Piracy

Now my first two points are issues I’ve taken with the way publishers and developers conduct business. How then does Piracy end up on the list? Surly I only have to worry about it if I chose to pirate. Well as I said in the intro I want to discuss problems with the industry and in this part it is my intention to offer argument against those who would say Piracy does not harm the industry.

Now this is possibly the most difficult of the three topics to discuss. Piracy, by its very nature, is unquantifiable. There is no way to accurately measure just how much of a problem it is. Peoples reasons for pirating are numerous and varied. Even if there was a way to count how many unofficial digital copies are made of a game there is now way to know just how many of them are actually being pirated. Any single copy just be someone using it as a digital back up of the product they’ve legitimately purchased, It may be someone trying to bypass the inconvenience of DRM and may even be the same person re-downloading a copy because their pervious one was lost or damaged.

Even the term Piracy is disingenuous. What we are actually talking about is copyright infringement. Piracy originally referred to an act of robbery committed at sea. We’re not talking about someone stealing another person’s pen here but serious acts involving taking some or all of a ship’s cargo, sometimes even the ship itself. This usually amounts to very significant sums of money that can damage the economies of multiple countries, ruin business overnight when their creditors come for their pound of flesh, often accompanied by acts of violence which can include multiple counts of murder.

Next to that, the newer definition referring to the unauthorised reproduction of copyrighted material seems rather innocent. You’re not even depriving anyone of a physical product. What harm could it do? I wasn’t going to buy a copy any way.

This tends to be the basis for most of the arguments I see defending piracy. If the copyright holders have not lost a sale then they haven’t been harmed.  The most obvious argument to this method of thinking is that whilst this may be true in any individual case, the odds of it remaining so in every case would be comparable to successfully navigating an asteroid field without any of the main characters on board. A logical counter argument is that the publicity generated by these pirate copies generate extra sales to offset any lost and may even increase the total number sold.

All of these arguments have valid truths in them but it’s impossible to win any argument with them as there is no way to measure any one against the other. That’s why my point has nothing to do with numbers because it’s simply a concept, concept of value.

If I haven’t lost all my readers by now then I’m sure to lose more when I start talking about economic theory so instead I’m going to tell a story about a Vampire merchant, a magician and a human.

This vampire has discovered, with considerable effort, a way to contain breathable air in a bottle! This particular skill holds little use for him; he hasn’t had to breathe in several hundred years. However, savvy merchant that he is he realises that this bottled air might be valuable to someone else.

Luckily there is a human nearby.  “Humans need to breathe air” the vampire thinks to himself, “Surely this human will pay me something for it.” Yet, after the vampire’s sales pitch the human replies “I’m sorry good sir, but I will not buy your bottled air” adjusting his monocle. “Not for $100, not for $1 nor for a drop of blood. For, you see, should I wish to have some air all I need do is inhale.” As the human straightened his top hat and walked away the vampire realised that if the supply of something vastly exceeds the demand then, no matter how much that thing may be desirable to a person, they are not likely to pay very much for it. A products value is, at least in part, determined by its scarcity.

Later that day both the vampire and the human find themselves locked inside a vault. There is a time release on the door set for one hours time so all the vampire need do is wait and he can walk out. The human, however, has a problem. There is only ten minutes of breathable air left in the vault. Suddenly he’s become much more interested in buying that bottled air.

This limited supply of breathable air has made the bottled air valuable, the human would be willing to pay all the money he has for it, as the minutes go by and he used up the oxygen in the air he’d willingly give all the blood he could spare. As the ten minute mark approached he might even consider trading his top hat and monocle.

However there is a third person trapped in this vault. A magician whose talents are such that, after getting a look at the Vampire’s fantastic bottled air, is able to manically conjure them at will. He tells the human he’s more than happy to conjure one for him should he but ask.

Do you think this would have any effect on the value of the vampire’s bottle? Of cause it would.

Similarly, if the vampire was a publisher, the human potential customers then the existence of pirates, the magician, must have some sort of effect on the value of games.

I’m not saying that, regardless of what some companies like to claiming, piracy is killing the entire industry. There is more money in video games every year. The biggest problem with piracy is it gives companies an excuse to do things like invasive DRM and it’s even one of the main excuses companies use to try and gain control over the internet.

So, how to stop piracy? Like the others piracy will never be stopped completely, harm minimization is the key. While I’ve previously been urging people not to spend their money, now I say spend it. To reduce the damage piracy does to one of our favourite past times all you have to do is buy things you think are worth paying for. As much as companies will notice when you stop paying for things they pay attention to when you do. Reward companies that shun invasive DRM, that make enjoyable games by giving them your hard earned cash.

There are companies out there who realise that the best way for them to combat piracy is not to fight them head on whilst trampling all over their customers but provide a better experience to the customer then the one the pirates do. If other companies see you giving your money to ones who follow this business model they are sure to follow.

To summarise, while DLC, DRM and piracy are not inherently evil the damage they do to the video games we all love is real and wide spread. While these things will never be defeated completely, they can be fought. The best way to do this is to be a smart consumer. Try not to buy into marketing hype, stop and think before you buy something. Try not to pre order and wait for reviews. If you’ve pirated something you like, when you get the money, pay for it. The marketplace is the world’s biggest democracy and you can help chose by voting with your wallet and every vote counts.