The reason music CD's shot up in prices over the past years is due to downloading.
LOL. :biggrin: Music is a very different matter from games. I was hoping someone would bring this one up.
Music industry is a giant rip off. With the advent of the internet and its rapid distribution of music, the middle man leechs aka Record Industry are no longer needed. Music should be freely distributed across the internet. Then let the artists reap massive profits on live tours (as that is where they already make much of their money). I also don't feel bad about seeing music artists who currently earn multi millions a year get knocked down a couple rungs on the ladder. What they do is important and should be appreciated, but they are being way overcompensated for it.
The stories the record industry circulate of lost profits to mp3 piracy are scape goats and lies. In many cases data has showen the record industry is actually still earning more profits, not losing them. DVD sales are down, but that is because back when dvds became big, everyone rebought past movies as DVD format. Now that the rush is gone, of course sales will decrease. They are just throwing smoke.
The fact that there are people who benefit from my work and do not pay makes me a sad panda. It's irrelevant whether they may never purchase my work if they had only the option to pay or not to use it. If they wouldn't by my work anyway, so be it, at least they do not get any benefit they don't deserve from me.
Why would you be sad though? If these are people who weren't ever going to pay you anyway, you should feel good that you still got to bring more happiness to them and the world at no loss to yourself. You say I am only thinking of my self, but perhaps that is you. If you can bring happiness to others at
no cost or benefit to yourself, you should still feel good about it.
Tagrineth said:
You can run around with your "WELL I ONRY GOTS MY $100 A MONTH TO PAY ANYWAY" argument, but I guarantee the majourity wouldn't even spend that much per month if the Utilitarianism argument became law. Nobody would pay for games anymore if it became law; if that were the case, nobody would develop games anymore either, because it simply would not be economically feasible.
I refer you to my previous posts where I mentioned a few solutions should that arrive.
A) Software developers merge with hardware developers.
B) Valve's episodic content where you must buy the authentic game for the full expereince, patches, updates, online play, etc
C)Software developers learn to develop games more effiently focusing on more origonal ideas (cheap) than just fancy graphics and textures (expensive).
This would only come about though if people refused to pay anything, and only pirated. Should it become that serious then I'm sure software developers would become more serious in their anti piracy techniques (again I refer you to valve's steam approach that requires online activation). I doubt piracy would ever become so prevalent. It is beyond the ability of most casual gamers currently, and as games get more complicated it requires more effort.
