Pirates of the Carribean

I have a confession. I was a pirate. Yarr. No, I didn't sail the seven seas plundering ships and digging up hidden treasure. It was actually a lot more boring. I used to pirate games... constantly.

From the time it was possible to pirate games up until about 2004 I pirated and played countless numbers of games. Torrents, Warez, direct downloads, borrowing from friends... if there was a way to get a game without paying for it, I did. I played some of the biggest name titles of the time, and all without paying a penny.

Sure, I realized it was wrong but I always managed to justify it in my head. I know it's wrong but they already make a ton of money off of the games anyway. I know it's wrong but I just kind of want to see how the game is. I know it's wrong but if the game is good I'll go out and buy it. I know it's wrong but this game totally isn't worth $50. I know it's wrong but it's not like the PC gaming industry will be hurt by piracy... woops.

I think the interesting thing is that I almost always seemed to blame the video game manufacturer for why I was pirating their games. Where really a lot of blame lies directly on me, and frankly, us as video gamers. All of the excuses for the most part are just that, excuses. I look back at all of the ways I use to justify my stealing of video games and pretty much all of them are crap.

I know it's wrong but they already make a ton of money off of the games anyways. I guess that's true sometimes, certain games are just always going to make money. When you have something like Half Life, there's almost no way that Half Life 2 isn't going to sell well. Even though you know it's going to make money doesn't mean that it's okay to pirate it though. I know that if I steal a box of Lucky Charms, General Mills isn't going to post a loss... but what if we all start stealing Lucky Charms?

I know it's wrong but I just kind of want to see how the game is. I used this one a lot. And occasionally it was somewhat true. If I couldn't get a demo I would sometimes just download it to see how it was... which leads to the next one:

I know it's wrong but if the game is good I'll go out and buy it. You know, I don't think that ever happened. I pirated FEAR, which was one of my favorite first person shooters of all times... played it and its expansions at least two or three times... and never bought it. Same with Dungeon Siege, same with a whole list of other games. The truth is that even if they were good I rarely went out and bought them. I already had them. Not until recently have I purchased things like FEAR or Max Payne or many other games I pirated when they first came out. I'm guessing that the makers of Max Payne are appreciative of the fact that I picked up their game for $5 off of Steam, but I'll bet they'd have liked it even more if I had picked it up for $40 when it was released instead of just pirating it.

I know it's wrong but this game totally isn't worth $50. And you know what? I was right occasionally. There are a lot of games out there that aren't necessarily worth $50. So I pirated them... but if I had waited two months or for a sale, maybe I could have bought those games for $30 or $20. There's a lot of games that aren't worth $50 that are certainly worth $30.

I know it's wrong but it's not like the PC gaming industry will be hurt by piracy. Again, I was wrong. Like I said, some of the blame lies on the video game industry and some of it lies on us. When Ubisoft announced their crazy DRM for Assassin's Creed II people were pissed. And rightfully so, the DRM was just stupid... but I understood why they were doing it. It was in an attempt to stop piracy. Would it work? God no. DRM is never going to stop piracy, and in a perfect world would just be gotten rid of. You have to understand something though, Ubisoft is a company. Ubisoft has investors. Those investors want the best ROI that they can get. So of course they're going to want to protect their product as much as possible from piracy, even if that means crazy DRM. Because I'm sure in their minds they would much rather hear that Ubisoft is implementing crazy DRM to try and protect their product from piracy rather then Ubisoft is doing absolutely nothing to stop piracy because it doesn't matter in the end.

If you don't want crazy DRM there's one solution. Don't buy the product. Simple enough... but you know what I heard the most after they announced the DRM? "If they're going to have the DRM then I'm just going to pirate it." But you know what? That solves nothing, that just means that your cementing in the future even more crazy DRM. If you don't buy the product it sends a loud and clear message that as long as there's this crazy DRM you're not going to make money from me. If you pirate it, they just point to the fact that they need the DRM to stop the rampant piracy. But you have to be willing to buy their games if they take the DRM off. You can't protest the DRM and then when they remove it, still pirate the games. You have to purchase the games for it to work. Though gaming industry? You have to be willing to take off DRM if a good majority of us are purchasing your product. It works both ways.

Listen, I'm certainly not saying that this is all us gamers fault. Trust me, the game industry has a ton of blame in this as well. I'm just saying that we as gamers have to take some of the blame as well, it's not all the evil, greedy corporations fault.

Recently the makers of Alan Wake announced that they wouldn't be making the game for PC. There were a lot of people speculating that it was because, hell, why bother putting it on a system where everyone is just going to pirate it anyway. Which makes sense. If I owned two hot dog stands and in the area that one of them was in only 15% of people payed and the other 85% just stole my hot dogs and kicked me in the shins you would believe I would move that hot dog stand to the place where 85% of people payed and the other 15% stole my hot dogs but were occasionally banned from my hot dog stand. God that was a tortured metaphor. I think you get my point though.

The PC gaming industry is bleeding, and instead of putting band aids on it we're stabbing it some more. Well people, at some point the PC gaming industry will die if we don't stop.

I recently wrote a post about my conversion over to a console gamer, and some of it was so I didn't have to deal with some of the PC gaming industry bullshit, but still I don't want to see it dead. It has a purpose. And if we keep stomping on the flower we won't get to see its full potential.

What brought this up this post is a Cracked.com article this morning. It was 5 Reasons It's Still Not Cool to Admit You're a Gamer, it was funny as usual but one of the points they brought up was number one on their list. It was that we have some serious entitlement issues (scroll down to read it). It's all true. We think that if it's not directly tailored 100% to our liking we have the right to go out and get it for free. And then we piss and moan when they take measures to try and stop us.

But there's hope. I mentioned that I stopped pirating in 2004... want to know how I know that? Because that was the year that I got Steam. Steam made it so I didn't have to pirate games. I want a game right now? Done. I just go to steam, pay for it, download it and I can play it. Want to know if there's crazy DRM? Steam will tell me and I just don't buy it. Not sure you want to pay $50 for that game? I can check the metacritic score and go look at reviews. Still not sure? I can wait, Steam has some of the best sales around. Older games I can't find in stores, well I guess I'll just pirate them, it's not like the company is making any money off of them... wait, Steam has a ton of old games for usually under $10. It's convenient and a great service. Sure, it doesn't have every game made on it... yet. This is the flower I'm talking about. Maybe if we all stop pirating and actually buying games, companies will actually start listening to us. Maybe Steam is the savior of PC gaming... and a model how we can do console games in the future, but if we continue the way we're going we may never find out.

And if you're a console gamer, there's Gamefly. The Netflix of the gaming world. It costs $15, which frankly is dirt goddamn cheap. Want to play a game without plopping down $60? Why not give Gamefly a try. If you check out one video game every four months it's still cheaper then buying one full price game. Why not try that instead of modding your Xbox so you can get your free games? Why not at least try and give back to an industry that is trying to give you a little bit of enjoyment... just a thought.

So what's my point? Nothing in life is free, and you're not entitled to it either. If you don't like the DRM, don't buy the game. Try and curb your pirating appetite. Video games are a big part of my life, and were killing the industry. Do I think we'll ever completely kill the gaming industry? No, but we're going to put it in a wheelchair where it eats from a tube. I want to see it at it's full potential, and we can't do that if we continue the way we're going.

And video game industry? If we try you have to try as well.

Squid.