Peter Moore warns against suing filesharers

untill those morons start chraging a reasonable price for whatever cd they're selling i'm only buying cd's from the few musical groups i support.
I mean come on 25euro for a cd that actually costs 5 euro to make. those no good celebrities need a profit of 20euro's for each cd? I guess not. The entire music industry is one giant rip off. Why do celebrities have to make more than 1million a month? granted they are gifted (some of them) but the amount of money they get is insane. make cd's 10 euro a pice maximum and my entire collection will be legal.
a game however is different most of my games if not all are legal because u know they make a reasonable profit.

Some of those calebrities do not deserve the money they make.

I basically pirate all my games and if I like the game ans if ti has reasonable price I buy it, but I'll never pay for over priced 6h playtime games. I really fall in love with the digital distribution too as it offer easy and cheap access to the games.

i used to do the same grasshopper, until they slapped a 500 quid court order on me.

needless to say i have stopped downloading games - perhaps a case in point?

He is spot on with what he says about learning from the mistakes of the music industry. The way they handled things just showed to many people how out of touch they are, and how they only really care about making as much money as they can squeeze out of people without very much concern about what they are offering. I'd hate to see the games industry carry on along the "almighty dollar" route, although its already a goodly way along that, churning out copy and paste crap as movie tie ins and kids games, just like the music industry churns out repetetive pop.
I don't pirate games as i like to think the games studios and developers get a decent cut of what they make, and honestly believe that the cost of producing a game is far greater than that of producing an album. Not having any inside knowledge of the industry i dont know if thats the case or a fantasy, but its what i tend to think.
The one thing i STILL dont understand is the huge price difference between console and PC games - if anyone knows why that is i'd love an explanation - surely dev costs cant be higher for consoles, as even if its harder to write, they skip all the hassle of supporting multiple pc configs/drivers/input devices etc. I tend to think that price hike is purely because consoles are a captive market and harder to pirate to get around being ripped off, whereas PC games if they charge too much ppl will just download.

they have to pay the licensee in order to develop a game for a console

Originally Posted by anduril
untill those morons start chraging a reasonable price for whatever cd they're selling i'm only buying cd's from the few musical groups i support.
I mean come on 25euro for a cd that actually costs 5 euro to make. those no good celebrities need a profit of 20euro's for each cd? I guess not. The entire music industry is one giant rip off. Why do celebrities have to make more than 1million a month? granted they are gifted (some of them) but the amount of money they get is insane. make cd's 10 euro a pice maximum and my entire collection will be legal.
a game however is different most of my games if not all are legal because u know they make a reasonable profit.

Try itunes or one of the many other mp3 sites. 99 cents/pence really isn't asking a lot. And £8 for an album really isn't asking a lot either. Remember, it's not just the cost of the CD, there's everything else in between like advertising, radio play, studio production/video production, royalties, all the middlemen etc etc the list goes on. Oh, and don't forget, the idea is to try and make a profit too. I agree with alot of what Moore says here, he seems to have his head screwed on. Another article I read earlier talked about how the only major games headlines that make mainstream news are either piracy or violence in games - games need o have better press, like, SERIOUSLY better press

Sell it online for half the price. Yes they can because they do not need to pay for boxes/cd's/dvd's/distribution/booklets/stores/etc. that is put on the customer. And with your personal ID you can redownload the games you have bought any time you want. hey wait a minute! thats sounds almost like Steam....

Originally Posted by crompers
they have to pay the licensee in order to develop a game for a console

that really accounts for £15 difference per game? wow....

thats how nintendo, sony and microsoft make all those lovely readies my friend

Originally Posted by Tris
that really accounts for £15 difference per game? wow....

Probably since that's where Sony/MS make there money.

And any one who buys music from most of the digital distribution systems really is setting them selves up for a fall. Buy CD's they cost the same (mostly) as an album from iTunes and are distributed in a ISO standard format that can be played on equipment ranging from brand new to twenty years old. Try that on your iTunes album/ Zune.

Does this mean that pirating any EA published game is basically risk free... This changes everything :D

I think he has the right idea though, they need to stop the causes of piracy not just punish the pirates.

Let me give you an example, I never bought the orange box when it was new because of the price, instead I played ep1 and 2 on a friends steam account (how legal/illegal, moral/immoral that is we can save for another day), but the other day I noticed it was now at £25 everywhere, so when I went into tescos I saw it for £25 and made my way to the till, along with orange nail varnish and lip gloss for my GF, we must have looked mad with all the orange stuff. But when it went through the till it was £15, I thought "feck yeah". So after that purchase I went to see if there where any other £15 games.

Unfortunately there was not, at least not any worth buying, but my point is I would have gladly bought 2 games for £30, but I would not have bought 1 game for £30. So is a sale at half the price worse than no sale at all, somehow I don't think so.

Originally Posted by sotu1
Try itunes or one of the many other mp3 sites. 99 cents/pence really isn't asking a lot. And £8 for an album really isn't asking a lot either. Remember, it's not just the cost of the CD, there's everything else in between like advertising, radio play, studio production/video production, royalties, all the middlemen etc etc the list goes on. Oh, and don't forget, the idea is to try and make a profit too. I agree with alot of what Moore says here, he seems to have his head screwed on. Another article I read earlier talked about how the only major games headlines that make mainstream news are either piracy or violence in games - games need o have better press, like, SERIOUSLY better press

I totally agree, most people thing that the celebrities are making 99.99% of profit when infact there are studios to pay, staff to pay, equipment to pay for, maintenance costs, licencing fees, and endless other costs. Any music/games you are looking at today I see as a very fair price for the time put into the product. :(

by the way, ars technica also did an article about this interview, where they touched on the fact that pc hardware manufacturers quite like piracy, as people who can get their content for free are happier to spend more on top notch components. Thought that was an interesting point.

Originally Posted by anduril
untill those morons start chraging a reasonable price for whatever cd they're selling i'm only buying cd's from the few musical groups i support.
I mean come on 25euro for a cd that actually costs 5 euro to make. those no good celebrities need a profit of 20euro's for each cd? I guess not. The entire music industry is one giant rip off. Why do celebrities have to make more than 1million a month? granted they are gifted (some of them) but the amount of money they get is insane. make cd's 10 euro a pice maximum and my entire collection will be legal.
a game however is different most of my games if not all are legal because u know they make a reasonable profit.

I think you seriously need to re-evaluate where you buy your music - €25 for a CD? I rarely pay more than £7-8 for a CD, either online or in-store, which is about the €10 you quote. Mostly you can get new releases online for £7.

Music: When non DRM lossless flac format is available to buy online with a service ala' steam so I can listen to music streamed from store or download to any pc I'll get back to purchasing music. Otherwise radio and mtv alike channels are fine for me....scratch radio, they play the same krub over and over

I'll buy a game when I know i'm going to play it again and again and get into multiplayer, ie Team Fortress n Portal or even commander keen which I all bought off steam.

Have I been transported to an alternative dimension where things have become slightly skewed from normal?

Since when did EA become the voice of reason?

We should be scared...very scared

Do a deal with Dell/Alienware and have free games bundled with the PC. Problem solved.

Originally Posted by mclean007

Quote:

Originally Posted by anduril
untill those morons start chraging a reasonable price for whatever cd they're selling i'm only buying cd's from the few musical groups i support.
I mean come on 25euro for a cd that actually costs 5 euro to make. those no good celebrities need a profit of 20euro's for each cd? I guess not. The entire music industry is one giant rip off. Why do celebrities have to make more than 1million a month? granted they are gifted (some of them) but the amount of money they get is insane. make cd's 10 euro a pice maximum and my entire collection will be legal.
a game however is different most of my games if not all are legal because u know they make a reasonable profit.

I think you seriously need to re-evaluate where you buy your music - €25 for a CD? I rarely pay more than £7-8 for a CD, either online or in-store, which is about the €10 you quote. Mostly you can get new releases online for £7.

u dont live in bullshit ripoff belgium.
then again the comment about itunes is right. things are cheaper there still i wonder what their profit margin is. since it costs virtullay nothing these days to distribute songs via itunes they must be making fortunes with it. granted it's cheaper but i still think it's too much.
and the 25 EURO for a cd isn't all that uncommon for a movie score. they rip u off when u genuinly love a genre that isn't adored by the repetitive pop-loving mob.

I went through a period in 2003-2004 when after getting my Xbox chipped and having discovered Bit Torrent, id download pretty much all my games for the console and for my Pc,.

at first it feels great to get something for free....you have beaten the system,
but then i would find myself playing these downloaded games for just 10 mins and then toss them aside and never return to them.....being 'free' they had no real value to me, i didnt appreciate them in the same i did for the games i had been buying previously...i just wanted to move onto the 'next big game'.....i never played any of the games (over 30 of them) i pirated to completion, which was a shame, i must have missed out on many great gaming moments.

Then in 2005, Battlefield 2 came out, which demanded a purchase for the online play, i played this for non stop for months and realised just how much enjoymnet this 'paid for' game gave me....at that point, my pirated booty went in the bin.

I havent pirated a game since.....my games collection is alot smaller, but much more valuable and enjoyable....

My games downloading is well and truly over.

Originally Posted by crompers
i used to do the same grasshopper, until they slapped a 500 quid court order on me.

needless to say i have stopped downloading games - perhaps a case in point?

This won't happen here, not soon any way B)
Anyway no one here can afford to buy every game he want to try as the salaries here are bloody small. I am able to buy games just because I work for foreign company and get some more cache.

The cost of an audio CD which sells well enough to enter the charts is about 2$. This includes copyright payments, recording costs, advertising etc.
The additional ~$18 goes straight into the record companies pockets as profit.
I don't particularly buy CDs anymore (I tend to use itunes or something like music2mix) but I thought I'd make it clear that they are still a rip off!

If I was sued over any downloads I have potentially on my box(es), I would instantly stop what I (might be) doing now, but at the same time they would also lose my custom. I tend to download via torrent to see if a product is to my liking, if not I bin it, if I enjoy it I have no problem with stumping up the cash.

Obviously those who are doing so for a free ride should perhaps reconsider their actions?

"i would find myself playing these downloaded games for just 10 mins and then toss them aside and never return to them"

perhaps you've also found out that out of 30 titles...not all are worth playing.
This ALSO demonstrates...not every pirated copy = one lost sold copy

Havent downloaded a single game this year though, and none the year before... no, not right...downloaded Shaiya..but it's free anyway

To continue on from anduril said earlier... the actual cost of making cd'd/dvd's is tiny compared to what we the consumers get charged for the actual content.

I think one of the easiest ways round this is to drop the cost of "purchasing" the game to a bare minimum and simply charge the consumer the cost of the license/key/serial/whatever mechanism.

So if you "lose" the physical media, you can purchase another at a dirt cheap price. Sure, slap on whatever anti-piracy measures they want (apart from SecuROM that stuff is rubbish) to protect the media, but use the key/license as the means of protecting it.

True, that will mean people might have to have a net connection to register their software, but they could offer a dial-up solution as well. That should pretty much guarantee a blanket coverage. So long as you have a registered bit of software, if you suffered some issue of losing your key/license or had a problem, calling them up would involve nothing more drastic than whatever security checks any local bank would use to ensure you are "you" when you call them up. I can't see what the problem is.

Nothing is 100% secure. Nothing is 100% copy-proof/pirate-proof. But super cheap media with a 1 time license fee makes better sense than dishing out £39 if you lose the media.

My take on it, anywaze...

I've only pirated two games, Gmod and HL2. HL2 I got as a freebee with a graphics card 2 years earlier but I lost the password to my Steam account so I lost it so I downloaded the pirated version. Then the Orange box came out and i got HL2 again but Gmod was starting to become outdated due to lack of updates so it wasn't compatible with the mods that the community had made for it so i got that one too after finishing all the HL series.

Pirates bundling games together created a new sale for Valve.

for once, my opinion of EA has actually improved.
keep it up, you sports game cloning buggers! (not sarcasm)

Originally Posted by Flibblebot
Have I been transported to an alternative dimension where things have become slightly skewed from normal?

Since when did EA become the voice of reason?

We should be scared...very scared

It's a trick! They want us all to pirate their games so they can fine us all!!!!

Originally Posted by summary
"If we learned anything from the music business, they just don't win any friends by suing their consumers," he observed. "Speaking personally, I think our industry does not want to fall foul of what happened with music."

Smart man.

I'll just say that they needed to make things a) reasonably priced and b) very accessible (no DRM, or at LEAST no more invasive than Steam). I never buy anything on the first day anymore, since I like to wait until all of the major bugs have been ironed out which never seems to be a 1.0 requirement anymore (oh yeah... c) make sure the games are playable). It also allows me to avoid all of those Bioshock-esque horror stories regarding copy protection and activation - I refuse outright to purchase games that treat me like a criminal.

Originally Posted by mmorgue
To continue on from anduril said earlier... the actual cost of making cd'd/dvd's is tiny compared to what we the consumers get charged for the actual content.

I think one of the easiest ways round this is to drop the cost of "purchasing" the game to a bare minimum and simply charge the consumer the cost of the license/key/serial/whatever mechanism.

So if you "lose" the physical media, you can purchase another at a dirt cheap price. Sure, slap on whatever anti-piracy measures they want (apart from SecuROM that stuff is rubbish) to protect the media, but use the key/license as the means of protecting it.

True, that will mean people might have to have a net connection to register their software, but they could offer a dial-up solution as well. That should pretty much guarantee a blanket coverage. So long as you have a registered bit of software, if you suffered some issue of losing your key/license or had a problem, calling them up would involve nothing more drastic than whatever security checks any local bank would use to ensure you are "you" when you call them up. I can't see what the problem is.

Nothing is 100% secure. Nothing is 100% copy-proof/pirate-proof. But super cheap media with a 1 time license fee makes better sense than dishing out £39 if you lose the media.

My take on it, anywaze...

maybe a system a la steam? maybe a system were you could request the game cd and case of a game you own at a nice price and delivered to your home?

Peter Moore is a genius!!!

Originally Posted by DXR_13KE
maybe a system a la steam? maybe a system were you could request the game cd and case of a game you own at a nice price and delivered to your home?

Peter Moore is a genius!!!

EA is actually working very hard on getting their version of steam to work properly (currently its still bloated crap), dont be surprised if the EA online store will be the main competition for steam in the near future.

wow, Kudos to Peter Moore for seeing reason here. I find now that I have a steady job I have less and less reason to bother with pirating games - too much hassle most of the time to find and often they come bundled with trojans 'n crap :-/

i never buy any secrom games, the new one that will not let you start if you have some sort of disk mounting tool like demaon tools installed {BioShock download secrom free is ok}

i allso would return any game that i was unable to nocd patch aswell

online activation is the way, i think COD2 or some other game had an system that keys that are valid but have not been sold yet do not let you play online,

Originally Posted by Hustler
I went through a period in 2003-2004 when after getting my Xbox chipped and having discovered Bit Torrent, id download pretty much all my games for the console and for my Pc,.

at first it feels great to get something for free....you have beaten the system,
but then i would find myself playing these downloaded games for just 10 mins and then toss them aside and never return to them.....being 'free' they had no real value to me, i didnt appreciate them in the same i did for the games i had been buying previously...i just wanted to move onto the 'next big game'.....i never played any of the games (over 30 of them) i pirated to completion, which was a shame, i must have missed out on many great gaming moments.

Then in 2005, Battlefield 2 came out, which demanded a purchase for the online play, i played this for non stop for months and realised just how much enjoymnet this 'paid for' game gave me....at that point, my pirated booty went in the bin.

I havent pirated a game since.....my games collection is alot smaller, but much more valuable and enjoyable....

My games downloading is well and truly over.

Pretty much the same as me word for word, except I had over 50 games i downloaded on the xbox. I dont recall actually playing any of them. I just seem to have collected them because I could.

When when I stoped upgrading my PC every year I found I could afford a game each month and now have more original games on the 360 than I ever had on PC and Xbox. I find I play the games more because I own them. If they were copies then they dont seem to get as much attention if any.

Games are cheap enough if you wait. You dont have to buy every game on launch day.

gone are the times when people did music, games, films even for the *art*.

its sad actually.

the last game I bought randomly wont start because of some security problem. which is funny, because i bought it. should of downloaded it, less issues that way.

Originally Posted by mikeuk2004
Games are cheap enough if you wait. You dont have to buy every game on launch day.

Even better, Game stock shelves of old games that they're selling dirt cheap, I bought Morrowind GOTY edition for about 8 euros a few weeks ago and have played it more than any other game I've bought in the past few years - even though it was about 1/10 the price

"EA is actually working very hard on getting their version of steam to work properly (currently its still bloated crap), dont be surprised if the EA online store will be the main competition for steam in the near future."

EA's download system is complete crap compared to Steam. Steam offers free downloads of the games you bought forever, EA does not, why should I use an inferier product?

The big shame with the piracy debate is that it's (long since) become a label for regular joes swapping data.
What should be hit hard in any term of piracy is the real piracy where you have mass production of illegitimate copies which happens lots of places all over the world.
Casual internet users don't share a rip of something to earn dollars... It's ideologically like borrowing your game or album to a friend.
What is real piracy is those who copy with financial gain in mind. Those who make money off of a product they only just copied. I would even go as far as saying it includes the idiot down the block who sells burned dvds for $5.

If you're copying to profit then you're a pirate!
If you copy to share then you're a sharer (or perhaps the industry could be allowed to term it "communist" ) :)

uh oh, you went and said the 'C' word

I believe I have a fantastic argument FOR piracy.

Last few years, seeing as I actually have a job, I've taken to buying a lot of games; games I've barely heard of, games I'll only play a few hours etc. I have the disposable income to do it, so I do it.

But, yesterday I discovered something rather horrible. Flat Out Ultimate Carnage; I bought the PC version through steam (iirc it cost me $49.99 + TAX and what not.); a proper impulse buy. We play a LOT of FlatOut 2 at the LANs I regular, so I figure it won't be much of a waste as we'll probably start playing FOUC insted of FO2. Considering I'll probably only ever play this game for a half hour every few weeks (maybe 8 hours in a year), thats some expensive entertainment.

Then I find out theres no LAN play. At all; the entire multiplayer system is done through the "Games for Windows Live" crap. I can accept that for the online modes, but seriously... no LAN play at all? Ok ok, maybe it's not all bad, lets see what new stuff they've added.

Lets see.... tracks.... all identical to the FO2 tracks (minus various visual improvements).

New cars? Nope.

New game modes? Yes, but they're hardly worth mentioning considering what they are. Carnage Races; smash everything in sight score points. Beat the bomb; Checkpoint-to-Checkpoint racing. Oh, and they modified the single player destruction debies (OMG U HAS LIVES AND POWERUPS!).

I've not even bothered to check yet, but I'm pretty sure none of the "new" modes are available in multiplayer either.

Then I find out its being sold for $19, on Steam, in the US.

So I've paid $30 (+TAX!) over the odds, for FlatOut2 with a few new knobs. Oh, and the developers polished the graphics up... but they didn't get around to changing any of the menu images from the XBox controller buttons either.

If I hadn't bought it through Steam, I'd be getting a refund; as it stands, I don't want to risk pissing Valve off over my Steam account, due to huge number of games I've bought through it