The Plight of Gaming Piracy
by Matthew Latino
It is not hard to see that outside of Japan and Korea that the PSP is not doing so well. Not only because of its sparse collection of good games but also due to rampant piracy. The piracy has actually become so severe that it has created a negative spiral for the platform, causing most third party developers, according to Sony’s senior vice president of marketing Peter Dille to be “…just about ready to jump off the cliff and pull support…” Dille goes onto to say in a interview he had with Gamasutra that:
“It’s not good for us, but it’s not good for the development community. We can look at data from BitTorrent sites from the day Resistance: Retribution goes on sale and see how many copies are being downloaded illegally, and it’s frankly sickening.”
According to him, Sony attributes the loss in sales revenue due to the fact that older versions of its firmware, which can be easily hacked and modded (and has been happening the beginning of the PSP’s launch) are still readily available and it is almost impossible to compel users to upgrade. In addition, Sony also claims to be trying to close the piracy gaps so that piracy doesn’t affect this year’s titles [Ed. Note: Sony's had some brief luck in closing off version 5.50 of the PSP firmware]. Still, in the information age situations like these are not uncommon, they’re almost expected.
In many cases, piracy has become far cheaper to get into than actually buying games.
Piracy has been at the forefront of gaming politics for most every system for a few years now, but it is only with the success of services like BitTorrent and devices like the R4 and other DS flashcarts that have really put a damper on videogame sales. For example GTA: Chinatown Wars also did not meet its expected sales by significant numbers due to the readily available downloads and the cheap price of DS flashcarts. It does not end with portable market, Xbox 360 games are also heavily pirated, although to a much lesser extent due to the requirement to physically modify your system, and of course who could forget the various ROMs for older systems and the PC warez scene (most recently being in the news for the Demigod fiasco) that are constantly passed around file sharing sites like a steaming plate of paella. But what can developers do to prevent rampant piracy? From where I stand there are very few options.
They could convert their medium to proprietary formats like Sony’s Blu-ray discs for PS3, which has seen a rather minute amount of piracy since its launch; however, developers cannot just change the hardware of their systems and hope everyone will make the change. It would be naïve if they believed that would actually work. They could add lock out codes or chips into the games themselves, but pirates have always found ways around this method since the days of the SNES. I am sorry that I at the moment cannot think of another logical method to prevent the problem, but I really do not see any other way that is even feasible.
Look, I am one of those people who loves the industry enough to always buy his or her games. Sure with the influx of so many new titles I mostly find myself buying games used to save me some dough (which is another argument in and of itself that faces the industry, but that is a story for another time) but even if I want to try a game people say is good I never look towards piracy. Sure I own an R4, but I only have two games on it: One being the Pokemon Trading Card Game for the Gameboy Color (whose original cartridge’s internal battery have been known to fail and thus cannot save your progress) and a fan translation of Mother 3 (which is the only way I am going to be able to play and enjoy it until Nintendo realizes that we “deserve” to see Mother again). I admit by having these two games that there are certain situations that make piracy almost necessary in order to play a game, but when a game just comes out there is no moral reason to download it for free. Let it be known that the current recession should not make this act acceptable as piracy was done before and will still be done after we pass this moment in history.
By downloading games for free people are hurting the industry, preventing certain games from getting sequels and even keeping newer projects from seeing the light of day. How can videogames evolve as a medium if it is constantly being held back by piracy? I know the same can be said about movies, music, television and even books but at least those mediums had enough time to exist in a period where piracy as we now know it (on the Internet) was even possible. I know I cannot sway the gaming public with the words I write here today as I end this article feeling nothing but the sheer weight of pessimism that surrounds the situation. I can only hope that the future of gaming can at least withstand this issue until a true solution is found.
I'm wondering where the backup source is for this statement: "For example GTA: Chinatown Wars also did not meet its expected sales by significant numbers due to the readily available downloads and the cheap price of DS flashcarts." Really? Is this verifiable? Or conjecture?
Well the source comes from The Business Insider: http://tinyurl.com/d8tdc2
I do not know how liable they are, especially now that certain video game websites have om under fire due to false information. Still I do not think we should worry as March was a terrible month for game sales "supposedly".
I think he's saying that blaming the sales on piracy isn't quite a fair point – it may be more emblematic of the DS' seeming second-class status that gamers won't go pick up a new AAA-level 3rd party DS game right off the bat, or that mature games don't necessarily sell on the DS than anything to do with piracy.
Yeah, exactly. Pointing to poor sales, then blaming "piracy" without any numbers or serious correlative data to back that up seems like just another excuse for bad sales, and not a correlation.
While I just wanted to use Chinatown Wars as an example, I totally agree that Rockstar was way too hopeful with the sales projections. You are not going to generate the same amount of revenue on a handheld which is focused more to kids, as you would on one with a more mature audience, no matter how good the game actually is.
Damn you Matthewwww! I had an article addressing specifically GTA's lack of sales in the pipeline. I'll have to be more creative next time. x[
I have to agree with the statement, as those that are interested in Chinatown Wars will be those that are mature gamers (because of the rating), and those that are into hardcore titles. Therefore, it is a logical conclusion that the majority of the audience will be at least aware of the problem of piracy, if not actual piracy products themselves, for the DS platform. And since especially in the UK,you can find a Flashcart including an SD card with delivery, cheaper than going into a store and buying the original cartridge, it's a more attractive option than sinking money into games you may not even like.
Don't forget that Nintendo are /very/ strict on who to offer rental licenses to as well, ergo you can't rent games on Ninty's platforms as readily as you would a 360 or PS3 game. having said that, the PSP's situation is identical, but I would guess that the reason for that, is the fragile nature of the UMD medium.
It boils down to this: You've shelled out £120 (or £150 if you bought a DSi [You silly man, you. : P]), and then you have to pay £30 a pop for games for it, or you pay £25 for a flashcart that plays games and can run other programs as well. I myself use mine as a movie player for DVDs I already have.
First off, great article. I'm not quite sure that I agree with everything you say – the community that participates in game piracy is usually a vocal minority, and pirates will naturally consume more content than the average consumer since they can get everything for free, so I think that the piracy rates tend to get inflated by that fact. There are a lot of people buying flashcarts to download all their games and people modding their PSPs for that purpose – but it's not as if it's a majority of system owners doing it, and there is still the specific hardware requirement, and in the US no large retailers sell these (well, beyond Datel's products for DS, but running actual DS games on those was for all intents and purposes not possible), unlike in Japan and Hong Kong where the PSP and DS are both still very successful.
Also, any complaints about the PSP piracy over the end of 2008 should be mitigated by the fact that the PSP's lineup sucked pretty much right after Crisis Core came out until some good games started to come out this year. Honestly, that the PSP still even sells in the same ballpark as the DS is miraculous, although looking at the sales numbers, it really tells you just how Nintendo dominates through the evergreen titles. It's also why I'm not so worried about GTA in the long run (well, at least after hearing others say this) – other big sellers on the DS (including Call of Duty 4 DS) haven't sold well at first but in the long run have picked up steam. I could definitely see GTA:CW being one of those games. Hopefully, at least – it's probably my favorite GTA game due to the sheer playability of it.
Yup. I own a flashCart and a GBA flashCart, to play Mother3, which never came out in the states. I had to get those things to apply the fan translation and just play the game. If I was able to buy it from an importer, I would, but htose are all sold out (the ones I checked, anyway). Flashcart ≠ automatically equal piracy, thoguh it does help. :)
I will admit to being slightly melodramatic at points but I still think this is a pressing issue in the community at large. I also see Chinatown Wars in the Top Twenty for a long while as it is a definite worth it title. I have always been befuddled by the amount of hardware sales in Asia, it seems like everyone owns 5 DS/i and 3 PSPs, it also might be the fact that videogames are much more integrated into their culture than ours.
Great article.
I own flash carts for my GBA and my DS and already have one on the way for my DSi. I still buy all my games new, though. I use the flash carts to keep me from needing to carry 30 games with me wherever I go. As it’s been mentioned, I even bought a Japanese copy of Mother 3 so my ROM is quite legal :)
There are legitimate uses for these devices and ROM sites that have nothing to do with piracy. That said, pirates suck. Buy your games if you like them :P