There’s been a lot of talk re­cent­ly about why PC gam­ing is “doomed”, main­ly be­cause of the ev­er-grow­ing amount of PC game pira­cy. I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly think that PC gam­ing is doomed at all, although I do think there will be a sig­nif­i­cant shift in the way the PC game mar­ket works - to­wards a more con­trolled dis­tri­bu­tion mod­el, per­haps, like Steam.

This is what I think about pira­cy, how­ev­er. It’s a self-sus­tain­ing cy­cle, in a way: high video game prices en­cour­age gamers to pi­rate games in­stead of buy­ing them, “forc­ing” video game man­u­fac­tur­ers to raise prices or keep prices high in order to not lose rev­enue. Those high prices in turn con­tin­ue to en­cour­age pira­cy. This loop is not nec­es­sar­i­ly un­break­able, though there are sev­er­al fac­tors that, in my opin­ion, con­tribute to its sus­te­nance:

1. Too much push for re­al­ism. High qual­i­ty graph­ics is not nec­es­sar­i­ly pho­to­re­al­ism, but the ob­ses­sion with pho­to­re­al­ism ba­si­cal­ly en­sures that de­vel­op­ers and pub­lish­ers spend enor­mous amounts of money on game de­vel­op­ment, and are sub­se­quent­ly ex­treme­ly afraid of “lost” rev­enue. This keeps game prices high. I think per­haps a bet­ter “mar­ket­ing catch­phrase” would be be­liev­abil­i­ty. Most games are not re­al­is­tic at all in any way ex­cept for graph­ics - after all, why play a game if you could do the same thing in re­al life? Games are, al­most by def­i­ni­tion, un­re­al­is­tic. That’s what makes them fun. Games do, how­ev­er, need to be be­liev­able. They need to pro­duce sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief in the gamer, just like a good movie.

2. An­ti-con­sumer poli­cies. This in­cludes schemes such as DRM and copy pro­tec­tion. It is help­ful here to cat­e­go­rize pira­cy in­to two groups - “dis­tri­bu­tion” pira­cy and “con­sump­tion” pira­cy. Pira­cy con­sumers are often some­what ig­no­rant of their ac­tions - they are sim­ply look­ing for a cheap­er way to play a game. Con­sumers are not nec­es­sar­i­ly skilled at ma­nip­u­lat­ing com­put­ers or games. Pi­rate dis­trib­u­tors are com­plete­ly aware of their ac­tions, and are usu­al­ly the ones who break the en­cryp­tion schemes on most games. They are usu­al­ly very com­put­er-saavy.

   Which group is tar­get­ed by game copy pro­tec­tion schemes? Pub­lish­ers would like to think the con­sumers. Copy pro­tec­tion pre­vents “ca­su­al pira­cy”, they say. How­ev­er, in my opin­ion the re­al­i­ty is, “ca­su­al pira­cy” oc­curs when a pira­cy con­sumer un­know­ing­ly down­loads a pi­rat­ed pro­duct from the In­ter­net, that al­ready has the copy pro­tec­tion re­moved. I’m pret­ty sure that pub­lish­ers lose much more money from widespread In­ter­net dis­tri­bu­tion of pi­rat­ed games than they do from, say, Joe­Bob giv­ing his bud­dies a copy of the game so they can all play to­geth­er. Copy pro­tec­tion re­al­ly tar­gets pi­rate dis­trib­u­tors - it sup­pos­ed­ly makes it hard­er for them to dis­tribute games il­le­gal­ly. Does it? Def­i­nite­ly not. Cur­rent in­dus­try copy pro­tec­tion schemes (Se­curom, Safedisc, etc.) are easi­ly bro­ken by pi­rates. “No-CD cracks” for games are re­leased by pi­raters some­times even be­fore the game is re­leased. Worst of all, **copy pro­tec­tion schemes con­vince pi­rate dis­trib­u­tors that the game pub­lish­ers are evil and greedy and don’t de­serve the prof­its from video game sales. This leads them to con­tin­ue pi­rat­ing video games.

   What’s the lesson here? Copy pro­tec­tion doesn’t work, it’s easi­ly bro­ken, and all it does is make things worse.

Some so­lu­tions have been pro­posed to the­se prob­lems. Cen­tral­ized con­tent dis­tri­bu­tion sys­tems, like Steam, pro­pose a seem­ing­ly al­most-per­fect way to con­trol the­se fac­tors. The built-in “ac­ti­va­tion” sys­tem pre­vents gamers from in­stalling games that they do not own (as long as those games are Steam-ex­clu­sive), giv­ing pub­lish­ers peace of mind in know­ing that their prod­ucts will have to bring in rev­enue to be played. How­ev­er, Steam is in­stal­lable on as many com­put­ers as the user wants, along with its games, so it does not pre­clude small groups of friends from play­ing a game to­geth­er. (Its ac­ti­va­tion sys­tem pre­vents mul­ti­ple copies of a game to be played on­line si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.) The na­ture of hav­ing an ac­count with a user­name and pass­word makes many peo­ple he­si­tant to freely give away their cre­den­tials, mak­ing ram­pant pira­cy much less ap­peal­ing.

Its on­ly flaws are this. One is pure­ly tech­ni­cal - Steam does not work through proxy servers, mak­ing life ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult for some gamers be­hind prox­ies. This can sure­ly be re­solved, easi­ly, through some fu­ture Steam up­date. The other is some­thing of a mar­ket flaw - Steam on­ly al­lows games to be pur­chased new, then kept or gift­ed. There is no “used games” mar­ket on Steam. Some gamers (in­clud­ing my­self) buy most games used, which is cheap­er and very ap­peal­ing for those will­ing to wait for a pe­ri­od after a game’s re­lease. eBay prices for many old games are ex­ceed­ing­ly af­ford­able. How­ev­er, be­cause of Steam’s lack of a used game mar­ket, all game pur­chas­es on Steam are at some­what in­flat­ed prices. A game that one could buy on eBay for less than $10 might still sell for $40 on Steam. Gamers who no longer wish to play some game do not have the op­tion to re­cov­er some of their ex­pens­es in pur­chas­ing it - their on­ly op­tion is to give the game away to an­oth­er Steam user. This means that sec­ond-hand trans­fers of games on Steam is very lim­it­ed.

I think, with the res­o­lu­tion of the­se mi­nor is­sues, plat­forms like Steam will be­come the ubiq­ui­tous method of dis­tribut­ing games on the PC. Lest de­vel­op­ers feel that con­sole dis­tri­bu­tion is the on­ly way to go, let me put forth my opin­ion that con­sole gam­ing is even more an­ti-con­sumer: it forces the con­sumer to buy en­tire­ly new, un­flex­i­ble hard­ware if some game is ex­clu­sive to one par­tic­u­lar con­sole. There are cur­rent­ly no such things as cross-con­sole stan­dards. And do not think that con­sole games can­not be pi­rat­ed. Sim­ple en­cryp­tion schemes and spe­cial­ized me­dia do not pre­vent con­sole games and em­u­la­tors from be­ing dis­tribut­ed wide­ly on the In­ter­net, as they are even now.