In what will be the first of a series of posts discussing the issue of internet piracy, I'm going to talk about an issue I thought of a few days ago: who are we trying to support when buying a product, and who are we hurting when pirating files?
In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I do pirate music and the occasional application (such as the Adobe suite of programs including Photoshop, Premiere, and Flash). I do not pirate comics (with one sole exception I'll mention in a later post) because I care about the medium too much; I do not pirate movies because I'm scared shitless of the MPAA, and I have only pirated one game, Fallout 3, which was the impetus for this post.
I downloaded a cracked copy of Fallout 3 over the past weekend. As I was downloading it, I felt a twinge of guilt that I wasn't helping to support Bethesda Software. While I don't have any loyalty to the company, as I've never played one of their games (unlike Valve, whose software I will always pay for regardless of their copy protection software), I do think it's awfully low to avoid paying for a game that a large team of developers spent years of their lives working on. But I downloaded it anyway.
Then I thought, “I'm only feeling guilty about this because I'm not giving money to the developers” But the previous weekend I had bought a used copy of LEGO Star Wars II for 10 bucks at a used bookstore, and that sure as hell didn't get any money to Traveler's Tales. So that made me stop and think. When we buy games used, for far cheaper, the only people we're supporting is the reseller. In a case like the local used place I bought LEGO Star Wars, I'll happily support a great business. But do we really want to support a massive corporation like GameStop?
In buying new, I figure the money is essentially spent on two things: 1) supporting the developer, which is a completely legitimate and worthy cause, and 2) having the right to play the game as soon as it's released. But buying the game used trades the right to timely enjoyment for a much more palatable cost; however, it also trades supporting the developer for supporting GameStop.
Now, GameStop and its supposed crimes against nerd-dorm is a topic for another time, but clearly developers should have priority over GameStop in the line to receive your money. So if the goal of buying a game is to support the developer, which I think it ultimately should be, buying used and pirating the game are the same in terms of the developer's revenue. I would argue that, if you plan to wait 6 months to play the game when it's used for cheap, you may as well just pirate the game and enjoy it on its day of release (or as soon as the pirates crack it).
Obviously this doesn't apply to direct downloads from the developer, such as Valve's Steam system, which is both more convenient and removes the retailer's cut. Theoretically this should decrease the cost of games, both due to the lack of discs and packaging and the lack of a middleman, but if it means increased revenue for the developers that's OK too. But if you're going to buy used from GameStop, you're having the same impact on the developers as if you were simply pirating the game in the first place.
--The Almeister
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