The Historical Impact of a Profit-First (and Only) Video Game Industry

Anyone who plays video games and hangs around me long enough will eventually stumble across the conversation wherein I try, often inexpertly, to explain my immutable position against Digital Distribution (DD), Down-Load Content (DLC), Digital Rights Management (DRM), game patching within closed systems (i.e. on consoles) and similar mechanisms which either expressly or coincidentally erode a player's ownership and ultimately control of their own gaming experiences.

"Internet Gating" is how I have decided to refer to the cadre of mechanisms which exist to force video game players to connect on the Internet to some "gatekeeper" to acquire permission to access or use the software they have paid for. 

Discussing the Right Things

I often find people are only prepared to sympathize with anti-Internet Gating notions on behalf of those with bandwidth limitations - people in rural areas, with suffocating bandwidth caps, or soldiers overseas with no Internet access, but let me assure you my objections have nothing to do with bandwidth or the ability to access the Internet.  Those factors are completely irrelevant to me - what matters to me and should matter to everyone who understands it is the part about asking permission.  Even if you look past the blatant infringement of the purchaser's rights of ownership, the fact is that the system we are required to seek permission from has a finite and relatively short lifespan - Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony have all shuttered at least one of these systems in the last decade - there's no longer anyone or anything to ask permission of.  This has a lasting detrimental effect on the historical preservation of an art form.

You Have More Rights Than You Think

Internet Gating in all of its forms is a violation of our rights of ownership.  When I explain this, one of the biggest sticking points is that many of you don't believe that we have any rights of ownership of software irrespective of the medium or means of transmission.  Most people I meet carry around some variation on the notion "you bought a disc but you don't actually own the software."  Believing that you can buy a piece of media but not own its contents means that you have surrendered most of your rights before even realizing it and you're already half way to accepting the terrible consequences of Internet Gating.  The truth is that you DO own that software. The publishers very much want to convince you otherwise and to that end have spent a lot of time and money to corrupt the legal system in favor of that fantasy.

In the realm of software this misconception can largely be traced back to the introduction of the End User License Agreement (EULA).  In a nutshell, software publishers started including a very official and legal sounding document with their software that essentially says "If you use this software, you are implicitly accepting a contract to do whatever we say.  The first thing we say is that you don't own the software so you can't copy it or reverse engineer it etc..."  Many interpret this as an acknowledgement of the limits on your rights as they already exist lest you accidentally violate the law, but in truth the EULA is trying to impersonate a contractual agreement - those things aren't true unless you agree they are - that's why there's an "agree" button.  

If you spend any time at all learning about contract law and any time examining the gist of EULAs, it should be apparent there are a pile of reasons why this doesn't meet the hundreds-of-years-old standards for a legally binding contract.  It's not because contract law is backwards or incapable of dealing with the ever-changing complexities of technology.  Such one-sided non-consensual implicit contract-like agreements are hardly a new invention - they have been de-facto instruments of unscrupulous business for basically as long as contracts have been a thing.  They're essentially the telemarketer asking the 80-year-old who's too polite to hang up the phone and has no idea what's being asked of them "Okay?".  If the person says "yes" whether they understand what they're being asked or not, the telemarketer closes the trap and has legal permission to begin taking their money.  These scams are largely illegal now because they're dishonest and exploitative.  The only reason EULA's aren't similarly illegal is because the companies that use them spend a ton of money on lobbying.  Whatever else is true, EULA began life as a wishful thinking scare tactic with the sole purpose of getting you to voluntarily surrender your rights of ownership by tricking you into believing that you didn't have any to start with.

Under natural law, when you buy something, you can do literally anything you want to with it, including copy it and reverse engineer it.  The advent of "copyright" is fundamentally a violation of the rights of ownership, but one that we tolerate because of the reasonable, if misapplied, belief that people who create things ought to be able to profit from their work and if they can't then they won't create new things and without new things everybody loses.  Since the introduction of the EULA a similar but almost entirely non-consensual corruption has crept into the law lending EULA's more weight even though they remain fundamentally illegal.  Because greed and avarice allow lobbyists to craft legislation and our lawmakers are focused more on their personal interests than the interests of those they are supposed to represent, the law in this area contains numerous contradictions and is wastefully convoluted.  What this means is that there are two classes of law on the topic - one is natural law which is perfectly clear - if you buy something, you own it and if you own it your rights to it are absolute.  The other is arbitrary law or "code" as it's commonly called.  This is where the nonsense, greed, shortsightedness and lobbying are leveraged to craft laws without a backing or limiting principle.  This is why it's often impossible to get a straight answer from a lawyer in the field of software law as it pertains to individuals' use of said software, and most of the time impossible to find two lawyers who will agree on what laws apply and how.  Judges, like senators, don't all do their jobs correctly - many of them hold some agenda in tandem with the Constitution which is another way of saying that they feel it's okay to violate the constitution if it serves their agenda or there is some precedent behind which to disguise prejudice even though their entire job is to apply Constitutional restraint to the legal system. 

This is not legal advice.  If it is advice at all, it is personal advice.  When the legal system contradicts itself it becomes impossible to always stay on the right side of it.  You have to base your decisions on some other goal.  For my part I choose to disregard any law as illegal which infringes upon my rights of ownership because the fundamental purpose of the law is to protect my rights.  This does not mean that I cannot be prosecuted for violations of those illegitimate and illegal laws, it means that truth and the law are not synonymous and if I have to pick one to side with it's going to be the truth because at least that is predictable and derives from principle.  Many laws are contradictory and poisoned by greed and there is no ethical gain by adhering to them.  There are consequences either way so everyone needs to make that call for themselves.

For those asking themselves why this guy is getting so wrapped around the axle over video games when there are "real" human rights issues in the world, remember that video games are a pillar of human culture now and for better or worse societal norms and the law are downstream of the culture.  What happens with our rights with respect to video games today will years from now have some impact on rights not constrained to or related to culture such as the right to own vehicles, houses or land.

Doing The Right Thing Doesn't Mean Letting Them Do The Wrong One

To clarify, I personally respect and advocate that others do also, the need of software developers and artists to receive compensation for their work so they can go on doing that work.  Specifically I advocate that respect manifest as paying for and not distributing unauthorized copies of said software.  What I do not advocate is submission to the irrational, unethical, immoral (and likely illegal) application of systems or processes which infringe on the rights of ownership in order to force compliance with these ends.  This respect between player and developer needs to be voluntary, not compulsory - not because people are fundamentally good or will do the right thing but because it is unequivocally evil to handle it otherwise.  The potential for consumers to infringe on copyright holders' copyrights cannot justify the copyright holders definitely infringing on consumers' rights of ownership.  

Consider the example of two kids on a playground.  Kid B approaches you and says "I don't like the look of Kid A, I think he might be a bully.  Help me hold him down so we can handcuff him to the monkey bars so he can't hurt anyone."  We should all intrinsically know that it's wrong to hold Kid A down so Kid B can incarcerate him just because Kid B is worried Kid A may or may not be a bully. (In case you need a hint, that makes Kid B the bully, and we shouldn't be helping him or justifying his actions.)

Digital Rights Misrepresentation

"Digital Rights Management" (DRM) like many things has been given a name designed to mislead the hearer as to its purpose.  It exists solely as a technological measure to allow the sellers of software and/or recordings to retain control of that software post-sale in contravention of the owner's implicit rights.  Its purpose is not to manage rights, rather to violate the rights of the owner at the pleasure of the publisher.  Many people labor under the misapprehension that DRM is a tool for preventing "piracy" (the willful infringement of copyright for profit), but this is not the case.  DRM very rarely prevents a piece of software from being copied and distributed without permission - in many cases software titles with the DRM removed by cracking groups are distributed before official copies of the software are put on sale.  In essence DRM is almost exclusively applied to paying customers who did not attempt to violate the publisher's copyright.  So then, why do publishers continue to pay for and employ DRM mechanisms?  I can't answer that question definitively but I can attest to how they've used it historically.  DRM has been used to prohibit users from playing games prior to their official release date, it has been used to enforce non-consensual alteration of the software, it has been used to compromise users' PC with spyware and malware, it has been used to intentionally and permanently disable software from functioning, it his been used to prohibit specific people from continuing to use the software without paying for another "license", and most egregiously of all it has been used to prevent re-sale of lawfully purchased software.

It may be hard to imagine a world without DRM, or you may be resigned to it as a necessary evil, but can you imagine what would happen if George Lucas could have used DRM to control Star Wars and prevent anyone from watching the films in their early or original forms?  That's essentially what's going on here.  Can you imagine if it was illegal for you to sell your car because the auto manufacturers reckoned they had a right to your money every time you purchased a car?  What if it was your home?

Despite publishers' attempts to make the public comfortable with the idea of DRM, the hand has been shown and while the full extent of its sinister nature may not be widely understood, DRM has a (well deserved) largely negative public image.

There were many cases where companies found themselves at the wrong end of class action lawsuits over the damage done by DRM, and despite the fact that DRM is almost completely ineffective at preventing copyright infringement, publishers still have the mindset that they should continue to own "intellectual property" after it has been sold to customers.  

Down Locked Content

To borrow a popular analogy, if DRM was the "stick", then Down-Load Content (DLC) is the carrot. The ostensible purpose of DLC - the one publishers hope you'll believe despite it not being part of their motivation at all, is that DLC is a means to enhance and prolong the useful life of a piece of software.  They want you to believe that you are getting more value from your experience because you can keep extending the software with new content rather than needing to buy a whole new title to experience something new.  While DLC does create the potential for extended or enhanced experiences, make no mistake, the reason publishers push DLC is Internet Gating, or more specifically the control it affords them at your expense.  The overwhelming majority of DLC requires that a player tolerate a DRM-laden infrastructure to obtain the new content.  Far from extending the experiences users receive in exchange for their payment, many titles are shipped intentionally incomplete to compel players to pay extra for the content which would have traditionally been provided with the base title - in some cases the additional content is already on the disc and complete but players are not allowed to access it without paying additional fees.

There is a blurry line between DLC and software patching as some of the "fixes" a publisher provides are tied up in "free" DLC.  It's "free" as long as you submit to DRM.  This is not incidental - many games are shipped knowingly incomplete with the promise of a "day one patch" which ostensibly brings the game up to the level of being complete and ready for release.  I'm personally horrified by this paradigm but many people I speak with seem to not understand why I take such an "extreme" position.

When gaming on a platform such as Playstation, XBOX, or Switch, software patches and updates are delivered via a closed network - they are Internet Gated.  My first objection to this is the tremendous compromise to privacy that each of these closed networks constitutes - in order to gain access you are required to supply personally identifiable data.  Historical precedent shows that none of these companies are capable of adequately protecting your data from being accessed by criminals.  I can understand this risk when I'm working with my bank - they have a legitimate reason to want to know who I am and where I live, but when I'm using a game console in the privacy of my home to play a game which does not, as part of its design, connect with players outside my home, there is no legitimate reason for Sony to know who I am or what I'm doing. Creating an account with Sony or Microsoft just to get patches for games is an unnecessary increase in the attack surface for identity theft.  Beyond that, my account is only in good standing for as long as Microsoft or Sony wants it to be.  If I say or do something that goes against an arbitrary code of conduct established by those entities they can disable my account without recompense for any monetary investment I may have made in it.  This includes if someone hijacks my account and it's not actually me who committed the violation.

Patches? Patches!? We don't need no...

Once upon a game industry, it was shameful to release a game with bugs.  If a company released a disk with a game-breaking flaw on it, they would have to institute a costly recall and replace the faulty products.  This caused them to take their time and try very hard to get things right the first time.  When Microsoft first started publicizing the original XBOX, one of the biggest criticisms was that the console had a built in hard drive which would tempt publishers to ship broken incomplete games and patch them later.  In January 2001 Seamus Blackley, then the Director of XBOX Advanced Technology Team promised in an interview with EGM (Issue 138, pp 158) regarding concern that the XBOX hard drive would lead to a developer culture of shipping buggy games and patching them, "If a patch comes through in a game proposal, we send out the nuclear weapons."  Like a campaign promise they never intended to keep, Microsoft knew how caustic and hateful game patches were and that console players would not embrace a system which allowed developers to cut the same corners as the PC player market was forced to deal with.  Once upon a time they wouldn't dare.  Nowadays it's unusual for a game not to have a patch waiting for it the day it hits the stores. We've allowed them to get away with it but they knew it was wrong.  We've allowed them to get away with it, but we didn't have to.

As I explained above, "day one patches" (well, all patches) are almost universally Internet Gated, meaning you have to have an account in good standing and ask permission of an entity on the Internet to access and use the content.  When that system no longer maintains those accounts and that entity no longer exists to seek permission from, those patches will be no longer be accessible to anyone.  The game will essentially only be available in a pre-patched broken state. There's no way for me to save the patches (like, say to a USB drive) for later use.  When the network is shuttered, the patches are effectively lost for good.  Worse still, when a game ships broken, there is no guarantee that a patch will ever be provided to make it whole in the first place.  Often the decision whether or not to fix game-breaking bugs comes down to sales numbers - if the game doesn't sell well, the publisher will often just abandon it rather than spend any more money to provide the originally promised value.

The Damage

The practices of Internet Gating are cutting a swath of destruction straight through the history and archaeology of video games.  It's not in the publishers' interest to care about this.  From their perspective the worst case scenario is that players can't enjoy games that they (the publisher) are no longer collecting revenue from. The best case scenario for them is if they have ported the game to their newest platform, players might be suckered into paying for the same games all over again.  If anything is going to be done, it is going to have to be done in opposition to what  publishers want and against their wishes.

Historically, and to an increasingly lesser extent, video games have occupied the same space as books.  They were discrete, physical representations of expressions of human thought.  Once published, they could be revised but their original form was always available.  Once purchased they could be added to one's library and accessed at the pleasure of the owner.  They could also be sold so the owner could recover the value of his/her investment.  The best and most artful games were the most cherished and valuable, while the low-effort low-quality games bereft of artistic merit, fun or notoriety sifted to the bottom and were largely forgotten.

The Carnival Trick

Game publishers want video games to be like carnival tickets - you pay the most they can get away with charging you for the cheapest experience they can provide.  The ticket gets you past the gate, but all of the most interesting stuff requires you pay more as you go.  They use psychology against you to keep you paying over and over whether you're having fun or you're trapped by a subconscious compulsion that they've identified in you without you knowing it.  When the money dries up, they pull up tent stakes and leave behind an empty lot littered with debris.

The video game market actually began life as a medium similar to a carnival - coin-operated arcades.  But the value proposition transition from the arcades to the home was a transparent one.  

The arcade value proposition said: we'll provide the location and the expensive equipment, and you only have to pay for as much as you play.  That model was successful but ultimately limited - even at the height of popularity, the best and most active arcades never began to approach the kind of profit that the home console market enjoys.  

Home console purveyors offered this value proposition: you provide the location, and instead of paying a quarter to play for a short time, you pay a few hundred dollars for the console and fifty dollars per game and you can play in the comfort of your own home for as long as you like.  The console makers and game developers got all of their money up front and as long as they kept producing new stuff, they kept getting it.  This was the best value arrangement for players both economically and in terms of software quality.

By comparison the transition to the carnival value proposition that game publishers are attempting today is duplicitous.  It goes something like this: we want you to keep thinking that the home console value proposition is in effect - you provide the location, you pay hundreds of dollars up front and sixty dollars per game and can play as long as you like, but instead of playing as much as you'd like for the price of admission, we'll dangle parts of the experience - including the rest of the game you paid for - in front of you and ask you to pay more as you go. Then when we're done squeezing as much money out of you we can with that game, we want it to be worthless without the DLC and patches tied to your account so no one will/can buy your used game from you instead of buying new ones from us.  Nevermind that those used games are the means by which the history of video games persists for the enjoyment of future generations.

Fake News

There seems to be no end of prognosticators out there who fancy themselves learned and insightful by embracing notions that digital distribution is an irresistible juggernaut that will inevitably replace physical distribution mediums.  This is propaganda.  It's only true if we make it true by believing and accepting it.  At this point things look pretty grim because many of the people who would otherwise have resisted this change believe it's not a fight that can be won so they never try.  There are plenty of people who "prefer" to get their games on physical media but can be persuaded to support companies actively trying to eliminate that option because instant gratification is more tempting than voting with your wallet.  Even among the hold-outs I frequently see them compromising when it's something they "really want".

Despite what you've read and what you've heard, the exclusively Internet Gated future is not "here", and not inevitable.  I will concede that it's very likely, given the number of people who have absorbed and re-transmit the propaganda and how close publishers are to boiling the frog, that we will eventually reach a state where physical game ownership becomes fringe.  But right now there's still room to stand up to the anti-consumer anti-ownership dystopian future.  Don't misunderstand me, digital distribution is now a permanent fixture in the world of video games - there are plenty of people who legitimately believe that they prefer it and that it's better than physical distribution.  While I think those people are either not in possession of all of the facts, lack self-respect, or view video games as throw-away transitory entertainment, I do not begrudge them being offered the ability to consume video games the way they're most drawn to.  The problem is that the publishers are pushing for an either-or scenario, and they haven't chosen to champion digital distribution because most players prefer convenience over having a say in how they play, they've chosen it in part because they get to keep a larger share of the revenue (i.e. money not spent on manufacturing, warehousing, distribution and retail).  The main reason however is that allows them greater control which they openly admit (if you listen) they want to use to exploit more money from players for the same old experiences.  After all it's considered efficiency any time a business can spend less money and make more - even if it involves compromising quality.  A profit-first model only cares about artistry insomuch as it affects sales - posterity and the historical significance of the product is irrelevant.

Where There's A Shadow, There's a Light

GOG.com is the exception to the rule about DRM and patching and a shining example of a business model which does not abuse customers to maintain control.  Respect of copyright is voluntary, not compulsory.  Purveyors of DRM-leaden games would have us believe that in such a storefront they would only sell a handful of copies of games before everyone just distributed and played the games for free.  The truth is that they are still profitable and rates of "piracy" aren't any higher on GOG than they are on competing DRM-leaden distributors.  Games purchased through their storefront are explicitly free of DRM, as are patches and DLC.  While it could be argued that the need to have a GOG account to purchase those games in the first place qualifies as Internet Gating, there is no requirement to provide personally identifiable information, and once the game software has been downloaded, it can be copied, backed up, transferred and installed without ever logging in to an account or seeking permission of anyone ever again.  Long after GOG.com shuts down (hopefully never, but nothing lasts forever) those games will still install and play fine anywhere.

Many publishers refuse to release games, or refuse to release newly developed games on the GOG platform citing the need for DRM to protect their "intellectual property".  As has been established, however that ostensible claim is just camouflage for the compulsion to maintain control long after they should have no right to do so.  If you have understood and agree with the points I'm trying to make in this article, one way you can fight back is by supporting GOG both by purchasing games there rather than carnival tickets from platforms like Steam and EPIC, and for the games that aren't available on GOG, pressure the publishers to stop holding back.

Console games are kind of another story.  On the one hand all modern consoles employ some form of DRM, but it's usually limited to anti-copy and region locking mechanisms.  Most importantly, however, the DRM on consoles is a closed system.  With a few awful exceptions, the locks and they keys all exist between the console and the discs/cartridges.  In other words, it's DRM but it's not Internet Gated - because it's a closed system.  Assuming the console is mechanically functional, a PS4 game can be popped into a PS4 twenty years from now when PSN no longer supports PS4 and the game will still just work.  If this were the end of the story, I'd be a happy camper because all things being equal, console games would be immune to the historical erosion caused by Internet Gating.  Unfortunately however console developers have taken on some of the bad habits that used to be the exclusive domain of PC developers - shipping buggy incomplete games with the knowledge that they can be patched later.  As mentioned earlier these patches ARE Internet Gated and they mean that the complete versions of many of the games being released today will never exist in a physical form.

There are some rays of hope however.  In recent years companies like Limited Run Games, Special Reserve Games, Strictly Limited Games and approximately a dozen others have sprung up to cater to those of us who still refuse to play anything but games we can hold in our hands, preserve or sell.  Limited Run Games in particular has enjoyed a meteoric rise in success proving that there is still a considerable amount of demand for these games.  While it's not always possible, LRG emphasizes waiting until games have been fully patched before committing them to disk.  Similarly some major publishers are publishing games through digital distribution first and only producing physical editions after the bugs have all been worked out - the best recent example I can think of is Sonic Mania.

On the down side, publishers like Bethesda who once published physical "Game of the Year" or "Complete" versions of their games once all of patches and updates had been released via digital distribution, has since started trying to get away with selling the old games in new boxes and calling them "complete" because there are codes provided to download the missing content through digital distribution channels.  Not only is this underhanded disingenuous marketing, it's a huge step in the wrong direction.

In many cases after copyright has long since accomplished its ostensible purpose of letting the creator of a creative work profit from it and the publisher has lost interest, gone out of business, or for whatever reason no longer maintains the "gatekeeper" portion of the lock-and-key, the only way to access and play these games is through means that have been made illegal through the lobbying and bullying of large publishers.  Even if players would be wiling to pay for these titles, there are no longer any existing means to do so.  Put another way, "hacking", "cracking" or altering the games' code to remove or defeat DRM is the only way that some of these titles can be preserved and made available.  Some of the games locked behind Internet Gating can be saved and preserved, but it usually requires breaking the law to accomplish.

Pick This Battle

Video games are an amusement - a non-necessity.  Why get all wrapped up in metaphysical knots over rights and free markets over something so unimportant?  Why not just have fun and not worry so much about it?  Because nothing exists in a vacuum.  Nothing happens to the video game industry without affecting the things around it.  Some of those things include children, and the economy - things that matter very much.  The models which are successful in one multi-billion dollar industry will spill over into others irrespective of the nature of those industries.  If we help make anti-consumer business models successful, we will eventually get nothing but anti-consumer business models.  If we let our kids believe it is okay for a corporation to abuse their rights on small things, why would they take a stand against larger abuses?  Hold the lines where they are, or they'll be on your doorstep before you realize what happened.

Personally I take a very hard line and don't participate in Internet Gating. Unless the gameplay intrinsically uses network connectivity as part of its core gameplay (an MMO for example), my consoles are not connected to the network.  That means I don't patch, don't download DLC, even if it's "free".  All of those things acknowledge and legitimize Internet Gating and I simply cannot stomach them.  While I would be delighted to hear it if you wanted to abstain for the same reasons, I realize not everyone is prepared to sacrifice as much as I am to say "no".  I sometimes have to deal with bugs that most people never see and play games in very broken states. I have to take the risk of using "cracks" downloaded from the Internet to play games I've bought and paid for but which would otherwise not work unless I created an account with the publisher.  There are, however, things you can do which might be a little less restrictive to your lifestyle. 

If you have any love for the art form or believe that the legacy of video games is one worth preserving for future enjoyment:

• Support GOG.com - always go there first when you're looking for a PC game.  If it's not available there, pester publishers via Twitter, Twitch and Facebook to release new titles on GOG.  Show them you prefer to have a consensual relationship with them rather than one where they assume you're a criminal and perfunctorily restrain you. 

• Stop paying money for DLC.  Tell these companies you'll buy the expansion when you can actually buy it rather than paying for the limited privilege of using it.  If enough of us do this, they will do what we ask.

• If a publisher announces a "day one patch", wait at least a month after the game releases to buy it and make a point on social media that you're doing this to protest them shipping the game before it was finished.

• If the publisher releases a physical "complete" version of a game you already paid for digitally, assuming the content is all on physical media, buy the physical one too to show your support.  You can always sell the game to a collector later if you don't really want/need it, but you will have voted with your money to affect the behavior of the publisher.

• Before buying a "Game of the Year" or "Complete" or otherwise updated all-inclusive version of a game, insist that the publisher disclose whether the additional content is on the disc or only available as a download with codes - you may be okay with download codes, but the publishers should be required to be up front about what they're actually selling and one way to bring that about is not letting them get away with glazing over when they've been lazy and not actually included the content on disc.

• Buy games from small publishers like Limited Run Games

• Stop using the word "buy" when you talk about paying money for DLC.  Not only is it an improper use of the word, but using it obscures what's really going on - you aren't buying something if you can't own it.  You're paying for it, but you're not buying it any more than you're buying the carnival when you pay for admission.

• If you can't do anything else on this list, whatever you do, stop participating in micro-transactions.  There are plenty of people out there with logical-sounding advice for what constitutes a reasonable micro-transaction vs. an unreasonable one, but they are ALL bad.  If Internet Gating is radiation, micro-transactions are the cancer it gives you.  There are no "good" cancers and you should seriously question the sanity and judgement of anyone who tries to tell you there are.

Keep in mind, many game developers do not want to engage in these anti-consumer business practices.  Many of them have been deceived into believing that DRM exists to protect their wages.  Many of them are being forced by the people with the purse strings to commit small acts of evil against you against their own consciences.  Boycotting this bad behavior by denying the companies good week 1 sales numbers, or refusing to accept Internet Gating isn't hurting Joe and Jane game developer.  They're being asked or forced (depending on your perspective) do do the wrong thing in service of squeezing the most profit possible from players to the detriment of all else.  By threatening profits you are directly affecting the thing that's bearing down on them.  If we can get the money pointed in another direction, then Joe and Jane can get on with making great software instead of trying to rob us with it.