New Study Claims Piracy is Driven by Availability and Price

AlphaAtlas

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A recent New Zealand study spotted by TorrentFreak said that "piracy isn't driven by law-breakers." Instead, it's reportedly driven by the availability and reasonably priced legal content. The researchers note that streaming services like Netflix, YouTube and Spotify are effectively doing "what was impossible for Hollywood to get right," and killing piracy in the process, as consumers are less motivated to pirate content when it's readily available by legal means. They concluded that "Piracy is finally dying. The reason for that requires an understanding of why people pirated in the first place. They didn’t do it because of inherent criminality, but rather because they couldn’t get the shows they wanted at a price they were prepared to pay."

Hamilton says Kiwi consumers are a savvy lot, too. While the research shows that in general people don't have much appetite for pirating, there is much higher agreement that 'It would be almost impossible to stop people doing this'. "The simple fact for those who know anything about the internet, is that censoring the internet doesn't work. People know there are multiple sites where it is possible to download illegal material. They also know that blocking the most popular ones simply means you'll get pirated material elsewhere." But the really interesting thing, says Hamilton, is a question around what would stop those who still occasionally view pirate content from doing so. "Overwhelmingly, New Zealanders said 'cheaper streaming services' and 'more content available on existing streaming services'. These two options were by far ahead of other options, at 57 and 48 percent respectively. Punitive measures, such as prosecution for pirates and censorship of pirate sites, were only thought likely to be effective by 33 and 22 percent of people, respectively."
 
I feel like that's a big fat DUH. I pirate shows and music not sold in north america because there's not an affordible legal option to procure them, outside of say paying 3-5x the price to import.

According to the legal system you have a logistical reason, anime in the 90's and early 2000's went through legal battles, where people were pirating Japanese fan hardsubbed anime, the courts ruled against studios and publishers because they stated there is no case when there is no market created to legally deliver the content..........it's still considered a grey area, but there is a greater impact for gaming for companies like Nintendo you could reasonably argue that if a company isn't willing to provide a legal means to own a game then they arnt putting forth any effort to claim a profit from the item, it's buried in legal jargon and I'm not stating it in the proper terms. The context however is there.
 
Seriously it was obvious as hell that price and availability is what drove piracy. They needed a study for that. sheesh

Welcome to bureaucracy, where we need studies for studies before we conduct studies to provide us with information we can study to shape policies 10 years later. At which point the data is old and we can start over!
 
This is like one of those"Well no fucking shit Sherlock" moments where people act cool and intelligent stating something that should have been a common sense moment. It almost reminds me of an Office Space moment.
 
"They didn’t do it because of inherent criminality, but rather because they couldn’t get the shows they wanted at a price they were prepared to pay"

Uh, isn't that the reason anyone steals? They want something but don't want to pay for it so they take it instead. I think with our current laws that is the definition of criminal.
 
piracy will always exist, however, the availability of reasonably priced goods will certainly reduce it significantly. Look at the pc games industry however. How many people are willing to pay SIXTY DOLLARS on launch for broken, unfinished games? It has gone down considerably for years now. GOG, the epic store, and even steam when they have good deals is one way to continue delivering quality content at affordable prices, however publishers are NOT doing their studios any good forcing release dates that simply aren't possible for the studios, essentially guaranteeing a poor product on launch.

I have stopped buying games that years ago I would have bought day one. I just don't trust companies to release a full product. Look at far cry new dawn for example. A real far cry title can have a development window for 3+ years. 1/2/3/5 would be actual iterations of the game. Smashing together the flavor of the day focus group piecemeal games that borrow crappy mechanics from every popular game doesn't deliver a unique, deep experience that 60 dollars commands. New Dawn at best is a $20 title, the $40 asking price is absurd. I'm glad I got the opportunity to play it at a friends house and see how awful it was. Day 1 review locks and other anti-consumer practices further destroy any good faith left by gamers.

Would I buy it for 5 dollars? probably not, but a lot of people would. . .eventually. . .if they got rid of the drm.
 
"They didn’t do it because of inherent criminality, but rather because they couldn’t get the shows they wanted at a price they were prepared to pay"

Uh, isn't that the reason anyone steals? They want something but don't want to pay for it so they take it instead. I think with our current laws that is the definition of criminal.
There's a pretty solid difference in "don't want to pay for it" and "price they were prepared to pay."
 
That's fine with me. We need to keep normal people out of the back alleys of the internet anyways. I liked it better when most people were scared of computers. I was working on a computer back in the 90's on some easy task and when I tried to show them how they could do it, I was told "I'll just pay you to take care of my computer issues because I don't want to accidentally launch any nukes". It was so easy making some extra money back then.
 
piracy will always exist, however, the availability of reasonably priced goods will certainly reduce it significantly. Look at the pc games industry however. How many people are willing to pay SIXTY DOLLARS on launch for broken, unfinished games? It has gone down considerably for years now. GOG, the epic store, and even steam when they have good deals is one way to continue delivering quality content at affordable prices, however publishers are NOT doing their studios any good forcing release dates that simply aren't possible for the studios, essentially guaranteeing a poor product on launch.

I have stopped buying games that years ago I would have bought day one. I just don't trust companies to release a full product. Look at far cry new dawn for example. A real far cry title can have a development window for 3+ years. 1/2/3/5 would be actual iterations of the game. Smashing together the flavor of the day focus group piecemeal games that borrow crappy mechanics from every popular game doesn't deliver a unique, deep experience that 60 dollars commands. New Dawn at best is a $20 title, the $40 asking price is absurd. I'm glad I got the opportunity to play it at a friends house and see how awful it was. Day 1 review locks and other anti-consumer practices further destroy any good faith left by gamers.

Would I buy it for 5 dollars? probably not, but a lot of people would. . .eventually. . .if they got rid of the drm.

To be fair though Far Cry New Dawn isn't supposed to be a "full game" per say, it's kind of like blood dragon and theres another I can't think of, those are just fillers to eek out some more money and entertainment in-between the proper numbered releases. Think of it kind of like their version of nuka-world or other DLC lol. I agree though on everything else you say, it should probably be $20, maybe $30 at most. I'm also not a fan of day 1 review locks but that's kind of the standard, although it shouldn't be in my opinion.
 
Gabe hit the nail on the head nearly 10 years ago.

UCEsoIL.png


people will pay for your content if you make it available.
 
Gabe hit the nail on the head nearly 10 years ago.

View attachment 145042

people will pay for your content if you make it available.

Naw, cause I'm not going to pay for Netflix + Hulu + CBS + Disney + PS Vue + Youtube + Whatever else comes out just so that I can watch "all" the shows I like.

Whats the point when I would be paying $150/month for cable or $150/month for ALL the services above....

Stop exclusive content deals, and region locking. I'd pay $50/month for ONE service that handled all shows.
 
Naw, cause I'm not going to pay for Netflix + Hulu + CBS + Disney + PS Vue + Youtube + Whatever else comes out just so that I can watch "all" the shows I like.

Whats the point when I would be paying $150/month for cable or $150/month for ALL the services above....

Stop exclusive content deals, and region locking. I'd pay $50/month for ONE service that handled all shows.

At it's core that's still a service problem. Offer people an all-in-one service and they would buy it. Unfortunately everyone got greedy and decided to open up their own platform. There's a reason Netflix and Steam are still the kings in their respective sectors.
 
Gabe hit the nail on the head nearly 10 years ago.

people will pay for your content if you make it available.
That's partly true. Zelda Breath of the Wild isn't on PC so of course I pirate it and use a Wii U emulator. But it's also a pricing issue as games costing $60 is far too high, especially with all the DLC that basically completes the game. So pirating often not only gets you the game but all the DLC for free.

The game industry hasn't had its day of reckoning, but the movie and music industry sure has thanks to piracy. Remember when you spent $25 per music CD to get 12 songs you didn't want, just the one you wanted? Gone thanks to piracy as people would download the music and burn it onto CDs and eventually MP3 players. Remember when Blu-Ray movies were costing over $50? Also gone, thanks to piracy as torrenting basically forced the industry to compete.

Services like iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Netflix all came about as the result of piracy, and today some of those pirates don't pirate but use these services instead. But gaming hasn't been effected by piracy as much and the industry continues to offer overpriced games with micro-transactions and DLC. It will eventually but right now it isn't entirely a service issue but also a cost issue. Look at Fallout 76, Anthem, and other recent terrible AAA games where the prices are dropping super quick. Not that these games are worth any amount of money let alone $60, but it shows that the industry is over charging when these games can be bought for a pack of gum.
 
I'd just like to be able to rip my DVDs/Blu-rays for home use without committing a Federal crime. Just saying. I read about court cases all the time where big companies go after folks for lesser things... how come the media companies don't go after the big illegal traffickers of their content anymore?

It's sort of funny back when the movie industry decided to "id" all the screeners they sent out and discovered the "leakers" were themselves. Maybe that's why there's no interest from them in truly going after the pirates and instead, continually advocating for laws that merely punish the people that actually pay them money?
 
People in america often dont get this one. Outside of the USA getting content can often be hillariously difficult legally or so absurdly expensive as to be offensive.
I was in Canada when season 1 was released and the cost to watch it in that country was a 180 dollar cable package. Period. No other option existed in the legal realm.

So, in this case, its both unethical to abuse a market that way and unethical to seek the content without violating laws. No one wins and everyone loses. A proper sane price scheme would have prevented law violations and made more money in the long run.
 
I would not be surprised if in the future Valve allows renting of games on Steam that allows you to beat a game in an allotted time period then it expires and you no longer have access to it. There's many on my Library I wont play again, like so many movies I've streamed that I wont ever watch again.
 
Seriously it was obvious as hell that price and availability is what drove piracy. They needed a study for that. sheesh

Doesn't matter, there's many in the entertainment industry that will still ignore it. It's been obvious for many of us that the content was overpriced and the delivery method was inadequate.

The difference between a physical item being overpriced is that it just doesn't sell, the consumer goes without. But with a digital item, the consumer has alternative avenues (less legal, low risk) and the producer of the goods has to consider that in their pricing structure. The entertainment industry didn't want to accept the reset to the valuation of entertainment. Thus, they got "disrupted."

Hollywood learned absolutely nothing from Napster and the music industry reset that followed.
 
When I moved to New Zealand I was shocked at how many people pirate content. At first I was disappointed but now that I've been here a while I understand. New Zealand is a very expensive place to live, think California, but with much higher taxes and higher cost of living, way higher. A majority of the people here live paycheck to paycheck or are on government assistance, it's really bad. However they do have fiber internet and most major metropolitan area's and it runs about $40 a month. Contrast that with SkyTV which can run well into the 100's, so you can see why people pirate. They don't have much money and the use the most affordable avenue they have.

Taxes on alcohol are ridiculous here. The government makes more money on beer than the breweries do. I believe it's 29% tax on beer and then 15% GST on top of that. So your 6 pack micro brew is around $20 to $23. A 1 liter bottle of Smirnoff Vodka is $35 and don't get into Jameson because that's much more expensive. They have a massive tax on cigarettes too which has lead to robberies of liquor stores and dairies, they're not stealing the alcohol, they're stealing cigarettes. Now many places have cigarettes locked up in a cabinet behind the register (not that I smoke, but notice it). Anyway... this is all off topic, but it just an example as to when you make things too expensive people pirate or steal.
 
I would not be surprised if in the future Valve allows renting of games on Steam that allows you to beat a game in an allotted time period then it expires and you no longer have access to it. There's many on my Library I wont play again, like so many movies I've streamed that I wont ever watch again.
You know what... I would absolutely pay for an hourly access system. I'd probably come out ahead with most AAA titles if I only had to pay the hours I actually played. Even at 1:1 dollar to hour played it would probably be more valuable than 60+ a title.
 
Naw, cause I'm not going to pay for Netflix + Hulu + CBS + Disney + PS Vue + Youtube + Whatever else comes out just so that I can watch "all" the shows I like.

Whats the point when I would be paying $150/month for cable or $150/month for ALL the services above....

Stop exclusive content deals, and region locking. I'd pay $50/month for ONE service that handled all shows.

Again, this is an availability problem.

If I want to watch GOT, and GOT alone, there is no need to force me to buy a service package that I don't want. If you don't offer me GOT alone we have an availability problem.

In Spain, for instance, 1st Season wasn't available on launch day in english. Also, it wasn't available outside of a package deal. So... good riddance, you bet I was enjoying the show the minute it launched worldwide. Had it been a few dollars per episode? I'd been there.


That's partly true. Zelda Breath of the Wild isn't on PC so of course I pirate it and use a Wii U emulator. But it's also a pricing issue as games costing $60 is far too high, especially with all the DLC that basically completes the game. So pirating often not only gets you the game but all the DLC for free.

The game industry hasn't had its day of reckoning, but the movie and music industry sure has thanks to piracy. Remember when you spent $25 per music CD to get 12 songs you didn't want, just the one you wanted? Gone thanks to piracy as people would download the music and burn it onto CDs and eventually MP3 players. Remember when Blu-Ray movies were costing over $50? Also gone, thanks to piracy as torrenting basically forced the industry to compete.

Services like iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Netflix all came about as the result of piracy, and today some of those pirates don't pirate but use these services instead. But gaming hasn't been effected by piracy as much and the industry continues to offer overpriced games with micro-transactions and DLC. It will eventually but right now it isn't entirely a service issue but also a cost issue. Look at Fallout 76, Anthem, and other recent terrible AAA games where the prices are dropping super quick. Not that these games are worth any amount of money let alone $60, but it shows that the industry is over charging when these games can be bought for a pack of gum.

Games aren't expensive. They are rather cheap in fact. $60 for 20 hours of enjoyment is dirty cheap. And considering inflation, they are going down in price whilst their developing costs keep increasing.
 
Again, this is an availability problem.

If I want to watch GOT, and GOT alone, there is no need to force me to buy a service package that I don't want. If you don't offer me GOT alone we have an availability problem.

In Spain, for instance, 1st Season wasn't available on launch day in english. Also, it wasn't available outside of a package deal. So... good riddance, you bet I was enjoying the show the minute it launched worldwide. Had it been a few dollars per episode? I'd been there.




Games aren't expensive. They are rather cheap in fact. $60 for 20 hours of enjoyment is dirty cheap. And considering inflation, they are going down in price whilst their developing costs keep increasing.

I agree $60 is pretty cheap for the amount of hours one gets from it. I would argue that the planned dlc from the start is them adjusting for needing/wanting a higher price tag but the market isn't tolerant to the increase. If they put all the dlc in at launch and with the $100 price tag, I would be not many would buy it. But $60 now and $40 later is easier especially once you already enjoy the game.
 
It's going to come full circle, as more and more services becomes exclusive and the big players like Netflix lose more and more licensing for their existing content. When you have to subscribe to 7 streaming services at $10-$20 a pop, its value over cable starts to diminish. It also becomes a pain to find the content you want, hopping between all the various services. The convenience and total availability of piracy will start to win out again.
 
It's going to come full circle, as more and more services becomes exclusive and the big players like Netflix lose more and more licensing for their existing content. When you have to subscribe to 7 streaming services at $10-$20 a pop, its value over cable starts to diminish. It also becomes a pain to find the content you want, hopping between all the various services. The convenience and total availability of piracy will start to win out again.

Yea, it shouldn't ever be easier to just find and stream it from a torrent site than to watch it legally. Go to watch a show, launch amazon prime, it needs to update. After update I see what I want to watch, apparently it isn't included in prime so I have to pay for it. But they don't allow payments from apple tv so I have to go my pc and log in and pay for it there to then go watch it on the apple tv.

Modern convenience....
 
"They didn’t do it because of inherent criminality, but rather because they couldn’t get the shows they wanted at a price they were prepared to pay"

Uh, isn't that the reason anyone steals? They want something but don't want to pay for it so they take it instead. I think with our current laws that is the definition of criminal.

You went to the extreme of what was typed, people pirated not because they didn't want to buy it, but because it wasn't available to legally obtain for a reasonable price, it's not that people don't want to pay in some cases it's because they can't pay for how much was demanded, legally speaking the law is open to interpretation even if people like you are not looking at it that way, in any crime intent and motive are the greatest driving factors of what you can be charged with, stealing a loaf of bread because you are starving is not the same as stealing 100 dominos pizzas to throw a party grant it that is extreme cases. In the case of gaming, ussually it comes down to DRM, I'll buy the game but if you expect me to play and run it crippled on top end hardware, you are insane, so I buy and download a cracked version, back in the day it was CD cracks so you didn't need a disk drive spinning loud every random moment.

On top of that, let's take a look at the government, is it stealing when people working as an agent of the government do it, or is a soldier shooting someone on the battlefield still murder regardless of post and position, you can honestly spin things to your liking and way of thinking to you make it right by your standards, but at the end of the day everyone is guilty of something....
 
For me its pretty simple. If the game launches as a piece of shit I dont buy it.

If they fix it later and its in a gr8 steam/gog/humble I'll buy it IF ITS fixed.

If the movie/show isnt going to be avail through Netflix/Hulu/Prime/Crunchy for weeks(if ever) then make room on the hard drive.

Never going back to cable because of the non stop issues I had so if its going to be an exclusive then someone will stream it
 
As exclusive online content becomes more and more splintered and gated it will come right back with a vengeance.
 
If you view illegal distribution of copyrighted works as if it were just another form of competition (filling a market gap), it becomes much easier to deal with. Especially considering that it clearly demonstrates your own competitive shortcomings.
 
I agree $60 is pretty cheap for the amount of hours one gets from it. I would argue that the planned dlc from the start is them adjusting for needing/wanting a higher price tag but the market isn't tolerant to the increase. If they put all the dlc in at launch and with the $100 price tag, I would be not many would buy it. But $60 now and $40 later is easier especially once you already enjoy the game.

Agreed.

The problem I have is not on the price, but on the fact that games are buggy, unfinished and not as advertised. Like Anthem. Thank god I only paid $15 for Origin Premier to try it out...
 
I agree somewhat because out of personal experience I stop game pirating a long time ago when I found Steam. I am now over 300 games (with half backlogged) and feel better supporting game developers that aren't tards. Other media on the other hand....
 
Seriously it was obvious as hell that price and availability is what drove piracy. They needed a study for that. sheesh

LOL, yeah I was thinking the same thing. It's probably because people that don't pirate can't conceive of why people pirate in the first place.
 
Games aren't expensive. They are rather cheap in fact. $60 for 20 hours of enjoyment is dirty cheap. And considering inflation, they are going down in price whilst their developing costs keep increasing.
I never understood the idea of cost per entertainment. OMG I'm getting about 0.3 cents of entertainment per hour. Like that's a fucking metric somewhere. A flawed metric as there's too many fucking games with grindy unfun mechanics that now have micro-transactions to skip the fun... unfun parts of the game. Assassin's Creed Odyssey is one example where you can't continue the main plot unless you do a lot of unfun parts of the game, unless you pay extra to get weapons and an XP increase. The fucking hell.

I go by how much it cost to make the game, not by entertainment value. If I compared games to masturbating to online porn, I basically payed nothing and getting hours of entertainment per day. Fucking porn industry needs to charge me $60 per porn video, and $25 for a season pass to future videos of the same porn star.

The cost of making a game is about the same as a movie or less, and in a few months that movie is on Netflix that I pay $8 per month. I get less than 2 hours of entertainment but that doesn't mean games should cost $60 plus DLC. It's not like games don't get cheaper, as Fallout 76 is $38 on Amazon and I've heard of much lower prices. If the game was a success it would retain that $60 value longer. So apparently the price of games depends on how many idiots are willing to throw $60 upon initial release. That's the reason Denuvo exists, to make sure anybody looking to pirate or spend $60 will go and spend $60. After the first month or three the games value drops and depending on the game can be picked up for $20-$30.
 
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Games aren't expensive. They are rather cheap in fact. $60 for 20 hours of enjoyment is dirty cheap. And considering inflation, they are going down in price whilst their developing costs keep increasing.
True. I can't complain about the $60 price because some Super Nintendo games were selling for $90-$100 at release. $60 seems like a bargain nowadays, though I usually wait for a sale.
 
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