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It's kind of like a growing cycle.
Pirates download games
Developers get mad and introduce DRM
Pirating doesn't stop
DRM becomes more intrusive for the actual customers
Customers become pirates.
Repeat.
Devs should learn to just embrace pirates, it's not a problem that's going to go away anytime soon and there will always be cracks. Witcher 2 was actually a fairly successful PC game despite how many "alleged" downloads it has. And devs also have to remember that not all downloaded copies of a game were potential sales. Plus look at skyrim, selling like hotcakes but there's no multiplayer at all and fairly subtle DRM. Good games still sell. It's just that sometimes you make bad games and the devs blame pirates for bad sales instead of themselves.
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On December 03 2011 20:15 askTeivospy wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2011 14:41 Dotrar wrote:
i pirated skyrim to make sure it works in wine.
now that ive got it working, ill probably buy it when i have the chance
you will "probably" buy it. I'm sure the clear majority of people who use that justification actually don't buy the game, because we all lie on the internet ^>^ jokes that they're so afraid to admit they're just stealing the game over an anonymous medium they use to steal game In reality piracy has ruined games. Theres no incentives in making free content patches if people are just stealing games in the first place. Now its DLC DLC DLC DLC DLC DLC DLC and make sure it costs 10-20$ each time. I find it a joke people rag on activision for being money driven. What do you expect? Pirate users made developers/publishers think that we're all a bunch of theiving idiots and now its time for them to steal back what is rightfully theirs through overpriced games/not giving us the time of day to give us free content for being part of the community they built. Thanks, people who buy things legally are paying for your stupid choices Modding in of itself is based off of piracy, which im sure is a big reason why companies are starting to make their games not modder friendly. Granted, the licenses for programs required to mod were ridiculously expensive so what else would you expect? Still thats no justification. BF1942/BF2 had the most amazing mod community, but where did that go? C yUH welcome to companies charging lots of $$$$ for their games to offset the ones that are stolen from them I think the thing that upsets me the most is how people feel entitled to piracy though. As if its their right.
do you really think piracy is "responsible" for the appearance of DLCs? There were paid expansions for games before piracy became "popular". But, with the rise of digital distribution, someone just thought of "why not make small expansions a little less extra money?", since you could now deliver those without inefficiently putting 30mb on one cd and selling it boxed. And those things became known as DLCs. That has absolutely nothing to do with piracy, it simply spread simultaneously, because digital distribution and piracy use the same transfer medium (internet). It's correlation, not cause.
Would you be as upset if they were to release one $60 expansion to a game instead of three separate $20 DLCs? I don't think that makes any difference at all, except that with DLCs it's more work to buy three of them, but in return you get parts of the new content faster than you would if you had to wait for a full expansion.
And no, modding is not based of piracy either. Modding just takes a ton of work to allow properly and modding can cause tons of compatibility issues. But in return, modding can make your game sell for a lot longer time (c.f. warcraft 3). However, if you look at battlefield or CoD for instance, the publishers would simply die if they tried to support modding for those games.
First of, these games are targeted for consoles. You cannot do game modding on consoles (properly). Secondly, the life expectancy of these games is less than a year, because after a year they just bring out the next game of the series. So if they added modding to those games, people would get angry because their mod content becomes incompatible after a few months when the next game is out. Those people who play modded content would be more hesitant in buying the next game in the series. Everything would just get worse for these publishers. How is that related to piracy? It's not.
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On December 04 2011 00:27 Myles wrote:Show nested quote +On December 04 2011 00:06 xM(Z wrote:On December 03 2011 23:35 Myles wrote:On December 03 2011 22:27 xM(Z wrote:On December 03 2011 14:35 HystericaLaughter wrote:
Nobody has the right to take something for free.. put it this way: people should get/recieve stuff for free. if they dont, they have the right to take it. if everything in this life, in human existence, is luck driven, then the above statement is not only true but it needs to be allowed to happen. That's absurd. People put time, effort, and money into everything that is produced, whether it be tangible or not. Luck is irrelevant. sure and if you're lucky to get a degenerative genetic disorder at birth, or end up the victim of a crash car (just random examples) in your early years, your time and effort will amount to nothing; just because you had bad luck. what you are, what you do and what you have is based on luck. your effort, time and 'money'?(since when you're born with them?) are only there to make luck seem like it was your fault. Simplifying everything down to luck is as wrong as simplifying everything down to hard work. And I still don't see how it's relevant to costs of something vs you thinking people should be able to have it for free.
nope, because one is 'earned' and the other one is 'given'. if you're given stuff for free, you should also give free stuff to others.
(costs are irrelevant at this point but idealy, the freebies, should be factored in the marketing/costs of the product)
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On December 03 2011 20:27 Aldehyde wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2011 05:01 Runnin wrote:On December 01 2011 19:02 Aldehyde wrote:On November 30 2011 22:16 LilClinkin wrote:The Witcher 2, a single-player action-RPG (and fantastic game) developed by CD Projeckt, was estimated to have been illegally downloaded over 4.5 million times. http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/121/1213607p1.html#disqus_threadThis is disheartening news. For those not familiar, The Witcher 2 is a single-player action-RPG with extremely high production values: Plenty of unique high-resolution art assets, voice acting available in multiple languages, a diverse range of quests and alternative endings. Essentially, TW2 provides the gamut of features that you'd want from a hardcore single-player role-playing experience. Unfortunately, the cost of producing such experiences has skyrocketed compared to 10 years ago, and costs are only going to continue to increase. If pirates continue to leech off the hard work of developers like CD Projeckt, the market for such games is going to crash as the profitability simply will not exist. It pisses me off when developers and publishers keep whining about how many times their game is downloaded and yet never answer the question "did you sell enough games?". I hope that someday you ask your boss for a raise and he tells you "don't you make a livable wage already?". If a game is good enough for you to play it, then pay for it, whether or not they make their budget back is irrelevant. You aren't entitled to a game just because the company made some money. That was not my point at all. I just didn't express myself clearly. My point is since there is absolutely no way for the companies to know how many of the pirates would buy their game if there was no way to download it illegally focusing on those numbers is stupid, wastes people's time and leads to companies punishing the legit customers rather than the pirates (what with DRM and all). I also like that you completely ignore the part where I say that companies can look at the amount of downloads and say "how can we turn those into legit ones?". I don't believe the way to go about it is by putting DRM on the game. I believe you should make it easy to buy your game, not have specific pre-order deals at specific stores, no DRM. As it is now, it's easier to download the game than it is to buy it. What's up with that? And if you buy it from the wrong place you don't get all the content and if you don't pre-order it's the same deal. I also never said that you shouldn't pay for the games you play but please, go right ahead and put words in my mouth. Of course it's irrelevant for me as a customer to wonder if they get their money back or not but looking at the number of downlaods and immediately coming to the conclusion that every download = a lost sale is fucking retarded. We have no statistics that show how big of a percentage of the pirates would buy games legitimately if there was no piracy. We have no statistics on how many of the pirates actually go out and buy the game after they've downloaded it. We DO have statistics showing pirates may actually spend MORE money than non-pirates http://www.switched.com/2011/02/11/neil-gaiman-piracy-leads-to-more-book-sales/http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/file-sharers-are-content-industrys-largest-customers.arshttp://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/04/study-pirates-buy-tons-more-music-than-average-folks.arsI am NOT defending piracy (though I don't have much against it). I am NOT telling companies to completely ignore the amount of downloaded games. I am NOT telling companies to not try and convert the pirates into buyers. I AM saying that looking at the amount of downloaded games and saying all of them are lost sales is stupid as shit. I AM saying that DRM and the like is also stupid. Next time you could try and actually put my whole quote there, not ignore half my point and then putting words in my mouth.
It's quite irrelevant how many times a game is downloaded. It's actually totally irrelevant. What's relevant is how many games you sell. Do you sell enough games to break even/make a profit or do you not? That's the question that should be asked but developers are so fucking thickheaded that they instead look at the amount of downloaded games and declare all of those people criminals.
Why not just say "what can we do to make those pirates into legitimate consumers"? Sure, you can't turn all of them around, perhaps you can't even turn most of them around but you can try. DRM and other stupid shit only fucks up for the legitimate costumer anyway.
It pisses me off when developers and publishers keep whining about how many times their game is downloaded and yet never answer the question "did you sell enough games?".
I did not quote the middle paragraph because I have no issues with it. Developers are trying to turn pirates in to legitimate customers and DRM is one of the methods they try (which is arguably a failure). I agree that 4.5 mil downloads =/= 4.5 mil lost sales. I agree that DRM fucks legitimate customers over.
The first paragraph? It says basically the same thing as the last one, so I quoted the "summary" you posted at the end to be concise.
All the points you just argued in your more recent post are missing from your first post. I apologize for not being able to read your mind, so until I learn that skill I have to make do with reading what you actually type in to the reply box. Don't blame me for your lack of clarity.
I guarantee you that every developer would LOVE to turn every pirate in to a paying customer, and they are certainly falling short in some of their efforts to do that. These shortcomings are not an excuse for anyone to pirate though, and does not change the fact that pirating is wrong.
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On December 04 2011 12:00 Runnin wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2011 20:27 Aldehyde wrote:On December 02 2011 05:01 Runnin wrote:On December 01 2011 19:02 Aldehyde wrote:On November 30 2011 22:16 LilClinkin wrote:The Witcher 2, a single-player action-RPG (and fantastic game) developed by CD Projeckt, was estimated to have been illegally downloaded over 4.5 million times. http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/121/1213607p1.html#disqus_threadThis is disheartening news. For those not familiar, The Witcher 2 is a single-player action-RPG with extremely high production values: Plenty of unique high-resolution art assets, voice acting available in multiple languages, a diverse range of quests and alternative endings. Essentially, TW2 provides the gamut of features that you'd want from a hardcore single-player role-playing experience. Unfortunately, the cost of producing such experiences has skyrocketed compared to 10 years ago, and costs are only going to continue to increase. If pirates continue to leech off the hard work of developers like CD Projeckt, the market for such games is going to crash as the profitability simply will not exist. It pisses me off when developers and publishers keep whining about how many times their game is downloaded and yet never answer the question "did you sell enough games?". I hope that someday you ask your boss for a raise and he tells you "don't you make a livable wage already?". If a game is good enough for you to play it, then pay for it, whether or not they make their budget back is irrelevant. You aren't entitled to a game just because the company made some money. That was not my point at all. I just didn't express myself clearly. My point is since there is absolutely no way for the companies to know how many of the pirates would buy their game if there was no way to download it illegally focusing on those numbers is stupid, wastes people's time and leads to companies punishing the legit customers rather than the pirates (what with DRM and all). I also like that you completely ignore the part where I say that companies can look at the amount of downloads and say "how can we turn those into legit ones?". I don't believe the way to go about it is by putting DRM on the game. I believe you should make it easy to buy your game, not have specific pre-order deals at specific stores, no DRM. As it is now, it's easier to download the game than it is to buy it. What's up with that? And if you buy it from the wrong place you don't get all the content and if you don't pre-order it's the same deal. I also never said that you shouldn't pay for the games you play but please, go right ahead and put words in my mouth. Of course it's irrelevant for me as a customer to wonder if they get their money back or not but looking at the number of downlaods and immediately coming to the conclusion that every download = a lost sale is fucking retarded. We have no statistics that show how big of a percentage of the pirates would buy games legitimately if there was no piracy. We have no statistics on how many of the pirates actually go out and buy the game after they've downloaded it. We DO have statistics showing pirates may actually spend MORE money than non-pirates http://www.switched.com/2011/02/11/neil-gaiman-piracy-leads-to-more-book-sales/http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/file-sharers-are-content-industrys-largest-customers.arshttp://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/04/study-pirates-buy-tons-more-music-than-average-folks.arsI am NOT defending piracy (though I don't have much against it). I am NOT telling companies to completely ignore the amount of downloaded games. I am NOT telling companies to not try and convert the pirates into buyers. I AM saying that looking at the amount of downloaded games and saying all of them are lost sales is stupid as shit. I AM saying that DRM and the like is also stupid. Next time you could try and actually put my whole quote there, not ignore half my point and then putting words in my mouth. Show nested quote +
It's quite irrelevant how many times a game is downloaded. It's actually totally irrelevant. What's relevant is how many games you sell. Do you sell enough games to break even/make a profit or do you not? That's the question that should be asked but developers are so fucking thickheaded that they instead look at the amount of downloaded games and declare all of those people criminals.
Why not just say "what can we do to make those pirates into legitimate consumers"? Sure, you can't turn all of them around, perhaps you can't even turn most of them around but you can try. DRM and other stupid shit only fucks up for the legitimate costumer anyway.
It pisses me off when developers and publishers keep whining about how many times their game is downloaded and yet never answer the question "did you sell enough games?".
I did not quote the middle paragraph because I have no issues with it. Developers are trying to turn pirates in to legitimate customers and DRM is one of the methods they try (which is arguably a failure). I agree that 4.5 mil downloads =/= 4.5 mil lost sales. I agree that DRM fucks legitimate customers over. The first paragraph? It says basically the same thing as the last one, so I quoted the "summary" you posted at the end to be concise. All the points you just argued in your more recent post are missing from your first post. I apologize for not being able to read your mind, so until I learn that skill I have to make do with reading what you actually type in to the reply box. Don't blame me for your lack of clarity. I guarantee you that every developer would LOVE to turn every pirate in to a paying customer, and they are certainly falling short in some of their efforts to do that. These shortcomings are not an excuse for anyone to pirate though, and does not change the fact that pirating is wrong.
My bad... Really, my bad. I was quite sure I had written more than that, I apologize 
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One of the things that generally annoys me is that most games don't give you access to the EULA before buying it. A lot of EULAs are ridiculous, like the one for origin on battlefield 3. I don't know if it has changed, but that was a good enough reason for me to not buy the game. I also hated the overall design of the game requiring you to join games through a web browser. Really? What the fuck. Who made that decision and thought it would be good? Why are game interfaces suddenly taking steps backwards that seem to take more work than doing it the old way? Luckily I found out how much I wouldn't like the game during the beta and never purchased it.
That said, I have never pirated a game. I primarily stick to Blizzard games and some counter-strike and a very few other steam games. Although with recent trends I become more convinced than ever to start pirating games to do some quality assurance. Too many games seem rushed and have core aspects of the game completely mangled. Yes Starcraft 2, I'm looking at your pathetic interface among other things.
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On December 03 2011 20:27 Aldehyde wrote:That was not my point at all. I just didn't express myself clearly. My point is since there is absolutely no way for the companies to know how many of the pirates would buy their game if there was no way to download it illegally focusing on those numbers is stupid, wastes people's time and leads to companies punishing the legit customers rather than the pirates (what with DRM and all). I also like that you completely ignore the part where I say that companies can look at the amount of downloads and say "how can we turn those into legit ones?". I don't believe the way to go about it is by putting DRM on the game. I believe you should make it easy to buy your game, not have specific pre-order deals at specific stores, no DRM. As it is now, it's easier to download the game than it is to buy it. What's up with that? And if you buy it from the wrong place you don't get all the content and if you don't pre-order it's the same deal. I also never said that you shouldn't pay for the games you play but please, go right ahead and put words in my mouth. Of course it's irrelevant for me as a customer to wonder if they get their money back or not but looking at the number of downlaods and immediately coming to the conclusion that every download = a lost sale is fucking retarded. We have no statistics that show how big of a percentage of the pirates would buy games legitimately if there was no piracy. We have no statistics on how many of the pirates actually go out and buy the game after they've downloaded it. We DO have statistics showing pirates may actually spend MORE money than non-pirates http://www.switched.com/2011/02/11/neil-gaiman-piracy-leads-to-more-book-sales/http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/file-sharers-are-content-industrys-largest-customers.arshttp://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/04/study-pirates-buy-tons-more-music-than-average-folks.arsI am NOT defending piracy (though I don't have much against it). I am NOT telling companies to completely ignore the amount of downloaded games. I am NOT telling companies to not try and convert the pirates into buyers. I AM saying that looking at the amount of downloaded games and saying all of them are lost sales is stupid as shit. I AM saying that DRM and the like is also stupid. Next time you could try and actually put my whole quote there, not ignore half my point and then putting words in my mouth.
I couldn't agree more with this. The draconian DRM used by, most notably, Ubisoft, in reality ONLY hurt the paying customers. What happens with the "always-online in a single player game -DRM" when their servers go down for a moment? The paying customers can't play theirs, while the pirates can. So was it really worth it to spend absurd amount of money just to piss on your paying customers?
Also as said in the quoted post, what most very anti-pirate people claim is that every download is a lost sale or that it is exactly the same as stealing a shirt from a shop. No, it is not. If a pirate A downloads a game he would never ever buy anyways, there is no revenue lost from from the developer of the game. On the contrary, if he likes it, he might recommend it to his friends who might in turn actually buy the game, thus generating revenue for the developer. Obviously, with stealing something concrete, it's not the same case.
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Unfortunately, it seems that these days most game companies are trying super duper hard to PUSH their games onto consumers through advertising and sales gimmicks and what not... so they feel "cheated" when people try to experience the game without buying, because of... idk, fear that they won't fall for whatever gimmick shinanigans are being used?
I mean, a good company that produces a well-balanced game WON'T have to worry about piracy, because the game will be good enough to encourage purchase for the part of services (i.e. multiplayer) that cannot be pirated easily. If a company produces a mediocre game, and then chooses to be offended when people want a guarantee that the game is good before they buy it... do they have the right to be mad?
That's all that I hear when I read the QQ about "every pirated game is a lost sale"
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I don't understand why people pirate games anyway... I support the gaming industry and would never do anything to hurt it, which is why I buy my games. I don't buy tons of games, but I never pirate them either.
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I feel like most gamers pirate because they're just too lazy to get up off their ass and go buy a physical copy of the game. Or do anything that requires more effort than typing and mousing. Which is why I think Steam is successful.
For the record I feel the same way. I'll even next day ship games to my door sometimes. But I generally don't have time during the day to go shopping.
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Just saw the thread/article pop up and thought of this thread right that moment
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=291926
So i challenge you now defenders of "piracy is always bad": Give me a reason after seeing this for someone NOT to pirate any and all games that has EA on it when it when the non pirate copy actually give me a disadvantage ( and a pretty big one ) and the risk of something happening to all my other EA games ... yeap, thats what some of the big names need to understand in order to prevent piracy.
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On December 06 2011 01:52 GreEny K wrote:
I don't understand why people pirate games anyway... I support the gaming industry and would never do anything to hurt it, which is why I buy my games. I don't buy tons of games, but I never pirate them either.
Don't worry. Companies don't magically lose money when you snatch a pirated copy of their game.
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On December 06 2011 05:48 Aterons_toss wrote:Just saw the thread/article pop up and thought of this thread right that moment http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=291926So i challenge you now defenders of "piracy is always bad": Give me a reason after seeing this for someone NOT to pirate any and all games that has EA on it when it when the non pirate copy actually give me a disadvantage ( and a pretty big one ) and the risk of something happening to all my other EA games ... yeap, thats what some of the big names need to understand in order to prevent piracy.
That's not an excuse to pirate... you just don't buy the game.
You see, you come here with the entitled attitude that you have a right to the game. You don't, you have a privilege and you gain that privilege by paying the developers that has taken hours out of their day to make the game. If you don't like what EA is doing, you simply don't buy it, don't pirate it, and don't play it. You are never justified to download a game no matter how hard the corporations fuck you over, because you can always simply not play the game.
Stop being an entitled brat, and if you won't do so, then stop getting mad every time someone calls you an entitled brat. You are just using whatever excuse you can to get the game for free. Games can come with no DRM and people like you would still pirate it (see Witcher 2, Minecraft, GOG games, etc), and that has been established over and over again.
Don't worry. Companies don't magically lose money when you snatch a pirated copy of their game.
They might not lose a physical copy, but you are getting a service that you should've paid for. If you played the full version of Skyrim and didn't pay for it, then you are getting something for free that should've netted Bethesda $60. It doesn't matter whether you were going to buy it or not in the first place (therefore creating a "lost sale"), you still took the service that would have otherwise cost you $60 if you got it legitimately.
I'm not saying "don't pirate" because it doesn't matter whether or not I say it. I'm saying stop justifying piracy, because you can't and its stupid when you do.
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Ever since I was suckered into buying red alert 3 (i know, rite?), I will download every game before buying it. It's not like game devs put out demos anymore, you can't even see if it'll work on your hardware. That said, to date the only game (non-abandonware, i love old games) that i haven't paid for is skyrim, and tbh it's just because i'm poor as fuck atm :/
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On December 06 2011 06:24 vindKtiv wrote:Show nested quote +Don't worry. Companies don't magically lose money when you snatch a pirated copy of their game. They might not lose a physical copy, but you are getting a service that you should've paid for. If you played the full version of Skyrim and didn't pay for it, then you are getting something for free that should've netted Bethesda $60. It doesn't matter whether you were going to buy it or not in the first place (therefore creating a "lost sale"), you still took the service that would have otherwise cost you $60 if you got it legitimately. I'm not saying "don't pirate" because it doesn't matter whether or not I say it. I'm saying stop justifying piracy, because you can't and its stupid when you do.
But I wasn't going to buy the game regardless. You are assuming that games are finite. Me downloading the game for free doesn't hurt anyone because I wasn't going to buy it regardless.
Also
I can "justify" piracy in many ways:
1. To see if the game is any good
2. Hey, I heard this game has crippling DRM for paying customers! I'll just pirate it since that has all the bs DRM removed.
3. I want to pirate the game because I can
4. I'm poor
5. I don't like paying for video games (Lumped in with 3 i guess)
I wasn't even trying to justify piracy in my previous post, just making a point. And for the record justifying piracy is kind of lame. You either pirate or you don't.
But in all seriousness, pirates aren't the ones that are hurting the industry. Its the crap products that keep coming out with draconian DRM attached aimed at screwing over legit customers. And when the used PC game market is basically dead can you really blame them? I mean do you really think that piracy is hurting companies like Ubisoft and EA? Or is it a much bigger problem?
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Norway28706 Posts
I actually think it seems like the blanket "piracy is always wrong" and "this sense of entitlement prevalent in today's society sickens me" stems from a different point of view with regards to laws/morality, where "obeying the law is the morally correct thing to do" is the attitude leading to opposition towards piracy. personally, I lead more towards a "do whatever you want to do as long as your actions are not harming others" style of thinking, which results in a different attitude towards piracy; I'm only doing others harm if I pirate a game I would have bought if pirating it wasn't an option. Thus, yes, I am entitled to play whatever game I want, but I am morally obliged to pay for a game if I am sufficiently interested in playing it that I think it is worth the money, and if I am sufficiently wealthy to afford paying for it. piracy in the event where either I or the game is too poor to justify money being spent, is fine - because as I wasn't going to spend money on it anyway, nobody is harmed through me copying it.
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Just make good games that people want to buy and adjust your prices. Problems solved.
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On December 06 2011 08:29 PepperoniPiZZa wrote:
Just make good games that people want to buy and adjust your prices. Problems solved.
This 1000x
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maybe if every new game wasn't hiked up to 60 dollars it wouldn't get pirated as much. I miss the days when a brand new pc game was 40 bucks.
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I'd actually love to see statistics on piracy if for a year every big release offered a serious demo for users to try the game before they bought it. I don't mean 1 level with 1 character and advertisements covering 15 minutes of gameplay, give people the full game with 5-6 hours of gameplay and the ability use their demo progress in the actual game if they choose to buy it. Seems to me that if the arguements of those who do pirate are acurate we should see a massive decrease in piracy over that year?
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EPT
