Aaaarrrrr!

We often hear about how piracy is damaging the music and movie industries. Any guilt pirates may feel about this is often sated by sitting down and watching an episode of cribs on MTV. These industries are behemoths, and piracy is seen as damaging executives and artists/actors with multiple income channels. When Metallica moans about piracy, its easy to shirk off any guilt. We know how rich they are and no matter how much we download, we will still hear about how rich they are.

For one of the other industries deeply affected by piracy, things are a bit different. The gaming industry is nowhere near as large as the music or movie industry and yet computer game piracy has become a norm for a majority of computer gamers. It has become so widespread, that judging a P.C. games success by its sales is an entirely useless endeavor. Most games are now pirated more often than they are bought and computer game developers are suffering for it.

In response to this, a few things are happening. Firstly, the gap between console and P.C. sales is just getting wider. Game manufacturers are caring less and less about P.C. games, in the knowledge that they just can’t make as much money, even if they do become popular. This is bad news for P.C. gamers, who will face playing games that are designed for console and then ported (usually badly) to P.C.

Secondly, many of the companies that are still making P.C. games are employing all kinds anti-piracy strategies to make money in the current market. Many modern games force players to register online, some even requiring constant internet access to play (non-online play). What started with CD-keys and CD protection has evolved into a complicated and downright annoying trait of purchased games. But here is the kicker, there are pirated solutions to all these anti-piracy protections and they are usually less complicated for the player then the anti-piracy protection itself. All you need to do is visit The Pirate Bay or Mininova, download a torrent of the game with crack included, follow instructions and presto. You don’t even need to constantly change CDs. Someone in the army of game crackers has his pride scratched making sure that you can play the most protected game as simply as possible for free. Aside from online games on developer owned servers, you cannot stop the pirates. The more anti-piracy protection employed, the greater the challenge to the hundreds of devoted crackers. All the anti-piracy software is doing is annoying the consumers who were loyal, or not web-savvy, enough to buy your game.

But the situation has gotten even more complicated in the retail game world. The imminent release of Starcraft II has brought into view the road that game retailers are taking. Blizzard, now Activition-Blizzard, have long been loved by fans. Their games have been known for being player friendly. The original Starcraft pretty much developed competitive Real Time Strategy (RTS) gaming. This was continued with Warcraft III, both of which ran off Battle.net, the much beloved internet gaming service of Blizzard. Both these games’ popularity is due in part do the proliferation of pirated copies, and the pirate Bnetd server.  Although the Starcraft II game itself is being well received in beta testing and previews, the out-game characteristics have prompted a near boycott by loyal Starcraft fans.

Firstly, in a move that is frequent in modern games, LAN functionality is no longer present. While there are many gamers this does not affect, LAN has been a longstanding tradition for many gamers, as well as one that promises low latency. The removal is said to be because of potential piracy. The community flinched, but accepted. Things, however, got worse. With Starcraft II came the release of Battlenet 2.0. It was promised to be so good, that we wouldn’t need LAN. The community was excited. With the new Battle.net, however, came new conditions and regulations. Starcraft paved the way for competitive RTS gaming in multiple ways, including large LAN (or internet based) competitions and spectators. The new Blizzard terms and conditions prohibit non-Blizzard sanctioned Starcraft events. While this may seem unimportant, consider South Korea. This is a country where the top players are considered top sportsman. They are national heroes, they get sponsored and paid sports appropriate salaries. e-Sports are gaining legitimacy. And while it may seem that, seeing as its an Activision-Blizzard game, they should have all the rights to it. The problem is, they didn’t make Starcraft what it is today by themselves. The community did, the gamers did. Now the game manufacturers are trying to make sure that all the cards are in their hands. The community knows where that leads, and they are equipping themselves with the power to stop it.

The new Battle.net is region locked. No overseas playing, unless of course Activition Blizzard creates intercontinental competitions. Okay… so another blow to gamers. With your purchase of the game you are also only allowed one account. Errr… You can also no longer introduce a friend to the game like you used to, unless they play on your account (with Battle.net tracking your stats). They’ve also removed the public chat rooms in Battle.net. This is apparently to prevent the chances of inappropriate content being posted. So no more Battle.net community. It just gets worse and worse. This isn’t even mentioning the censorship and a host of other problems (which include Facebook connect and REALID). The list goes on, and there are ominous messages that suggest a possibly monthly subscription in the future. Although these complaints may seem like the discontent gripes one might expect, there is legitimate back peddling in the quality of the service being offered. More than this, and here I think is the crux of the piracy issue, the corporates behind Starcraft II have decided to fight against a large portion of its fan base. A fan base that it desperately needs.

There is more to the Starcraft II story, enough for another few pages. This is barely tapping into the complications that are arising as Blizzard try to usurp the Starcraft media coverage leader in South Korea (yes, it is a very big deal there). The worrying undertone here is one that is running across many media industries. How to deal with piracy? I’m not claiming that all these problems with Starcraft II are directly in opposition to piracy, but I suspect that the reason why the chain behind the game (Vivendi-Activision-Blizzard) is clenching so tightly is not pure greed. It’s corporate take-over, a misunderstanding of a very non-traditional market and the maintenance of a fast becoming defunct mindset regarding intellectual property. It is not fair to lay all the blame squarely on the Activision-Blizzard, as they are simply approaching the problem in a way that does not satisfy their fans. The problem is admittedly there. Their solution, however, simply ensures that both sides will suffer.

Neither the gamers or developers seem to be taking the high road. Which leaves the question as to when the two will crash into one another.

Written by Matthew Stone (2010)

Matthew Stone is a smart guy in Research and Analysis at The Rubiks Room (TRR). Matt supplies sick beats and writes a lot when he’s not exploring the intimate regions of the Internet and it’s citizens. You can hire him to be a CPR training model, just visit TRRDigital.com or follow TRR.