Despite Being Pirated 4.5 Millions Times, 'Witcher 2' Developer Refuses To Annoy Paying Customers With DRM
from the there's-more-to-serving-your-customers-than-updating-a-spreadsheet dept
As we all have seen demonstrated here at Techdirt, there are several ways to react to piracy. Ubisoft, in particular, has usually found a way to make the worst of it, either through incapacitating DRM or by expressing a firm reluctance to release certain games for the PC.On the other hand, you have companies like Valve, who recognize that not every instance of piracy is simply someone wanting something for nothing, but rather an opportunity for the pirated company to experiment with pricing and convenience options in order to meet the expectations of underserved customers.
Now you can add CD Projekt, the publisher of Witcher 2, to the growing list of software companies who see piracy as an opportunity, rather than a sinkhole of lost sales. In an interview with PC Gamer, CEO and co-founder Marcin Iwinski came up with some quick math on how many times Witcher 2 was pirated, arriving at a truly jaw-dropping number:
I was checking regularly the number of concurrent downloads on torrent aggregating sites, and for the first 6-8 weeks there was around 20-30k ppl downloading it at the same time. Let's take 20k as the average and let's take 6 weeks. The game is 14GB, so let's assume that on an average not-too-fast connection it will be 6 hours of download. 6 weeks is 56 days, which equals to 1344 hours; and with 6h of average download time to get the game it would give us 224 downloads, then let's multiply it by 20k simultaneous downloaders.Despite the fact that the free version was "outselling" the retail version 5-to-1, Iwinsky remains adamant on his company's no-DRM policy, pointing out that CD Projeckt has always had to compete with free:
The result is roughly 4.5 million illegal downloads. This is only an estimation, and I would say that's rather on the optimistic side of things; as of today we have sold over 1M legal copies, so having only 4.5-5 illegal copies for each legal one would be not a bad ratio. The reality is probably way worse.
From the very beginning our main competitors on the market were pirates. The question was really not if company x or y had better marketing or better releases, but more like "How can we convince gamers to go and buy the legit version and not to go to a local street vendor and buy a pirated one?" We of course experimented with all available DRM/copy protection, but frankly nothing worked. Whatever we used was cracked within a day or two, massively copied and immediately available on the streets for a fraction of our price.There's your "reason to buy." And now, here's Iwinsky stating the obvious:
We did not give up, but came up with new strategy: we started offering high value with the product - like enhancing the game with additional collectors' items like soundtracks, making-of DVDs, books, walkthroughs, etc. This, together with a long process of educating local gamers about why it makes sense to actually buy games legally, worked. And today, we have a reasonably healthy games market.
DRM does not work and however you would protect it, it will be cracked in no time. Plus, the DRM itself is a pain for your legal gamers - this group of honest people, who decided that your game was worth the 50 USD or Euro and went and bought it. Why would you want to make their lives more difficult?Of course, this obvious conclusion still escapes many software companies. In their (usually) wasted efforts to deter piracy, they routinely deliver a product that is crippled by its own protection measures. The DRM is a joke to pirates and an insult to paying customers. So, why do these companies continue to punish their paying customers? Iwinsky has a theory:
[A]s with every growing business, there are a lot of people coming in who... have no clue about games and could work in any other industry. They are not asking themselves the question "What is the experience of a gamer?" Or "Is this proposition fair?" But rather, they just look to see if the column in Excel adds up well or not, and if they can have a good explanation for their bosses.Even with companies like CD Projekt and Valve demonstrating that attempting to punish pirates through DRM or other restrictive measures just makes your customers miserable, others continue to view every pirated copy as a reason to ramp up protection. Iwinsky notes that the "Excel guys" aren't paying attention. The only way to get them to listen is to truly show them what a lost sale is: "Vote with your wallet."
As funny as this might sound, DRM is the best explanation, the best "I will cover my ass" thing... You are asking, "So why is it taking so long for them to listen?" The answer is very simple: They do not listen, as most of them do not care. As long as the numbers in Excel will add up they will not change anything.
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Filed Under: drm, witcher
Companies: cd projekt
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Oh, and it's worth mentioning that a quick glance of the Wiki page on the game reveals a couple of drivers for piracy that would have inflated the figures, and even driven legal purchasers of the game to piracy. If piracy was high, maybe these factors would have been the cause:
"At launch, many critics and gamers complained about activation problems, registration issues, and performance on high-end systems with both nVidia and AMD cards." (registration and activation would not have been issues for players of the pirated version)
"Players who purchased The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings through Steam have had to download several 9GB patches to update the game to versions 1.1 and 1.2 respectively. In contrast the 1.1 patch for non-Steam purchasers was only 15MB." (Have the Steam version? Might as well pirate a non-Steam version or a crack so you can apply reasonably sized patches)
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Or better yet send some money their way now saying "Love your game, just couldn't afford retail. Here's what I can pay"
Yeah, that's like saying, "Here's my name, address and confession to 'pirating' your game. I've included a fraction of the purchase price in hopes that you will not turn loose your money-hungry legal hounds."
You might want to add some fine-print to the letter such as, "By reading any part of the message above and/or accepting the payment proffered, you agree to relinquish all rights and privileges to sue this message's author, his household, employer, extended family and/or pets and/or any other attempt to engage the aforementioned parties in legal proceedings including, but not limited to, a claim of copyright infringement. Failure to abide by these conditions entitles the message's author to five (5) free-of-charge lifetime-licenses for each game (past, present and future titles) published, designed, developed or otherwise influenced by the employer of this message's recipient as well as a lump-sum payment of ten-million U.S. dollars to the message's author and an additional ten-million U.S. dollars donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)."
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Nice!
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Bad Inputs
He's obviously working on a first-world country's download speed. I would imagine these are global downloads he's looking at and the average speed would be a LOT lower than he's estimating.
To give you an idea, I've got a fairly decent (by local standards) 4mpbs ADSL line here in South Africa and I kicked off a torrent of 8GB last night which is coming down fiarly quickly (again by local standards), and the estimated download time was almost 30 hours. The limit is not so much the ADSL line as the international bandwidth limitations.
If we assume that, say, half those torrents he looked at are on lines similar to mine (not unlikely in this global world we live in), that 6-hour average download is likely to become at least a 24-hour average. This would reduce his bought:pirated ratio to almost 1:1. Not bad at all methinks.
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Re: Bad Inputs
Really? My math (14G/6hours/60min/60sec) comes up with an average download speed of 65kb/sec.
I'm pretty sure I get double that on a typical workday, and I've seen it get up to almost 4x that over night.
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His real complaint is that the games he wants are overseas and there's a narrow pipe there which (1) I don't believe applies to half of the torrenting world as he assumes, and (2) corrects itself after a few cycles when the overseas data becomes relatively-local data.
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14,000,000,000 Bytes
/6 hours
/60 mins
/60 sec
= 648148 Bytes/sec
multiply by 8 to convert Bytes to bits and you have 5,185,185 bits/sec or 5.185Mbps
My lame DSL caps at 1.5Mbps so I too would give up a middle toe for this speed.
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14GB != 14,000,000,000 Bytes. Changing that number to 15,032,385,535 would raise your required rate to ~5.3Mbps.
My lame cable caps out at 25Mbps so I too would...um...nm.
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You have access to cable internet? Lucky man...
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Bear in mind the US is lagging FAR behind other countries in terms of "high speed" broadband connectivity and data transfer rates. Data caps just add insult to injury by telling the customers that they are the reason for the slow internet and/or spontaneous shut off after breaching the data cap and not the company trying to rake in a few more cents before finally trying to compete with cable companies as broadcasters. These people are in the business of providing a communications platform, not a one way crap stream from the richest advertisers.
/rant
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Re: Re: Bad Inputs
14GB = 14,336MB = 14,680,064KB = 117,440,512Kb
117,440,512Kb \ 6h = 19,573,418Kb/h
19,573,418Kb/h \ 60m = 326,223Kb/m
326,223Kb/m \ 60s = 5,437Kb/s or about 680KBps
(my calculations include the repeating decimals)
While 680KBps isn't unheard of, it's still faster then most of the US.
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Personally, I think it should be a mandatory thing - if you don't want to wait a month for something free, go pay for it. Admittedly, I think this now that I have a job and can AFFORD to buy them.
I can't think of a single game I pirated as a kid that I haven't purchased since then, except Creatures 2 (because I got Creatures 3 instead).
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Who remembers those old silly commercials, I am amazed with them to this day.
Also the copyprotection scheme of those days was a security bit that you turned on and off LoL
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The sole point to take from CD Projekt and Marcin Iwinski is that they are competing with "free" and doing quite well out of it. They are on the right track and long may that continue.
Bravo to Marcin and all at CD Projekt.
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Fast forward to today and now we're all employed and have plenty of money to spend on games and guess what, we do. I have not copied a game in years largely because of Steam. Anytime they have a holiday sale I pick up a bunch of games. It's too the point now where I've bought more games than I have time to play. Last Christmas I bought GTA 4 and Mass Effect during the Steam holiday sale. We're almost a year on and I still haven't downloaded either of them because I'm busy playing other games.
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(Warning: I am ignoring the fact that probably some of those that pirated the game also ended up buying it later)
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In every market what you see is that only more or less 20% of the people consume something and the other 80% don't, meaning 20% pay and 80% don't ever pay anything no matter what the incentives to do so.
There is even a name for it.
The Pareto Rule
Quote:
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You also have a certain percentage of downloaders that do it because it is the only way to get something. Because of region blocking there are a fair number of countries where you can not even purchase a game or music even you are willing to pay for it.
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Yesterday, it was "piracy cost MPAA /at most/ $60 million"...
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Re: Yesterday, it was "piracy cost MPAA /at most/ $60 million"...
Ever heard of the bell curve?
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Re: Re: Yesterday, it was "piracy cost MPAA /at most/ $60 million"...
Simple the price point was not $1 dollar it was $50 thus 80% of people didn't pay it, reduce the price point and more people would buy it.
Ever heard of the bell curve?
--------------
I said, fool, that IF the publisher had gotten A BUCK APIECE from each pirated game, THEN he'd be $4.5 million ahead, NOT anything about what the price of the game was. Then I compared that with yesterday's piece asserting that the ENTIRE MOVIE INDUSTRY is said to lose only $60M from ALL movies gotten off Pirate Bay. Those two figures can't be squared.
You are at the LOWER end of the bell curve.
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Re: Re: Re: Yesterday, it was "piracy cost MPAA /at most/ $60 million"...
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The analogy has nothing to do with the cars except for the fact that cars are being used as metaphor for movies. Bus fair is being used as a metaphor for Netflix subscriptions. Notice how Netflix subscriptions really has nothing to do with the downloaded movies just like the bus fair has nothing to do with the stolen cars.
Netflix has a very very limited instant viewing library and riding the bus is not the same thing as driving a car.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Yesterday, it was "piracy cost MPAA /at most/ $60 million"...
About your flawed analogy, cars can be stolen, when you take a car from someone you are depriving someone else of the use of that object, in the case of imaginary property you don't deprive anyone from the use of that imaginary property or the exploitation of that imaginary property, for a car to be like imaginary property in your dishonest allusion you would have to say that someone using his own resources copied a car and use it, now how is that in any way or shape stealing?
On the other hand depriving someone from something like in the "exclusive rights" of content owners is really stealing from everybody, because you are depriving everybody else the use of that imaginary property without giving nothing back in return.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Yesterday, it was "piracy cost MPAA /at most/ $60 million"...
Stealing from everybody becasue you are depriving them of use without giving anything back in return? Surely you jest. Did the author not provide a work to the public that would not otherwise exist but for the author's labor?
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About the content owners stealing the rights of people to use something, is like the right of passage, content owners are impeding others from passing through and that is not right, nobody should have to pay another for work they have done, somebody doing a cover of some band should have not to pay somebody who didn't do the work, that is what is very wrong with copyright and if you want to call it stealing I don't mind I will rip off any artist that believe they have those rights and I want to see you or any government try to enforce it, that will be a laugh.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Yesterday, it was "piracy cost MPAA /at most/ $60 million"...
But you can't make an unlimited number of copies of a car for free like you can with digital content, so your comparison is meaningless.
You would think by now people would get this simple but important concept...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Yesterday, it was "piracy cost MPAA /at most/ $60 million"...
You fail to understand a basic economic fundament, and I'm the stupid one?
You cannot compare physical goods with digital ones. It's stupid to even mention them together as you did, you just look ignorant.
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Re: Yesterday, it was "piracy cost MPAA /at most/ $60 million"...
The difference between the fantasy MPAA number and the $65M is the amount the MPAA is losing because of Netflix. The $65M is the amount they are losing because of pirates.
In the case of games, there is no Netflix where the user could legally get one view of the game for a few $$ as part of a monthly subscription. But games are different to movies. Many people don't want to spend 50 hrs in front of the same movie, yet who'd rent a game for one night ?
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Re: Re: Yesterday, it was "piracy cost MPAA /at most/ $60 million"...
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Sounds like fishing bait to me.
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Re: Yesterday, it was "piracy cost MPAA /at most/ $60 million"...
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Demos people
Now, if there is no demo I am just too lazy to click three or four times to set up a torrent... and I won't even look at the game.
There are always exceptions, such as games that have been heavily reviewed and there is a lot of YouTube info on, but otherwise, no demo, no sale.
I am willing to bet a fair number of these pirates (15%) are like me - try before you buy types who just don't want to get ripped off with a crappy game and no return option.
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Re: Demos people
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As I recall when a movie is good, people want to see it and experience it in as many forms as they can as many times as they can.
I saw this interview once with a Star Wars fan, and was him recalling what he felt the first time he saw Star Wars and was he telling others how after going out of the first session he immediately bought another ticket to see it again and telling that that went on for a while he saw Star Wars over and over again because it was so awesome and probably because ticket prices where low at the time.
Its been ages since I saw something like E.T. great success appear to keep getting far in between, you want to input that as a piracy consequence too?
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One game loses 4.5 million sales, yet ALL the movies on TPB lose the studios a mere $60 million bucks?
This quite clearly points up that even figures here on Techdirt are flexible enough to support the on-going assertion that piracy doesn't hurt and is even good.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111123/03341616884/how-much-does-file-sharing-really-cos t-hollywood.shtml
"In the end, they find that it's possible the studios might have made about $60 million more under this simplistic scenario."
Yeah, I know you're going to start the "pirated copy doesn't equate to lost sale" crap, but it's just baloney. You guys aren't even honest enough to admit that studios WOULD get SOME of those lost sales if thieves weren't around in 4.5 to 1 ratio, according to this very piece above.
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Re: One game loses 4.5 million sales, yet ALL the movies on TPB lose the studios a mere $60 million bucks?
There are 7 billion people in the world, how many of those actually buy anything?
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Re: Re: One game loses 4.5 million sales, yet ALL the movies on TPB lose the studios a mere $60 million bucks?
There are 7 billion people in the world, if a pirated version of a movie were not available for download, how many would actually buy the movie.
We don't know the answer to that question because no one wants to actually correct the problem, they want to pretend that it doesn't exist. And in fact DEFEND piracy as promotion or claim that people are pirating because they can't get the content any other way.
Many more people pirate simply because it's free, and readily available (even when legitimate and still cheap, legal and just as easy distros are available).
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Re: Re: Re: One game loses 4.5 million sales, yet ALL the movies on TPB lose the studios a mere $60 million bucks?
Probably less since, the people who didn't paid would be the majority and people don't like to comment on things they didn't experience so they would find other things to entertain themselves and call it a day.
It could easily depress the market for that movie that without the word of mouth wouldn't be that great now would it?
How many people do you know buy merch from something they didn't watch?
Would children buy E.T. merch today because it is cute?
You think kids would buy Picachu merch or keep emulating his love for ketchup because they didn't see it?
The movie is a vehicle that brings people to a state where they are pliable and suggestible, taking that away takes with it also your revenues away.
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RE: Vote with your wallet
I don't know if voting with your wallet will effect their decision on DRM.
All that will do (in my opinion), is make them scream "It's the fault of pirating that we're losing money" even louder and then they'll try to make stronger (and/or worse) DRM policies and/or try to buy more politicians to make more stupid, restricting laws.
Again, I could be wrong, but if we look at how they're acting now, just imagine when people really stop buying their crap to protest the DRM.
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Re: RE: Vote with your wallet
Thanks for pointing that out. It's the stupidest assertion in this piece, and that's saying a lot.
@ "Tim Cushing": HOW THE HELL CAN 4.5 MILLION PIRATES "VOTE" ANY MORE NEGATIVELY? They DON'T PAY BUT DO USE the product! -- Most would steal it whatever the price, anyway.
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Re: Re: RE: Vote with your wallet
Now, I agree with his statement, but that doesn't make it my assertion. My assertion is that the only truly "lost sale" is the one where you piss off your customers enough that they will no longer purchase your products.
I agree that voting with your wallet can have some effect, but as others have pointed out, refusing to buy a game will make some companies tighten up their DRM even more, simply because they can't imagine that someone would just not purchase their game. If it's not purchased, it must be stolen. It would take a long time to drain a software company in this fashion, but they would certainly help it along by crippling their software in increments until it's damn near unplayable, no matter what your PC setup/internet connection is.
@ "Tim Cushing": HOW THE HELL CAN 4.5 MILLION PIRATES "VOTE" ANY MORE NEGATIVELY? They DON'T PAY BUT DO USE the product! -- Most would steal it whatever the price, anyway.
And yet Iwinsky doesn't see a whole bunch of people not interested in his games. What he sees is potential, whereas you (and many others) only see the loss. The same goes for some software companies, hence the DRM and lousy attitude towards PC gamers.
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Re: RE: Vote with your wallet
If those developers who are losing sales because of DRM can't see that these other DRM-free developers are making loads of money, that is not skin off my nose. They are idiots.
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How many developers are being discouraged from entering the gaming market because of piracy? I am sure there are many who look at the 5 to 1 ratio and decide that it isn't worth it. Pirates are hurting the gaming market because their actions are limiting the number of games that are released.
Stopping piracy would be in everyone's best interest. Perhaps some rewards should be offered for reporting people who pirate. Then if we could convince law enforcement to actually prosecute the pirates to the fullest extent of the law you might actually see piracy rates drop.
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So how is the games industry hurting? Its not. It is doing fine.
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The iPad could be the PS3 Killer.
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Doubt?
http://www.happypenguin.org/images/oilrush90.jpg
http://www.happypenguin. org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_Frankie!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_v ideo_games
http://planet.freegamedev.net/
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Further smartphones practically killed the market for PSP and DS Nintendo platforms with their $1 dollar games available everywhere.
Also stopping piracy may even recede sales since it kills the promotion part of it, I have yet to see anybody prove that a bigger exposure doesn't translate in bigger sales, because if that wasn't true I don't understand why all those people expend billions in promotion in the first place.
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Your fantasy of piracy as promotion makes me laugh. I chuckle everytime I read it. It's called denial.. Pirates don't want to feel guilty so they imagine that in some twisted version of reality they are actually helping things.
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Sorry dude, you're in last place here.
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So no, you're wrong on every single point.
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Needs even more of a clue
While I applaud their progressive and forward-thinking outlook here, this statement is indicative of one of the big problems with the entertainment industry as a whole.
Please take a moment to get this clue FIRMLY established in your head:
NO ONE BUYS A PIRATED GAME FROM A STREET VENDOR ANYMORE!
Now, I'll grant you, there are probably some small, very local (think neighborhood-level) people trying to sell movies/music/games/whatever on a street or flea market somewhere, but really, almost NO ONE gets their stuff this way anymore, not for at least 10 years now. The vast majority (and I mean like 95%) download. Maybe their friend makes them a copy, but thats also usually from the one they downloaded.
Please put this myth to rest that there is some huge network of Mafioso-like criminal enterprises out there that are engaged in a massive scale of cd and dvd printing and making huge money off of it and then funneling that money 100% in toto to terrorist organizations. Ain't happening, sorry. These criminals are engaged in things that ACTUALLY make them money, like drugs, guns, and prostitution. I've lived in getto/hood places in recent years, and never once was I approached or seen a street vendor offering a movie on a burned DVD. I was offered all the other things, many times.
So please, for the sake of our sanity and reality, get off the "pirates sell DVDs of our stuff!" mouse wheel already.
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Re: Needs even more of a clue
Maybe where you live.
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Re: Re: Needs even more of a clue
Maybe where you live."
Yeah...try EVERYWHERE I have lived. I havent seen a cd or dvd for sale outside of a flea market in almost a decade. The only place I have really seen it on the streets in recent times is NYC, and even that is a lot less than it used to be.
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Re: Re: Re: Needs even more of a clue
Hahahaha
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Re: Re: Re: Needs even more of a clue
Sometimes, you have to realise these arguments are global, not the patch of earth you happen to currently inhabit.
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Re: Needs even more of a clue
Iwinsky is referring to when he first started his company, which was back in 1994. Probably much more common back then. That's not very clear from the portion I quoted, but he goes into a bit more detail on that at the original article.
I'm not trying to be pedantic. Just pointing out that Iwinsky isn't suffering from the same illness that infects the entertainment industry as a whole.
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Well, I believe some of us are already doing that. Except the Excel Guys will interpret that phenomenon in a way that is not aligned with what we expected. OH MY GOD OH MY GOD! More people are pirating!
In their simple little minds they can only reach one conclusion: The previous DRM is not strong enough. We need STRONGER DRM!
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Re:
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I can pirate anything and I do from time to time, I bet if the police kicked the doors of every American home starting with the very rich they would find trillions of dollars of illegal material.
What it amazes me is that they try to enforce this BS laws on the poor first, the very same people who are the least likely to have ever bought anything, they even screen out VIP people so they don't get in trouble, but to the commons is "the law"?
Right, screw that, I'm a pirate, I will pirate to my hearts content and I'm calling that BS out, come and pick me up the only way I will stop pirating now, is when I die(with luck more 20 years).
I'm sick and tired fo those people who believe in monopolies and think they have a right to exclude others or stop others from doing something that they don't like, even if there are some little benefits to it, it doesn't matter because of all the evil it does to the rest of us.
So to all content owners out there "fuck you" come and get me if you can, to the American government I say "fuck you" you can't touch this. They say it is the law, well I want to see them enforce that law, is one thing to say it and a completely different thing to actually do it.
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I give it a pass.
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Bought on Release Day
Very few video game companies are run by men and women with this goal in mind.
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