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. 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. 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. Photos courtesy of The Opte Project and the ever charming Hyperbole and a Half.
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I think a workable EULA for software should be one that some old software from 1995 had. You needed the disc to be in a disc drive in order to run the game, but were unlimited on the number of computers you could actually install the disc on.
The software itself was licensed to be shared “like a book”, which means that it could be lent out, but the game disc needed to be in the drive in order to play — others could borrow the disc but if they were playing with it, you couldn’t. Although the ease with which discs can be cloned these days makes this less viable (and I can gift Steam games but not share them, although I’ve heard that they’re working to enable such a feature), I still think it’s a better idea for the industry than what we currently have.
That most retail console software still works like this is a good thing — it actually makes borrowing software a reasonable practice, especially since disc media require game saves to be held in some sort of external memory. (Did anyone ever lend out their copy of Pokemon to find their painstakingly completed save file overwritten? Probably my biggest gripe with the 3DS is that saves still aren’t externally stored – which, amusingly, has been exploited in a foolish attempt to cut down resale value for a few games.)
But that brings us to another issue — consoles aren’t manufactured as freely the way that CD players, televisions, and even computers are. Nobody except Microsoft sells devices that can play XBox 360 games. A third party can’t undersell Sony with a functional clone of the PS3. Thankfully this isn’t the case for older consoles (indeed, one can even find fairly reasonably-priced combo NES-SNES-Genesis consoles on a number of online retailers’ sites).
Whether the availability of such clones is the reason most pop-culture gaming references are rarely dated later than the mid-90s or mostly the result of it (i.e., people know about the NES and so get this because they want to experience it but didn’t) is another matter, however.
Heh I remember those days of Disc-based DRM, and I agree that it was a reasonable compromise.
That’s a very interesting point regarding consoles. I wonder how the market would respond to an open source console?
“Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem”
I disagree. Valve seems to be the most popular not because of service BUT because of price. I see most all of my twitter feed talking about the “games they can finally buy” because the price dropped 50-75%.
Certainly if I see a game priced out at $60, I’m going to start looking for it to fall off the back of an internet truck UNTIL the price comes down to something I can afford. Hopefully by that time I haven’t grown bored of the game and deleted it, vowing not to buy it because it was so dull.
I DO agree however about the lending part. Today everything needs “activations” and “serial numbers” guaranteeing that you can’t sell the game again (more or less violating the first sale law stating you can sell the item in question and it should work as intended and it’s NOT a licensed thing). Of course people hate having to have the CD/disk in the drive so “bam” NOCD crack and it’s back to your friend’s house with the CD/disk 😛
BUT you can also look at it like a library, you have access to innumerable books that you can check out until your done and send them back to get more. If you want to read that book again, there it is. BUT game companies are about profit and that’s why games aren’t art yet. I have yet to see DRM on a printed book.
I absolutely agree pricing is one of the big reasons Valve is so popular. It’s like someone offering to mow your lawn for $15, it’s a fair price and it saves you some effort. Even though it’s virtually free to do it yourself, it’s a service people would be willing to pay for. So yeah, good prices and good service are the key.
It’s a good point you make about art. Paintings, sculptures and books are all considered art, and usually are available to view for free in one form or another, but the attitude of game companies makes them feel more like a product. No money, no game, no compromise. I’ll be pondering on that.