this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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Digital products don't cost anything to produce many copies of for sale. That's why they can have many deep discounts through the year.
"Piracy" word is unfitting actually but it's overused by distributors. "Ownership" is unfitting too, but it comes to mind by default when we talk about paying. You either receive a product that you can use indefinitely or a service that you can use indefinitely. That's about it.
Problem though, is that products almost consistently aren't delivering on quality expectations as of lately. Or they contain some artificial restrictions/defects that impact the product value in end users' eyes. Or they can randomly stop working at all. The list can go on.
In the end, it's not that pirates don't want to pay for stuff. It's that they are not allowed to pay as little as they deem adequate for the quality of the product they get.
The ultimate reason behind everything is people's wish to be able to use stuff they paid for. Indefinitely where possible. And because the product is good enough most of the times.
Piracy was never stealing, because potential purchase can't be stolen since it's not happened yet, and any pirate using a product without paying for it can be equal to that potential purchase. The new catchphrase is just a convenient way to remind distributors that they need to provide on value and quality and stop blaming someone for their failure to meet their financial goals.
Some of what you say is true but I still don't think there's any A implies B. Quality does seem to be down, prices and DLC are up, and some older content just isn't available for purchase at all.
Some of this is bogus though. It doesn't cost any money to make a digital copy, but it costs a LOT of money to make the original. This is like R&D/T&E cost for any manufactured product, so to call it "free" is a little disingenuous. I also agree I agree I don't want to pay full price, but the "potential purchase" is horseshit. If you walk into a department store and pick up a shirt (even if stock is infinite) because you want it but don't think it's cheap enough, that's theft. Sure you can come back when it's on sale and buy it, but a purchase/payment is transactional: if you don't uphold your end, that's not a transaction. Last, while some of us DO just want a way to pay and own in a legit way, you can look at replies to the last comment and find a 1 in 5 example of "I'm never paying, I want it for free" which jacks the prices for the rest of us even if we are just paying a fair share of up front cost.
Your mistake is trying to explain everything with physical analogies. It straight up won't work properly.
Yes and so what? Should there be a link between those costs and the amount of copies sold? I see regional prices increased by as much as 500% sometimes. For titles that have been around for many years too.
It's just simple to assume that those initial costs will be recouped eventually, so long as the product is good enough. Regardless of piracy. I think it's also adequate to assume that people must be okay with paying the asking price for what they get, and that it will not make the business less successful, if the product is good enough. If it's not good enough then it shouldn't sell much in the first place, and it may be impossible to recoup costs.
Fine, so let that small (albeit not free) cost of copying one digital copy slip from the pocket of the company. This is where pirates get it. They then create their own supply chain with their own R&D/T&E/whatever costs that are completely disconnected from the company and therefore shouldn't be a concern.
When pirates who weren't going to purchase a game try it for free and decide they actually want to support the developer or recommend it to a friend, this is a sale that wouldn't be possible without piracy. Not exactly horseshit.
Exactly because the stock is infinite no one would ask you to be responsible for what you've done. That t-shirt is probably cool and more people would want it when they see it on you. But really it just can't have infinite stock and a price at the same time.
Why even care what transaction is? In the end, some potential sales convert into real sales and that's all that matters. Digital products can have demos and trials - there is no need for the nature of distribution to be "transactional".
Missing the logical link here. But anyway, those people should be outside of the target audience. Yet still there are ways how they can help generate potential sales. By wearing a t-shirt they got for free from some illegal store, you know.
I see no reason why the cost shouldn't be a function of copies sold, or rather that the maximum of cost and possible revenue shouldn't be a function of copies sold. The point of selling is to make money, and profitable games beget sequels / remakes / expansions. Of course this isn't a guarantee that companies are always good actors but we can't control that.
I have no idea what the intersection is between devs and companies like EA or steam or whoever to be able to say that when you pirate you hurt the distributor not the developer. The cost of piracy may impact either one or both, but the original post is "company bad so piracy OK" so it's not really a small scale / one-off discussion.
There are some pirates who will pay for a copy when all is said and done, but I would bet a large sum that these people are vastly in the minority. There's not a good deed potential purchase at the end of probably even 1 in 5 downloads of anything.
To really boil it down, companies are predatory, but it doesn't justify unbridled piracy. In the same way companies are predatory gougers, people are generally shitty, entitled leechers. Something something two wrongs something something else.
Not sure if you're thinking of proposing some new system for the industry to go with, that would not be a subject of the same piracy related catchphrases.
We can, in fact, control that with our wallets. To some degree, yes. But it would sound more stupid if someone says "we can't control companies" and something like "piracy should stop" together.
This is what we can't control though - the revenue split between devs and publishers. As for the "company bad so piracy ok" I don't think there is anything to discuss. It's viable and I could use that myself (though I might not even have enough time to care about pirating stuff, I just don't buy products related to specific parties).
And I would say there is even less deed potential in trying to convince pirates into buying stuff instead of downloading it for free. The point is, information spread helps sales of good products (so you want more paid/free end users, not less). Another point is, most pirates will always be pirates (so it's useless to blame people who wasn't even going to purchase your product by default). Third point is, digital products are luxury so it's not a loss of people when they don't buy your product (they will be just fine without it) - it's your loss when people are not convinced to give you the money (the amount you ask for) for your product.
So what you're saying is "yes some companies are providing bad products but it doesn't mean people are entitled enough to not pay for such products"? Then what would you say as a day 1 purchaser to people who paid 75% less than you to receive the same product? Where is the point when you go from "that's ok since it was an official discount" to "that's not okay because they didn't pay for it (~~as much as someone else paid~~)"?
No matter how bad something is or how little someone else paid for it, neither you nor anyone else is entitled to any product free of charge. Period. Whether you indirectly help sales or you don't, it's a shit perspective to take.
Yes I sail the seas every now and again and yes companies are shitty, but there's no inherent high ground to be found in taking something without paying for it.
Well sorry, if I know the company will treat me and my PC as shit for buying their product, I'd rather consider using other party's services a way to go.
I directly helped with bug reports (that were indeed used to fix stuff) on several products I didn't own. You can also teach Minecraft's creator how indirect help of pirates is a shit perspective I guess.
Also no. Bytes can't be taken, only copied. As I said, physical world rules don't really work here. You can copy as much as you want without doing any harm, and someone might even thank you later for preserving some work of art that was mistreated or abandoned by its original distributors.
It doesn't. Those people are not a loss- they would not have bought even if piracy was impossible/unavailable, they would just do without. Companies claiming they have to raise prices to compensate for people who won't buy their crap is a lie, and you are a fool to believe it.
"they would not have bought even if piracy was impossible"
Yeah, they would forgo their hobby and look at the wall all day instead!
Or, you know, find something else...
That they couldn't pirate
No, dip ass.
If you're middle class or upper middle class and not a teenager, you spend money on the things you want. If you can get them for free, most people do that instead.
The last time you went to a museum and it was donation requested instead of admission required, did you put any money in? My money is on no.