Intellectual Property: Why Game Publishers Are Doing It Wrong.

You’ve probably heard of the SOPA bill, and the devastating effect it would have on the Internet and individuals. It would basically forbid the use of any copyrighted material in any way, shape or form on the Internet. It ranges from posting a game screenshot on a forum, to creating a Youtube video demonstrating how to defeat a particuarlly tricky boss.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA), which represent companies like Microsoft, Apple, Dell and Adobe, originally supported the bill, but later retracted their support after recognising the bill is too heavy handed. However, it’s indicative of the approach that many publishers feel is the best way to deal with piracy. There’s an impression that severely limiting our ability to share things will somehow translate into profit. It’s a narrow minded philosophy that fails to factor in the many benefits of people sharing intellectual property with one another.

The aggressive posture of the majority of publishers isn’t doing them any favours, and in many cases ignores the other viable and possibly more profitable solutions which companies like Valve have been putting in to practice with great success.
Speaking to The Cambridge Student, Gabe Newell said that “Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem”, a sentiment that Valve put into practice in Russia, which is set to be their number one European market. Not bad, considering it was previously thought to be a waste of time due to the rampart piracy.  While most publishers put large amounts of time, effort and money into stopping people from illegitimately playing games, to the point of punishing their paying customers in the form of Digital Rights Management (DRM), Valve provides a solution that is both viable and profitable: offer better service.

Most people buy vegetables from a grocery rather than grow them themselves, even though growing your own is much cheaper, as most of us find the convenience to be worth the higher cost. It’s much the same with pirated software. Sure, it’s cheaper, but cost is only one of many things a customer considers when making a purchase, and will most likely choose the product they feel offers the best value for money.

More and more it feels like game companies are being run with the sole focus being to generate profit. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money, but a business that is too ruthless in it’s pursuit to increase the bottom line is going to end up making snap decisions and policy that in the long run will end up hurting them.

Take the case of second hand sales; if you don’t want your customers buying and selling used games, then make games they want to hang on to. I’m not the slightest bit inclined to trade my collector editions of Mass Effect 1 and 2, and I’ve already pre-ordered the third. If I were to obtain a pirated copy, I would miss out on all the shiny things that comes with a collectors edition. It’s a decision I would make even if the base version was free, let alone a cheaper second-hand version. Two of the biggest gripes addressed in one fell swoop. Offering value for money on something so awesome the customer wants to keep it.

It’s a series I recommend to people, gamers and non-gamers alike. Now I think of myself as a pretty charming guy, but there is an undeniable advantage when it comes to recommending things to friends when your able to show them, a practice widely adopted by many people when it comes to music, books and movies. It’s perfectly legal to lend friends your copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and it’s often this form of advertising by which people first hear about things.

Computer software, as it stands, is the only form of media in which publishers seek to prevent this in the form of the End User License Agreement (EULA). Unfortunately, this means your friend just has to take your word for it, and unless they’re a gamer, chances are they’d rather spend their money on something they know they’ll enjoy. After all, they listened to Regina Spektor on a CD a friend lent them and went to go see her in concert, or just finished reading the first book of The Dark Elf Trilogy, also lent by a friend, and got Drizzt’s whole series in hardback.

While gaming has become more popular in recent times, it’s pretty hard sell for us geeks trying to spread the gaming love. I’d very much like to lend my non-gamer friends a copy of Assassin’s Creed because I know they’d enjoy it and the series, but according to the EULA I’m not allowed. So instead I lend them one of my numerous Isaac Asimov books, and share a laugh when they tell me it’s my fault they’re broke because they just spent a pant-load buying the Foundation series.

I desperately want to see this with games. There are very few people who don’t get the reference “You have my sword…and my bow….and my AXE”. They know exactly where it came from and the context, bearing in mind The Lord of the Rings intellectual property makes bucket-loads of cash, despite the book being readily available for free access in libraries, or friends willing to lend copies of the movie if you somehow you don’t own it yourself, but it’s only us geeks that get “Dovahkin!”, and it’s little wonder given how hard publishers make it for us to sell their products.

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