From: HeroSoftware@cup.portal.com (Bits of Magic)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games
Subject: Re: Key-disk... It's back again!!
Date: Sat,  3 Oct 92 09:40:40 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: na
  <1992Oct1.033943.16669@netcom.com> <wyman.718035194@graphite6>
  <1992Oct3.011507.7469@ncsu.edu>

>Just to make a point, I can't see why anyone would want to pirate
>anything that comes on a CD-Rom.  Logically, the game should be
>so big, pirating the thing would be near-impossible anyways.

>However, considering that they wasted all that space on the CD
>by putting only a 3.5 meg game on it, I suppose I shouldn't be
>surprised.

>However, I feel there's no excuse for releasing such a small
>game on a CD, when it could fit on 3 5.25" or 3.5" disks.
>I know quantity isn't necessarily quantity, but in this case...
>You've got several hundred megs of space on that CD rom that
>could have been put to good use.  In fact, I'm obliged to think
>that it must be a pretty shoddy game, to which point I begin to
>wonder why anyone would BOTHER to pirate it...

You've demonstrated a common lack of understanding of the economics
of selling software.  Many people share these misconceptions:  let
me attempt to enlighten you...:-)

1) People want to pirate CD-ROMs for the same reason they want to
pirate anything else.  They don't want to pay for it, or they can't
afford to pay for it, or they want the thrill of getting it for
free, or they'd rather pay more in media and copying costs than it
would cost from a dealer (presumeably because they hate the companies
and people who create the products), or they like the challange, or
perhaps just because they're morally bankrupt thieving scumbuckets.

What?  Me take personally someone who steals from me?  No way!  :-)

2) CD-ROM is an incredibly cheap media for what you can do with it.
It would cost huge amounts of money to ship a 300MB game on floppies.
That's obvious.  Cost of goods on a floppy runs in the vicinity of
$.50 to $1 (these numbers are ballpark and rounded -- take them as
intended -- as rough examples).  You can get up to 2 MB on a floppy if
you have compression, so a 300MB game would cost in the vicinity of
150 disk units, or $75-$150 in COST OF DISKS alone!  The cost of a
CD is under $2 in quantities of 1000, and probably goes down to $1 at
reasonable runs.  So the cost of disks on CD-ROM is $1 for that 300MB
game.  Everybody with me?  Everybody understands that CD-ROM is much
more efficient for shipping big products?

It's so obvious that it obscures the equally obvious that it's cheaper
to ship on CD-ROM once you have to ship around 3 floppy disks.  It can
be the same cost as 2 or even 1 (maybe!) depending upon your print run
size and the size of floppies you're talking about).

Not to mention that a CD-ROM version may sell to people who wouldn't buy
a floppy version, for a variety of reasons like maybe they want to play
with their new toy, or they don't want a pile of disks sitting around, or
they don't want 20MB games sitting on their hard drive, or they don't have
enough HD space, or it's a machine at work...

3) CD-ROM is not an unpirateable technology.  At this instant I can buy
a machine which will copy CD-ROMs for under $5000 and about $50/disk.  It's
not cost effective if I'm talking about a few copies of $80 games.  But if
I'm talking about selling copies of a $500 (or $3000) program, it's worth
it.  And that technology is only going to get cheaper.  FAST.  That's what
technology does.  CD-ROM will remain nearly unpirateable for a few years,
that's all, and only if the products are large enough to not be worth moving
to floppy.  But there are other reasons than uncopiability to use CD-ROM (see
above for one or two).

4) The inference that a game is worthless because it occupies 3.5MB on a 
600MB storage medium is so incredibly bizarre that I have trouble formulating
a response.  Let me see...

There is an industry in Southern California which is truly an information
industry.  You go to these people and ask them a question about recording
rights and information.  They poke around in a card file (this was a few
years ago that I ran into them -- they may use computers now) and extract
what you need to know (sometimes it takes a few days).  They copy the
information onto a 3x5 card for you and hand it to you.  The information on
that card can cost $50K!  Is that information less valuable if they write
it on the first page of a blank book?  Is it less valuable if they put
that 1K of data on a floppy disk that has a capacity of 1.4MB?  On a Syquest
cartridge that holds 45MB or 80MB?  On a WORM cartridge that holds 300MB?
I think not.  It has essentially the same value no matter what the physical
cost of goods was.  Is it more valuable if they tell you over the phone
because there is no physical cost of goods?  I think not.

In a real sense when you buy a software product I believe you are buying
what amounts to information.  Whether it's human-useable information or
computer-useable information is irrelevant.  The information is what's
valuable, not the media on which it is shipped (so long as the media
remains readable, that is).  The cost of goods for a software product
is certainly an element in determining pricing, but IMO it should not
be the major one.  The value of the information should be more important.

****************************************************************************
* Evan Robinson                * "I never get sick of zombies.  I just get *
* herosoftware@cup.portal.com  *   sick of producers."                     *
* GEnie: EVANROB               *                        George Romero      *
****************************************************************************
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games