August 21st, 2008

Piracy’s Blessings

If my neighbor dies and I can get a benefit out of it, without doing anything illegal, I have nothing to regret. No, I don't hate my neighbors, although I wouldn't mind at all to see those listening crappy music with the volume pushed to the max while I sleep disappearing. Obviously, that would only bring me a huge personal satisfaction, but no extra money, but what would you say if you were to find out that while you buy the games you play, and while others grab them using some BitTorrent tracker, which is obviously illegal, unless we're talking about free games, hardware manufacturers consider game piracy a blessing, since it boosts their sales?

I know this is one of those "the rest can die, as long as I live" approaches, and those into the hardware industry should also be aware that the downfall of the gaming industry, or a massive switch of releases from PC to consoles would also hurt their business, but for now...we're talking about Todd Hollenshead's personal thoughts, so this is not public. Anyway, such things won't ever become official, as you can figure out for yourselves, but let's see what id Software's CEO thinks, shall we?

In an exclusive interview for GamesIndustry.biz, Todd said "I think that there's been this dirty little secret among hardware manufacturers, which is that the perception of free content -

even if you're supposed to pay for it on PCs - is some sort hidden benefit that you get when you buy a PC, like a right to download music for free or a right to download pirated movies and games."

He continued by confirming what I was saying earlier about such things becoming official - "I think that if you went in and could see what's going on in their minds, though they may never say that stuff and I'm not saying there's some conspiracy or something like that - but I think the thing is they realise that trading content, copyrighted or not, is an expected benefit of owning a computer."

In the end, it's the fight for survival, and I can't imagine someone not being happy when his competitors' bad luck leads to an increase of his own fortune. I know, some may say this is not true, but this is sometimes a natural reflex, and not something you really can control.

"I think that just based on their actions...what they say is one thing, but what they do is another. When it comes into debates about whether peer-to-peer file-sharing networks that by-and-large have the vast majority, I'm talking 99 per cent of the content is elicitly trading copyrighted property, they'll come out on the side of the 1 per cent of the user doing it for legitimate benefit," he concluded.

In the end, it seems piracy is a blessing for the hardware industry. Just think about a user from an emerging country, where a legal copy of a game can worth as high as 10-25% of his monthly income - should he buy 2-3 games per year, and remain with the same hardware, or get a decent video card and play 5-10 pirated games each month?