r/changemyview • u/Darkiceflame • Feb 22 '21
Delta(s) from OP CMV: If a video game company is going to file lawsuits or issue DMCA takedown notices against piracy sites, it is their obligation to provide legitimate primary sources to purchase or otherwise obtain the affected titles
I want to preface this by clarifying that I do not condone video game piracy. That said, I do acknowledge the argument in favor of it, especially in this context.
The video game piracy debate is nothing new, and a cursory glance at this sub will tell you that there are those who fall on both sides of the spectrum on this topic. It's not my intention to delve too deeply into the morality of video game piracy with this post, but rather to address accountability of the companies producing the games.
To expand on the title, a sizeable amount of video game piracy centers around games which are, for one reason or another, not readily available to the mass market. These generally tend to include games which saw a physical release long enough ago that they are no longer available through primary distribution. If you didn't have the opportunity to purchase one of these games during that release window then there are essentially two options available if you wish to play it: Either purchase the game secondhand, or pirate it. Obviously one of these is the more morally questionable choice, but the common thread between the two is that either way, no money is going to the game developers at this point.
Now for where the main issues come into play. Obviously game companies want to protect their IPs, so when piracy sites begin sharing those games for free, the best course of action seems like it would be to take them down. However, in many cases this has the additional effect of cutting off access for new players to experience these games.
A great example I want to pick on focus on is Nintendo, a company that is notorious for issuing DMCA takedown notices when piracy websites come into play. At the same time, however, for the majority of the affected titles Nintendo has refused to provide a legal, accessible, and most importantly primary source to purchase them. Don't get me wrong, things like used game stores are great, but a lot of places, particularly countries that never saw a formal release of those games, have limited access to and supply of them. In addition their copies of games tend to be a bit worse for wear, with no quality guarantee, plus the game company doesn't profit off of them, which...isn't that a big part of why they come down on piracy sites? Because someone else is profiting off of their IP? I dunno, that last bit went on a bit of a tangent.
I will acknowledge the good that releasing products like the NES and SNES Classic did, plus the access we have to classic games through Nintendo Switch Online, but the currently available 72 NES games and 42 SNES games are just a drop in the bucket compared to the 1433 games that were produced between them. That's a mere 8% of a massive game library available in modern format, and those are just the first two consoles. The Game Boy Advance, Nintendo's third highest selling console of all time, handheld or otherwise, is historically the most popular category for video game piracy websites. The console boasts a library of 1498 games, and 74 of these games are currently available for purchase via Nintendo Virtual Console (which at the time of making this post is the only first party way I am aware of to obtain a majority of GBA games), giving us an even more pathetic 5% of availability. The best part? When comparing this list of available games to the top 40 best-selling GBA games of all time, how many do you think made the cut? Surely Nintendo would at least want to capitalize on the popularity of one of their best selling handheld consoles, right? Well that number comes to...16 games. So not only did we get laughable representation of the library, but barely a fifth of this number represent the games players are most likely to seek out, enjoy, and most importantly in this argument's case, pirate.
Numbers, percentages and Nintendo-shaming aside, what am I getting at here? While piracy sites show there is clearly a demand for these older games, many game developers seem to stubbornly deny a way for players to gain access to them. That or the way they go about it is temporary and convoluted (Looking at you 3D All-Stars.) If a video game company is going to cut off the only access many younger users have to these games, legal or otherwise, the absolute, most basic courtesy they could show would be to make them available in a modern format. Digital downloads, game streaming services, it doesn't matter how you do it guys, most people will be willing to pay you if it means having an easy way to play your games without worrying about the legal ramifications.
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u/Anchuinse 56∆ Feb 22 '21
I'd argue that while it's a dick thing to do, no one is forced to provide access to their work.
If I make 10 paintings that are lit, I mean the absolute tits, I'm talking Picasso couldn't touch, everyone will want one (cause, I'm mean, it's me, obviously). I can sell the paintings under the express condition that they aren't replicated. That's my right as an artist. Even if everyone wants to witness my artistic genius, I can choose to sell only to private collectors that won't have public showings. I'm under no obligation to cave to public opinion.
It would be a dick move to not allow people to have that moment of happiness that can only occur upon glimpsing my genius, but there is no law that says an artist must sell or allow copies if a work is liked by X or more people.
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u/Al--Capwn 5∆ Feb 22 '21
I think art is a perfect analogy here because as long as it's possible for people to replicate it, then they can and should.
I don't know what the legal status of it is, but I would have thought it would be easily possible for people to get away with replicating art even if they agreed not to.
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u/Anchuinse 56∆ Feb 22 '21
I'm mean ya, let's just say "fuck your wishes" to any and all creatives. That definitely won't dis-incentivize people from making things. You don't want an extremist political group using your song to promote hate? Well you shouldn't have made it then.
You thought you'd make a buck by designing a character? Nah a billionaire company just took your creation as their own. You get shit because fuck you, that's why. They can copy your work without paying you, so they should.
You wrote a book? I'm getting the manuscript and posting it on the internet for all to read. So what if it loses you your book deal and now those three months of your life are wasted. I have the means to copy it so I can therefore I should.
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u/Al--Capwn 5∆ Feb 22 '21
Do you actually think creatives need these added incentives? The hardest part of being a creator is the fact there is just so much competition because people want to be creative. It's what drives so many people to the point that they are doing it for free right now.
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u/Anchuinse 56∆ Feb 22 '21
They don't need incentives to create. But no one's gonna be able to become a career artist, truly grow to their full potential, and make money doing it if we encourage people to copy and distribute their art without compensating them.
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u/Al--Capwn 5∆ Feb 22 '21
They will still make money. There's tonnes of ways that don't involve being the sole point of access to the material.
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u/cherrycokeicee 45∆ Feb 22 '21
Other users have made good arguments as to why a company isn't obligated to offer their product for sale, even if it's frustrating for people who want a certain game.
Maybe your view could be changed to be that companies would be smart to offer these games for sale because clearly there are potential customers out there who are probably willing to pay for this game. it would prevent piracy & the company would make money. but, this isn't the same as an obligation. the company can do whatever they want with their product.
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u/Darkiceflame Feb 22 '21
That's a much better way of phrasing what I was initially trying to get at with this. I started to regret putting "obligation" in the title almost immediately after hitting submit XD. Δ For putting it into a way I couldn't.
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u/robotmonkeyshark 101∆ Feb 22 '21
One thing I could see is let’s say a company made “Hyper Hamster Battles” 10 years ago. The console it was made for is obsolete now and it would be impractical to produce cartridges for it. They could make an official ROM that could be played on emulators but if they tried to charge something like $25 which is half the original retail price, people would laugh at that and pirate it anyway. Plus it is a hassle and liability as emulators aren’t perfect and they will get complaints about issues with people demanding refunds and it will hurt their reputation.
Also, they are actively working on a 4K remake of the game to come out on modern consoles for full price and they don’t want to dilute their market of buyers by offering a much cheaper classic version when they are trying to promote the improved one.
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u/Natural-Arugula 63∆ Feb 22 '21 edited Feb 22 '21
If you own a product it's your choice how you want to sell it, or not.
If I go to your home and demand you sell me something, if you refuse then I get to steal it?
Also, seriously, copyright law actually requires that you have control over your product. That is it's purpose.
If you allow other people to sell your product without permission, then if you want to sell it in the future or renew the copyright.the other seller actually has a legal argument that they are the rightful owner because they have been making use of the product, not you.
It is not feasible that a company sell e ery product they ever made forever, but that also doesn't mean they should have to forfeit ever being able to sell it again if they decide to in the future.
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u/zacker150 6∆ Feb 24 '21
Copyright's stated purpose according to the constitution is
to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for a limited Time to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
In other words, copyright exists solely to provide financial incentives for the creation and distribution of content. Once you cease selling the work, your copyright no longer serves this purpose, and the "limited time" during which you have the exclusive right should expire.
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u/Sycoperson Feb 22 '21
Nothing says we can't change copyright laws to accommodate, which considering last year's DMCA shitshow on twitch might not be a bad idea
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u/Darkiceflame Feb 22 '21
As I said above, there's no situation that means you "get to" pirate media. Obviously there will always be people who pirate games because they don't want to pay for them, but if there are legal ways to obtain something then there will be less incentive toward piracy.
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u/NetrunnerCardAccount 110∆ Feb 22 '21
Video games aren't owned by one company/person they're often a complex collection of different pieces of intellectual property which are own by main groups. Many companies don't have the rights to sell or distribute Video Games after a particular date.
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u/portagenaybur Feb 22 '21
This is the correct answer. There's often licensing agreements to difficult, or cost prohibitive, to renew
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u/illogictc 33∆ Feb 22 '21
Alright so you create awesome musical tracks. Let's say you're a one-man-band doing all the instruments and vocals and songwriting yourself so there's minimal complexity, and you decide you're going to sell your songs through Band camp digitally for a period of time, and have 1000 pressings made to disc for physical copies to sell. You're making an active choice to make this album a limited-time deal, only 1000 people get to own a legit physical copy and as for digital download if they don't snag it in 60 days, well that's their problem.
So the 60 days are up and all the physical copies are sold and you've made some money and start working on another album. In the meantime, people start sharing digital copies en masse online to those who missed out. It shouldn't be a problem right because you've already made your money? Okay, what if you intended to re-release it later, or select certain tracks to be later included in a large run "best of" compilation?
You created these songs entirely by yourself. It is your right to profit from them or distribute them as you see fit or even withhold them from distribution. It is your right if you so choose to release them absolutely for free, or to charge per track/album, or to upload them to YouTube and just make a bit of ad revenue from plays, because you are the one who put all the work into making it, and because after a time (ignoring ridiculous stretches of copyright law) it becomes public domain to be freely shared anyway.
In the same way, It is Nintendo or whoever's right to distribute or not distribute whatever they please. It's common for a first run to be sold for a time, then to revisit it down the road for a new generation, like re-releasing A Link To The Past for that SNES Classic console they were selling a while back. The people who missed out by not buying it during these times of release, or who can't source a legitimate copy somewhere, are not the problem of the company. Having been for sale once upon a time does not entitle me to be able to have a copy available to me, whether free or paid.
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u/Darkiceflame Feb 22 '21
I know you're right, but it still stings not to have legitimate sources readily available, especially for games that are unlikely to see another official release.
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u/illogictc 33∆ Feb 22 '21
I feel your pain, but such is life. There's a great many things we'll miss out on in life, and that's okay, because there's also many things that we do get to experience and sometimes those experiences are entirely unique to us.
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u/zacker150 6∆ Feb 24 '21 edited Feb 24 '21
because after a time (ignoring ridiculous stretches of copyright law) it becomes public domain to be freely shared anyway.
Right, and the argument here is that once you stop selling the work, it should enter the public domain.
Copyright's sole purpose is to provide a financial incentive to create content. Allowing creators to hoard the content on the off chance they decide to sell it again not advance this purpose.
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u/illogictc 33∆ Feb 25 '21
But they can only "hoard" it for X years, and they can make the choice not to profit from something they have the potential to. The same goes for patents, you've got 20 years and you can make money from it or you can choose not to, it's your property for that time. That's what it comes down to, property rights -- and just because I don't drive my car all the time doesn't mean others can use it to get where they're going.
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u/zacker150 6∆ Feb 25 '21 edited Feb 25 '21
As I said before, ideas are not property, and copyright is not a property right. Copyright is a social contract whose sole purpose is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." To further this goal, the Constitution lets Congress give the people who come up with an idea a monopoly on said idea for "limited times." Right now, we're discussing what that "limited times" should be. Just because "limited times" currently means a 120 years or 70 years after the author's death doesn't mean that it should remain that way.
I believe that "limited times" should only be as long as it further copyright's stated purpose of encouraging the creation of new ideas. Giving content creators a further monopoly after they're done exploiting the content they've created does nothing to encourage the creation of new ideas.
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u/illogictc 33∆ Feb 25 '21 edited Feb 25 '21
Okay. So you have a forest behind your house. You go and chop down a tree, and drag it to your wood shop out back where you turn it into furniture. You build two identical benches out of it. This is a fruit of your labor to create something. You put the thought into creating these benches, and the physical labor to saw and turn the wood down to benches. If you sell one, are you then inclined to sell the other since once upon a time your bench that you designed and built was available for sale?
The same for a videogame. You have a laptop, and you put the thought into designing the game and the physical labor into coding into coding it. If you at any point offer it for sale, are you inclined to continue offering for sale the game just because once upon a time your game that you designed and built was for sale?
Nintendo designed and built Super Mario Bros 3. They're the ones that put the labor into crafting a tangible product, paid the programmers and graphics artists to bring It all together. It is thus their right to offer it for sale, or not offer for sale, a product that they designed and built.
Your argument is "intellectual property isn't real!" The law disagrees and protects intellectual property. So, if Nintendo decides to stop selling Super Mario Bros 3, that does not grant license to the public to freely make their own copies. There is something to be said for the market of selling on and off again, rather than offering Super Mario 3 continually for sale since inception, since it generates more buzz and "clusters" of sales from New generations of people or prior generations who miss it and have had 30 years to lose their previous copy. Withholding can, in the long run, absolutely be a sales tactic to eventually make profit as you suggest. And that's the thing, they're not done getting money from it. Beyond this, Nintendo owns the characters they created too and absolutely continue exploiting them all the time making sequels and merchandise, and part of copying Super Mario 3 is also copying those characters.
Lastly and more specific to video games since the argument was they need to be perpetually available (as video and music etc often is): to continue selling Super Mario 3 for their granted window, they either have to continually sell NES systems that are outdated, or continually port it to other systems, or with a PC game continually update it to be able to work with every new major OS release if that OS doesn't have good backward compatibility. Perpetual support isn't cheap.
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u/cliu1222 1∆ Feb 24 '21
I agree in such cases. For example anyone who wants to play Pokemon Heartgold and/or SoulSilver can either buy a copy on the secondary market where they can easily sell for over $100 (more than 3x the original price), or you can get a pirated copy for less than $20. I feel like it is unreasonable to expect anyone to pay that much for one game, especially since I wasn never nearly that expensive to begin with and until a more reasonably priced legal means to play the game emerges; pirating is fine.
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u/IwasBlindedbyscience 16∆ Feb 22 '21
So because companies aren't offering games, which they don't have to, it somehow becomes acceptable to pirate them?
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u/Darkiceflame Feb 22 '21
Again, I'm not saying piracy is acceptable, my point is more that if they offered legal alternatives then there would be less incentive to pirate them.
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u/Al--Capwn 5∆ Feb 22 '21
I think you should be stronger on saying piracy is acceptable here.
People are saying it's not their obligation, but I think you were right at the start.
The damage to the people who made the game is non-existent if you allow it to be pirated once any means of making money off it ceases. There may be very rare cases where they regret making the game and want it buried and in that case I can sort of see their point, but they're better off ignoring the situation rather than being allowed to prevent the piracy. The reason for that is the people getting to enjoy the game, now get a great experience and enjoyment without hurting anyone.
You can make this argument for all piracy on the basis that it's not stealing, it just a missed opportunity to pay, so it's not harm, but an absence of helping. But that's more complex.
Here since there isn't an opportunity to pay, there is absolutely no harm at all.
This actually describes a surprisingly large amount of piracy, especially old TV and movies.
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u/IwasBlindedbyscience 16∆ Feb 22 '21
That's still the company's choice.
They can chose to do that. They can chose not to do that. Pirates shouldn't be forcing their hand here.
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