Odds are, if you follow what I have rather optimistically named a “blog” then you are also aware of the chaps over at VanHemlock.com.  This is good, as they are probably my favourite regular podcast, spliting into a “what we’ve been playing” episode and a “news” episode (currently on hiatus) and as wonderfully British as they are, they do have a tendancy to come up with some very interesting points (we won’t get into VanHemlock’s intimate practical knowledge of UK Supermarket Security).

In their latest episode, they are prompted by the furore over Ubisoft’s latest plans for DRM – namely the needing a continuous, steady internet connection to play your single-player games – to have a little chat about computer game piracy.

Being a recently graduated student, still fresh in my mind is the exploits of many a student (especially the Computer Science ones) in various nefarious activities, including various forms piracy; be it music, movies, games or through various means such as torrents, rent’n'rip, swap-parties (not your partners ) so-on and so-forth.

The way I see things is that we’re always talking about the effect on The Industry, on Developers, Publishers and Retailers but we always miss out an important aspect. The Pirates. In this I mean the people who actually download the games (we won’t get into the other media right now), as opposed to those individuals that get down-and-dirty with the code and crack them in the first place or the distributors who get it out there into the public domain. So The Pirates, the users – some speculation goes into their motives for doing this in the first place. Maybe, as VanHemlock points out, they may have a misplaced sense of Anarchy or perhaps they feel they would pay for them, if they could but afford them or perhaps they keep telling themselves that they want to know what it is like before buying it. Afterall, we can listen to music on the radio or in the store, we can view a painting or watching a movie at the cinema before deciding to buy the DVD later, so why not computer games? They are, afterall, just another form of media/entertainment.

But once they get into the habit of it, what’s to stop them? I’ve often heard that some of the most habitual pirates are, in terms of demographical statistics, the best consumers. They spent the most money on this assorted media, even if they also supposed commit the most frequent crimes against it. Does this perhaps suggest that by immersing themselves in so many games (and lets assume they do, I mean it’s free right?), they start to develop a certain level of taste or preference. They understand and appreciate the difference between a good game and a bad game (in their opinions), and perhaps the work that must go into them. So now they appreciate them, they may not stop pirating but the chances are they are more likely to dig deep for some cash for “Good Games”. If out of solidarity if nothing else. Maybe they evolve into only Saturday Driving Pirates or somesuch.

Personally, I agree with VanHemlock, I don’t think that piracy is ever going to go away. There will always be someone who wants to crack things for the fun of it. I know I have and I will qualify that by saying that only on software that I have paid for and I deleted the modified files after proof-of-concept. Call it Intellectual Curiosity. And I’m a bugger for buying the latest and greatest games. But that’s besides the point. Piracy is here to stay and it’s a good idea to make it as inconvenient as possible for the mass market, thus maintaining the market, but not to go all draconian on us. StarForce did that and various other disc-checking DRMs and it did not go well for them. It’s probably better off keeping Piracy around about where it is now, if you keep pushing it deeper and deeper, it’s practices will only get darker and more dangerous for everyone involved.

As a last note I would like to say that though I can see where people are coming from, I do not condone Piracy. Of any media. These people have put time and effort into these products, these creations. Blood, sweat, tears have gone into these things. Often spiced with a sprinkling of divorce and broken families. They deserve they’re jobs and they deserve the small trickle of money they get from the publisher for every item sold.