Does piracy offer anything good? (aside from the bad)

[El Mahdi]

Here's the thing. If a company leaks their product and it gets copied to create buzz, that's not piracy. That's a willing act on the half of the company who makes their product available for free.

If the company, however, does -not- make this available, and does not wish it copied, then it is not morally correct.

It's like if you're a car salesman. If someone comes by and you offer a test-drive, that's cool and froody. Go for it. But if someone comes by and takes the car without asking, and goes for a 'test-drive' it's stealing and is a different matter.

Now, that said, there is a question about whether or not piracy will result in more or less sales for the company, and it is a valid one to ask. However, only one answer truly matters, and that's the holder of the intellectual property in question. They should have the right to make (or not make) these decisions, after all, it is -theirs-.

Sharing your creations is your right to hand out or not hand out.

And you are absolutely right.

Problem is, a company can be "right", and do actions that are legally "right", and still be strategically "wrong". Even an action that's "right" can run a company into the ground by destroying it's customer base.

"Right" is all well and good, but if it goes against practical reason (in this case, what's good for the company in the long run) then it's more "foolish" than "right".

I'm sure WotC saw this move as a strategic decision that would be best for the company in the long run. However, I don't think they factored in just how bad the backlash in their customer base would be. A Strategic Vision for a company is useless if you alienate your customer base in the process.

Research and reason shows that the effects of pdf piracy on sales is a lot less than expectations and is likely mildly beneficial. Disregarding reason, and punishing your customers, is not a recipe for continued success - no matter what your strategic planning tells you.

• Effect of piracy has minimal negative impact with possible slight beneficial aspects.
• Removing pdf's eliminates a revenue stream. A small stream in all likelihood, but profit is profit.
• Removing pdf's, at best, will have no effect on piracy, and may actually increase it (most likely).
• Removing pdf's seriously angered your customer base and caused the loss of customers and revenue. Even if only a slight loss, revenue is revenue.
• Company strategy is now to spend resources and money on developing policies and medium that will have zero effect on the problem they are attempting to fix. A problem that is more a nuisance, than a serious threat to long term, or even short term, profits and company survival.

Add it all up, and it's a loss for both customer and company. And IMO, more loss for the company than the customer (no matter what, the game will go on whether WotC does or not).

It's like if you're a car salesman. If someone comes by and you offer a test-drive, that's cool and froody. Go for it. But if someone comes by and takes the car without asking, and goes for a 'test-drive' it's stealing and is a different matter.

This is a false analogy. Taking a car without permission is theft. Downloading a pdf is not. There is no loss of anything except a potential sale (although not all illegal downloads represent a potential sale). There is no loss or destruction of property.

Downloading a pdf, especially with the intention of looking at it to see if one wants to buy the hardcopy version, is nothing more than if one walked into a bookstore and thumbed through a store copy. Except that in the case of the pdf, the "store" copy is not accruing wear and tear from the hands of potential customers.

Downloading a pdf as a supplement to a legally bought hardcopy, as opposed to buying an overpriced pdf, is a market adjusting factor. The smart company fixes this problem by offering their pdf's at a price suitable to the market (again, customers determine value - price follows from value). The foolish company, whether technically "right", does what WotC just did.

"Right" without "Reason" is useless at best, and most likely counterproductive.

 

[Kask]

And you are absolutely right.

Problem is, a company can be "right", and do actions that are legally "right", and still be strategically "wrong".

In other words, the market is ALWAYS right. A company, it depends...

 

[FormerlyDickensC]

"People who do not pay for titles will not pay for them whether or not they pirate" is only the case for some people. There are certainly sales directly lost as the result of piracy, but there are so many nuances that I couldn't even tell you how likely it is for people I know well, much less attempt to extrapolate that over the entire market for any good. The only people who try to make hard assertions are either pirates trying to rationalize their acts of banditry or industry folk trying to overblow the problem for PR reasons or to seek greater damage in lawsuits.

I agree with this statement. I think that neither side could be absolute. And its nearly impossible to discern the truth empirically. But I do think there is some merit to the argument that not all piracy is categorically bad. How much? I have no idea.

I also think its funny how the first couple of responses to my post accuse me of being a pirate. Nice job guys. You elevated the discourse, for sure. But its also nice to see my post engender so many responses. Hopefully, I will be able to read through them all shortly.

 

[FormerlyDickensC]

And you are absolutely right.

Problem is, a company can be "right", and do actions that are legally "right", and still be strategically "wrong". Even an action that's "right" can run a company into the ground by destroying it's customer base.

"Right" is all well and good, but if it goes against practical reason (in this case, what's good for the company in the long run) then it's more "foolish" than "right".

I'm sure WotC saw this move as a strategic decision that would be best for the company in the long run. However, I don't think they factored in just how bad the backlash in their customer base would be. A Strategic Vision for a company is useless if you alienate your customer base in the process.

Research and reason shows that the effects of pdf piracy on sales is a lot less than expectations and is likely mildly beneficial. Disregarding reason, and punishing your customers, is not a recipe for continued success - no matter what your strategic planning tells you.

• Effect of piracy has minimal negative impact with possible slight beneficial aspects.
• Removing pdf's eliminates a revenue stream. A small stream in all likelihood, but profit is profit.
• Removing pdf's, at best, will have no effect on piracy, and may actually increase it (most likely).
• Removing pdf's seriously angered your customer base and caused the loss of customers and revenue. Even if only a slight loss, revenue is revenue.
• Company strategy is now to spend resources and money on developing policies and medium that will have zero effect on the problem they are attempting to fix. A problem that is more a nuisance, than a serious threat to long term, or even short term, profits and company survival.

Add it all up, and it's a loss for both customer and company. And IMO, more loss for the company than the customer (no matter what, the game will go on whether WotC does or not).




This is a false analogy. Taking a car without permission is theft. Downloading a pdf is not. There is no loss of anything except a potential sale (although not all illegal downloads represent a potential sale). There is no loss or destruction of property.

Downloading a pdf, especially with the intention of looking at it to see if one wants to buy the hardcopy version, is nothing more than if one walked into a bookstore and thumbed through a store copy. Except that in the case of the pdf, the "store" copy is not accruing wear and tear from the hands of potential customers.

Downloading a pdf as a supplement to a legally bought hardcopy, as opposed to buying an overpriced pdf, is a market adjusting factor. The smart company fixes this problem by offering their pdf's at a price suitable to the market (again, customers determine value - price follows from value). The foolish company, whether technically "right", does what WotC just did.

"Right" without "Reason" is useless at best, and most likely counterproductive.

Well Said.

 

[Silverfox13]

Does piracy make the hobby any more accessible to an audience that might not otherwise dabble in the rpg arena? Answer: Probably no, not to a great extent.

Yet, I think that having the easy access that piracy affords DOES offer some support to the industry...similar to how music piracy increased CD sales.

I haven't looked all through the threads, so there may already be a topic for this. But how do ppl feel about this issue??

I've also read the inevitable creator problems with piracy. People who create do not want ppl stealing their work without paying the creator money. Despite the holier then thou attitude, I can easily see this argument.

But I think that my point is that ppl who pay for titles will pay whether or not they pirate first. And ppl who do NOT pay for titles will NOT pay whether or not they pirate....therefore, every pirated copy is not a lost sale, but is instead something akin to a free trial. Given that not every case works out this way, I am arguing that most cases out there in world do work such as this. Does anyone agree, or is this forum mostly the creator folks who see every pirated title as a lost sale...and nothing good?

I remember a few artists taking a strong stand against piracy, like Metallica and lil' Kim. I have no statistical backing, but I think this hurt many of these artists popularity, maybe even there pocket books.

I'm a little ticked actually, I started buying the digital copies because of the ass quality of the hard back books, it was also easier to use all the books via a laptop (preparation as a gm was made much easier) and I did not have to break my back carrying a dozen+ huge books.

I'm not sure who in there marketing wisdom thinks that everyone will have $60.00+ a month to spend on D&D products anyways. I also thought there was a large resurgence of players and if I see a decline that affects my play it's likely to end my WotC purchases for good.

I personally feel that the prices for non-essential goods such as hobby and entertainment products/services is highly bloated. If they were offered at reasonable prices you would not see 10:1 ratios of pirated downloads.

 

[kenmarable]

I think it can also depend on the size and type of company.

First off, PDF-only companies can be seriously harmed by pirated works. A legitimate purchase after previewing a pirated copy gains nothing but a clear conscience. As much faith as I have in humanity, I'm pretty positive that people are more willing to pay for a clear conscience and hardcover book than they are just a clear conscience.

However, a balancing factor is company size. Someone like WotC may be negatively impacted by lost sales. The mentality of "my using a pirated copy rather than a legit one isn't going to hurt someone the size of WotC" is pretty easy justification to live with and gets multiplied out pretty quickly. Pirating from a big "faceless" corporation is much easier to stomach than pirating from, say Philip Reed's one man operation. Philip's a nice guy and on these boards, pirating from him is just mean.

There's also the exposure issue. For a market leader like WotC, pirating probably has a minimal impact marketing-wise. Although I suppose leaks before a book is available can help, that window is rare and pretty small. I'd say the vast majority of pirating, especially after the initial 4e core books, is all done after the book is available. When you are the market leader, it's extremely difficult to have any impact from marketing within the current customer base. Your reputation and brand have FAR more weight than any ads, pirated copies, etc. That's why they probably focus a lot of their marketing efforts outward (like the Penny Arcade/PVP podcasts). Anyway, not to get too far off on a tangent, but "pirated PDFs as marketing" for the biggest company in the industry probably has an extremely small, if any, impact.

However, for the very small company, I would say avoiding obscurity is probably more important than potential lost sales. The lost sales from not being known would FAR outweigh the lost sales from pirates, in my opinion. That being said, I still wouldn't approve of pirating no matter the benefits or legal status because it's just plain rude. If and when I become a small time publisher, my plan is to release products for free (even getting them out on the torrents), and then have people pay after the fact if they find them useful. That is my plan and has definite risks (but also some definite cost savings and potential to avoid the obscurity problem), but I would never force that on another publisher regardless of how useful I thought it would be. Like I said, pirating is rude. Distributing my own products for free is a business plan.

Bottom line - it's really complex and I'm positive the impact varies greatly from WotC to Paizo to Green Ronin to Ronin Arts.

 

[wedgeski]

Stardock has profited quite nicely off of pirating.

On Demigod launch day over 80% (100,000+) of users were illegitimate! EIGHTY PERCENT! If even a small percentage of those users would actually have bought the game, that's thousands of lost sales which could easily mean the difference between survival and oblivion for a games development house.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

On Demigod launch day over 80% (100,000+) of users were illegitimate! EIGHTY PERCENT! If even a small percentage of those users would actually have bought the game, that's thousands of lost sales which could easily mean the difference between survival and oblivion for a games development house.

That's only half the story, though.

I don't know anything about Demigod/Stardock, so I'll assume all of your numbers are unequivocably correct. (and instead of 100,000+ I'll ignore the "+" and just go with 100,000).

20,000 people paid for the game legitimately on launch day. 80,000 did not. We know that based on our assumptions.


Possible impacts regarding pirating:

1. a percentage of the 80,000 wanted to play and never paid.
2. a percentage of the 80,000 wanted to play and after testing it on launch day, started paying.
3. a percentage of the 80,000 tried it out and left, never to return.

That's the impact of the pirates. If #1>#2 net loss. If #2>#1 net gain.


What about the 20,000 paying customers? (Again, my ignorance is hurting me here). Were there leaks ahead of time? Any chance that this number could have been a much smaller number without pirating?


I guess what I'm saying is that I agree with you and your point is valid, but it is one point of many, and stating just the one point leaves a lopsided perspective.

 

[Voadam]

I dont like to use PDFs, and will never pay for them. But take the Old World of Darkness. I love that game and didnt get into it till like 2000. Those books are rare or sold for insane prices. If I can get them free I will. And in this case its the only option, whether or not I like playing from a PDF.

Huh? I guess its the only option if you can't find a physical book and won't pay for the pdf but the vast majority of the old world of darkness books are available for legal purchase as pdfs at rpgnow. I mean, Vampire the Masquerade alone has 126 books for sale as pdfs.

 

[wedgeski]

I guess what I'm saying is that I agree with you and your point is valid, but it is one point of many, and stating just the one point leaves a lopsided perspective.

All true. Those numbers are unequivocal, by the way, straight from Stardock based on the fact that every instance of the game run in the vicinity of a live internet connection pings the game servers.

I guess in this case those numbers are painful because they're not just casual hoarders, the sort of people who click on a torrent for the sake of having it, but instead these are folks who have downloaded, installed, and run the game. It is fair to say that you've probably eliminated some portion (I don't know how many) of those who would 'not have bought the game anyway' in the process.

And from a corporate perspective, I don't think any CEO (let alone a share-holder) has the perspective to look at numbers like that and think of it as anything but net lost sales.