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Macrovision, a company which specializes in copy protection, has conducted a poll of PC gamers concerning software piracy. Of the 2,219 gamers who answered the polls, 52 percent admitted to having had used a crack (generally a file that is used to break copy protection) in order to pirate software. Furthermore, 33 percent confessed to having downloaded an ISO (a full copy of a CD image). 15 percent of those polled did not stop after pirating one or two games either. This group admits to have downloading/copying fifteen or more games in the past two years.

The Electronic Software Association estimates that piracy has cost the PC gaming industry over three billion worldwide. Marcovision believes that estimate to be even higher.

Macrovision believes the way to lessen is the financial impact of piracy is lengthen the time that it takes for a title's copy protection to be cracked. Every day counts. The company cites numbers from the poll in which two-thirds of the admitted pirates said that they would not have the patience to wait six weeks for a game to appear as warez. Instead, they would purchase it legitimately.

Source: Gamespot

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I'm not sure how much I trust a poll about software piracy that is conducted by a copy protection company, but I think the latter part of the article is pretty much common sense. The casual gamer is not going to want to wait long periods of time and go through complicated procedures in order to pirate a game. As it stands right now, there are numerous outlets where one can easily pirate a game.

The only problem I have with copy protection is when it breaks computers (for example, the copy protection the RIAA used on CDs that broke Macs) or when it renders the software unusable.

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"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

Yarrrrrr! Landlubbin' copyright protection.

Seriously.... well, I'm not a PC gamer, but I feel no need to get into PC gaming for the sake of pirating games that I otherwise buy. I only get a game or two per year, but still I actually want video game companies to get money because I simply want them to exist. If I did download a pirated file of some PS2 game or somethin' then I wouldn't cry from remorse, it just wouldn't be the thing that I do most of the time.

Isn't the real piracy problem centered in Asia, mostly China, though?

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Get me off this Disciplinary Committee so I can play any FF except for FF8!!!

I pirate ROMs, mainly. I can't think of any last PC game I pirated.

Like Ryan, I don't think I'd trust a poll about piracy done by a copy-protection company much. I do know quite a few people who pirate, but if it's a game they really like or have been anticipating, they buy it legally. Usually.

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Wow. 1,000 posts.

I miss you all now that I'm in boarding school! ;_;

I'd pirate more games if it were easier to do so. I think I'd be far less likely to do something like that if it were possibly to rent and check out a game without purchasing it. I'd like to play Heroes of Might and Magic IV, for example, but not badly enough to blow a bunch of money on a game that might suck.

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Veni, vidi, dormivi.

WRT the inaccuracy of piracy reports: I always like it when they say "The 2oftware industry loses $x billion every year through piracy." Yeah, really? I can only imagine that these figures c.me from the assumption that everyone who pirated a piece of sof`ware would buy it if the cheap way out weren't available, which is pretty flawed theory.

Well i see no use to pirating some games. If you just want to Play like- By yourself single player, by all means. But as someone who plays online i would just as soon buy the game. Finding Cracks is often difficult and the sites one must go through in order to obtain them are often riddled with Spyware and Hentai- or so i've found. I admit games like SC are easy enough to copy though. I Havent Had the original SC disk ever. Someone gave me mine in fact. And im able to access Battle net quite simply. Though i Pity the fool who ever tries to Hack FFXI persay. Some Games are just unpiratable.

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If you've been mod-o-fied,
It's an illusion, and you're in-between.
Don't you be tarot-fied,
It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean?
~Frank Zappa

Sins exist only for people who are on the Way or approaching the Way

Quote (Tiddles @ 14th June 2004 16:47)

WRT the inaccuracy of piracy reports: I always like it when they say "The software industry loses $x billion every year through piracy." Yeah, really? I can only imagine that these figures come from the assumption that everyone who pirated a piece of software would buy it if the cheap way out weren't available, which is a pretty flawed theory.

How else would you figure it? Here is someone who owns your product and is not paying for it. Although you do have a point, there is a difference between outright stealing and software piracy, because with software piracy, you aren't taking a copy away from someone who wanted to buy it legally. Touchy issues like these are why I am a Communist.

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"That Light has bestowed upon me the greatest black magic!"

Quote (The Ancient @ 15th June 2004 14:21)

Quote (Tiddles @ 14th June 2004 16:47)

WRT the inaccuracy of piracy reports: I always like it when they say "The software industry loses $x billion every year through piracy."  Yeah, really?  I can only imagine that these figures come from the assumption that everyone who pirated a piece of software would buy it if the cheap way out weren't available, which is a pretty flawed theory.

How else would you figure it? Here is someone who owns your product and is not paying for it.

True enough, but would they have bothered obtaining it at all if they couldn't get it for free? In many cases, especially with some of the serial pirates I've met lately, the answer is a definite no. You can't really chalk that up as a lost sale, if you couldn't have made the sale in any case.

I definately understood your point, I was just wondering how else you could measure it.
I wouldn't really classify anyone who only uses or plays things they could get for free as a consumer anyway. So these people don't fit into their target market do they?

This post has been edited by The Ancient on 15th June 2004 17:34

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"That Light has bestowed upon me the greatest black magic!"

I don't think a poll is a very accurate way to go... when there are millions of gamers out there and they only had, what less than 3,000 votes... what if they just happened to get votes froma a specific crowd that pirates. Personally I've never pirated anything other than music and I don't know many peopkle at all that do... I might know one or two people that pirate PC software but other than that everyone I know just buys a game if they want it.

This post has been edited by Sephiroth on 17th June 2004 19:09

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles

It's called sampling and they can actually determine the probability of error based on the sample size (3000) and the entire gaming population. I'm not gonna drag out any statistics here(mainly cause I've forgotten it all), but if it was done correctly then I'm sure the sample size is adequate.

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"That Light has bestowed upon me the greatest black magic!"