PC game piracy examined

[Maleficus]

-

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Maleficus
No, actually there are several examples in the real world which you choose to ignore.

Trailers for movies. before someone compares game trailers for games to movie trailers, movie trailers psuedo work because they are the same type of experience, a game trailer doesn't work for a variety of reasons which I won't bother to type out.

Just another excuse with no substance. Many games do have playable demos and you'll find many more media outlets that are much more indepth than anything you'll find in the way of movie trailers.
Gametrailers.com
Combine that with dozens of reviews that are out before or on the day of release, TV shows and HD on-demand reviews along with numerous online forums like this and there's plenty of ways to obtain reasonable information about a game without actually stealing it.

open house/house showings
test driving a car
the radio for music

Do you get to move into that house and live there for 9 months without buying it or paying rent? If the dealership is closed does that mean you can steal the keys and test drive at your discretion? Can you play the music on the radio commercial free whenever you want? Here's another one, if you order a meal, can you eat half of it then decide you don't like it and not pay for it?

the problem is, when the gaming market lacks these things, people take things into their own hands to make informed decisions. Are there a group of people out there that will take advantage of others and use the situation for profit or to slide by without paying? most certainly. That does not change the purpose of the activity in and of itself though.

And the purpose or justification of the activity doesn't change the legality or moral reprehensibility of it either.... The problem is people who steal and commit crimes will find whatever reasoning as justification for their actions.

Your holier than thou attitude though precludes you from any understanding.

What is there to understand? If you pirate games, you're stealing. Stealing is fundamentally wrong. Its really black and white, if you see nothing wrong with stealing then its obvious you see nothing wrong with piracy.

Fact of the matter is we have all bought games we ended up hating, we all wish we could have only known the game would have been like this before we bought it so we could have stopped ourselves from wasting our money.

Exchange "games" with anything, its a part of life. The only reason people like you justify piracy is because the anonymity and lack of regulation of the internet make it easy.

Criterion Games has the right idea with Burnout, released the full game with a limited amount of time to play it, as long as it's a reasonable amount of time their is no reason for piracy with this game. Also it needs to be left like that, so that people who don't find out about it until a month later can still get that same experience can try the game for a weekend or whatever and then decide if they want to buy it.

And of course you still didn't buy it. But you mentioned it here, I guess they should be grateful right?

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Maximilian
No your opinion is invalid, what are you trying to accomplish here? Your not convincing anyone that DRM is a great idea and we should all support it... ill continue to do things my way so i dont get screwed by buying another crap game, others who also do this will likely keep doing the same and the pirates who pirate for the sake of it well theyre never going to stop. Accept it, pirates are not the root cause of the problem, lousy games and even worse protection schemes are.

I've already stated what my main concern is: that developers are going to eventually turn their backs on the PC industry and stop making games for the the PC completely. This has already begun to happen as development from many leading dev houses has shifted their focus to the consoles first, only porting to the PC some months later.

Pirates are the root cause of the problem because devs see piracy rates on consoles are much lower than the PC. All this despite much higher sales figures for the consoles as well. The article shows this clearly beyond dispute. Once development for the PC no longer becomes worthwhile they will simply stop making games for the PC or even porting them.

Devs who deserve my cash will get it, those that dont will get nothing, simple as that. Piracy is a conveniant excuse for low sales of a lousy game. If a game is good it will sell well, sins of a solar empire is a prime example.

And I have no problem with that mentality, but let the content and quality of the game determine that and not the DRM scheme.

Also Sins isn't a really good example since again, it sold around 500k copies and was pirated about 400k as well, very similar to the piracy/sales ratio of other titles like Spore/Crysis/COD4 etc.

I conclude that you are definately not a gamer to have come to this belief that DRM is awesome...

I'm not a gamer and I work for EA, anything else? I really wish DRM wasn't necessary, but as has been shown over and over again, you cannot realistically expect people to do the right thing and as such, DRM is necessary.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
Unfortunately, single player games rule the market. This kind of DRM doesn't work for single player games since the crack will not check if the game is valid. That thing I posted about requiring a server for single player would be the only thing that would make cracking a single player game a pain in the ass since it would mean running your own server then joining that server. Even then, it's still questionable if it would stop piracy. When I was big into Neverwinter Nights, I ran a LAN server on my second computer so that the AI would not eat my frame rate. In theory, cracking a server-requiring game like World of Warcraft would work the exact same way. To be honest, setting up a NWN server on my second computer then joining it wasn't that difficult, so why would it be any harder to do that as a crack method for some future game?

It still would work for single player game if you required online incremental content delivery. There's already been similar implementations, like games that do not include the .exe on the DVD. Bioshock I believe was one where it cut down Day 0 and 1 downloads because the .exe needed to be downloaded from their servers. Titans Quest also mentioned something similar as it checked at various points for authenticity. I'd like to see something where there's random downloads and/or checks to continue. Sure you might get cracked eventually, but it sure would be a lot more difficult to pirate a game that came in 30 pieces compared to a single ISO that only needs a cracked .exe or cd-key.

I agree that Xbox Live is a fantastic service, but I think you're wrong when you assume that a lot of people are focused on the online part of gaming. I'll go as far as saying most Xbox games would still be a lot of fun for anyone who did not have internet. GTA 4 was all single player; the online sucked. I really like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, but the only multiplayer I care about is having 2 controllers plugged into the same Xbox. Sports games are the same thing - me and a friend playing together in the same room. If it was widely known how to pirate Xbox games without changing any of the hardware in the console, Xbox piracy would be insane. It would be just as bad as PC piracy if not worse since you could rent a bunch of games from the store and copy all of them in one night. The only thing stopping Xbox piracy is figuring out how to do it without breaking your system.

See this is the glue aspect of XBox Live and other services like Steam. All of your games are tied to your account and to your Xbox, so if you get busted there's a good chance you lose your Xbox Live account. The risk of punishment and reality that the gaming experience isn't the same with pirated copies are effective deterrents to piracy on consoles.

Uh that game is $50 everywhere I check.
http://www.amazon.com/Prince-P...qid=1229300014&sr=8-15
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/ol...&cp=1&id=1218027350894

edit: accidentally posted a canadian link, but most of you are not canadian.

Well I can't account for prices everywhere but gogamer, amazon and target all have Prince of Persia for $30 in the US.

I'm not actually going anywhere with my posting. I'm just thinking out loud and trying to argue against things I disagree with.

I don't mind people who actually pay for games disagreeing and I'm not saying I like everything about DRM either. I just see it as a necessary security measure to ensure the continued well-being of PC gaming.

 

[lupi]

Originally posted by: chizow

I'm not a gamer and I work for EA, anything else?

Nope, for those of us still using more than a couple brain cells that was all you needed to say.

 

[Nik]

Originally posted by: Nik
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You prefer to steal something of poor quality rather than buy it.

You are never going to be able to find something that meets your standards, because you have shown that you have none.

Please do not generate any posts regarding in support/acknowlegement of piracy - that attitude does not sit well with the standards that we try to set around here.

Senior Anandtech Moderator
Common Courtesy

While I can acknowledge and conform to the rules of this forum, which I will, your evaluation of me and my choices isn't accurate. Judge all you want, say whatever you like, but I do have standards. It's pretty easy to meet someone's standards if they don't have any. I have high standards that the gaming industry used to adhere to. That's WHY I got into gaming. Games were long. They were fun. They were absolutely worth the money. They were innovative and creative. Now-a-days it's hard to find a game that's even immersive.

Buying games that I've downloaded is something I've always done, for games that were good enough to bother playing after a few levels. A short demo doesn't give an accurate evaluation of the game; it's just a level or two that gives you a peek, but hardly enough to be a proper evaluation of the game. MMOs usually give you two weeks to evaluate the whole game. That's pretty awesome.

There are three games in the past year out of five that I've purchased after downloading. If you don't want me endorsing piracy, that's fine, but saying I have no standards isn't anywhere near accurate.

Sorry for breaking forum rules, though. I won't do it again.

 

[Nik]

Originally posted by: chizow
I don't mind people who actually pay for games disagreeing and I'm not saying I like everything about DRM either. I just see it as a necessary security measure to ensure the continued well-being of PC gaming.

Your posts just go to show how one-sided the gaming industry is --more in touch with generating the all mighty dollar for a soulless corporate money machine instead of truly serving the gamer. There are plenty of ways to charge the paddles and revive the PC gaming market and it isn't beating up your customers.

 

[LumbergTech]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom
Anyone who's for DRM read this, http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/6800.page

found this to be the most frustrating part of the whole post

"#6. He stated that changing out any hardware will directly use up an installation.

#8. He stated that reinstalling the game on the same computer will not use up an installation, unless you reformat.

#9. He stated that resetting your CMOS or BIOS will use up an installation. "

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: chizow
I've already stated what my main concern is: that developers are going to eventually turn their backs on the PC industry and stop making games for the the PC completely. This has already begun to happen as development from many leading dev houses has shifted their focus to the consoles first, only porting to the PC some months later.

Pirates are the root cause of the problem because devs see piracy rates on consoles are much lower than the PC. All this despite much higher sales figures for the consoles as well. The article shows this clearly beyond dispute. Once development for the PC no longer becomes worthwhile they will simply stop making games for the PC or even porting them.

Who cares, i mean the devs who have what it takes will suceed on the PC, like blizzard. Those who move to consoles... well best of luck to them. Epic and Crytek spring to mind here, i really wouldnt mind if the next crysis game was on the xbox 720 or whatever and i really wouldnt mind if the next UT game never appeared at all. The good devs left on the PC are either doing really well or have been hoovered up by EA, its just the few stragglers that havent really fallen into either of those categories that are having problems.

Originally posted by: chizow
And I have no problem with that mentality, but let the content and quality of the game determine that and not the DRM scheme.

Also Sins isn't a really good example since again, it sold around 500k copies and was pirated about 400k as well, very similar to the piracy/sales ratio of other titles like Spore/Crysis/COD4 etc.

Well im not buying something i have to uninstall to get an activation back. To hell with that, limited activations are a bunch of BS anyway. Its about the trend, if people stand for that crap it will spread to other publishers and other games because lets face it if people were fine with limited activations the devs and publishers stand only to gain from that. Lucky for us gamers some people are smart enough to avoid paying for that garbage which will make EA and co think twice before trying to shovel that on us again.

Sins is an excellent example of DRM being worthless. Current methods are worthless, future methods will be just as futile, the more they tighten their grip on customers the more customers will slip through their fingers.

Originally posted by: chizow
I'm not a gamer and I work for EA, anything else? I really wish DRM wasn't necessary, but as has been shown over and over again, you cannot realistically expect people to do the right thing and as such, DRM is necessary.

You are evil. As illustrated here

 

[9mak9]

well the reason people keep pushing back and pirating is because all the consumer of these games are taking hits from the recession; but the prices on games have not dropped or helped anyone in that matter. While the price has not gone down the qualities of the games sure have. And people who create the games might not think that, but it is a general opinion of us gamers, who all in all are what matter to the industry.

 

[EagleKeeper]

The quality of the games have come down somewhat because of the cost of creating the quality games has increased so much.

Also, the gamers have demanded increase quality for every new generation.
To take advantage of the hardware requires an additional level of effort beyond the game development.

So if a game level has not increased, to some it has come down - level of expectation. You do not want to keep playing at the same quality level, one becomes immune/adjusted and demands more.

 

[ZzZGuy]

It needs to become mandatory to put a label on the box what "extra" DRM software is included, what it does, how it can harm your system and what limitations you have to accept in order to play the game.

I don't buy games that have hostile DRM, if it comes to the point all new games have hostile DRM then I'll be playing my Xbox 1080 along with a old computer to play "the good old games". I've been told it's silly, but when I have to beg X company for a extra install that they may or may not give because I upgraded my computer and reinstalled windows a few times AND put it on my laptop, I say to hell with that. The way it's headed, soon the majority of gamers will experience problems with hostile DRM and not know why, they will have to jump not just through a hoop but a whole circus. When that happens, they will simply abandon PC gaming all together leaving pirates who are the only ones enjoying a proper version of the game.

 

[ZzZGuy]

Originally posted by: Common Courtesy
The quality of the games have come down somewhat because of the cost of creating the quality games has increased so much.

Also, the gamers have demanded increase quality for every new generation.
To take advantage of the hardware requires an additional level of effort beyond the game development.

So if a game level has not increased, to some it has come down - level of expectation. You do not want to keep playing at the same quality level, one becomes immune/adjusted and demands more.

I like crysis because it's pretty, and I like Doom I because it's fun (yes, I played it recently). We are at the point that dated graphics still look good.

 

[9mak9]

I have gone back to play Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Torment, Beyond Good and Evil, Fallout, Max Payne, Half Life, etc. all that are pretty dated in graphics but are so superior in content, replayability, enjoyment over todays games. I want my money's worth when I spend $50. The game needs to either be very long and good like Fallout 3 or that has me going back for more to play other characters like NWN2. I hate games that I play once and then leave them on my shelf to gather dust because I have no reason to go back. I understand adventure games and some others are made for one time play but I have still played Longest Journey, Indigo Prophecy and Syberia numerous times because they are amazing games and fun.

Way too many games are too short and don't offer enough reason to go back...in exchanged we get better graphics, IMO not worth the tradeoff

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Why, exactly, are we discussing this at all, anyway? Really, all this DRM talk....in the end, it's just ignoring the actual problem of the failure of the government to enforce standing criminal codes. Can the DRM, and start funding police enough to criminally prosecute individual down loaders.

 

[PsharkJF]

Personally, I find it amazing how some of the same attitudes of people are referenced in the article, and how nobody even references this article when disagreeing with it.

 

[Nik]

Originally posted by: PsharkJF
Personally, I find it amazing how some of the same attitudes of people are referenced in the article, and how nobody even references this article when disagreeing with it.

The article is referenced in the OP.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Maximilian
Who cares, i mean the devs who have what it takes will suceed on the PC, like blizzard. Those who move to consoles... well best of luck to them. Epic and Crytek spring to mind here, i really wouldnt mind if the next crysis game was on the xbox 720 or whatever and i really wouldnt mind if the next UT game never appeared at all. The good devs left on the PC are either doing really well or have been hoovered up by EA, its just the few stragglers that havent really fallen into either of those categories that are having problems.

Ya, obviously you don't care about the future of PC gaming or you wouldn't advocate such myopic views. Of course Blizzard is an excellent example since they've always had one of the most effective forms of DRM, Battle.net. The writing is on the wall, if you haven't read the article or the various interviews published over the last few years you won't know just how grim the situation is. Various quotes from devs @ Tweakguides

Well im not buying something i have to uninstall to get an activation back. To hell with that, limited activations are a bunch of BS anyway. Its about the trend, if people stand for that crap it will spread to other publishers and other games because lets face it if people were fine with limited activations the devs and publishers stand only to gain from that. Lucky for us gamers some people are smart enough to avoid paying for that garbage which will make EA and co think twice before trying to shovel that on us again.

Sins is an excellent example of DRM being worthless. Current methods are worthless, future methods will be just as futile, the more they tighten their grip on customers the more customers will slip through their fingers.

And again, that viewpoint is fundamamentally flawed because it assumes the majority of users will actually an encounter a problem with current DRM schemes, when in reality, they will not.

The people who are "smart enough to avoid paying" for that garbage aren't doing paying customers any favors, just as people who steal anything aren't. Ultimately they drive up costs and may ultimately result in a discontinuation of product or service.

And again with Sins, read the article. It was pirated at the same ratio compared to sales of more popular games. Just because the Stardock devs choose to ignore pirated copies instead of lost sales doesn't mean piracy wasn't an issue for Sins of a Solar Empire heh.

You are evil. As illustrated here

Amazing, someone would go through all that effort but finds uninstalling to regain an activation tedious! Just goes to show you cannot reason with unreasonable minds.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: PhatoseAlpha
Why, exactly, are we discussing this at all, anyway? Really, all this DRM talk....in the end, it's just ignoring the actual problem of the failure of the government to enforce standing criminal codes. Can the DRM, and start funding police enough to criminally prosecute individual down loaders.

It would take an amazing amount of resources to have standard law enforcement handle piracy. A much more likely scenario would be similar to what happened in the music industry where ISPs were charged with the task of policing their networks. The problem is the PC game industry does not have a vocal and well-funded lobbying arm like the RIAA to protect its interests and go after individual offenders.

Originally posted by: PsharkJF
Personally, I find it amazing how some of the same attitudes of people are referenced in the article, and how nobody even references this article when disagreeing with it.

I've references and direct-quoted the article numerous times, but you have to realize many people advocating piracy or condemning DRM won't even spend the time to read it.

What really amazes me however is the refusal of pirates to acknowledge piracy is stealing. You see it in this thread, they're willing to use whatever justification in their minds necessary to make the distinction that piracy is not stealing.

 

[PsharkJF]

You weren't the one I was referencing chizow.

The "read between the lines" comment I was going for was that it seemed to me nobody had read the article, given the odd posts of anti-drm stuff that the article itself attempts to debunk. That's all.

 

[ZzZGuy]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: Maximilian
Who cares, i mean the devs who have what it takes will suceed on the PC, like blizzard. Those who move to consoles... well best of luck to them. Epic and Crytek spring to mind here, i really wouldnt mind if the next crysis game was on the xbox 720 or whatever and i really wouldnt mind if the next UT game never appeared at all. The good devs left on the PC are either doing really well or have been hoovered up by EA, its just the few stragglers that havent really fallen into either of those categories that are having problems.

Ya, obviously you don't care about the future of PC gaming or you wouldn't advocate such myopic views. Of course Blizzard is an excellent example since they've always had one of the most effective forms of DRM, Battle.net. The writing is on the wall, if you haven't read the article or the various interviews published over the last few years you won't know just how grim the situation is. Various quotes from devs @ Tweakguides

Well im not buying something i have to uninstall to get an activation back. To hell with that, limited activations are a bunch of BS anyway. Its about the trend, if people stand for that crap it will spread to other publishers and other games because lets face it if people were fine with limited activations the devs and publishers stand only to gain from that. Lucky for us gamers some people are smart enough to avoid paying for that garbage which will make EA and co think twice before trying to shovel that on us again.

Sins is an excellent example of DRM being worthless. Current methods are worthless, future methods will be just as futile, the more they tighten their grip on customers the more customers will slip through their fingers.

And again, that viewpoint is fundamamentally flawed because it assumes the majority of users will actually an encounter a problem with current DRM schemes, when in reality, they will not.

The people who are "smart enough to avoid paying" for that garbage aren't doing paying customers any favors, just as people who steal anything aren't. Ultimately they drive up costs and may ultimately result in a discontinuation of product or service.

And again with Sins, read the article. It was pirated at the same ratio compared to sales of more popular games. Just because the Stardock devs choose to ignore pirated copies instead of lost sales doesn't mean piracy wasn't an issue for Sins of a Solar Empire heh.

You are evil. As illustrated here

Amazing, someone would go through all that effort but finds uninstalling to regain an activation tedious! Just goes to show you cannot reason with unreasonable minds.

How about me with a laptop, which I bought so I have something to do out in the middle of nowhere. You honestly want me to take anywhere from a 40 minute to 2 hour bus ride, then pay $20 in cab fair carrying a item that is likely to get me mugged if I do any amount of walking around just so you can not call me a pirate when I uninstall a game (I'm under the impression you require a internet connection)? Then there is the issue of royally screwing up my OS which I have done in the past. Oh and how about that 10 day ET phone home BS EA tried to pull? So my answer to you is go F. yourself.

Screw the impact on others, I AM the one affected and I speak with my wallet.

 

[thatguy82]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: Zenoth
I agree with almost everything he says, and the very idea behind his article is certainly honorable, to open up people's eyes about the situation and think of it with solid evidence, facts and to not fall into the FUD and misinformation.

I'm sorry, but the article is still fud. The guy misses the obvious conclusion that consoles sell more because console owners are prone to buying lots of shitty games whereas PC gamers buy a smaller number of good games. World of Warcraft is 4 years old and it still has millions of players. Can you name a single console game from 2004 that has a significant player base online? Maybe Halo 2, and that's a big maybe. What about Counter-Strike? That game is 8 years old. Show me a console game from 2000 that has anyone playing it. Diablo 2 and Starcraft are other examples of old PC games that still have a huge player base.

The life cycle of PC games is several times longer than the life cycle of console games, and that's why we don't buy as many PC games. I can gaurantee that Team Fortress 2 will still have a large player base for a few more years. What will COD4 on Xbox look like at that time? It will be completely dead. Yes the console version sells a lot of units, but the game is very quickly abandoned because the quality just isn't there. Devs look at it and scream "omg piracy is why they don't buy games!" while gamers are thinking more along the lines of "why would I buy Battlefield 123 when I'm still having fun with Left 4 Dead?"
Devs don't seem to understand that I only buy games when I'm bored. If I'm still having fun with World of Warcraft, why the hell do you expect me to buy Call of Duty 36 or whatever?

I completely agree that developers should focus on consoles (and multiplatform) since that's where all the money is, but don't hand me this bullshit and say piracy is why sales are down. The companies that actually know how to sell PC games follow a pretty standard model - they spread the games out a lot. See if you can answer this simple question: how many games has Blizzard made in the past 10 years? The answer is 4 full games (not including expansions), and they've all sold very well. Valve is taking the opposite approach of releasing a bunch of small/cheap games and episodes, and they too are selling very well. The only companies that are having a hard time are the ones releasing full size games that cost millions to make, and they are releasing these games every year. The idiots running those companies don't seem to understand what market saturation is, so they blame piracy.

good post

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: Nik
I refuse to pay $60-$100 for a goddamn video game that's going to last me 4 hours and has no replay value. Shit, I refuse to pay $10 at the theater for two hours of a movie that I'm not sure will suck or not.

Game makers marinade their games in good graphics but beyond that it's the same damn game I bought last month. It's the same hack-and-slash or shoot-anything-that-moves crap that came out last year. Look at the Call of Duty chain as an example. I bought the original COD and I bought COD4. COD was good, but COD 2 through, what, 5 now? It's just the same shit over... and over... and over again. The majority of gamers are stupid lemmings that see a title and buy it. As gamers, it's our own fault for driving the price of games up and the quality down because we will buy ANYTHING. We don't put our foot down and say no, this is garbage and I'm not paying $60 for it.

That's why I pirate games. When PC games don't suck so much and when they don't cost a damn arm-and-a-leg, THEN I'll start buying games again.

^

Prime example of why we need more effective DRM.

no its more of an examply of why we need better games

ill freely admit i used to priate games all the time, hell i didnt pay for a PC game from whenever doom came out till 2003 ish (max payne 2 wa sthe last PC game i played that is not an mmo) which is when i gave up on PC gaming for the most part

THE GAMES ARNT EVEN WORTH STEALING ANYMORE

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: ZzZGuy
How about me with a laptop, which I bought so I have something to do out in the middle of nowhere. You honestly want me to take anywhere from a 40 minute to 2 hour bus ride, then pay $20 in cab fair carrying a item that is likely to get me mugged if I do any amount of walking around just so you can not call me a pirate when I uninstall a game (I'm under the impression you require a internet connection)? Then there is the issue of royally screwing up my OS which I have done in the past. Oh and how about that 10 day ET phone home BS EA tried to pull? So my answer to you is go F. yourself.

Screw the impact on others, I AM the one affected and I speak with my wallet.

Uh, what does your laptop have to do with any of this? Honestly if you're worried about getting mugged wallking around with a laptop you've got bigger issues than DRM or my opinions. News flash: every year people get struck by lightning, eaten by sharks and hit by cars. I guess we should avoid going outside, swimming, or walking altogether.......

There's nothing wrong with speaking with your wallet, if you don't think a game is worth buying then don't buy it. Just don't steal it either. If its worth stealing then obviously you assign some value to it, so you should pay for it.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Anubis
no its more of an examply of why we need better games

ill freely admit i used to priate games all the time, hell i didnt pay for a PC game from whenever doom came out till 2003 ish (max payne 2 wa sthe last PC game i played that is not an mmo) which is when i gave up on PC gaming for the most part

THE GAMES ARNT EVEN WORTH STEALING ANYMORE

So someone who is so out of touch with reality that they're quoting $60-100 prices for games is a good example of why we need better games? LOL.

This seems incredibly hypocritical from someone who cries anytime someone takes a crap on WoW and gladly pays $15 a month for an MMO, but isn't willing to spend on non-online titles. Just helps prove my point. Tie content to a credit card or form of guaranteed payment and piracy rates will go down.