Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...Piracy’s to blame for ads in games. Discuss.
khenry
There was much comment regarding the ad-supported Battlefield game, whether it turns out to be Battlefield 3 or just a promotional teaser for the full sequel at the end of 2008. I only hope that anyone against the idea hasn’t copied a game recently because those [funsters] are to blame for ads in games and if any PC death prediction comes true, yep, it’s all your fault, pirates.
For the record, I copied my brother’s records, then bought my own tapes then CDs when he moved out, so I’m hardly the ELSPA police here, but the hard core of new gamers who simply won’t pay and don’t care are a threat, plain and simple, to the PC gaming industry (although not the hard drive and optical disc and burner businesses).
Don’t get me wrong, several writers who have travelled to East Asian countries and seen the quality of fakes on offer have remarked upon the artistry that goes into a really top-quality bootleg. Anyone with 0.00001% of creative sensitivity could appreciate that side of the “market fake”. Once you return to the West, that elegance is forgotten, the bootleg comes on a disc in a wallet and it’s all about the money and whatever else piracy funds, from fags and alcohol of the small-timer, to drugs and/or terrorism of the organised.
Even without the evidence of various piracy hauls and the financial trails they uncover, let’s not forget the intellectual side of the various BS justifications for piracy. By Pirate Bay’s moral standards anyone should be able to get on a plane, go to Sweden, break into their apartment, sieze their equipment, then carry out some serious violence against these ignoramuses and hunt down the other pair. Whilst the former actions have all happened, the more violent latter have not - because of the law. By Pirate Bay’s logic, government or big businesses could intellectualise taking any action they see fit to protecting IP and the taxes that it generates, but violence generally remains the domain of 24 and conspiracy theorists. Taking the American drug-use principle of “there are so many people at it that it’s not a crime any more” shouldn’t be allowed to work and thankfully in the UK, we know that smells fishy.
By the same token, companies shouldn’t give fuel to these justifications by viewing piracy as a shop window with the attitude that gamers will “go legit one day”. The fact that Activision-Blizzard is stupid enough not to kill pirated CoD 4 keys shouldn’t be a reason to be one of the million players who haven’t paid for it. Fair enough, the game sold seven million, so the newly amalgamated company won’t take that big a hit. Should the company change its mind though, you know it’ll be the PC version that gets the chop and a million lost sales was much more of a financial threat to iD Software with Quake 4 two years back. Thankfully, Epic and Valve do tend to kill pirated or cloned keys. Devs do try to meet pirates halfway by disabling disc checking if you’ve bought the game and it’s not inconceivable that Take 2 was happy with the mess caused by Bioshock’s activation if a few pirates were inconvenienced along with legit buyers.
Price is no longer an excuse, my purchase of Supreme Commander Forged Alliance was £2 less than the average pre-order price of a PC title due to its suicidal launch date on the same day as UTIII. PC titles are already less than half that of consoles even before Ebay weighs in. The same is true of the last days of DVD where relatively new films fall to rental prices, £2-£5, sometimes even the double disc editions as well. If EA could bottle whatever seems to make The Sims piracy-proof, it would get back its number one publisher’s position and never ever lose it again.
Despite being too damn lazy to do anything but wait for a sale and buy stuff, I can see the value of the “protest buy” where the game comes from Ebay but is an original, maybe the console from a message board member looking to trade up. That’s how I acquired the old Xbox and the first two Halos, in response to MS’s crippling of the PC versions. For Halo 3, the game will once again be secondhand, but the 360 console is now as unreliable as makes no difference - I may as well buy a new model this time, and maybe the one game I want to play will be bundled. Given Adam’s and Freelance Phil’s experiences (see penultimate post to 29th Jan), the lifespan is random whether it’s new or old, but Microsoft have at least done the right thing and extended repairs on the piece of junk.
So there will always be piracy in my view and I can’t forsee an easy answer as to how to deal with it. Since prices on consumable media have never been as good as they are now I get more enjoyment from my racks of various media rather than files on a hard disk where I would permanently fear a crash, and would need to buy blank discs constantly. The TV industry has responded in the UK with many more repeat showings and a legitimate player for every channel which stops you having to view in 10-minute chunks on Youtube (unless the programme you’re watching lends itself well to being broken up, such as Stephen Fry’s Manic Depression documentary).
As Youtube, Facebook and Myspace users know, there’s no getting away from the advertising which underpins this “free”dom, and PC gamers will soon have to get used to the same ad-driven way of life unless we all turn into modders for a game we’ve already purchased and create our own content that doesn’t require it.
In game ads dont bother me if they are unintrusive. For example when playing Burnout Paradise some of the trucks and vans have adverts/logos on the side of them, as they would in real life. If it stays this way i.e. an image or in-game banner then I could cope.
Oh yeah…. piracy sucks. I buy each and everyone of my games. Thats 20 on the 360 and 10+ on the PC with a WOW subscription too (just ordered Rome: Total War Gold for £9.99 - sooooo cheap). Now people who use the excuse that they dont earn much money hence buy copies is plain stupid. 1) I dont earn enough to drive a Ferarri. Does that mean should steal one? 2) Stay in school, you’ll get a better job 