How Bad Is PC Piracy Really?

[Hatta]

Interestingly, these numbers are actually very close to the percentage of viewers/listeners who donate to PBS/NPR. It seems that DRM and lawsuits don't do any better than asking nicely.

I think this reflects the fact that by now, actually buying a game is in fact an act of charity. People have more time than money these days, so we have to allocate it sparingly. If you want to improve these donation rates, you have to fix that underlying economic fact.

[Gnashvar]

Piracy is wrong but I still think they are stupid or just plain naive when they claim each pirated game as a lost sale. People in 3rd world countries would not buy those games if they couldn't pirate simply because they just can't afford it. The could probably get one or two but not the amounts companies claim as lost sales. Minimum wage in my country is less than 5 USD a day. That's a day not hour. People make great efforts to buy a computer do you think they are going to spend 50 bucks, 10 days salary on a game. Never.

[isiolia]

However, I'd be okay with pirating Photoshop because:
1. It's the best image-editor on the market.
2. It costs more than a Neo-Geo.
3. Even though it's the best, it's still not worth near as much as it costs.

If Adobe priced it around $100, okay. But seriously? $700? It takes me three months to make that much money.

Adobe would just be making way too much off of it otherwise. I'd feel worse if this level of pirating was happening if it was at $100, but I completely understand why the majority of the internet does not give two fucks about pirating this software.

It's also a pro-level tool, for which there are free or cheaper alternatives. If your usage of the software truly justifies needing actual full-blown Photoshop Extended Edition, then you can probably also justify the price. Compared to pro-level 3D software, it's downright cheap.

Adobe makes Photoshop Elements, which is $90, or $140 bundled with Premiere Elements. Not to mention $100-or-less applications from other companies. Or free stuff like the GIMP or Paint.net.

The vast majority of the internet doesn't have an issue pirating Photoshop, but they also will barely scratch the surface of what the program can do, and could just as well use something that's legitimately free.

[Zing]

I'd also buy Windows because I know it will work better than a pirated copy of Windows.

This sentence made me stop and think about my own behaviour. When Windows 98 was released, I had already been running a pirated gold master copy for about a month. I acquired a legit copy shortly after the official release. Win98SE was the same way, and also Windows XP. However, in every instance, I wanted the retail release, not because I felt Microsoft should be rewarded, or that I was "doing the right thing", but because I was concerned about any modifications done by the pirate release group or non-gold-master code included in the release. I was more concerned about potential hassles than any moral issue.

[CFFJR]

It's also a pro-level tool, for which there are free or cheaper alternatives. If your usage of the software truly justifies needing actual full-blown Photoshop Extended Edition, then you can probably also justify the price. Compared to pro-level 3D software, it's downright cheap.

Adobe makes Photoshop Elements, which is $90, or $140 bundled with Premiere Elements. Not to mention $100-or-less applications from other companies. Or free stuff like the GIMP or Paint.net.

The vast majority of the internet doesn't have an issue pirating Photoshop, but they also will barely scratch the surface of what the program can do, and could just as well use something that's legitimately free.

Ain't that the truth.

Hell, Maya alone is $3000, more if you get the whole suite with 3ds Max and the other stuff. Craziness.

[J T]

The developer of the indie game "No Time To Explain" had an interesting idea on how to fight piracy. At his release date, he flooded the main piracy portals with a unique copy of his game wherein everybody is wearing pirate costumes. I think it might have been missing some key features of the full game too. This marks a distinction between the pirated copies of the game and the real thing. It also makes it hard to know if you're downloading the one you want. Assuming that the game companies are just as able to use these services as anyone else, this might become a common tactic- flood the online piracy sites with crippled copies of your game so that people lose faith in the quality of the pirated games and prefer to just buy the real thing.

[AmishSamurai]

I noticed that companies will blame poor sales of a game on piracy instead of just the game being bad a lot. It makes a nice scapegoat.

[Hobie-wan]

Assuming that the game companies are just as able to use these services as anyone else, this might become a common tactic- flood the online piracy sites with crippled copies of your game so that people lose faith in the quality of the pirated games and prefer to just buy the real thing.

This has sort of been done before with games that would happily take a fake serial or just run seemingly ok but your aim would slowly worsen and other strange things would slowly degrade the game. Of course if this happens but you never reach a point where the game pops up and says "HAHA I'm slowly breaking the game you filthy pirate" some people may just assume the game sucks and stop playing and still not buy it.

[Inazuma]

If I pirated a game to test it out before buying it, and it was a degraded on purpose to punish pirates, I would just think it was a bad game, and not end up buying it. That sounds like a stupid idea to me.

"Hey, lets make a shitty version of our game and distribute it to all of the piracy networks so everyone thinks our game sucks!"

[Erik_Twice]

If you don't buy it, you are not entitled to it. Basic economic right.

I find very hypocrytal to complain about customer rights when you don't even respect the right to property. Hell if you pirate you don't respect the most basic worker right: The right to own your own work.

Price or quality is irrelevant. Photoshop costing a lot doesn't make you any more entitled to it.



I can't comment on how bad PC piracy is compared to other platforms. I mean, how many people pirate Angry Birds? More than bought it, that's for sure. And at least around here the reason the Playstations sold so well was piracy.

Anyways, it's pretty bad no matter the platform. And no, crappy Spore-like DRM won't fix it, I can just google "download Spore" and I will be playing the game ASAP.

The only two DRM I see being good and with a nice balance between customer and publisher are CD keys and Steam-like connections. More is overkill and harms the paying customer while less opens too many doors.


Anyways, I don't see any solution to this other than people learning to respect basic worker's rights.