Husband and wife count the cost of piracy

[Steven W]

Married couple ordered to pay back £600,000.

Check out the Press Release for more info.

[dangel]

Piracy isn't necessarily 'all bad' but when you're making money from it, then it sure is..

[Zak33]

Piracy is ALWAYS stopping the real person making the dough they deserve, and is therefore theft

[Grey M@a]

well you mean the likes of the record companies are the theiving scum they charge 15 quid for an album the artist see's £1 of it rest goes to the fat cats Do what I do, order from the states, with £1 = $1.98 you get albums for £4 atm

[Koolpc]

Thing is, if the price of things was at a more reasonable level would we see as much piracy?

[dangel]

Piracy is ALWAYS stopping the real person making the dough they deserve, and is therefore theft

I think it's only so black and white when a pirate is selling your software - when they do that then you _can_ conclude you lost a sale, as the person buying from them could of given you the money instead. Casual copying for personal use is far more difficult to quantify - if nothing was paid then how can you assume they'd of come up with the cash for a legitimate copy? As a developer i'm far, far more worried about commericial copying as that's really where the money is - not only in the higher sales price you can charge but the additional income from support costs.

[Smokey21]

Thing is, if the price of things was at a more reasonable level would we see as much piracy?

No. Simple as that really.

[badass]

Piracy is ALWAYS stopping the real person making the dough they deserve, and is therefore theft

Have to disagree there unless you agree that any record label or suftware publisher is also guilty of theft

[Ferral]

This has become an age old problem since the days of the old Commodore Vic 20, most likely even before that. I have just used this era as a point for example. Back in the days of the Commodore 64 disk games came in at around £13 and cartridges came in at a few quid more. Cassetes were around a tenner for a new release and virtually every week I bought a new game as it was affordable even on my YTS training money !

There is no way I could afford to go out and buy a new game every week now given the current pricing on new titles. I purchased Thief 3 back end of last year as it was released on budget for a mere tenner. I have found myself doing this more as of late, or if there is something I really want I will trade in some old titles and get a new release that way.

A few year back software companies tried a lower pricing scheme over a summer where all the top releases were around 20 quid, not to shabby at all. I reckon personally that if titles were priced better people would go out and buy the game rather than getting it from a pirate. Not forgetting that with some of the games getting released now you are not getting great value for money. Prey for example is £35 and was so easy to beat, it also lasted around 6 hours start to finish. That price for a game that short is taking the mick. Oblivion has been one of the best games I have bought, so far I have 80 hours play on it and an only around halfway through the game. You are getting good value for money with it.

It all boils down to a catch 22 situation, developers are not getting what they rightfully deserve and the middle man and shops are getting most of the proceeds from any given title. This alone will bump a titles price right up before it gets to the consumer. Developers need to look into ways to get the games to us without the high price tag and I am pretty sure we would see far less piracy on a large scale.

[Rack]

This has become an age old problem since the days of the old Commodore Vic 20, most likely even before that. I have just used this era as a point for example. Back in the days of the Commodore 64 disk games came in at around £13 and cartridges came in at a few quid more. Cassetes were around a tenner for a new release and virtually every week I bought a new game as it was affordable even on my YTS training money !

There is no way I could afford to go out and buy a new game every week now given the current pricing on new titles. I purchased Thief 3 back end of last year as it was released on budget for a mere tenner. I have found myself doing this more as of late, or if there is something I really want I will trade in some old titles and get a new release that way.

A few year back software companies tried a lower pricing scheme over a summer where all the top releases were around 20 quid, not to shabby at all. I reckon personally that if titles were priced better people would go out and buy the game rather than getting it from a pirate. Not forgetting that with some of the games getting released now you are not getting great value for money. Prey for example is £35 and was so easy to beat, it also lasted around 6 hours start to finish. That price for a game that short is taking the mick. Oblivion has been one of the best games I have bought, so far I have 80 hours play on it and an only around halfway through the game. You are getting good value for money with it.

It all boils down to a catch 22 situation, developers are not getting what they rightfully deserve and the middle man and shops are getting most of the proceeds from any given title. This alone will bump a titles price right up before it gets to the consumer. Developers need to look into ways to get the games to us without the high price tag and I am pretty sure we would see far less piracy on a large scale.

I totally agree. I would probably buy lots of new titles if they were ~20quid - that's the sort of money I can just splash out with when I feel like a new game.
I just can't justify 50quid on a game I might not like and will probably only play for a couple of hours a week when that could go towards better hardware, etc.

Recently I have only bought games when they were a bit old and in the <20 range as I don't need to make any 'how's this going to effect my monthly budget' calculations.

[YorkieBen]

piracy killed the Amiga, it could start to badly affect the PC games market too. Companies may go over to consoles only for alot of big games

[dangel]

piracy killed the Amiga, it could start to badly affect the PC games market too. Companies may go over to consoles only for alot of big games

Tosh. Commodore killed the Amiga by lack of development - the PC merely overtook it. PC piracy has been just as rampant (if not more so) for many years.

[Butuz]

piracy killed the Amiga, it could start to badly affect the PC games market too. Companies may go over to consoles only for alot of big games

It's already happening isnt it. 5 years ago stuff was released either on the PC first, and then ported to console, or just on the PC.

Now it seems to be going the other way around.

Butuz

[vrykyl]

does anyone remember when the games industry told us all that by ditching large boxes to package the discs in and moving to dvd jewel cases that the cost of all are games would go down?? if anything they went up.....things cost to much these days [bah humbug]

[Lee H]

it could start to badly affect the PC games market too.

I feel that bad programming is also to blame. Look at the money I've practically wasted on Battlefield 2 for example. I have 2 copies myself for both my computers and both of them are plagued with issues like crashing and random freezing.

Another - titan quest : Cracking game, but the release was full of bugs, including one where a QUEST ITEM was dropped but not drawn on the screen. As such you could not progress to the next continent without typing a command into the console.