"[I]f one quarter of the people that usually pirate [Football Manager] switch to purchasing Football Manager 2012, the sales of the game worldwide would more than double" reveals videogame developer and publisher SEGA (Purchese). This means that approximately 80% of the people who use Football Manager 2012 own a pirated copy of the game. This number can be found from the quote provided by SEGA as one quarter of 80% is equal to the other 20% who have purchased the game, in effect doubling their income. With the percent of users pirating videogames is between 40 to 80 percent even for one of the largest game developers, profit off games becomes increasingly difficult as a large majority of their player base is not paying for the game they
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Throughout the last decade some pieces of legislation have been enacted and have decreased the piracy rates in several countries. The government seems to be able to This may seem this way at first, but history has shown that this is not the proper way to stop piracy. To disprove this idea, I will explore a relatively successful piece of anti-piracy legislation. It was the Swedish Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive, or IPRED. The purpose of IPRED to allow copyright holders to request the internet service providers to reveal any copyright infringing individuals, making the anonymity behind piracy non-existent. At first “it increased physical music sales by 33%, digital music sales by 46%, and total music sales by 36%” (Adermon et al.). While it may be effective for the short term, more importantly, the long-term effectiveness comes into to question. Thankfully history has the answer to the long-term effectiveness of similar laws. The prohibition of alcohol from 1920 to 1933 effectively models what happens when law enforcement tries to ban anything as big as alcohol usage, and in this case, piracy. According to Ron Honick, an Electrical Engineer, and Paul Craig, the lead security consultant at Pimp Industries, “When alcohol became illegal, most people stopped producing and selling liquor. The risk was high, and getting drunk was …show more content…
While I do concede that they do take away some of the profit that they could have had if they sold it by their own means, however, having their product on the platform is far more beneficial in the long run despite the fees and lower prices. Peter Holm explains that “Steam [a videogame distribution platform] offers frequent sales, including sales of up to 75%. These sales are heavily promoted on the front pages of the Steam site and application, and they often last for short periods of time, encouraging impulse buying” (Holm). Impulse buying often leads to customers purchasing games that they would otherwise never buy at full price. Consequently, they can make money off someone who was otherwise uninterested in purchasing their game. To put it in another way, because of the huge sales and ease of access that Steam provides, not only does the platform combat piracy but also reaches another demographic that the game would previously never sell to before, those not willing to spend money on the product and not willing to pirate the product. And the fact that they make more profit is not based off baseless projections but rather physical data. Data from Steams
Throughout the last decade some pieces of legislation have been enacted and have decreased the piracy rates in several countries. The government seems to be able to This may seem this way at first, but history has shown that this is not the proper way to stop piracy. To disprove this idea, I will explore a relatively successful piece of anti-piracy legislation. It was the Swedish Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive, or IPRED. The purpose of IPRED to allow copyright holders to request the internet service providers to reveal any copyright infringing individuals, making the anonymity behind piracy non-existent. At first “it increased physical music sales by 33%, digital music sales by 46%, and total music sales by 36%” (Adermon et al.). While it may be effective for the short term, more importantly, the long-term effectiveness comes into to question. Thankfully history has the answer to the long-term effectiveness of similar laws. The prohibition of alcohol from 1920 to 1933 effectively models what happens when law enforcement tries to ban anything as big as alcohol usage, and in this case, piracy. According to Ron Honick, an Electrical Engineer, and Paul Craig, the lead security consultant at Pimp Industries, “When alcohol became illegal, most people stopped producing and selling liquor. The risk was high, and getting drunk was …show more content…
While I do concede that they do take away some of the profit that they could have had if they sold it by their own means, however, having their product on the platform is far more beneficial in the long run despite the fees and lower prices. Peter Holm explains that “Steam [a videogame distribution platform] offers frequent sales, including sales of up to 75%. These sales are heavily promoted on the front pages of the Steam site and application, and they often last for short periods of time, encouraging impulse buying” (Holm). Impulse buying often leads to customers purchasing games that they would otherwise never buy at full price. Consequently, they can make money off someone who was otherwise uninterested in purchasing their game. To put it in another way, because of the huge sales and ease of access that Steam provides, not only does the platform combat piracy but also reaches another demographic that the game would previously never sell to before, those not willing to spend money on the product and not willing to pirate the product. And the fact that they make more profit is not based off baseless projections but rather physical data. Data from Steams