Eh? Piracy is basically an excuse used by poor developers to explain to their publisher why it hasn't sold.
For example.
"Look, 75 million people downloaded our game, whilst 1 person bought it. If they had all bought it, we'd have made ?3,000,000 in revenue instead of ?40. It has nothing to do with being a crap game, it's because of the pirates innit."
Now, this is a compelling argument, only there are people like Valve who seem to be surviving quite nicely. In fact, when I look at a lot of games that are successful, it's amazing how they don't even mention the piracy numbers. So if everyone is pirating games, how on earth does anyone make any money?
Well, perhaps, they actually provide a game worth paying for? Maybe, they make sure that the user would want to pay for the game. For example, if I downloaded a game for free, I would find that perhaps the always online DRM had been removed. Or maybe the need to put the CD in the drive no longer exists?
Had this game been made by Ubisoft, if I had bought it, I would almost certainly need to do these things. I would, essentially, be going through a longer process to play the game I purchased, than the scummer who illegally downloaded it.
Of course, take Codemasters. They spent so long trying to make sure no-one could pirate their game, investing in pointless secure-rom systems, and essentially what did they really achieve? They made a game that alienated the community. Instead of successfully creating the groundworks for a cricket game that on a base level was much better than it's competitor. They created a cricket game that was a minor improvement on EA's rubbish equivalent, but gave it absolutely no longetivity because no-one could mod it. It died because of it's own limitations bolted on by their own developers.
So, yes, don't pirate, because it is illegal and there actually isn't any justification. You are essentially stealing someone's work. However, are you aware that 2nd hand game sales are just as big an issue for the developers? Afterall, once it goes 2nd hand, they also no longer receive any revenue for it. With this in mind, perhaps companies would be more advised to consider their customer and appeal to them, not their shareholders and how they can most exploit their customers. Codies didn't listen to their playerbase, they didn't take the hit early on and make sure they had early sales. They didn't improve anything, and they didn't give their fairly dedicated community a chance to improve their game.
Again going back to Valve, they've even turned player made mods into fully fledged paid content. Through Steam, they hold regular sales, which limits the desire to purchase a 2nd hand game, as the thought it will turn up on Steam cheap exists. Even at sale price, at least the money is going to the developers. Codies have only themselves to blame, as do a lot of the companies who continually refuse to accept that their lack of sales are down to them, and that instead they can just blame some flimsy grey area of society as the fault.
To me, "racing" means horse racing, so that's what I thought when I first read your thread title. Made me wonder about whether an FM-style owner/trainer game about horse-racing would be successful. Has it been done before?
