The State Of Game Piracy: Which platform is hardest hit and how?

[JohnTC02]

I thought this might be of interest with all the talk of hackers trying to find a way to circumvent the latest DRM.

"As today's gamers, we have the great honour of being a part of the first generation of consoles and games where game development has actually been slowed and or even stopped in some cases due to piracy...

The lure of free games has often outweighed people's morals, but never before has it been so common than present day. Someone who doesn't know how to attach a picture to an email still knows how to get the latest Sims expansion for free. That's why I think we should keep up to date with the current state of piracy and see the effect it's had on each platform."

The State Of Game Piracy.

[WhiteKnight77]

I think the Is DRM on PC games going too far? from the International Game Developers Association goes with the above topic.

DRM like this is only going to serve to undermine the legitimate customer's experience. As we see more hyper-intrusive systems like this one, we'll see a lot more first time pirates. It's going to start with legitimate users looking for cracks to make their purchased software work without the obnoxious DRM. Once they're exposed to the underground "warez" world, it's only a short step from downloading cracks to downloading full versions of games.

Here are some thoughts for discussion:

- Are we going too far with DRM for PC games?

- Are we potentially creating more piracy by using hyper-intrusive DRM?

- Is the long term cost really worth it? i.e.: Someone has to buy and maintain that server hardware.

[Tinker]

The thing I honestly do not understand, is if you can google I want this/that game for free, and find a long list of places you can download it, without having to do anything more than click a few buttons, why are these sites allowed to exist?

Who gives a monkeys if the site itself does not host the files, the site allows people to obtain these files for free. Surely this should be #1 priority to bring down any such site allowing any such links to free software?

[JohnTC02]

The sad thing here is if you know where to look it's all to easy to find a pirate version of just about any PC game or software you want.

There are so many sites out there it's almost impossible to police it effectively, if the authorities shutdown one site then the next day there will be two more to replace it. Plus with the growing popularity of P2P networks and bit torrent it's a win win situation for pirates.

I do not condone this practise in any way but it's always the general public that gets prosecuted if they are caught with pirate software while the pirates themselves seem to get away Scott free, all they do is shut their site down and open a new one under a different name.

Human nature is such that if there is something going for free then people will grab it, so as Tinker stated it should be top priority to get these sites closed down, the problem here is that as usual it comes down to funding for such projects.

Maybe all the top game manufacturers should all put x amount of funds into a specially formed group of Internet police to shutdown these pirate sites, maybe this is already happening who knows?

[CR6]

The thing I honestly do not understand, is if you can google I want this/that game for free, and find a long list of places you can download it, without having to do anything more than click a few buttons, why are these sites allowed to exist?

What I don't get is why does Google link to them? Game publishers should go after Google.

Nice find with that article John. I didn't realize the PSP was the most pirated platform

[kleaneasy]

The thing I honestly do not understand, is if you can google I want this/that game for free, and find a long list of places you can download it, without having to do anything more than click a few buttons, why are these sites allowed to exist?

Who gives a monkeys if the site itself does not host the files, the site allows people to obtain these files for free. Surely this should be #1 priority to bring down any such site allowing any such links to free software?

They exist for the same reasons porn, specifically child porn exists online. Policing it’s a nightmare, and even when they do get a site or the persons running it there’s always another ready to jump into that space before the other sites even had chance to go offline.

I don’t know what they’re meant to do about it, but there is a lot of debate in the UK at the moment as the government considers proposals for illegal downloads, with one of the plans being to see ISP’s working with them to remove internet rights. A lot of people are up in arms though saying there’s simply too many ways to bypass information such as IP for anyone to ever be sure a download was actually performed from said house so could potentially see innocent people suffer.

I don’t know the solution but in terms of internet and illegal activity it would be nice if they finally did come up with something regardless of which crime we’re talking about. But then perfect worlds I guess

[WhiteKnight77]

This article goes to show that while there is plenty of PC piracy, console piracy is just as rampant or worse. I just wish there were statistics on where such piracy was bigger though I know that South America and Asia has some of the largest numbers of piracy. When publishers completely ignore piracy on all platforms and only focus on one, there is a serious problem and not just where they think it is.

[Tinker]

Dont forget, you run a modded XBox on live, it will be banned. (MS banned 1 Million not so long back) You cannot possibly justify banning someones home computer from the internet, yet.

Which does leave the PC as the #1 contender for pirated games.

The thing I honestly do not understand, is if you can google I want this/that game for free, and find a long list of places you can download it, without having to do anything more than click a few buttons, why are these sites allowed to exist?

Who gives a monkeys if the site itself does not host the files, the site allows people to obtain these files for free. Surely this should be #1 priority to bring down any such site allowing any such links to free software?

They exist for the same reasons porn, specifically child porn exists online. Policing it’s a nightmare, and even when they do get a site or the persons running it there’s always another ready to jump into that space before the other sites even had chance to go offline.

I don’t know what they’re meant to do about it, but there is a lot of debate in the UK at the moment as the government considers proposals for illegal downloads, with one of the plans being to see ISP’s working with them to remove internet rights. A lot of people are up in arms though saying there’s simply too many ways to bypass information such as IP for anyone to ever be sure a download was actually performed from said house so could potentially see innocent people suffer.

I don’t know the solution but in terms of internet and illegal activity it would be nice if they finally did come up with something regardless of which crime we’re talking about. But then perfect worlds I guess

Zero tolerance. You are found with a link on your site that people can freely accesss software, single warning to remove said link, otherwise, heavy fines, money could go towards court costs, teams who bring them down, and some even pushed back to the devs, publishers as compensation.

A lot of money could be generated through it for good purposes, plus less sites on line would make people seek legitimate ways to watch there Saturday night movie, or whatever.

Bring down the sites and those responsible for them I say. These people are just as bad as any type of piracy.

Obviously I know nothing about how this would/could work, so it is just an opinion.

[WhiteKnight77]

Modded XBoxes are only banned if they are found online from my understanding. One does not necessarily has to go online to play a game, though many will want to. That still does not explain the utterly rampant piracy on the PSP. Can those be banned from the internet? What about the Wii? Both of those combined have to equal or exceed piracy on the PC due to the sheer numbers of them.

[petsfed]

Zero tolerance. You are found with a link on your site that people can freely accesss software, single warning to remove said link, otherwise, heavy fines, money could go towards court costs, teams who bring them down, and some even pushed back to the devs, publishers as compensation.

A lot of money could be generated through it for good purposes, plus less sites on line would make people seek legitimate ways to watch there Saturday night movie, or whatever.

Bring down the sites and those responsible for them I say. These people are just as bad as any type of piracy.

Obviously I know nothing about how this would/could work, so it is just an opinion.

You can make a court order from the UK stick in Nigeria now? Who knew?!

There is a reason that most spammers are based in Russia, and its not because being annoying is a national past time. The MPAA and RIAA have gone after downloaders in the States instead of the torrent sites because the torrent sites are hosted in non-extradition treaty countries, not because of some innate maliciousness.

[Bota:16]

Vote +1 for ISPs to throttling the bittorrent protocol. I don't care what anybody says 99.9% of all bittorrent traffic is piracy. Yes there is legal use of the technology but when the illegal use overshadows the legal use by such a large margin, why not?

Go after the sources, not the end users. There are far fewer sources than users. Sure websites can come and go very rapidly and easily but many of the same people are behind them. And it's why I hope the people behind the Pirate Bay pay dearly as it would set a precedence that companies can use for current and future "pirate" sites.

For instance UBI or any company could do a google search for torrents, find the biggest ones, look for links to copyrighted material, sue the crap out of them, push for jail time to the owners of the website. They wouldn't have to sue/stop every single one of them to be effective. There will always be small/underground/private torrent sites but those a drop in the bucket compared to sites like Pirate Bay, Mininova, etc. Eventually the risk of providing pirated material becomes too great and people eventually move on to something else. They could do this for not only the torrent sites but also the trackers that provide the backbone for torrents to work.

There are more efficient and better long term solutions to DRM than forcing it upon it's legitimate consumers. Piracy is a state of mind or a personality trait if you will. But until they realize how serious it is and detrimental it is to an industry, they won't change, no matter what DRM is implemented. I could easily do what I said last paragraph and actually get a better experience because of the hoops I wouldn't have to jump through in order to enjoy the game and it's free. I don't because I know its wrong and it matters to me for developers/publishers get compensated for their product. Without them I would have to find a new hobby and I like my hobby.

[Tinker]

A typical disclosure found at the bottom of some random site:

Edited this site provides links to other sites on the Internet (edited, and others.) We do not host or upload any files. Therefore, edited this site is not responsible for the accuracy, compliance, copyright, legality, decency, or any other aspect of the content of other linked sites. If you have any legal issues please contact the appropriate media file owners / host sites.

That to me is a load of ######.

The site I took that from is just 1 of the main Suppliers of illegal software/files, IMHO. You do not have to register, login, or anything. just click a few buttons, and hey presto.

[Rocky]

That's a great article, nice find John.

I was totally shocked by the PSP situation. I must be one of the few that always regularly upgraded my PSP to the latest official software and wasn't at all interested in PSP Homebrew etc. The figures in that article are shocking, for a platform that was producing top quality games in a handheld format, to not reach even a top 100 chart plaing is shocking. And when you consider that PSP versions were more often than not far from straight ports, they were PSP specific with extra features and lots of content to make buying the PSP version worthwhile. To think all that work by developers was basically wasted on pirates is sickening, in fact here's a quote I found from a dev team.

"We can look at data from BitTorrent sites from the day Resistance: Retribution goes on sale and see how many copies are being downloaded illegally, and it's frankly sickening.

That is so sad.

The thing I honestly do not understand, is if you can google I want this/that game for free, and find a long list of places you can download it, without having to do anything more than click a few buttons, why are these sites allowed to exist?

I think it is because there are so many and when you shut one down, another 2 already spring up, and one is run by the same guy you just shut down. Case in point, I get a daily digest of Ghost Recon news from various sources (hey it's my job lol), when I started reading that digest about a year ago I noticed Google was sending me links that matched "ghost recon", but were actually illegal download sites for GR titles.

I sent Ubisoft the URL of the site I first noticed. Perhaps I was naive about it, but I thought they would act on it. I checked that site a few weeks later and it was still online, serving illegal GR downloads.

Since then, I get google sending me at least an illgeal download site for GR games EVERY DAY, and never the same site twice. That's how big it is, and perhaps a reason why these sites are still online. I mean it took Nintendo a long long time to get nds-roms offline, but they just sprang back up in another guise shortly after!

I'm still shocked about the PSP situation though, that really is very sad. A superb device like the PSP has basically been kicked to the kerb thanks to pirates.

What I don't get is why does Google link to them? Game publishers should go after Google.

Exactly. Google SEND ME a half dozen places I can download illegally every WEEK, surely that is not right.

I have these emails all on file and can post them up anytime.

Seriosuly, when I read comments like this following a PSP Piracy article, I just want to get a hold of someone by the neck!

Piracy is certainly a good scape goat

That's the sort of mentality publishers are up against and they have my sympathy there.

[JohnTC02]

The figures in that article are shocking, for a platform that was producing top quality games in a handheld format, to not reach even a top 100 chart plaing is shocking.

This is the sad part about it, there are so many pirated copies out there plus they are so easy to find if you know where to look that it has hit the official sales figures leading to these titles not even reaching the top 100, I would say there are more pirated versions of some games than there are legit ones.

If this situation carries on it will have a knock on effect and you you see some of the big game developers pulling out of the PSP market which in turn will lead to the demise of the PSP as well.

Obviously I don't know the answer here but if this is allowed to continue you will see the devs just making their games for the PS3 which at the moment has a piracy level set to "none" (I'm sure that given time even this will change) and they will just do a cheap port for the PC market or they may even drop the PC completely.

[Daywanderer]

I used to be a hardcore anti-piracy type of guy, but I've somewhat softened up over the years as the amount of playable demos decreased and the amount of crap on the market increased. I'm all for supporting game developers when they make good games, but if there's no demo available, how am I to know if a game is worth my money or not?

Hypothetically, of course

In fact, the only games I'll buy without trying in some way or another are titles from developers I "trust", like Blizzard and Bioware. Everything else is a potential waste of my hard-earned money.

I'll gladly admit that the anarchist in me laughed with joy during the whole PirateBay deal that's been going on over the past year (or two?). They take the servers down, another cluster is booted up in another country. They threaten with heavy fines, they say "FU" because three of the "admins" are utterly broke and the fourth is one of the richest men in Sweden. In that particular case, the PirateBay crew got my full support due to the absolute stupidity of the people trying to take them down. I'm a strong believer in Darwinism, and anyone who believes they can take out torrents are clearly not the fittest. With hundreds of torrent sites and the fact that there are no laws against hosting torrent trackers, it's a futile battle. Torrent sites basically do the exact same thing as Google, which is simplifying the search for pirated material. I doubt anyone would go head-to-head with Google over this, and with the laws as they are today, they would never win anyway. The only reason they attempted to take down PirateBay was to set an example. Double fail: They still haven't managed to shut it down, and there would still be hundreds of sites doing the exact same thing.

On a more local note, I also chuckled when "they" came to Norway and tried to force our leading ISP to block torrent sites. The reply was another "FU", it all ended up in court and the ISP won. Good thing, because once my ISP starts telling me what I can or can't access on the internet, they stop getting my money - and clearly ISPs are well-aware of this as the same thing's happened in several countries lately. Let's leave policing to the police. Oh my, they don't have enough resources to combat piracy? Well, stop blowing millions on futile court-cases and increase law enforcement funding instead. In all honesty though, if that happens, I honestly hope they prioritize more important things before game piracy.

Another thing I truly despise is invasive DRM solutions. Early stuff like the much-hated Securom system was easy enough to bypass with a small crack (which many used despite having a legal copy of the game), whereas the whole Assassins Creed 2 fiasco was enough for me not to buy that game at all.

Anyways. I believe that people that are into "hardcore" piracy will keep doing it no matter what. They will always find a way. Piracy has been around for a long time. No one needed sites like PirateBay before, and no one really needs them now. People who don't care about supporting developers and just want free games will continue with their piracy no matter what, and they can never be stopped. And I cannot imagine that game sales would skyrocket should piracy disappear completely, basically because a majority of the pirates will simply not pay for the product anyway.

What developers and everyone else involved should focus on, is finding ways to get casual pirates to buy games. For me, Steam helped a lot. Rather than having to spend time finding the game in a store (which can sometimes be a pain here in the Norwegian outback), I just buy and download it off steam. The musical equivalent would be Spotify, which I gladly support with my premium membership. It's just as easy as downloading from a torrent site, but I get to support the developers at the same time. Win - Win.

A strong multiplayer component is also important in this day and age. The lifespan of a game is increased by a massive amount (which makes it easier to swallow the increasingly steep price of games), and with stuff like X-Box Live and similar systems, pirated copies are unusable unless you take the effort to find special pirated servers, which aren't even available at all for a lot of games.

Oh well, that's my humble opinion anyhow

I'd also like to add that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 blew away all sales records, pulling in $310 million on the first day alone and $550 million over the five first days. It was also one of the most pirated games in 2009, if not the most pirated.

xD

[Sgt. Atoa]

Modded XBoxes are only banned if they are found online from my understanding. One does not necessarily has to go online to play a game, though many will want to. That still does not explain the utterly rampant piracy on the PSP. Can those be banned from the internet? What about the Wii? Both of those combined have to equal or exceed piracy on the PC due to the sheer numbers of them.

You MR are right...I will say that 40% of my friends have a modded XBOX 360....they where playing online the same game that I paid US $59.99, now if MS think they stopped piracy on the 360 because of the BAN HAMMER last NOV they are completly wrong, what most people did is adapt to the situation now my friends have 2 XBOX 360....1 LEGAL for the usual suspects like MW2 and BFC2 and the one banned by MS where they can play all SP/OR NOT SO POPULAR ONES ex AVP,AC2, DAO etc

@ROCKY yup PSP piracy is out of control actually, I don't even know a person with an unmodded PSP including mine

Edited April 7, 2010 by Sgt. Atoa

[Daywanderer]

Increasing piracy on consoles is likely because of the utterly insane prises of console games, as well as the availability. Like I mentioned before (either in this topic or another, too lazy to read through my last post right now ), I feel that "systems" like Steam and Spotify have simplified the process of acquiring games and music legally. Currently, the only similar system available to the X360 and PS3 are XBox Live Arcade/Marketplace and PlayStation Network, who only contain titles from past-gen consoles or small-budget games like Braid.

And, as mentioned, the prices. Take Steam for example, where one of the most expensive titles as of today (bar limited/collector's edition stuff and game packs) is probably Modern Warfare 2, which is still sitting at just below 60 Euro. Which is about the same price as a cheap PS3 or X360 title, in Norway at least, with average store prices going to around or past 70 Euro. Whereas PC titles might go as high as 60 Euro at launch and drop relatively quickly, and most starting at 40-50 Euro.

This is why my games list in Steam is nearing 100 titles, if not more, whereas my list of PS3 and X360 games is less than 20 total

[WhiteKnight77]

Government Says Data Estimating Piracy Losses is Unsubstantiated is very interesting and touches on piracy of music, movies and software and counterfeiting of even auto parts and how it may not be as big as the respective industries state it is.