Google: Piracy is An Availability and Pricing Problem

[Misanthrope]

Source?

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/174587/

[RelentlessAF]

especialy since there is no physical media so no shiping costs or cost to put it in a store! now if it were 10 cents a song or what ever I probably wouldnt pirate but I have around 1500 songs and that times 1.29 is 1925 im not spending 2 grand for FREAKING SONGS!

My girlfriend and her sister have each together spent $3000 on songs, they don't even know what pirating is and when I told them about it they thought it was too complicated. Non-techies at their best.

[LePawel]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/174587/

Thanks, my bad, good to know the sales are so powerful. Although I assume this drives assholes like Kingdom Rush devs to release the game for £7.00 on steam, while it's at less than £0.59 on play store, and then put it on -50% "sale".

But I guess there's no silver bullet eh...

[MatheusSanzo]

No shit.

[Snickerzz]

especialy since there is no physical media so no shiping costs or cost to put it in a store! now if it were 10 cents a song or what ever I probably wouldnt pirate but I have around 1500 songs and that times 1.29 is 1925 im not spending 2 grand for FREAKING SONGS!

i used to think that too but now think about the cost of server, bandwidth, maintenance, power, ect ect but i do agree 2k is to much

[LePawel]

we should come up with prices that sound fair, and as consumers, demand this, instead of just complaining about it.

 

 

how about $0.40 for a song

$7-12 for a movie

$20-30 for a AAA video game

and no piece of video editing software should be more than $200...

why is MS office still $500 if you want the whole thing? i say $150.

Any professional software is expensive to a standard consumer, 3DS Max goes into £3000+ and then upgrades cost half of that on yearly basis for new versions. But when you spend over $250 million on some AAA title, and you need let's say 50 licenses without upgrades, 150K is equivelant to a price of 5-6 devs for a year. They have their target markets, and we are not one of them.

[Admire]

Netflix would have never ever happened without piracy. Piracy forced them to reform, and look where they are now.

 

Netflix was not even in my country 2 years ago, now its the sixth biggest tv option in terms of viewers. I know tons of people who have stopped downloading movies now because of Netflix and stopped downloading music because of spotify.

 

Its a massive pricing issue and always has been.

 

 

Any professional software is expensive to a standard consumer, 3DS Max goes into £3000+ and then upgrades cost half of that on yearly basis for new versions. But when you spend over $250 million on some AAA title, and you need let's say 50 licenses without upgrades, 150K is equivelant to a price of 5-6 devs for a year. They have their target markets, and we are not one of them.

 

And I honestly think that the work that goes into software like that is enormous.....Its a professional software.

[Eroda]

this is what ive said so many times, in this fast paced iformation era having somethign air in another country but having to wait 6 - 8 months to see it is stupid. GOT is the most pirated show in AU i think AU ranks the highest for pirating it.. mainly because we cannot see it the same day it airs in america if it was on TV within hours of it airing in the US piracy would drop. if i had access to netflix type of service where i could watch the shows/ movies i wanted to watch whenever i wanted after they air or at the same time they air i would happily pay for it

[Misanthrope]

Netflix would have never ever happened without piracy. 

Damn near perfect quote, you win some cookies!

[Misanthrope]

this is what ive said so many times, in this fast paced iformation era having somethign air in another country but having to wait 6 - 8 months to see it is stupid. GOT is the most pirated show in AU i think AU ranks the highest for pirating it.. mainly because we cannot see it the same day it airs in america if it was on TV within hours of it airing in the US piracy would drop. if i had access to netflix type of service where i could watch the shows/ movies i wanted to watch whenever i wanted after they air or at the same time they air i would happily pay for it

 

Same day? Some shows are movies are not available for months here in Latin America, regardless of whenever you speak fluid English and don't need subtitles or dubbing or not (which is the chief excuse given) 

[lufihengr]

$6-8 for a movie ticket?! I have to pay $12 minimum, and that's if it isn't a "3D" or IMAX version.

 

Even then, I just sneak in food and candy.

We pay the same but in euros........... 12 euros for a ticket. ~15 dollars

[Murdoch]

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I no longer pirate music, because legal services such as Spotify have finally caught up with what is available via piracy.

Illegal services absolutely paved the way for that to happen. The BitTorrent tracker Oink was established in 2004, it was a revolution in terms of distribution. A massive library of music, literally anything you could think of, in any format you wanted, ridiculously fast speeds, and an awesome community. A bunch of music lovers, at odds with the music industry, not because they didn't want to support it, but because there was no legal service that came close to what was created there.

I realised at that point, there was no going back, and the music industry would have to adapt. And I'm glad to say, they seem to have done that now.

The TV and movie industry are still lagging behind. Excessive pricing, and lack of availability on streaming services mean that piracy is often the best choice. There are private BitTorrent trackers that simply offer better access to new shows and movies, higher quality encodes, and coupled with services like plex / xbmc, an overall better consumer experience. I have a Netflix account, and applaud what they are doing, but if I want to watch an HBO show, the day it's released the only way I can do that is by resorting to piracy.

[Admire]

I p

 

We pay the same but in euros........... 12 euros for a ticket. ~15 dollars

 

 

Roughly the same here. 16 dollars.

[Askew]

I don't pirate games, but I do pirate everything else, music costs too much if I bought every song I have on my drives I would literally be able to buy a house or pay for all the music with the amount it would cost.

[JaeDee884]

loving all the americans in here complaining about pricing, its cute

I pay $20 a ticket, $30 for 3D
all our pricing has its tax included cause its all national as well. 
$30 for 900 channels???? https://www.foxtel.com.au/shop/packages-and-deals/?execution=e1s1 we pay $49 for 41 channels in Australia on the only cable/satellite service. 
all the streaming services in Australia have access to old movies, no tv shows or anything, I've got a DNS service and netflix which is an amazing deal, the only competitive option is Play.google.com, Itunes and renting movies off PSN
I'd happily pay $15 a month for an Australian Netflix with the quality and quantity of the American one.

[BloodySinner]

especialy since there is no physical media so no shiping costs or cost to put it in a store! now if it were 10 cents a song or what ever I probably wouldnt pirate but I have around 1500 songs and that times 1.29 is 1925 im not spending 2 grand for FREAKING SONGS!

 

If you're not willing to pay the artist for their work, then you have no business stealing their stuff. After all, they're just freaking songs, right?

[LAwLz]

If you're not willing to pay the artist for their work, then you have no business stealing their stuff. After all, they're just freaking songs, right?

Ehh... What? Are you saying that it would be OK to "steal" the song if you were willing to pay the artist? That makes it even worse if you ask me, because they would pretty much lose a sale.

[BloodySinner]

Ehh... What? Are you saying that it would be OK to "steal" the song if you were willing to pay the artist? That makes it even worse if you ask me, because they would pretty much lose a sale.

 

If you're not willing to pay for a product, then don't steal it. That's what I meant in the first post.

[LAwLz]

If you're not willing to pay for a product, then don't steal it. That's what I meant in the first post.

So if you are willing to pay for a product, it is OK to illegally download it?

Or do you mean that it is never OK to download something?

[Ertman]

They are essentially correct. There will always be those that pirate, but widespread availability at low prices, converts most into purchasers and partipators in the economy.

[Misanthrope]

If you're not willing to pay the artist for their work, then you have no business stealing their stuff. After all, they're just freaking songs, right?

 

That'd be a half reasonable argument if record labels were willing to pay artists for their work: they'd be lucky if they get 5% If they're small enough maybe you can truly help em out by going to their live shows but most likely they're making next to fucking nothing after expenses, to the point  that most artists now carry their own merchandise (tshirts and such) to make end's meet.

So yeah, good sentiment, though luck all around, maybe if we could get rid of the fucking middlemen we don't need anymore thanks to digital distribution things would be better off, once again thanks to piracy services like Spotify exists and might give artists a fighting chance.

[AHaskin14]

i buy my games and music because i love game developers and musicians but i could care less if hollywood loses money so i pirate movies no regrets.

[bronsonp4htdude123455]

If you're not willing to pay the artist for their work, then you have no business stealing their stuff. After all, they're just freaking songs, right?

ok well what about this am i going to go to a store and buy a cd? yes I wouldnt steal I am listening to music..... (not helping m self) ok how about this do you go to youtube and listen to music ? the same concept im not hurting anyone im not selling bootlegged copys etc 1 its hard to find the music i want and 2 its RETARDED to spend 1.29 for one song how much of that goes to the artist like i said i have no problem paying for things if 1 they were more redily available and 2 werent so danmed expesive ! i digress but on the youtube thing the reson i mentioned that is do you think the person who made the video payed for it on itunes? youre high....

cheers

[Ryoku]

How about 75% discount or basically 4 games for the price of 1? A lot of those same people now purchase games on steam sales when possible. It's not hard to comprehend that people have budgets and limited resources and if they had no option to pirate they just wouldn't play games at all or at least not as many of them.

Human nature is largely dictated by circumstances and poor availability and ridiculous prices are certainly mitigating factors.

what you said fits me perfectly, I was unemployed for awhile and had to pirate stuff. Once I got ajob again I bought like $300+ in steam/origin sale games. pretty much everything I pirated and liked.

[DonPOETA]

what you said fits me perfectly, I was unemployed for awhile and had to pirate stuff. Once I got ajob again I bought like $300+ in steam/origin sale games. pretty much everything I pirated and liked.

 

This!

 

Piracy is a form of quality control that gives everyone a chance to test the product personally before money changes hands without relying on totalbiscuit and co. This could be fixed if all games are free for lets say 2 hours at launch, but this will never happen becouse EA and the likes want to sell their shitty games too (90%+). Statistics show that the so called pirates spend more money on content than consumers who "never pirated anything". Problem is pirates only buy productus they already know they like.

 

Price is also a major factor. For a digital copy to have the same price as a physical one is just insanely ridiculous and the price diffrence for the same products in different regions even more so. I still remember how by the time my pre-ordered copy of ME3 DD showed up in my origin account I was half way through the pirated version of game.

 

In conclusion piracy FTW!

 

Buy only quality content and never pre-order!