Ok, so question first, then I'll explain what's behind the question.

Question: What might happen if everybody decided to stop buying games and entertain themselves with pirated games. What would happen to the gaming industry?

I want to give you a chance to participate in a "thought experiment". A thought experiment is what scientists use to test if a conclusion is valid or to show that it is not. For example, Google "Schrodinger's cat", sometime. This is a good example of a thought experiment, where Schrodinger showed how ridiculous quantum mechanics could seem when applied to the macroscopic level. In essence, the conclusion to the thought experiment is that quantum mechanics say that a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time until observed by an outside conscience, which started a lot of of research and debating for the enrichment of science.

Now, this thought experiment I want to start revolves around computer gaming (PC and console). First, let me start off by saying this: Do not pirate games or anything else. It is illegal (in countries that apply, which are most developed countries). It doesn't matter if the person who is supplying the game or torrent is in some 3rd world country where copyright laws do not apply, you would be breaking the law by downloading or seeding copyrighted data.

With that said, consider the question above. If the sales of all games suddenly stops, what would happen? Here are my thoughts. Obviously, the professional gaming industry would die quickly if all the pirates were not scared straight. If nobody buys games, but pirates them instead, without deterrence, then I would think that this would give rise to more open source games (aside from the sudden loss of jobs). These games would not look as good as professionally developed games such as UT3 or Crysis, but would have great content and, generally, a little dash of ingenuity.

It is my understanding that open source games, which are generally developed by an online community, are generally the basis for professional games. For example, consider the game: “Narbacular Dropâ€Â

Unless the industry starts acting like huge pricks, consumers will never turn to piracy en-masse, as most people have morals of some kind.

On the other hand, some people have no scruples, or have otherwise convinced themselves that piracy is just fine, so piracy will likely never go away. Plus, it's very easy to do.

Yep... Finance... Economic stability... Target audience... Popularity... All these play a very big role in piracy in-general (not just games).

Sorry but i'm not paying €80,- for a DVD. €30,- is the highest i'd go, maybe €50,- when it's really, really, mega super uber tera ultra good. Add 19% tax to that. Also there's 55% tax on our income, so don't you think we're kind of pushed in the corner?

If everyone would pirate, the industry would die. That's a simple answer.

When prices are unreasonable, I don't blame those who get stuff illegally.

agreed... me and my brother had to use a pirated copy of XP for a long time until I got a Legal copy of 64 bit XP for my computer and my brother finally got XP home for his computer...... my older brother got busted once for downloading a pirated copy of Star wars jedi knight: jedi academy on his computer.

So, what would you think would happen if the industry dies due to pirating. What do you think would be the future of gaming in this hypothetical situation? Only open-sourced games with shabby graphics, but awsome gameply? A revolution in anti-pirating software? None of the above?

I disencourage and dislike pirating. But sometimes the game developpers make some sort of anti-piracy method which actually encourages pirating, also many methods are worthless, not doing anything against piracy but greatly disenhancing gameplay.

Some games disable LAN play or multiplayer with 2 PC's at the same time. Me and my bro sometimes want to play a game over internet against other people while we're in the same server. Some people made something that this will be impossible but then I can play together with my brother if he's at my uncles house.
And the game is installed on all 3 locations with the same CD! -.-

Me myself would avoid downloading any games, but I do share games amongst my small group of friends. And then only 30% of that either.

Prices are sometimes way too expensive. This is probably a counter against the pirating to still get the same total money out of the developped game. But this just encourages most people to pirate rather then buy the steep price.

Steam really does a great job on this area actually. Games should attempt to do about the same.

Piracy will never stop, and people doing stuff for money will never stop. It's a never ending struggle.

As anti-piracy measures get better, piracy gets more advanced too. You never will be able to stop people from getting pirated products. Ultimately, it will generally be the law abiding consumers that get hit, rather than the ne'erdowells.

Plus open source games seem to have been on the general raise for overall quality, too. That and I've lost a lot of hope for commercial games in general, so I could probably survive in a world inhabited solely by open source games. Last time I personally bought a new PC game was a very long time ago (have bought older classics recently, though), and other than Halo 3, I've haven't exactly been buying many console games either.

And my lack of buying games has nothing to do with acquiring illegal copies...

...for the most part.

Consoles can be pirated? if not, probably all games would be released in consoles.

Sometimes prices are high, and taxes are really high. and here we pay taxes to our politicians pizzas.
to stop piracy, i think that lowering the prices will do a good job, mainly for countries where people don't have much $. and our governments have to lower a lot the taxes. here we work four months to pay taxes.

Of course. Some are harder to crack than others, but all of them fall victim to piracy.

i didnt know that...

Why would open source games have shabby graphics?

Look at engines like Darkplaces or Tenebrae, which both power Quake. They deliver graphics quality to the point of making a game from 1996 look like it came out earlier this year.

Open source is just open source. The word says nothing about the potential quality of said open source application/engine/etc.

Speaking of great open source games, anyone know the name of that one 3-D shooter that had some nice visual effects... maybe started with an "S"? That had some nice features, such as the ability to edit levels in realtime during gameplay. Also, the menu was a translucent wall in front of the character and selections are made by moving your view to select a button to click. If all professional game development suddenly dies in this hypothetical thought experiment, I hope people woulf expand and develop that game even more.

Also, if the hy;pothetical scenario I first descrubed were to happen, Jerry Thompson would have nobody to sue (-: Instead of trying to convince people that there are these evil corporations trying to brainwash people into killing other people (something that had never happened before computers, like in WW1, WW2, revolutions, jihads, etc), then Jerry would have to convince people that the entire world is trying to make games to brainwash the entire rest of the world.

Update: Oh, and I was just speaking hypothetically to provoke thought, there, Bjossi. I left room for "none of the above", which you chose and I completely agree.

Who's Jerry Thompson?

Saurbraten is the game you're thinking of. Spelling might be a tad bit off though. I beleive it now goes by the name Cube though.

What counters pirates is the navy ^^

although this aint in the seas or space -.-

Cyber Navy!

Is a double edged sword....

If you don't pirate games (or movies etc. etc.), then the entertainment industry will do better and thus give us better games/consoles etc.

But, piracy exists due to the cost of the stuff...in some places the prices are high, and the average person cannot afford the stuff, thus piracy exists.

This is proved by the fact that the countries with the highest piracy problems, are the nations where the majority of the population is fairly poor (e.g. Russia, India, South Africa etc. etc.).

You are never going to get rid of piracy for this simple sad fact.

I think overall, people don't deliberatly try to buy pirated stuff...its simple economics that does it...buy the real thing for 100's of dollars, or buy a copy of 10's of dollars...when you can't afford the 100's of dollars, the 10's puts the stuff within your reach.

How many pirate stuff here, is surprisingly big of a number for a country with pretty big minimum salary. I'm talking about dozens of thousands of a population of a little over 300k.

I read in some palce that I can legally download any material I want to. Movies, Games, anything.

Im just not allowed to use it. How does this make sense?


Although this was only for 1 specific thing... so this doesnt go for all of it.

I don't see how it makes sense either. By that logic, if you walk into a store, you can take anything you want and leave, but if you play/use it, then it is a crime.

On the price arguement, I live in the UK, so I pay £40 for my console games ($80)
and about £30 ($60) for "most" PC games.

My point being, it's frikking expensive, and I don't know how much of that is tax,

What are you guys paying in USD where you are?
I use $ so it's more comparable.

Typically, console games and PC games are the same price, though more obscure releases typically have a lower starting price for PC, and go down in price quickly for console.

That being said, Your typical PC or Console game would be about $50, though some may be $60, some may be $40, though I don't remember seeing any games being released for $40 lately.

Prices of each game usually goes down given enough time, like to $30, $20, or $10.

CoD4 is a ridicilous price. $70!!
Its one amazing game, the best war FPS I've ever gotten into. But $70? no.

Jerry, its 17.5% in VAT, so thats £5.96 ($11.92) for consoles and £4.47 ($8.96) for PC.

Plus, you have to consider that this godforsaken island is probably the most expensive 'rich' country to live in in the world.

Since we're talking prices, I'd just like to say that if you live a year behind the times, you live for half the prices. This goes for hardware and software (except things like Windoze)

Console games are much more expensive here than PC games. We are talking about dozens of percent difference in the most extreme cases.

Well here in South Africa: for PC games, we pay between R300 to R400 (R=South African Rands) depending on new release/popular title etc. Most of the time it is closser to the R400 mark and over.

For console games we pay around R400-R600 and higher for the newer popular ones !!

The exchange rate to the US$ varies, but at the moment it is around the R8 = 1US$ mark.

Which means we pay around US$50 for PC games and US$75 for console.
Problem is we earn in R's and at these prices, games are out of reach for the majority.

I normaly wait a bit after release, then buy it on Steam or other such places, and you can get it at real bargin prices (for us), because it is discounted on those services after a short while after release...but here in SA we don't get any discounts on games that are aging, until they are like really old (1yr+), and even then that's only on the titles that are not popular. That is the only way I can afford most of my games...

*Now I'm not saying I'm a "Pirate" per say and I'm not siding with the main stream companies either. But when the economy in America is as wonderful GWB would say is in a "Recession" this kinda thing is gonna escalate in America. But so far the "Recession" has apparently increased consumer spending on Video Games and other commonly pirated stuff.* But in the gaming world its every gamer for themselves ya know? So if the companies wanna start something with lets say Thepiratebay, well I'm probably gonna have to don my eye patch and shiver my timbers because well it feels right, not morally but just instinctively. Agree with me or disagree with me but lets not start a debate over my comment please

*Please disregard this personally if you live outside the United States like alot of the members do, this is a personal rant*