You're right to think so, it's not the reason. Square just slaps denuvo on everything they own now. AS posts misinformation frequently
Before I buy an expensive game, I always pirate it - I need to know how much I'd like it. You can't blame me for that. If Denuvo prevents me to pirate a game, then I'm not going to say: "oh I guess I'll have to buy it then". Then I just don't buy it. Ever, until it's finally cracked or it's reached a sale price so ridiculously low that I think the risk is worth it.
I'm an aware buyer and I eventually buy all the games I've ever pirated. If more consumers had that type of behaviour, maybe game companies wouldn't try to scam people as often and caution wouldn't be as necessary.
So tell me, what's wrong with buying the game on Steam instead and then refunding it if you don't like it?
For two hours? Two hours isn't enough to know if you like the game or not. And specifically to counter this, some games are designed to either drag on in the first hours, or try to be as fun as possible for that time before becoming more average.
Basically: if a demo is fun, that doesn't necessarily mean the whole game is fun. It means the part in the demo is fun.
Because that doesn't always work, I bought Player Unknown's Battlegrounds and got 2 matches in. The incredible load times mixed with match length and failed to load lobbies/games pushed me to 3 out of 2 hours so they denied my refund request. That's $30 lost on a game that I can't play.
You mean like every game with a GoG version that shows no difference in sales?
Not only that but we also have evidence of it being complete bullshit in the form of Undertale,The Witcher 3, and GOG.
Reminder that studies have shown that anti-piracy measures either don't impact sales, or impact them negatively. But of course those studies get swept under the rug because the shareholders need to be sure their product can't be too accessible.
It's a little different with software companies, because they make money off business licences, which are required for a company to make something for their sellable product. By giving away student licenses, more people become skilled with the tool, so it encourages businesses to use the tool as most qualified candidates use it. Additionally business licences are paid for by the number of users, so hiring more employees that use the tool means more money for Adobe/Autodesk. Basically it's clearly beneficial for Adobe/Autodesk to give away licences and not strongly pursue piracy because single users dicking around in the software might turn into users in a company that use the software.
Games are a bit different because its hard to prove that more people pirating the game will lead to future purchases. GOG can make money because they target the niche amount of users who don't want DRM, and games without DRM can get good press which might encourage on the fence people to buy. Additionally if a game is good pirates may later buy the game. However this is all conjecture and there isn't enough data to say whether piracy is good or bad compared to software aimed at the business sector where more users = more companies using the software = more Enterprise licenses.
Good analysis and a healthy reminder effort, thank you. But that doesn't really contradict what I said, as I know outright saying that piracy benefits game sales is a bit hard to swallow. In my case though, I'm convinced it does. I don't trust trailers and most reviews, so the only way to know for sure if a game suits me is piracy.
Again, there is a MASSIVE difference between DRM bring broken/not on a product and DRM being flat banned. If it were completely ubiquitous to have no DRM, piracy would be significantly more popular. I personally know more than a couple of people who don't pirate specifically because it's 'too difficult', it becoming extremely easy can and would have a marked impact on sales.
seems a bit shit
Id push the refund if it means enough to you. Is there anything that protects you in US consumer law?
I was able to refund it after about 5? Hours after an initial rejection, just brought up Australian consumer law and what it was infringing on and they just refunded it with no question then.
I recall Adobe at some point in time basically saying they didn't give a shit if people pirated their software, because almost all of their money comes from corporate sales and it's not geared towards home users.
That might be old and outdated though but I remember back when Adobe Photoshop was $1000 for a license and you couldn't buy it for any other price.
Really the only reason I brought up Adobe and Autodesk was because the person I replied to did so here
to which I thought it was pretty silly that the companies with the most pirated software doesn't seem to be hurting from piracy. (Although there are a lot of factors for that could contribute to why companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk, and so on do so well echonomically). I can't really remember any of the companies on the top 100 of Thepiratebay's software category coming out to say that piracy is hurting them. And you're right about student licenses (although Adobe's is more like a student discount), but what I think most people forget is that with most student licenses you aren't allowed to make a profit from your work, which effectively kinda makes pirated and student versions really similar in a way.
Though really the gist of the post was the question and request for numbers about piracy hurting the industry
Its actually slightly different reason, sorta connected though.
They, in a sense, embrace that young people pirate their products because it means that you will end up with tons of people that have the skills already to be hired by the industry who uses the software.
If it wasn't for piracy you would actually end up with a ton less people who know how to use one of todays most used industry software.
A person who pirated PS/AE etc. in their teens could very much end up being some great artists that has no problem buying it later on, who might open a studio to buy volume licenses or simply works in the industry who uses their software.
Of course they never fully admitted it and continue to only offer reduced price for students but its one benefit of piracy in the end.
Also let us not forget the fact that most (if not all) AAA games manage to have sales on day -1 and even before that
You make a fair point. However, isn't that what reviews would tell you? If a game is super inconsistent (e.g. becoming shit after two hours), surely a review would remark on that?
Under EU law this would constitute a defective product, making you eligible for a refund. I'm not sure how that works in the US.
There are many more ethical problems with DRM than just having an unusable product after many years, denuvo is not transparent, as denuvo is designed to avoid you tampering with it, which means you can't do certain legal modifications to it, not because the game is a complex program or due to a lack of skill, but rather due to an artificial restriction.
The same happens with movies, let's say Pete, who is not a knowledgeable person in terms of computers but at least knows how to edit a video wants to do a review of a film he bought using fragments of it to point what he feels is wrong, which is perfectly legal, however he can't do it, not because the movie uses a very complex format or because he doesn't have the skill to do it, but because someone decided that he didn't deserve that right and imposed an artificial restriction, which in case of very locked down devices, is almost impossible to break, and because in most cases it's illegal to distribute cracking tools, Pete has no other choice but to not do the review using those movie fragments, which might mean he won't do it at all if he wanted to focus on the visual aspects of the movie.
While it is advertised as a mechanism to prevent copyright infringement, DRM is actually designed to restrict all of the incredible possibilities enabled by digital technologies and place them under the control of a few, who can then micromanage and track every interaction with digital media. In other words, DRM is designed to take away every possible use of digital media, regardless of legal rights, and sell some of these functionalities back as severely limited services.
Okay, you've got a point. That was one of the consequences I didn't consider.
Actually not necessarily, unless we're talking fan reviews. Because when professional reviewers need to write a review, they sometimes don't have the time to play all of it. Thus, because of time constraints, they play up to a point where they feel they've got a general idea of the quality of the game and leave it at that, without mentioning they didn't play the full game of course since that would make the review inaccurate.
Fan reviews are more reliable in that regard, but we also need to keep in mind that they're more subjective, since most professional reviewers try to paint a general appreciation of the game, not for themselves, but for the public. Fan reviewers have a bigger tendency to be honest and personal about their opinion on a game.
All in all, rather than look all over the internet for reviews that might fit my needs, if I really wanted to have an idea, nothing beats playing the game at zero cost and being the sole judge.
Also you have to realise some people focus on different things when doing reviews, reviewing a movie's effects might be basically impossible without being able to show what you mean.
serves him right for posting on reddit eh
You really can't compare piracy between software and games- one is entertainment, the other is a commercial tool. You can't make money using unlicensed software so people are forced to buy it if they want to be commercial and legit. No big company is going to risk using fraudulent means in their business, they'd rather pay the price to avoid any trouble and be as legit as possible. Games don't have nearly the same situation, it's all home media and entertainment. To the average consumer, there's no actual reason to buy games other than for ethical reasons and supporting the developers. Businesses don't buy software for that reason, it's because they have to. There's no argument here about big companies not suffering from piracy
because it's not nearly the same if you're only looking at software developers
games however are still software, so I feel the same rights as for the rest of the software should be available, just because they don't serve a practical purpose doesn't mean that it's okay to ignore them.
You got it right there buddy. This was the point that I hoped that Peachy (or anyone reading) would reach
Uh, ok? I never said it was okay to ignore them, I'm just saying why you can't look at both of them the same way in terms of piracy.
Adobe isn't a fair comparison because you now have to buy into a subscription service unless you get a box copy of software which is exceedingly rare.
You ought to learn to read then, and going up in the post chain wouldn't be a bad idea either. Then you'd find someone named Peachy asking if piracy would be a problem if you could pirate anything you'd like, to which I asked if they could demonstrate how it was a problem using numbers, since that should be possible if it was an actual problem, right?
And it seems like an even more silly thing to say when we have examples of games that are really easy to pirate being really successful. Not only that but there are also plenty of games that sell a lot copies before it even gets released.
A prime example of this is The Witcher 3.
https://youtu.be/NWhTLvNEYbQ?t=14m39s
14:39
“and still we sold near to 10 million units across all 3 platforms. But the piracy factor was irrelevant, because we cannot force people to buy things.”
Probably one of the only game companies that imo actually understands the average gaming consumer. Not to mention they released shit loads of free DLC.
Hell, I even had a friend that initially pirated TW3 because he initially thought it would be shit, and then after playing it for a few hours he bought it twice as a good gesture to the devs...
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