Evil Pirate L33ch3r vs. Honest Gamer
Obviously not, it’s illegal, it’s immoral, and it’s not even difficult to do these days. In fact that last point is precisely why a lot of people do it. If Evil Pirate L33ch0r can download a full game over his home broadband connection in less than an hour, have it installed and start playing way before his good friend Honest Gamer, something isn’t right.
In fact, he is way ahead of Honest Gamer.
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Evil Pirate L33ch3r is enjoying his nice new download way before. . .
- Honest Gamers’ ‘Amazon / Shopto / Whoever’ order has arrived, the game will ‘leak’ online (presumably review copies falling into the wrong hands?).
- Honest Gamers waited for their antiquated DVD drive to spin into life and install the one or more DVDs the game comes on.
- Honest Gamer mistyped their CD-key for the 2nd time, before activating the game online, authenticating whatever DRM it came bundled with.
DRM & Install issues. Steam doesn’t always work. The pirate is still winning. .
We are assuming that all of the above goes swimmingly. There have been instances where the honest gamer gets stung.
This can be in the form of overbearing DRM (which remember, isn’t that bad) or the download service becoming crippled and useless (Steam in mw2 release download fail? Steam, killing floor free weekend? Steam, any big release or free weekend?)
Pirate L33ch0r is also free to play without having a constant internet connection and he can install as many times as he wants.
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Honest Gamer is getting annoyed now?
Meanwhile (probably just after Honest Gamer angrily spots a Youtube video of his newly purchased game “OMG DIS GAME RUNS SO 1337 ON MAH RIG, LOOK AT MAH SPECS!!”) Evil Pirate L33ch0r has just unzipped his 35 200mb .rar files, installed the game copying and pasting the CD-key from the lovingly crafted ‘scene’ .NFO file.
He then goes through the excruciatingly difficult task of copying the Game.exe from that cryptic looking ‘crack’ folder. Then he’s in. Damn, that’s quick and hassle-free.
If you think I’m pro-piracy / anti-DRM, I’m neither. I understand the need for DRM / content control etc, and I’m principally against piracy.
Do it like Radiohead?
A few years ago Radiohead sold their album ‘In Rainbows’ on a pay-what-you-want’ basis. Over a period of only 29 days 1.2 million fans flocked to their website to buy the album paying an average of $6 each. $7.2 million in 29 days is very good.
Obviously, games and music are different. One could argue that only an established artist can ‘get away’ with these sorts of arrangements. Both true, but I believe that a ‘good game’ would still do well if offered in this way.
What I would like to see to discourage the widespread easy pirating
- Demos for every single game. Preferably a timed demo of the full game, not a random or unfinished level. I want to know exactly what I might be buying and I want to try it out in full.
- An on-line element. Doesn’t need to be a ‘bolted-on’ multiplayer, but some kind of online interaction with friend lifts a mediocre game to being a good one. Co-op is great.
- Guaranteed speed / stability of download service. Surely Steam have enough money to throw more bandwidth at their service?
- A better download client. I’m probably in the minority, but I dislike the Steam client. I went from not minding it, to (post big update) hating it. It’s bloated and slow. It will end up becoming the iTunes of the PC game distribution platforms. (ie bloated and intrusive)
What do you think?
Let us know in the comments box below what you think about piracy. Do you do it, and how do you feel about it? If you don’t do it, why? If you do, also why? Thanks for reading! 
Piracy, especially on the PC, is simply too easy to ever die. Right or wrong, as long as it is easy it will be done, regardless of DRM. I think it is all about incentive, not about punishment. If there is proper incentive to buy a game rather than pirate it, it will mitigate things a bit.
As far as whether piracy can ever be good? I feel as though it certainly can be, with the right mentality. With the proliferation of mainstream gaming has come the mainstream gamer, people who play nothing but Call of Duty, Gears of War, and other bland casual games like that. The core gamers, gamers who like playing the niches they enjoy without fear of their favorite series turning into a generic FPS or action game, are being abandoned for profits.
Piracy, in this case, could serve the purpose of civil disobedience. We could never speak louder with our wallets than the casual FPS gamer, the kind of gamer being focused on, so there needs to be other ways to get a point across. Piracy is just this, a rebellion against an industry becoming more and more mainstream, and abandoning niche gamers wholesale. Sometimes you need to damage something to create positive change, especially when that something has grown too bloated and greedy to be swayed by reason.
Of course, this is not the mentality of most gamers who pirate, as most pirates will pirate games from indie devs as thoughtlessly as they pirate big studio games. It will get to a point though, where the gamers get tired of being sold FPS after FPS, generic action game after generic action game, chiseled jaw brown haired white male after chiseled jaw brown haired white male, and piracy will be used as a tool rather than a means of indulgence. I welcome that day.
Steam is more than a download application. The overall package (ease of purchase, community, frequent updates, really good deals, and good download speeds) makes it every bit more worthy than a DVD based install.
And, how do you get slow steam speeds? Did you try setting your region manually (I usually get better than torrent speeds with steam).
I liked steam as an application a lot more before its ‘facelift’ – it is now more sluggish, and far less straight forward.
To be fair, steam is reasonably quick at downloading most of the time. Its when they have a big release, often you can’t download at all; regardless of region selected.
Thanks for commenting
@Red – spot on, couldn’t agree more.