Divine Approval: That Time When The Vatican Pirated Video Games
from the holy-shit dept
So, hey, you know how people who have pirated video games are the devil, the great Satan, beings of pure evil with nothing but ill-will on their minds? You know how the question of piracy and how producers react to it isn't one of economics, but a question of morality? We may have a problem here. It turns out that last year's version of Football Manager, a game series that involves the apparently enjoyable task of managing a football (soccer) club, included some code that tracked the IP address of anyone who attained the game through unauthorized channels. When the makers of the game went back recently to study the results, they found that 10-plus million copies of the game were pirated, predominantly within China, Turkey and Portugal, obviously an Axis of Evil Soccer Fans. Then they stumbled across this:
Italy was also up there in the rankings though, and of the 547,000 copies Sega were able to trace to the country, one was from inside the Vatican.Now, it's been some time since I was in Sunday School, but it seems to me that if the center of an organization that I was told was run by an infallible man in a giant hat through which God's official decisions on morality are made is pirating video games, then that's kosher (editor's note: damn it, Tim, you're mixing up religions again).
Okay, okay, so I'm obviously joking. Piracy taking place within the halls of the Vatican of course doesn't make that action any more right than some of the other terrible things each and every religion has done in the past. We're all human, after all. And perhaps we should give a tip of our hats to the producers of the game, who seem to be acting a bit more reasonable and human on the piracy subject than many of their peers.
While ten million pirated copies is cause for alarm, Football Manager boss Miles Jacobson is realistic about what it actually meant for his studio, saying that one pirated copy did not equal one sale lost. By their calculations, it added up to 176,000 lost sales, or $3.7 million in revenue.While I'd still stipulate that I'd like to look at their "calculations", this is a far cry from the "each pirated copy is a lost sale" claim. So good on you, Miles Jacobson. Perhaps your reasonable words will give you a special spot in Heaven. But if that doesn't do the trick, I think there's someone in the Vatican that owes you a favor.
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Filed Under: piracy, vatican, video games
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So if they can track 'lost sales', does that mean they can also track 'gained sales', where people tried the game via piracy and then went and bought it? If so, it would be interesting to see how the two compare.
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"gained sales", are sales, yes they can track sales.
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After all if they are claiming to have lost 176K sales(a rather specific number) due to piracy, then I was wondering if they took into account or tracked the reverse, sales that were caused by piracy of their game.
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Wait a sec...
The Pope seems to be in touch with the world.
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The Pope is a pirate?
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Best Pope ever!
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So, gloss over "lost ... $3.7 million in revenue"...
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Re: So, gloss over "lost ... $3.7 million in revenue"...
Keep in mind if you took every 'losses' figure seriously, both the music and movie industry would have crashed and burned decades ago, given they are always claiming 'losses' in the hundreds of millions, or even billions, on a yearly basis.
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Re: Re: So, gloss over "lost ... $3.7 million in revenue"...
Even without seeing their data, I find that plausible enough to give them the benefit of the doubt.
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Re: Re: Re: So, gloss over "lost ... $3.7 million in revenue"...
Just talking about the losses from piracy, without taking into account the gains, is focusing on only half of the equation.
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Re: So, gloss over "lost ... $3.7 million in revenue"...
That data came from software that uploaded data from everyone, not just pirates.
Or you are just paid to badmouth Google?
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Re: So, gloss over "lost ... $3.7 million in revenue"...
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The games was phoning home?
What else did they collect and are not telling anybody?
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Being condemned to hell in 3..2.
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O RLY?
...if I had a secular PC.
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That will take the pressure right off the Paedophile priests, and the 'rest' of the issues that are wrong with the Vatican.
Vatican is not 'in' Italy.
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Isn't that lovely. Certainly the same code would be in the retail copies.Not a fan of that BS. But I am also the guy that made sure his calculator app on his phone didn't have any special permissions...
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In case anyone is unaware, Steam isn't available in China or Turkey. And neither are boxed copies of football manager. Even if they were theoretically available there for retail sale, they would be selling for ridiculously outlandish prices according to their standard of living.
The whole point of this article shouldn't be 'PIRACY IS THE EVILS' or even that 'Piracy isn't as bad as anyone thinks it is'.
It should be "If people want to play your game, they will find a way whether you like it or not". And also "Only stupid people worry about that 14 year old living in America who pirates things while there are entire countries that have piracy-based economies".
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Father Mackie
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gaming
http://global-products-and-services.blogspot.com/
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