I'm curious to hear the wider populations thoughts on this but I have to stipulate for the sake of not getting banned and not demeaning CFUK's reputation:

[disclaimer]I, nor CFUK, promote piracy in anyway shape or form. [/disclaimer]

reason i bought up this thread is that I'm really getting annoyed with the dwindalling amount of developers releasing demos for their games/software for a try before you buy.

back in my Amiga days, before the internet was affordable for most the way devs spread the word was through magazines and with a demo on the disks cellotaped to the front. i think before that it was spectrum and C64 CASSETTES of the front or at least a several page spread of source code to type yourself to make the game!

it seems to me we're fast moving from a "try before you buy" era now which worries me. devs complain that their software is being pirated and that they're losing revenue. Though i'd be interested to know which of those devs complaining actually released a demo to try first.

given todays cheap and easy access to the internet, and that you can download a 5-10gb game in under an hour I can see why people think it's perfectly fine to hit a torrent site and download the latest release for free. but at what cost?

the gaming industry claims they are losing billions to piracy. others argue that pirated games can convert to revenue. other's argue that once a pirate always a pirate.

but what are your thoughts?

for me, I came to thinking about this today when i purchased Test Drive Unlimited 2 from Steam for £15 after deciding enough is enough with the dodgy copy i got because at the time there was no demo but even though i had the full game in dodgy form, it was still not the "full" game in it's online form. I wanted more, and i think devs are catching on to offering more for paying your way now, which is great!

in my recollection over the last 5 years i've illegally downloaded and then subsequentaly purchased 8/10 games/software. not because i'm a cheapskate, but because i'm not very wealthy and i like my games to have a good value to playtime ratio. my worst ever purchase was Portal 1. back when that came out i bought it on XBL and completed it in a time that equates to more expensive than going to the cinema!

recently though (and kudos where kudos is due) i bought Terraria on steam with only a video and a couple of short Let's play's for a basis on my purchase (it was out less than a day, so not much to go by). it was great! but the replay value is about as good as Portal, but for the price it was less of a painful purchase.

with the exception of Terraria, Something i've not done for a long..... long time is bought a game on impulse with nothing but a magazine review and no demo, no pirate copy either. Dungeon Keeper was my previous impulse buy! man it was awesome but would i have bought it sooner if i'd have played a demo? hell yeah!

you could argue i'm one of those pirate>conversions but in my mind, i'm merely a try before i buy customer. I like to see it, touch it, feel it, and generally get a feeling for if i'll like it. without a demo, there is none of that.


so, my questions to you all, are not in the aim of validating piracy, but in the interest of statistics.

in the last 5 years, how many games that you've pirated did you then go on to buy?

did you pirate it because there was no demo available?

do you find that pirated games offer little "value" to you? as in, if it's not what you're looking for, do you find yourself discarding it to the recycle bin more easily than a game you've forked out for?

and finally the most contraversial question of all... in the last 10 years, of all the pirated games you didn't buy in the end, do you still play them now?

i'd like people to be honest, but i dont want others criticising. it's in the interest of research

I don't really pirate many games because I mostly buy games for xbox, so I can't answer that part of you questions. But I do agree with you that more developers should release demos, because I also like to try a games before buying it. But since not many do, I will just watch some videos on youtube.

I completely agree that people should be able to try a game before buying it - meaning a demo should be out. I'm not going to lie and say I haven't pirated games in the past - but for one wanting to get into gaming development, I feel like I should honor my choice of career and actually spend money on the games they develop. Problem is - I buy less games when I don't get to try them first. So they are sort of loosing money that way too. I only buy games if I more or less "know" they'll be good (only rarely on impulse - but then too I do know a thing or two about my buy).

Yes, piracy IS bad. They are loosing money over it. But I do agree that there should be far more demos of games that are being released.

Whenever I buy a product, I always do a fair bit of research and read reviews before I actually purchase. That way I know I'll get my money's worth for it. So yeah, I'll pirate things to save money, and to make sure I like the product. Never actually done that to a full game though, I'll stick to what demos I can find.

Im a music and film pirate. Mainly because films in the cinema are too over priced, music because its basically given away anyway, its easy to find websites with free downloads for music and films, I have never downloaded games, mainly because i like to have the box it comes in, also its easier to reinstall ect. Places such as steam only seem to release demo's now for small indie games, which in my terms are mostly rubbish. they need to push people into demo's more by putting more out there. We need more

I have never pirated any games. But i have also not purchased alot of games because i wasn't sure if i would like them. In the past i bought alot of games which i had never tried a demo of and found that they never lived upto there price tag. As a result i now don't buy games unless i know i will like them or if they are dead cheap.

When it comes to piracy in general, developers often forget one thing. If people couldn't pirate a game, there would be less people playing there games. They wouldn't magically get 1 million more sales because 1 million pirates could no longer pirate it.

In any case the easiest way to combat piracy is to add online incentives, so that people will have to buy the game if they want access to the extra online stuff.

I'm a firm believer that the corporate side of most games developers is to blame for the lack of demo releases. Over recent years, the only demos I've ever seen have been released -after- the game, as a sort of teaser to those who didn't buy the full thing in the first wave of sales. CoD games and HALO being big ones. The developers knew before the game was released that they would have alot of sales without the demo, perhaps even feared that a demo would lead to deteriorating sales! Over recent years there's been a substantial drop in the ratio of Quality Vs. Graphics in which most game developers think that the most important thing first is to have things -look- good, so the simpler minds of the market will rush to buy their product on impulse. Another big thing I hate now is the cash cows. You know the titles, I don't even need to name them. The one's that are guaranteed to have another sequel each year which gets alot of hype then turns out to have about as much depth to it as a 50 pence (82 cents to you wierdos across the pond) indie title.

On piracy... Yes, once upon a time I was a consumer. But after my second PS2 broke down due to some sort of failure brought about by the pirate disk reader I gave up on pirating games for the reason above. There simply aren't as many games I'm interested in buying any more and most purchases I make now are made with old trade in's at my local game store. The only thing I -do- still pirate is the occasional movie or song track like everyone else or very old games that you simply can't buy anymore. I'm -still- trying to find a reliable source for the original Legacy of Kain game but you just can't find one now, its been cast into the world of myths.

Now on the affects of piracy... I think the industries loss is exacerbated a bit. Perhaps just in an attempt to make people aware that the companies that make the game don't recieve a penny off these pirated games. I never once thought about it when I was younger, standing at the open market and drooling over a sign detailing "10 Games = £5". I don't think I would now either what with my wallet starting to house spiders. But its just the fear of losing worth a great deal more (my XBOX for instance) that now stops me from indulging in these bargains, as I won't be able to replace that with the little money I have.
IF the developers would start to ween out little demos of the game before its release I think people would be a bit more inclined in avoiding piracy as they would be more confident in their purchase. Not everyone can tell how a game will be from just a few paragraphs of text and a short video stylized as one of those ambiguous trailers you see at the cinema. Heck, even bringing down the price a little of RRP would work wonders I bet, its been a few years now and still the cost hasn't shifted despite the fact the market has grown considerably. Anyway I'm losing my trail of thought here... Think this is where I'll pull out. /endwalloftext

that was a nice read!

and your comment about demos before release, so true! i remember playing the Lemmings 2 the Tribes and the first Worms demo's to death while waiting in anticipation for the full release and saving up my pocket money to rush out and buy them.

i think you're right, corporations probably see little value in releasing a demo pre release. perhaps this is something that us gamers should petition for to encourage them

i never buy, always download. in my opinion, the counter-piracy arguements aren't good enough. for example, in the music industry, the ones who loose huge amounts of money are the record companies, not the artists. the artists get their main income out of them being famous and holding live shows. an artists doesn't get more than 5-10/100 of the price of a CD if you buy it in the store and that's a fact. the ones who really benefit of us buying music are the managers, CD stores and the record companies. now, if i'd own a record company, piracy would be a deadly enemy for my business. ofcourse would i want to label it as "stealing" or "a crime".

in my opinion, the whole industry has come to a point where new technology enables ways for us, the consumers, to get out music trough pirating making the old concept of "buy CD's" out of date. it has happened before with VCR, cassettes and records. the history has a way of repeating itself.

my liberal view of the piracy issue might also be strongly influenced by the record companies way of marketing and selling mainstream songs. read up about justin bieber in particular (protip: he never wrote a single song himself). that is the future of music if the record companies get to decide.

I pirated minecraft because there was not a demo. I ended up buying it a week later cause i liked it so much.

I have never pirated a game (Well Ive got a few dodgy ps2 games somewhere) but I always pirate flims and music and programs even if theres a trail but for the guy above me why would you pirate minecraft? its very cheap to start of with and if you have to pirate it thats just wrong.

I have never pirated a single song/movie or game.

However, I do buy all of my music second hand from shops/junk stores and new tracks from the dj shop. Reasonable pricing and what not.

Movies, If I buy it on DVD it is always been second hand or discounted a fair bit.

And Games. I have a small library of games. In the past 5 or so years I have had my Xbox, I have bought no more then 20 xbox games.

I lied about PC games, I did use a private server for world of warcraft, but it wasn't the same. I am generally very careful about what I buy.

I have a list of reviewers who share similar tastes to mine and I buy all of my PC games off steam, bargain stores and alike.

But there do need to be more demos. I would have missed out on borderlands and Red faction if they wern't for sale on steam.

i think it's slightly different for music and films. trailers and listening to the songs on the radio and whatnot gives you the full experience, for free. Although with movies you've got to look at the trailers and reviews more closely.

I think games are a much harder area to judge when making a purchase. of all the things we can purchase in our lives, very few items on the list offer you very little in terms of "touchy feely" type of trying. you buy a car, you test drive it or see it in the flesh, a house you walk around it... a pet you meet it. Lower value items too

If you think about the likes of argos etc where the package comes in a box you can't open in store before you buy, but you do get some chance of a refund if it's not to your liking.

buying media doesn't offer that safety net. ok if you get a console game you maybe might be able to take it back if you hate it, but a pc game not a chance.

as for pirating minecraft comment, i did too! because back when i looked at it, pirated it, and then subsequently purchased it the only free trial was freebuild, but it was the Survival i was interesting in seeing and could not. granted the price is cheap, but it's still a risk albeit smaller.

Even then i get it wrong though... sometimes i trust a company, moreso idies than the big corporates. I played the demo of Amnesia to it's end... then purchased with nothing but a smile.... i think i've only played that for 2 hours total so far... it scared the bojingles outta me and i have to turn on the light and save and quit. granted i could play it in the day, with volume turned down but what's the point? it's meant to be scary lol.

edit: ah i forgot to add. interesting Mulan that you bought up the preowned issue. most of my 360 games are preowned. but the devs are catching on now and calling preowned titles lost revenue! how the hell do they work that out? they got the dosh when the first person bought it! so now devs are adding DLC that you as a second owner need to pay more for that would otherwise get included for free as a first purchase.

I can't help thinking greed is at work here

i pirated minecraft because it looked interesting and I wanted to try it out before i spent money on it. I liked it so I bought it. I think that notch should have like a 10-30 min demo for the game.

to the above there is a demo now 90 mins of tender joy and evil chickens

90 min is pretty good for a demo

Minecraft's demo is Minecraft Classic.

edit: ah i forgot to add. interesting Mulan that you bought up the preowned issue. most of my 360 games are preowned. but the devs are catching on now and calling preowned titles lost revenue! how the hell do they work that out? they got the dosh when the first person bought it! so now devs are adding DLC that you as a second owner need to pay more for that would otherwise get included for free as a first purchase.

I can't help thinking greed is at work here

diablothe2nd

They believe its lost revenue because people aren't buying new packages of old titles as much thanks to stores offering the trade in option. It isn't lost revenue at all, it's as you say they're just getting greedy. I'm honestly surprised that the console companies haven't already adopted what Sony was planning to do with the PS3 at one point and making it so their games will only work on one console, making trade ins impossible.

EDIT WALL OF CHINA INCOMING- LONG NON-READABLE RANT
EDIT


In the pricing of a normal £40 xbox game I think it goes like this.
£15 is spilt between the publisher and the developer.
£7.5 to the platform it is on. Xbox/PS3 royalty fees.
£2.5 goes towards production and shipping costs.
£10 goes towards the retailer roughly.
£5 goes towards un-sold games/returns.

The retailer value does value greatly though. Conflicting sources of between £10 a game to £2.50. That is shared between the people who publish the game and shop-keepers.

So this £10 fee to unlock a second hand game is just a way that publishers can take a profit from more games, yet ignore the costs of retailing, shipping and production costs. £10 is pretty much what they make from a game anyway. Considering most games when sold second hand are when the game isn't as popular.

By this time the fee for shipping/production is still present. The Publishers must still make a taking.
The Shops must make a taking still.
But the Unsold stock fee/royalties?


Games follow this price range. ~£40, £35, £30, £25, £20, £15 ,£10, £7.50 to £5 being the bare minimum per game.

We can assume that the unsold stock fee, would be removed from the rrp after a while, so that the unsold stock, becomes sold. Makes no sense to keep it there. But that won't account for anything more then a £5 drop out of a £40 game to £35.

The publisher after a while, may take a decreased profit from the game. So that may lead to drops of an extra £5. So that would give the £30 games you would see for sale.

It would be worth noting that when large games are released, price drops of up to £10 are made. Presumably these are taken out of the retailers profit altogether in order to remain competitive. Sometimes even at a loss.

So what produces a £25 game? Often seen after a year or so after being released. Or two weeks of a really shitty game.
We are left with:
Royalties: £7.5
Shipping/Production:£2.5
Publisher/dev fees?=£10
Retailer fees?=£10

The retailer is unlikely to drop to less then/= to £5 based on some offers I have seen in game and likewise stores.(1) {I do know large stores make losses or even just pennies on games sometimes.}. We can assume that shipping and production remains constant, but that the retailers would drop up to £4 (£2.50 in my model since it is unlikely for the developer to take the same cut at the same time).

Sadly, Microsoft does not like to talk about the royalty fees publicly. But it seems to be done on a per disc basis, based on the rage game having to be compressed to two discs. Since Microsoft and the PS3 make no money from selling the console, a loss even, they have to make money through royalties. Which means that the royalties are unlikely to decrease, but make be a proportion of the sales value.

So A £25 game consists of.
£5 royalties.
£2.50 Production
£10 Dev fees
£7.50 retailer fees

£20 game then? heh.
£4 royalties
£2.50 production
£6.50 to developers of the game.
£7 retailer fees.

£15 game?
£3.50 royalties
£2.50 production
£4 to developers
£5 to retailers.

£10 game?
£2.50 royalties.
£2.50 production costs
£2.50 to developers
£2.50 to retailers.

£7.50 game.
£1.00 in royalties.
£2.50 to production costs.
£2 to devs
£2 to retailers.

£5 game.
£2.50 in productions costs.
£1.50 to developers
£1 to retailers.


These numbers have limited factual basis bar then what I could make out from the clouded facts on the Internet.

I did not know for example, that exclusive games often have royalties removed from the cost. Which is a huge bonus for developers.

Also, with todays budgets, most games have to sell well over 500000 copies to turn a small profit or to even break even.

But with digital downloads on the pc in comparison, you can easily see that they have no royalties. No/limited production costs. Which splits the £30 price tag for a game like civilisations 5 of £30 between just retailer and developer.

The retailer in this case, could easily take up to £20 per copy, with steam making £10. This shows how steam can easily surpass the normal street stores.


When it comes to Xbox games (ps3/nintendo) they have to do more then to just break even. They have to provide a sustainable profit. They see that every seconds hand game is a lost sale. Even at low prices of £1 a game, it is still a loss. If they can provide a £10 buy in that provides content then they stand to gain so much more. Piracy is an issue which different game makers and publishers think about with vast changing opinions. Ubisoft believe piracy is killing its games and so has waged a invasive war which has backfired. Other companies are lenient. However none are complacent and it has worked fine like Stardock.

Nintendo on the other hand saw vast amount of games being pirated and sold. Which can be seen as a direct attack on the publishers.

The thing we all have to remember is that people have worked very hard on these games to produce them, and they are only trying to make a living. Some companies like Activision are very greedy with their games. Others like stardock and steam, are not.

Very few companies live long producing purely Griefers games and hoping to cash in on a fad. Movie orientated games and alike have increased in quality, and decreased in quantity.

You can always rent games from your local library or rental shop. Far cheaper then buying it, you get to enjoy the game and you pay for whatever enjoyment you got. Some of that money, makes it way back to the developers. Some.


(1)When a game isn't as popular any more, the price decreases. Where does that decrease come from?
Since a fair few shops can give you up to a £10 discount on two games of £20 then they must stand to make more money from that arrangement. Clearing stock? They wouldn't give it away with no profit for them. So we must assume that the profit on a £20 out of date game is greater then £5.


At the end of it, I found this which highlights the costs of a game.

http://www.forbes.com/2006/12/19/ps3-xbox360-costs-tech-cx_rr_game06_1219expensivegames_slide_2.html?boxes=custom&thisSpeed=20000

Ive never downloaded anything. Its immoral, Sorta like pissing in your nans slippers.

@Aconan's Long Post: Most developers get a fixed fee that covers there costs but doesn't allow them to continue on without another project(Which is why developers can easily die if they can't get a new deal with a publisher for another game). They generally either don't get royalties or they get small royalties and/or they don't own the IP.

Its only really the publisher that makes money from game sales. Developers get the short end of the stick.