It seems like the perfect plot for revenge; Someone wrongs you, you steal their stuff. Like some sort of Robin Hood plot. That seems to be the understanding of many gamer pirates on N4G.
But here's the problem; it really doesn't hurt them as much as it does gamers.
Tell me, what happens every time an extreme new form of DRM releases? What do the publishers say? What do they blame? Piracy.
And here's where it becomes a double-edged sword. When you pirate the game, you become a statistic. Yes, people like statistics. You put a big green bar next to a tiny red bar and you make a sharp statement. You exclaim a large number and you can't be wrong. Publishers know this.
That's why they're more than happy to report their "losses" in the form of how many pirated copies of their game were stolen. It's an easy out to explain poor sales to investors. They "simply" impose stronger DRM the next time. Or have an online pass. Or cut stuff out and sell it in the form of DLC.
MANY have the attitude that pirating the game will make for a good way to get revenge, and thus many pirated copies can probably be attributed to those people.
Imagine if those people didn't pirate the game. Pirated copies could potentially be way down. The lower the number, the less convincing those snotty publishers would be at the next investor's meeting. Imagine some fat guy sweating his suit into a swimsuit as he tries to explain that a few hundred (or even thousand) pirated copies are the reason that blandfest 2012 didn't sell as expected.
Let's knock them down a peg. Don't pirate games when Publishers do something dirty. Just don't play it at all. Miss one game and make a stand.
(Yes, I drew the Pirate)
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Piracy is just a red-herring for these publishers. DRM took off during an age when piracy was less of an issue, it's main reason of its implementation, in my opinion, was to kill the used game market.
Valve even release data to publishers showing them what happens when you take the strict DRM route.
"Recently I was in a meeting and there’s a company that had a third party DRM solution and we showed them look, this is what happens, at this point in your life cycle your DRM got hacked, right? Now let’s look at the data, did your sales change at all? No, your sales didn’t change one bit."
"...and then we tell them you actually probably lost a whole bunch of sales as near as we can tell, here’s how much money you lost by bundling that with your product."
So there is clearly an ulterior motive to this DRM and it's not to stop piracy since we know, and they know, that it's going to get hacked anyway. I think pirating the likes of mass effect 3 actually sends the message, 'look what happens when you screw over your customers and force origins upon them'.
As far as piracy on PC goes, it's not about the DRM or the company. How many times are games illegally downloaded even though they did everything they could to make it "PC gamer friendly"?
I can't wait to see how Rayman Origins stacks up against other Ubisoft titles. No DRM vs Heavy DRM and probably still just as many illegal downloads with the excuse changed to "I wasn't going to pay for a flash game" or something equally ridiculous.
I agree, even if you are pirating the game, you are showing weakness by stealing it, proving you still want their game. So if they know they're making something people want badly enough to steal, they'll just punish every gamer out there who IS buying it. You're just making it worse. Just don't play the game at all if you have a problem with the company who makes it.
Piracy its getting less relevant these days good to hear that.
Stop trying to beat piracy with DRM and use the time to make your game better. DRM gets you nowhere and just pisses off paying customers. Im looking at you borderlands.