Do you think the industry as a whole has turned entirely anti-consumer/anti gamer?

[[deleted]]

It seems that no matter where you go, you see overused buzz words such as "entitlement" and "over expectations" used by people who do not understand the definition of the word whenever a game does poorly. IGN pretty much coined the term "gamer entitlement" with thier ugly love letter to EA a few years back, which isn't surprising since IGN is known to suck up to publishers such as EA for money hats. Other video game "journalist" follow this method as well, which is expected since a lot of journalist are in the back pocket of major publishers these days. Hell, there is a reward show for journalist who does the most brown nosing. If that isn't the funniest thing i have ever seen, then a shoe i will wear.

But whats with the corporate shilling? Any time a game is released with gamebreaking bugs, or just doesn't work, and people complain about it, you have all these shills running in and brown nosing for the company like they beleive the company would embrace them in some disgusting, revolting, butt hug. Yes, yes, fanboys will always be misguided and over zealous with thier shilling, but what's the excuse for those who blindly defend any game developer? It seems today everything is "the gamers' fault" and all developers are innocent angels, even if the complaints are acceptable and agreed upon.

In fact, here is a drinking game for you guys. Find any forum for any game, look up general discussion section, do a search, and drink every time you see shills mindlessly use the buzzwords "entitlement", "whiners", "over-expectations", and "hater". You will literally die of alcohol poisonising in less than a hour. On second thought, don't do it. I don't want any of you guys to get hurt.

Do you agree? If so, what really caused this burst in "the gamer is always wrong, so shut up and buy out stuff you nave" mindset?

[rojimboo]

引用自 Boink：

引用自 rojimboo：

That 20% loss is a straight up loss due to piracy, it's no longer piracy rates we are discussing. Increasing your sales 20% is massive. "In reality" - where you get that buzzterm and what does it mean? Boink's personal fudge factor of 15%? Lol

Analysis of HADOPI showed an increase of 25% in digital sales, you still haven't been able to spin that.

You didn't read the paper, which is obvious.

The conclusion was that the impact was almost zero - the 20% figure is assuming the worst possible outcomes from the modelling, not what happens in reality.

Martikainen paper:

Martikainen (2011) is one of the two academic papers we are aware of that find no
evidence of harm from file sharing. Martikainen uses BitTorrent download data, collected
from March to May 2009 and finds no evidence that increased levels of BitTorrent sharing
reduce DVD sales. However, it is also important to note that this paper is only able to
analyze DVD sales, not digital sales; and other work in the literature (e.g., Danaher et al.
2010) finds that during a similar time frame, digital sales and digital piracy were strongly
related, while there was no statistical relationship between digital piracy and physical sales.

https://techpolicyinstitute.org/files/smith_danaher_telang_ipe%20chapter.pdf

[Boink]

引用自 rojimboo：

https://techpolicyinstitute.org/files/smith_danaher_telang_ipe%20chapter.pdf

Yes, you keep quoting the same author as if he is G_D. He's not. On page 26 he makes a social value argument against piracy that I've already shown is both intellectually dishonest and logically insane. ("If hypothetically everyone pirated a film, would the film be made" could literally be re-written as "OMG WHAT IF WE WERE ALL COMMUNISTS").

He cites a working paper (2011) before it had been released (2014), which just is naughty.

Also, in an attempt to make a case that there are "only three" papers that suggest that piracy doesn't effect sales he pads his list of those that support it. Of 15 papers, eight (8) are based on limited surveys (university students or consumer surveys - including an amazing paper where a survey of university students concluded that 30% of all music was pirated) and two (2) are his own papers. Of course, three (3) versus seven (7) doesn't look as impressive on the page.



One. Trick. Pony.

引用自 rojimboo：

Boink boy here is the one derailing the thread claiming positive effects of piracy (which he still hasn't shown).

No, I've not made that position at all (do I threaten to report you now?): what I've clearly shown is that outside of some fairly rabid industry friendly academics, piracy isn't a reason for games companies to hate their user base.

引用自 rojimboo：

In fact it was a direct response to "Why the industry has turned anti-consumerist and treats gamers like trash", because most of us are trash and pirates.

Self-hatred is not a pretty thing.

No, most gamers aren't pirates (games industry is $93billion world wide).

No, most gamers aren't trash (small vocal groups using #shoutattheworld twitter do not make the majority).



In fact, attitudes such as yours show clearly that you're either being paid or hate yourself and do this for some kind of masochistic self-help. Ugly.

[rojimboo]

引用自 Boink：

引用自 rojimboo：

https://techpolicyinstitute.org/files/smith_danaher_telang_ipe%20chapter.pdf

Yes, you keep quoting the same author as if he is G_D. He's not. On page 26 he makes a social value argument against piracy that I've already shown is both intellectually dishonest and logically insane. ("If hypothetically everyone pirated a film, would the film be made").


He cites a working paper (2011) before it had been released (2014), which just is naughty.

Also, in an attempt to make a case that there are "only three" papers that suggest that piracy doesn't effect sales he pads his list of those that support it. Of 15 papers, eight (8) are based on limited surveys (university students or consumer surveys - including an amazing paper where a survey of university students concluded that 30% of all music was pirated) and two (2) are his own papers.


One. Trick. Pony.

That book chapter happens to be very informative as it is to my knowledge the only time someone has collected all papers relating to the subject matter and analysed the results.

Did the Martikainen paper results change significantly / at all? Nope. Are those criticisms still valid? Yes.

Also, I think you will find that he first restricted the papers to at least peer reviewed, and the tally was 3 papers of no harm due to piracy vs 15 that found harm, to first or second tier published peer reviewed papers, at which point the tally was a whopping 1 paper of no harm to 11 of harm. And there were several issues and inconsistencies with that 1 dated paper to boot.

The higher quality the paper, the more significant the result.

The science just isn't on your side. Especially the high quality science.

Go back to browsing propaganda leaflets from the Pirate Party, maybe they have some instructions for you how to conduct the debate further. Maybe some (toilet) papers, lol.

[76561198117027862]

引用自 rojimboo：

引用自 Tux：

this thread really should be locked. Although piracy is an interesting conversation its so far removed from the orginal topic its completely unreconizable at this point

I've explained my reasoning.

In fact it was a direct response to "Why the industry has turned anti-consumerist and treats gamers like trash", because most of us are trash and pirates.

Boink boy here is the one derailing the thread claiming positive effects of piracy (which he still hasn't shown).

Please do not throw baseless and preposterous accusations.

I can't speak for you, but none of us here pirate games. And no one is going to even try to argue in favour of piracy because it is against the rules.

[Boink]

引用自 rojimboo：

Also, I think you will find that he first restricted the papers to at least peer reviewed, and the tally was 3 papers of no harm due to piracy vs 15 that found harm, to first or second tier published peer reviewed papers, at which point the tally was a whopping 1 paper of no harm to 11 of harm. And there were several issues and inconsistencies with that 1 dated paper to boot.

The higher quality the paper, the more significant the result.

The science just isn't on your side. Especially the high quality science.

When your definition of "quality science" is eight (8) papers based on university student surveys, then you know your degree is worthless.

[rojimboo]

引用自 Boink：

引用自 rojimboo：

Also, I think you will find that he first restricted the papers to at least peer reviewed, and the tally was 3 papers of no harm due to piracy vs 15 that found harm, to first or second tier published peer reviewed papers, at which point the tally was a whopping 1 paper of no harm to 11 of harm. And there were several issues and inconsistencies with that 1 dated paper to boot.

The higher quality the paper, the more significant the result.

The science just isn't on your side. Especially the high quality science.

When your definition of "quality science" is eight (8) papers based on university student surveys, then you know your degree is worthless.

Let's go through the list, shall we?

Hui and Png (2003, Contrib. to Economic Analysis & Policy) 1994‐98 IFPI worldwide CD sales data and physical piracy rates “[D]emand for music CDs decreased with piracy, suggesting that ‘theft’ outweighed the ‘positive’ effects of piracy.”

University student survey? Nope.

Peitz and Waelbroeck (2004, Rev. of Econ. Res. on Copyright) 1998‐2002 worldwide CD sales, IPSOS survey data for piracy downloads Internet piracy may have been responsible for a 20% decrease in music sales between 1998‐2002.

Nope.

Bounie et al. (2006, Rev. of Econ. Res. on Copyright) 2005 survey of movie piracy and purchases from French universities “[Piracy]has a strong [negative] impact on video [VHS and DVD] purchases and rentals” but statistically no impact on box office revenue.

Yep.

Michel (2006, Topics in Economic Analysis and Policy) 1995‐2003 U.S. BLS micro Consumer Expenditure Survey data “The relationship between computer ownership and music purchases weakened” due to piracy, potentially reducing CD sales by 13 percent.

Nope.

Rob and Waldfogel (2006, Journal of Law and Economics) 2003 survey of U.S. college students piracy and purchase behavior “[E]ach album download reduces purchases by 0.2 in our sample, although possibly by much more.”

Yep.

Zentner (2006, Journal of Law and Economics) 2001 survey of European music purchase and piracy behavior “[Piracy] may explain a 30 percent reduction in the probability of buying music.”

Nope.

Bhattacharjee et al. (2007, Management Science) 1995‐2002 Billboard 100 chart rankings, WinMX file sharing post 2000 P2P file sharing technologies have resulted in “significantly reduced chart survival except for those albums that debut high on the charts.”

Nope.

Hennig‐Thurau, Henning, Sattler (2007, Marketing Science) 2006 survey of German movie purchase and piracy intentions Piracy causes “substantial cannibalization of theater visits, DVD rentals [and] purchases responsible for annual revenue losses of $300 million in Germany.”

Nope.

Rob and Waldfogel (2007, Journal of Industrial Economics) 2005 survey of U. Penn. students’ movie purchase and piracy behavior “Unpaid first [piracy] consumption reducespaid consumption by about 1 unit.”

Yep.

Liebowitz (2008, Management Science) 1998‐2003 Census data on broadband Internet use and music purchases “[F]ile sharing appears to have caused the entire decline in record sales [observed from 1998‐2003].”

Nope.

Danaher et al. (2010, Marketing Science) 2007‐2008 BitTorrent downloads of television torrents The removal of NBC content from iTunes resulted in an 11.4% increase in demand for NBC piracy relative to ABC, CBS, and FOX piracy.

Nope.

DeVany and Walls (2007, Review of Industrial Organization) Box office revenue and the supply of pirated content for an unnamed movie “[Piracy] of a major studio movie accelerated its boxoffice decline and caused the picture to lose about $40 million in revenue.”

Nope.

Waldfogel (2010, Information Economics and Policy) 2009‐2010 survey of Wharton students’ music piracy and purchases “[A]n additional song stolen reduces paid consumption by between a third and a sixth of a song.”

Yep.

Bai and Waldfogel (2012, Information Economics and Policy) 2008‐2009 survey of Chinese university students’ movie behavior “[T]hree quarters of [Chinese students’] movie consumption is unpaid and … each instance of [piracy] displaces 0.14 paid consumption instances.”

Yep.

Danaher et al. (2013, J. of Industrial Economics) 2008‐2011 iTunes music sales in France and other European countries The HADOPI anti‐piracy law “caused iTunes

Nope.

I count 5 out of 15 papers that are based on student surveys. Whatever your objections to that might be (you still haven't specified what your issues are with each individual paper).

So what did we establish? If we limit it to quality peer reviewed publications (1st and 2nd tier), the tally becomes 1 vs 11, with 3 of those student surveys falling off. Quite a disconnect in the academic world regarding whether piracy is on the whole harmful to sales.

[supertrooper225]

Look people. DRM decreases theft. Piracy is wrong and immoral regardless of peoples excuses or intentions of buying the game later. I don't believe that for a second. If you want a product you pay for it. That is it end of story. No academics or papers or peer reviews needed. There is no debate necessary on the matter and it has gone on long enough. Can we please veer closer to the topic at hand?

[rojimboo]

引用自 supertrooper225：

Look people. DRM decreases theft. Piracy is wrong and immoral regardless of peoples excuses or intentions of buying the game later. I don't believe that for a second. If you want a product you pay for it. That is it end of story. No academics or papers or peer reviews needed. There is no debate necessary on the matter and it has gone on long enough.

+1

It really is that simple.

But some people don't even believe the peer reviewed science, relying instead on anectodal evidence of personal of experience (look my buddy does this therefore it is the way of the world and I win the internet with that argument).

To be honest them lot seem to be arguing the extent to which piracy is harmful, not that it is (at least I hope so - if they are arguing that it's a net benefit they are deluded and part of the entitled (like that word) Pirate Party).

Evidence show there are plenty of lost sales, as common sense would dictate what with these crazy piracy rates that DRM free developers themselves have revealed.

There is the other side of the coin. No pun intended. Some people stand to profit considerably from piracy, and pirates themselves would love to keep pirating. It's good to question the motives of some of these 0-level accounts sometimes.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_10.html

The Business of Piracy

A major reason why the piracy debate is such a confusing minefield of misleading and sensationalist information is because piracy pays, and pays well. As the saying goes, in any legal dispute, the only people who win are the lawyers. Similarly, when piracy is rampant, both gamers and game companies stand to lose a great deal in the long run; the only people who are laughing all the way to the bank are the owners of piracy sites, and the companies that sell copy protection and DRM.

We've already examined copy protection and DRM in the section of the same name earlier in this article. Suffice it to say that as shown earlier, various developers and publishers have openly stated they don't like DRM, and there's every reason to believe them. I have no doubt they don't like paying hefty fees to Sony, Macrovision or Valve for example to implement SecuROM, SafeDisc or Steam DRM for their games. They consider it a necessity, especially against day-zero piracy, otherwise they quite simply could do without the added expense and negative publicity.


However while virtually no-one likes the protection companies, the other party which is making a massive profit on the basis of pirate activity is sadly getting only admiration and respect from most gamers. I'm speaking of course about the variety of piracy-related websites which have proliferated in the past few years, especially the sites which provide links to torrents, several of which have daily traffic propelling them way up into the top several thousand or hundred sites in the world. The Pirate Bay (TPB) is a particularly interesting example, because Swedish authorities raided their operation in 2006 and now have over 4,000 pages of documentation based on their ongoing investigation of the business. What's been discovered is that what is ostensibly meant to be a site about "freedom of information" is actually a full-blown business that's been estimated to earn up to $9 million each year from advertising alone, excluding donations. The owners of the site have since claimed that these accusations are false; that all the money goes towards server-related costs, and in fact TPB operates at a loss.

There are many reasons to doubt this claim, not the least of which is the fact that the owners have admitted to complex tax arrangements bordering on what appears to be either money laundering or at the very least a serious attempt to hide their income. More importantly however, The Pirate Bay doesn't host any pirated material, it has an extremely basic text layout with minimal content and virtually no images (aside from ads served by other parties), which means bandwidth costs and server requirements are actually considerably less than any other major sites. An enterprise class server can be purchased outright for a hundred thousand dollars for example, and obviously you don't need to buy new servers every year. Certainly, they seem to have enough money on hand to offer regular visitors the opportunity to win prizes such as trips to Dubai with $5,000 spending money despite supposedly operating at a loss.

Update: The Pirate Bay has now been found guilty of assisting the distribution of illegal content online by a Swedish court in April 2009 and have been sentenced to a year in jail and a $3.6m fine.

Update: As conclusive proof of the commercial profitability of The Pirate Bay, the founders of the site have sold it to a company called Global Gaming Factory X for $7.8 million in June 2009.

Update: As of November 2010 The Pirate Bay's original owners have again been found guilty after appeal, and now must pay an even larger fine.

But TPB is not alone in making generous profits from piracy. Virtually all piracy sites of reasonable size would be making substantial sums given they're absolutely saturated in ads and have large amounts of traffic. While most sites don't disclose anything about their income, a recent spat on the medium-sized ReleaseLog website resulted in a disgruntled staff member publicly revealing on the site that the owner makes $5,000 US a month from advertising alone, equating to a comfortable $60,000 a year, simply for linking to various torrent releases. This is at the same time as he was asking for donations and free hosting, not paying his staff anything at all, and also linking to images on other sites to minimize his bandwidth costs.

Update: The 26 year old founder of the members-only Oink music piracy site has been found by Police to have $300,000 in his personal Paypal accounts derived from member donations.

What's objectionable about this practice isn't so much the amount of money these people are making, but the fact that they're doing it without contributing a single cent to the people who are actually responsible for creating the content that is being pirated. These sites are the ultimate free riders, because their content is almost entirely made up of other peoples' hard work. It also reveals the fact that there are millions, maybe billions of dollars up for grabs in the lucrative world of piracy, so for obvious reasons piracy sites love to put on the front that piracy is all about freedom and altruism, that DRM and big companies are evil for opposing piracy, and that there are endless flimsy studies which purportedly show that piracy is actually beneficial, despite actual evidence and logic to the contrary. Plausible misinformation is the key to their survival, so they've become extremely adept at it. It's a very successful business model and there are millions of eager users who are more than happy to swallow any excuses given to them as long as it gives them access to lots of free stuff. It appears that the idealistic concept that P2P is supposedly all about sharing without profit is not one shared by those who actually profit from it: piracy sites.

[BenjiGonzo]

引用自 supertrooper225：

Look people. DRM decreases theft. Piracy is wrong and immoral regardless of peoples excuses or intentions of buying the game later. I don't believe that for a second. If you want a product you pay for it. That is it end of story. No academics or papers or peer reviews needed. There is no debate necessary on the matter and it has gone on long enough. Can we please veer closer to the topic at hand?

This entire argument is a joke, if it was a little more open minded between these people maybe it would've gone somewhere, but instead there's just some aggressive and angry internet users going back and forth on some random forum, and from what I've seen they have essentially been doing this for a day straight now.

It doesn't matter what the core of the argument is, if it's not open minded and polite, then it's just another argument.

[rojimboo]

引用自 Silverfox：

引用自 supertrooper225：

Look people. DRM decreases theft. Piracy is wrong and immoral regardless of peoples excuses or intentions of buying the game later. I don't believe that for a second. If you want a product you pay for it. That is it end of story. No academics or papers or peer reviews needed. There is no debate necessary on the matter and it has gone on long enough. Can we please veer closer to the topic at hand?

This entire argument is a joke, if it was a little more open minded between these people maybe it would've gone somewhere, but instead there's just some aggressive and angry internet users going back and forth on some random forum, and from what I've seen they have essentially been doing this for a day straight now.

It doesn't matter what the core of the argument is, if it's not open minded and polite, then it's just another argument.

Yeah, I don't know at which point a Steam forum discussion devolves into 'argument' territory, but my understanding is that if the dialogue is informative and without ad homs, it's still worthy discussing it. I would hope this thread has mostly been that - nobody is trolling or flaming that I can see and there has been plenty of material for anyone to make their own opinion on the matter, disregarding or including the academic research on the matter.

If you want ugly, try promoting Steam DRM or any DRM in the GOG discussion forums. Messy, messy, messy xd

[76561198117027862]

引用自 supertrooper225：

Look people. DRM decreases theft. Piracy is wrong and immoral regardless of peoples excuses or intentions of buying the game later. I don't believe that for a second. If you want a product you pay for it. That is it end of story. No academics or papers or peer reviews needed. There is no debate necessary on the matter and it has gone on long enough. Can we please veer closer to the topic at hand?

DRM at the same time punishes the paying customers while not doing much to hinder the actual pirates.

Punishing the innocent for the actions of the guilty is also wrong and immoral, but here we have one going on and on about how it is justified because companies are supposed to be greedy and most gamers are supposed to be thieves.

Not that any of it has anything to do with the topic at hand, but when all you have is a hammer you see everything as nails.

[TestosterPWN]

The radical man-hating brand of feminism is trying to forcefully rape the gaming industry with their crackpot ideology. Get used to buzzwords. Especially words like "privilege, entitlement, misogyny, toxic masculinity, etc".

[supertrooper225]

引用自 Agni：

引用自 supertrooper225：

Look people. DRM decreases theft. Piracy is wrong and immoral regardless of peoples excuses or intentions of buying the game later. I don't believe that for a second. If you want a product you pay for it. That is it end of story. No academics or papers or peer reviews needed. There is no debate necessary on the matter and it has gone on long enough. Can we please veer closer to the topic at hand?

DRM at the same time punishes the paying customers while not doing much to hinder the actual pirates.

Punishing the innocent for the actions of the guilty is also wrong and immoral, but here we have one going on and on about how it is justified because companies are supposed to be greedy and most gamers are supposed to be thieves.

Not that any of it has anything to do with the topic at hand, but when all you have is a hammer you see everything as nails.

It hardly punishes anyone. All you need is an internet connection which most people have. Bad apples ruin things for good people. That is the way of the world. Don't blame the people that develop the games you enjoy. They deserve your respect and definitely deserve to be paid for their work. Blame the people that made that step necessary (and it WAS truly necessary). If it wasn't for them it wouldn't have had to happen.

[76561198117027862]

引用自 supertrooper225：

引用自 Agni：

DRM at the same time punishes the paying customers while not doing much to hinder the actual pirates.

Punishing the innocent for the actions of the guilty is also wrong and immoral, but here we have one going on and on about how it is justified because companies are supposed to be greedy and most gamers are supposed to be thieves.

Not that any of it has anything to do with the topic at hand, but when all you have is a hammer you see everything as nails.

It hardly punishes anyone. All you need is an internet connection which most people have. Bad apples ruin things for good people. That is the way of the world. Don't blame the people that develop the games you enjoy. They deserve your respect and definitely deserve to be paid for their work. Blame the people that made that step necessary (and it WAS truly necessary). If it wasn't for them it wouldn't have had to happen.

Try to apply that logic to how the law works and you will see how ridiculous that analogy is.

You can support corporate greed all you want and yes it is nothing but greed, but please don't try to justify it.

[rojimboo]

引用自 Agni：

引用自 supertrooper225：

Look people. DRM decreases theft. Piracy is wrong and immoral regardless of peoples excuses or intentions of buying the game later. I don't believe that for a second. If you want a product you pay for it. That is it end of story. No academics or papers or peer reviews needed. There is no debate necessary on the matter and it has gone on long enough. Can we please veer closer to the topic at hand?

DRM at the same time punishes the paying customers while not doing much to hinder the actual pirates.

Yet, we are discussing this on the most succesful DRM platform in existence.

Also, while not doing much (define much)to hinder pirates, it is doing something, and seems to be the current balance point for unintrusiveness and eliminating casual sharing, second hand market and hindering zero-day piracy. Are you saying that the makers of these games are not...lol...entitled to protect their creations even a little bit?

Punishing the innocent for the actions of the guilty is also wrong and immoral, but here we have one going on and on about how it is justified because companies are supposed to be greedy and most gamers are supposed to be thieves.

Necessary evil. Tell people to stop pirating. Though these days DRM acts also as market control and datamining tool, apart from its technical functions added to that, so I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon.

Most business practices in the modern world are immoral. Most consumer practices are equally immoral too.

Not that any of it has anything to do with the topic at hand, but when all you have is a hammer you see everything as nails.

I don't either see how DRM really contributes much to the topic at hand other than oh wait...was it you who brought it up as an anti-consumer practice by developers. ANd what? You expected none of us to say that well, there is such a thing known as piracy, and the second hand market.