Some game thieves pay for their crime
September 23rd, 2008 — News analysis and background
Over the last year Activision have been taking peer to peer torrent game thieves to court. Here are the results:
Shawn Guse of Federal Way, Washington agreed to pay Activision $100,000.
Chris Hyman of Abbeville, South Carolina agreed to pay Activision $25,000.
George Laflin of New Jersey agreed to pay Activision $100,000.
Maryanne Leach of Northome, Minnesota agreed to pay Activision $1,000.
Kenneth Madden of York, South Carolina agreed to pay Activision $100,000.
James R. Strickland of New York State; case is still active.
This is brilliant news. It is nice to see a game publisher with the gumption to act against people stealing from them. Let’s hope they nail a lot more of these thieves.
Friday 26 September 2008
Thursday 25 September 2008
Shawn Guse, software thief
Shawn Guse, software thief
September 25th, 2008 Opinion
In the article “Some game thieves pay for their crime” I reported how Activision was taking people who stole their games to court. One of these people was Shawn Guse of Federal Way, Washington who agreed to pay Activision $100,000. As a result of the article he has now contacted me. Here is his email:
My name is Shawn Guse and you have my name posted on your web site without my permission and I want it removed or changed to “A Washington man”, and I also want the link to the settlement removed if you have one. Please don’t contribute to the crucifixion of my name. If you are so kind as to remove the whole article that would be great. I have contacted many other web sites that are posting this and they are gladly removing it due to my request.
And here is my reply to him:
Surely the publicity is part of society’s punishment of you for being a thief?
Just a few years ago I was working at a game publisher towards the end of the PS1 generation. When people like you started copying games on a massive scale we had a huge drop in the income we needed to the pay the people who made the games. About 60 people lost their jobs with massive personal trauma. The whole company suffered and we all went through terrible times. It was awful to see my friends and colleagues suffering in such a way.
So it was a great delight for me that I was able to publish the names of the thieves caught by Activision.In your email to me you show no contrition for your actions and the effect that they had on the people who work in the industry. All you are concerned about is yourself.The “I want” tone of your letter is, frankly, despicable.Perhaps you should have considered the consequences of your actions more thoroughly before you started stealing games.
September 25th, 2008 Opinion
In the article “Some game thieves pay for their crime” I reported how Activision was taking people who stole their games to court. One of these people was Shawn Guse of Federal Way, Washington who agreed to pay Activision $100,000. As a result of the article he has now contacted me. Here is his email:
My name is Shawn Guse and you have my name posted on your web site without my permission and I want it removed or changed to “A Washington man”, and I also want the link to the settlement removed if you have one. Please don’t contribute to the crucifixion of my name. If you are so kind as to remove the whole article that would be great. I have contacted many other web sites that are posting this and they are gladly removing it due to my request.
And here is my reply to him:
Surely the publicity is part of society’s punishment of you for being a thief?
Just a few years ago I was working at a game publisher towards the end of the PS1 generation. When people like you started copying games on a massive scale we had a huge drop in the income we needed to the pay the people who made the games. About 60 people lost their jobs with massive personal trauma. The whole company suffered and we all went through terrible times. It was awful to see my friends and colleagues suffering in such a way.
So it was a great delight for me that I was able to publish the names of the thieves caught by Activision.In your email to me you show no contrition for your actions and the effect that they had on the people who work in the industry. All you are concerned about is yourself.The “I want” tone of your letter is, frankly, despicable.Perhaps you should have considered the consequences of your actions more thoroughly before you started stealing games.
Friday 19 September 2008
It is time to publish PC games as Steam exclusives
From: http://www.bruceongames.com/2008/09/16/it-is-time-to-publish-pc-games-as-steam-exclusives/
For over 25 years now PC games have been available on disks and in boxes at retail stores around the world. This business model is now well and truly broken because most people would rather steal games over the internet than pay for them. Game publishers have tried a number of protection strategies (DRM or Digital Rights Management) but none of them work and they cause a great deal of resentment amongst legitimate users. Why alienate your customers?
However there is a form of DRM that consumers like, and that is Steam. They like Steam because it adds value in lots of ways so they don’t even realise that it is mainly there for DRM, they just see it as a download service and as a community. The problem is that publishers tend to release a game in boxed retail format and on Steam. This is silly because the boxed version is the one that is going to end up being copied over the torrent network. It is obvious that the time has now come to release PC games only on Steam. This has many advantages:
If your security (and Valve’s) is good then there will be no piracy. If software thieves want to play your game they will have to pay for it. Which is as it should be, but isn’t at the moment.
No need to design and manufacture all that packaging and all those disks.
No need to distribute physical stock around the world.
No need to give sale or return.
Higher gross profit percentage.
Simultaneous global launch into every country on earth.
Lots of added value services for the consumer.
Quite simply we have reached the point where making the boxed version actually reduces sales and costs money. The piracy that it allows costs far more than the income it provides. Publishing a game as a Steam exclusive will make you more money and involve far less work. In fact using Steam as the exclusive distribution fixes the broken business model. So it makes it worthwhile to develop PC games once more.
All this depends on the Steam DRM not being cracked. So Valve need to keep one step ahead of the thieves. Also publishers don’t have to use Steam. They can make their own Steam-alike. For the biggest publishers this may be viable but for most the existing Steam community is a very powerful reason to give this service the sole rights.
And now I am going to back my thesis up with this market research. 85% of these PC gamers are software thieves, 55% have avoided buying a game because of DRM and 58% have had issues arising on their computer from the DRM on legitimate games. Yet, and this is the big one, 51% would have paid for a game they have pirated if it had been available on Steam.
So, if publishers have any sense, boxed retail PC games are dead. It is a pity EA didn’t realise this with Spore.
For over 25 years now PC games have been available on disks and in boxes at retail stores around the world. This business model is now well and truly broken because most people would rather steal games over the internet than pay for them. Game publishers have tried a number of protection strategies (DRM or Digital Rights Management) but none of them work and they cause a great deal of resentment amongst legitimate users. Why alienate your customers?
However there is a form of DRM that consumers like, and that is Steam. They like Steam because it adds value in lots of ways so they don’t even realise that it is mainly there for DRM, they just see it as a download service and as a community. The problem is that publishers tend to release a game in boxed retail format and on Steam. This is silly because the boxed version is the one that is going to end up being copied over the torrent network. It is obvious that the time has now come to release PC games only on Steam. This has many advantages:
If your security (and Valve’s) is good then there will be no piracy. If software thieves want to play your game they will have to pay for it. Which is as it should be, but isn’t at the moment.
No need to design and manufacture all that packaging and all those disks.
No need to distribute physical stock around the world.
No need to give sale or return.
Higher gross profit percentage.
Simultaneous global launch into every country on earth.
Lots of added value services for the consumer.
Quite simply we have reached the point where making the boxed version actually reduces sales and costs money. The piracy that it allows costs far more than the income it provides. Publishing a game as a Steam exclusive will make you more money and involve far less work. In fact using Steam as the exclusive distribution fixes the broken business model. So it makes it worthwhile to develop PC games once more.
All this depends on the Steam DRM not being cracked. So Valve need to keep one step ahead of the thieves. Also publishers don’t have to use Steam. They can make their own Steam-alike. For the biggest publishers this may be viable but for most the existing Steam community is a very powerful reason to give this service the sole rights.
And now I am going to back my thesis up with this market research. 85% of these PC gamers are software thieves, 55% have avoided buying a game because of DRM and 58% have had issues arising on their computer from the DRM on legitimate games. Yet, and this is the big one, 51% would have paid for a game they have pirated if it had been available on Steam.
So, if publishers have any sense, boxed retail PC games are dead. It is a pity EA didn’t realise this with Spore.
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