Console Gaming Piracy = £1.45 billion Lost Sales in 2010

I've done my fair share of pirating in the past. But I haven't illegally downloaded anything in 5-6 years. Bottom line is, stealing is wrong.
Hell I've even bought a copy of Nero and Adobe Acrobat Pro. Two of the most pirated pieces of software on the market.

 

It's always been like that and it always will be until technology stops advancing and new products stop coming out.
It would be nice though if they gave you a discount code of some sort. Like if I bought COD:BO on the 360 and wanted it on the PC, I could maybe get it at half-price since I already owned it.
That will never happen though.

 

been say'd before tons off times.
just make games cheaper.

just look at valve they dont have any issues with piracy.

 

good, hopefully developers will start releasing more games for pc now that the "consoles are pirate free" curtain lifted

 

The only thing I hate about this is I can't mod consoles for a hobby because of all this pirate bull****. I wouldn't even put the damn thing online, how is that a crime? It's like charging someone with murder for buying a handgun.

 

If you can afford the platform and the time to enjoy it, you can afford the game. Period.
People who make the "those people weren't going to buy the game anyway" argument are just wrong. If you weren't going to buy it guess what? You shouldn't be playing it. Period. Lost sales are porjected sales. Sales that they should have made but didn't because of pirating. If the game wasn't available for free then people would have had to pay for it. Right? Exactly. It's not the fact that X amount of people DID pirated it. It's about the fact that X amount of people were ABLE to pirate it. It's all about the ability.
Because there is no survey people fill out before they pirate a game companies have to assume that X amount of people would have payed for it if they weren't able to get it for free. Hell, they all broke the law to get it or risked a couple thousand $ if they were caught pirating in the US. That and they obviously have the said platform to play it on.
As for the greed side of it. Well that's what happens when luxury items become popular. Yes luxury items. Video games are a luxury item. Perod. Don't belive me? When was the last time you read in the news about people dieing because of a lack of video games? Exactly because we don't need them hence they are a luxury. Affordable as they are that is still the case. So again, if you can afford the platform and the time to enjoy it you can afford the game. If it's too rich for you maybe you should reconsider your priorities and stop wasting your money.
My 2 cents.

 

Games are too expensive now a days, I won't pay over £10 unless I really want it, maybe £25 max for a big game, console games are like £50 and PC games are creeping up with some coming in at £35 which is way too much.

Also modding does not equal piracy. My Original Xbox is soft modded, I own a lot of games for it (about 20, incidentally have only played two, the rest are sealed), but I use it daily as a media centre with XBMC, in fact due to just XBMC I went on to buy a total of 4 xboxes. This locking down stifles sales.

My wii for example is soft modded aswell, not for piracy but for convenience, I have all my legal games ripped to a hard drive, they now load faster and I don't need stupid disks, I just have a list of all my games onscreen with cover art and can play what I like on demand.

 

Sprecker the world doesn't work that way mate, calling pirated games, lost sales is bull$h!t.

btw you come across as trying to be holier than thou

 

Everybody has an opinion and rightly so, it just seems some ppl are more ignorant of reality than others.

 

Piracy is really too risky these days, the companies have spies all over the torrent networks. Even places like Demonoid are slowly becoming infested. With that said, I haven't pirated in 4+ years. I do like to check out the "scene" occasionally though to see what's become of it.

 

The world works the way you want it to. If you don't want to be a part of a certain aspect of society you don't have to be (given certain unavoidable circumstances like illness and intelligence). I never once stated pirated games equaled lost sales. All I stated was why companies say that. Create something popular and sell it. See what happens when you find out that 1000's of people got it by copying it.
The whole idea that something that isn't physical has no value is a big problem in the (business)world today. If you can get it for free why pay, right? Because some people have respect and a certain sence of responsibilty.
If people are going to allow pirating to be OK and look the other way than those people don't have the right complain that games are becoming stale, unoriginal and shovelware with intrusive DRM and a high price tag.
I stand by what I said. Games are a luxury item if you can't afford them but insist on playing them illegaly you should seriously reconsider your lifestyle choices.
If I come off as hollier than thou, well, that says more about you than me.

I agree with being able to do what you want with the hardware you buy. I can't see why any company would want to chase a big share of the market away? One example is the new Xbox360 slims and how the old HDD's don't fit unless you remove it from the case. Against the TOU.
I get the reason but to force a good portion of the willing market to reDL, reinstall and repay for things they already bought to do the exact (to the letter) same thing is wrong. Aswell as banning people who opened thier Xboxes to correct the overheating problems because they couldn't afford to send it back is stupid. They should of allowed it if you called in and said that you were doing it so they would have your Gamertag on file and if you were caught cheating or what not than instant IP ban. Or something.
I also agree with a company that doesn't want you on their servers if you do decide to secretly modify you hardware. Would anyone here let anyone in thier house knowing that they brought with them all the tools they need to rob it? Didn't think so.
This is all just my opinion. It isn't directed (mostly) at anyone here. It doesn't cause any sort of harm or force any sort action to anyone other than to maybe make you think something other than "The companies are just greedy and all the games these days aren't worth paying for but I am going to play them anyway... etc. "
You really want to get the companies to stop making fodder and start putting out original ideas? Stop playing games. When everyone stops buy/stealing (I am pretty sure they know how pirated their games are and use it as a tool to judge what people like) these games they will have to stop making them. Then someone will make one that is completely new and people will want it again.

 

If you say so

 

Pretty sure I did.
So you agree that piracy is actually an excuse companies use to raise prices in a comercial, seller driven market where even though millions of games are DLed illegally every year the major companies still manage to make a profit? Or do you agree that because of priacy games that should have sold tens of millions only sold millions and those companies that developed the games had to be shut down, absorbed or sold off because of lost sales? I can't tell from your statement.

 

to answer your question I think it is an excuse, I believe that the games should be priced better, in fact I have over 100 games on Steam and have had the account for about a year I think, if games are priced well I buy them, infact there are many games I had a copy of which I bought a genuine one of because the price was fair, I'm not gonna pay £40 for say Black Ops....

I bought NBA2K11 2 days after release for £12.99, if more games were priced like that I wouldn't really consider getting them via other means

but hey that's my opinion

 

I rather download SOME games these days than buy,why?.... cause devs are lazy and release unfinished products, then want to throw in patches later to fix. If u gonna release a buggy game then it should be sold at lower prices. I dont spent spend 50-60$ to be a beta tester or to play an 7 hr or less game. GOW 3 should have been 45$, it was not worth 60$ being way too short.

BTW...the games i do download, i buy when prices are reasonable.


When prices go up, piracy increases. This also affects music and movies.

 

man these games today, so expensive!! [/sarcasm]





hint: $60 then is $100 now, and games were ALOT cheaper to make.

 

I don't care tbh, I rarely download neway

 

Everybody is complaining, yet I don't see Simon Cowell going on the doll to scrape a living or any mainstream music artists, film stars and anybody associated with the entertainment business.

I havent pirated video games since PS1 (and that was when I lived in a very poor country where it was more difficult to find an unchipped console than it was original). As far as films go, £9.99 a month from LoveFilm - unlimited streaming of thousands of titles and unlimited DVD rental (1 film at a time), does it for me, no more need for torrents!

 

yeh that lovefilm thing is good, might get on that

game makers need to realise we are not idiots, they need to go to digital distribution, get rid of the extra cost of physical media, middlemen (retailers, distributors etc) and pass the savings on to the customer. I think publishers will begin to accept that this is a model in which they will have to go to, in order to keep the sales high

My 2 cents