My Suggestion on How to Stop a Large amount of Piracy.

[RTX 5080 FE(Mr Happy)]

Let's face it, There are pirates everywhere and for everything. From video games, to knock off Purses and I phones to bootleg movies.


But on the PC platform, the power to reduce a large amount of piracy lays 100% solely in the hands of the devs.


How so? 2 words. FREE DEMOS And no, dont give me that you can refund a game in 2 hours on steam, because steam gets all pissy with you and sends an auto threat of"You refunded alot of games recently We are not a demo service, if we think you are abusing the system, you will lose the right to buy games " type message(I had it once, dont recall the exact words)


Every game on steam that has a demo, I have bought. However, I will not admit or deny having tried games that I was curious about. The world economy sucks. Unless you are rich, $60 may not be alot, but it sucks to spend it on a trash game you decide wasnt worth it.


A demo allows you to try it, play it, and if you like it, you are gonna end up buying it. If you dont like it, you wont. Sure it wont stop 100% of the issue, but I know of atleast 5 or 6 games I personally would never have bought(or otherwise tried) if not for a demo.

There is also a good dozen games I found my own "free trial" that I instantly bought after trying.


Anyway, that is just my late night energy drink fueled rant.


Be safe all.

Discuss

(Please note I do not support piracy and do no contact me about it. Support the developers, buy games. Developers support the gamers, release demos)

[Satoru]

No one pirates games because 'there arent any demos'. thats just their 'excuse de jour' for piracy.

If 'demos prevented piracy' then by that literal definition shareware would have zero piracy. After all it is, by definition, a demo by design. You'll excuse me if in the 80s/90s somehow you think piracy wasn't a thing and only magically appeared recently

[Muppet among Puppets]

When all you have are the pictures on the back of a box, a demo can really help.
But it is not all what you have.

[Arokhantos]

It's a service issue, you wanna get rid of piracy then fix the service issue, there many service issues i could describe that can drive piracy through the roof, i don't even have to mention them im pretty sure the majority here in this topic knows what i mean, especially Valve knows this best cos they have a great service.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Franky:

It's a service issue, you wanna get rid of piracy then fix the service issue, there many service issues i could describe that can drive piracy through the roof, i don't even have to mention them im pretty sure the majority here in this topic knows what i mean, especially Valve knows this best cos they have a great service.

Steam was a usefull drm. With benefits for the user.
Not this "allowed to install the game 3 times" or other nonsense.
And you could get games with patience for a good price.

The bad games you can refund.

The risk of making a purchase mistake are lower. Not even considering all the informations around that make it slim.

[Brian9824]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Franky:

It's a service issue, you wanna get rid of piracy then fix the service issue, there many service issues i could describe that can drive piracy through the roof, i don't even have to mention them im pretty sure the majority here in this topic knows what i mean, especially Valve knows this best cos they have a great service.

No again, piracy exists even if there are no service issues. It's a I want stuff for free and don't want to pay issue.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von brian9824:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Franky:

It's a service issue, you wanna get rid of piracy then fix the service issue, there many service issues i could describe that can drive piracy through the roof, i don't even have to mention them im pretty sure the majority here in this topic knows what i mean, especially Valve knows this best cos they have a great service.

No again, piracy exists even if there are no service issues. It's a I want stuff for free and don't want to pay issue.

That would only be an argument for someone who still wants to sell "activation limits" and not give something usefull to the user.

[Brian9824]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Muppet among Puppets:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von brian9824:

No again, piracy exists even if there are no service issues. It's a I want stuff for free and don't want to pay issue.

That would only be an argument for someone who still wants to sell "activation limits" and not give something usefull to the user.

Nope, again disproven. Just look at Cyberpunk 2077, DRM free version available, no activation limits, no service issue, yet its one of the most pirated games of all time.

Pirates just tell people they only pirate games for nobel reasons to try to justify it, doesn't mean they actually do it.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von brian9824:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Muppet among Puppets:

That would only be an argument for someone who still wants to sell "activation limits" and not give something usefull to the user.

Nope, again disproven. Just look at Cyberpunk 2077, DRM free version available, no activation limits, no service issue, yet its one of the most pirated games of all time.

Pirates just tell people they only pirate games for nobel reasons to try to justify it, doesn't mean they actually do it.

But the people who bought the games for those reasons, or for the non existence of bad others, do.
And well, cyper 77 had other issues.

[Brian9824]

People pirate because they want it free, simple as that. The same reason people steal cable or internet instead of paying, or steal anything really.

it's not a social statement, or anything. It's just they feel the price is too high so they get it for nothing.

It's been proven repeatedly by history, and has existed since the beginning of time.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von brian9824:

People pirate because they want it free, simple as that. The same reason people steal cable or internet instead of paying, or steal anything really.

it's not a social statement, or anything. It's just they feel the price is too high so they get it for nothing.

It's been proven repeatedly by history, and has existed since the beginning of time.

Free is obviously not the reason one can compensate with offerings that gather people who do not look for something free. Those people are an audience.

[nullable]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Toothless Raider:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Tito Shivan:

You're assuming whoever goes to pirate a gamedoes it because they want to try it and not to play it for free.

True, there will always be a certain amount of people no matter what, but I feel my suggestion is one in the right direction.

I mean in that way we can imagine whatever we want. IE you can imagine demos could curb anywhere from 1%-99% of piracy.

Wanting demos is fine. Imagining demos prevent piracy might be pretty questionable. It might sound good to you, but I'm not sure this is some detail that the industry has been missing for years... if demos had a dramatic impact on piracy I imagine they'd be very common.

I think the NPCs in your imagination might not behave as much like hundreds of millions of people as you believe.

[Brian9824]

My suggestion to stop piracy is to make anyone caught playing a pirated game be locked up and force them to beat Superman 64 before they are allowed to leave.

[Mad Scientist]

Literally a suggestions/ideas section and somehow you miss that...

Free Demos I highly doubt will magically lower piracy, people these days can see Gameplay videos, Livestreams, see review sites, steam screenshots, etc. Laziness ie failure to research is a large issue overall.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Toothless Raider:

Support the developers, buy games. Developers support the gamers, release demos)

Gamers support the Developers, Developers make a product that should be catered to gamers and a large enough of them depending on the type of game they want to make, they largely do not support the gamers, they make the product.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Toothless Raider:

But on the PC platform, the power to reduce a large amount of piracy lays 100% solely in the hands of the devs.

I highly doubt that. Piracy is a thing, there's likely still groups of pirates and then the people who are pirates, that is unlikely to change regardless of demos, drm/no drm, gog version etc. Pirates do so to not pay for the game, it's likely as simple as that for a near majority of them.

Demos are more realistic for stronger games to get a good idea if your PC can handle it or not, everything else (even that) can largely be researched before you buy.

[RTX 5080 FE(Mr Happy)]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Joe Cool:

Best way to cut down on piracy = eliminate DRM.

It's really as simple as that.

Legit users who pay for their games get saddled with DRM that causes all sorts of problems from not allowing them access offline (kind of important) to having bugs and glitches due to the DRM software itself.

Meanwhile those who sail the high seas to acquire their copies face no problems whatsoever. They can play offline, don't suffer from glitches/bugs getting it to work, and often get better performance (due to the bloat of the DRM not being present)

Personally I never had one issue with DRM in 20 + years of gaming. I am 43, and DRM never bothered me.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von brian9824:

Demo's won't do anything to stop piracy, people don't go thru the effort to pirate a game just to "try it"

I beg to differ. I deny and confirm nothing, But what you say people dont do, I am guilty of doing several times over the years.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Walach:

Wasn't there a "totally not biased or something" study of some kind where it showed that; less people paid for a game If they could see that it was a bad game in a demo?

Thus they wouldn't buy it but, if they didn't know that before hand then they might not bother with a refund? :P

EDIT: And that is a reason why they stopped making demons for a game.

I'd love to see that study, but that does make alot of sense, atleast from a pcoket book standpoint

[Brian9824]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Toothless Raider:

I beg to differ. I deny and confirm nothing, But what you say people dont do, I am guilty of doing several times over the years.

That's fine, you don't speak for everyone, and the fact that games with demo's are pirated just as much as games without demo's proves you wrong.