Would you steal a handbag?

"djmt1" (djmt1) 08/01/2014 at 17:43 • Filed to: Drive, Piracy, IT Crowd, Go to the Toilet in his Helmet.

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During the whole Drive Plus ruckus I have seen a bunch of people talking about piracy.

Remember you wouldn't steal a handbag.

dogisbadob > djmt1 08/01/2014 at 17:52

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They're not as poor as they say they are. For example, Matt has an Aston-Martin and a Chevy Volt. Chris Harris has a late-model Ferrari.

It would be different if they were driving $2000 beaters.

djmt1 > dogisbadob 08/01/2014 at 17:58

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What does their level of wealth have to do with it?

Their current business model was unsustainable and changes were needed.

Also Matt's Aston is gone as is Chris' Ferrari.

dogisbadob > djmt1 08/01/2014 at 18:13

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OK, maybe they're gone, but I seriously doubt they're driving 10-yo Hyundais.

Their level of wealth has *everything* to do with it when begging the less-wealthy for money. They made their price the highest tier available (other prices such as 99c per month were also available). And on top of that, most countries can't even pay if they wanted to.

They waited four months to tell us anything about their dilemma at all. Perhaps if they mentioned their troubles back then, they could have raised some money with kickstarter or something.

You don't raise your prices when you're struggling! (or charge for something that was previously free) In fact, Porsche was going through this 20 years ago, when they raised their prices as the mark-dollar ratio was becoming unfavorable; Porsche almost had to pull out of the US market.

If they weren't making any money before, they'll be making even less now.

And what if every channel decides to start charging?

djmt1 > dogisbadob 08/01/2014 at 18:23

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Firstly Drive is a business not a not for profit organisation.

Secondly Chris and Matt aren't the only employees, there are others behind the scenes.

Thirdly you can raise your prices when you are struggling, it is a legit way to stop struggling.

I admit they have handled this whole situation really badly especially the Q&A where so many questions were blown off but people make mistakes, it is an unfortunate thing about life. I'll be honest this post was just an excuse to share the IT Crowd vid but I do believe that people deserve a reward for hard work and piracy no matter which way you spin it, is stealing and I don't want to steal from people I respect.

Going by our avatars we'll both gamers so I put this to you. Do you buy used games?

I don't as I like to reward devs for providing me with good entertainment and I only trade in bad games.

dogisbadob > djmt1 08/01/2014 at 20:05

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Yes, I have bought used games, and I've rented games a long time ago when people actually did that, although lately usually stick to free and cheap PC games. If I had more money, I might buy more new games and a new car.

I have heard of the piracy actually helping them at least as much, if not more, than it hurts them. Microsoft, Adobe, and Autodesk are three good examples of this, and the video game industry probably doesn't hurt from it, either.

djmt1 > dogisbadob 08/01/2014 at 20:20

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The concept of piracy helping anyone is bullshit. The question is more about the damage that is done because more often then not it is negligible. The vast majority of pirates will pirate stuff no matter what so to regard them as lost sales is nonsense.

Piracy among video games isn't really a problem for two reasons. Firstly the closed nature of consoles means that piracy is virtual non existence especially with the dependence on online services and for PCs well a combination of low prices and DRM mean that those who should be counted as lost sales are becoming either too lazy or too demanding to deal with piracy.

Either way piracy is bad for everyone and no matter how much CD projekt may protest that they aren't concerned with piracy, I'm pretty sure that if they didn't have their very profitable graphical design work to full back on they would a lot more pissed that pirated copies of the Witcher series are at 2:1 for every copy sold.