Social Implications of Games/Gaming

A sample topic for a week: Intellectual Property and Gaming

Some Piracy Statistics

Macrovision conducted a survey across a number of popular gaming sites. Of the 2,219 PC gamers quizzed, 52 per cent admitted to obtaining cracked software while 33 per cent of those reported acquiring 'ISO' files – essentially full CD images with copy protection hacked out. Alarmingly, 15 per cent of respondents admitted to acquiring 15 or more pirated games within the last two years.

Based on the survey results, Macrovision estimated that for every four weeks a game's copy protection remains effective for a highly desired title, significant revenue could be generated at retail as users become frustrated with waiting for 'free' working versions, and instead opt to buy a legitimate copy. Two-thirds of those that admitted using pirated software claimed they were not patient enough to wait six weeks after release before buying a legitimate copy.

Grain of Salt Time

Macrovision is the world’s largest maker of copy protection software, so it is in their best interest to make piracy seem worse than it may be.

Intellectual Property/Piracy

Resolved:– Developers make games– People pay for games– Developers make money and more games

BUT:– People Pirate Games– why?

Piracy

It’s easy– How easy?

Peer-to-Peer networks

Various peer-to-peer networks make it very easy to pirate everything digital.

According to the RIAA, SPA, and MPAA, the only reason peer-to-peer networking exists is to pirate intellectual property.

The INDUCE act is currently in committee in Congress

INDUCE Act

From Wired News (July 23):The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony about the

Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act -- otherwise known as the Induce Act (S. 2560). In its current form, the bill proposes to slap technology companies for making any device that could "induce" or encourage buyers to make illegal copies of songs, movies or computer programs. The bill, introduced by Hatch (R-Utah) and Leahy (D-Vermont), has garnered strong support from Hollywood and the music industry. But technology companies say the bill would kill innovation and potentially outlaw some of the most popular devices, including Apple's iPod.

INDUCE Act (cont’d)

Opponents of the bill made movies of committee hearings available through all p2p networks.

Thus proving that p2p networks are good for something other than piracy, like cheaply distributing the workings of the government.

Why Pirate?

“Try before you buy” because retailers will not accept returns of opened software.– Most retailers changed return policies because

pirates would buy, copy, and return.

Given that, is the retail distribution model obsolete?

Alternative Distribution Methods

High control method (copy protection)—– Valve’s Steam

WHAT CAN STEAM DO? Once you've installed Steam, all of the following features are available on your

desktop and while you're playing Steam games.

EASY AND FAST ACCESS TO GAMES After installing Steam, you'll have instant access to Valve's full library of

games. And when you choose one to play, you don't have to wait for the whole thing to download -- you can start playing in a matter of minutes.

AUTOMATIC UPDATES Say goodbye to game patches forever--they're a thing of the past. Steam will

keep all of its games up-to-date for as long as you want to keep playing them. No more hunting for download sites just to get up and running!

Steam’s Downsides

Games are “converted” to Steam. Cannot be played without a connection to the Internet (i.e. enforces the EULA– you own a license to run the game, not the game itself).

Downloads content and stores it on your hard drive for you to buy. It stays there (locked) if you don’t buy it.

That eats bandwidth. HUGE Footprint

– Full Steam Installer: (723.4 MB) Counter-Strike Steam Installer: (379.4 MB) Half-Life Steam Installer: (211.6 MB) Opposing Force Steam Installer: (289.8 MB) Day of Defeat Steam Installer: (396.2 MB) Team Fortress Classic Steam Installer: (272.3 MB) Deathmatch Classic Steam Installer: (23.7 MB) Ricochet Steam Installer: (15.5 MB)

Mods must be company approved. Broadband only. If Valve goes out of business, you won’t be able to play the games you paid for (no server,

no authentication, no game). Licensing for cybercafes prohibitively expensive. Doesn’t work well at this time.

Let’s Talk Copy Protection

What is it?– Code that verifies the program is being used by

someone who paid. How does it do this?

– CD Check Means CD must be in the drive when game is played. Sometimes conflicts with certain brands of CD drives. Sometimes degrades system performance (Morrowind) Easily broken.

For instance:

Does simple CP contribute to piracy?

Because of technical problems, many users are forced to break copy protection in order to get their game to work.

They discover websites where cracks live. Bob burns Joe a CD. Joe now knows how to

crack it.

PSA: Tell the kids it’s wrong

Other methods of CP

“SilentAlarm involves the protected application silently detecting modifications to the security at various points during its execution, and later degrading the quality of the game in a subtle but effective way. Examples of SilentAlarm include guns that jam, car wheels that fall off or continuous scene loops, making the game difficult or impossible to complete.” -- Macrovision

If the CP makes a mistake (doesn’t recognize CD drive), game seems to be bad. Legitimate users think they’re playing the game as intended by the designer, but they’re playing the bastardized version.

Even more CP

Starforce

Starforce

Driver level CP. Doesn’t warn user it will be installed at installation. Doesn’t uninstall when user uninstalls game. Game won’t run if certain programs (Nero, CloneCD) are on the

system. Programs are legal and legally sold, but can be used for piracy.

Present in demos, so user who hasn’t even bought the game may have this on their system.

Degrades CD burning performance even when game isn’t running.

Is suspected of permanently disabling external USB drives.

TotalGaming.net distribution

No copy protection! From the creator, Brad Wardell: TotalGaming.net is a gaming network for obtaining games electronically and downloading them

right away. What makes it different is that it also includes retail games as well as indie titles and that there is no sort of DRM type scheme or "renting" involved. You're buying games.

From there, you can purchase games either individually OR purchase a TotalGaming.net subscription which contains most of the games available in the whole network.

Regarding royalties: The developer's game is made available as a seperate purchase. What % of the sale the developer gets is based on a number of factors but one of which is whether the game is also part of TotalGaming.net's subscription as well.  Their royalty of the TotalGaming.net subscription also depends from game to game.

A developer can opt out of having their game available as part of the subscription but their stand-alone royalty would be smaller since they are, to a degree, riding on the popularity of the subscription to get users to notice their games on the site.

More from Brad:

And PC games have a perfect storm of bad habits:– First, I am expected to devote hundreds of megabytes to them. Okay, I can live with that. – But then they expect me to keep the CD in the drive. – And then I usually have to keep track of a little tiny paper serial number (usually taped to the back of the CD jacket). – And all that so that I can play a game that needs a couple of patches to play.

And when the PC sales go down, what's the reported reason? Piracy of course.  Yea, it's piracy. Sure. In my experience of writing games, it's not pirates ripping us off of our hard earned money, it's been publishers.  The tale of Galactic Civilizations is very similar to the tale of Swamp Castle from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The other developers told me I was daft to write a space based strategy game for OS/2! So I wrote Galactic Civilizations for OS/2. I was a college student back then so I couldn't afford to get it into the stores. So a publisher called Advanced Idea Machines "published" it. They never paid us royalties and disappeared soon after. Since I had no money, I couldn't afford a lawyer at the time.

So I got smart. Stardock would publish the OS/2 sequel Galactic Civilizations II.  So we made the game, manufactured the boxes, took care of all the marketing and getting it into the stores.  And just to be safe, we had two distributors. One called Micro Central and the other one called Blue Orchards.  Both went went out of business owing us hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That particular incident nearly wiped out Stardock. But no matter, we recovered. We clawed our way back up and made it into the Windows market.  We

decided to make a Windows version and we decided to work with a well known publisher on it (Strategy First). This time everything would go perfectly...

Well, that was a year and a half ago and we're still waiting for royalty payments on most of their sales. 

But this time, we had an out -- direct electronic sales. People were able to buy the game directly from us and download the game.

So?

Piracy Legislation Copy Protection Distribution

Students take it from here. Debate, papers, forum posts.