I see the points people have been making about pricing, but people pirate $10 DVDs as well. So I do not think that pricing causes piracy. I think piracy is easy, never has immediate consequences, and for most people never has consequences, and that is why people do it.

I don't take much of a "Robin Hood" approach to piracy, in that piracy is correcting some previous injustice. I also disagree with the mindset that a company must earn my loyalty to encourage me to pay for their products as opposed to pirating them. If you don't like a company's businesses practices you can choose not to buy their products. But it does not give someone the justification to use their products without paying for them.

The long and short of it is that piracy exists because it is an easy form of theft, and theft has, and will always, exist. I do not think its causes have anything to do with the industry it affects.

Until they break into either the computers that host that stuff or physically into the place they're kept and get the game data :p
It could happen.

Why do people pirate games (and music, movies, etc)?
(in random order)
1. They have no money. This means there are no lost sales.
2. The item has not yet been released in their region. You can avoid this by treating all customers equally
3. The pirated item offers better enjoyment. No mandatory online connections, no mandatory anti-piracy preachings (see the irony here?)
4. People don't want to wait for the item to be offered at high discount. Personally, I stopped buying games shortly after their release because sometimes it only takes 6 months or so for an item to be discounted by 50% or more. When you discount so extreme and so fast, it's no wonder people don't believe a game is worth $60 or more.

Companies really have to start treating their customers better. GoG.com is on the right path but too many companies still cling to pre-internet business models.

Yes, that's certainly an efficient way to combat piracy. Personally, however, I will stop buying games for good when they are only sold as streaming content.

Reform and severely limit the copyright law, elect politicians which have not been bought by the media industry, don't fucking talk about this "piracy" stuff of all time as you would have been brainwashed by the fucking industry propaganda....

Then: profit.

We should attack the pirates, first with bombs and rockets to destroy their homes, and then when they run helpless into the street, mow them down with machine guns. And then, of course, release the vultures. I know these views aren't popular, but I have never thought of popularity.

I (for the most part) like the way the music industry did, ie. take out the DRM from digital music (making it nice for legit customers), but still go after those who actively share pirated music online (make it bad for freeloiaders). Maybe gaming industry isn't quite as ripe for that, except for GOG that is, and some indies.

What I don't agree with the music industry though is e.g. employing general internet censorship, like SOPA apparently is, and how in here the ISPs are now forced to block "pirate sites". Closing down clearly illegal sites is ok, as far as I care.

For (PC) games, I've previously proposed that put in DRM when the game is new (online activation, installation caps etc.), but take the DRM out later when the game is not brand new anymore and the biggest sales have been secured already. Say, one or two years later.

Some publishers seem to do this already, e.g. Risen was just released from DRM (***), as well as many other a bit older games. Then you get both the initial sales from those who don't care about DRM, as well as from those who do, and still combat the 0-day warez scene at the same time.

But, maybe most of the publishers are just not ready for that. Quite on the contrary, on the console side, where there is much less piracy, their biggest gripe now seems to be that people play old (incl. second hand) games, so I presume their next actions will be:

- selling physical (disc) second hand games should be prevented (with PC games, this is pretty much already the situation)

- in the longer run, make games automatically terminable, e.g. it is playable for you only three months or so after purchase. After all, just because you paid 70€ for a console game disc should not mean you should be able to play it for many months or even years! You should buy newer games instead! How dare you!


(***) Now I am unsure if Risen is or will be 100% DRM free, as some site said that the DRM will be taken out of the DVD version, but there will still be "standard DVD check", whatever that means. Starforce or something similar? I consider it DRM-free only if there are no copy protections whatsoever, even if some seem to argue that DRM refers only to online authentication methods (and people claiming that are simply wrong, because even movie DVD copy protections have earlier included in the definition of DRM, see below)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Scramble_System

And then? Go back to reading books? I guess that most of the people who are comfortable with renting movies online without offline viewing possibility or listening music online without offline listening possibility are also comfortable with playing games purely online.

Do you play any modern multiplayer game that relies on dedicated servers like WoW or any Facebook game? Because then you basically have a similar problem because part of the game is streamed there too.

I don't see why that wouldn't be an option. It depends on many things, e.g.:

- are you usually behind suitable internet connection for playing streamed games (for example, I probably am not at the moment (I think I tried to run OnLive from this network before, no go, same as with Steam), maybe many university networks use forced proxy servers as well)

- what is the pricing, e.g. do they expect me to pay the same 50-70€ for rented games, as for new, "owned" games. For some odd games every once and awhile, I might be willing to pay a couple of bucks for renting the game for a week or two, who knows. Maybe not, because usually I don't play games I buy every day in order to complete them in time.

For the record, one of the main reasons I've stayed out of WoW is specifically their pricing, it just rubs me the wrong way to pay monthly for one game, especially on those months I am barely playing it at all. Otherwise WoW sounded interesting to me at least to try.

Your question is somewhat similar like "would you stop playing games if they all turned into MMO games for which you pay monthly?". Could well be, if I start finding the whole gaming market disgusting, I steer away, something I've done before as well, e.g. with all the Starforce DRM cases, or when I started getting fed up with draconian Amiga game copy protections long time ago (yes Microprose, a big F U for the copy protection in Amiga Gunship, I think I didn't buy many Amiga games after that incident), etc.

Anyway, one point you must remember that at least in the foreseeable future, it doesn't seem probable that all PC games would go, at least exclusively, to streaming model. Maybe many AAA games would, but as long as Microsoft does not block people from making Windows games outside such streaming services, I just don't see it happening that there couldn't be gaming outside streaming services. Minecraft 2 exclusively in OnLive, right?

Funny thing but actually many companies think so. Some of them just don't wanna release stuff on PC because they don't want to see their game being more pirated than bought.

On other hand I understand them. If I would release game I would hate every pirate too. ;)

Oh, and one definite problem with your analogy: people can still buy yet another BR collector's ultimate complete edition of Star Wars series, or buy (DRM-free) digital music for listening offline, even though there are also renting services (Spotify etc.) for the same items.

So, if Spotify was the only way to "buy" music, would some people stop paying for their music? I know I would, definitely, right after I've now finally entered the market for buying music online (before this I've bough only physical music CDs, except I've avoided Sony rootkit audio CDs of course). My life does not depend on music either, I hear too much already on radio, and I could easily live even without that.

the problem in my country is that renting games are illigal here, and since game companies put codes with the games so you can activate the content so you cant return it if you dont like the game. The consumer getting more and more restriction to take risk of buying a 60 price tag and not like the game and then being stuck with it.