New Grand Theft Auto sells horribly for a bunch of reasons. (a throw back to copyright/piracy)

So Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars sold awfully.

Only 90,000 awful.

I'm sure any of you who follow these types of things are already thinking what I am, and not what the comments are saying.

Man, Kotaku comments.

It had nothing to do with DS "iz 4 ze kiddie."

Oy vey.

It has everything to do with the DS being retardedly piratable.



This turns to a point I'd like to discuss frankly.
A friend recently pointed out/vocalized a thought of mine:
"Buying used is the same as stealing to the publisher and developer."

Counterpoint to this topic: Patapon 2 (for the PS) being download only in the US.

With PSP piracy you sort of have to work at it, otherwise your internet will get shut off and you'll be evicted. I was really surprised how stupidly easy DS piracy was. Any game is a very easy google search away. I can't justify downloading the DS games, it is stealing which is illegal.

The reason why I do this, despite being of an economic profile that makes it stupid for me to buy games basically ever, is complex. Sometimes, I buy to support, like the recent Retro Game Challenge (DS) or the third season of The Venture Bros on DVD. I was not planning to buy Chinatown for this reason, though that feeling has changed since these reports have come in. Rather, I want to buy Chinatown because in games that are long experiences in which you accomplish things (open to interpretation), I feel unsatisfied playing from a ROM and saving a little .sav file. Playing on an actual cartridge feels somehow more special and real. This is completely ridiculous, but I know I'm not the only one to feel some version of this since I have read/heard about/seen people's inability to commit to their self-made 300-in-1 rompacks/playlists/ad nauseum.

I believe that people are inclined towards honest behavior for the most part and that the majority of pirated media would not have been bought by those people anyway. That may seem naive, but there are actually studies that support it, which I will not bother to find right now even though I care too much about this stuff (the business side of games).

And yeah, you can fault me for that, too; whatever.

Basically this is noteworthy of mention in that the used games market, which is so much more visible and relevant than used second-hand markets in other media, is very detrimental to the future of the industry.

Money is a measure of value. When you pay for something you are, ideally, trading value that you've earned in exchange for something you value an equal amount. It's also an indicator of how much your product is worth to other people. The more others value that product the more incentive you have to produce it.

The growing trend of readily available piracy places value on all the wrong things. Particular material things. The philosophy behind it primarily rewards people for creating things which are difficult to steal, placing secondary the actual quality of the product. You give almost no incentive for people to continue creating valuable ideas, and too much incentive for them to continue harassing the consumer with garbage like SecuRom or proprietary hardware.

Ideas, or the intangible products that come from them like music and video games, shouldn't be so cheap that you blithely steal them because it's easy. They are exactly what we should value and encourage most. (On the other hand over time they do lose some of that value, and we recognize that through public domain. Never mind that copyright, trademark and patent term limits are currently screwy)

Which is not to say that I don't steal my share as well. I had Napster in the 90's. But I've never encountered a community who felt so entitled to it.

Also, if it happens that piracy is the cause of GTA's poor DS sales, perhaps it is because the ROM appeared like four days to a week before the release.