On December 01 2011 03:10 InterestingName wrote: Piracy is more of an individual issue. Many of these supposed illegal downloads were made by low budget gamers who never would have been able to buy the $60 dollar titles. For me, it is often hard to find big titles in stores directly after release. Not only that but being a student i rarely have $60 to throw down at release time for a game that i genuinely want to play and pay for. I downloaded Skyrim, and only just bought it yesterday, more than two weeks after. Although i only pay for maybe 1/10th of the games i have illegally downloaded, most of them end up being utter shit that the developer should not be rewarded for. Any want to give me their outrage about how much "Big Rigs" was pirated?
The idea of a "low-budget gamer" seems to be the problem here. If something is outside your budget, it shouldn't be your hobby. I want to have my own helicopter as a hobby. I can't afford one. I don't steal one. Simple.
"I want this, so I'll steal it since I can't afford it" isn't justification. It's childish behavior.
it's actually more like, "I have all the parts needed to build a helicopter in my back yard. but I don't know how to go about it. hm, here's what i'll do, I'll download some instructions on how to manifacture a helicopter so I can build it myself, rather than having to pay an inflated price for something that I already have all the necessary components to enjoy".
many gamers are younger than 18, living with their parents, and thus not responsible for their own economic status. in norway, a 16 year old is discouraged from working. (apart from summer jobs.) further, many gamers live in development countries, where computer games happen to be one of the very few things not price-adjusted for the regular wage in said country. if every single pirate was a 20+ year old living in a western country and capable but too lazy to get a job, then absolutely, your blanket statements might have a semblance of truth to them, but when you look at your statements from like, a "reality" perspective, then they end up just being.. bitter and resentful.
That's not even close, though. You don't have the parts for the game, you don't have a framework. You get all the software when you buy/pirate it. If anything, you have a helipad but no helicopter.
The point is, getting a hobby illegally because you can't buy it legally is not a justifiable by any means. It's superfluous to your life, unnecessary, and only there for enjoyment. You won't die if you don't get a game, it's not like you're stealing food to stay alive another day. You're stealing entertainment because you can't afford it/don't want to buy it. You would survive just fine without games.
my helicopter example is less stupid than your helicopter example, and more in line with what piracy is than what your methaphor seems to indicate that you think it is.
On December 01 2011 02:49 Mammel wrote: In the last ~5 years I've bought SC2, WoW TBC and WotLK, and... Thats it? Played most of the games. Most of the were trash.
What I probably would've paid for if they wouldn't be insanely overpriced for a student are TW1 and 2, DA:O, skyrim, maybe Risen, Medieval 2, Heroes 5 was decent, dunno about that... There are probably ~5 single player games other than those that I've played for more than 5 hours and roughly 50 games that were so bad that I couldn't even finish them.
With 1:10 of the games not sucking ass, how can anyone whine about piracy? I don't care If I'm a billionaire, I refuse to pay for trash games, DLC, preorder crap etc.
And you think that good games are going to get made if there's no money in it? Games are crap because developers are working off a budget. That budget is small because people like you aren't paying and giving them money to make good games.
You want the game industry to grow? Support it with your wallet.
The problem is the evidence contradicts you
The industry IS growing and he is pirating ... so by YOUR logic piracy has helped. Games are crap because they are rushed, released early and designed on the premise of 'crap we need to make some money we need to release a game' and not from the premise of 'hey lets make a great game'
The industry in growing in spite of pirates. There are more people buying now, but there are also more people pirating now.
How many copies of any PC game do you think are normally pirated? 4.5 million of the Witcher 2 apparently. At ~$60 USD, that's $270 million. Sure, some of those people may have gone out to buy it afterwards, but probably not much.
$270,000,000 can fund another game almost by itself. If you don't think that people actually buying games would help the industry, you don't know shit about money.
It's a bit of a fallacy to assume that 4.5 million illegal downloads represents 4.5 million sales. Only a fraction of people who download a game illegally would ever be willing to pay for it.
For many pirates, it's not "Pay for the game, or download it for free" but rather, "Download it for free, or download another game for free." In the case where there is no other free option then the choice becomes "Download it for free, or do something else with my time."
I'm not sure there's any reliable means to calculate exactly how much money piracy costs, because it's impossible to know for certain how many people that download free games would have paid for the game if the free option wasn't available to them.
To answer the question of "How do we cut down on piracy?" Well, one option would be to flood the popular means of acquiring those pirated copies with fake game files. I remember back when I was a young lad using Kazaa to download music, I couldn't download anything recent because every time I wanted the latest Godsmack single, or popular top 40 song on the radio, Kazaa had about 50 different unique files, and only one of them was the actual song. Some were 30 second intros followed by static, some were looped bridges, others were troll files. But I guarantee you it stopped me from illegally downloading a whole lot of music.
I understand this wouldn't work in the case of dedicated piracy websites making pirated copies available. But it would work for most P2P networks, and torrent-search websites, and would probably cut into a not-insignificant percentage of software piracy. It's important to note that one of the traits of piracy that makes it so attractive is its convenience. And if you make it inconvenient to download a game for free, or make it more convenient to purchase the game online, you can also cut down the number of pirated copies.
As an example of how convenience can cut down on piracy I offer my own anecdotal, personal experience when it comes to downloading music:
In addition to music being free, in of itself a great thing. One of the reasons I would use Napster/Kazaa back in the day was that I didn't have to purchase an entire $15-$20 album to obtain the 2-3 songs I actually wanted. Until iTunes came out (and until I was old enough to have my own credit card*), there were no convenient options available to me to purchase ONLY the music that I wanted, at a fair and reasonable price (you will never convince me that $15-$20 is a fair price for an album with 3 solid singles, and 12 tracks that I don't like). Because I was unable to get the music that I wanted for a fair and reasonable price, I simply stole it. But if I could have gone to my local HMV with a CD, paid $5 and got the 3 songs I actually wanted, I would have done it.
Once I had my own credit card, it was less than a week before I had iTunes and Beatport on my computer so that I could easily download individual songs for a buck a piece, and stop stealing my music. Unfortunately, neither of these options are 100% perfect, because sometimes I want a song, or a specific song version that I can't actually find through a pay-service (most recently, I was looking for a legitimate copy of Lady by Modjo). In fact, I'd prefer to purchase legit copies of the songs I want, because I'm guaranteed a certain quality, and a "pure" file. No worrying about skips, loops, static, or other issues with the song I'm downloading. When I use iTunes or other such services, I KNOW that when I pay my money for the song I want, I'm getting the full song, in high quality. Having a convenient service available to me stopped my song-stealing ways.
Now, don't rag on me for trying to "justify" stealing music. I know it was wrong, and I don't care. So take my experience for what it is. An example of something that WORKED for one individual that was stealing digital copies of his music.
On December 01 2011 03:37 FJ wrote: Why are people defending it? It is still theft. You could argue 'well the developer doesn't always lose because I wouldn't have bought it anyway'
That's like says 'Officer, I didn't do any crime, think about it. I can't afford a brand new Ferrari, so it's not as if Ferrari has lost out on anything because I wouldn't have bought one in the first place'
Why is it only games this sort of 'impulse theft't is justified. Take for example a person in a music store stealing an actual CD. The same could be argued - He wasn't planning on buying it, so the company didn't lose out, and the CD printer didn't lose out either because they already printed the CD that wasn't going to be bought.
the theft is black and white argument that falls flat on its face unless you consider that stealing to live is wrong. im not saying i need games to live, merely pointing out that theft isnt that simple.
a lot of pirating is done (atleast by me) when i see something that i could play for 2 hours or so then throw away and would never pay any money for. look at any of the media industries, they throw out 99% watered down trash which people buy because they are either too young or stupid to have any taste or because theres nothing else.
look at the dark knight as a quick example. its a decent film which i paid money to go and see. its entertainment 99% of the way but that didnt mean they had to skimp on writing, lighting, sound etc etc etc. many many many many many holywood films are pieces of shit where they have cut these 100 corners so why should i encourage them to make more of these?
if i pirate this random bad movie i get 2 hours of trashy distraction while still pointing out to them that action and adventure arent exclusive with writing and drama.
then when u consider that its a price fixing scam that games even cost £50/ $60 these days its easy to see why people are angry at the industry :D
On December 01 2011 03:43 dementrio wrote: Remember,
If you cook a pancake for yourself, you are stealing from the coffee house round the corner. They put effort into developing pancakes, but thanks to your theft, they are not getting any money for it. It's not even like you need pancakes. You should not steal something that was not meant to be free, there's no way to go about it.
You still paid for the mix and/or ingredients. The coffee shop around the corner may go out of business if everyone cooks their own pancakes, but the stores that you buy ingredients from are profiting and flourishing.
Who profits when you pirate? Just yourself. It's a selfish act that doesn't help anyone in the long run and hurts others in the process.
Piracy is a crime, you can't justify it just because the material stolen is in infinate supply.
I'm just saying, it is a crime. I think companies should embrace the digital age and find new ways of distribution rather than crying over every download.
I still dont understand why people take piracy statistics so seriously when the methods used to gather them are far from thorough. Plus it benefits almost every developer to use it as an excuse so they dont have people getting fired for making a game that sucked and tanked in sales. They have every reason to inflate piracy stats because it justifies switching focus to consoles without backlash and garners public support because people feel bad for them. Ubisoft does this constantly.
The point is, getting a hobby illegally because you can't buy it legally is not a justifiable by any means. It's superfluous to your life, unnecessary, and only there for enjoyment. You won't die if you don't get a game, it's not like you're stealing food to stay alive another day. You're stealing entertainment because you can't afford it/don't want to buy it. You would survive just fine without games.
This is one of the reason I have no remorse for pirating at all. If this whole industry collapses, who cares. Other business models will be found. Some jobs will disappear, other will be created. Good artists have survived every technological advances since the gramophone. You can't stop technology advance. Once you develop atomic bombs for your own profit, they are here to stay and other people will use the technology, whether you like it or not.
I see all the cries of lost profit, but where's the advocates of gained marketing?
When I was 12 or so, I got WC2 burned from a friend of mine. Good ol' manual pirating. Played that to death. Few years later, WC3 is released. What do I do? Buy it. TFT released. Buy it. WoW released. Buy it. Subscribe for four years. Every expansion so far, bought 'em.
Now imagine I didn't get that WC2 from my pal. What'd be the biggest money loss, that copy of WC2 or WC3 + expansion and WoW + subs for 4 years + 3 expansions?
Same thing with Heroes of Might and Magic, really. Played it at a pal's when I was 10 or so. Got my own computer a couple years later, and bought HoMM3 plus expansion. HoMM4 releases, bought it. HoMM 5, bought it plus both expansions. HoMM 6 released, bought it (even my computer can't run it, kek).
I will echo what another guy said a couple pages earlier -
On December 01 2011 03:43 dementrio wrote: Remember,
If you cook a pancake for yourself, you are stealing from the coffee house round the corner. They put effort into developing pancakes, but thanks to your theft, they are not getting any money for it. It's not even like you need pancakes. You should not steal something that was not meant to be free, there's no way to go about it.
You still paid for the mix and/or ingredients. The coffee shop around the corner may go out of business if everyone cooks their own pancakes, but the stores that you buy ingredients from are profiting and flourishing.
Who profits when you pirate? Just yourself. It's a selfish act that doesn't help anyone in the long run and hurts others in the process.
The companies making hardware profit.
If instead of a regular pancake we talk about a superspecial pan-aux-caque you have the EXACT SAME THING that is the video game industry, and everything based on intellectual property, copyright and patents. Spoiler alert: it seems ridiculous with a pancake, because it is ridiculous.
On December 01 2011 03:10 InterestingName wrote: Piracy is more of an individual issue. Many of these supposed illegal downloads were made by low budget gamers who never would have been able to buy the $60 dollar titles. For me, it is often hard to find big titles in stores directly after release. Not only that but being a student i rarely have $60 to throw down at release time for a game that i genuinely want to play and pay for. I downloaded Skyrim, and only just bought it yesterday, more than two weeks after. Although i only pay for maybe 1/10th of the games i have illegally downloaded, most of them end up being utter shit that the developer should not be rewarded for. Any want to give me their outrage about how much "Big Rigs" was pirated?
The idea of a "low-budget gamer" seems to be the problem here. If something is outside your budget, it shouldn't be your hobby. I want to have my own helicopter as a hobby. I can't afford one. I don't steal one. Simple.
"I want this, so I'll steal it since I can't afford it" isn't justification. It's childish behavior.
it's actually more like, "I have all the parts needed to build a helicopter in my back yard. but I don't know how to go about it. hm, here's what i'll do, I'll download some instructions on how to manifacture a helicopter so I can build it myself, rather than having to pay an inflated price for something that I already have all the necessary components to enjoy".
many gamers are younger than 18, living with their parents, and thus not responsible for their own economic status. in norway, a 16 year old is discouraged from working. (apart from summer jobs.) further, many gamers live in development countries, where computer games happen to be one of the very few things not price-adjusted for the regular wage in said country. if every single pirate was a 20+ year old living in a western country and capable but too lazy to get a job, then absolutely, your blanket statements might have a semblance of truth to them, but when you look at your statements from like, a "reality" perspective, then they end up just being.. bitter and resentful.
That's not even close, though. You don't have the parts for the game, you don't have a framework. You get all the software when you buy/pirate it. If anything, you have a helipad but no helicopter.
The point is, getting a hobby illegally because you can't buy it legally is not a justifiable by any means. It's superfluous to your life, unnecessary, and only there for enjoyment. You won't die if you don't get a game, it's not like you're stealing food to stay alive another day. You're stealing entertainment because you can't afford it/don't want to buy it. You would survive just fine without games.
my helicopter example is less stupid than your helicopter example, and more in line with what piracy is than what your methaphor seems to indicate that you think it is.
Neither is perfect, but then again there is no corollary to piracy other than, like, music or movie piracy.
You never argued the actual point, though. A hobby you can't afford is one you shouldn't have. As a kid, my parents were middle class. I wanted to play Warhammer 40k so badly, but I could never afford a full army and all the necessary books. So I chose a different hobby.
It's a selfish, childish act to pick a hobby and ignore the fact that it's outside of your realm of cost, and just illegally acquire it instead.
On December 01 2011 03:43 dementrio wrote: Remember,
If you cook a pancake for yourself, you are stealing from the coffee house round the corner. They put effort into developing pancakes, but thanks to your theft, they are not getting any money for it. It's not even like you need pancakes. You should not steal something that was not meant to be free, there's no way to go about it.
You still paid for the mix and/or ingredients. The coffee shop around the corner may go out of business if everyone cooks their own pancakes, but the stores that you buy ingredients from are profiting and flourishing.
Who profits when you pirate? Just yourself. It's a selfish act that doesn't help anyone in the long run and hurts others in the process.
The companies making hardware profit.
If instead of a regular pancake we talk about a superspecial pan-aux-caque you have the EXACT SAME THING that is the video game industry, and everything based on intellectual property, copyright and patents. Spoiler alert: it seems ridiculous with a pancake, because it is ridiculous.
The hardware industry has nothing to do with it. That's like saying "I know I stole a car, but the lockpick and tool industry made a profit because I needed to buy things to steal it with".
You already have a PC. If you didn't, you wouldn't think about pirating in the first place. The developer has already made a game. When you buy a game, you profit enjoyment, the company profits money. When you pirate, you profit enjoyment, the company gets nothing at all.
And it's not the same. If you went out and made your own game instead of buying theirs, then it would be the same thing, but you're not doing that.
On December 01 2011 03:37 FJ wrote: Why are people defending it? It is still theft. You could argue 'well the developer doesn't always lose because I wouldn't have bought it anyway'
That's like says 'Officer, I didn't do any crime, think about it. I can't afford a brand new Ferrari, so it's not as if Ferrari has lost out on anything because I wouldn't have bought one in the first place'
Why is it only games this sort of 'impulse theft't is justified. Take for example a person in a music store stealing an actual CD. The same could be argued - He wasn't planning on buying it, so the company didn't lose out, and the CD printer didn't lose out either because they already printed the CD that wasn't going to be bought.
the theft is black and white argument that falls flat on its face unless you consider that stealing to live is wrong. im not saying i need games to live, merely pointing out that theft isnt that simple.
a lot of pirating is done (atleast by me) when i see something that i could play for 2 hours or so then throw away and would never pay any money for. look at any of the media industries, they throw out 99% watered down trash which people buy because they are either too young or stupid to have any taste or because theres nothing else.
look at the dark knight as a quick example. its a decent film which i paid money to go and see. its entertainment 99% of the way but that didnt mean they had to skimp on writing, lighting, sound etc etc etc. many many many many many holywood films are pieces of shit where they have cut these 100 corners so why should i encourage them to make more of these?
if i pirate this random bad movie i get 2 hours of trashy distraction while still pointing out to them that action and adventure arent exclusive with writing and drama.
then when u consider that its a price fixing scam that games even cost £50/ $60 these days its easy to see why people are angry at the industry :D
Don't get me wrong, I pirate myself. I am just saying, it IS theft. Even if you didn't plan on buying it in the first place, you still went and stole it.
On December 01 2011 03:41 Liquid`Drone wrote: man, the comparison with "stealing physical items" is just.. stupid. if you steal a physical item from a store, or from a person, it means that the store lost an item which it thus couldn't sell and which it thus couldn't gain a profit from, or it means that a person lost an item which he paid money for (and thus would have to spend money on again to continue having).
in the event of piracy, there's no physical item disappearing, but rather, you create a new item without having paid for it. theft of physical item = someone lost something, always. but piracy only results in a loss of profit in the event that the person who pirated would have bought the item if piracy was not an option.
The problem is that despite being "copied" it still follows the concept of supply and value. Making essentially infinite copies of something makes it valueless. Piracy destroys incentive to create what we perceive as valued games.
1: perhaps music and games have been overpriced. especially now that distribution can be done virtually for free, there's no reason why one single cd should cost $30. 2: the music, movie and games industries are not on the verge of breaking down. the game industry has continuously been growing for the past 20 years, and will continue to do so. this indicates that people do value the products they make, even if they exist in numberless amounts. 3: as shown by a recent post, at least with music and anime, people who pirate also purchase more.
from my point of view, piracy is something that 1: acts as a way of balancing the market. if a sufficient amount of people pirate, it means a sufficient amount of people consider a product overpriced or a service bad/inefficient, and 2: allows more people to benefit from cultural products that enlighten us as humans and improve our lives (this is one of the best, if not the absolute best, aspect of globalization, and 3: allows some cheap bastards to not pay for products they could and should pay for.
with the introduction of spotify, with the introduction of services like steam, with the introduction of services like hulu, it shows that my point in #1 is absolutely correct and something the industry has already taken into account; the old method of cultural distribution was archaic, inefficient, and expensive. but spotify, steam and hulu would not have been created if there wasn't an economic incentive to create them - piracy is the primary reason why digital distribution is becoming more and more competitive relating to physical stores selling physical objects.
On December 01 2011 03:49 plated.rawr wrote: I see all the cries of lost profit, but where's the advocates of gained marketing?
When I was 12 or so, I got WC2 burned from a friend of mine. Good ol' manual pirating. Played that to death. Few years later, WC3 is released. What do I do? Buy it. TFT released. Buy it. WoW released. Buy it. Subscribe for four years. Every expansion so far, bought 'em.
Now imagine I didn't get that WC2 from my pal. What'd be the biggest money loss, that copy of WC2 or WC3 + expansion and WoW + subs for 4 years + 3 expansions?
Same thing with Heroes of Might and Magic, really. Played it at a pal's when I was 10 or so. Got my own computer a couple years later, and bought HoMM3 plus expansion. HoMM4 releases, bought it. HoMM 5, bought it plus both expansions. HoMM 6 released, bought it (even my computer can't run it, kek).
I will echo what another guy said a couple pages earlier -
On December 01 2011 02:41 Neeh wrote: So many people here with the most awful excuses for pirating. Keep at it, screw the industry over..
How hard is it to actually pay for something?
Trust me the 'industry' will be just fine. In the last 15 years I've seen it do nothing but accelerate, regardless of piracy.
Probably due, in part, to piracy.
Indeed, the industry accelerates probably due, in part, to piracy. The ammount of free advertising pirating yields is mindbogging, really.
Plus there's the entire fallacy that a download is a lost sale which you lot have gotten stuck in, but I won't touch that.
It's great that one pirated game caused you to purchase later titles by the same developer, and I'm certain that you aren't alone.
The problem arises that for every person that pirated WC2 and went on to purchase all of the sequels in the series, there are 5 people that pirated WC2, then pirated WC3, then played WoW on a free hacked server until they got bored/the server got shut down.
I would imagine that for the most part, quality speaks for itself, and piracy doesn't ACTUALLY do a whole lot of harm to large developers. Where piracy does the most damage are the small indy camps by cutting into their profits, thus slowing down their growth, and thus their ability to get a strong foothold in the market and BECOME a large developer.
On December 01 2011 03:37 FJ wrote: Why are people defending it? It is still theft. You could argue 'well the developer doesn't always lose because I wouldn't have bought it anyway'
That's like says 'Officer, I didn't do any crime, think about it. I can't afford a brand new Ferrari, so it's not as if Ferrari has lost out on anything because I wouldn't have bought one in the first place'
Why is it only games this sort of 'impulse theft't is justified. Take for example a person in a music store stealing an actual CD. The same could be argued - He wasn't planning on buying it, so the company didn't lose out, and the CD printer didn't lose out either because they already printed the CD that wasn't going to be bought.
the theft is black and white argument that falls flat on its face unless you consider that stealing to live is wrong. im not saying i need games to live, merely pointing out that theft isnt that simple.
a lot of pirating is done (atleast by me) when i see something that i could play for 2 hours or so then throw away and would never pay any money for. look at any of the media industries, they throw out 99% watered down trash which people buy because they are either too young or stupid to have any taste or because theres nothing else.
look at the dark knight as a quick example. its a decent film which i paid money to go and see. its entertainment 99% of the way but that didnt mean they had to skimp on writing, lighting, sound etc etc etc. many many many many many holywood films are pieces of shit where they have cut these 100 corners so why should i encourage them to make more of these?
if i pirate this random bad movie i get 2 hours of trashy distraction while still pointing out to them that action and adventure arent exclusive with writing and drama.
then when u consider that its a price fixing scam that games even cost £50/ $60 these days its easy to see why people are angry at the industry :D
Don't get me wrong, I pirate myself. I am just saying, it IS theft. Even if you didn't plan on buying it in the first place, you still went and stole it.
You don't get it do you? It quite literally is not theft and trying to convince yourself of the opposite will change nothing.
On December 01 2011 03:58 jimmyjingle wrote: I have an idea!
we should move back to cartridges!
the kind you have to blow in to get them to work.
It's too late for that to work, they figured that one out a LONG time ago
A meaningful quote from this old video, paraphrased:
"The problem is we sell one copy of the game, and then it's distributed to 10 other people. If you have a tenfold decrease on the income from creating games, it's going to lead either to really bad games, or really expensive games"
On December 01 2011 03:43 dementrio wrote: Remember,
If you cook a pancake for yourself, you are stealing from the coffee house round the corner. They put effort into developing pancakes, but thanks to your theft, they are not getting any money for it. It's not even like you need pancakes. You should not steal something that was not meant to be free, there's no way to go about it.
You still paid for the mix and/or ingredients. The coffee shop around the corner may go out of business if everyone cooks their own pancakes, but the stores that you buy ingredients from are profiting and flourishing.
Who profits when you pirate? Just yourself. It's a selfish act that doesn't help anyone in the long run and hurts others in the process.
The companies making hardware profit.
If instead of a regular pancake we talk about a superspecial pan-aux-caque you have the EXACT SAME THING that is the video game industry, and everything based on intellectual property, copyright and patents. Spoiler alert: it seems ridiculous with a pancake, because it is ridiculous.
The hardware industry has nothing to do with it. That's like saying "I know I stole a car, but the lockpick and tool industry made a profit because I needed to buy things to steal it with".
You already have a PC. If you didn't, you wouldn't think about pirating in the first place. The developer has already made a game. When you buy a game, you profit enjoyment, the company profits money. When you pirate, you profit enjoyment, the company gets nothing at all.
And it's not the same. If you went out and made your own game instead of buying theirs, then it would be the same thing, but you're not doing that.
I already have flour and eggs. If i didnt, I wouldn't think about making pancakes. And it is the same thing. If I went out and made my own pancake recipe, then it would not. But I am shamelessly stealing their recipe. It is theft. They are losing money because I am stealing their idea. It is morally wrong, and moreover, I have a job and could afford tons of pancakes. I just enjoy to sabotage the very fabric of our society.
On December 01 2011 03:49 plated.rawr wrote: I see all the cries of lost profit, but where's the advocates of gained marketing?
When I was 12 or so, I got WC2 burned from a friend of mine. Good ol' manual pirating. Played that to death. Few years later, WC3 is released. What do I do? Buy it. TFT released. Buy it. WoW released. Buy it. Subscribe for four years. Every expansion so far, bought 'em.
Now imagine I didn't get that WC2 from my pal. What'd be the biggest money loss, that copy of WC2 or WC3 + expansion and WoW + subs for 4 years + 3 expansions?
Same thing with Heroes of Might and Magic, really. Played it at a pal's when I was 10 or so. Got my own computer a couple years later, and bought HoMM3 plus expansion. HoMM4 releases, bought it. HoMM 5, bought it plus both expansions. HoMM 6 released, bought it (even my computer can't run it, kek).
I will echo what another guy said a couple pages earlier -
On December 01 2011 02:44 jtype wrote:
On December 01 2011 02:43 Probe1 wrote:
On December 01 2011 02:41 Neeh wrote: So many people here with the most awful excuses for pirating. Keep at it, screw the industry over..
How hard is it to actually pay for something?
Trust me the 'industry' will be just fine. In the last 15 years I've seen it do nothing but accelerate, regardless of piracy.
Probably due, in part, to piracy.
Indeed, the industry accelerates probably due, in part, to piracy. The ammount of free advertising pirating yields is mindbogging, really.
Plus there's the entire fallacy that a download is a lost sale which you lot have gotten stuck in, but I won't touch that.
It's great that one pirated game caused you to purchase later titles by the same developer, and I'm certain that you aren't alone.
The problem arises that for every person that pirated WC2 and went on to purchase all of the sequels in the series, there are 5 people that pirated WC2, then pirated WC3, then played WoW on a free hacked server until they got bored/the server got shut down.
I would imagine that for the most part, quality speaks for itself, and piracy doesn't ACTUALLY do a whole lot of harm to large developers. Where piracy does the most damage are the small indy camps by cutting into their profits, thus slowing down their growth, and thus their ability to get a strong foothold in the market and BECOME a large developer.
Yes, but are those 5 people who kept pirating and used hacked servers people that'd otherwise actually buy the game? Chances are they're too young to have income to buy games or pay for subscription-based services, or they're simply not -that- interested.
Plus, even if those five others keep playing pirated games, how many pals do they not spread the word to? How many future generations of high-income consumers do they not lay the foundation for? Sure, the company might miss out on sales now, but they're gaining a generation of strong, game-friendly buyers for the future.
The problem lies in that every company wants short-term profits and ignores the long haul, but this is not a metaeconomy thread, so I'll stop there.
EPT
