Game Piracy
What is Game
Piracy?
Game Piracy is an activity where
people distribute copies of a computer game they have made with no agreement
from the game’s developer and owner of the game’s copyright. The rate of game
piracy can vary; sometimes it can be up to 90%.
A good example of this happening is from the
game “Demigod” this is a RTS ‘Real time strategy ‘ game, they had around 60,000
sales at the time but for some reason they had over 1 Million players online,
this resulted in breaking there servers. That’s over 85% of the players online
that had pirated the game. On the day of the release there were around 140,000
concurrent users, with 18,000 validated users. The pirates could not update or
play online but they could still connect with the servers.
Another example of games being
pirated is Apple and Android Applications; it takes about 30mins before the
application is pirated upon release. This shows how easy it is to pirate
applications. Piracy on application can sometimes run up to 95%, so the
developers have thousands or in some cases millions of people playing there
game but in fact only around 5% of the players have actually purchased the app,
this leads to effects on developers such as they go out of business and cannot
create anymore games.
There are many reasons why people
pirate games; some people do it for profit, purchasing real versions of the
game for the soul purpose of copying and selling them cheaper that normal
retail price. Others sell hard drives or discs loaded wit numerous games, so
that people can purchase a large package of pirate’s games. One of the most
common ways of pirating is where people copy and distribute games for friends
so that they can save money, or because they don’t understand what gam piracy
is, for example if the game lets you have 5 copied, they give there friends the
other four copped and they in turn pass it on, the person who purchased the
game would have actually been contributing to game piracy by handing out the
real versions.
What effect does this have on the
copyright holders, well game piracy reduces the profits that they might of made
from making the game. Companies which release their games for free can also
have effects of game piracy, in some cases the person who wants the game may no
know weather the game is the real version or a pirated version, this causes
many problems such as they are downloading unauthorized games which can lead to
safety concerns such as viruses or hackers.
There have been many ways to stop
game piracy such as games that include the use of registry keys which users
much use to validate there games when they want to play them. Also with the use
of certifications, which can’t be duplicated so that the purchasers will know,
they are getting the real version, not a pirated one.
What are the consequences of game
piracy? You can be prosecuted under copyright infringement laws (The use of
works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder’s “exclusive rights”,
such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the copyrighted
work, spread the information contained within the copyrighted works).
Can it be
stopped?
There are 2 sides to this, some
people have ideas that they know ways to kill pirating, although on the other
hand the people who distribute the pirated copies will find more and other ways
to release them for free, such as with the new generation consoles, PS4 and the
Xbox One, it has been heard that the main way to get games is by download from
the online stores, this will prevent a lot of pirating, but obviously not all
of it. People have made hacked consoles so that they do not detect a pirated
game or a key needed to play it, so that you can play pirated games, which will
mainly rule out that with the new download system that everyone is talking
about.
A good example of ways to try and
stop or show people what pirating can do is the game “Game Dev Tycoon” When
they released the game they released to versions, a real version that you have
to pay for on there website and other version, a version they released for
free. You may be thinking why would they release a free game and a pay to play
game, but the idea was to show people who downloaded the pirated version what
game piracy really does to the industry and the developers of the game, if you had
the pirated version after playing for a while you would get a message about
piracy, this message said “Boss, it seems that while many players play our new
game, they steal it by downloading a cracked version rather than buying it
legally, If players don’t buy the games they like, we will sooner or later go
bankrupt.”
Basically the developers are
trying to show the people who downloaded there game illegally what happens if
lots of pirating happens, that they lose many sales and go bankrupt from it,
this created a big scene since you cannot continue playing the game when this
message happens, annoying the players and even some people posting on forums
about it happening getting frustrated by it, when actually they are doing
exactly the same thing to the real developers where the consequences are real.
Other games that have been
heavily pirated:
Top 3 of the most downloaded
games in 2011 on the Xbox 360 and PC using BitTorrent.
PC Game Downloaded in 2011:
- Crysis 2 (3,920,000) (Mar. 2011)
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
(3,650,000) (Nov. 2011)
- Battlefield 3 (3,510,000) (Oct. 2011)
Xbox 360 Game Downloads in 2011:
- Gears of War 3 (890,000) (Sep. 2011)
- Call of duty: Modern Warfare 3
(830,000,) (Nov.2011)
- Battlefield 3 (760,000) (Oct. 2011)
To conclude, from my research I
have found out what game piracy is really about, how it happens, why it is done
and how people do it, as looking through many articles and researched websites
thoroughly I have concluded that game piracy or any sort of pirating will never
be fully stopped, the people who are distributing the illegal copies will
always find other ways to do so. Game piracy may get lower in the future such
as with the new generation consoles with download games only. But still some
people will find ways to do so.
Websites used:
Is Piracy killing the
PC gaming industry?
It is quite clear that most of the popular games that
are released on console even before they are even released on PC. An example of
a popular game could be GTA (Grand Theft Auto) which were exclusive to PC in
the past years are now being released on consoles before their PC release date.
The reason for this would be the falling sale figures of PC titles due to an
increase of piracy levels on games. Because of this reason some major game
publishers are switching to the console area where the piracy element is much
less. Some companies are now using new methods for game distribution for
example Valve who sell their titles through their online distributor, Steam
which allows players to download all of the games content after you have
purchased it online. Other game publishers also now use strict copy protection
techniques, but all these methods install extra software onto your computer
which would pretty much kill your gaming experience.
Why do people pirate games? Maybe it’s because they
might not be able to afford them, I wouldn’t really agree with that because if
you can buy fuel for your car or buy food when you’re hungry, so is this the
case for when you buy anything that entertains you. Probably the main reason
for piracy is that the PC games are more easily available to be downloaded from
the internet, P2P networks or Torrents etc. If you could imagine how many games
people have downloaded and who have only played them for a short period of time
before they would delete it from their hard drive, so I’m quite sure that this
has happened to a lot of people. If given that opportunity then I wouldn’t take
it, if I brought a popular gaming title I would like to think that I helped
contribute to the gaming’s industry.
It is suggested that people who pirate games stick to
a rule where they would actually go out and buy then game from a shop to
support the publishers. Would this be the same if someone pirated a game, liked
most of it, but not all of it, would you still buy the game from a shop then? I
wonder how many time players have done this. If you want to support games
companies then just go out and buy the game, most shops offer money back
service where if you aren’t completely satisfied with your purchase you can
refund it before a certain date. A great way to ensure you would like a game
would be to find out if the games company have created a demo’s specifically
for this kind of thing.
There is another reason why there is a decrease of the
number of people playing PC games, for playing a game with intense graphics you
would need to purchase expensive hardware for example graphics cards,
processors and memory, which would need to upgrade regularly so it would match
the requirements of the latest games. On the other hand, consoles are very
simple with this as all you would need to do is buy the console, put your
chosen game in and it starts playing. That’s it for consoles. Personally I
prefer playing on a games console and purchasing games through gaming shops as
it makes me feel like I’ve done my bit for the gaming’s industry.
Personally I think that the PC gaming community should
stand and support the games publishers because this would be the right time to
do so, but if you don’t then you would have to keep waiting for a quality game
titles to be released for the PC and then eventually you would see the PC
gaming industry fade out and die.
Below are two links to interviews we did with people
who have different views on Game Piracy:
This first interview was with someone who does pirate games:
This next one is an interview
with someone that doesn’t pirate games:
If people have
any comments on this, feel free to post them below, thanks.
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