Hi Tracey! Chinese New Year was awesome this year; there was lots of good food. I hope your week-long family dinners were more exciting this year.
A lot of people, especially people our age, have pirated something, be that a movie, a song, or a piece of software. Most industries fight this through copyright laws, but as you know, copyright laws aren’t as strict in America as they are in, say, Japan. So piracy remains. Video game developers, however, have taken an aggressive approach to piracy. A trap ending had been coded into Skullgirls that would be activated if the game was pirated. In Game Dev Tycoon, developers coded a failstate into the game that forces a player to see their in-game career end in bankruptcy for player who obtained the game illegally. These are smart ideas, but bigger publishers have turned to invasive Digital Rights Management (DRM) policies to stop piracy. This includes online authentication so invasive and unreliable that paying players are forced to access the game through torrent sites.
The most common argument in piracy in digital entertainment is that it undermines the rights of the creators. It’s a fair argument, but the video game industry isn’t known for its standard of living and working conditions. Employees are often under short term contracts and underpaid, forcing them into hours of overtime to make a living. Ethically, neither side is right, but it is very difficult to support an industry that does not have a history in petitioning for humane living standards for its workers.
–Nancy
Sources:
Down with the Digital Dictators! 