Taking games from the market

[Wictorian]

Why do some companies take their games from the market?

[Sauron]

If you mean remove, the reason is copyright. If the company goes under and doesn't find someone to buy the rights to their games sometimes they'll just remove them from stores since noone is left to collect the money. Yet more reasons to abolish copyright.

[Wictorian]

Thanks for reply.

[Giganthrax]

On 12/16/2019 at 5:58 PM, Sauron said:

Yet more reasons to abolish copyright.

Haha, what?

 

What a wonderful world it would be where a company could release a great lovingly-crafted game, only to then immediately have a bunch of trash studios freely make sequels to that game or directors like Uwe Boll make movies based on those games.  

 

Oh right, that wouldn't happen because no games would ever be made because everyone would be copying them at home and selling the copies for pennies.

[Sauron]

8 hours ago, Giganthrax said:

Haha, what?

 

What a wonderful world it would be where a company could release a great lovingly-crafted game, only to then immediately have a bunch of trash studios freely make sequels to that game or directors like Uwe Boll make movies based on those games.  

 

Oh right, that wouldn't happen because no games would ever be made because everyone would be copying them at home and selling the copies for pennies.

Except no, because as you say there would be a big difference between a "lovingly crafted" game and low effort shovelware. So what if there are copycats? And it's not like copyright prevents them, either - do you have any idea how many minecraft clones there are that are virtually identical in the base concept and differ only in name? There are also games and movies that don't copyright their name and share it with plenty of other games, that has never been a problem. Did you know there's a movie called "Frozen" that has nothing to do with the Disney one? Imagine if they had copyrighted that name before Disney... I guess we'd have Elsa from "Freezing" now?

 

As for home copies, that literally already happens for free - do you think piracy doesn't exist just because it's technically illegal? People can and do copy and redistribute games and all sorts of other stuff, and yet the industry is making more money than ever. Why? Because people are willing to pay for services and convenience, even if they have the option not to. In an industry liberated from copyright you'd make money off of convenient distribution and availability rather than by keeping art hostage.

 

Of course that would make companies like EA or Disney a lot less money, but who cares? Who gives them the right to profit indefinitely from things they didn't make and got the "rights" to from underpaid staff that actually put in their talent? Why do we have to withstand turf wars on what art can be accessed on which service under which conditions just so that already uberwealthy billionaires can sit on even more cash they don't need without giving an extra penny to the people who actually made that art?

 

I know it feels counterintuitive to you, after all like everyone else you've been fed copyright propaganda your whole life. What if I told you there are already huge communities that have successfully operated for decades without copyrighting their work? Have you ever heard of Linux?

[Giganthrax]

19 hours ago, Sauron said:

Except no, because as you say there would be a big difference between a "lovingly crafted" game and low effort shovelware. So what if there are copycats? And it's not like copyright prevents them, either - do you have any idea how many minecraft clones there are that are virtually identical in the base concept and differ only in name? There are also games and movies that don't copyright their name and share it with plenty of other games, that has never been a problem. Did you know there's a movie called "Frozen" that has nothing to do with the Disney one? Imagine if they had copyrighted that name before Disney... I guess we'd have Elsa from "Freezing" now?

 

As for home copies, that literally already happens for free - do you think piracy doesn't exist just because it's technically illegal? People can and do copy and redistribute games and all sorts of other stuff, and yet the industry is making more money than ever. Why? Because people are willing to pay for services and convenience, even if they have the option not to. In an industry liberated from copyright you'd make money off of convenient distribution and availability rather than by keeping art hostage.

 

Of course that would make companies like EA or Disney a lot less money, but who cares? Who gives them the right to profit indefinitely from things they didn't make and got the "rights" to from underpaid staff that actually put in their talent? Why do we have to withstand turf wars on what art can be accessed on which service under which conditions just so that already uberwealthy billionaires can sit on even more cash they don't need without giving an extra penny to the people who actually made that art?

 

I know it feels counterintuitive to you, after all like everyone else you've been fed copyright propaganda your whole life. What if I told you there are already huge communities that have successfully operated for decades without copyrighting their work? Have you ever heard of Linux?

Dude, the moment any movie/series is made, a single copy would be bought by someone, ripped, and then put up on YouTube for everyone to watch in glorious 4K. The makers would make zero money.  

 

Same for games. Literally without copywrite anyone could make a website, put up games for free direct download, and make money off of ads. And no, piracy isn't the same thing because piracy is literally illegal. 

 

And copycat game aren't the same as there being 50 different games called Red Dead Redemption designed to all look alike in order to fool people into buying wrong stuff (not that anyone would buy it because without copyrights it would all be freely available online on major websites anyway and all the studios would go broke). 

[Sauron]

2 hours ago, Giganthrax said:

Dude, the moment any movie/series is made, a single copy would be bought by someone, ripped, and then put up on YouTube for everyone to watch in glorious 4K. The makers would make zero money. 

Dude, this is literally possible right now. Publishers still make boatloads of money. They would make even more if drm didn't make paying for something a worse experience than pirating it. Also, movies make the vast majority of their revenue in cinemas - which cannot be substituted by a youtube upload.

 

I don't even need to argue in hypotheticals, there is plenty of foss or otherwise DRM free art, games included, that still makes money. GoG literally only sells DRM free games and yet people choose to buy them, because it's more convenient. It wouldn't even be illegal to share copies of those games for free.

2 hours ago, Giganthrax said:

And copycat game aren't the same as there being 50 different games called Red Dead Redemption designed to all look alike in order to fool people into buying wrong stuff

Again, for plenty of games this is possible right now and yet it doesn't seem to be killing the games industry. Every point you're trying to make can be debunked simply by example. I don't think the word "portal" is copyrighted and yet I don't see a swarm of games called "portal" trying to fool customers.

[Giganthrax]

18 hours ago, Sauron said:

Dude, this is literally possible right now. Publishers still make boatloads of money. They would make even more if drm didn't make paying for something a worse experience than pirating it. Also, movies make the vast majority of their revenue in cinemas - which cannot be substituted by a youtube upload.

 

I don't even need to argue in hypotheticals, there is plenty of foss or otherwise DRM free art, games included, that still makes money. GoG literally only sells DRM free games and yet people choose to buy them, because it's more convenient. It wouldn't even be illegal to share copies of those games for free.

Again, for plenty of games this is possible right now and yet it doesn't seem to be killing the games industry. Every point you're trying to make can be debunked simply by example. I don't think the word "portal" is copyrighted and yet I don't see a swarm of games called "portal" trying to fool customers.

People buy stuff instead of pirating it because piracy is illegal and often punishable.

 

No you can't upload a movie you dont have rights to to youtube because it'll be taken down because, again, it's illegal.

 

And the reason movies make most of their money in cinemas is precisely because of the exclusivity imposed by the studios and distributors (that's why it takes a few months for movies to come to bluray/netflix). They do this because they know the movies would be pirated or one bluray would be watched by 20 people.

 

If you remove copyright, all that is gone.

 

Copyright is there to protect the rights of the creators. If you created something that people want, you need to have your ownership protected by law.