The problem is, how can you define, essentially, copying 1s and 0s as equal to stealing actual physical materials. Obviously if you steal from the store, you've taken more than just 1s and 0s. You've taken physical materials that cannot be replaced. If you copy a game, the original is still where it was before, you've just recreated it somewhere else. So how did you cause the loss of anything material?
I think focusing on the "piracy is not theft" part of what he said is ignoring what he's trying to say anyway. We've all said this before (or, at least, some of us). Publishers need to figure out how they can thrive without noticing, mentioning or even CARING about piracy at all, because there is never going to be a day when a set of 1s and 0s cannot be, effectively, stolen.
A good way they can start is by pricing non-blockbuster games more appropriately. I wonder what Bulletstorm's PC sales numbers are like and how soon piracy will be blamed for whatever they are. Here's reality: Bulletstorm is not a $60 game.
It's a difficult situation as far as definition goes. To say that it is theft is, strictly speaking, inaccurate, as, which has been said a number of times, nothing is actually being removed from one person's possession. On the other hand, to say that it is copying is to almost necessarily deny that there is a crime being committed and that this type of crime does deny the ability of the devs/publishers to make money they otherwise would have (obviously there is no 1-1 ratio, or even, probably, a 1-5 ratio, but there is still a large amount of money that would have been made had the copy not been pirated).
I don't agree that publishers need to find a way to ignore piracy, and I support DRM, but far too much time has been spent thinking how to punish violators and far too little time on thinking about how it affects legitimate customers. A service like Steam works, in my opinion, as the benefits provided far outweigh the annoyances (that you have to validate it online, even for retail copies), a service like what Ubisoft tried, on the other hand, doesn't, as it punishes people for an ISP outage and provides them with no actual benefits. Obviously, anything can be cracked and broken, and for anyone to insist that there is a way to stop that is silly. All that can be done is to make it enough of a hassle that casual pirates will buy the game out of annoyance and that won't make paying customers have to undergo the same trials.
Pricing is an avenue to pursue, but I wonder how feasible it is to price a AAA game at a lower level and hope for more sales. What is the drop off point with that? Unless non-casual gaming reaches the numbers of casual gaming, I just don't see the kind of sales base to support that, as much as I wish it existed.
~Jason
