[INTERESTING ARTICLE; See Page 8] Discussion: Thoughts on Piracy

[Your Computer]

Here's something else somewhat different that this post brought to my mind though: What if the said software has great learning value to it, but is too expensive? I'm mainly talking about the Adobe suite products. Many of them will play fundamental roles in future in jobs of people who wish to pursue such careers. The price tag however for each of the products is absurd, and definitely not aimed at your average consumer.

Here's what one of my friends, who is a very talented animator/artist in areas of Flash had to say on the matter:

Programs on the other hand are often hard to actually pay for, simply because they are aimed at companies and are way too expensive for a regular person that's just curious to learn. Though, I think the makers of the programs realize this though, and secretly encourages piracy in that aspect. The persons that have the software learns the products, making the companies with the money pay for the licences further down the road.

If a company wishes to stick with a product that they require their employees to know but is too expensive for the average employee, said company should therefore be forced to teach their employees how to use said program, or simply shutdown their company. If there is no legal way for employees to learn the required tools, then the company should either fail (which would therefore hurt, e.g., Adobe as well), or find some other solution to get the job done that is affordable to the average employee, if they choose not to teach their employees for the more expensive products. In either case, a company like Adobe would be forced to bring down their prices or fail along with their clients or fail due to competition.

Bring piracy into the equation, and the prices will remain high--and may even raise--and competition would be that much less. Companies like Autodesk took a reasonable approach by giving away student licenses for free. This gives them a somewhat safe position in the market place. Other companies don't have to follow suit, but if they wish to stay in business, they'd better have a similar solution to offer to potential employees of their clients. You could argue that piracy helped keep the business in business. But why should we assume that they would not have been able to stay in business without piracy?

Take piracy out of the equation, and the premises lead to better conclusions than what piracy would have lead to.

Even if a company doesn't care for its consumers, and has the silliest policies, it doesn't mean that their games fall into the same class of not deserving your approval. It might not even have been the developer's call. Let's make another assumption: Say Visceral Games developed a new Dead Space game, it's very good, and they have perfect confidence in a demo. EA however is scared that releasing demo might scare off potential consumers after they try the demo, and discover they don't like it, so they shut down the option, even though a demo would've worked fine. Now the only way for consumers to first-handedly know if the game is good is to pirate it. If that hadn't existed either, then the only people who would buy the game confidently knowing that it's a good purchase would've have been people who were already familiar with the game developer's quality, and their friends. Newcomers would be far less because of the lack of being able to try.

Now I know that one may argue that that was the company's fault for losing sales for not having included a demo. But think about this: This fault would've meant many people would've missed out on what they had not yet discovered to be a good product. This shame could easily be averted with piracy in moderate levels, and would raise the general awareness of the existence, and quality of such a product.

In a more personal case, I know a few friends who would not have bought Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, despite it's great reviews, had they not pirated it in the first place. It didn't have a demo, does that mean Skyrim is not worth your time? I wouldn't say so.

I accept that a company, after releasing an epic game, may (and therefore does) decide to change their policy for their upcoming game for whatever reason. The aforementioned epic game brought in lots of income due to its entertainment value and the impression it gave and left with the consumer. This implies that they may very well be able to get away with not providing a demo and just rely on advertisements to promote demand. Though i find it odd for a company to attempt to reduce risk by increasing risk, this hypothetical company already has market presence within the gaming community, and so the outcome is questionable and consumers don't have to assume "If no demo, then not worth my time." In my previous post i was under the impression of a company that had little to no market presence, and therefore the company and its products are more of a risk to the consumer than the current scenario you bring up.

If the consumer believes that a "want" is a "need" though knowing of potential risks, then that is to their own foolishness. It's a digital product; supplies aren't going anywhere. The game company has a market presence, which means there's going to be plenty of information out there to substitute for a demo, since there will be plenty of others that it won't be a risk for. Piracy can be safely left out of the equation. I would find it amazing and absurd that a user is too incompetent to find general information about a game yet somehow manages to obtain a "pirated" copy of the game.

While there was no demo for Skyrim, there was enough information out there to substitute a demo. Ignoring information is not the same as there being no information.