Ethical considerations of game funding

(EDIT: I see this post has been merged into its own topic. Oops, I got a little carried away. For the original context; this first post was replying to one that depicted game developers as really angry because "If buying isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing")


Likely true, but with exceptions:


Honestly, in most cases, it's not even the developer's fault that we don't own the games, but the storefronts, console makers (nintendo, sony, and xbox), and money-hungry CEOs of triple-A studios. There is a quite surprising amount of steam games that don't actually have any kind of DRM, making them technically DRM-free, even if Valve doesn't tell you and their Terms of Use say otherwise. Even more common that happens in the Epic Games store. Then there's GOG, which is entirely against DRM.

yeah absolutely. I'm all about supperting indie developers, but when it comes to AAA titles, thats where i draw the line. I know most of the latest assassins creed titles require an internet connection afaik and that infuriates me.

I haven't actually cracked a game in years, I've got everything on steam. But yeah, hopefully preservation of games gets easier in the future.

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When I get interested in a pc game, I do a bit of research first.

Is it available on GOG? If yes, I'll eventually get it there. If not, does the steam version have DRM? If no, I'll buy it there when I can. If yes, I take a look through what people said from the version of the game available on other storefronts. If all the possible purchases have DRM, then I just go for anything else. Not even worth pirating, since that still can lead to recommending the game to someone who will buy it and support companies selling "licenses" instead of the game itself.

If I really really want to play a game with DRM because I heard it's really good, I just wait for the Epic Games Store to gift it on their weekly gifts; that way, I don't own the game that I didn't pay for, but I didn't pirate it neither.

I split these comments from the "humor" thread to a new thread as they are rather serious and deep topics.

Also, because I would like to give my thoughts on it.

If something is particularly expensive to make, it can be expensive to buy. Consumers like to feel that they are being overcharged, unaware of the massive expenses that went into development.

We cannot assume that a high price validates piracy.

We can all list volumes of materials that a person may want, but be unable to afford. Some of them, are indeed even status symbols, their price reflecting more of the class and status of the buyer: Lamborghini.

Just because someone lacks the funding for a wanted item does not entitle them to take what they want. And word of mouth may have less value if something is well known and well advertised already. Saying "I like it too" does not qualify as payment for an expensive product, just as a drawing of a seven legged spider does not cover the Electric Bill.

Yes, we need to stand up, fiercely, against predatory marketing, like Licenses instead of ownership.
And deny patronizing businesses that engage in predatory marketing.

The biggest problem with greed in marketing strategy is the sheer number of buyers that make it work.
Word-Of-Mouth is better served by enabling buyers to see the fallacy of predatory marketing and nebulous concepts of ownership.

But stealing? The claim made in the post quoted above is that stealing movies, games and music enabled them (somehow... that is highly questionable. I mean, learning coding is more involved than watching a movie) to create a game. Can a tripleA title not make that same exact claim? That their predatory behaviors allows them to make more products?
This is complete nonsense.
We could use that dubious claim to support any unethical behavior, any crime, any oppression and any theft.

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I was discussing games in general many years ago and the push to put games out. The guy I was talking to told me that gaming revenue is only second after adult movies!

100%! I would say its a mix of price, game availability in a users' country and whether or not its a singleplayer game.

I hate to say it, but the video games we used to have in 2008 where you'd purchase a game and own the game - that is over. Now you're purchasing a base game, where parts of the game can be locked behind DLCs or microtransactions.

Don't get me wrong, offering numerous DLCs like Euro Truck Simulator 2 has done is the way DLCs are supposed to be used. Where the development team will spend many months (if not years) on a single DLC for the players to enjoy.

This is for sure the way to go. Sadly i don't think enough users care enough about this for this to happen. I remember when Helldivers II added a the PSN implementation where a PSN login was required to play the game, their Steam Store page were boombarded with negative reviews and the feature were withdrawn eventually. That win made me so happy.

This reply got way longer than i expected...

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This is going to be an unpopular take, and I won't be checking back on this thread to defend it, but:

Software has always been and will always be licensed, not sold, because it can be duplicated. If you OWN the software you purchase in the same sense you own a chair you purchase, you have all rights to it, including reproduction. If a company sells you a game, you have the right to give copies away to as many people as you want. (Edit: There are protections in the form of patents for physical objects. To the best of my knowledge, only software is protected by both patent and copyright, and you won't hear me defending software patents--one or the other. The legal complications around this are significant, beyond my full understanding, and vary by jurisdiction, I suspect.)

"But that's piracy and they could put people in jail for it!"

No. Piracy is piracy because of the terms of the licenses that reserve the right to duplicate. Without the license, there is no piracy. Even free software is licensed, that's why we have things like the GPL: with software, the creator must establish some rules to protect themselves or the software, even if that protection boils down to "if you use it, you have to let others use what you make with it."

"But it's a multi-billion dollar industry and they're nickel and diming us!"

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Games in the late 90s were $50 at launch, usually. In today's dollars, that'd be $96.28. The usual $60 launch price for a game today would've been $25.97 in 1999. I worked at an Electronics Boutique in 1999. Even used copies of fairly new games didn't go for $25; we sold them at $30+ or if they were high demand, even $40+. The game industry has held the base price of games down really well, despite the cost of developing those games skyrocketing.

Make no mistake, CEO pay and greed is a chunk of that. I work in the industry today and there's real resentment against a lot of executives. That's why you're seeing the unionization of the industry (that and the fact that we've lost tens of thousands of jobs in just two years). The bigger chunk though is simply that it takes more time, effort, and skill to make 4k textures, high poly models, and code to manage all of it than it took in the pre-DLC days. Throw on voice acting (voice actors cost money, and we've gone from a few lines of English to outrage if things aren't fully--and well--voiced in at least EFIGS*), trailers, always-on backends (I won't lie to you--game companies LIKE requiring connections, but it does cost money to maintain that infrastructure), HR and other support staff (did you know some AAA studios run good quality cafeterias, subsidizing their employees' lunches? now you do), and the cost of game development skyrockets. We've gone from six figure budgets to 9 figure.

Probably correct. Revenue != profit. It costs a LOT more to make a triple A game than an adult film.

Nothing validates piracy of a non-essential. As @Aravisian said, lacking funding does not entitle someone to take what they want. Two things entitle someone to something that's not a basic need (and in our messed up society, even basic needs aren't treated properly...). Making it oneself, or being granted the right to it by whoever does own the right.

I've worked thousands of hours on games that I know for a fact some of you have played. I live in a one bedroom apartment. I have some savings, but retirement is looking grim. It's a mercy I never wanted kids, because I sure can't afford them. When someone says, "Eh, screw it, it's not going to hurt the company if I don't pay for this," they're validating not paying me.

*EFIGS--localization terminology for the five primary western localization languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, usually Latin American.

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It was a brutally honest take that covers the depth.
I will take it even further, unapologetically.

If GnuLinux could charge for products; Freedom, but not free-cost; we would see more and better development, maintenance, stability and support.

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Not directly, but if they couldn't afford to buy games and didn't have access to piracy neither, they wouldn't have experienced videogames and, therefore, didn't discover that passion that led them to want to learn coding to make their own game. It was more of a "first step out of a thousand steps". This doesn't mean that piracy is OK, but I'm sure their point is that they can't lose money from someone who can't buy it anyway even if they wanted to.

Well, the context here was indie games. While some indie games may have gotten insanely popular (Minecraft for example), there are many cases of great games that aren't very popular. In those cases, recommending the game to others, who will later recommend the game to others, etc etc, can make a difference. I got interested in Undertale and eventually bought it because a friend recommended it to me, but -while the game is quite popular in English-speaking communities- it wasn't that popular for Spanish people, as it doesn't officially have a Spanish translation, forcing us to rely on fanmade language patches or having a decent understanding of English (which I was not good at back then). Because of this, I wouldn't have heard of it nor bought it back then.

You are right when it comes to products that are well known and well advertised though.

But I think the point of view from someone who wouldn't be a customer anyway is still interesting. With the example of a lamborghini, you would need to spend money on every individual unit produced, so if one gets stolen there is a real loss of money, making the act wrong in every sense, legally and ethically. But it's interesting when it comes to media: sure, if you are able to afford the game then choosing to go the pirate way leads to an unjustified loss of money for the creator that's as the same level as the lamborghini example. But in those cases where someone might not be able to buy it... what money is lost if there was no money to gain in the first place? Not even energy-costs to power the server where it's downloaded, as it for sure won't be from an official source... and going into more specific examples: what about games that aren't sold anymore (AKA abandonware, including those on console)? Is there any money lost if there was no way to pay, no matter how much money you are willing to pay?

In a way, this reminds me of how public libraries work. Anyone can go in and read a book for free, but the creator of the book only got the money from one purchase (similar to how media has to be bought by someone first before it can be distributed online). You can buy the book and support the writer, or you can read it for free in a library. An example I can think of to compare here is a kid who loves to read books from the library. Their parents don't buy books because they earn just the minimum money necessary to survive and very little more. The kid grows up, gets a job and, still passionate about books, wants to keep reading. They can now afford to buy books themselves so they do so, opening the possibilities to even more books that weren't available at the library (or even those that would always be lent to someone else, if it's a very popular book). But would they if they didn't grow passionate for reading books? Possible, but unlikely.

Similarly, I have heard of people who played on their Nintendo DS with pirated games on a flash cart, and now are BUYING switch games, with nostalgia being a big factor. Would they be so passionate about Nintendo's games if they hadn't had grown having a lot of fun with them as a kid? Probably, but way less likely, and probably would be more picky on what games to get (in my own personal case, I have spent 85€ on mariokart 8 deluxe with the DLC, but I don't see worth spending 70€ on the latest Zelda, since I don't even know what the series is about. Despite that, a lot of people say it's an incredible game and "one of the best of the zelda series", while there are people who say mariokart wii is better than the one on switch. Yet, I was willing to pay more for mariokart, because I was familiar with the series and the racing genre and knew I was going to have a good time. Zelda Tears of the Kingdom doesn't give me that guarantee because I have never given a try to that genre nor that series, even if people who played it really liked it)

I suppose I should add my take on the best way to fix this, given I'm denouncing piracy. It's not "boycott the big guys," because that's just going to get devs out of work that much faster. Buy any AAA game you want (and can afford, and your conscience is clear with, of course), from any publisher you can stomach. But go out of your way to support the GOOD guys. The Larians, who've been on record fighting with publishers for years, whose products are of superlative quality, and the Kepler Interactives (Clair Obscur most recently, also Sifu). I'd have said Paradox five years ago; I'm not so sure now.

The thing that will most change the game industry isn't starving its big players--it's feeding its good players. Create jobs and opportunities for the developers who don't want to work under bad actors, but need the job/insurance/whatever, and they'll move. There are thousands of developers looking for work right now. Sign the UVW's petition, and if you're feeling generous/financially comfortable, fund them as a community supporter. UVW-CWA is the only (?) direct join game industry union in the Americas (meaning it's open to all game industry members, not just members of a specific studio). The CWA provides a lot of help and support to unions in the industry.

In short: the more the small ones can grow, the more the big-bads stand to lose, or have to change in order to retain/acquire talent. Growing the middle is actually more effective for generating change than supporting the super tiny single developer efforts... not that I don't love seeing them prosper too.

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I do not accept this as valid because plenty of affordable and accessible games, movies and music all exist. Plenty.
This is a validation and justification, not grounded in reality.
It implies that all access to gaming, videos and movies are completely denied unless one pays a high price. This is simply not true.

True - good point to point this out.

This is a point, too. The car is the item - not a copy of that item.
However, those that can afford it, then pirate it so as not to spend money - that is where loss begins to accrue.
As piracy is validated and taught as 'acceptable', then it spreads as a behavior.

There are some studies that suggest piracy has a positive impact to product sales:

I agree this is a dangerous way of thinking about it. A lot of people will use this as an easy justification for engaging in piracy while thinking they're doing a good deed...

More than likely, smaller studios benefit far more from than larger ones do. The marketing budget alone can sometimes be greater than the development of the game itself.

There is one game that I've bought more than once over the years: Age of Empires II. I basically don't play it anymore these days but I still don't mind paying because it's not only a great game, but the company behind it actually listen to the community and has kept it alive over the years. Not out of the goodness of their hearts (we're talking about Microsoft, after all) but when the community took it upon itself to create their own servers, they saw that there was a clear interest in it.
Today, they even continue to organize and sponsor big prices for tournaments... that alone is something worth paying for.

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An interesting line in the article:

points out a number of caveats for this headline number, not least of which is a 45-percent error margin that makes the results less than statistically significant (i.e. indistinguishable from noise).

Listen... at that point, I stopped reading.
I really did.

An error bar like that did not even deserve a headline.

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I'd be interested in such a study that's not actually horrible.

The 306-page "Estimating Displacement Rates of Copyrighted Content in the EU" report points out a number of caveats for this headline number, not least of which is a 45-percent error margin that makes the results less than statistically significant (i.e. indistinguishable from noise).

I don't understand how one justifies publishing a report with a 45% margin of error. (Aravisian beat me by seconds--I don't want to dogpile, but we had the same, immediate reaction.)

To be more precise, the study estimates that for every 100 games that are downloaded illegally, players actually legally obtain 24 more games (including free games) than they would in a world in which piracy didn't exist.

If those games are not from the publishers they pirated from, that's not necessarily relevant. If the price points aren't similar, that's not necessarily relevant. If 100 games are pirated from developer A because it's the big, popular $60 game right now and 24 extra $20 games are obtained from developers B, C, and D, developer A still loses out, and the industry as a whole is taking in less revenue. Ars even notes that the study includes acquiring free games in the 24 more. At most, the study indicates that people who get games will get more games.

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If error bars are so large that confidence intervals include the null hypothesis value, the result is not a usable value. This study is far past that point. A p-value of .05 would have gotten our attention. One of .45 is an absurdity.
It admits that they have a value of exactly nothing.

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@Locklear93 I was sad to learn of your situation. I don't buy many games these days for the computer. I've never really taken to Steam or other platforms that might exist. One of the things that may be contentious these days is 'bonus content'. I worked alongside the mother of one of the developers of Mass Effect, and who also instigated the concept of 'bonus/add on packs' which has now become industry standard. It feels like the gaming industry is on a par with the Motor Car Franchise, where servicing the car is the bread and butter, the lifeline of a Motor Dealership. I briefly worked for a distributor of Ford cars that also serviced cars. The Finance Director explained to me that out of every new car costing £10,000 the dealership only received £300. In today's world when people are starving, should we be burying our heads in distractions?

A small correction here: Add on packs, under the formerly common name "expansion packs," or "expansion sets" have been around since at least the early 90s. I believe they were around in Japan since the 80s. This concept was around since EA was publishing games by four man teams.

In the case of the game industry, those add-ons save jobs. You won't hear me say CEOs and shareholders shouldn't just flat out keep more of the money at the bottom, but it's an unavoidable truth that the kind of games people consider "fair" are actually difficult for developers to live on.

When you're developing a game that you sell for a set price with no DLC, subscriptions, supporter packs, or what-have-you, that game gets you one large, backloaded payout after 3-6 years of work. You'll pick up more from later sales and promotions, naturally, but nothing remotely comparing to the initial launch. So now, after one game, you have that income in your warchest, and you want to make another. Here's the problem: what do you do with everyone who worked on the first?

For six months to a year, you're not going to need the full art team, any of the sound folks, QA, or even most of your programmers. Historically, this has been responsible for the game industry's nasty cycle of staff up then lay off. That cycle's been in place for as long as game development has been more than four or five man teams; it's not new and not the fault of megacorps. The reality is that when you start and wrap up development, you don't need nearly as many as you do in the middle, and you can't pay the full team without REALLY endangering your studio's existence if the game does poorly. I've worked on games where we started with 5 QA in alpha, and ramped to 70+ before shipping. That is a LOT of money for people you don't need for the whole duration, and it extends to all disciplines--even programmers and designers.

Releasing DLC evens this out. When you would lay people off, you instead move them onto DLC. In the 90s, the same model was used for expansion sets. This is why I have problems with people accusing DLC broadly of being a cash grab. We can all agree that any product sold ought to provide decent value to its purchaser, but what constitutes "value" is highly subjective. Most people prefer major campaign DLC around here, I think--stuff that meaningfully expands the game narratively and mechanically, without the original game feeling incomplete. Thing is, these are a lot less work for the artists, since you don't (usually) need as many assets. QA teams are smaller because there's less content to test, programming teams are usually smaller since this sort of DLC doesn't generally make massive engine changes, etc. Elsewhere on these forums, it's been argued that ALL cosmetic DLC is a cash grab and the skins and things should've been in the base game. In principle, it would keep the artists busy for the same amount of time, so sure, why not?

Because those skins aren't required mechanically for the base game, or for its narrative--what was included filled those roles, so continuing to pay the artists is gambling that having a wide selection of skins will actually sell more copies. It's not a good gamble for the developer, but it can be hedged with collector's editions that come with extra skins. That puts the gamble on the player though, which also sucks. If you don't like the game, then the skins were a waste of your money. Disconnect the cosmetics from the game, though, and the work is smaller, so it's easier to split the artists between multiple items, and you can release based on feedback and demand, not over invest in DLC no one wants.

None of this is to say you should buy DLC you don't want, only that full product, no post-sale game development has a real problem with keeping staff paid, and DLC helps alleviate it. Bad DLC is still bad. Pay $30 for an "expansion" and get 3 hours of play? You've got every right to be mad. But the more that's packed into a single, packaged game without any post-sale income, the more likely the studio is to have REAL reasons to downsize, as opposed to execs wanting to make the line go up. It also makes it harder to finance new projects, which can put smaller studios at the mercy of bigger publishers.

If no one's burying their head in the distractions my company releases, I join the starving, so to some extent, yes! That said, I do understand your intent and there's a difference between having enough fun for good mental health and allowing one to be distracted by bread and circuses.

My personal take is that DLC is ethical funding if:

  • The base game provides a complete experience. Continuing a story is not the same as not finishing the story.
  • The content was not cut from the base game. This does happen, but is much less common than gamers believe. In my 20 years, I'm aware of one case. Obviously, different companies may be worse about it.
  • The DLC is not necessary to be viable in multiplayer.
  • The DLC provides what it promised. Even if it's a bad deal financially, if it says it gives you one skin and you get one skin, it doesn't matter to me if it's $2 or $2000. Charging $2000 for something not worth it and not required makes it a bad DLC, not an unethical one, as long as the proposition was truthful.
  • The publisher or developer isn't reaping the profit while still laying off or severely underpaying those who worked on it. The most ethical game in the world ceases to be if a developer gets shuttered while the publisher continues to sell it.
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Which is why I made the analogy with car dealerships, add-on packs maintain the income that keeps the industry surviving. Pardon my ignorance, what is DLC?

Downloadable content. It's been the standard term for any addition to a game made available via download. Can be free or paid.

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This is why posts like these that are informative and detailed help all readers to critically examine our assumptions and be more aware of how their money affects the industry.

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