One simple word can describe the state of Piracy within the free market: Sealand. In 2007 founding members of the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay started a campaign to free themselves of the ‘tyrannical’ international and domestic copyright laws by simply circumventing the whole issue in it’s entirety by buying its own sovereign nation. Built in World War Two as a defense platform to deter German interference in British shipping lanes, HM Fort Roughs (Which would later go on to claim Independence as The Principality of Sealand in 1967) seemed like a fantastic place to take refuge from ‘The Man.’ Although The Pirate Bay only managed to fundraise a measly $20,000 (A far cry from the $900 million asking price), The idea of creating a nation free from all copyright laws remains an interesting idea. Had the plans to purchase and occupy the 550m2 platform come to fruition, the founders of TPB wouldn’t be in their current legal situation, but would it have had any profound effect on piracy in the rest of the world? While no one can know for certain, I would venture to guess that piracy rates would remain relatively unchanged.

Piracy continues to be a heated issue among the predominant media industry lobbyist groups, ie the IFPI, RIAA, MPAA, and ESA. While each of these entities tries to combat piracy much of their efforts amount to trying to bail out the water in a sinking boat with a spoon. While both the music and film industries have their own challenges when facing the realities of piracy, the video game industry, specifically the PC market, presents its own set of unique problems.

The PC platform itself creates challenges within the confines of its innate design; by being an open platform, piracy is simply a match made in heaven for the PC games market. Unlike home consoles, which often require modification of the hardware, PCs can solve almost any issue of copyright protection with simple software solutions. With the simple act of a goggle search, the instant ability to play almost any new release with relative ease is within any PC users’ fingertips. The ease at which games are pirated on the PC has lead to the implementation of many different systems and strategies by publishers in hopes of capturing the revenue lost with every release on the platform.

The most simple from of copy protection has been around nearly as long as the PC itself. Early systems usually involved a simplified verification of ownership by various means, usually consisting of a question that could only be answered by someone with a copy of the manual or original box, much like how CD keys work today. With the growth of the Internet came methods to circumvent these archaic systems, and lead to the creation of software solutions to verify ownership. Middleware programs like Starforce add an extra layer of protection by encoding information in a way that makes the cracking of a game more difficult.

An example of how early PC games (Secret of Monkey Island specifically) handled password protection

This however is where the line begins to blur between the protection of a publishers intellectual property, at the cost of usability and faith in legitimate consumers. With reports that programs like Starforce hamper system performance, many PC gamers are being penalized in the name of preventing a crime that a majority hasn’t committed. While the use of these middleware programs has decreased, the current alternatives, which consist of either continual authentification via a connection to the Internet (which usually disables play without it), or a set number of installs per disk, leave much to be desired. In an effort to both curb piracy and get paid for their products, publishers have had to change the expectations of the PC platform over the past decade.

In recent years, as a majority of developers have begun leading development on home consoles, the number of sloppy ports from consoles has seemed to increase. This trend has set a troubling precedent that sees most PC releases of AAA console titles come many months after their console counterparts, often with the addition of game ending bugs and glitches that render the titles unplayable until patches are released. While the problem of delayed releases can push users to piracy, premature releases also set up PC games to be pirated at increased numbers. With games being put on popular torrent sites, usually weeks before release, the alur of playing a new release before anyone else is like dangling candy in front of a diabetic baby, sure it’ll taste good and provide instant gratification but will ultimately end up causing more trouble then it’s worth.

Ultimately, the biggest factor in stopping the piracy of PC games has been the evolution of online games. By tying a consumer to an online account, a publisher is able to greatly decrease the rate at which a game is pirated. For certain games there are ways around this, but the ultimate success story lies in the realm of MMO’s and their ability to eliminate piracy altogether. Subscription based models provides a true win-win situation for both consumer and publisher.

In addition to the genesis of MMO’s as one of the predominant genre of PC games, free to play games have also begun to make their mark upon the platform. Both id’s QuakeLive and EA’s Battlefield Heroes offer publishers another option to eliminate piracy altogether by simply giving the games away for free. With the games being supported by advertisements (both through their websites and by integrating them into the games), or through optional microtransactions, the idea of creating free to play games on the PC is evolving into a lucrative option.

Valve’s download and user client, Steam, is another example of how the industry has evolved to meet the needs of the base consumer in an effort to decrease piracy. By providing a legitimate way for consumers to download and authenticate games without the need for physical copies, Steam is another giant step forward to eliminating piracy altogether. Gabe Newell, founder of Valve, has gone on the record stating that “As far as DRM goes, most DRM strategies are just dumb. The goal should be to create greater value for customers through service value (make it easy for me to play my games whenever and wherever I want to), not by decreasing the value of a product (maybe I’ll be able to play my game and maybe I won’t).” Newell’s point echoes the sentiment of a true PC gamer, that instead of having to neuter functionality, DRM should instead enhance the player experience. The creation of such a download system allows for the free market to take over and regulate the price, which is illustrated in the many sales and special deals that frequent the service.

As games become more and more sophisticated, the reality of Moore’s law, which states that computing power doubles roughly every 18 months, becomes much more important when examining the issue of piracy of games on the PC. With only a limited number of the PC gaming population able to run new releases to their full potential, piracy is being naturally curbed by the simple act of pushing consumers to consoles, which don’t need to follow the rules presented by Moore’s Law. A drastic change in processing power is noticed between each generation of home consoles, however the time between these changes averages around 6 years compared to the 18 months that is assumed with the PC platform.

Graph which illustrates both the theory and reality of Moore’s Law

Much like the oxymoron of the US declaring victory over an abstract idea, piracy is an issue that will probably never cease to exist. As the computer literacy of the general population continues to increase so will the ease at which conventional PC games will be pirated. The survival of the PC as a competitive gaming platform will ultimately depend on game publishers ability to evolve and adapt, much like how they have done with subscription based games and download services, to the ever changing market.

-Eric Wall

Tags: Copyright, ESA, featured, PC, piracy, Starforce, Steam, The Pirate Bay

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