A random Twitter encounter with the head of a games studio just got me thinking about computer game piracy.

Specifically;

• why do people pirate, and;
• why do people, with the power to do so, want to stop piracy.

Off the top of my head, the reasons that people pirate in general are economic (not enough money), pricing (not value for money at the price point), ethical (free the poor data), generational (a sense of entitlement), availability (of a sample to make a purchase decision), access (to the data) and criminal (pure cost / benefit analysis of a criminal activity).

I think there are a few reasons for piracy that are given that we can ignore, can roll up into the above categories, or we can chalk up as coming from the mouths of idiots.  These are 'sticking it to the man', which is bollocks almost all of the time, and in the ethical category the rare times it's not. Rebellion against DRM, which is split between the ethical and access categories.  Ignorance, which is complete toss.

It would be fascinating to be able to do a study with a random enough sample to collect the data, but immediately there's many, many obvious bias issues.

Now, I think everybody with an interest in this is going to have their own views on the percentage split of economic, pricing, ethical, generational, availability, access and criminal (and 'other'), but the best I can do is try and find parallels in related areas.

iTunes

If we take music piracy I think that the success of iTunes has shown that one of the main reasons for piracy is access. They made it incredibly easy to view a sample of the song (availability), and then made it easier than pirating to download the song, aided by their end-to-end walled garden, admittedly.

If we turn that to computer game piracy, how can we make the access easier? Steam is helping in this regard, but doesn't have the installed base that Apple had, and is actually hurting in the other regards (purely digital distribution has no tangible product and makes the product seem of a lower value at the same price, it is a closed DRM system which the ethical pirates abhor, it does nothing to assail the generational view of piracy as normal).  

Access is not only about being able to get the game, but being able to get the game on your terms.  Whenever you want, on whatever platform you want, with no artificial barriers between you and the game.  It is also about making it easier than pirating to play the game.  Apple still seems to be the only company in the world that has realised this, and/or has the infrastructure to do anything about it.

This comedic flowchart from a Reddit post emphasises how wrong the movie studios have got it for today's consumers.

Computer games are in no way as bad, but in my view the key to success in any market is simply giving consumers what they want.  Today's generation will pay for media, if you make it as easy for them as not paying for media, and I think that is the magic balance that people will come to realise - the main thing you have to do is make it easy.

Pirating a game is a case of website > download > play.  My gut is that the price of computer games makes it an unfair comparison with iTunes music, but I'd be fascinated to see someone release a game under this principal.  Simply as easy as website > download > play.  Obviously you've got to fit 'payment' in there, and iTunes has the added advantage of automated back-end billing.  [tangental thought] Maybe in-game card payment would be the answer? [/tangental thought]

No clients, no DRM, no account creating, no advertising, no old school distributor. If a game studio's aim is revenue maximisation (as opposed to the ethical desire to eradicate piracy), and in a digital distribution world the cost of incremental distribution is approaching zero, if a game retails at GBP30, and 90% of people pirate it, could revenue be maximised by making it GBP10 and removing all barriers between consumer and product?

Maybe one day someone will try it, and I'll be fascinated to see the outcome.