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Yes it does. And in no instances is purchasing a game from steam more expensive than doing so from a retailer. Hell, if you were going to the retailer for something else you could purchase the game from steam then go to the retailer and save yourself any other transaction costs involved in finding the title and installing it once you got home.
edit: To disagree with point 3 is to be fundamentally ignorant of the purpose of government, the quantification of wealth, and the history of all intellectual property law.
To counter I would say that piracy is not a reasonable reaction to DRM either, but as is plainly obvious I agree with you.
Valve's last PC exclusive sold more copies than Halo 2, and they didn't have any rants about piracy. Epic's last PC exclusive sold gangbusters as well and I heard no crying about piracy.
Epic's last game on the PC was pirated to hell and back and only sold 30,000 copies, and all the sudden PC gaming is no longer a viable platform. Incidently there was literally zero advertising for the game on PC, the commercials for it didn't even have PC listed as an available platform, and the game itself wasn't as good from many perspectives as the one before it. I'm sure piracy is the only reason it didn't sell.
Piracy is important, but I've noticed that the game companies that focus on sales as opposed to piracy tend to make more profit on the PC. I don't know why they don't look at the music industry and realize that the more you blame your problems on your potential customers, the less paying customers you have.
Artificial limitation of the life of the product and an attempt to fight first sale doctrine by pushing the idea that you're licensing the use of a product and not buying the product itself.
See I see "install limits" and say, fuck I might as well just download the game and burn the pirated version to a DVD, then at least I own it, I did this for Bioshock after I bought it. In no circumstance should I have to pirate a game I own to get around intrusive copy protection.
@AH: I guess I stole a copy of Bioshock then lololol
Piracy is a reasonable reaction to DRM if that DRM gets in the way of your enjoyment of the game or is an added cost associated with owning the non-pirated game.
Lowering costs and increasing benefits are perfectly reasonable and expected reactions to an action that does the opposite.
Allow me to tell you what this says to an economist.
"Attempts to reduce the quality of our good such that more repeat purchases need to occur"
This is only smart when you have a monopoly on the production of the good and there are no substitutes. Which even without piracy, game makers do not have.
Which means it actually says
"Attempts to fuck over our customers and have lower sales" since it is not accompanied by lower prices.
But is first sale doctrine even relevant when it comes to an intellectual product?
I mean, so many of the issues with piracy in music/movies/games are due to the problems our laws and such have run in to with the difference between a phsical product and an intellectual product.
It's been around for awhile, but up until recently it just simply wasn't viable to seperate the physical product companies were sellin (the CD itself for instance) from the intellectual product they were actually selling (the music on the CD). Computers, however, have broken through this barrier like a wrecking ball. Now companies/governments/etc can't treat intellectual products as indistiguishable from the physical products they comes on, and no one knows what to do.
I've seen titles running $10-$15 more on Steam than they do at Wal-Mart. And if I'm at Wal-Mart anyway, the other "transaction costs" are pretty much zero (walking by the electronics aisle, checking out)...installing a game from a disc is a non-zero cost, but my time is hardly worth that much.
Note that this is uncommon, but you seem so comfortable speaking in absolutes ("in no instances") that I feel the need to nitpick.
Basically your argument only holds (at the absolute level you're asserting) if you're allowed to place arbitrarily large values on your time (mainly the time to install, which generally requires about 5 minutes of actual user interaction).
The numbers are not arbitrary, they are based on the value that you place on your time. They are some amount in excess of the salary or hourly wage that you receive.
Well I would say piracy is still wrong even if the DRM is intrusive. If you pirate it and like it you should buy it if you're able.
That said I completely understand it, I pirated Spore specifically because the DRM was intrusive and wanted to see if the game was worthy of putting up with it... and I found out it wasn't. Thanks EA drm, you saved me from spending $50 !
Right. And unless I place a value on my time in excess of $100 an hour, Steam does in some instances cost more than retail.
I didn't say it wasn't "wrong" i said it was reasonable and expected.
According to the article, the majority of PC gamers don't consider Steam a superior economic choice to retail purchases. Add that to the fact that those with faster connections tend towards piracy and you can see why that is the case.
And as an aside, I've done the majority of my PC buying over Steam.
What?
Or, more specifically, Steam can't lower their prices too much or physical retailers would throw a fit and drop the appropriate product from their shelves. So Steam has sales to sneak around that.
I followed the blog of one of the devs for SiN Episodes. He specifically mentioned tons and tons of support errands for a bug. This bug only appeared in pirated versions. It wasn't even intentional; this bug was created due to the way that particular pirate release was cracked.
When calling or emailing support you'd have to have an account with them to do it.
It would help
Steam games require a steam ID for service. They still get tons of call from people who go "I don't have a steam ID." turning away the pirates still eats up valuable customer service resources. It would help but not that much.
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I understand your point, and pragmatically I agree with you I suppose, but I don't think it is right for any company, even a good one, to demand that their customer subscribes to an internet service just to retain customer service on a product they purchased.
If they can register their account over the phone with the key what's the problem?
I'm not sure what your point is, should we give up? Blizzard gets phony calls from people trying to scam accounts so should they just not bother with account security since it still eats up their time? Should they just give out account info?
I mean I don't have the data but I'd imagine it reduces the load on CSR quite a bit since they don't have to talk for a fortnight trying to determine what the problem is with pirates.
What happens when the company goes out of business or doesn't want to support that game anymore?
The same thing that happens to customer service on a game that goes out of business or the company doesn't want to support anymore if the customer doesn't have to prove they own a legal copy.
Although I am in favor of games that normally require CD checks to allow you to play without them as long as you have an internet connection and are registered, and I see no reason why this shouldn't be an option in this day and age.
Well, for starters, I completely missed your "over the phone" stuff when I responded to your post. Because I'm an idiot.
CD?
I'd love to see them try to fit a game on one of those
Anyway, yes this might be good as long as there are options to use either disk or internet, but I hate it when games check disks or log on to the internet when there's no damn reason to do so. You want to check the disk? Fine. Just have a reason for it.
Remember when the game use to keep music and videos on the disk? Why do they see fit to install everything on the hard drive in un-compressed formats and then have the nerve to bitch when I don't have the disk in the drive. It's not like X-Box installs the whole game to the drive, so why's the PC so special?
And if you're going to log on the net, then have some features that make use of that. Multilayer is a good start, or automatic content updates. Hell save your data like save files on-line and game stats. That would be great if you wanted to play on your friend's PC or if your computer dies, or if you get a new one, etc.
I am pretty good in deprotecting games myself. Mainly because copy protections from filthy money grubbers take a more and more annoying approach in their quest for greed.
Its basically a requirement if you want no disk in the drive (i have a harddisk alright, thats sufficient and i don't care what some mislead corphead thinks). Lately it took more abstruse forms as online activation, limited installations and more obscure stuff.
I know many examples of people who would usually BUY their games and get a pirated one. No internet acess. Opposing the idea of limited installations for an example.
The business is hurting itself. Badly. Since the latest copy protection shemes a lot more pirates are around. At least thats my impression. And i find myself sympatizing with their cause. Because the only way to show the corps this is contraproductive is directly hitting the sales curve. I don't feel bad about pirates as i once did. I feel a strange sensation of rightiousness.
I do not like to think about myself as a thief, so i pay for my games. Still such an action is quite understandable. Anyone would feel ripped off being told by his game he has used the maximum number of installs after having grapic card driver issues with multiple reinstalls. The resulting stance is comparable to self-justice.
A line has ben crossed here. And no end in sight.
I still think they should have their serial keys and be done with it. Yes, those can be generated, but any protection can be ripped the one or other way and this is the least intrusive. Punishing paying customers with intrusive protections in some case denying game acess whilst pirates enjoy flawlessly working versions is a bit odd to say at least.
Its insulting. And totally misdirected.
The point is... we buy games because we want to buy them. We don't have to. No, we don't have to. We do it because we feel its right.
Curse and blessing of the business. Corpheads can't win this war. They tried for centuries and they are stupid enough to give it another try. But fact is they can't.
If they get us to the point where we think its a bad idea to buy those games they are in deep trouble.
Its more a morale issue. Not an issue of law. They totally fail to grasp this concept. They are corpheads alright, so morale concepts are hard to come by for them i guess.
So what happens is they lose more and more customers to piracy (loss of the morale issue actually).
And whats their response?
"Lets make a more sophisticated copy protection".
And we all know that means more invasive - so, more pirates...
Corpheads are OFFENDING customers, thats why they turn away from them. Can you blame them? I can't. Not anymore.
Left 4 Dead, if I'm not mistaken, essentially requires you to have a vlid key to play the game at all since it's a Co-Op game best played with other folks... All the Battlefield games require valid keys and such for online play too....
It's my opinion they're attacking the problem from the wrong angle, they're all stuck in the "We need to prevent them from making a copy of this game, they should be thinking of ways to prevent people from properly enjoying the complete experience of the game, and I think some game makers are doing it, but need to do it in a non-offensive manner, so clipping out single player levels would be mean, but disabling online play would work. Or allowing for various new weapons that could be unlocked in single player mode, nothing major, just a few different options that change the dynamic of play, making it more interesting...
Just my 2 cents...
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Holy shit! Sony's new techno toy!
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Would you rather it install programs that mess with your registry, have install limits and online checks to make it seem more 21st century?
If I get bothered enough I'll just grab a no-cd fix for it.
Because, as already established, only paying customers get bothered by DRM.
You're aware that the version that the pirates are using doesn't do either, right?
That's the issue here. This isn't a problem that can be solved through increasingly draconian technological measures. I'm not sure how it can be fixed, but the current approach clearly isn't working.
Or, you know, could simply Run fallout3.exe directly from the fallout3 directory because only the launcher has the DVD check, not the actual game executable.
I've got nothing against CD checks. They are relatively noninvasive and alot more pleasant than the draconian bullshit coming out that basically installs a dungeon master on your HD who slaps you hard in your penis if something happens it doesn't like.
"It's not as bad as it could be!" is not a good argument. Be grateful I'm only kicking you in the shins instead of punching you in the face.