id's Hollenshead: Piracy 'hidden benefit' for PC manufacturers

"Heck, the only reason we got one was to steal quotes from Tom Bramwell's interviews."

You BASTARDS.

Yeah, piracy is just not cool. I try to explain to all my friends that it is wrong, but they continue to do it.

well that is a good reason to have a pc

Same on the pirates.

He makes a very good point. Now just wait for the waft of piracy-advocates to come piling in and claim what he says is complete crap.

I'll admit that I pirated some music back when napster came out, but I always felt it was slightly more of a crime to pirate movies and games.

I think he has hardware manufacturers confused with ISPs. Or at least I did up to the part on sticking up for P2P.

Anyway, I don't pirate. I can afford to buy whatever software I want. Haven't bought anything for the PC all year.

It's definitely true. I pirated a lot during high school when I had no real income, and when I built my first PC there was this logic where you think "If I'm spending this much on the parts, why should I have to spend that much money on the games if I don't have to?"

After a while I realized how messed up that logic is, and now I buy all my games. Thanks to Steam, buying games is actually easier and more convenient than piracy, unlike store-bought games.

Nothing like convicting everyone before they've had a trial, eh Tommy boy?

I'm not advocating piracy in any way, but this kind of attitude (like the RIAA/MPAA's) doesn't help things in the slightest.

Grow up Tom.

YARRRRRRR me hearties.

steam is much better, i agree with caramelzappa.

*puts back on eyepatch and pillages the villiages*

Um, no. That's stretching things a bit. A person doesn't spend a thousand dollars just to pirate a fifty dollar game.

Getting f*cked over by retail stores for a used copy of a scratched game disc with no manual makes me want to pirate. Looking at a beta version of a game that's just gone gold and is sitting on a shelf makes me want to pirate.

This is stupid and counterproductive. He doesn't suggest there is any inappropriate behavior on the hardware manufacturers' part, or that there is something better they could be doing. I've never seen a PC ad once and thought, wow that's encouraging me to pirate. Also, it's ironic that you could read his comments to mean that it ticks him off that some people buy PCs for the open source content.

Essentially, he's accusing themthe manufacturers of not feeling really, really bad about Hollenshead's own problems--like some kind of jealous lover.

Absolutely 100% correct. He has guts to say it, so all the more credit to him.

If you are not a pirate, it is extremely difficult to fill even an 80 gig hard drive. pirated video is the driving force behind the sales of large hard drives. Pirated games an graphics cards have a similar relationship.

The thing is though that the games industry should have seen this coming. Everything the PC gaming industry has done over the last 15 years has skewed their demographic to people with three defining traits: they are tech savvy, they love games, but they hate gaming companies. These are the exact sort of people who will flock to piracy.

You know why Blizzard is so successful? There are many reasons, but they all basically boil down to one thing: people LOVE blizzard. They don't pirate because unlike most every other company with which they either hate nor have a detached emotional relationship to, people actually care about Blizzard.

Brand loyalty is a good way to combat piracy. Try it.

"I think he has hardware manufacturers confused with ISPs. Or at least I did up to the part on sticking up for P2P"

No, but you're mistaken in your logic. P2P is probably the worst thing that has happened to ISPs as of late, as the people who use these systems suck up an immense amount of bandwidth. Consequently, with more and more US ISPs setting up download limits, it's P2Pers that are largely responsible for bringing this around.

He's pretty much correct.

Back in the days when PCs cost the earth, it was a pretty clear choice.. buy a cheap console, and then have to pay for everything... or buy an expensive PC, but get everything else free.

I haven't pirated any games since i was back in college, but the majority of the people with TIME to play all these games are college kids/young single guys.. and while they mighthave the money to spend on $600 graphics cards every six months, thats only because it give them access to free content.

SIde note: I noticed a broadband provider recently advertising its limits in terms of how many dvd movies you can download... i'm not aware of any legal sources for dvd movie downloads...

game devs need to work on some form of subscription download service thats pre-installed on most PCs.

I've got a peg-leg, a hook and a PC with an internet connection! Aaaaaaaaarrrrggg!

What other purpose is there these days for the kind of space you get with computers (500MB-1TB) other than storing more content than is reasonable to assume they've purchases legally?

Granted, I know people who large HDDs filled with legal content, such as people with music and movie project hobbies, but I've more often seen people who fill their drives with pirated stuff.

bunch of smart guys over at id...

Follow my train of thought:

"'C:/ scourge??' Is that the name of some virus, or some pirating site..? Oh wait, it's just another pun..."

Curse you Ludwig, curse you.

5 gigs? I thought games are 10-20 gigs now...

Well and the servers and hard drives for all that increased bandwidth don'T exactly grow on trees either.

"law-abiding minority"

Sounds sad, but definitely true...

I know places where you need an "ID" to see "PC" thats "RG" UM?

http://www.squidoo.com/doughboy

Surprised no one mentioned it yet, but you've all seen those nvidia bumpers (that is, advertisements) when you start just about any game?

What did you, as the consumer, receive in exchange for having to watch a commercial that runs every time you start your game? Nothing.

From the dev/publisher's point of view, the pirates buy hardware and then steal the software. Ok, fair enough. But then the hardware manufacturers give free money to the dev/publisher. Those ads run with absolutely no benefit to the consumer -- they don't get a price break for the game, they don't get free stuff from nvidia. It's money that the dev/publisher gets to pocket for doing absolutely nothing except selling your time to nvidia. They have no right to complain about pirates who only buy hardware, because they're reimbursed by nvidia. The people who do have a right to complain is, as always, the legit consumer.

You're the one who has to watch the ads -- for nothing. You're the one who has to subject yourself to DRM -- for nothing. All of these things are costs that are put on your shoulders, and they don't actually do anything to stop the pirates. So what we really have here is a situation where dev/pubs include piracy as part of a business model, and use it to justify making life harder for you, the paying customer, because they're not willing to absorb the cost of piracy as a cost of doing their business. It's been a long time since piracy has affected any dev/publisher, it only affects you, the buyer.

The problem is'nt that he is not right, he is right actually. The problem is that he does'nt come with any trace of solution to that situation after making such a statement. Making such charge against the hardware manifacturers without any more substance to back up his claims is just irrevelant. This kind of speech will just vanish into the wild cause it does'nt bring up anything, while it actually hold truth, which is sad. I actually am, like Anonymous at 20:47 and many others, pirating and spending my money on hardware. But if I did'nt have the hardware, I would'nt be able to run his or other compagnies games decently. So when you think about it, is his statment bringing anything new to the situation, or chaning anything? no. I would'nt buy a game i could'nt run decently. I will tell you mister Id CEO, I pretty much like Id Software, John Carmack in particular, but you have to push the matter much more far then this if you want to make any kind of impact. The broadband ISPs have a much bigger responsability in the piracy case than the hardware manifacturers have. The hardware manifacturers actually benifits from the piracy situation, but without being really aware of it. If they are guilty of something, it is to not denounce it, and not to encourage it. Check out the ISPs first. Tne internet is a great information and communication tool right, but what is the point in having a high bandwith connection if it's not to pirate content, there is no other point. You see, there should be some kind of piracy taxe, and everyones with some kind of brain knows it. The situation with hardware manifacturers is totally different, there should be a coallission between software and hardware manifacturers to back each others of, and there is already one that have been created around last year, including the big players in the industry like Microsoft, AMD-ATI and Intel. So well...what's really the point behind that accusation of yours?