Empire using Steam; Gamespot interview/preview

[Monk]

I call BS. That's what the industry is whining, but it's blatant lies. Piracy has ALWAYS been rampant, and it has not changed in the last years. If anything, it has considerably lessened compared to the pioneering years, when the people with a computer exchanged truckloads of floppy disks with plenty of games in them, and nobody though much about "pirating".

Nowadays, there is lots of laws, sueing and a general understanding that "pirating isn't a big deal, but it's good to buy" (which is quite an improvement compared to before, trust me). Games now sells in the millionS, while a game was considered a success with 50 000 sales, and a revolution with 100 000 (of course, costs also inscreased, from the two-men teams in the days ^^).

What has changed, is the amount of money thrown into what is now called the "video game industry" (which was known as the "video game world/community" before, quite telling in its own right), making it a much more "serious" situation. In other words, there is now lots of bucks to get, so the big sharks are using everyting in their arsenal to grab their part.
Their first weapon being the DRM (which never work), their second being PR (read : lies), and their third lobbying for laws.

And among their biggest, dearest, most outrageous lies, is the one where they claim their loss due to piracy by simply multiplying the price of the game by the number of pirated copies. Which is, of course, laughable : it's not because someone got a game for free, that he would have bought it if he couldn't have pirated it.

The main threat from piracy, is to push video game publisher to switch entirely to console gaming.

I'm not sure i understand your point, are you suggesting that developers and publishers lose no money, or if they do very little, because of piracy? I find that hard to believe since in some countries you can buy top dollar pirated games from a street vendor for literally pennies on the dollar. The true impact of piracy is not simply people pirating a game they will buy in the future, its people stealing something they never truly in their heart intended to purchase.

Copywrite laws change depending on the country in which you live, so I really can't see that as a valid point. While laws may be pretty strict here in the US, they are pretty lax elsewhere. The world's governments have taken all sorts of different stances on piracy so developers trying to sue and get their money back doesn't always work.. especially if they attempt to sue a site that doesn't reside in the US prosecuting based on US law.

Actually you're right in a sense. Pirating has changed, but it has by no means slown down. Where before people were out in the open about it, wantonly exchanging floppy disks at swap parties, they have now moved it underground. There are literally millions of tracking billions of illegal downloads in today's online world, and movies, music, tv shows and games are all pirated daily. Anything and everything is at risk for piracy now. If you compare the online scene with what it was ten years ago, there's just no comparison. To discount it's growth is to ignore a real problem.

We're sorta getting off topic here, and that's my fault for using such broad language, if Martok/Nelson wants we can stear this back to ETW and Steam.