Closed for business - Android vs. iOS

Business and Project Management Discussions
#61

PC gaming is as healthy as ever thanks to the ever-shifting nature of the games and the sheer range and quality at which they are available (versus the relatively very limited selection on consoles). And of course there are now many incentives to actually buy software which are making it much more attractive:

  1. Steam delivery - finally a way to buy, deliver, and use software on the PC that doesn’t suck.
  2. Cheap enough for everyone to afford - probably mainly due to Steam but the price of PC games has plummeted in recent years, and developers are still making a living.
  3. Frequently tied in with online components only accessible to people who have paid, such as multiplayer.

Cas :slight_smile:

#62

Steam I think is the only thing keeping PC games alive and even then the price for games is a huge drop when compared to the 60$ consoles. The only perfect anit piracy protection is making the game online only which means the game need to be multilayer. All DLCs and any other extra content will just be cracked/hacked/whatever. Almost every game that is not online only for PC has been cracked and will be cracked.

Bliz had the right idea when SC2 came out. You could play offline if you wanted but the advantage of online play and quality of the online play was great. After Dibalo 3 I can safely say I will never buy one of their games again. No because the game sucked (which it did) but because they quality of playing online was absolute poo. It felt like I was playing an alpha build of the game.

The only reason PS3 and 360 are not as easy to pirate crap on is because almost all their popular games are multilayer which means you need internet connection which means no pirates. They could be pirated but no one wants to go through the effort because it really is not worth it. Why spend the time making it so you can play all the multilayer games offline? The poor Wii on the other hand is so damn easy to pirate crap on and is not really known for great online games so well…you know what I mean.

#63

@StumpyStrust
You have spent money buying Diablo 3 and did not get what you wanted, that had hoped for,
but maybe you’re waiting for something, what’s one promised you, but they gave you hope,
they took your money and do not meet expectations, they simply stole money from you,
if you could return the game and take your money you do that?
I think you would have done it, but it’s not so simple, they do not have a simple interface, a refund, in fact, they have deceived you and steal your money, and who, after all thieves? Again the pirates?

And so when they release a new game again, they would impose it to you to buy and how strange you buy it,
they are manipulating you and thousands of people to pick up the money,
and it does not matter what they give in return, if people are not happy after spend money.

Do not believe me if you want, look at the facts,
if people were simply a way to return the money for not a quality digital product - millions of companies would simply go bankrupt.

#64

Markus’ views on piracy do not help the reality one bit. It’s all very well to go spouting off that sort of shit when you’re sat on top of $50 million and your game is thoroughly and theoretically unnecessarily DRMed but for the rest of us, piracy is a real issue. He’s not making any friends.

StumpyTrust is, honestly, probably the only person I’ve yet heard who has complained he hasn’t had $60 worth of fun out of Diablo 3. But it’s like films and books. You don’t go demanding your money back if you simply didn’t like it. That’s your problem. You’re not paying $60 to be guaranteed to like something, you’re paying $60 to give a massive team of hundreds of people a shot at entertaining you. His expectations, reasonably, should have been a brilliantly executed dungeon bashing adventure with sumptuous graphics and sound and gameplay which should have been pretty much obvious too. Exactly what is the problem here?

Cas :slight_smile:

#65

…I am very confused on how they forced me to buy the game? The did not. I was a big bliz fan of all their games and they release quality stuff normally. SC1, D2, WC3 all great games. I bought what I thought would be the next great game. It did not live up to the old bliz standards. I am the one who gave them my money. I am the one who made the choice to buy their game. They do not have some special mind controlling thing over me. I also said I would NOT buy one of their games again.

Come on its like fast food, some times they get your order wrong. If you bitch hard enough they may give you new food but even then you still payed the money. For companies that invest 100mil$ into a game, I do not expect a refund. I am wondering what these facts are.

If you want to see what piracy has done to PC gaming look at Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning. The company that made that crashed partially because of poor management but also because of piracy. I will admit that I pirated that game and I am glad I did not spend money on because I found it boring. Tons of other people loved it. It got rather good reviews. So why did the game fail?

The one thing I personally would almost say to pirate is all this DLC BS. Its one thing to release extra content months after the game has come as mini expansions or something but when you have all this premium content out on the release date of the game, you are just milking it too much. 60$ for the game and they don’t even give you all the crap. Need to spend another 15$+ to get everything that was finished from the release. And yeah I am talking to you bioware.

StumpyStrust forgot the ‘s’ :stuck_out_tongue:

The reviewers who only played on the normal difficulty say its great but most people who have played it to inferno know how bad it is and my biggest gripe was not even gameplay but how unstable the servers were. Took a week of them doing some black magic till I could even logon. Not too bad if I could play offline. Then their servers lag so bad I can barely move most of the time. Lets also not mention all the AH bugs that gave people inf gold. Oh and the fact that it has been hacked 5 too many times. I have never had a more unstable game other then my own.

#66

Hmmm… justifying piracy. Obviously, it is morally wrong to debunk a person’s hard work. I guess that is really the key word… “moral”.

Piracy, in most cases, is just an excuse. When I engaged in it, it was mostly to get a trial period of a certain product before I committed to buying it, or getting something I felt I’d only be using once. All bad. It is never justifiable.

Regardless, piracy does have good side. It is known that groups of people that pirate your things have a very great interest in your product. I remember an article where one developer joined the site where his products were getting hacked, and ended up making a profit by selling merchandise to the pirates. (A one-in-a-million chance… perhaps and I lost the link to that article :frowning: ).

I can’t 100% disregard what Markus said. Just because you are making a heap of money, doesn’t mean you can’t see things for how they are. I know for a fact that the quality of Android applications has gone down with time. Yet, the price of those applications are running at the same price ($.99). It is definitely not a good atmosphere for the potential buyers if they have to roll a dice to see if they get a good application or not. Maybe Markus has a point that we have to continue upgrading and updating our applications to keep them fresh and buyable.

Sadly, there is just a lot of factors and bad-blood. I think piracy can be the fault of both the developers and the users. Why?

Users just don’t want to buy a crappy product. So they “steal” it instead.
Some developers think writing any 5-second app is enough to warrant $1.

Ugly. Nasty. Developers are the only ones eating the pain.

#67

Why you can’t do this with digital copy


Within four weeks. You can usually still get a full refund as you’re unlikely to be seen as having ‘accepted’ the goods.

#68

You can add me to that list too. But I’m not going to rave about being ripped off and demanding a refund or whatever. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes they lose repeat business. Just the way it works.

#69

“Testing” out a game is an excuse I’ve seen fairly often. But assuming the game isn’t made by some noob, there will usually be a demo or youtube videos which give you an idea of the game.

#70

Yup and rarely do you ever get accurate reviews from people on youtube. I am not justifying anything, its all wrong, but some times I feel like the devs of some of these big AAA studios are trying to hide stuff.

The one company that I think all devs should follow when it comes to policies on pirates and user experience would be CD Projekt. They made the Witcher games which were amazing and worth every dime. They gave out all their later DLC/expatiation for free. The have no real DRM protection because as they say, it will just be pirated anyway no point in ruining legitimate users experience with cumbersome DRMs. (I am not necessarily quoting)

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/29/interview-cd-projekts-ceo-on-witcher-2-piracy-why-drms-still-not-worth-it/

Basically, DRM seems a big no no and after reading how pupygames does their DRM or uhh lack of DRM I am considering buying Titans Revenge even though I got my ass handed to me in the demo.

#71

As for me I can fully stop using piracy,
Say truly I even have many game license copys on CD and what more important if some one give me chance return them and get money back
I refuse him, I really love them.
But I can’t decide for other ppl,
I better say if even they use my games by piracy I can forgive them,
the only one hu I can’t forgive is rich ppl that use piracy.
And ppl that make money on piracy I HATE them.

The problem not in piracy itself, problems how ppl use it.
Piracy is like fire and ppl like kids
Some kids can use fire not right and burn all home, and other use it right,
but after some time all understand how use it right,
saying about piracy if you like product buy it.
Or simple buy, or donate game studios what you like, its good help ppl.

But in any case piracy produce morans which don’t want pay for product in any case or even try make money on some one hard work,
and that is back side of coin.

And yes if piracy start go out of control I agree on 99.9% to stop it fully.
But for now is only small drop in the ocean.(maybe I don’t know all statistics I do not deny this)

p.s I even have WoW on CD :wink:
I play first on pirate server and then buy it , so as you can see piracy some times help increase sales =)

#72

One thing people ignore is the indirect theft. The chewing up massive amounts of bandwidth is stealing from all of use that use the internet.

#73

Like dumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, causing global warming, shifting rain patterns, is stealing crops from farmers?

We really should stop using the word ‘stealing’ in this thread :point:

#74

Yeah, there’s no “stealing” as such really. There’s just a contract with society that’s been broken.

The end result though is what we see happening:

Diablo 3 won’t run without a net connection even for single player. WTF?
Android apps that appear on iOS and Android are nearly always free on Android and plagued by advertising instead. WTF?
Single player games are getting rarer and rarer as multiplayer is the only sure-fire bet against piracy. WTF?
PC game studios keep going bust despite making perfectly great games because they mysteriously sell in tiny numbers. WTF?

… and basically this has all irrefutably happened because of rampant piracy on all those open platforms versus the locked down nature of the consoles and iTunes. Everyone’s complaining about the locked down nature of those platforms, and everyone’s complaining about the other 4 points… and then they’ll happily in the same breath go on to attempt to justify piracy in some manner that says it has little or no effect on developers.

Cas :slight_smile:

#75

Like I said: I’m making no judgements on people that pirate…but it’s still stealing. It’s taking something from someone without their permission. End of story. There no difference between real and virtual products. The fact that the impact can’t be measured doesn’t matter. Although there’s zero incremental “production” costs…there is a very non-zero transmission cost, which all of us are paying for by reduced bandwidth. Again even if it can’t be measured it’s still stealing. End of story. I’d just like people to “man-up” and admit they don’t give a f uck.

#76

@Roquen
There no difference between real and virtual products.
You fully right;)
I even create couple story’s to show that:

Situation #1

Human (A) buy apple from Trader, eat half and give rest Human (B)
Trader say”(B) you stealer(pirate) you don’t pay for apple you can’t eat it ;)”

Situation #2

Human (A) buy seeds from trader, grow up tree take new seeds and give them Human (B)
Trader say”(B) you stealer(pirate) you don’t pay for seeds ;)”
(clone product in real life =))
(yuu may say (A) do work to clone seed, but crack teems same do work to clone and clear DRM)

Situation virtual #1
Human (A) buy game CD from Trader, play it 10 min
and say ”I don’t like it, do you want try Human (B)”
hi answer “yes why not”, (A) give (B) CD
((A) have installed game on PC)
Trader say”(B) you stealer(pirate) you don’t pay for CD you can’t use it ;)”
(If product don’t have DRM, its piracy to share it? And many say yes ^^)

Evil True: Now you see what a nonsense stand behind electronic piracy?

Same as for intellectual right, for them I create new story
Human (A) find apple and grow up Tree,
Human (B) also find apple, and want grow up Tree,
(A) say ”(B) you can’t grow up apple tree I first grow up it, its my intellectual right, to group all apple trees ;)”

(Interesting why no one do right for Air, then hi can say “ its my air you cant breathe it”)

Its evil, but that’s truth, you don’t pay for program itself developers,
you pay them for there work, and not for product itself.

And if you don’t like what they doing why you should pay them?
They even try hide truth from you.
Simple example:
Trader Show small part apple(Demo) you like it, buy it, and suddenly you see the another part is rotten.
But you already pay for it, why you can’t return you money back?

(try find another story, about electronic piracy in real life, I want read it, especially where analogy of piracy is crime =))

In any case if you like work that’s some one do, why not pay him :wink:

Update:
But like I say before: In any case piracy produce morans which don’t want pay for product in any case
or even try make money on some one hard work,
and that is back side of coin.

This is a situation when a small group of people create bad opinion about all society.
We’ve seen it many times in many different cases :frowning:

#77

Roquen: I can’t agree with you that copying something digital is “stealing”. Things that are stolen no longer exist for the person who used to own the item. That’s not true for digitally copied items. Digital copying is like taking a (perfect) photograph of your artwork. It might equate to a lost sale, but you haven’t lost your artwork. Given that the word “Copying” already perfectly describes this situation, I see no reason (other than sophistry) to apply the word “steal” instead.

Piracy is a tricky issue. I’ve had software I worked on pirated. We’ve always viewed it as at least, not a bad thing, at best - free advertising. Getting an audience is a way bigger issue than piracy, so if everyone knows your game due to piracy, but you can convert some of that audience into people who pay then that’s probably better than obscurity. That said, I can’t understand the way Android users will apparently not pay a couple of bucks for a game. When Steam does that, I purchase titles that I wouldn’t otherwise - when the mobile marketplace does that - all of the time - people still copy apps. I don’t get it.

#78

Entertainment media (films/music/games) are luxury goods.
Thus I believe people will only pay what they think the product is worth.
If they can’t get it for this, they’ll walk away.
Once this happens you’ve already lost the sale, so it’s mostly irrelevant if they subsequently pirate it or not.

I believe attempting to fight piracy directly is costly, counter-productive and ultimately futile.

#79

I think you are being the sophist here. The definition of stealing certainly does apply. Consider the Webster’s New World Dictionary’s very first definition of the word steal:

[quote]1) to take or appropriate (another’s property, ideas, etc.) without permission, dishonestly, or unlawfully, esp. in a secret or surreptitious manner.
[/quote]
Clearly an “idea” still exists for the person from whom the idea is stolen! Your additional condition that an object must be involved and this object must no longer be in the original owner’s possession is NOT part of the generally accepted definition of stealing.

Whether and how much of an upside there is to having product illegally copied is one debate. Whether the person stealing by copying can ever justify doing so is another debate.

But there is no debate about the appropriateness of the application of the word “stealing” to the act of illegally copying intellectual property.

#80

@kaffiene: Language has the power to form and shape thought. This isn’t just academic masturbation, it’s a fact. If a given language doesn’t have a word(s) to express some concept, then it’s difficult to impossible for a speaker of that language to grasp it. If there are similar meaning words they may be able to have a very inexact understanding of what’s being said. In the case where there’s none approaching then the concept simply doesn’t exist. As there are many people here that speak more than one language I’m sure that they at least of a vague notion of what I’m talking about. Likewise over or misuse of a word by enough people over enough time evolves the meaning and impact of the word.

What’s this have to do with piracy? If even non-pirates (for whatever weird reason) go around saying “It’s not stealing…it’s copying”, is giving pirates a culture permission to do their thing. It’s patting them on the head and saying “Go right ahead. I might shake my head at you, but you’re not really hurting anyone”. Use the right word. It’s isn’t copying…it’s stealing. Pirates are not “folk heroes”, or “modern day Robin Hoods”, or making a political statement, they’re petty criminals committing a crime that is pathetically easy. Stealing candy from a sleeping baby is breaking into Fort Knox in comparison. Nothing noble or cool…it’s “I want this, this and this. I want it now and for free”.

There is real harm done by piracy. The fact than the amount is unknowable doesn’t change a thing.

Where does the entitlement come from?

[quote]I believe attempting to fight piracy directly is costly, counter-productive and ultimately futile.
[/quote]
I would never recommend that anyone waste time on anti-piracy stuff in software…it’s a lost cause. All I ask that non-pirates to not encourage the behaviour and that pirates not delude themselves about what their doing.