (like in the GameCube).

The idea that some sort of special interest legislation criminalising the selling of second-hand goods is what the games industry needs or deserves is fuckwitted. Sorry.

[Mogget]

I've seen people here saying that they've had no problems with their pc games and that's great but it hasn't been the case with me.

To be fair, it could be argued that my lack of problems with PC games is due to several factors. I only buy a handful of games each year, I don't install hundreds of funny little programs for all sorts of pointless little tasks, and I don't have a DVD burner in my system (I did have a CD-RW drive once, but I got rid of it when I realised that packet writing to CDs is shite).

[Strafe]

HMV and Virgin don't offer a used DVD selection, but GAME sells used games. Why is that? Because videogames are overpriced.

First let's discard the wrong idea, which I've even heard spouted by the Guardian gamesblog, that games prices have to rise because of rising production costs. The cost of making a big Hollywood film is 10 times what it costs to make a game, and yet DVDs don't cost £400. You don't have to know much about economics to realise that what you charge for something isn't dictated simply by how much it costs to make. For one thing, price affects demand.

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Bad comparrison, I'm afraid. Films have cinema releases. "Big Hollywood films" have a secondary product line too (Books, Toys, Collectors Cards, Posters etc).

[Mogget]

So?!? Just because you won't buy it on the basis of it being alot for it's quality (or lack of), certainly doesn't mean its overpriced.. clearly people are buying, they can't be overpriced..

..would you rather they be sold for much less and then for it to just be the first person to snatch the purchase?

Madness..

I think he means that he would prefer to see the game more widely available, and pay a sensible price for a copy.

[Switchblade Honey]

Also, there's an interesting practical experiment on the effects of games piracy that's been conducted in the console market over this generation.

PS2 - piracy possible, sells the most legit games.

XBox - piracy possible and you can even rip games to the hard drive.

Gamecube - essentially no piracy due to custom disc format.

The last two are effectively "joint second".

So tell me again how piracy is a terrible, terrible thing that's killing the industry?

[Switchblade Honey]

Bad comparrison, I'm afraid.  Films have cinema releases.  "Big Hollywood films" have a secondary product line too (Books, Toys, Collectors Cards, Posters etc).

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So what? You'll have to spell out for me how that affects my argument. Address in your answer the following points:

1. The DVD market is where films earn most of their money nowadays.

2. Hollywood has multiple revenue streams - cinema, DVDs, tie-ins etc. Developers have multiple revenue streams - selling games, licensing the engine, Internet cafe licensing, making military simulation versions of their games.

3. "Big games" have secondary product lines too - there's all sorts of Halo tat. In fact, that's something I left out of "what developers can do": add more value to the legitimate product by including extras that are hard to copy. Like Valve did with the special Half Life 2 pack. Ok, it was only a baseball cap, but what if they'd bundled a spin-off novel or something?

(Oh yeah, and let's not forget convenience - what if it was quicker and more convenient to get a legit copy than to spend a day or two downloading from unreliable torrents?)

[Xevious]

Also, there's an interesting practical experiment on the effects of games piracy that's been conducted in the console market over this generation.

PS2 - piracy possible, sells the most legit games.

XBox - piracy possible and you can even rip games to the hard drive.

Gamecube - essentially no piracy due to custom disc format.

The last two are effectively "joint second".

So tell me again how piracy is a terrible, terrible thing that's killing the industry?

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PS2 - sells the most legit games, but the lowest number of games per console.

By far.

[Strafe]

So what? You'll have to spell out for me how that affects my argument. Address in your answer the following points:

1. The DVD market is where films earn most of their money nowadays.

2. Hollywood has multiple revenue streams - cinema, DVDs, tie-ins etc. Developers have multiple revenue streams - selling games, licensing the engine, Internet cafe licensing, making military simulation versions of their games.

3. "Big games" have secondary product lines too - there's all sorts of Halo tat. In fact, that's something I left out of "what developers can do": add more value to the legitimate product by including extras that are hard to copy. Like Valve did with the special Half Life 2 pack. Ok, it was only a baseball cap, but what if they'd bundled a spin-off novel or something?

(Oh yeah, and let's not forget convenience - what if it was quicker and more convenient to get a legit copy than to spend a day or two downloading from unreliable torrents?)

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You were kind of asking why a film that costs "10 times more to make" than a game would mean why the DVD doesn't cost £400.

I'm basically explaining that in your example (Hollywood Blockbusters), the revenue comes from multiple streams (And a massive chunk is from Cinema, if not the biggest), that games don't cover. I hadn't even included the HUGE home rental market, or TV or SKY Boxoffice (You do realise that they pay the film makers too, right)?

I wasn't arguing anything, other than why a DVD doesn't cost £400. You seemed to be trying to get an answer to this and I was explaining why it wasn't the case. I'm sure if, like games, films only got money from one revenue stream then they would certainly cost more. Fortunately, the film business doesn't work like this.

If you can't work that out, you're thick. Sorry.

[metallicfrodo]

1. The DVD market is where films earn most of their money nowadays.

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Stooker has already kinda made this point, but

1) Can you provide a source for that claim.

2) When you say earn most money do you mean most profit? i.e. the production costs of the film might have already been covered by the cinema release so the DVD sales are almost pure profit so they only need to sell a relatively small amount to make a larger profit than the cinema release even though that may have taken 60 million dollars or whatever.

[Switchblade Honey]

You were kind of asking why a film that costs "10 times more to make" than a game would mean why the DVD doesn't cost £400.

I'm basically explaining that in your example (Hollywood Blockbusters), the revenue comes from multiple streams (And a massive chunk is from Cinema, if not the biggest), that games don't cover.  I hadn't even included the HUGE home rental market, or TV or SKY Boxoffice (You do realise that they pay the film makers too, right)?

I wasn't arguing anything, other than why a DVD doesn't cost £400.  You seemed to be trying to get an answer to this and I was explaining why it wasn't the case.  I'm sure if, like games, films only got money from one revenue stream then they would certainly cost more.  Fortunately, the film business doesn't work like this. 

If you can't work that out, you're thick.  Sorry.

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No, I wasn't "trying to get an answer" to why a DVD doesn't cost £400. I was pointing out that it's wrong to expect the pricing of something to directly reflect the production costs.

Now, you're right to point out that Hollywood has multiple revenue streams. But as I've already pointed out so does the games industry. The costs of making big films are much bigger than the biggest games budgets. And if the games industry is more reliant on retail than Hollywood is, then whose fault is that?

Oh yeah, about the HUGE home rental market - if only you could rent games in Blockbuster, eh? Except that I've also read developers whining about games rentals as being another thing that's the same as piracy. Publishers do get revenue from rentals, don't they?

[metallicfrodo]

PS2 - sells the most legit games, but the lowest number of games per console.

By far.

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But is that to do with Piracy or the fact it is a far more masmarket product than the other two consoles?

I would imagine that the percentage sales of DVDs to DVD players was much higher in the early years than it is now. Owing to the fact that moviephiles were the more likely purchasers of DVD players in those times and also the people more likely to buy a greater number of DVDs. As DVD players became massmarket I bet the attach rate became a whole lot lower. I would imagine that the same thing happened with CD players.

[Strafe]

Now, you're right to point out that Hollywood has multiple revenue streams. But as I've already pointed out so does the games industry.

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Too a MUCH MUCH lesser extent.

Oh yeah, about the HUGE home rental market - if only you could rent games in Blockbuster, eh? Except that I've also read developers whining about games rentals as being another thing that's the same as piracy. Publishers do get revenue from rentals, don't they?

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Again, Game rental vs Movie rental is a much, much smaller market. As for your second point, I have no idea.

[metallicfrodo]

No, I wasn't "trying to get an answer" to why a DVD doesn't cost £400. I was pointing out that it's wrong to expect the pricing of something to directly reflect the production costs.

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A better question would be why does it cost me 8-10 quid to go and see a movie in a cinema, that 'might' entertain me for 2 hours? Now that is massive overpricing if ever I saw it.

[Switchblade Honey]

Too a MUCH MUCH lesser extent.

For most companies, true. Although I think Valve funded those 5 years developing Half Life 2 with a lot of revenue from CounterStrike in Net cafés. Why isn't there a console-based net café business where the 85-90% of XBox owners who don't have XBox Live can pay £5 an hour to play networked games on a big screen? A few cinemas have done this, but why aren't publishers working to encourage it, so that they get more value out of the multiplayer they've developed that half of buyers won't even touch?

Rather than whining about piracy, the games industry could do more to pursue other revenue streams. Like movie adaptations of their games - there's another good one. Of course, it would help if they bothered to hire professional writers and voice actors so the storylines and characters weren't utter shit.

Again, Game rental vs Movie rental is a much, much smaller market.  As for your second point, I have no idea.

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Games vs movies in general is a much, much smaller market. Game rental could be handled a lot better. How about I rent a game for three days, and if I want to keep it, I can keep the disc and have the rental fee knocked off the (reduced) price?

[BeeJay]

A better question would be why does it cost me 8-10 quid to go and see a movie in a cinema, that 'might' entertain me for 2 hours? Now that is massive overpricing if ever I saw it.

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Go to the cinema in Wales before 1pm and pay less than £4 instead.

A couple of comments:

1. The not for re-sale does refer to selling the item on new. Selling most stuff on second hand is fine and legal.

2. I'd attribute a lot of the PS2's sucess to the fact that the PS1 was easily modded and so is the PS2. I know a lot of people who bought PS2s because they knew a man who could mod it and sell them games cheaply. This also relates to the games per console sold arguement.

I know of a couple of people who have PS2s only and have no legit games for it. They were quite surprised when I told them that you could do the same with an xbox. They were genuinely interested in getting a 360 with this in mind.

[BeeJay]

For most companies, true. Although I think Valve funded those 5 years developing Half Life 2 with a lot of revenue from CounterStrike in Net cafés. Why isn't there a console-based net café business where the 85-90% of XBox owners who don't have XBox Live can pay £5 an hour to play networked games on a big screen? A few cinemas have done this, but why aren't publishers working to encourage it, so that they get more value out of the multiplayer they've developed that half of buyers won't even touch?

Rather than whining about piracy, the games industry could do more to pursue other revenue streams. Like movie adaptations of their games - there's another good one. Of course, it would help if they bothered to hire professional writers and voice actors so the storylines and characters weren't utter shit.

Games vs movies in general is a much, much smaller market. Game rental could be handled a lot better. How about I rent a game for three days, and if I want to keep it, I can keep the disc and have the rental fee knocked off the (reduced) price?

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Ok, firstly, the game industry is bigger than hollywood. Secondly Blockies used to do exactely that on game rentals. Don't know if they still do.

[Switchblade Honey]

Stooker has already kinda made this point, but

1) Can you provide a source for that claim

2) When you say earn most money do you mean most profit? i.e. the production costs of the film might have already been covered by the cinema release so the DVD sales are almost pure profit so they only need to sell a relatively small amount to make a larger profit than the cinema release even though that may have taken 60 million dollars or whatever.

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1) http://slate.msn.com/id/2123286/

"Indeed, DVDs alone now provide 59 percent of the feature film revenues of the studios,"

2) That's a strange way to look at it. You've funded the production by the time the film is made - both the cinema revenues and the DVD revenues are contributing to your profits. The DVD revenues are greater.

[gandhi]

HMV and Virgin don't offer a used DVD selection, but GAME sells used games. Why is that? Because videogames are overpriced.

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I think you'll find its more to do with films getting re-releases on DVD or there being enough stock of a film on DVD so you can get what you want. This isn't the case with games, if you want something x years old you won't be able to buy it new and those that you can will be hard to find.

[ianwuk]

If someone can take the time to make a game then I will take the time and legitimately pay for it. Simple really.

[BeeJay]

If someone can take the time to make a game then I will take the time and legitimately pay for it.  Simple really.

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yes

[Switchblade Honey]

Ok, firstly, the game industry is bigger than hollywood. Secondly Blockies used to do exactely that on game rentals. Don't know if they still do.

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The game industry is not as big as Hollywood. That is games industry propaganda. I think the figure's derived from taking the total sales revenue (not profit) from software plus consoles, which is like including the price of DVD players in the revenue from DVDs.

Can anyone post the article that debunks the "bigger than Hollywood" idea?

I also suspect that the often parroted "the average gamer is 25/38/57" meme is more games industry spin, produced by recording the age of people buying games rather than the age of little Johnny who will actually play them.

[tiedtiger]

Just a general comment:

Piracy derives from two major points.

One is convenience, i.e. it is more convenient to have mp3s than to go buy a CD, and it is more convenient to have players that do likewise. It is more convenient to bittorrent your shows to watch them when you want than it is to wait for c4 or the beeb to get around to showing them. It is more convenient to scarf a game from the internet than to go to the shops that buy it, especially if that game is NTSC only etc.

Our society is built on the idea of convenience (supermarkets, fast food, credit cards, etc), and media piracy is a natural extension of that.

The other factor is value. Value is different from price. It's well within the rights of an intellectual property holder to charge whatever price they like for their goods, but the market does not necessarily attribute the same value as the price. Perceptions of value drives people to seek their goods in alternate places, some legit (like 2nd hand sales, bargain hunting) and some not so legit (like copying a mate's games) etc. Online piracy is an extension of that, in that it's an expression of value. In general, the perceived value of most media is a lot lower than its retail price.

Two big examples of this are to be found in book publishing and television.

You can obtain books online for free in pdf format, hey you can also get them in the library. But most people don't really bother with book piracy - except for expensive boks like technical manuals. Because books are cheap and convenient (ebook readers have never really taken off), the drives to piracy are lessened. It still happens, but it's not as gigantic an issue (except maybe for Harry Potter), especially not when book sgo into paperback form. Book publishing is still the largest media sector in the world, yet it is relatively unaffected by piracy.

Then there's television. Piracy of television programs is rife, but primarily in areas where shows like US dramas are not going to be available (in some cases for up to a year), and also as an opportunity for people to catch certain shows that they missed. And yet many of those same pirates have a subscription to Sky or NTL (or cable in the US) and will choose to watch the vast majority of their television on television, because its convenient and they think that the subscriptions are good value. Spme people will go to any length to get their cable for free, but most won't. Even in Britain, the license fee is mostly supported by the public.

The thing with games piracy is that games are increasingly inconvenient, with their region separations etc, and also with their copy protection that causes games not to work. They are also priced far higher than their value (so are movies and CD albums and pr0n), and this is what drives piracy of them.

Yet how many people will happily pay for a usenet subscription to get their favourite media? It seems more and more people are taking up the usenet banner, so they clearly will set *some* value on their media.

That's why I think a "game channel" approach has some sense to it. If it offers a simple, clean service with many games, play as much or as little as you want for $10 a month, then that will work.

[tiedtiger]

Ok, firstly, the game industry is bigger than hollywood.

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[Monkichi 3.0]

There are very few innocent parties in all this, and the whole issue is mostly shades of grey, but with obvious black and whites at the ends of the spectrum.

From the developer/publisher point of view, many games are made and released with the sole intention of making money. Not really a problem, I go to work with the sole intention of making money (Wasn't always like that, but that's another story). The problem is that when you're using the moral highground of saying that pirates cheat you out of money you deserve you then have to look at whether you "deserve" that money to begin with. I've seen some shoddy, shoddy crap in my time which was trying its hardest to get released into the market so that someone out there could pay full what for a broken item. Reproducible hard locks, game crippling bugs, whole features missing (Well, they were there, but didn't work), shoddy workmanship, blatant cash ins etc. That's not even including price fixing and controlling the markets to ensure maximum profit. Of course, there's nothing wrong with a company wanting to maximise profits, in fact, it's duty bound to make as much money as possible in order to safeguard their employee's job. Or so you'd think. This is the same industry in which workers are blatently abused. 12 hour work days anyone? Zero hour contracts for years? Carrot and stick approach to keeping staff (Never actually giving the carrot of course)? Let's get one thing clear, this is an industry which will, at the first opportunity in which it can get away with it, fuck people over. It shows little love for its customers, and unfortunately for the peope working in it.

Of course, not all the people working in the industry are like that. Some companies honestly want to make something good, provide value, make a good product. I got into the industry because I loved it, and still do to an extent, but I find myself forced to do things I know aren't in the interest of gaming. Still, I need to pay the bills, morals will only get me so far. I'm sure it's like that for many in the industry too. So the white? It's the people who work damn hard and deserve to get their dues. The black? The blatant exploitation and disregard for the industry itself, by the industry. The middle ground is the day to day stuff.

So now the gamers. From modding to importing all the way round to second hand software and piracy, gamers want things they're not "supposed" to have. It's clear that a factory mass producing pirate copies of a game has no love for the industry at all. It's there to make money. Owning nothing but a collection of pirate software doesn't mean you don't love games, it means you don't respect the makers, don't feel you need to contribute. This is, in my eyes, the black. It's not defensible. Then we have the white, the people who have never bought/downloaded a game, who play it by the book. Obviously, they're beyond reproach. Then we have 95% of this forum. Have you imported? You've deprived the European distributor their cut. Have you bought second hand? You've deprived the publisher, developer and distributor their cut. Have you sold your game? You've deprived the distributor, publisher and developer their cut. Like I said, shades of grey.

I'd just like to say that the argument about "stealing" will go nowhere. People simply cannot identify with copyright infringement in this way. Artists can, people who work in the industry can, but not the people who pirate games. To them, it's like saying that photocopying the money in their wallet is the same as stealing it. It's not going to happen. People can, however, identify with not getting payed for a service, or more so they can identify with people who don't contribute and are leeches. Personally I think it's the way to go with this one. I buy films I have downloaded if I enjoyed them, as a way of contributing to the people who made the film. Is it because I feel guilty? No, it's because I think they deserve it, I want to give them something.

[Switchblade Honey]

I think you'll find its more to do with films getting re-releases on DVD or there being enough stock of a film on DVD so you can get what you want. This isn't the case with games, if you want something x years old you won't be able to buy it new and those that you can will be hard to find.

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It's not. If you look at the used bins in GAME, it's mostly recent games. Even in Computer Exchange, the stock for this-gen consoles is mostly new releases.

It's true that the games industry largely fails to appreciate the value of its back catalogue classics (except Nintendo). If games were cheaper and readily available for longer (perhaps through an online service), then you wouldn't get situations like this from dumpster's post:

"And Rocky really was excellent. Didn’t sell very well for the first couple of weeks, and the few copies that did sell started to come in to be traded. The first one I traded in, the customer told me what a fantastic game it was. I played it, and agreed. And over the next few weeks, word spread about how good it was, and the game started to sell. Trouble was, at this time, it was on the preowned shelves for a tenner less."