>In a nutshell, FlightSimLabs installed a password dumper onto ALL users’ machines, whether they were pirates or not, but then only activated the password-stealing module when it determined that specific ‘pirate’ serial numbers had been used which matched those on FlightSimLabs’ servers.
We installed spyware on your PC, but trust us, we didn't use it, we only used it on the people we didn't like...
>“This method has already successfully provided information that we’re going to use in our ongoing legal battles against such criminals,” Kalamaras revealed.
We're going to introduce documents into a legal process that were obtained through illegal means and hope we don't get counter-sued.
It looks like once again, a gaming company has decided to stop working on making games, and start working on a convoluted game of cat and mouse with unemployed anonymous nerds. What could go wrong...
I do understand the need to fight piracy, but breaking into my house, plundering through my stuff, taking photocopies of my files/ID/passwod/etc, is not the right way to do this (in my book).
At least they were smart enough to make this AV-proof. One of my favorite lines is: "please disable your AV while XYZ application is installed". I do understand that some applications require access to files/registry keys/etc, but this means they've done a crappy work on building the thing, and they cut corners by asking us to compromise our security for their lack of due process. Random example [1].
I'm pretty sure that piracy does have a huge impact on sales for niche addons and games like that. The client base is very very small and anything that is not absolutely perfect quality does not get sold these days (seriously, look at the quality and effort that has gone into some PMDG planes or the ixeg 737, it's astounding). Small client base plus very good quality equals, everyone must pay their share for the product to be viable.
That being said, what FSLabs did is of course inexcusable.
That really doesn't change the argument surrounding piracy - the contention is that piracy doesn't displace sales. If that's true, it is literally not effecting whether everyone is paying their share. The people who pirated it simply were never going to pay for it whether they play it or not.
I tend to agree with you though, if you make a game that requires incredible attention to detail, hugely time intensive modelling work, and know that the target market is a tiny niche then maybe the product is just not viable.
>The people who pirated it simply were never going to pay for it whether they play it or not.
I hear this argument a lot but can't see how it possibly be correct. Sure, not everyone who pirates would buy instead but at least some people would (it probably is a small percentage, but it is not zero).
One can imagine that the effect of those few is amplified for titles with high costs per unit.
If you consider this you also have to consider people who pirate a game and then decide to buy it later when they get the money or they realize that it's worth the price. It happened to me on several occasions.
There's also the "photoshop effect", where piracy helps ensure that the application remains the de-facto standard. Admittedly this is less applicable for games but it might help with 3rd party controller support, modding community etc...
In the context of niche games with pricey DLCs, I now have a significant collection of TS2018 DLCs. If I was not able to "try out" that game a few years ago in a less than legal fashion, I likely never would have gotten into it in the first place. I have a similar trend with books; on several occasions I've ended up owning (legally) the entire work of some author, simply because a friend gave me their copy of a book.
I also believe that in the age of Steam specials, refunds, etc, people who pirate your game are not "lost sales". They are usually doing it because their appetite for games outstrips their budget, and they were highly unlikely to pay for it in the first place. But there is a significant chance may convert to a paying customer, or at least market the game by word of mouth.
I’ll add my anecdote here. I haven’t pirated a game in ten years, but when I was a student, I pirated most of my games. Almost all of the ones that I played for more than a few days, I now own legally. Some of these games, I’ve become a big fan of the series and buy all new games (I pirated the original Witcher game for example, I now own it, the collectors edition of the second, the third game and am eagerly awaiting basically any game the developer releases. While it’s likely I would have eventually played The Witcher 3 anyway given how successful it was, I’d likely have missed the Witcher 2 and probably wouldn’t be such a blind fanboy of anything CDPR release)
I also regularly NOT buy games (but nowadays also don’t pirate them, in the past I might have) if they hnave intrusive DRM
"Sure, not everyone who pirates would buy instead but at least some people would (it probably is a small percentage, but it is not zero)."
If we've already start speculating, such part might be offset by people like me, who tend to buy games only they like. I often pirated new game just to see if it's worth buying. And I've recently bought most of games on GOG I had played as pirate versions when I was a poor teenager, even though I barely play computer games anymore.
You have to take into account additional arguments, like the time you'll be spending implementing effective DRM will cost you more than any sales you're actually running the risk of losing, may degrade the experience of your legitimate customer base, etc.
The key is imagine. We have no means by which to estimate the proposed loss in the future when it happens. Talking about such a "loss" is irrational, at best. It matters not if someone pirates software. If someone is pirating your software, and you care deeply about it, your model for making money is probably off.
>I hear this argument a lot but can't see how it possibly be correct. Sure, not everyone who pirates would buy instead but at least some people would (it probably is a small percentage, but it is not zero).
Consider that for lack of a demo, or other scenario, people who pirate the game but end up purchasing it later. Sure, not all pirates would buy the game they've pirated, but at least some people would (it probably is a small percentage, but it is not zero).
>One can imagine that the effect of those few is amplified for titles with high costs per unit.
I would argue mainstream titles would make up that difference through volume of pirated copies though.
Piracy isn't a non-issue, but it's just not a dire threat either. Decades of video game piracy has demonstrated that.
>I would argue mainstream titles would make up that difference through volume of pirated copies though.
Averages don't mean that the small development house with the high cost per unit product doesn't go out of business when a small percentage of those who would have bought their product pirate it instead.
I think there may be some nuance to this, however. What you're saying is known to be to true at the macro level, but it may be more complicated at the micro level. For instance, it's well known that games companies aren't too fussed about games getting cracked after the launch window. The availability of a crack may not reduce your spend on video games, but it may reduce your spend on specific video games. This situation is made much much worse if your product is expensive, like this one is, and meant to make money over a long period rather than a short launch period.
None of this excuses them, but I do wonder about how the piracy data actually pans out for small, expensive shops like this.
My impression is (based on what I've seen with music plugins and heard from plugin developers, which tend to be also produced by small shops) that piracy data does matter a fair bit if you don't do anything about it.
Nonetheless, several plugin companies do seem to be able to nicely balance the ability to protect their software, while avoiding arduous copy protection methods. The method I think seems to work best is a combination "honey pot + time bomb" type method, where you provide an "easy" method for the pirates to "crack" and get on the usual sites, while also including a more difficult to reverse engineer that activates at some point later. (This kind of nudges those who kind of use piracy to "try and buy" but sometimes, er, need a bit of motivation to actually purchase the product. Even people who can afford the software and make a pretty decent living with the product have been caught with pirated plugins in interviews (https://torrentfreak.com/avicii-and-other-djs-produce-hits-u...).
You definitely don't need to include malware to protect your product.
> My impression is (based on what I've seen with music plugins and heard from plugin developers, which tend to be also produced by small shops) that piracy data does matter a fair bit if you don't do anything about it.
The problem is nobody really knows that because it's nearly impossible to do a controlled experiment for this.
What happens in practice is that a company's first product is unprofitable. So they go back and make significant improvements, spend five times as much on marketing, and add anti-piracy code. Then the new version is more profitable.
The people who want the solution to have been the anti-piracy code credit it with the improvement, but there is no way to know if it was that or the product improvements, or the marketing, or more favorable market conditions at the time of the second launch, or the fact that the same marketing effort now produces 50% more customers because there is now an existing user base (including the pirates) who are easier to convert because they're familiar with the previous version, etc.
To actually know the answer you would need a statistically valid sample of product launches where the determination of whether anti-piracy measures are taken is made at random. But as far as I'm aware no one has ever attempted this, and the choice to use anti-piracy measures has to be randomized or you could trivially be measuring the wrong thing, e.g. larger products with more resources are both more successful and more often include anti-piracy measures but the causation is reversed.
So nobody really knows the answer and it's all just wild speculation.
What I've heard developers notice is a sharp drop in sales the instant a product is put on the torrent sites (eg, there's a clear "before" and "after" pattern). I also know that there's one plugin developer (u-He) who has posted that the "time bomb" method he uses does drive sales the instant those "time bombs" go off. (https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5762973#p5763...). Of course, I only know little bits I hear from developers here and there -- the small shops are the ones that probably have the nitty gritty data details.
The impression I get is that coding some degree of protection is worth it, as long as the protection does not impact the user experience that much (and judging from what I see, this is quite possible). There's no excuse however for emulating the warez guys and bundling malware with your software... there's smarter ways to protect products.
> What I've heard developers notice is a sharp drop in sales the instant a product is put on the torrent sites (eg, there's a clear "before" and "after" pattern).
That still doesn't really tell you the answer though. The hypothesis is that pirates can be converted to users, but that doesn't necessarily happen immediately.
Suppose the product hits the piracy sites and 100,000 people download it. 5000 of them would have bought it, so you "lost" 5000 sales right away and you have your dip. But then over the course of the next year or two 7000 of those pirates realize they like the product and go on to buy it.
That's definitely a thing that happens, the question is what the real numbers are and whether they balance.
> I also know that there's one plugin developer (u-He) who has posted that the "time bomb" method he uses does drive sales the instant those "time bombs" go off.
Same problem here. Obviously you're going to get an uptick when the timer expires. But suppose you timebomb 100,000 people and as a result you immediately get 4000 sales, but then 96,000 people stop using your software. If 7000 of the 100,000 would eventually have paid you anyway, now you've just kicked 3000 of them out.
Mmm... that sort of hypothesis can't really be quantified, unfortunately, without surveying all your customers whether they bought their software due to a previous pirated copy (and getting honest answers).
I don't think the number is zero, as seen in this thread. But overall I don't think humans are that altruistic. :) This is probably particularly true for user-oriented niche software (like the software in question, premium flight sim DLC). Some software in the past (eg Adobe Photoshop) that was marketed primarily for businesses possibly benefited a little from consumers pirating it, but again, that "benefit" is hard to quantify as well.
The reason I like the "time bomb" approach though is that I think it gives a bit of a "push" to anyone who is actually using your product extensively. If they aren't using your product enough to care to pay for it, it's probably not a big deal if they stop using your software. If the "time bomb" is at a reasonable period, I have serious doubts that they'd suddenly decide n months later (with no time bomb) that it's all of a sudden worth it to pay for software the have for "free".
I don't think niche products unfortunately can do what mass market products are doing these days... which is switching business models towards ones where piracy can be controlled a bit more or is less of a big deal. (Freemium / DLC, cloud-based, subscription-based, etc.) In fact the only alternative model I see for niche is the Kickstarter one where the consumers themselves front the initial business costs (which can work out for consumers sometimes, and not work out other times).
On the threshold to professionality, there is a big difference in general "computer knowledge" between makers of audio plugins and makers of flight sim add-ons. For every former demoscener working on DSP plugins you will find a former model plane collector in the flight sim space, with a skillset only marginally updated. I've been on the fringe of both scenes at different points in my life and it does not surprise me at all that one of them is so much better at picking the right battles with piracy than the other.
That argument is bullshit, frankly. Before the advent of CD-Burners and Napster, you found a way to buy a CD if you really wanted it. Everyone had their own copy of an album. A select few would make cassette tape copies, but you were never satisfied with that.
I've seen numerous people who could absolutely afford games, stealing them. Hacked Xbox's filled with every game imaginable. These people would have bought some of these if they couldn't steal them, without a doubt. Would they have just gave up video games? No way. So, it absolutely displaces sales.
The reason why your comment is being downvoted is because of your ignorance, because you're trying to float widespread piracy as a recent phenomena and it's not. You just don't know your history.
Before CD-RW lots of games were available on floppy disk, which were simple to copy. And even without a CD-RW you could copy the data off the CD. Perhaps you don't know about no-CD cracks? They were everywhere. There were plenty of ways to pirate CD based games without a CD-RW. It might seem difficult or complicated compared to 2018, but only if you didn't live through those times. At the time that's the way it was, and it was relatively easy.
>Everyone had their own copy of an album. A select few would make cassette tape copies, but you were never satisfied with that.
Forgive me, I never say this, but it's appropriate in this case: LOL
The EU study does not say what the pro-piracy crowd wants it to say.
The study only looks out the count of games and not the dollar amount spent. A non-pirate who buys a $60 game and all the DLC and microtransactions is counted the same as a pirate who buys one $0.99 steam sale game. It does say that sales for blockbuster movies are heavily impacted by piracy.
I don't see your point. I haven't pirated a game in over 15 years (basically since I started working), and I buy some games at full price and tons of games at dollar sales or humble bundles. The thing is that the ones I don't buy at full price are the ones I would never even entertain playing at full price, and statistically I rarely even play them after getting 5 of them in a bundle.
What that means is that those games can have <$15 from me, or nothing. $60 was never on the table. And the games I buy at launch others won't bother with at full price.
The only difference between me and the pirate in your example is that the pirate hypothetically would have bought "some" games at full price if piracy wasn't available, like I do. But that's not an assumption you can naturally make. Some people just don't care about playing games when they're new.
I'm just as inclined to assume that a pirate only buying bargain games would have the same legal consumption without piracy.
Beyond convenience and honesty, my thinking about pirated software is that in a world where malware and viruses are prevalent, the last thing I would do on earth is to execute some dodgy cracking utility or game from some random torrent website, unless it is in an airtight and up to date VM.
I've downloaded and played dozen of pirated games, but I've been lucky enough to never have a problem. Or at least I never realized I had malware on my PC :-|
For my part, it was not a lack of money, but rather ease of getting the game (when I was directly given an ISO) or because I don't want to wait for a sale, but the game still seems too expensive. I ended up buying two of them (KotOR on a sale and transistor full-price). But now I have a big enough library and I have less time to play, so it's not as appealing as before (and I also have more to lose on my computer).
Forget about counter-sued, this is a criminals matter.
One for which you can earn hard time. Even if you don't use the spyware. I wouldn't dare work for a company that did this.
Copyright violation is merely a civil matter, cracking a serial number generator is not even copyright violation. Breaking DRM is still illegal, but that's all. I'm not even sure we've established that's it's illegal to distribute information on how to crack DRM. Certainly, not in all jurisdictions.
It is illegal. Actually, in most of Europe unauthorized access to computer system is a criminal offense that might lead to jailtime, while downloading pirate movie/game is a small wrongdoing that nets you fine (unless it's for profit, large scale operation). And that's access only, distributing malware and stealing personal data are two more, separate criminal offenses. So basically that's shooting a boy who has tried to steal an apple in a crowded market.
Exactly my thought - this sounds like a criminal matter, not a civil one.
It's the same reason you don't try to brick someone's computer even if you can prove with certainty that they were, say, cheating and griefing on your game's multiplayer. None of that matters, it would still be a crime.
We installed spyware on your PC, but trust us, we didn't use it, we only used it on the people we didn't like...
>“This method has already successfully provided information that we’re going to use in our ongoing legal battles against such criminals,” Kalamaras revealed.
We're going to introduce documents into a legal process that were obtained through illegal means and hope we don't get counter-sued.
It looks like once again, a gaming company has decided to stop working on making games, and start working on a convoluted game of cat and mouse with unemployed anonymous nerds. What could go wrong...