Piracy versus PC Gaming [Mar 09, 2007, 8:23 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Next Generation recaps a GDC talk titled "The Videogame Piracy Problem:
Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest" by id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead about the
impact of piracy on the game industry. They outline how Mr. Hollenshead says the
estimated $3 billion economic loss caused by piracy in 2004 does not include
piracy that takes place on the Internet. There is also an article about this
talk on
Joystiq that focuses on the statement that piracy is a factor in id's
embrace of consoles, quoting Todd as saying "Piracy has pushed id as being
multiplatform." On a related note,
Can PC
Gaming Survive in a Console World (thanks
Digg) recaps a panel discussion on the topic that brought up a similar
point:
Part of the problem is piracy. Big titles get stolen by cyber thieves, and it hurts revenue. "The market," said Capps, "that would buy a $600 video card knows how Bittorrent works."
Does that mean casual games, which exponentially outsell what PC gaming traditionalists think of as A-list titles, will one day rule? Hilleman made a point: casual is a poor choice of words. The average player on EA's Pogo "casual" game network plays "for 24 hours a week. There's nothing casual about that."
There is some light in the PC gaming world. World of Warcraft, for instance, is a massive hit, and the upcoming Spore looks not only creative and different, but promising. The MMO and other social networking games could become the norm for PC gaming, with big-ticket titles growing rarer with each passing year. Johnson added that MMOs are "successful because you can't pirate WoW. You cannot pirate an MMO. Period." Therefore, he said, "game design on the PC is going to bend toward persistence."
Of the thousands and thousands of illegally "shared" games/songs/applications/etc it is safe to say that a significant percentage of those people doing the sharing would have otherwise paid for these products.It is actually more likely that the percentage who would pay is relatively miniscule because if the downloaders were actually willing and able to pay the asking price, they would be doing it. Anyone will take something if it is free. The notion that someone would have paid for dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of songs, movies, or games simply because they had downloaded them for free is ludicrous. If file sharing did not exist, would these downloaders have purchased ANY of the things they had downloaded? Sure, it is likely unless they were pretty impoverished. However, would it be a significant quantity? Most likely not since they could not afford it or would not otherwise spend the money on it.
The bottom line is that even if copyright infringement via file sharing disappeared tomorrow, there still wouldn't be enough sales revenue to keep all of these companies which claim that such infringement is killing their business afloat.
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