@bhoqeem
Sounds good to me, and I think that's generally what EC was trying to say anyway.
1 Well, it's working for CDPR ;)
2 will run into problems with publishers wanting to discourage imports, but yes, prices need to be tailored to regions.
3 Oh boy, could they ever stand to wrap their heads around getting demos right. I'm not big on demos, but there are some really useless ones out there that actually put me off some games.

I'm in the crowd that won't play a game at all rather than download a torrent, but I'm perfectly happy to let developers and publishers know when I think they've overstepped and thus lost a sale, which they do all-too frequently. Ubisoft, EA, I'm looking at you.

:)

In terms of prices, a friend once told me that Microsoft is actually subsidizing every sale of their Xbox in order to cut prices. Could this somehow be modeled and tailored towards--and would eventually support--region-based price structures for software?

I admit that I don't quiet get the actual mechanisms, but the idea is there, and it somehow works for Microsoft.

I understand it's a completely different playground in console business, but....

I doubt it will ever cease to exist lest 1984 comes true in the future and it already is condoned today. What I would suggest is less a “simply let it be” than rather a CDPR-esque approach. Make people want to buy your game. Now this can be done through a variety of means (one of which is indeed dropping DRM).

I mean, look, this problem has already been blown out of proportion to an absurd extent. PC gaming is doing fine and will continue to do so. If they had focused focus on their customer again instead of their short-term profits then this wouldn’t have gotten so out of hand anyway.

Even when it is obviously an intentionally emotionally charged combat term that was introduced to the drive a campaign?

It is the comparison, the things that it insinuates, which got me riled up. With the copyright laws being the abominations they are today (serving as the safeguard for several oligopolies) adhering to them is pretty much as morally wrong as downloading without paying. Besides, copying is NOT theft. This equation is just frickin’ insane.

Feel free to find a more fitting term then. I tried to do the same in the past because I too felt that there is no good equivalent yet. Maybe a neologism?

O RLY? How about Minecraft? If there are people downloading it for free then there are also always people who will pay for it.

This is not about wanting to do so but literally having no other choice. Or what would you propose? I mean I would try to look at it as advertisement if I can’t stop it.

The word piracy is still perfectly fine. It's been used in English in the context of copyright infringement for centuries. Nowadays it's easy to redistribute others' works for no profit, so the term easily lets itself apply more widely than before. Presuming site owners make absolutely no profit off donations and ads...

How about corsair then? Claim the bounty in the name of the Intertubes.

No need. Already have the word piracy. Maybe warez if you prefer. Whatever.

A game and its creator with a massive cult following is hardly the norm.

Blink once if some one is holding you at saber tip.

I agree on that...prices for games be relative to purchasing power parity of a region.

Whats the point of posing $50 price in a region, when the same $50 can provide an excellent meal (all you can eat) one time a day for more than 40 days (like in my region).

Thou there are some good games which adhere to the pricing ranges, like GTA4 costed $10 my region for PC version (when it was released worldwide for PC), same with Mafia 2 for PC. But not all publishers sell products in such ranges..wish they do.

As a gamer AND someone who works in a software development company, I have a pretty good understanding on both sides of the debate. As a gamer, I'll be the first to admit that I loathe DRM too. It slows down performance, frequently requires you to have a online Internet connection, sometimes does VERY questionable things to your computer's registry, and most importantly of all, isn't successful at fighting piracy. At best, it just slows down the crackers by a few days. I myself frequently buy games new from retail, then promptly download a No-CD crack so I can play a game without intrusive DRM.

On the other hand, most people don't realise that software development, even AAA video game development, is by no means an industry of high returns. When you hear that so-and-so spent $80 million developing their next big blockbuster video game, you tend to imagine the developers (or maybe just the company executives) being rich fat cats who can easily afford to soak up losses. In truth, most software companies live hand-to-mouth, having just enough in the bank to survive a bad month or two. So when you hear about people using your product for free, you rightly feel cheated out of money that should have been yours. It's money that you could have used to give your employees raises or promotions, buy better equipment and software, and embark on bigger, grander projects. If all your company ever manages to do is break even, then one single failed game is enough to send your company into bankruptcy.

Now, that said, I personally believe that the vast majority of software pirates are people who, in all honesty, would never have bought your software anyway. They're simply opportunists who are snapping up stuff they can get for free. In my opinion, software companies would do better at trying to increase the number of paying customers via community outreach, building up a fanbase, and other positive reinforcements. Perhaps each game does ship with a CD-key, but this CD key is used to create an account on your forums, which gives them access to free bonus content, allows them to display their achievements to friends, or perhaps has a ladder standing of "Best Player of the Month". The bonus content will inevitably be leaked, of course, but the rest of the stuff is purely "window dressing" that doesn't impact on one's experience of the game.

As far as my opinions of software pirates go, do what you wish to do. But if you REALLY want to show your support and appreciation for the people who make the games you enjoy, and to help them continue to make more exciting, memorable games, then show it with your wallet and buy their software.

Oh, and don't pretend like your software piracy is your way of "sticking it to the Man". The creator of the indie game World of Goo (a one-man show, if I recall correctly) published stats that showed that more than half of the people publishing high scores online were using a pirated version of his game. If you were REALLY about attacking big corporations and helping the little guy, then why the hell did you pirate a little guy's game?

Its easy, just create a script to pool in number of unique IP's who are seeding + Peer'ed(with 90%+ instance) from Torrents. (gives an approximation of 80%, or even 90% of illegal users who playing the game without honoring the developers.

(90%+ peer'ers because sometimes the torrents do not update the jump to 100% or on clients which immediately stop seeding a moment at 100%),

(But the script should be running from the instance the very first copy of the content is placed on the torrents, and even on multiple tracker headers.)

With the count of number unique IP's for seeding + above 90% peer'ers; then comparing it against number of sales should give the closest numbers one requires.

Wouldn't it be impossible to discern between a bunch of piracy-related sales and unrelated piracy and unrelated sales, though? You can't tell which is which, who engaged in both, any of that.

Its impossible to discern the actual numbers, only approximation (not estimation*, want to make it clear).

Shouldn't be hard, since sales of the games can be tracked.

1. Segregate IP's according to region.
2. Count unique IP's per region (t_ip_pool_r[xxx], where xxx= region ID).
3. Take number of sales from each region, both Retail and digital downloads (s_pool_r[xxx]).
4. Being lenient, Subtract 1% of sales count for individual regions from the unique IP counts of the same regions (t_ip_pool_mod_r[xxx] = t_ip_pool_r[xxx] - 0.01 * s_pool_r[xxx]).
5. Now add them all;

Approx = 0;
For xxx=min to max do Approx=Approx+t_ip_pool_mod_r[xxx];
Print Approx;

(feeling nerdy)

-Edited-

Math is hard. The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was also hard. Therefore, math is incredibly dangerous to the future of mankind.

But I'm going to just take your word for it this time :)

So, you're not actually losing anything, are you? Say, if they don't get the pirated copies, they probably still won't buy it. If you think about it, software is different from physical merchandise. Piracy is different from stealing goods, nor does the amount of unpaid usage cause the software to deteriorate in any way - it does not incur "real" losses. A lot of discussion were based on the theory that if everyone who has pirated the software has paid for the software, the companies would earn much more; because they didn't pay, the companies suffered from real losses. I believe this is true in some cases, especially OS and productivity software (where the pirates actually *need* the software); but probably not universally true for games. If they don't get to pirate the game, they probably won't play it, nor would they buy it. So in this case, the "speculated" losses are rather fictitious.

Call me naive. But I think some might try out a pirated version as a demo of sorts. If they like it enough, they will buy it in support of the developers.

Combining the two, you don't actually incur serious losses from someone pirating your games. Contrary to that, it acts indirectly as a marketing tool to expand the market and reach out to potential customers.

That being said, this is a rather tricky issue. I might be accused of supporting software piracy, but what I am trying to say is that, piracy is not as *evil* as a lot have made it out to be, and in certain cases it can prove to be somewhat beneficial.

Correct. That's exactly the point I was making in my post. While the company is losing out on potential revenue, the fact is that the majority of software pirates would NEVER have bought the software anyway. If they were somehow unable to get hold of a bootleg copy, they still wouldn't pony up real money for it. So the CEOs who are cursing and ranting about the "thieving pirates" stealing their goods isn't exactly true. I readily acknowledge that point and want more software companies, especially gaming companies, to realise that.

Here's where we disagree on. While some people may decide to buy the real version of the game after having played the pirated version, this will be only be a tiny, TINY portion. How many people do you actually know (as in, know in real life) who voluntarily buys the genuine product after having completed a pirated version of the game? Even I will freely admit that if I had a fully working product that I got for free, and the developers will never know I have it, my motivation to actually put down money for it after the fact will be close to nil. More likely, the pirates will simply go, "Cool, that was an AWESOME game," then start downloading the torrent for the next big hit game to come out that month.

Again, this wouldn't really be an issue in itself because these people wouldn't have bought your game anyway, but the danger here is that it eventually creates a pervasive attitude of "why buy the game when you can just get it for free with no repercussions"? When I was still a teenager, I actually had friends who laughed at me and called me stupid for buying games when they just got all theirs free from various underground forums and warez sites.

If software companies don't take steps to combat this opinion and continue to encourage people to do the right thing, eventually people WILL start to believe their friends and stop buying the games. It's hard to keep doing the right thing when you see your friends constantly getting away with doing the wrong things. And if enough of your paying customers start turning to the "dark side", so to speak, then eventually your profits disappear and you either have to start cutting corners, laying off staff and turning out poorer-quality products, or you go under. No more games for anyone.

If trying to achieve a wider reach is the outcome, then it could be accomplished (as I said in my original post) by better community outreach, more interaction between the developers and fans, and the release of a proper demo. (And by that, I mean one that actually gives the player a good idea of what to expect from the game, and not simply a bunch of cutscenes and one combat.) There is no real reason for somebody to download and play through the entire game before deciding whether or not to buy it; that would be like somebody demanding that they get to watch the entire movie to make sure they like it before they buy a ticket to the theatre.

For me, all of them who game.

Good games encourage loyalty. Some of us need proof that the game is actually good before we offer up that loyalty, though, having been burned repeatedly in the past by marketing spin. It's simply not financially possible for most of us to know what's good and what's awful apart from buying every game that comes out, so I think of piracy as a more accurate feedback system (instead of haphazardly rewarding companies that may have produced pure garbage) to drive demand in the right direction rather than "sticking it to the man," to reference your earlier post.

Which is exactly why there's so much piracy of movies. It would be like showing 10 minutes of a movie and forcing people to extrapolate the rest of the plot based on that small section. It just can't be done. You don't see the good and bad twists, you don't know what kind of resolution it will come to--you're flying completely blind. You can get a feel for the cinematic style, granted, but little else. Incredible games and incredible movies can both be absolutely destroyed by a horrible ending, so I'd argue that there's a huge reason for someone going through the entire game.

Legitimate concern, although isn't it a bit of a slippery slope? Will everyone eventually stop buying games because everyone else is pirating it? Will everyone stop paying because a performance or a restaurant charges by donation? Will all good street performers starve because no one is legally obliged to pay him? Do you not put in extra tip for good service? Yes, there are people who simply refuses to pay and exploit the absence of obligation. But I like to believe that most people actually feel compelled to reward the party for delivering a satisfactory service or good, especially if they are financially capable. True, there are cheapskates who refuse to pay at all, but I refuse to think that everyone or the significant majority will eventually turn to piracy and renounce the long-establish rule of paying for the use of a good or a service (even when there is possibly no legal consequences).

Yes. A good demo showcasing the gameplay would be very beneficial.
Well said, we need to test drive the game. Though I disagree with your argument about having to go through the entire game to decide whether s/he wants to buy it. Some games simply don't have much replayability and may severely diminish the perceived value of purchasing it after one playthrough.