Sony Asia president discusses repercussions of piracy
by David Hinkle 
{ Sep 19th 2009 at 6:00AM }
Yasuda said that the loss of sales due to software piracy has affected employees at almost every level of development, from the producer who hasn't been able to receive royalties to the youth that dream of being a game developer. For producers, Yasuda says these royalties contribute "to the healthy development of the software business," but warned that, in the long run, students aspiring to be developers will "suffer the most" when they eventually release their first game and feel the pain of lost sales.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
DeepFriedSushi @ Sep 19th 2009 6:04AM
what is this? i dont even.
THE WICKER MAN (BWF) (GT: Dalek Prime) @ Sep 19th 2009 6:08AM
AAARRGHH'nt you aware its talk like a pirate day? Pirate day in WOW. Capt Baby Pirate image will see much use today!
Blank-Mage @ Sep 19th 2009 6:40AM
It's like you guys aren't even trying anymore.
Then again, I just realized now that I paid more attention to the talking cosplay toddlers than I did to the actual article, so what does that tell you?
Blank-Mage @ Sep 19th 2009 6:42AM
THEN I noticed the one on the left looks disturbingly old for her size. Like, to an natural extent and oh my God do I need to sleep before this gets any worse.
Atr-Slzr-Ctr @ Sep 19th 2009 3:24PM
She's a cute baby girl, so maybe her mother is hot.
Neuromancer @ Sep 19th 2009 3:25PM
Do you want to report yourself to the authorities before things get out of hand?
Blank-Mage @ Sep 19th 2009 10:02PM
No, I bet those toddlers aren't even magical.
Um, I mean, not that I take that into account.
Lucky @ Sep 19th 2009 6:45AM
If I could make one wish come true, I'd wish that sohtware piracy disappeared altogether. Not because I want developers to get their deserved money, but because I never want to see those damn baby pirates again.
Ghen @ Sep 19th 2009 6:54AM
I don't understand Sony's bitching. You can't pirate games on their console. Major kudos to the engineers who did that and then shut up.
MS and Nintendo on the other hand...
mahouneko @ Sep 19th 2009 7:01AM
He's referring to piracy on the PS2 and the PSP.
TinyTim121 @ Sep 19th 2009 7:03AM
You don't understand Sony's bitching?? You can't pirate on their console?? http://www.joystiq.com/2009/04/21/sonys-peter-dille-thinks-psp-piracy-is-sickening/
IonAion @ Sep 19th 2009 7:04AM
There is piracy on PSP and PS2 which they are still selling and releasing new games for.
Shadow_Modder @ Sep 19th 2009 7:06AM
From you comment, you probably don't know, but there's a big piracy scene on the PSP...
Ghen @ Sep 19th 2009 7:13AM
didn't know.
*about face*
hunter @ Sep 19th 2009 11:30AM
you can´t pirate games on the ps3 (all the other consoles are pirate-able) just because blue rays are expensive, plain simple. When blue rays are cheaper you are going to see hundreds of copies. But this really shows how idiotic this pirate topic is, sony has virtually no pirate problems on the ps3 (like wii or xbox) but they still complain??? and sorry but wasn´t this supposed to be a pc only problem? (or at least that what everybody alway said) and now it´s a problem with the only console that is not having piracy at least for the moment? right.......
BigD145 @ Sep 19th 2009 2:10PM
I thoroughly enjoy my PS2 hard drive and booting games off of it. The loading screens are 10x faster. Do I own the games on my HD? Yup. I have more games for my PS2 than any other console I own. They were cheaper.
mahouneko @ Sep 19th 2009 4:06PM
@hunter:
Way to miss the point of the article. Downvoted.
The PSP and PS2 have piracy issues. Even in the heyday of the PS1, the PS1 suffered from a great deal of piracy as well. Moving into a completely different storage media is just a temporary solution for the PS3 given that MOST (if not all) PS3 games are region-free. What Sony has learned about piracy is that the initial cases of piracy started out benign, like wanting to import US or Japanese games and getting around the region-lock. What really happened is that the modchips that circumvent the region-lock have the side effect of allowing people to play unsigned code (read: backup games). Once people found out about that, that's where the whole piracy turned negative.
What Sony is doing right now is to give people a notice that piracy harms the gaming industry and to encourage people to support the creative development of game developers to try to minimize the damage to PS3 developers and mitigate the damage to PSP and PS2 developers. Everyone knows about piracy on the PS2 and PSP platforms, so this is Sony's goodwill gesture to the videogame community to grow up and support the developers.
Bowser Rogozhin: England is finished @ Sep 19th 2009 7:47AM
He's right, and piracy isn't just destroying our video games. There's a reason why every other programme on TV is a reality show stuffed with bundles of product placement, paid 'guest appearances,' and the like. People no longer watch TV in the proper manner, and, as such, through devices like Tivo and Sky+, are wrecking traditional, thought provoking programming by giving the people the ability to skip ads. The people are greedy, and skipping ads is pure gluttony as without ads you get no revenue, and without revenue you get tabloid slosh. I'd even say that skipping adverts is, in itself, is a form of piracy and it's forcing redundant thought to become the mean.
Imagine the current TV landscape and apply it to video games; like TV, pretty soon, the only sustainable genres will be karaoke feel good rubbish and sports. Oh wait...
Kevin949 @ Sep 19th 2009 10:40AM
I pay money for cable, I shouldn't have to sit through advertisements. Advertisements were a way to keep TV free. Not anymore though. Now they're in our fucking movie theaters too.
vidGuy @ Sep 19th 2009 12:11PM
Advertising just needs to change to keep up with the times. Don't worry, there's plenty of online Behavioral Targeting and Google Ads out there. We are already seeing TV ads replaced by in-service ads, like the pop-ups or the embedded links on TiVo. Plus, Kevin is write - how can skipping ads be piracy when we are paying for the damn service?
vidGuy @ Sep 19th 2009 12:12PM
*right* wow, haven't made that mistake for 20 years.
makimak22 @ Sep 19th 2009 9:22AM
Ironic that the keynote was delivered in China, the country with the worst game piracy (among others) in the world.
hhhenryhhh @ Sep 20th 2009 12:16PM
how is that ironic, maybe that is exactly why it was delivered there.
mahouneko @ Sep 23rd 2009 11:04PM
The keynote was delivered in Singapore. Get your geography straight.
Kevin949 @ Sep 19th 2009 9:50AM
The real question though is, would the people pirating the game have actually bought it in the first place? Probably not. I can understand "potential loss" but to claim these things as actual loss when there was no sale in the first place (and probably would not have been) is not really a "loss" it's just not a gain.
BananaBoat @ Sep 19th 2009 10:10AM
Even if only a small percentage of total pirated copies would have been sales, a huge amount of money has been lost. Obviously it's insane when a company claims that every single pirated copy is a lost sale, but it's not as if piracy doesn't hurt them.
Kevin949 @ Sep 19th 2009 10:38AM
Well I wasn't necessarily trying to imply that piracy doesn't hurt them. It's a legitimate concern, for sure. But it doesn't hurt them nearly as much as they claim, nor would a small percentage of piracy turning into actual sales become a huge amount of money. Well, not directly for the developer anyway. If you calculate it at 50 or 60 bucks per game then yes, it's a lot of money. But there are a lot of people that get a chunk of that before it gets back to the devs.
yomachaser @ Sep 19th 2009 10:59AM
That is (by far) the worst pro pirate excuse and it comes up so fucking often. If you weren't going to buy it in the first place ,but you want to enjoy the use of it that is the definition of a thief.
makimak22 @ Sep 19th 2009 11:04AM
Ignore the money side of the business. How about the infringement of intellectual properties? Doesn't matter how big or small you think the (potential) financial loss is to the developers, piracy is a criminal offence. FULL STOP.
BananaBoat @ Sep 19th 2009 11:12AM
I know you weren't, but I hear that argument all the time. As you stated, there are a lot of people that get a piece of the profit from every video game sold. This includes retailers, developers, rights holders, and numerous other entities. While I'm sure it could be argued at length, for the purposes of my argument, I'll assume that each entity is equally deserving of their cut.
If a game that costs 60 dollars gets pirated 1 million times (which, I'll admit, only happens with highly anticipated PC games) that is a 60 million dollar loss, if you count every title. Now, depending on what percentage would have actually been sales, it could still be a very large number. 50% would be 30 million dollars. The percentage would be different for every title, but it isn't hard to see how there could be a substantial financial loss (though, as you've pointed out, that loss is spread over various entities). For an indie dev, the number wouldn't even need to be nearly that impressive. 100k in sales could be the difference between bankruptcy and a successful game (for indie devs).
o/ Do what you want cause' a pirate is free, you are a PIRATEEEE \o
(all math subject to being wrong due to my shitty math skills)
Enosoma @ Sep 19th 2009 11:15AM
Yomachaser, it's actually the definition of Blockbuster Video. Or Netflix.
aristokrat @ Sep 19th 2009 12:57PM
I think the piracy scene in Asia is much different than the one here. Most of the pirates I know just download what they want over BitTorrent and burn it themselves, whereas it seems that some Asian markets have a prominence of actual sales of pirated copies in street-side stalls. Therefore, while I don't think of US piracy as equating to lost sales all that much (at the very least because money isn't changing hands), companies can claim that Asian piracy results in "lost" sales as far as the money that did change hands. I don't know the true extent of this problem over there, but it's the image I have in my mind due to second-hand accounts of visits there and hearing about the huge knock-off industry in general.
The fact that these vendors aren't in jail implies a laissez-faire attitude on behalf of the governments there. Maybe the Asian game companies should hire some goons to go around busting up stalls themselves (they'd easily pay their own salary).
Kevin949 @ Sep 19th 2009 2:06PM
Well first, I didn't expect my comment to illicit this much of a response. Second, I never said I was pro-pirating or anti-pirating. I stay fairly neutral on the subject for a number of reasons, mostly moral fiber reasoning.
@yomachaser - So borrowing from my friend is stealing now?
@makimak22 - When did I say it wasn't? As a matter of fact, I never said or implied that piracy was ok or wasn't wrong. You're putting words in my post.
@bananaboat - Honestly, I won't even begin to speculate on what they actually get per copy after everyone gets their cut.
@aristokrat - The piracy you mention is very different from what I initially think when someone talks about this subject. I agree 100% with you that someone that pirates a game/movie/whatever and sells it for profit should be locked up and fined. I think too that is where a lot of confusion is coming up from my initial comment and the actual piracy I was referencing. I wasn't talking about piracy in the sense of those that pirate for money.
Does it make it any more or less wrong no matter how you look at it? Not by definition, no, but pirating for money is much more morally wrong than doing it for necessity or to enjoy something. And I'm sure you're all going to accuse me of being a pirate or something, so I'll put it out right now. Yes I have downloaded stuff, yes I had a cracked PS1 and PS2, but not anymore. That was back in the day when I didn't have the money to afford to buy what I wanted because I was a kid, but a kid with enough know-how and knew the right people to do that crap.
No i wouldn't condemn someone if they told me they downloaded this or that, it'd be hypocritical of me to. But I would sling 'em through the mud if they said they sold it to make a buck.
Blank-Mage @ Sep 19th 2009 10:04PM
I feel it's wrong no one has added o/ YAR HAR FIDDLEDEDEE \o yet.
BananaBoat @ Sep 20th 2009 6:43AM
@Blank-Mage - Yeah, I was hoping for that, but nobody did it. Now it's no longer talk like a pirate day, so there is no point...wait...what am I saying....
o/ If you love to sail the sea, you are a PIRATE!!!!!! \o
Enosoma @ Sep 19th 2009 11:11AM
So, it's basically allowed to happen for like... forever, and now all of the sudden they want you to destroy your R4 chip and "backup" copies.
HAHAHA!
It's their own fault. See what you get? No one told them not to put their hand on the stove when it's red.
Enosoma @ Sep 19th 2009 11:13AM
Forgot to mention, that, for the most part, those that pirate games never would have purchased them to begin with.
Very few, however, actually use "piracy" to test games before they buy them. These days $30 to $60 is a lot of money to waste on a game you won't like.
I downloaded Fallout 3 well before I bought it. Mainly because I love RPGs, but hate FPS games. Test phase, you know?
Kevin949 @ Sep 19th 2009 2:18PM
Honestly, I'll do that with some games. Especially if there's no demo available (PC). I can't count how many times I've downloaded a game just to go out and actually buy it because it was so good and I wanted to experience all of the game (online multiplayer, updates and added content, so on).
mahouneko @ Sep 20th 2009 4:57AM
Actually, I will test certain games where I haven't fully committed myself to purchase or not purchase. It's why demos are nice to have. Without demos, I basically have to stare hard at the cover art of the game at a retail store to determine whether I should buy it or not. I fucked up by not buying ICO and Shadow of the Colossus exactly because the cover art for both games outright sucked.
Remember, not everyone has the time nor the money to subscribe to and read video game magazines and some magazines are known for outright lying about a game just because it's on a particular platform.
There are a number of games on my PSX that are back-ups, even though my PSX library vastly outnumbers the back-ups. How it turned out that way was because I played the back-up games, then decided that I liked it enough to go and hunt it down. GameStop back then barely existed and was miserable when it came to figuring out whether they had something or not. The following is a list of PSX games that I hunted down after playing their back-up version:
-Brave Fencer Musashi
-DewPrism (Threads of Fate)
-Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (if you're wondering where the RosenQueen store came from, it came from THIS game)
-Legend of Dragoon
-Valkyrie Profile (this one actually sold out before I could pick it up, had to use eBay to get my hands on it)
-Tales of Phantasia (was never released in the US, so I picked it up for the PSP)
-Tales of Destiny
-Star Ocean: The Second Story
-Vandal Hearts
-Thousand Arms
-Tail Concerto
-Grandia
-Wild Arms 1 & 2
So yeah, in my case, if a game can maintain my attention for the first two hours or so, I'll most likely buy it. If it fails that test, then I'm most likely not going to buy it nor bother to continue it. That's just my personal experience though.
Josh @ Sep 19th 2009 12:41PM
Yeah, I just have no idea where this industry is heading. It's either going to fold or heavily change to adapt to piracy.. But something has to happen.
Charlie_Six @ Sep 19th 2009 12:51PM
It's difficult to prevent people from stealing from entertainers. Games, movies, music and TV shows are, for the most part, just technologically infused versions of circus clowns. Circus clowns aren't exactly the most respected people on the planet, nor are they in big demand.
For the "youth who want to get into the games industry," I would say... don't go into the games industry. The supply level is high enough already. Games are plentiful. It's probably been 10 or 15 years since I last said "There aren't enough good games coming out these days." Nowadays my game calendar is way too overloaded.
Go become a doctor, a nurse, scientist, whatever. Do some real-life Trauma Center action. Heck, if you love war games and being a violent hero, go become a soldier or police officer somewhere that needs them. Just try not to shoot any innocent people. Last week, the UN World Food Programme said that about 1 billion people are not getting enough to eat due to the economic crisis. Go farm some food for them, Harvest Moon- or Age of Empires-style.
The world needs more of those. We don't need more game developers, we really don't.
Geist @ Sep 19th 2009 1:05PM
Just because I shoot guys in a video game does not mean I want to shoot guys in real life, and I definitely don't want to get shot at.
The Dark Wayne @ Sep 19th 2009 1:38PM
Circus Clowns? That's a very strange way of looking at entertainment, especially since entertainment existed before clowns ffs.
Zo @ Sep 19th 2009 1:02PM
Wow! These comments make me LOL!
- What you pay for cable is for the "cable" that runs to your house. The cable companies then have to pay royalities to the cable networks. The TV ads pay for the actors and programs that you watch. Hollywood and its Unions have their own IP property/payment schemes so you will always pay.
- Most people would not walk into a store and steal an item right off the shelf, but are more than happy to steal music, movie and video games and then complain that the prices are too high or games sucks -- the prices are high to offset some of the lost sales and the cost to do something well has gone up and up because while technology gets cheaper, people actually cost more every year.
- The same people who will tell you they are honest and ethical will also see nothing wrong with stealing music, movies or games -- give me a break! The more people will steal the worse the industry gets. This is why we have DRM. This is NOT to say that the sales models that the music and movie industry is old and has not kept up with the times, for certain the more piracy the more they will dig in their heals and the more crap we will get.
- As long as people believe they can get away with it, people will steal anything digital because their is no moral hazard. It kills me when I hear and see people even stealing indie developed games/music.
- When the game studios shutdown and music and movies suck or shutdown, you can blame all the pirating and some of you on this board will be to blame as well
MRLN the Amazing @ Sep 19th 2009 1:40PM
Why would a celebrity use a dating site? Don't they just go out and four or five of the opposite sex leap out at them? Stupid robots.
Charlie_Six @ Sep 19th 2009 2:13PM
I used that site and now Megan Fox is my girlfriend, it's true
m0m0 @ Sep 19th 2009 2:19PM
will someone please do some data analysis of game sales for the 3 consoles? sony is probably doing bad in terms of games/console, despite the fact that ps3 has no piracy.
avan @ Sep 19th 2009 3:30PM
i thought it was because of the many unfair business practices... looking at you japan
pika2000 @ Sep 19th 2009 3:50PM
Sony arguing about piracy is a joke by itself. Let's look at the previous highly successful Sony consoles, the PS1 and PS2. Those 2 consoles are pirated to no end in Asia, and both are a major success to Sony. So Sony, what's the argument about loss of sales again? Care to explain why PS1 and PS2 were so successful despite the rampant piracy on those? Despite the rampant piracy (cheap optical media), both consoles garnered tons of userbase, and developers are flocking to them.
This tired piracy argument is just weak, lame, and old. Note that in Asia, even NDS games are pirated like crazy, yet it's printing money for Nintendo.
ZippyDSMlee @ Sep 19th 2009 4:23PM
If you try and sell it you are a pirate if you just share it your a smart consumer.
NEXT!!