So yesterday Microsoft flipped a switch, turning off access to the Xbox Live service for thousands of Xboxes that had been chipped (the BBC news report). These machines had been deliberately altered at the hardware level to circumvent the DRM (Digital Rights Management) part of games played on those machines. Chipped machines could play hacked games, in essence, without paying for them. I suppose this is the Xbox equivalent to jailbreaking iPhones.
The BBC report was interesting because it also linked to the story of an Xbox gamer ("Raz") who was "gutted" he'd been cut off. The relevant part of the story I want to quote is this:
I took it into a shop [the Xbox], there was a guy back there and I asked him and he did it for me [chipped it]. He charged £75 to get it chipped but at the end of the day I said to myself I'll pay £75 to get it chipped, after two games I've paid the money back.
I've probably saved about £600 and I've copied roughly 30 or 40 games. A lot of them I've downloaded or I've taken off friends that have downloaded themselves.
The interesting attitude displayed here is that Raz doesn't consider that there is a whole software/hardware ecosystem going on here. He just views it as him versus Microsoft, or him versus the Gaming World. Not him versus Activision, Eidos, EA, and all the other software producers. He views the software as somehow coming from the Xbox — "after two games I've paid the money back", he's home scot-free, he's paid his dues with the original hardware and the chipping and shouldn't have to pay any more.
The other point he raises is that:
I still think they should lower the prices. There are 16-year-old kids out there, they don't earn money so they go screaming to their parents saying, 'Can you buy me this game?'
Fair enough, one game once in a while but the amount of games coming out, good games, everyone wants to play them all. And for them to pay £50 a game?
So good games are coming out and he wants to play them immediately, and therefore he's forced to pay full price. Oh and the price is too high. Now I'll admit I've never played these games (I prefer adventure games, this kind of first person shooter makes motion sick), but when I've watched others play them, I'm always struck by the attention to detail paid by the artists and programmers to the scene and the action. And to me, coming from an entirely different part of the software market, that all spells money, costs, time, resources. And the game producer only has a smallish amount of time to recoup those costs by selling at full price before another good game comes out that everyone wants to play immediately and the producer is forced to cut prices.
Software is a funny old game, really. It takes time and money to produce it, but the product you manufacture has essentially zero duplication and distribution costs. People like this gamer focus on the latter (costs nothing to copy) and forget the former (costs a metric tonne of cash to make in the first place). Without the ability to cover one's expenses, software like this would disappear. The same goes for music and photographs, since they're both just software these days.
Now I know that open source software is free (albeit, subject to some legal restrictions like copyright and licensing), but it still costs money, effort, and resources to make. Ultimately, those expenses have to be paid for. For a widely supported open source project the price is paid by the free time of the developers who implement it. Similarly, some of the code might be provided by large companies that need to use the software and who are willing to subsidize the effort to make sure their needs are met; in this case, it's that company's products that provide the revenue to pay the price. Or the company provides free software, but the ancillary services like help, documentation, updates, fixes, maintenance, additional content cost money. Or it's the Government that subsidizes the open source software, in order to provide access to it for its citizenry, and of course it would be the citizenry that would pay for it through their taxes.
DRM, unfortunately (fortunately?), is not the solution. I've been bitten in the past by software becoming unusable because it's no longer installable or playable (for a couple of examples: I used to have some MSN music; the company I used to work for, TurboPower, was closed down along with its authentication servers; and In just over a year's time I won't be able to install Microsoft Money any more). The only way this would work would be to have an ICANN-like regulatory body that would be in charge of authenticating installs and copies. That is, instead of relying on the manufacturer to stay in business and to keep their servers up and running, the authentication step is done by a global-scope third-party. But, heck, the possibility of hacking a single body instead of numerous servers would be so attractive…
In the end, I suppose I personally am motivated by the fact I am in the software business. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is my motto when considering purchasing software, photographs and music, and so I always scrupulously plop the credit card down.
But of course, piracy will stay and still pay.
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2 Responses
#1 Aaron said...
30-Nov-09 3:50 PMAlso coming from a software developer background, I have a lot of the same feelings about piracy. The one thing I don't agree with however, is the way the gaming industry has set up shop now. If you look specifically at the Call of Duty series where they release a new title every 1 - 2 years, the prices for the titles go up as they strip out the important features and then purposely delay and then cancel betas and demos so that people cannot try it before they run out and buy it.
Most games you have to play online, you will end up having to buy it before you can even play it. Then when the game sucks, you are instantly out that money you just paid to get that hot title that has all the good stuff ripped. When you are a PC gamer, you get screwed bad. You cannot take the game back to the store for a refund, and you cannot take it to GameStop for a trade. Generally PC games were cheaper than consoles, but with Call of Duty Modern Warefare 2, I think a new precident is being set with them making the PC version cost the same, while not supporting any features that make PC gaming unique and fun. It's now 60 - 70 bucks for a game that you have no idea if it will be ok on a PC or not because they cancelled the beta and then also cancelled any demo that they had previously promised to have. Every game I have run out to preorder lately has had the demos and betas cancelled because of various reasons, and then the day of the release everyone finds out that features of the game were cancelled or scrapped for a "greater good". You then get the picture of why the demos and betas are killed off. They don't want you to know their game sucks before it releases. Operation Flashpoint 2 was a perfect example. No promised demo. It was "delayed until after release" so they could concentrate on the game for release day. The demo still hasn't shipped and the game outright sucks for multiplayer.
People I know that pirate games now when they never used to are doing it just to see if the money is even going to be worth spending, then go out and buy it if it is.
The way I see it now is that a lot of companies are scraping their demos because that gives them the opportunity to just do the money grab at the start and then move onto the next title. We used to be able to grab all kinds of demos for games and decide which one we want to play then run out and buy it, but not anymore. A lot of the "hot" titles are not going to have demos and it's starting to say a lot about where the industry has gone.
I won't be pirating games, but I definitely won't be buying them either anymore. If it doesn't have a demo, I'm not buying it.
#2 julian m bucknall said...
30-Nov-09 6:08 PMAaron: Aren't you therefore arguing for a better review system? Say, a bit like movie reviews? You know: you follow certain reviewers because they have provided reviews that you've agreed with in the past. Their likes and dislikes are yours, pretty much. So if they pan a movie, you'll skip it in favor of another they lauded. Shouldn't the gaming market be like that in some sense? You would only go for the first-day games that got a good review and leave the rest for Steam (or to buy off eBay).
Aside: I'll admit I'm arguing from a non-gaming position here (I used to play first-person shooters a lot, but had to stop after I found I was getting motion sickness -- now I only play adventure games, if at all), so I don't get all fired up about having the latest game on the first day.
I do get your point about demos though (or, in the parlance of the market I'm in, "evaluation editions"). I well remember trying out a demo of Gabriel Knight 3, and deciding to buy it based on the gameplay, despite the obvious bugs in the demo (such as being able to walk through a wall at one point).
Anyway, thanks for responding.
Cheers, Julian
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